Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

Rebecca was in the bathroom. He took the man into the bedroom and the presence of the unmade bed, the woman’s shoes and his fire — pungent clothes lying on the floor. “Selufu’s letting them have it. The ones he arrested.”

“The twenty from the showground?”

“Fifteen or twenty — I don’t know how many. They’re being beaten and made to stand the whole night. A very bad time. They are beaten and those Young Pioneer bastards are let off. Selufu’s even afraid to arrest them. Yes, it’s true. You see yourself, all this burning and fighting keeps going on because he doesn’t arrest them, he arrests the people they attack. That’s why he doesn’t like the soldiers — they grab anybody who makes trouble. He’s scared, he’s scared for his job.”

“If I go to Selufu, and he asks me where I’ve got my information?”

The barman took his arm as if to confide a gin-inspired platitude. “Don’t go near him.”

“Oh I’m one of his willing helpers.”

“Why I came, I knew you’re taking the trip down. Tell Shinza. Some of them might say things that will make him change his plans. He’ll know if they knew anything important. I’ve got the names.”

“Well, I suppose there are all sorts of rumours … I could have heard from anywhere? D’you think anyone’ll have noticed you’ve been to this house?”

“Perhaps someone has seen me, perhaps not. Everybody looks now, where you are going, when you go.”

“Selufu can’t just be left to do as he likes with people.”

The barman ignored the appeal. “You don’t want the names?”

“Yes, give them to me anyway. D’you know whether Shinza is all right?”

“He will be all right.” Half reproof, half belligerent loyalty.

When the barman had gone Kalimo came into the kitchen, where Bray was fetching his freshly polished shoes from Mahlope. “I hope you didn’t give that one money, Mukwayi?”

“Why should I do that?” He was guardedly amused.

“That’s the man from the bar at the hotel, ay? I know. Everyone knows him. He borrows money, money. They say he even gets it from the white men who drink there.” In English, “He no good.”

“Don’t worry, Kalimo, I didn’t give him anything.”

All day he lapsed into periods when he could not think at all; when the opposing pressures exerted themselves equally, holding him in deadly balance between them. He was going to the police station at noon; and then simply stopped the car down the road under a tree and smoked a cigarette. By early in the afternoon he knew he would go at six, and if Selufu wasn’t to be found, he would go to his house (Aleke had given him a pass, now, issued by the police, that allowed him out after curfew; another mark of grace and favour). If Selufu did find out that the informant was the barman at the Fisheagle, the man would probably be picked up and detained to see what he knew. If Selufu didn’t find out, and had the ready-made advantage that Bray “admitted” the torture story had come as a rumour round Gala, Selufu would certainly deny it outright. All this was quite apart from any conclusions he might reach about himself — Bray. He thought, I could demand to see the men — again, in the name of whom, or what? Selufu was sent here by Mweta to replace Lebaliso because of the boy with the scarred back. So if I have the crazy authority to ask it, it’s in the name of Mweta.

And at the same time, there was that remark of Selufu’s, when he went to see him with Sampson Malemba: “… no trouble on your trips about the countryside, Colonel …”—vaguely taken as a reference to his contacts with Shinza, or to a suspicion about them. It could have been a warning hint: don’t think I don’t know.

He must know.

And yet I have been so cooperative in this mess. Acting out of common humanity. Keeping the peace. (In the name of whom; what sort of peace?) And maybe Mweta hesitated even yet to “set the hand free….”

He scarcely spoke to Hjalmar or the girl when they ate together. When he and she found themselves alone he kissed her without desire. He and Malemba took the daily food supply up to the showgrounds; the men were back in the grandstand but still under heavy guard. The whole of Gala smelled burned out from the Gandhi Hall fire. There was news of riots and hut-burnings at the fish-freezing plant at the lake; roadblocks prevented the fish trucks from getting into Gala.

After dinner he sat under the fig in the dark smoking a stale cigar he had come across. He would get up and go to Selufu at any moment. He sat on. Rebecca came out and finding he did not speak, moved quiet as the bats blotching the old tree. Hjalmar brought a book and turned on the special insect-repellent light; in the garden, as well as the patriarchal fig there were jacaranda trees that one didn’t notice outside their brief blooming-time — they had suddenly unfolded into it in the last few days and the light was caught in caves of lilac flowers. Mahlope was sent by Kalimo to fetch the coffee tray; the young man was singing to himself in a moth-soft voice.

He went into the house and stood a moment at the table where his unfinished report lay, some pages clipped together, some in folders, some loose sheets held down by an ashtray and even the little photograph frame with Venetia and the baby pressed into use — Kalimo’s precaution against the dusty wind that often blew into the house. The paper was gritty to the touch. A hairy black fly lay dead on its back. She had sat on the floor against his legs at the fireplace — it was empty, except for the cigarette butts they all lazily threw there. It was weeks since he had sat at the table, had written a letter, even to his wife. He took a sheet of the typing paper Rebecca had used for his report and wrote out the details about the money in Switzerland: name of bank, address, account number, code name. He folded the sheet and flattened it with his thumbnail, cigar ash falling onto it, and then carefully tore off and folded once again the half he had written on, putting it into the pocket of his bush jacket.

He got up and called her from the dark veranda.

She found him in the bedroom, where they would be safe from Hjalmar. He was sitting on the bed. He said, “We’re leaving tomorrow. We’ll pack up tonight and go in the morning.”

She came no farther into the room. “Why don’t you believe me. I’m not going.”

He put out his hand to her. “Come here. My darling, we’re going together.”

“You are taking me because I wouldn’t go the other day.”

“No, no. I’m not going to dump you anywhere. We’re going. I can’t stay here acting vigilante for Aleke, can I? How can I?”

She stood in front him where he sat, looking down at him, slightly drawn back. He slowly put out his hands and rested a palm on the shape of each hip.

“You are coming with me?”

“We’ll go together.”

“And then?”

“I’m not sure. We’ll go to the hotel so’s I won’t compromise anybody by anything I do … we’ll say I’ve had to come to bring you down because it was unsafe here. — It is unsafe.”

“I was only afraid of one thing — not getting back.”

“I know. But I’ll be there.”

“You won’t come back here?”

He shook his head.

“Not at all?”

“Perhaps not.”

“This funny house of yours,” she said. She sat down on the bed beside him and took his hand.

She asked, “You mean you’ll go to Switzerland?”

There was a ringing closeness in the room around them. Inside him was an experience exactly the reverse of the emptiness, the sense of all forces disengaged and fallen apart, that he had been having all day.

“Maybe. But it’s too late for that. There’s something else I have to do in Europe. I’ll tell you tomorrow when we’re out of here. But so far as everyone else is concerned, I’m just in town because of bringing you, hmm?”