Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

“It will be paradise.” Mweta gave one of his famous gestures, one hand opening out the prospect over the table, the long room, the country, and laughed. As they rose from their chairs, he squeezed Bray’s arm, hard, a moment.

After coffee in the sitting — room Mweta took Bray to his study. The Harrison woman had come in a convention of apology glossing firmness, to speak to Joy Mweta about something, and Joy had gone to her at once with the half — nervous, prideful air of a favoured pupil summoned by the headmistress. Clive Small said as Mweta passed, “By the way, sir, I’ll take care of those people from Fort Howard if the call comes through.”

“And Wilfrid knows about it?” He turned, and he and Asoni exchanged a few words in Gala. “All right. But please, if the chief’s brother insists …”

“No need to worry, I’ll handle him like a butterfly,” said Small, tightening his handsome mouth. He saluted Bray gaily. “Hope very much to see you again, sir.”

The corridors of the place were paved with echoing black and white tiles. Mweta held open the door, first, into a men’s cloakroom. When Bray came out of the lavatory Mweta was standing there waiting for him; they might have been on some London railway station. Bray was amused, with the touching sense of finding the friend, intact, behind the shifting superimpositions of a public self. One did not have to say, confronting the portrait in the toga, is this what he is now? The figure in the toga, the sacred vessel on the velvet-draped dais, they were all simply this rather short man with his head thrown back, in full possession of all these images. He did it all the way he used to jump on the bicycle and pedal to the next village and the next.

Yet the study was oppressive. Heavy curtains made a maroon, churchy light. An enormous desk with a leather top. Leather chairs. A sofa upholstered in something woolly with a tinsel thread running through it. It might have been the office of a company director; it had all been furnished for him by someone who saw him as another sort of tycoon, a black villager who found himself, by political accident, nominal supra-chairman of the mining companies that were the country. It probably had been done, indeed, by somebody on loan from the Company — who else would there have been who had any ideas of how a top man should be set up? But this speculation came from hostility towards the room; perhaps it was merely the way the Governor had left it, like the rest of the house.

Mweta hesitated at the big chair behind the desk but walked away again. He began to walk about the room as if they were waiting for someone. “I never dreamed it would be so long. Every day I wanted to phone and say come over …? I felt worried about it, eh? You wouldn’t believe me but there isn’t a half-hour — every day — there hasn’t been a half-hour — when there wasn’t something that had to … somebody to see …”

“But that’s how it must be,” Bray said, from the sofa.

“Yes, I know. But if you’re here, James—”

“Doesn’t matter who’s here.”

“I suppose so.” His eyes disowned the jolly, officially welcoming tone of lunch, that kept creeping back in intrusion.

Bray said, “You’re the President.”

“But not with you.”

“Oh yes.” Bray put himself firmly in his place.

Mweta looked deserted. He had the strange combination — the smile affirming life, and in the eyes, the politician’s quick flicker. “I don’t even know where my books are. I think they must still be over at Freedom Building.”

“I was up there to have a look at the old place on Friday.” The shoddy block behind the main streets of the town, leased from an Indian merchant, had been PIP headquarters from the years when all they could afford was one back room.

“Well, Freedom Building is over at parliament now!”

“Of course it’ll be seen to that the Party machine doesn’t run down,” Bray said.

But Mweta had not forgotten the polite English way of making a warning sound like an assumption. He laughed.

“How could that be?”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it. Specially in the rural areas. People could feel nearly as remote from what goes on in parliament as they did when it wasn’t their government, you know.”

“That’s what I’ve got ministers of local government for. And I’ll still see as many people as possible, myself. I want to tour the whole country at least every few months, but already I’ve had to take on this fellow … at Freedom Building people used to come and see me any time of the day or night, and sometimes when Joy got up in the morning she found someone already sitting in the yard….”

“He’s essential, I should say. For the time being, anyway. People will get used to it. They’ll learn to understand.”

“Oh he manages very well. But it’s not what I want.”

“What’s she doing here — the Englishwoman?”

“She was here before — she did the flower vases, things like that,” said Mweta. “And for the celebrations, Joy wanted someone, she wasn’t sure she could manage.”

“Everything went off splendidly,” said Bray. “Not a hitch anywhere.”

“Let’s go out there.” Mweta stood up in the middle of the room as if he were shedding it. They took the first door from the corridor into the park and fell into strolling step together, over the rough grass and under the sprinkled shade, as they had done, walking and talking, years ago. Mweta was smaller and more animated than Bray, and seen from the distance of the house, as they got farther away their progress would have been a sort of dance, with the small man surging a step ahead and bringing up short the attention of the taller one. They paused or went on, in pace with the rise and fall of discussion. Mweta was telling a story that displayed the unexpected shrewdness of Jason Malenga, the Minister of Finance, about whom Bray had heard many doubts expressed, not only by Roly Dando. “Of course if I’d kept Foreign Affairs for myself, Tola Tola would have been the one for Finance, but it was decided I couldn’t hope to do it.”

“No, how could you.” No mention of the obvious choice of Shinza.

“Well, others have tried. In any case”—they exchanged a look— “Tola Tola’s always there if Malenga needs advice.” Again, in spite of the silence over Shinza, so much taken for granted between them brought a qualifying remark: “If Malenga would ever admit it.”

They dismissed this with smiles. “What I might do”—Mweta gave way to the urge to seek reassurance for the rightness of decisions already made— “in a few months time — next year — if I reshuffle, I’d give Tom Msomane the Interior, shift Talisman Gwenzi to Finance, perhaps a double portfolio, let him keep Mines—” Bray’s silence stopped him. “I know what people say about Tom. But he’s a chap who can handle things, you know? — he’s shrewd but he can pick up a delicate situation without smashing it. He’s got, you know, tact. And for the Interior — problems of refugees, deportations, and so on. You should see the file. Just waiting for the celebrations to be over, and then they must be opened.” He gave a rough, nervous sniff. “I am thinking seriously about Tom.”

Bray said, “But for the Interior. Doesn’t he take too personal a view? Won’t he be inclined to settle old scores?”

“Well, maybe, that may be, but being in office, the responsibilities and so on. I think he’ll be all right. Sometimes you have to take one risk against another.”

Bray didn’t know whether Mweta was inviting a question about Mso support, or not. His face was screwed up, momentarily, in a grimace against the sun or his thoughts; perhaps he felt he had made enough confessions.