Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

At six Roland Dando came home. He gazed anxiously from the car, as if, despite the telephone call, he were not sure if Bray had been safely received, but once he set eyes on him behaved as if they had seen each other a week ago. He was indiscreet, like many people who live alone, and brought back with him from the town — a child bulging with favours from a party — all the anecdotes and gossip of the Independence celebrations, producing, in a clinging fluff of supposition and rumour, bits and pieces of real information and opinion about Mweta’s position and the sort of team he had gathered around him. Another tray came out under the trees, this time with whisky and gin. An old black Labrador with corns on his elbows stood slowly swinging his tail before Dando as he talked. Jason wouldn’t bring home any golden fleece, believe you me (Jason Malenga was the new Minister of Finance); no, it wasn’t a bad thing that the British Chief of Police wasn’t being kept on, people always judged by the Congo, the idiots, but the African deputy, Aaron Onabu, was perfectly capable of taking over from that dodderer anyway; Talisman Gwenzi was first class, and a real Mweta man, David Sambata was an unknown quantity for Agriculture, what black knew a thing about agriculture, anyway; Tom Msomane was a corruption risk — there was reason to believe there’d already been something shady over a land deal for a community development — but he was from the right tribe, Mweta knew he couldn’t attempt to hold the show together without at least three Msos in the cabinet.

Dando pulled ticks off the dog’s neck and burst them under his shoe while he drank and dealt out judgements. Out of a kind of jealousy of the new young men from Britain and America who were so careful to show their lack of colour-feeling by avoiding tainted words and addressing people by polite forms, he recklessly used the old settler vocabulary that reflected an attitude he had had no part of, ever. Roly Dando could say what he liked: Roly Dando hadn’t “discovered” the blacks as his fellows only yesterday. “Of course, Mweta has to hand out a job to everybody. Every pompous jackass from the bush who filled his pipe with tobacco bought with dues from the local party branch. They’re all heroes, you know, heroes of the struggle. Struggle my arse. Edward Shinza’s one of the few who did his stretch and got his head split open that time by Her Majesty’s brave boys, and where’s he — back in the Bashi Flats among his old wives, for all I know, no one even mentions his name.”

“But Shinza’s here for the Independence ceremony?”

Roly glared. “Nobody gives a damn where he is.”

“But he is in town, now?”

“I don’t know where the hell he may be.”

“You mean Edward’s not going to take part in the celebrations? That’s not possible. He’s not come up to town?”

“You can see he hasn’t been given a cabinet post. I don’t suppose he’s going to turn up for the honour of standing in the crowd and waving a flag, eh?”

“But that’s ridiculous, Roly. You know Shinza. He knows what he wants. I had the impression he’ll be ambassador to U.N. Give time for Mweta to shine on his own for a bit, and any tension between them to die down. Of course he should have got Foreign Affairs. But that’s between the two of them.”

“You might ask Mweta, if you get a chance to talk to him, ask him if he isn’t going to find a piddling little job somewhere, something with a decent label to it, for poor old Shinza, he was banging on the Colonial Secretary’s door with a panga while Mweta was a snotty picannin singing hymns up at the mission school.” Dando glowered pettishly over his third or fourth gin and ginger beer. He was given to putting himself on strange mixtures. He would drink one for several months and then switch, for similar good reasons (it was more digestible, it was less likely to produce an after-thirst) to another.

“Oh Mweta’s not like that.”

“You know Mweta. I know Mweta. But there’s the President, now. If there’s a father of the state, it’s got to be him or no one.”

“I certainly had the impression whatever tension there was had eased up, last time I saw Mweta in London.”

“Yes, ‘poor old Shinza,’ that’s what everyone says. Poor old Dando.” Dando did not explain the shift of reference. Perhaps he simply remarked upon his own getting older; undoubtedly he looked older. His small nose showed unexpectedly beaky now that the skin had sunk on either side.

Bray had a lot of questions, not all of them kind, to ask about other people. Some of the answers were extraordinary; the two men quickened to the exchange of astonishment, ironic amusement, and (on Dando’s part) scornful indignation with which he told and Bray learned of the swift about-face by which some white people turned a smile on the new regime, while others had already packed up and left the country. “Sir Reginald himself will present Mweta with a buta wood lectern and silver inkstand, it’s down for Tuesday afternoon.” Dando was gleeful. Sir Reginald Harvey was president of the consortium of the three mining concessionaire companies, and it was common knowledge that, as a personal friend of Redvers Ledley, the most unpopular governor the territory had ever had, he had influenced the governor to outlaw the miners’ union at a time when Mweta and Shinza were using it to promote the independence movement. There was a famous newspaper interview where he had called Mweta “that golliwog from Gala, raising its unruly and misguided head in the nursery of industrial relations in this young country.” “—It’s enough to make your hair stand on end,” said Dando; and enjoyed the effect. The People’s Independence Party, at the time, had taken Harvey’s remark as an insulting reference to Mweta’s hair; he still had it all, and it certainly would be in evidence on Tuesday.

Bray repeated what had been said to him at the airport that morning — that some of the white people still living in the capital would be more at home down South, in Rhodesia or South Africa. “Who was that?” “I don’t know-one of the people from the plane — a baldish fair man with an accent, I didn’t catch the name. He’d recently moved up here.”

“Oh Hjalmar Wentz — must have been. He and his wife took over the Silver Rhino last year. I like old Hjalmar. He’s just been to Denmark or somewhere because his mother died. We’ll go in and have a steak there one evening, they’re trying to make a go of it with a charcoal grill and whatnot.”

“What happened to McGowan?”

“Good God, they’ve been gone at least five or six years. There’ve been three other managers since then. It’s difficult to do anything with that place now; it’s got the character of the miners’ pub it was, but it’s very handy for the new government offices, not too overaweing, so you get quite a few Africans coming in. A genteel lot, very conscious of their dignity, man-about-town and all that, you can imagine how the white toughies feel about all those white collars round black necks in the bar. Hjalmar’s as gentle as a lamb and he has to keep the peace somehow. Oh I’ll tell you who’s still around though — Barry Forsyth. Yes, and making money. Forsyth Construction. You’ll see the board everywhere. They tell me he’s got the contract for the whole Isoza River reclamation scheme — employs engineers from Poland and Italy.”

Because of the mosquitoes, they moved into the house. The spiders came out from behind the pictures and flattened like starfish against the walls. There was no air at all in the living-room, and a strong smell of hot fat. Every now and then, while dinner was awaited, their conversation was backed by intensely sociable sounds-sizzling, scraping, and high-pitched talk-let in from the kitchen as the servant went in and out, laying the table. There was another large meal, and an exchange about a bottle of white wine between Dando and his cook, Festus.