Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

Mweta was on his feet behind the company director’s desk, leaning forward on his palms. There was always the second, on first entering his presence, like the pang of remembering the first sight of someone with whom one long ago fell in love. He came round with that smile — a toothpaste — advertisement smile, really, in the associations of Europe, but in Africa the smile of a boy come upon on the road somewhere, biting into sugar — cane — and took Bray’s hands in his elegant dark ones. A kind of current of euphoria went through the two men. “If you’d said to me, who’d you like to be there when you get home, James would have been the answer. Oh but it’s tiring, eh, James? — years ago, you didn’t tell me, you didn’t warn about that. From the moment the plane arrived, three, four meetings a day — and the lunches, and the cocktail parties, the dinners— And twice it happened there was something special to discuss before a conference — the only time was before breakfast or after midnight.”

“Well, you’ve always had the stuff it takes. All those miles on the bicycle; that was the right preparation.”

“Anyway, we got what we wanted. And this is one of the times when a tied loan is an advantage, eh, all the equipment and materials and skilled manpower comes from the financing countries. They’re paying and their men’ll see to it that the job is done. No throwing up your hands over this delay and that. No defaulting contractors to blame, while we pay. D’you know we’ll get six thousand kilowatt hours a year, when it’s fully operative. We could sell to the Congo, Malawi — Zambia, even — who knows, it’s possible they’ll get out of Kariba. Our lake scheme in the North was just one of those dreams, you know, nice dreams we had before Independence. It’s not a proposition, compared with this. The main thing is money — it’s exactly twice as hard to get money for a scheme that benefits a single state as it is to get the same money to benefit two. And you’ve got to try for it alone. I can tell you, James, it’s all the difference in the world, it’s the difference between going as a beggar and going as statesmen. That’s one thing I’ve learnt.”

There was a tea table near the woolly sofa, now, with a couple of black leather airport chairs for talks less formal than those conducted across the desk. They came to rest there.

Bray said, out of the warmth and ease, “That seems to have gone off splendidly. But what bothers me is the other. Last night.” It seemed a piece of cruelty to speak. Mweta’s eyes winced. He folded his arms to recapture the ease. “I don’t understand, James.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

Mweta’s eyes continued to flicker. He said, smiling, “You heard what I said.”

“Oh that. What you had to say. But what you think about it? The real reasons why you’ve found it necessary? I wasn’t coming to talk to you about this at all—”

Mweta made an eager, dismissing gesture; Bray came to see him because he was Bray.

“No — I had a reason”—a rebuff for them both— “there was a young man I picked up on the road to the Bashi last week. I discovered later that he’d been in detention at Gala prison for almost three months — he didn’t need to wait for your new law. I was going to talk to you about him, I didn’t know whether you knew, though of course I could tell that Onabu knew, this sort of authority — I don’t know what to call it — came from up there, from Onabu.… But that’s not what matters. I mean, it matters enormously in itself, but there’s something much more important, and now, since last night, even more important. The boy, the Detention Bill, they’re the effect.”

Mweta sat back in himself, arms still crossed, in the determined, flexed attention that Bray knew so well. His face had smoothed momentarily as if he were to be let off; then the flick in his eyes came again. Bray was aware of it all the time.

“—That’s not what matters. Because it seems clear to me that what happened to the boy, the Detention Bill — they’re inevitable, essential, you can’t do without them, your reason being what it is—”

Mweta came in quickly but distrusting: “Yes, my good reason. I’m not going to stand by and let this country be ruined by trouble — makers.”

“What do you call trouble — makers, Mweta?”

“You get people who see Independence right from the beginning as a free — for-all. Grab what you can … They’re always there. You have to deal with them. You know that. I don’t like it, but I have to do it.”

“You’re better off than most, here. You’ve got a good chance of giving people what they lack.”

Mweta said, “James, that’s not the point. You could give them all a house with electric light and a clean — hands job and you’d still have trouble from some people.”

“Then there’s something else that’s bothering them.”

Mweta gave a little snorting smile. “You’re quite right, it’s power, that’s what they want. Somebody wants power and there’s only one way for such a person to try and get it. He must use every poor fellow who’ll listen to him, he must stir them up with talk they don’t understand, so they’ll be only too ready to believe we’ve bamboozled them, too, and from this it follows so easily to convince them that if this country isn’t the Garden of Eden, that’s got nothing to do with their inadequacies and our difficulties. — James — we’ll clean up that young rubbish and show the people behind them it’s no good. You can believe me. I don’t want the Detention thing a day longer, after that.”

An irritable spark like static electricity ran between them. “There won’t be an after that. You’ll need to keep that bill forever, if you don’t do something about the reason why you need it in the first place. If you’d do that you wouldn’t be obliged to ‘deal’ with it. The way you have to deal with it now. This way you don’t like, Mweta—”

Mweta was about to answer and did not. He smiled at Bray to shut him out. “Well, go on.”

“I believe some of those ants of yours are nibbling under their own benches in the House.”

Mweta’s mouth moved and settled.

“ ‘They are being watched,’” Bray said, “Well and good. And who else? Who else is being watched? And why? Mweta, why? What for? I can’t help feeling convinced that if you’d given him a ministry there’d have been no trouble. From him. He’d have dealt with the trouble.”

“He’s the one who’s always made it,” Mweta said. Then suddenly, like an actor going out after his audience he turned shining eyes and eager — hunched body, all gathered up in a stalking intensity and burst out, beguiling, gesturing— “Shinza! From the day of self — rule he began to turn his criticism on us. From that day. Always looking at me and shaking his head inside. Whatever it was we were discussing. No trust any more for anybody. He made up his mind he had to watch the rest of us the way he used to watch them. Yes! You remember? At the talks in London, he was always the one would come out and say, afterwards, ‘I don’t think so — and-so means what he says, he’s playing for time.’ ‘So-and-so’s going to do what the Colonial Secretary says.’ ‘This one must be made to back down….’ He watched them for us while we were too busy thinking what point to make next. He found out things I hadn’t noticed, often he was right, he could warn you. But among ourselves! Our own men! In the Central Committee, among the ministers! How can you work like that? James, James”—his voice dropped to patient reasonableness, soft and dramatic— “I can tell you, his eyes were on the back of my head. I ask him something — I went to him as I always did, you understand — he was my father, my brother — he listens with a smile on his face and his eyes closed.” Mweta was standing over Bray. He hung there, paused, breathing heavily, gasping, almost, like a man about to sob, deserted by words. “‘I hadn’t understood the issue properly.’ ‘Did I realize who I was dealing with?’—With his eyes closed. To smell me out. Yes, like he did the Englishmen in Lancaster House, making the noises in the throat and looking like they’re falling asleep just when they’re ready to get you. It was mad, eh? All right. I said to myself, he’s your father, your brother. All right. But let him come out in the open. Let him speak what he thinks at the time for these things, like anybody else. This is a government, not a secret society. Open your eyes and look at me, Shinza. But I kept quiet. A long time, a long, long time. Did I ever say anything to you? That last time in London? You never knew what it was like. I was ashamed, you understand, I didn’t want you to know how he was behaving. I didn’t want to believe it myself. But I can’t think about myself any more. If I do, I must get out”—he strode to the window and flung away the park, out there, rippling in the still heat— “We’re not in the bush in Gala any more, with nothing but each other. Eight million people are in this country. I can’t be tied by the hind leg like a cow. When Clough and the British Chief of Staff met for the defence agreement and the question of a base on the southern border came up, Clough starts outlining what he ‘believes’ I’d agree to, and, my God, it’s clear to me that he’s got a pretty good idea before where we’ll make a concession and where we’ll stick fast — the missile base question, for example. Clough obviously knew we were going to bargain with that, he was prepared, he made no bones about it — and so I said to him — that is, I made a point of raising an objection to something that we really had no objection to at all, just to see what his reaction would be. And he came out with it just like that: ‘But I understood that this would be acceptable to your government.’—From where did you understand, I said. Who gave you to understand? Of course, he got out of that one somehow. But later on I asked him, alone. ‘I was given to understand.’ He looked at me as if I was mad, as if I didn’t know. You can’t blame him. Who gave you to understand? —He had had talks with Clough: ‘Of course, Shinza knew my predecessor well.’ It was often useful to chat beforehand. Much progress had been made quietly, in the past. And so on. What could I say? Well, that time no damage was done. Luckily. But that’s the kind of thing. Look at the minority report he put in. And that’s something you knew about. You know what you thought of that. Yes, well, a bit tactless, that’s what you said to me. But you’re not one to say much, and I know you were worried, whatever you said. I have eight millions on my hands, James, and I can only look after them my own way.”