Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

But once he saw the money in his hand, he must suddenly have thought of something he wanted to buy, for he looked at it smiling, as if to say, what use is this to me? He said to Bray, in Gala, can’t you give me two — and-nine more? Bray didn’t have the change but the girl did, and they paid up, amused. So the drive back was started well on in the afternoon, and it was slower going, climbing the pass instead of descending it. They had just come out onto the savannah when Bray felt that there was a puncture. They changed the tyre without much trouble but did not get back home till well after dark. “This’s one of the times when one would like a good little restaurant to appear magically in Main Road, Gala.” She said something about having to get back to the children, anyway; but when they drove along under the weak, far — apart street — lights of the road where they lived, she seemed to forget her concern, and came into the house with him. Kalimo had the fire lit; the ugly room was perfumed with the soft, dry incense — smell of mukwa wood. They had bought a couple of bream at the lake, and wanted to cook them over the wood — ashes, but Kalimo carried them off. “Don’t fry them Kalimo, for heaven’s sake — grilled not fried—”

She laughed to see him trying to prevail. “If you are worried about the children …? You could dash over now? Kalimo won’t be ready for an hour if I know him.”

She went as if she had been intending to do so, but he saw that she wouldn’t have gone if he hadn’t said anything; and she was back within ten minutes. She had put on lipstick and her hair was brushed back, lank from the lake. She herself had the look of a child fresh from the bath. “Everything all right?”

“Oh Lord, yes. Fed, in bed. Trust Edna Tlume for that.” She had brought a packet of marshmallows: “For afterwards, with the coffee. Don’t you love them toasted?”

When Kalimo came in to clear the table he looked disapproving; she was squatting before the fire, watching carefully while the pink sweetmeats swelled on the end of a fork, wrinkled and slightly blackened. “Try one, Kalimo” she waved the fork at him, but he stumped out — the kitchen was the place for cooking.

She smoked one of Bray’s cigars. It was half — past ten by the time he heard Kalimo lock the kitchen door. She was resting her head and arms on her knees. He stroked her hair; such a banal caress — it did for dogs and cats, as well. She jerked up her head — in repudiation or response, he didn’t wait to understand — he put his face down to that small cup of bone at the base of her full neck and was at once launched, like the wooden cockleshell upon the lake, on the tide of another being, the rise and fall of her breathing, the even, hollow knock of her heart, the strange little sound of her swallowing.

She was smiling at him, slightly sadly.

“How long can you stay?”

“As long as we want.”

He began to kiss her, for last time as well as this time, and he pressed his palm protectively on her belly and the round hardness of her pelvis in the tight, worn old jeans that didn’t become her. It was all understood, between them. He undressed her and took her to his bed in that bare, male room which he had never shared with a woman; at once a schoolboy’s room and a lonely old man’s room, the room left behind him and the room somewhere ahead of him in his life. But the narrow bed was full again, he was full again, and it was all there, the body that had run shaking into the water, the big legs shuddering, the breasts swaying. This time he saw every part of it, watched the nipples turn to dark marbles rolling in his fingers, found the thin, shining skin with a vein like an underground stream running beneath it, where the springy soft hair ended and the rise of the thigh began, had revealed to him the aureole of mauve — brown skin where the cheeks of the backside divided at the end of her spine. All this and more, before he hung above her on his knees and she said with her practical parenthesis, “It’s all right” (knowing how to look after herself, trusted not to make any trouble) and she reached up under his body and took the whole business, the heavy bunch of sex, in her hands, expressing the strangeness, the marvel of otherness, between the two bodies, and then he entered all that he had looked on, and burst the bounds of his body, in hers.

She was a woman full of sexual pride. She said, “You had a lot of semen.” His mouth and nose rested in her hair, smelling the dank, flat lake water. Beneath one instant and the next, he slept and woke again; his hand left her humid breasts and trailed, once, down the trough formed by the rise of her hip from her rib — cage, as the strings of a guitar are brushed over as it is laid aside.

They put out the light, now, and in the dark he began to talk. It was the old story; the unburdened body unburdens the mind. Hence the confidences betrayed, the secrets sprung, beans spilled, in beds. He was aware of this but talked to her just the same; about Shinza. “—I have this unreasonable idea that when I see him again — I will know.”

“That’s what I thought. About you and me. If— if —it should come to that — again — I thought, then I’ll know.”

“What?” he said, teasingly. His sex lifted its blunt head and gently butted her, a creature disturbed in its sleep.

“What we would do,” she said.

He drove to the Bashi that week. At the European — style house in Chief Mpana’s compound, the man in clean grey flannels and polished shoes was summoned by a child. He said that Shinza was sick. Bray said that he was sorry; could he go over and see him in his house, then?

“No, he’s sick.”

But surely, just to greet him? What was the illness?

He was asleep. He was asleep because he was sick.

“If I wait a while?” Bray said.

The man had eyes like the inside of a black mussel shell, opaque and with a membranous shine, as if they had been silvered over with mercury. Although his face was lean, the lids were plump and smooth. He said, “He’s sick.” It was the contemptuous obtuseness that had done so well for colonial times; the white man could be counted upon to turn away and leave you alone: dumb nigger.

“If he knew I was the one who was here, he would want to see me.”

“He’s sick.”

Bray went back to the car and smoked one of his cigars. There was a big box for Shinza on the seat. He should have left them for him, anyway; he was on his way back to the house with the cigars in his hand when he had an impulse to skirt it and go to the big hut where Shinza and the girl and the baby lived. Only children were about in the yard. The door was open, and before he knocked softly he saw, with a wave of familiarity, the deal table stacked with papers, the trunk with the coffee set displayed, the family group of leaders askew on the wall — then Shinza’s girl, Shinza’s wife appeared, carrying the baby, no longer pinkish yellow; it had taken on colour as a pale new leaf does. She greeted him shyly, formally. He apologized; and how was Shinza feeling?

She said, “Oh? Oh he is all right,” suddenly speaking in mission schoolgirl’s English. “But I thought he was ill in bed?” She stood and looked at him for a moment, deeply, startled, caught in his presence as in a strong light. Then she went over and closed the door behind him. It was dim and secure in the room; the thatch creaked, an alarm clock ticked. Hardly able to see her, he said, “What’s happened to Shinza?” His voice sounded very loud to him.

She leaned forward— “He’s away again. Don’t tell anybody.”

“Over the border?”

She grew afraid at what she had done. “I think so.”

He said, “Don’t worry. I’ll go quickly. If anybody sees me, I’ll say you wouldn’t let me see him. It’s all right.”