Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

She had often a slight air of apprehension when he began to talk to her, as if she were afraid she might misunderstand — even in bed in the dark he would sense it.

“He was over the border. It’s not too difficult to come and go across the north — west border there, in the Bashi. Miles of nothing, the Flats run out into half — desert, there’s only the one border post on the Tanga River. That little wife of his more or less told me he’s been before. — Don’t look so worried!” Her face had gone broad, smoothed tight of expression.

“I’m wondering if it isn’t Somshetsi he goes to see. You remember about those two? — Mweta expelled them a couple of months ago because old President Bete accused him of allowing them to set up a guerrilla base on our side of the Western border.”

“And if he’s going to see them …?”

He drew a considering breath; his waist was as slim as it was when he was twenty — five but like many muscular men of his height, he had developed a diaphragm — belly — it could be drawn up into his expanded chest, but there was no ignoring the fact that it pouted out over his belt when he forgot about it. He shifted the belt. “There’s a piece in one of the English papers. Apparently Somshetsi and Nyanza have split. Somshetsi’s the man, now. He denounced Nyanza for wasting funds and not taking advantage of opportunities for furthering plans of liberation and so on. Whatever’s behind that, if Somshetsi could see any chance of a change here, a change that would allow his group to come back and base itself here, why shouldn’t he be very interested? Where they are now, they’re the width of a whole country away from their own. No possibility of any attempt to infiltrate. Where they are, there’s no common border with their country. Shinza could be their chance.”

All her comments were half — questions. “If he really means to make trouble here.”

“What I’m thinking is that if Shinza had retired to raise another family he wouldn’t be slipping over the border to Somshetsi.”

“What could he get out of it?”

“I don’t know.” His mouth was stopped at the point of hearing himself say aloud, Shinza might get support, through Somshetsi, from other sources that would like to see Mweta out; might get arms, might form some sort of alliance with Somshetsi — Shinza! A flash of absurdity. Shinza and Mweta belonged in the context of the fiery verbal wrangles at Lancaster House, with the conventional sacrifices and sufferings of an independence struggle with a power that, in contrast to the settlers who believed it existed to represent their interests, was simply choosing the time to let go. Shinza was better suited to the role of President to Mweta’s Prime Minister, than to intrigue in the bush.

There was a small knock, low down, on the screen door of the veranda. Rebecca called out, “Yes, Suzi?” The children never ran in without knocking carefully; he wondered whether she had trained them, or whether they had some sort of instinctive delicacy or even fear of finding out what the grown — ups assumed they were not supposed to know. The little girl’s voice was muffled.

“Come inside and tell me. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The child banged through the door and rushed to her mother with some complaint about the boys.

“Don’t take any notice. They’re just silly.”

“I’m goin’a tell them they just silly.”

Rebecca smiled in culpable alarm to him. “Oh no, don’t tell them. It’s a secret, just for you and me.”

The child’s indignation calmed as he called her over and gave her a cigar — box of mahogany — tree beans he had collected for her from the tree outside Sampson Malemba’s house. “Someone must make holes so’s I can make a necklace.”

He was very polite and courteous with children; the perfect uncle, again. “I haven’t got the right tool to drill holes, Suzi, but I’ll get them done for you down at the Gandhi School, if you can give me a little time.”

The little girl said confidently, “My daddy will do it for me when he comes.” The children seemed to have no sense of time; they spoke of their father as if he were part of their daily life.

When the child had gone she sat with her hands between her spread thighs, staring at the typewriter. She turned and said, “You’ll be going down again now.” She meant to the capital; to Mweta.

“That I will not.”

“No?”

“No.”

She had not followed properly, lagged somewhere: she looked stoically forlorn. He noticed only that, not knowing any particular cause, and came over to touch her absently, gently; there was so much in each other’s lives into which they did not, would never inquire — never mind, he could offer the annealment of the moment. He stroked a forefinger across her eyebrows, drawing them there above the strong lashes always tangled together a little where upper and lower met at the outer corners of those eyes, the colour of tea, today. None of her children had her eyes.

“It would be fatal,” he said.

He walked away from her. He felt, almost accusingly, you would have to have known me all my life to understand. But he went on talking, as if he were talking to Olivia, who would feel exactly as he did; except that he didn’t talk to Olivia any more, even in letters. While he spoke he was aware of an odd, growing sense of being alone, like coldness creeping up from the feet and hands. And while his matter — of-fact, steady voice was in his ears he thought suddenly — an urgent irrelevance, striking through his consciousness — of death: death was like that, the life retreating from the extremities as a piece of paper burns inwards towards the centre, leaving a cold ring of grey.

“I understood perfectly what I was doing … when Shinza and Mweta started PIP it was something I believed in. The apparent contradiction between my position as a colonial civil servant and this belief wasn’t really a contradiction at all, because to me it was the contradiction inherent in the colonial system — the contradiction that was the live thing in it, dialectically speaking, its transcendent element, that would split it open by opposing it, and let the future out — the future of colonialism was its own overthrow and the emergence of Africans into their own responsibility. I simply anticipated the end of my job. I … sort of spilled my energies over into what was needed after it, since — leaving aside how good or bad it had been — it was already an institution outgrown. Stagnant. Boma messengers, tax — collecting tours — we were a lot of ants milling around rigor mortis with the Union Jack flying over it.… But now I think I ought to leave them alone.”

She was sitting very straight, as if what he said drew her up, held her. “Why is it so different? You must know what you think would be the best, the best government, the best—”

“For them — that’s it. Why should I be sure I know? Why should I be sure at all? It was different before. That was my situation, I was in it, because I was part of the thing they were opposing, because I could elect to change my relation to it and oppose it myself — you see? Now I should be stepping in between them — even if it were so much as the weight of a feather, influencing what happens, one way or the other — it would still be on the principle of assuming a right to decide for them.”

She was indignant on his behalf. “Mweta wants you to persuade Shinza! But if they ask you!”

“That doesn’t change my position, if Mweta wants to make use of the temptation held out to me, if it suits him to—”

After a moment, she said, “What about people who go and fight in other people’s wars. Just because they believe one side’s right. What about something like the Spanish Civil War.”