Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

“Cash earnings, of course—? Subsistence crops and so on don’t come into it, ay?” Under his levity Shinza was alert to holes into which opposition would poke its way.

“Cash earnings. What a cabinet minister gets from his garden in the land doesn’t come into the reckoning for him, either.”

Shinza nodded rapidly, satisfied.

Nwanga said to Bray, “The Dondo and Tananze crowd are going to back that up full strength. They want a freeze for all earnings above six hundred a year.”

“Well, nearly everybody in that hall earns less than six hundred. They shouldn’t feel like disagreeing.” Ogoto looked as if he were staring them all out.

“That was some detective work, Linus,” Shinza said aside. “How’d you do it?”—referring to the figures for delegates’ earnings.

“I was on it for months, man. People don’t answer letters, you know — you have to keep on at them. It’s cost me a lot in stamps.” Ogoto laughed suddenly, embarrassed, and his ears moved the hide of his scalp. Then once he had overcome the embarrassment of praise it went rather to his head; he couldn’t stop talking, with intense enjoyment, of the trouble he had gone to. He told one anecdote after another; everyone laughed except the card players and the schoolboy, burrowing down in their concentration, and the old woman.

Bray talked to Cyrus Goma about a resolution concerning peasant workers. He had noticed it was to come from the Southern Province’s regional council — Goma’s seat was in the Eastern — but Goma knew its terms precisely. “The idea is farm workers should be recognized as the personnel of an agricultural industry, and they should be organized, just like any other sector of industry. Seventy — one per cent of workers in this country are still on the land. They haven’t any proper representation, no properly laid — down conditions of employment, no minimum wage, nothing. Of course it’s a tricky thing to work outmost of them aren’t employed full time as cash wage — earners, as you know. They’re employed seasonally by white farmers; part of the time they work their own or tribal land; or they’re squatters allowed to work some of the white man’s land in exchange for a share of the crop….

“Is there good support?”

Goma gave a short laugh. “In principle. Who’ll get up and say he’s against improving the life of nearly three quarters of the working population? But people can hold back for other reasons.”

“Of course. Organize that seventy — one per cent of peasants and the trade unions increase their power out of all recognition.”

Goma shrugged. Whenever Bray approached the definition of policy behind the separate resolutions of Shinza’s faction, Goma presented a bland front. Shinza was back in discussion with Linus Ogoto and Nwanga, his cigarette waggling on his lip. “… In Guinea, I mean, don’t let’s forget the issue of Africanization didn’t arise … the French pushed off as soon as Sékou opted out of the French Community, there were no more expatriate civil servants earning fat salaries for local people to compare themselves with. They were on their own. It was easy to introduce drastic salary cuts. But you must be very careful how far it goes … if you get deteriorating wage scales and fringe benefits at the level of, say, the teachers, it’s a boomerang”—he yawned, now and then, with excitement— “you get their union campaigning for a review of salaries again—”

Shinza was disturbed at the fact that the question of Mweta taking power to appoint the Secretary — General of UTUC was placed early on the next afternoon’s agenda. A man in a grey suit with tribal nicks on his cheekbones said, “They want to get it out of the way.” Shinza ignored him, ignored Bray’s eyes. He leaned his elbow on the table, put his hand over his mouth and gave a heavy sigh through distended nostrils: “Out of the way.” Of course, he wanted to have time to make an impression on Congress, to demonstrate over several days his return to active leadership and his claim to support before the issue came up. He was half — forgotten and he must remind PIP of what he still was and could be. Then whichever way it went — if the motion were to be defeated and Mweta took to himself the right of appointing UTUC’s Secretary — General and overlooked him, or if it succeeded and UTUC’s executive retained the right to elect him — Shinza’s political stock would rise.

Cyrus Goma said something to Shinza about the time. The little group took on the wariness, eyeing each other, of people expected elsewhere. Shinza scorned the mystery. “If you feel like it, come along …? If you wanted to …” Goma with his hunched head frowned down at himself; the others stood awkwardly. Shinza sensed the pressure of disapproval and passed over the invitation as if Bray had already refused, “I’m sorry … we’re just pushing off to see Dhlamini Okoi.” So Okoi, Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, was in the Shinza camp too, now. Shinza smiled lazily to see that conclusion in Bray’s face. But Goma looked sharply, gloomily annoyed. Bray paid his respects to the old woman again. Now that Bray was on his way out, Cyrus Goma was pleasant with relief, chatting to show that there was nothing personal. “… after all these years. And how’s Mrs. Bray? She’s happy out there in England? When you write please give her my greetings, I don’t know if she remembers me….” He still had on the West African cotton robe that was his form of dress for public appearances. “Let’s go.” Shinza gave the word. He said to Bray, as if in confidential amusement at the attitude of the others— “Till tomorrow morning. Don’t get into trouble in the big city.”

It was not yet ten o’clock and the darkness was thickly hot. A flying cockroach got into the car and slid itself, flattened like a knifeedge, under the torn floor mat when he swatted at it. Well, there were probably tasty pickings beneath the seats and in crevices, left over from journeys with the children. They had made the car as homely with crumbs and broken toys as Rebecca’s always was. He didn’t feel like bed, or drinking with Roly; he thought he would go round by way of the Silver Rhino and say hello to the Wentzes. They would expect him some time and he didn’t mean to linger in the capital after Congress was over. The Rhino was full; “Reduced rates for delegates — what can you do,” Hjalmar said. “We have to pay the staff the same, no matter what the guests pay.” Margot was in bed; “Not ill?” “Who knows, with Margot? She says she’s tired; and she’s ill. She says she’s ill; and she’s tired. I want her to go on a holiday. She says why don’t I go away for a few days.” He left the office unattended and they sat in the little private sitting — room with its round table under the cone of light from the low — hanging shade, the windows of this Vuillard interior pushed gasping — wide into the hot night smelling of red dust and grass fires. Hjalmar Wentz always generated the immediate intimacy of someone who has no one to talk to; he gave the impression, tonight, of a prisoner of whose cell Bray unknowingly had sprung the lock. The son Stephen had taken his A levels but there was no question of a university — it was the first time for as many generations they knew of in either his (Hjalmar’s) family or Margot’s that anyone simply left school and became one of the half — educated petite bourgeoisie. “He is a natural colonial — the adaptable kind who enjoys the sort of popularity you get when you run a bar and everybody calls you Steve — you know what I mean. There’s nothing you can do about it. Everybody likes him. Margot finds it disgusting. Of course I don’t exactly rejoice … but I see it as a solution to the problem of survival, nhh? We brought him here, in this world and this place, and that is how he’s worked things out for himself. Not intellectually, you understand — he has only instincts. Margot in Europe never knew such people. Her father, the old professor — when they went to a spa, he took all his meals in a private room. They were taught that solitude and contemplation develop the human faculties and wasting time with stupid people prevents them from — inhibits them. He was a great Hegelian; they were made to turn every accepted idea round about and think the opposite before making up their minds — you know, negative thinking and all that. He had a great contempt for middlemen … well, who hasn’t, specially if you have to become one. But he never did … he died before that might become necessary. Ah — ja-a-ah!”—it was not the German exclamation, but the unmistakable longer — vowelled Scandinavian one, with a rising cadence at the end— “All very Jewish — intellectual, although he hardly considered himself a Jew. If he’d been in Eastern Europe instead of Germany the old man would’ve been one of those Talmudic holy men who don’t have anything to do with earning money — part of the rabbinical tradition that to him was a much worse kind of ghetto than the real ones.”