Nadine Gordimer - Occasion for Loving

The day Jessie met them at lunch they had been moving Shibalo’s painting things from the back-room of a shop to the flat in the white suburb where he came and went as he pleased. Ann had not been there before; the tenants, two young men in advertising, were at work, but Shibalo was supplied with a key, and everything in the flat was in the natural state in which the owners’ continuing activities had left it — he constituted no interruption. There must have been some prearrangement between them, however, because he stacked some canvases in the wallcupboard in the bathroom, and pushed two easels in beside the ironing-board in the dingy kitchen before he dumped the rest in the living-room. Ann was deeply curious about the canvases and stacks of drawings gathered in newspaper—“all old stuff,” he said; whenever one was revealed she would stop dead to look at it in searching silence. She showed, too, the possessiveness on behalf of the artist that attacks ordinary people once they get to know a creative person; she began moving various objects out of the way to make room for pictures, and was irritated by the screen that was carefully placed as a target for a projector. “Why can’t that thing be rolled up somewhere? They can’t be using it all the time.”

Vanity made him ignore this partisanship out of embarrassment; like most artists of any kind he thought himself far above the measure of privilege that ordinary people might think it necessary to claim for him. He put a record on the player and sat back to listen; he watched her, as if he were lazily following the movements of a bee or a moth about the room.

She put down a canvas she had pulled free from some others. There was a flurry in her busyness. She looked at her hand, picked up the canvas again, and then put it back.

“Look,” she said, coming over to him.

On her forefinger, with its slender tip that bent back supplely as she stiffened it, there was a streak of fresh wet paint.

He pulled a face of concern and, smiling, leant out to pick up the turpentine bottle. He took his handkerchief and used it to clean her hand; then he leant out again and got a sheet of paper between his fingers and put the hand flat down upon it on the chair-arm, twisting her arm awkwardly as she half-sat. He drew round the outline of her hand with a stub of charcoal. The triumphant, challenging set of her face weakened; she kept her eyes down on her own hand. He picked it up and gave it back to her.

He jumped up from the chair and began to fool about with spontaneous energy. “I must do the honours of the house. Forgive the informality of this humble abode. It’s the girl’s day off. There are no snacks prepared. The champagne isn’t cold enough. But in the kitchen you’ll find the glasses, and somewhere”—his head disappeared into one of those unidentifiable space-saving cupboards that might store anything—“we’ll find the brandy.”

She took off her shoes and drank her fingerful with ginger ale, stretching herself on a plastic-thonged chair on the balcony. He had taken out a big, hairy white sheet of card and sat in the shaded doorway of the room behind her, drawing. “Let me see.” He took no notice so she got up and went to look. It was her profile, glancing over a naked back.

“How do you know that’s how I look?”

“You’re all the same,” he said, “that’s the beauty of it.”

She went back to the sun and sat on the balcony ledge, the sun contracting the skin on her back, her bare soles just in contact with the grooved tiled floor.

“One push,” he said, looking and looking at her.

She crossed her arms over her stomach, balancing carelessly. “Why not?” A reddish warmth from the tiles was reflected in her skin. Death never occurred to her except as a thrill in life; the drop behind her brought a special smile to her face.

When Jessie left them at the Lucky Star after lunch they went back to the flat. There was suddenly nowhere else to go, nothing else to do; the whole city seemed to let them pass unnoted as if some intense preoccupation between them made them invisible. They sat in the room with the curtains pulled against the sun, facing each other. Ann was not thinking of Shibalo but was filled with consciousness of Jessie. She was aware of her in broken images from their association, that was unimportant for her and had gone by, irrelevant. This strong awareness of the other woman made her roused and shaky inwardly, as one feels after an exchange that has left one goaded at the point of the moment to speak.

She went to the bathroom and did her hair and her face in a trance of skill; the smell of her trailed across the room. It was five weeks exactly since he had walked into the caravan. Time went so quickly for her; it had brought her here, now, quite suddenly. No good thinking of anything else.

They began to kiss and please each other with some rivalry, like a pair of peacocks showing off their feathers. If there was laughter, there was also fascination. At last there was solemnity too, but it was the hectic solemnity of surprising passion.

Because he was not much interested by her, Tom Stilwell made an effort to talk to Ann when he found her about. There were gaps in his attention to as well as his knowledge of her day-to-day life, and usually his attempts were of the well-how-are-you-getting-along-with-such-and-such variety. He asked her about the travelling exhibition one evening when she happened to be in to dinner, only to hear it had just closed. “Oh my God, everything’s always over before I get to see it. I suppose that Japanese film’s off by now too, darling?” he added to Jessie.

“Of course” she said cheerfully. “But there’s a new place to eat opened up where the old Bella Napoli used to be. We could try that before it goes bust, perhaps.”

They passed from this to discussion about whether, in general, group shows were more or less satisfying than one-man shows. “In any case, I imagine there isn’t anyone among the group you showed who could attempt a one-man show — except perhaps Shibalo.”

“Of course, yes. And he can get a gallery in town, any time he wants to,” said Ann.

“What about talking to Patrick Bold about the caravan now?” Tom said, half to Jessie.

“You can,” said Ann. “His brother’s taking it for the next six weeks or so.”

“We wouldn’t want it until about July — Jessie?” She had the component parts of a small doll beside her and was studying them between bites of apple. Her eyes hesitated over the coupling of this piece to that with obstinate enjoyment of the difficulties created by her ignorance of the principles of construction involved. “I’m not so sure.” She was not referring to the time, but to the fact that a house that was part of Fuecht’s estate might be available to them soon. It was a house at the sea where she had stayed as a child.

“How many would the caravan take?” The possibility of the house, vague as it was, stirred some opposition in Tom, as will any proposition that appears to bring to the active surface something one dislikes in the nature of someone one loves. He had the unexpressed knowledge, based on no facts and requiring none, that Jessie wanted to use the house because Fuecht was dead, perhaps to demonstrate that he was dead.

“It’s huge. Oh, six can sleep in it, easily,” Ann assured him at once, with the confidence of a butterfly telling a bird how to build a nest.

“The kids could double up, anyway. And one could take a tent as well. How about you and Boaz bringing along a tent?”

“Marvellous. But it depends when. Boaz is supposed to go up into Moçambique in the winter.” Ann was drawn to the problem of the doll. “Wait a minute, why don’t you try getting the head in first — then that bit”—she took up the torso irresistibly—“hooks in there. Ought to.”