Nadine Gordimer - Occasion for Loving

The game of renunciation began. In it they felt the parenthetic closeness of two people who have shared an experience outside the separate involvement of each in his own background. The Stilwell house, that held every vibration of her voice and laugh, and had seen her every gesture, did not know her as she had her being among the objects and with the person in the flat. Like two men who have been stationed together in some foreign region, or a pair of children who return to family meals from an imaginary country, there was an existence in which they knew life and each other as nobody closer to them did. It became a refuge, too; doubts and decisions did not operate there, any more than public notices specifying enchanted circles which a black foot might not enter. As soon as she sat smoking in one of the chairs belonging to the two young advertising men she had seen only twice, and following, now with her eyes, now with the sense of an intensely-known presence, Gideon as he moved about the room, Boaz’s “What is it all about?” was dislodged and fell harmless.

She said, “I want you to come to the house. Meet Boaz.”

They were eating grapes, sitting in the car. He threw a couple into his mouth, ate them slowly, and spat the pips out of the window. She had no idea what he would say. Their relationship was a pure one, without questions or importuning. “If you think he would want to.”

“He’s nice,” she said. “It seems idiotic. I mean, we always both know people—” She spoke as if the affair had already died and become a friendship; while she was speaking she believed that, from that moment , it really had.

He did not know if what she said implied that her husband was used to her making love to other men; he felt himself, as he occasionally was, lost in this particular world, like a foreigner who speaks the language perfectly but is sometimes floored by some esoteric colloquialism. He was off-hand: “All right.”

She said no more about it, though several times she talked of Boaz when they were together, held him off at arm’s length and considered him. She seemed touchy that Gideon Shibalo should appreciate Boaz. The references, the anecdotes were not ones that reflected the personal relationship between Boaz and herself, but showed him, a figure on the horizon, against an impersonal light. Once Gideon was describing an acquaintance who had a special kind of perception: “He’ll see you walk in the door and he’ll know at once you haven’t eaten yet today and are not up to much. Or he’ll catch on from something you let slip without knowing it that you’re about to lose your job. He smells you out and then uses what he’s found out … Not always to do you any actual harm … but to make you feel afraid of yourself …”

She agreed about the existence of such people and remarked, a footnote in the flitting silence before they turned to something else, “Now someone like Boaz is just the opposite, you know.” She paused. “Just the opposite. He’s always amazed when you point out some weak spot in a person. He’s very self-absorbed, in a way, and he treats everyone as if they have the same standards and so on as he has himself. You can see a mile off that someone’s lying, or a perfect mouse, but he’ll treat them as if important work can be expected of them at any moment. Sometimes it’s just funny, of course, but at other times it’s wonderful. He never exposes people.”

One afternoon after they had had lunch together at the Lucky Star she began to drive across town in the direction of the Stilwells’ house. “Where’re you going?” “Home,” she said. “Drop me off somewhere?” “Come in for a bit.” She had the faraway look that seemed the nearest she ever got to depression; in the Lucky Star she had sat quietly, smoking, her hand secretly covering his every now and then to exclude him from the distance she kept from the rest of the room. Once at the house, she was cheerful and humorously at ease; how beautiful she looked, clipping across the floor in her high heels, the slim strong tendon to which her ankle narrowed at the back hollowed away on either side. There was no getting away from it, no black girl ever had ankles quite like that.

He had not given it a thought that the husband might be there, but when, after they had had the inevitable cup of tea and listened to a new record that Tom Stilwell had left in the living-room, she said, “Come up with me to see what Boaz is doing,” he felt no nervousness but a calm amiability to match hers. They went upstairs, talking. She was breathy, hospitable: “Mind your step there. Jessie’s children take a delight in creating hazards on the stairs. Oh, just look at this a minute — this is a wonderful timbila Boaz found, we’re trying to fix it—” They were standing on the landing, looking into a half-unwrapped parcel of sacking and newspapers, when Clem and a grubby friend appeared in one doorway and Boaz came along the passage from the bathroom. “Boaz, this is Gid,” said Ann. “Are you busy or can I bring him in to look at a few things?” Boaz had rigged up a darkroom in the bathroom, and his hands were full of wet prints pegged to a string. “Come in; let me get rid of these …”

Boaz had the great advantage of being on his own ground; the room, that Gideon had seen once before, briefly, was filled with the authority of work; the bed, the personal possessions and clothes scattered about were no more important than a few human necessities set up in the corner of a laboratory. Boaz pointed out various instruments, drawing attention, with the diffident modesty of a particular pride, to those he knew to be treasures. “This is quite interesting. The only thing I’ve ever seen at all related to it comes from Bangui, what used to be French Equatorial Africa … and this I think may be the only one left of its kind — beautiful, eh? It makes a mewing sound, rather disappointing after you’ve looked at it.” He paused and said half-questioningly, half taking it for granted, “I don’t know whether this sort of stuff means anything to you.” “Ah, it’s all Greek to me,” Gideon reassured him and laughed. “I remember a bit of tissue paper over a comb, at school. The kids hadn’t even begun the penny whistle craze in those days.” “Didn’t you have an old grandmother who sang you an old African song occasionally?” Boaz could not resist a flicker of professional interest. “No, no. I’m afraid not. I was brought up by an aunt, she was great on hymns.” Ann gave her usual performance, calling, “Wait, I can play this,” and determinedly producing a note blown out slowly as the thick bubble of a glass-blower. She drew them together in amusement, watching her. Boaz said, “But seriously, it’s quite amazing, you know. She’s intensely musical. She can sing almost anything. I mean, in African music the melodic patterns differ from area to area, according to the tone pattern of each tribe’s language — but she can sing accurately a song composed in any melodic pattern. And with wind instruments — a shipalapala, kwatha , anything like that — she controls her breath like an experienced trombone player!” They got down to the principles of construction of a group of instruments: Gideon challenged some of their features—“Why that bit of wood there? Seems crazy — why not the other way round?” and Boaz took the harp apart and, surrounded by bits of it, on the floor, demonstrated—“You’re way out. They know what they’re doing — you see, that conducts the vibration from the strings into here — like that. And if you put it anywhere else at all — see? It’s the principle of sympathetic resonation.” He looked up, intent and smiling. There was the atmosphere almost of gaiety that came of a new presence among extraordinary things that were familiar to the Davises. Ann, achieving a perfect balance between the two men, had a weightless freedom; she hummed, touched this and that, made a remark that brought the attention of both of them finely to her, like the eyes of runners breasting the tape — and came not so much as a feather’s breath down on the one side or the other. After perhaps half an hour, the three of them came downstairs, and, finding the Stilwells, joined them for drinks.