Nadine Gordimer - A World of Strangers

He found this very funny. ‘- I’m selling books, I’m connected with a publishing firm.’

He took out a packet of cigarettes and we strolled down to the gate, smoking. ‘I used to be a journalist,’ he said. ‘I know, Anna Louw told me. What made you give it up?’ ‘Various things,’ he said, in the vague, jaunty tone, mysterious and important, that I recognized as the tone of the man whom many jobs give up. ‘I had other things on the go. I couldn’t manage everything at once.’ ‘So what do you do now?’ Anna had told me, but I had forgotten already. ‘Insurance. Much more money in it.’ ‘You mean the usual sort of thing, life policies and so on.’ ‘That’s right,’ he laughed pleasantly. ‘Fire, funeral, accident, loss — all that stuff. Of course, we’re not like you people, mostly we insure against things we’re sure will happen, funerals mainly. Yes, I exploit the poor simple native, and in return he gets a lovely funeral — what do you say, a slap-up do.’

‘Did you really like England?’

‘I shouldn’t ever have come back here.’ He stumbled and I caught his arm. The darkness accepted him; his face and hands were gone in it; he sat down on the grass. ‘If you’d stayed,’ I said, searching for the right kind of meaningless reassurance, ‘if you’d stayed, you would have longed to come back.’

‘Man, there’s nothing in Africa I want,’ he said, grinning, and I became aware of his face again, though I could not see anything but his teeth; that smooth, polished-wood face with the withdrawn eyes, the delicate nose, the gathering-up of planes toward the mouth. Suppose he had been born to the old Africa, before the Arab and the white man came, suppose he had had a tribe, and a place in that tribe, and had known that his life was to hunt and fight and reproduce and live in the shelter of fear of the old gods — would that have been what he wanted? I thought of him in the room from where the blur of music and voices sounded, lean and gangling and befuddled, with a glass of brandy in his pink-palmed hand with the too-long nails. The idea was sad and ridiculous. And then I thought of myself, and what I wanted: a house lived in, a place made, a way of life created for me by my fathers, a destiny I could accept without choice or question. That was not sad and ridiculous. The wine closed over my head, and, sunk in myself, I fiercely and dismayedly resisted the idea; that could not be sad and ridiculous. It was what I wanted and could not get.

‘Let’s go,’ he said. I turned, in agreement, toward the house.

‘Let’s go and drink. I’ll take you to a place. You’re an Englishman, I can take you. Show you round. “Can I show you around?” Do the honours.’ The phrase pleased him and he repeated it, shaking his head and making a clicking sound of approval.

‘I came with Anna Louw. How can I?’

‘Woman’ll get herself home,’ he said. He stood up, threw his cigarette into the hedge, and a dog, scavenging along the gutter in the deserted street, stiffened into hostility and began to bark at him. He cursed it amiably. ‘They always bark at us. You don’t have to teach them, they know. People like Sylvia don’t know what to do to stop them. Hers is locked up, so he won’t embarrass her.’

When we got inside again, he seemed to forget his suggestion. He got into a political argument with Sam, Dorothea Welz, and the Englishman, Stanley, against whom the redhead leaned, silent. I danced, dazedly, with Sylvia, and, her tongue loosened by wine, we talked about London and Aden Parrot paper-backs. Anna Louw came up and said, ‘Darling, I have to be in court at nine tomorrow and I haven’t even finished preparing my stuff.’ ‘Anna!’ Sylvia was concerned. ‘Honestly, I must go. But you don’t have to come,’ she said to me. ‘Don’t you come because of me. Someone else will always take you home.’ I protested my willingness to go, but she knew I didn’t want to. I thanked her, tried to tell her across the restlessness of the room that I would telephone her to do so properly, but she slipped out with the considerateness of one who does not want to break up a party. Old Welz went with her: Dorothea had rushed up, when she saw Anna leaving, and begged: ‘For heaven’s sake, take poor Egon with you, will you, Anna? He’s had a long day and he’s quite dead.’ ‘Thank God.’ The little man put his arm round Anna. ‘It’s enough. Let’s go. Sylvia, Sylvia, thenk you. You are a woman of qvality. Look how you last; the others,’ his chin jerked in the direction of the redhead, ‘they droop, their paint runs. . ’ ‘Oh, go on, Egon, do,’ said Dorothea. ‘As soon as I’ve proved myself unquestionably right, I’ll follow. . ’ Steven had dropped out of the argument and was singing, a soft, two-part Bantu song, with Sam. Sam waved his hand gently, to keep Steven in time. Steven’s cigarette held its shape in ash, burnt down in his forgotten fingers. ‘Come on; again,’ Sam coaxed. When Sitole saw me, he stopped the song abruptly and the ash fell on his shoe. ‘Let’s go and drink. I’ll take you,’ he grinned.

‘In what?’

‘Your car.’

‘I haven’t got a car,’ I said. Peter had just put on a particularly loud record, and he was trying to persuade the African woman to sing again.

‘No car.’ Steven put a hand down on Sam’s shoulder and laughed. ‘He hasn’t got a car.’

‘Don’t all white men have cars?’ said Sam, with obedient good humour, giving his line.

‘Once upon a time,’ said Steven, ‘dear children, there was a man who didn’t have a car. All right. We’ll use Sam’s.’

‘Steve, I have to go straight home.’

‘He’s married,’ said Steven, in a high voice,’ Sam’s a married man. Ah, go on, Sam.’

A few minutes later, when I was talking to someone else, he came up and said: ‘Sam wants to go now, Mr Hood.’ I excused myself and went with Steven back to the table where Sam was. ‘Sam’ll drop us off where we’re going,’ said Steven. We had one more drink, and then left, with Peter and the woman singer. We went almost unnoticed, for the party had suddenly blazed up again, as a dead fire will when a handful of crumpled letters catches the last spark. I know that I kissed Sylvia, and her cheek smelled of powder, and the others shook hands with her. The stray dog was still in the street, and he circled the car with a stiff tail, gurgling threateningly.

Sam’s little Morris was new and went with the smoothness of a car that is taken care of, though it was heavily loaded. I sat in front, beside him, and Steven, Peter, and the woman were pressed into the back. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning and all life was withdrawn from the streets in the white suburbs through which we drove, and the town. We followed tram-car tracks, we skirted the sharp corners of darker, meaner streets; the car took me along as the world whirls and turns through space: I had neither recognition nor volition in its progress. The street-lights ended. We went down, into the dark. There were shapes, darker against the darkness; there was the moon, half-grown, spreading a thin, luminous paint on planes that reflected her. A graveyard of broken cars and broken porcelain; an old horse sleeping, tethered, on a bare patch; mute shops patched about with signs you could not read; small, closed houses whose windows were barred with tin strips against the street; a solitary man stooping to pick up something the day had left; a sudden hysterical gabble behind a rickety fence, where a fowl had started up. Sam stopped the car. ‘You’re sure this is what you want, Steven,’ he said. Steven laughed and answered in their own language. He struggled out of the back, and I got out. We said goodnight. Sam seemed uncertain about leaving us there; he stood looking at us for a moment, and then he revved the engine rather longer than was necessary before he drove away.