Nadine Gordimer - A World of Strangers

‘No, of course not, how could he. But he’s listened to hundreds of records. He’s got opera, he’s got Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet acted by the Old Vic, he’s got American musicals, that play Under Milk Wood — oh, dozens. I don’t think Mr Brunner can teach him anything.’

‘Don’t be a damn fool. Anybody can teach him something. Anybody who’s been able to see plays and hear operas.’

Steven looked patronizingly superior. ‘He’s a fool’, he insisted, ‘to let them pick his brains. And he even says thank you, Baas, for it.’

The others sat around politely, sipping their drinks almost surreptitiously, as if they were frightened to disturb us. Betty Ntolo giggled with embarrassment at the sight of Steven, talking as he did about white men in a white man’s house; she was never at ease in the company of even one white person. But I think she wanted to show the little nurse, who was one of Steven’s latest admirers — Steven is the only man I have ever known who really never had to pursue women, but had them come after him — that she was a familiar, used to him and his ways. ‘I think that girl, the well-built one, the one who played the sister — she’s rather good,’ said Elias Shomang, settled back more comfortably in his chair now; he had been sitting, with the belly-burdened awkwardness of a heavy man, on the edge. And the talk became more general. ‘I know her,’ said Peter. ‘She used to sing with an outfit I know, but she’s gone all posh.’

‘She’s certainly ample,’ I said.

Steven couldn’t seem to stop worrying at me that evening; he said, treating the women present — as he always did when it suited him — as if they were not there,’ I can’t understand it, Toby seems to find all our women too fat. What’s this English taste for starved women?’ We all laughed, but he went on, ‘I’ve never been able to interest him in a nice African girl yet.’ Everyone laughed again, and I gave him some nonsense in answer; yet he was not looking at me, he had turned away to someone else, and I understood that he meant what he said, it was a cover for some reservation he had about me, some vague resentment at the fact that I had not been attracted by any African woman. He, I knew, did not suspect me of any trace of colour-prejudice; he attributed my lack of response to something far more wounding, because valid in the world outside colour — he believed that African women were simply not my physical concomitants. It was a slight to him; hypothetically, he had shown me some woman he had possessed and I had detracted from his possession by finding her unbeautiful.

Just then, there was a ring at the door, but it didn’t surprise any of us very much, although the time was nearly midnight, because it was quite likely that some other friend who had been at the opera had decided to drop in. I got up and went to the door with my glass in my hand. The caretaker of the flats was standing there; she wore her fur coat, a long-haired animal with tawny stripes that made a chevron down her bosom, and her huge, regularly-painted face confronted me like a target in a shooting game. She was one of those people, quite common in Johannesburg, who don’t seem to be Afrikaans-speaking, but don’t really speak English either. She whined like an Australian, she dropped aitches like a Cockney — it would take an expert in phonetics to convey what she made do with for communication.

She must have drawn breath as she heard the door open, for she said at once, from the top of her chest and the back of her distended nostrils, ‘Mr Hood, ’ev yoo brought natives into the building. I’v hed complaints yoo been bringing natives in the building, end jis now Mr Jarvis seen yoo coming in the front door with natives.’

I said, ‘Yes, Mrs Jarvis?’ standing there with the glass in my hand as if I were about to propose a toast.

She came past me into the hall and closed the door; I guessed that she was not fully dressed beneath her fur coat, she held it tightly round her all the time. ‘I wanna tell yoo, Mr Hood, whatever yoo been used to, this is’n a location, yoo can’t ‘ev natives. If yoo bringing natives, yoo’ll ’ev to go.’ Her breath was quite expelled. She looked past me as if she could not bring herself to look at me. She was a very clean, over-dressed, over-painted woman, and now, just as always when she passed you on the stairs, she smelled of cigarettes and toilet soap.

‘I can have whom I please in my own flat so long as I pay the rent.’

Through the open door into my room, she saw Peter and the nurse sitting on the divan and the jacket hanging before the radiator; Elias Shomang was hidden by the door, but Steven in shirtsleeves crossed with a bottle of soda-water, doing some imitation that made them all laugh.

Mrs Jarvis lost control of herself. Her hand left her coat and I saw an expanse of lace covering a vast flushed mound of flesh. ‘Yoo can’t bring kaffirs in my building,’ she screamed. ‘Sitting there like this is a bloody backyard location, I mean to say, the other tenants is got a right to ’ev yoo thrown out. Kaffir women coming here, behaving like scum, living with decent people. Wha’d’yoo think, sitting here with kaffirs. . ’

Through the door, I saw that nobody in the room spoke, nobody looked at anybody else; the woman’s voice took them like a seizure. It seemed to swell up and fill the flat, and I shouted back at her, my throat bursting, ‘This is my flat, d’you hear, you’ve no right to walk in here.’ But she went on and on: ‘Mr Hood! Mr Hood! Yoo got no right. I shoulda listened to what I been told. What would Mr McKay say, in his building, I got my job to think. . place full of kaffirs. I know. I been told. Yoo coming home five o’clock in the morning in a kaffir taxi. Yoo unnerstend, Mr Hood.’

Steven said suddenly, standing in his shirtsleeves in the doorway between my room and the entrance, ‘You have no right, Toby, look in your lease and you’ll see.’ His voice was passionless and removed; I heard it like the voice of someone not present, a voice in one’s brain. His brown, pale-palmed hands rested delicately on the door-frame, he stood lightly, and his eyes were glitteringly bright.

The woman turned and went out the front door.

I still had my glass in my hand; I had never put it down — it had happened as quickly and unmomentously as that. Shomang was murmuring regret, like a guest who has broken an ashtray. The nurse sat staring down at her lap; she looked as if a hand must descend on her shoulder any minute. We were all a little incoherent, shaken, cocky. Peter, that sleepy boy, who lived like a snake in the charmer’s basket, only coming to life with music, said again and again, excitedly, ‘Bloody white bitches! Bloody white bitches!’

‘Is it true about the lease?’ I said to Steven.

‘Of course. Haven’t you got it?’

‘Somewhere. I’ve never read it.’

‘Read it and see. No natives unless they’re in the capacity of servants.’

‘It certainly makes social life a little difficult,’ said Shomang cordially, in his stilted African English. At that we all laughed. Betty Ntolo, hanging on Steven’s shoulder, put her hand over her mouth as if to stifle the sound of us all. Steven shook her off, kindly, ‘A quick one and then we better get going.’

‘To hell with her,’ I said, bringing over the brandy.

‘She’s the kind to go for the police,’ he said,’ Wheeeeee. Bang-bang. Open up. Flying Squad here, sir. We got a report you’re selling drink to natives in your flat. . ’ He did an imitation that combined the absurdities of gangster films with the absurdities that he had noted in his own experience.

‘We should have gone to Ma Ramosa’s.’

‘We can still go.’