Nadine Gordimer - A World of Strangers

After about an hour, Patterson found us — or rather we heard him, and the three of us managed to find our way back through the bush to where, in the mealies, the lights of the car turned on by the others to guide us hung two banners of heavily moted orange light in the blackness. As we stumbled into the colour and brightness, we got an applause of shouts and jeers of welcome. That night was our last and John insisted that we finish the red wine before we went to bed. I did a couple of imitations I had once done in a student revue at Oxford, and spontaneously added a new one to my meagre repertoire — Miss Everard and the Italians on the boat. John, using Patterson as a victim, showed us how he once tried to learn Judo. Hughie sang army songs with Eilertsen, and gave us, with no bones about it, his assessment of what makes a woman worth the trouble. Over at their own fire, the Africans drank their brandy ration and talked in undertones that now and then surged into laughter, or exploded, like a cork out of a bottle, into sudden onomatopoeic exclamations.

We went out after birds once more, early in the morning, but without much luck; yet the final bag was impressive — fifty-eight birds, not counting those we’d eaten in camp. When we had breakfasted we packed up to go; there was no point in washing or shaving in a tin basin when we could bath at home in a few hours. The camp looked like a house the morning after a party — everything was distasteful and begrimed, the flies sat about on all that was half-clean, half-eaten, half-done with in four days of thoughtless living. When we had loaded the cars, the patch of bush where we had lived simply looked flattened, as if some animal had lain there. We drove away. My arm, on the rim of the car window, was teak-coloured with sun and dirt. Patterson’s heavy face was seamed with white where he had screwed up his eyes against the sun. John had a poll of red hair, dyed with dust. There was an air about us both spent and refreshed; as we came back again among houses and shops, it seemed to me that I had been far away and a long time. The boot of the car was piled with the thick, soft bodies of birds, their plumage tousled and lying brushed against the grain, as it seems to become the moment life has gone. All the way the old setter lay on the back seat, asleep or dead, one hardly knew; both were drawn so close in her now, there was little difference. We stopped at Patterson’s house first, to divide the bag, and the birds lay heaped on the grass while Hughie dealt them out. The dog did not come when John called to her to give her a dish of water. He said to me, ‘Give old Grace a prod, will you.’ But when I put my hand on her rump she felt like the birds I had just tumbled out of the boot.

After I had bathed and shaved the dirt away, and fried myself a plateful of eggs for lunch — I still felt as hungry as I had been in the bushveld — I went to town. The kitchen of the flat was piled with guinea-fowl, there were feathers and the smell of wood-smoke filled the place; I didn’t know quite what to do with the birds and thought I’d decide when I came back in the evening. In the meantime, it was simple to shut the door on it all.

Saturday’s and Monday’s mail lay on my desk at the office; nothing much, the usual publicity handouts and invoices from Aden Parrot, letters from booksellers who had under-ordered and were now clamouring for stocks of an unexpected best-seller, a note from my sister, on holiday in Spain. There was also a long, hand-written (too confidential even for Faunce’s confidential secretary) letter from Uncle Faunce, telling me that it was possible that Arthur Hollward might ask to be relieved of the South African representation of Aden Parrot; he seemed to be getting old and to have a hankering to settle down in England. How would I feel about staying on, perhaps for a year or two. Nothing definite; merely a feeler, and so on. It was what Uncle Faunce called ‘playing with the idea’. While I read it, I was thinking about my guinea-fowl — half for Marion Alexander, half for Cecil? Perhaps a couple for Sam and his wife, and, of course, Anna Louw. I put Faunce’s letter away without thinking about it; first I hadn’t known what to do with my birds, now I didn’t seem to have enough to go round. I wrote down the names of the possible recipients on the back of my cigarette box.

I worked on at the papers around me until nearly five, when the typist, her coat on ready to go home, came in and said, ‘Oh I forgot. There was a mysterious phone call from the police yesterday. Something about stolen property.’

‘Stolen property? Whose?’

‘Well, I told them that as far as I knew you hadn’t lost anything. You haven’t had a burglary or anything like that at the flat, have you?’ She was a good one, this one; an earnest, rather greasy-haired little girl who was a graduate of the university in Johannesburg, and had taken the humble office job because she was passionately interested in publishing and hoped to get herself a job with Aden Parrot in London, eventually. ‘I’ve got the number, anyway, so perhaps you’d better phone them.’

Before I left the office, I did. When I had given my name and address, and had been handed from voice to voice until I reached the right one, it said hoarsely, patiently, ‘We got a coat here, sir. There was a card in the pocket with your name and address.’

I said, ‘A grey coat with checked lining?’

‘That’s right. We got it here for you.’

‘But I’d lent that coat to a friend.’

‘Well, it must’ve been stolen from him. It was found on a native on Saturday night. You’re lucky. All you got to do is come along and sign for it.’

I said, indignantly, triumphantly, with a laugh, ‘But I lent it to him. He’s Steven Sitole, he’s the friend. Give it back to him .’ The card in the pocket. ‘Whatever you’ve left in the pockets is mine, eh, Toby.’ How Steven must be laughing, over this.

The voice said, ‘He’s dead, sir. He was with a whole lot of other natives in a car that crashed on the Germiston road, and the coat was on his body. They were making a get-away from an Indian club the police was raiding.’

How can I explain the jolt of horror, the knowing, the recognition with which, at that instant, I felt, beneath my hand, the dog as I had discovered her on the back seat of the car. Dread passed a hand over my face, cold. I understood. To my bones, I understood.

I said, ‘What was his name? What was the name of the man? Have you the names there?’

He had not; ‘You must go and find out,’ I said. ‘You must go and fetch the report or whatever it is and read it to me.’

He protested, but I made him. I did not think while I waited, I did not think.

‘Native called Steven Sitole and another one, Dan Ngobo, both dead. Two other natives and an Indian arrested. Three bottles of brandy in the car.’

I said, ‘All right.’

‘And the coat, sir, whad’ju want us to do with the coat?’

I went to the mortuary and got permission to see him. The man said, ‘Did he work for you? You won’t recognize him.’ But I knew I must look at him because otherwise I would never be able to believe that he was gone. I would go away back to England one day and it would seem to me that he was merely left behind, he would begin to live again, forgotten by me. I wanted his death to come home to me, as his quickness had done.

He was broken, that was all. He was still himself. He looked as if he had been in a long and terrible fight, and had lost.

I said to the man, ‘He had a ring, a cheap ring with a red stone in it, that he always wore on his little finger?’

But he knew nothing about it.