Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

Seats are comfortable as those in a luxury cinema, very different she finds them from the benches in her grandfather’s and her father’s church; Steve doesn’t remember how his young backside might have been accommodated accompanying father Andrew on one of his rare obligatory occasions to show up in church, a wedding perhaps, or a funeral. In front of them are books slotted in pockets on the backs of the next row of seats. The woman beside him — he gives a quick glance of polite acknowledgement, but she is passing the time pushing back the cuticles on her fingernails, the man on Jabu’s side is praying, just audibly, a white shawl falling round his neck. Jabu’s careful not to disturb him by jolting the chair arm and she manages with her usual natural grace to succeed in taking a couple of the books without doing so.

There is pervasive talk, even giggles from young boys apparently corralled to a block of seats across the aisle.

Is this an orthodox or a reform synagogue. The woman is satisfied with the condition of her nails and he can ask her. It’s reform. Jabu is turning pages to verify something she’s finding in one of the bilingual books, there’s movement of her lips — she’s trying to mouth Hebrew words, she who speaks at least four languages other than the natal isiZulu he’s picked up under her tutelage. If you’re black you’ve had to improvise communication with unilingual whites, she’d probably easily acquire this ancient one, too.

The rabbi welcomes the congregation in Hebrew and with colloquial English, not the tone Jabu’s accustomed to in church, whether spoken isiZulu or English, implicit chastening against inattention to the presence of the Lord. His Hebrew is poetry, there’s a choir singing in that language, you don’t have to be able to read music in order to understand the beauty of it.

Steve has been looking about to see where Jonathan is sitting, if he’s not behind the scenes, who knows what the protocol may be for the father in this male ceremony.

Andrew and Pauline — must be here, Jonathan’s and his parents, the boy’s grandparents. He has passed over the man in robes and a turban-like headgear, fringed prayer shawl, some ecclesiastical functionary among those in the gathering, although standing, not seated, where yes, the parents Andrew and Pauline have been spotted. He glances that way again as if to mark, we’re here too, Jabu and I. Family solidarity in the most unlikely circumstances after the years when I had to be removed from the way of life expected for me.

The rabbi or whatever he is: he has the face of Jonathan. He is Jonathan. That’s my brother. How could I not have seen. Known him.

Can those stage props have changed him; the sign of change, this one way: his. What was it he said that day, it isn’t enough to be black or white, finish and klaar the way it was in the bad old days, you belong to something…what was it, ‘more real’. What’s more real than what we are, now! My Jabu is a woman the same as your Brenda is a woman, same rights — must I spell them out. Your Ryan and our Sindiswa are growing up not tattooed White Master/ Swart Meisie just as the Nazis tattooed numbers on the inmates of concentration camps. Why d’you need that ghetto disguise to make you real?

This Jonathan, the functionaries, the boy, are now grouped on the platform.

Jabu senses beside her that Steve is not aware of the address being given about the significance for the boy to be bar mitzvahed, he’s not even hearing the edict taken not only to be faithful to Judaism but to fulfil human responsibilities to everyone, the people and the country. Good sense to hear; she turns to him — and there are his hands splayed palm-down on his thighs. The male gesture of tense reaction she knows in him although she doesn’t, this time, know a cause. Her hand like a secret between them goes over his. There is some sort of text reading announced to which the assembly apparently is to respond at points from the pages and lines given in the books supplied. In the church most know the Bible but here at the occasion there is scuffling and consultation of Torah and prayer book among the congregation, which certainly includes Jonathan’s business associates of various backgrounds religious or otherwise, some Afrikaners, ambitious brother capitalists no longer the master race. There’s one black man among them, must be member of a board; an example of forward-looking recognition of Black Empowerment policy in the second Leninist definition of power, ‘first gain the political kingdom then the kingdom of finance’.

She is the only black woman.

Jabu flutters the pages of the right volume and speaks the responses at the right moment in the English version along with the Hebrew of the old man in his fringed prayer shawl. During pauses when nothing seems to be required of respect while there is activity of some sort going on up at the platform, Jonathan’s alter ego stands as if awaiting orders, there are men in the same kind of dress and in conventional dark suits coming to put a hand on the shoulder or briefly round the arms of the boy Ryan with instruction, advice or homage, the boy’s not seen to do more than nod slow and repeatedly. Brenda leaves her seat and goes up to the official group, comes down again, then once more summoned. There is no word seen to be exchanged between her and the figure of her husband. At some stage there is a rustle of hush in the congregation-cum-audience; a moment has come. The boy walks up to the podium-pulpit with back intently bent, straightens, swallows (you can’t see the movement of the Adam’s apple from the distance of the seats but everyone knows that brave pause) and delivers his candidacy speech in the English version and in Hebrew for which he has been under tuition for several years. Then comes the other Moment, the revelation by the young hand about to be that of a man, of what is most holy in this house of God, as the revealing of the likeness of the rebel Jew, Jesus, is in the other religion He inspired. The boy takes hold of a cord, the curtains sway on the wall, shake folds and curl back either side with the flourish of a retreating wave. He lifts out the Scroll of The Law. Jabu’s half-turned in her seat as if she’s about to applaud, but knows better than this secular impulse, in a house of worship.

And that’s only the beginning of the spectacle, there are ceremonial embraces up there, it’s like a scene from a religion ancient as an archaic Greek frieze, it looks as though some in embrace are going to succumb to the floor. And the solemnity changes key to something different, an order is being made of the rabbi, his cohort of family men and male friends, doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, businessmen, some transformed by a token enrobement, family women in whatever is their individual best (just as down in the congregation Steve’s wife is in hers) with the inducted boy carrying aloft like a trophy the Scroll of The Law on its staff. He leads the parade down from the ceremonial platform and everyone rises, the ignorant taking cue from the conversant, Jabu from the devout old neighbour and Steve from her. The procession is coming slowly down the first aisle, slowly round the second, apparently held back in pauses, by those congregants nearest. As it approaches the row where he and she sit, the woman on his left stands and pushes past their feet to get to the aisle, hampered by the unsteady old man already risen. Jabu, Steve see those who are closest enough to the aisle lean a hand straining to touch in the procession’s passing the holy object carried by the celebrant. There is silence except for the stir of feet and clothing.

The held breath is released. The Scroll back hung in place. In a gush the procession breaks, interrupted, disbanded by everyone crowding in with congratulation on the way out the doors, the excited, half-schoolboy-chaffing boys burst from their exclusion to entrap this one of theirs who has just breasted the tape on the finish line of the instruction they shared.