Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

Education. That’s Steve’s department isn’t it, in the partnership of ideals with love and sexual fulfilment and the pledge of children, which is the mystery called marriage. There’s rock beneath their feet, below the different work each does; their common beliefs. He waves her off to test-drive with all this between them in his smiling confidence and in her recognition of his supervision for her safety. What is love? You learn only as you go along. It’s not what overwhelmed at the beginning…Any more than you would have thought of hijacking (everyday on the roads now) as part of freedom; but you should’ve because there could be consequences of freedom not succeeding — not possible to in less than one generation? Not accepting the revolutionary ways and means to achieve the closure, historically vast as Space itself, between the rich and poor in human span as opposed to eternity.

He knows. She’s said it fondly many times, he thinks too much. Better just get on with it. His thesis has been published in a scientific journal. He’s still the Lefty in the Faculty — yes Leftover from the Struggle in his attitudes towards the orientation of the university. Always arranging seminars interdisciplinary on this aspect or that, the relation of academics to students, some process of new learning for both; while some white academics have spent half a lifetime in research of one nature or another, both as students and in honoured posts at universities abroad in the world, École Normale, Universität Hamburg, Institute of Advanced Studies Boston, St John’s Oxford, Japan, God knows where else students haven’t heard of. Assistant Professor Reed and his Comrade coterie are surely encouraged by the appointment of a professor from another country on the African continent to the Chair of Economics — some sort of tentative towards recognising cultural interdependence not as customarily defined with Europe and the USA. The economist, with his Oxford degrees and accent, was in academic rank more on that of the old guard round coffee, even though in elaborate West African dress and embroidered cap. He warmed his manner of speech with expressions, slipped into locutions from his own people’s usage, and drank with the Steve coterie, initiated to the bar where they met. At Steve’s house he was jauntily delighted to find the man had a black wife — apparently the sexual mores if not the taboos of the past in this country were still in his mind. He immediately started addressing Jabu in his own African tongue as if somehow she must understand; a verbal embrace just between the two of them. It was a compliment to her. She looked round to the others crowded on the tiny terrace, the place of welcome, as if someone did, could understand — there was a burst of laughter from Peter Mkize — He’s making a praise song, how beautiful you are, your eyes, your—

— Don’t let’s go into details any further. — It was one of the Dolphins, cupping his palms and giving a curving thrust of the pectorals.

— How’d you know what he was saying—

— I don’t, we know she’s a beauty, don’t we, she’s got features.—

The brother from another part of the continent lowered his eyes on himself and moved his fine head in confirmation or sophisticated contrition. Everyone agreed he was an acquisition to the university; congratulatory, as if Steve had had something to do with the appointment. But it was most probable that it was through Professor Nduka that students from countries on the African continent were accepted for registration at the university; they can afford to pay the fees or are protégés of some international foundation that does, unlike the country’s own youth, who do not have enough either of money or scholarships; ‘the university is open to all’, Steve mouths the quote to Jabu. She will be thinking even if she doesn’t say as she did before, What are you going to do about it. Act. Act. He and the others of the group at the university who are again questioned: How do you promote the integrated culture of the institution in its identity as African with appointment of a Nigerian as head of a department — and march in protest with the men and women of our people who can’t afford to pay for a place in higher education.

If some churches still outcast homosexuals the theatre celebrated the opening night of Marc’s play, at last, having been rewritten by him in its successive versions, to his satisfaction. Like Jabu’s Baba, Marc has his philosophical clip to serve all circumstances: Tell it like it is.

The Developed World has been used to this probably since the Oscar Wilde trial (although he only said he had nothing to declare but his genius — not that he had nothing to declare but his love that dare not speak its name), but in the Developing World homosexuality has been a titillating subject for insinuating patter by stand-up comedians in sleazy night clubs, not a theme for the theatre.

Jabu is at the opening with one of the lawyers for whom she is what she calls ‘on loan’ from the Justice Centre in a child custody case; Steve was to be at a dinner for a visiting scientist that night. The play, which Steve and Jabu had been elected to read as a duty of their objectivity as well as privilege in its early versions, is very different in the dimension of performance, real voices and bodies. Live, it is seen to shirk the temptation of reverse claims, superiority above heterosexual relationships; if there are no wife-beatings and female ball-busting emasculation in this other sexual love relation, there is jealousy, betrayal and — a characteristic or irreverent teasing laughter, at one another, over all.

There was no interval so after the end the audience lingered in the foyer and bar to talk about the play and the full-frontal style of performance. Jabu felt a gentle tweak at one of her piled-up locks — Alan is there, behind her.

— Have you ditched my brother, who’s the guy?—

She’s worldly enough now to answer in kind. — Why should I do such a thing, a man from a family as distinguished as you Reeds. — She introduces him to her lawyer colleague. Like the temptation to mention a present malady to a doctor one meets, for a free consultation, Alan takes the opportunity to interrupt enthusiastic exchanges about the performance, in the spirit of Marc’s clip. — D’you think gay marriage is going to be legalised? What’s the talk among you male — and female — members of the profession. — An intimate cosy tip of the head acknowledges Jabu as among them.

— I should say it’s inevitable, but who can predict how soon.—

— Sooner or later, then. — That’s all the information you get for free: the unspoken, Alan feels he shares in amusement with Jabu. He won’t embarrass her by harassing the lawyer.

The performance perhaps creates a certain atmosphere along with the air-conditioning that allows frankness and wit. She asks playfully — You thinking of getting married?—

Alan gives her a little — hush there — hug.

Home, just past the church that usually exudes light and the latest digital recording, dark and silent, the pool in reflected streetlight the only open eye.

Steve is already in bed, arrived before her. He wants to hear all that he’s missed. She has questions that come to her, she wants to ask — sits on the bed pushing his book out of the way and they talk as if she were an animated guest walked in. — I can’t explain — it hit so hard, I don’t think I was the only one who saw how there’re ways we don’t even know we show prejudice, hurt them, maybe friends, our friends — comrades…our own. The pool was shiny when I passed, just now…And how they laugh at everything that happens to them. It was so funny, the play. I didn’t realise how they do this, when we read it.—