Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

There’s an ox slaughtered in the village, the meat butchered from it isn’t in plastic packets from the supermarket, it comes straight to the great iron vessels straddling the women’s cooking fires. For Sindiswa, who doesn’t often visit in KwaZulu this is not exotic; at the birthday party of a Greek schoolfriend there was a sheep on a spit he and his pals, directed by his father, were turning.

Steve’s drawn into the football game with Gary Elias, the boy cousins, along with other fathers in Baba’s collateral clan. Many of the men who live away in the industrial towns, miners, construction workers, are Home-Boys back for Christmas. They form their own enclave drinking the supply of canned beer they’ve contributed as well as imbamba that has been generously brewed. They are amiably drunk and then there’s a discrete breakaway by a few who protectively surround a woman bowed and weeping among the laughter and chatter of a good time; her son has died in some city where he found work. Jabu goes with her mother and other women to console, when she finds herself nearby.

He’s given himself half-time from the football match.

— It was AIDS. — Who? — The one who didn’t come. — Her tilt of eyes to the city workers. He and she followed the toll of AIDS, she could quote straight off the latest infection count published but so far no one either knows has died. At the Justice Centre she meets men and some women — out of fear of disgrace they are even more cautious about letting it be known — who are HIV-positive, on antiretrovirals, and even some who have AIDS. They are people dismissed from their employment because they are infected with the virus: she’s involved in court actions against employers illegally ignoring workers’ Constitutional rights.

Who knows which among his students is positive, aware or not; a lecturer in another faculty has made what’s called his ‘status’ public and addressed the students in every faculty, urging them boldly, like himself, to take the test, and if it is positive start treatment immediately; if it is negative, wake up, be sure in your love-making you take every means of protecting yourself and your partner of whatever sex from infection.

There are two comrades — not of the Suburb but theirs from the wider association of the shared past — who are out of the closet and on treatment that will keep them alive maybe without developing AIDS. The Dolphins? Don’t fall into the wishful belief that it’s a homosexual curse passed on to heteros.

Still flushed by a football game taken unseriously by everyone, fun — like the absurd contests there used to be sometimes in camp lulls between action, he goes to join the workers in their loss. But they come from dispersion in whatever jobs they’ve found all over the industrialised country, most will not have known the man as grown men, and if there were a few of the man’s comrades — fellow workers, they will have mourned him, away at the graveside; it’s the mother’s sorrow revived by the son this year missing among the Home-Boys returned for Christmas. These welcome the white man the church Elder’s, headmaster’s daughter married, exchanging happily, interrupting each other’s anecdotes that come from the kind of life the towns and cities offer them, hostels where you must survive violence, the cost of backyard rooms if you manage to find them — there’s the thigh-slapping story graphic in their mix of isiZulu and English, of one who’s got himself a share of a room on the skyscraper roof of what used to be rich whites’ apartments. Up there, the servants lived, now the new tenant class don’t have live-in servants, and the building’s owner rents sky rooms to anyone — there’s a shebeen run by some women at weekends, there are kids up there, men and their girls, Izifebe Onondindwa .

Sindi is speaking isiZulu she learnt from her mother since the first words heard as a baby in Glengrove Place to a cluster of girls who find they have the same jokes and complaints about boyfriends although her freedom at her kind of school is something unimaginable to them at the girls’ equivalent of Headmaster Elias Siphiwe Gumede’s school for boys.

Instead of going home for Christmas, the Zimbabweans fleeing from home in tens of thousands, finding a way to that other Methodist Church, the beds of city pavements, the empty suburban lots. New Year a week ahead bringing the elections, another post-apartheid government; the hiving-off of ANC heroes to start a rival party — no one’s talking of this, these are the KwaZulu Home-Boys, back drinking home brew. It’s going down plentifully to the great promise — the promises of the idol, Zuma. Jacob Zuma will change all that hasn’t been changed to make better the better life for all. Msholozi, his praise-name: one of them, the workers; Zuma, their own.

Her Baba has given her husband his share of the presence and attention he distributes among everyone in traditional hospitality both of the Christian in this holy season and amaZulu feasts of celebration. He has the easy male subject to introduce — having to buy a new car. — The garage man tells me my old model isn’t worth repairing any more, and the tyres — our roads you know — a new set would be a lot of money thrown out…they say you must buy a new car every six years.—

— In that case, mine should be in the scrapyard! Nearly three years out of date.—

— And you got here with Jabu all right?…of course…of course if I do have to replace, I must have my wheels, there’s a Japanese model or maybe I should stay with Ford.—

Their expressions show each has other things occupying their minds, but this is friendly talk on safe ground in respect of whose this is beneath where they sit. No venture to mention a corruption trial lingering above the certain election of Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, as if allusion first would be an offence to the host, and second could be tactless in consideration of the politics whatever they might be, of the daughter’s husband. Her reactions when she paid that visit after Msholozi was found innocent in the rape trial: she will have influenced her man. Or his could have been the influence on her attitude. A daughter of mine.

They passed a night in comfortable spirits at her parents’ house, sleep understandably delayed by the singing and rising scales of ululating joy, background static of the radio commentary until some uncounted hour. The children were distributed where they elected to be among collaterals their own age who were delighted to make place for them, Gary Elias of course sharing a bed he occupies on his regular visits.

She didn’t have to ask if he would come with family led by the Elder to church for the service on Christmas Day.

— Am I all right? — He wore a jacket despite the heat, and the tie he’d thrown into his duffle bag, remembering decencies observed in the Anglican church attended with his father.

He would pass; she had brought her formal Pan-African outfit and although this elaborately distinguished her from the simple traditional dress of the other up-to-date women and the tight tailored skirts, flowered hats hung over from the colonial period of decorum worn by a few old women, her beauty as a tribute to worship of the Christ Child, coming from their continent of Africa, was admiringly received. Their headmaster. Their Elder, in the line of his family’s distinguished leadership in this, their church, had educated his daughter for the world but she had not forgotten to come back, bring something, symbol of her achievements, to them.

Enjoyed himself. Really. He felt — at home. In her home. In place. Is it because the personal life can become, is — central over the faith — political faith? (That’s heresy…)

He’s got over (unthinkingly there) his rejection of, no wasn’t that — his detachment from the Reeds, Jonathan. A reconciliation brought about by Jabu, by life with her? Yes, a comrade; but she has never given allegiance to their faith — Struggle — as a religion, substitute for religious faith. She’s free? What an easy way out. But she doesn’t take easy ways.