Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

It’s killingly difficult to accept a priority between choice of existences in the meanly allotted human span. Oh, stuff the philosophy. There is her heritage KwaZulu Africa as exemplified in her father with whom she is bonded although parted from by the poster she came upon on the fence.

Tonight he sees her reading and making notes on the information supplied by the Australian consultancy on the jurisprudence and legal system Over There. He’s addressing her to himself by her full name: has Jabulile Gumede accepted, decided for Australia. They discuss the move practically, they’ve talked about schools, about whether it would be more to a lifestyle perhaps envisaged, to be in a city rather than well, some suburban outback, a suburb, not the Suburb?

That’s not a decision, an acceptance within the self, herself.

It is expected that some time after the return to the Suburb, as promised, in Sindi’s concern to be back for her schoolfriends’ New Year’s Eve party, there’ll be an afternoon or evening with his mother — perhaps the last before she moves to Cape Town — and whoever among the Reeds may be around her.

Jabu has made the arrangement, it’s an evening. Jonathan and Brenda are there, the Jonathan-Brenda daughter Chantal who with her mother’s ebullience hugs cousin Sindiswa whom she has seen only a few times in the childhood almost outgrown. And Ryan the son who is studying engineering in England for a degree which will favour him to take up a post there or anywhere. He hasn’t waited to graduate, he’s married, his Welsh-English wife Fiona is with him, Sindi won’t be a bridesmaid after all. Ryan’s speaking confidently of life in London, acclimatised in every way — even his South African English has somehow naturally lost its old inflections which come from the way the language is used by the Babel of citizens, isiZulu, Setswana, Sepedi, isiXhosa, Afrikaans — all notes sounding up and down the linguistic tune.

His wife works in an art gallery in Cork Street and her brother is first violinist in a chamber orchestra that performs all over the world. — Not just the stress and strain of engineering structures I’m wise to, we never miss an exhibition of developments in art, trends, the different conceptions, what art is , I mean, taking in new technology as means the way paint brushes used to be and then of course the music — Fiona’s brother the open door to concerts, everything new that’s happening in music, fantastic, post-Stockhausen to post-Jackson. — As if suddenly remembering the concerns of Steve and the beautiful — yes, she is — black wife. — And we don’t have to feel why am I having all this while people here are living in shacks still kicked around — Wrinkles his nose, and then tosses the situation, as it should be for the evening, away with jerk of his head.

— What about the Muslims in England? — Jabu’s gentle witness-interrogation voice.

— Well there are, there’ve been nasty incidents, of course you’ll always get thugs who’ll take out their own frustrations on people who don’t look like themselves. — He arches his eyebrows to make known he’s not among them.

Australia wiped out its aboriginals. Almost. So you don’t have to feel guilty of privileges, there. The few who’re left, the descendants, are mostly specimens, they have no real part in national life?

He isn’t hearing the exchange continuing between Ryan and Jabu.

Neither is Jonathan, who’s telling him, — I’m looking for the way to finance buying a house for the young couple in London or wherever he gets a post, most likely one of the big construction companies — maybe even a municipality or what do you call them, county. My lawyer’s busy with control hassles, how to get permission to send the money from here, there’s the provision you can own one property abroad, you know…oh, conditions apply. Officials go nosing into every nook and cranny of your finances. However. I’ve got some friends who know their way around.—

So the son’s not coming back. Home.

As was clear when Jonathan came to ask for advice about the best university faculty of engineering for his son. Home is transferable. It always has been. Long before tribes coming down from the equatorial North, the Dutch following the reconnaissance of the Dutch East India Company, the French and their viniculture, the English colonial governors, the indentured Indians for the whites’ sugar plantations, the Scottish mining engineers, the Jews from Czarist Russian racism and later Nazi Germany’s persecution, the Italians who took a liking to the country during their spell as prisoners of war here, the Greeks whose odyssey launched by poverty brought them — all these and others of distant origins made home, this South Africa. It hasn’t managed to wipe out completely the San and Khoi Africans whose homeland of origin was taken from them.

You can make of somebody else’s your home anywhere. It’s human history. But it’s less complex if the indigenous population has been more or less disposed of.

Has Jonathan heard of connections with the Australian consultancy maybe through a friend who has noted who else was there at a seminar; or has Jonathan beside him read his mind. — Ever think of England? You have such good connections haven’t you, that conference you went to? You could surely get a pretty good appointment in a university. But I suppose you have your ties here…no reason to…Brenda and I — the awful violence growing — we talk about it don’t we all, but when you come down to nitty-gritty I say… everywhere . God knows what country’s safe, and I just have the idea that once the world recession’s over, investment, business is going to boom here; well, stick it out. The metal industry, we’re not doing too badly even now, my outfit, we’ve managed to redeploy — not so many worker lay-offs in our show. But that doesn’t solve the question of getting money out for Ryan’s house.—

They laugh together, Jonathan aware that in this matter his brother Steve is not the man to ask for useful advice.

England. Other consultancies. Yes. Why never think of England if you have such great thoughts at all and are pursuing them. Connections. The influential academics at the conference where all arrangements were efficiently managed by the official with a man’s name in its female version. ‘Home’ to England where father Reed’s line came from. Life in England: a few days in an old mill converted to a private place.

The old year is seen off at the Jake/Isa venue, but all were joint hosts, Blessing and Peter Mkize, Jabu and Steve, the Dolphins, including renegade Marc and his wife. The comrades in the sense way back in the Struggle and now in the Suburb commune, ignite one another in enjoyment just as they are ready at hand when anyone among them is in trouble.

Dancing, she and he are the clandestine lovers in Swaziland where Baba sent her to be educated and the university student was evading the Special Branch. They circled Marc dancing, nuzzling his wife as in parties round the church pool he used to one of the Dolphins — his lover?

Jabu whispering after an unaccustomed extra drink or two. — What d’you think there was about her…—

She means in particular that attracted Marc; what — in the one who’s not a male…?

Yes? Not easy for himself a man who’s attracted only to women, to place himself in Marc’s — what — body sense and aesthetic sense.

Into the small ear close to him. Wine speaking. — She has a beautiful long waist.—

Connections. (Jonathan had brought them up.) England.

The one with the feminine version of a man’s name, she has a waist that your hand goes smoothly down from the intimate armpit to the hollow at the hip.

Time hasn’t materiality, the New Year’s arrival is aural, cheers jetting with fireworks from the Suburb and the city all around, the stamp of drums and farting blare of vuvuzelas, supermarket clone of the oxhorn that used to be blown to honour tribal dignitaries, not in its plastic evolution deafening crowds when a goal is scored on the football field. From whatever was their partying in the yard the sons have appeared among the adult embraces landing where they will, the hugging, shoulder-thumping half-triumphant to have made it through an old year, half-expectant of the new one — and the seeking out, alone among all the press of others, a special meeting, embrace between those who live each-to-each. They are clasped as one body, but they kiss for the first time — never before in the time that is now, this year, he sees tears magnifying her eyes in celebration. She laughs and they’re kissing again.