Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

The new life to be served upon him and his sister.

His mother — Jabu pronounces authority — We decide. We’ll apply for him at that co-educational. Him and Sindi. — The tone final, not in manner of judgment handed down in court; something parentally fundamental making itself heard to her.

— We’ll think about it some more — over this weekend. — It’s Easter interregnum anyway, when Gary is expected to be brought for the holiday weekend with Baba in KwaZulu.

Yet then — she’s gathered the prospectuses now, cover on cover of impressive school buildings laid out in gardens, the kangaroo emblem as the lion is in Africa; she looks up not at him; no. — I don’t want to go. — As if speaking to herself. — Will you go. Mama told me on the phone yesterday, there’s going to be a huge gathering — election — he’s organised, he’ll introduce the speakers, his choir from the church, freedom songs she says, if Msholozi doesn’t come himself it’ll be one of his closest. Can you take Gary.—

The moment outside the Glengrove Place door. But no threshold to carry the bride over. She asks him, alone to take the boy to spend the usual promised weekend there, her home KwaZulu.

I don’t want to go.

Her Baba. The consequence: meaning this — it can’t be questioned, dissuaded — what an intrusion he feels that would be of the commitment of love, the confidences kept, you for me, I for you, in areas I don’t, others don’t, have access to. The mystery of sexual intimacy, that’s called upon, unknown.

All he could ask in response to their need, the specific need of Jabu in her torn bonds with her father was take to her what practical reason could be the lie he must produce. But he has it: she is involved in a difficult case, cannot miss the sessions of preparation required of her by her senior advocates — what else, the Elder of the church, headmaster of the boys’ school is one who strictly observes the pre-eminence of duty.

Sindi of course had other plans anyway. Wethu has also cried off. She has become so popular in the women’s league of the city church she chose that they insist they need her with them for the rising from the dead of their saviour.

There’s the poster he was told by Jabu she saw after she attended the rape trial. It was honouring the not guilty judgment in celebration then, still does; many more posters are tacked up now, including an example of one of Msholozi’s marriages, picturing him and whatever wife in full guise of flesh and leopard skin.

Even without the daughter of the village who had given legitimacy to the presence of the white man in the extended family by marrying him, he was familiarly welcomed with accompanying grandson of their churchman, schoolmaster. Elias Siphiwe Gumede observed male protocol, greeting him before allowing the interrogation of questioning eyes: was his daughter back gathering something from the car, women always at that sort of arrival fuss — and here is the boy, tall enough, this holiday come home, to put his arms round his Babamkhulu in joyous cityman style, why not, that the other grandsons around would not dare. The high greetings were in their language; standing smiling by, he caught the assurances not questions coming from the grandfather that the boy was happy, happy to be back, heh, and the boy’s gush of names, how’s Sibiso, is Xamana here? — Where is your mother, already with the women?—

His Zulu could pick that up. And he began in isiZulu but had to resort to English. — Babawami, Jabulile sends a special message to you (quiet a moment, Gary!) she asks me to tell you, explain for her, she couldn’t come home for Easter although she very much wants to be here with you and Mama — there’s a terribly important case coming on and she has to be with the advocates the whole weekend, meetings preparing for it, no way out of this, she instructed me — she apologises, she said, but Baba he’ll understand.—

Not home for Easter, sorry sorry (she would have used that bowed-head jingle before him as a little girl); these are the inspiration come to him in a lie.

— What trial is this? Did you bring papers?—

No lie stands; it has to lead to others. But necessity makes this glib. — Too bad, it hasn’t come to court yet so there’s nothing in the papers, she would have given me these for you…there wasn’t any document she could, unfortunate…she says—

And the next lie, to offset any mood, absence darkening over the occasion. — At least I’ve brought Gary Elias for you, that’s what she absolutely insisted, and you know what Jabu is when she wants you to do something!—

— You are always welcome here. — Out of a phrase book. As if granted, between Jabulile’s two men, that without her he doesn’t count.

Elias Siphiwe Gumede is already disciplined to the preeminence of what this weekend is: not the Easter devotional celebration of Jesus rising from the grave to which each year the daughter was respectful for her father’s sake even if for her the rising was that of the Struggle from the grave of apartheid; this is the Easter when her father will be the man who has brought home more than an election meeting: a gathering for the congregation of Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma.

There is no soccer game for Gary Elias and team of extended family boys. The open land that was the field is an amphitheatre of planks being totteringly tiered by the usual home-boys back from the coal mine and the cities’ factories (it’s still the Whites and Indians who own them) along with old men back in their birthplace to die, and the schoolboys for whom this is another game. — It’s all us guys! — Gary Elias is off to join them; the dignitary whose namesake he is gives the stern flourish of a permissive order— Hamba ushone .—

Good Friday is not one on which the usual weekend drinking in city bars, shebeens happens; here the Elder might come out of his house and wither with authority of disapproval any groups of men squatting round liquor which the daughter’s man joins whenever she brings him to her home. But one of the group that always welcomes him hears he’s arrived and sends a child to beckon — there’s a private Friday, just displaced to someone’s mud-insulated house that’s more or less out of sight of Baba’s range.

Msholozi, in what would have been the persona of his clan name, did not come, either, to honour Elias Siphiwe Gumede, his influential campaign organiser in the village and surrounding communities, including shack dwellers from around the coal mine. The substitute wore no leopard skin (perhaps he was not at that level of traditional authority) but was dressed in the well-tailored dark suit, tie and fashionable pointed-toe shoes as if already a cabinet minister, anticipating Zuma’s government. He spoke with impressive cadence bringing out all the beauty of Jabu’s mother tongue, that she sometimes said was becoming lost in the adoption of it to pop slang, tsotsi talk, American and international substitutions for isiZulu’s own forms of expression — she caught herself out in the practice she accused.

This isiZulu ringing over the football field-cum-stadium with pauses as if to take breath, but actually skilfully handing over to calls, chanting, cheers, was clear enough to get the gist with his limited grasp of the language his son had turned to so effortlessly the moment he stepped onto his mother’s home place. What was caught in the full spate of words was the same litany of Zuma’s speeches, as expected; who would presume, in the entourage of the man to deviate from what was so successful even without the rousing of dance and battle song ‘ Awuleth’ umshini wami ’. The home brew downed in secrecy with the home-boys perhaps released a facility to understand some of this; perhaps to feel not rejected; a response — what would Jabu think of that!