Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

Gary Elias as usual had to be called, sought out again and again when it was the day and time to leave this home for the other. He has over visits gathered to himself a rather special place among the boys, they clung and pushed about him, playful punches and trippings-up as he finally appeared at the car, and an always unfinished teasing exchange continued through the window as he was driven away. A flushed face twitching animation, joyful sweaty presence beside the father. His last yell, — Ngiyokubona ngontulikazi — Nagokhisimazi! Khisimazi! Shu! See you in July!..And Christmas, Christmas! EISH! —

In July; yes. But Christmas. If the Melbourne post was confirmed, just a few minor details still, but the certainty is there, the departure would be latest November — it was expected at the other end that the immigrant family would come with the provision of weeks to get accustomed to the way of life, settle in, before the university and whatever schools the children were entering began the year in January. A New Year.

While the formal preparations are being followed in accordance with a process by the parents, in the jostling public presence of election time in a free country, normal life goes on for children; suppose to Gary Elias and even Sindi…Australia is an abstract (as ‘when you grow up’) with no effect on the day-to-day of school and weekend pleasures. They haven’t known loss. It’d be difficult for them to feel, while the parting is so protracted, what it will be to leave behind bosom friends and buddies.

What about the house. Jake, who found it for them, has asked, as if it were a detail forgotten in the total decision made, with all its implications comrades cannot intrude upon.

— Yes. Of course sell it — for occupation at the end of this year. But don’t agents always want immediate sales?—

— Or let it. For then. — Jake has the alternative. Does he refuse to believe the departure is lifetime, no return. Or has he a friend ready in mind, wanting to rent. Bringing up the subject, is it a sign of end of sensitivity in a friendship, Jake is not affected by the departure; or is it an indirect reproach. Australia.

When he speaks of Jake’s suggestion to Jabu it becomes referent to something else; the home of their daughter and son — for themselves Glengrove Place was home, the first, the original possible for them. They ought to consider the meaning for Sindi and Gary of this one; ready them more considerably for change, not explicitly, something looming, but as preparation making Australia part of life in the present.

Again the matter of the right time — not to make it heavy. Favourite food is always the adults’ resort to counting on a good mood shared, it maybe comes from that between the woman and the infant when it is sucking at her breast. He and Gary Elias went to a takeaway to bring pizzas, each for everyone’s individual taste, including one to put aside for Wethu who was out with her church women somewhere.

The mother has her courtroom confidence. — We’ve found what we think is the school for you, I’ll show you the photographs, curriculum and so on, subjects extramural — to choose along with the usual — drama, music, there’s even a special communications high-tech group in the science department, space exploration, it’s called astrophysics, stars and planets, and of course all sports, there’s a fine gym near the swimming pool.—

But no. Gary Elias is quick. — A school for me?—

The father’s turn. — For both. You and Sindi.—

He can’t believe it. — A boys’ school for me.—

Sindi’s private smile of approval to her mother, for the moment they look alike although Sindi is not as beautiful, only a man (himself) would recognise that the DNA mixture hasn’t worked so well aesthetically, this time, although it so often does. The boy is the beauty.

— A co-ed, like Aristotle. — Her mother and father know she won’t agree to be separated by gender, that’s old stuff in education, her father doesn’t teach in a single-sex university.

There has to be male response to a male. — I have to enter you for next year — now. But when we are there, November most probably, we’ll go to the school. And you’ll see for yourself. I’ve had the best reports about it from someone who’ll be my colleague at the university, he’s got two sons at the school — and he has no daughter, so—

He’ll have to talk to the boy alone, just the two of them over the coming months; he’s the educationist yes but Jabu is the one who affirms their comrade-and-lover conviction that there’s an end to all nature of segregation. Under whatever rubric. Apartheid. It’s over.

— And you, Sindi—

— My friends think I’m so lucky, have the chance. Travel to new places…I mean you know — Spoken as might a woman complimented on her enviable shapeliness.

What he was really searching is how she accepts in the other emotional life-upheaval of adolescence, itself departure from the familiarities of childhood — Australia. They have given her books, she’s been a reader since she learned to recognise words at the age of six, journals of the glories of the country supplied by seminar organisers.

What is the process of acceptance. The ‘envious’ remark of Sindi’s schoolfriends was really of the excitement of holidays; not deportation. Gary calling from the car in KwaZulu, Christmas, Christmas — the summer holiday he’d be back.

The concept of belonging is a pile-up junction of private footpaths and public freeways in a month before there’s going to be an election and the country (can you honestly call yourselves a nation only fifteen years after you’ve been centuries divided by cleaver, black and white) will get new governing parentage. Jacob Zuma, electioneering, says the ANC is a ‘child of the church’. The support of Christian leadership is in line with the commitment made when the Party was formed: three founding presidents were priests. Two thousand churchgoers pray hand in hand with him.

The church leaders have said they will encourage their members to ensure an ANC victory at the polls, and also undertake to fight against moral decay. On the same page of the newspaper she has taken up — not in the mood to force themselves to turn over the rejection by the boy — there is the report that the National Prosecuting Authority is still considering whether or not to drop sixteen graft, fraud and racketeering charges against Jacob Zuma.

— I can’t make sense, who’s in opposition to whom, if the NPA is really after Zuma, or putting on a front for justice. Keep refusing to say whether they’ll ever explain the hold-up of the trial.—

His private lawyer has her knowing head before him. — A few days ago a brother of Shabir Shaik told university students about the possible scrapping of Zuma’s charges. That’s the kind of inside information the Shaik family would have. What happens to Zuma also happens to Shaik, he’s on ‘terminal illness’ parole from serving his fifteen-year sentence for corruption and fraud but if Zuma comes to trial Zuma’s financial adviser will be arraigned somewhere along.—

She has ready every legal convolution in the continuing saga, Australians are lucky acquiring this astute mind from South Africa. Another byway, criss-crossing: there has been given a bit of press space even while electioneering commands the pages — an announcement. Australia slashes immigration to protect its workforce. No more foreign bricklayers, plumbers, carpenters, hairdressers and cooks will be accepted. Academics in science and their partners in the legal profession who meet the local qualifications are not on the list disfavoured due to world recession. He has made certain anyway that he and his family — every requirement in place, only the specific date of arrival to be settled — are not affected.