Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

In the principal’s office the young woman who went to summon him brings tea. There’s determination to make this a friendly occasion of a request to see the master of the school, not a confrontation by parents, one a university professor, who’ve come in academic and business hours to speak to him. Yes, it happened. The problem is — how to predict these unfortunate things. And the learner (nomenclature in accord with a progressive private school) this boy is not a boarder, we cannot know what influences he might encounter that his parents aren’t aware of. — Of course they are very disturbed. He’s apparently a friend of one of the matriculants although he’s in a class below. He may of course — think of the behaviour a couple of months ago as assertion…You’ll know from experience with your own offspring, childhood’s become very short these days, I’ve no experience in this regard with adolescent girls, but in twenty-six years’ teaching the male young I think I can claim knowledge of change — adolescent boys now take charge of themselves before they have the moral judgement to succeed, if you follow me, they experiment with mores and morals — behaviour — to reject the intermediate stage of life they feel we impose on them in preparation . For the world they’re going to live in; and with modern technology they’re so much more exposed to the kind of world it is than other generations I’ve taught. It’s a world of display isn’t it — you must show who you are, and the way to hand is take power loud and abusive over your peers.—

A fluent analysis — but if his experiences can’t see the signs, can’t predict. — Have you thought of some combined group of teachers and boys — the boarders and day boys, like ours — to talk together, why they think — see — these things happen among them. It won’t be easy, they may be quick to button up in suspicion of being recruited to spy. Tell-tale. But you can deal with that; if your staff’s open, make clear this is absolutely not a disciplinary tribunal. It’s their school.—

The principal feels obliged to listen attentively to the academic; he teaches, too, and the campuses have their troubles — and then some! He rests chin on fist. — Perhaps you — one of your colleagues, a young lecturer himself not so long out of school, mh? he could come along and meet our boys, talk to them as the young men they’re going to be.—

It’s not a bad idea but what is the headmaster himself going to do about the peer group that follows its own code of discipline in the school, probably they’ve never heard, been taught about fascism but the fact is they’re young fascists in the making, Mussolini-style, Nazi-style, Apartheid-style. History’s always ready to make a comeback. The man can’t regard what’s happening as a mishap in his school’s production of a free-thinking generation in a free country.

Each must go his own way, to the city, the university, now’s not the time to talk about what they, parents, have to do…There’s only the shared frustration — what use was the confrontation. Alone in the car, addressing himself. Poor devil’s having to deal with developments coming to him from outside the school walls. Julius Malema’s harnessed himself bucking high to the election campaign, pulling the great eager mass of black youth (brothers of Njabulo and Gary Elias although without the privilege of private school) behind Zuma. For the time being not singing his adapted hate song, the generic ‘Kill The Boer’ which in Struggle days meant not the Afrikaner farmer but the white army of apartheid. On the subject of discipline — Malema’s still successfully ignoring any edict against hate speech, with gibes, insults, racist and sexist, at opposition leaders. If not a hero, he’s created a climate which sweats rebellion.

Peter draws up alongside the open car window as both are driving off. He’s in some agreement with himself — Not much sense, aih , taking the boy out in the middle of the year, I think let him finish it and then start somewhere else, new school, next year.—

— Peter’s going to leave Njabulo to complete the year.—

She prompts with questions the account of the principal’s response to Mkize and him.

— And then?—

He’s aware what both are thinking.

It’s end of summer but still warm enough for them to exchange the day on the terrace where the Dolphin’s welcoming gift of the hibiscus plant is blooming man-tall. — Njabulo’ll be in another school next year; that’s it.—

And doesn’t make sense for Gary Elias to leave the school, now. Next year. He won’t be here, in the Suburb.

Whatever she said then was drowned by a plane trampling the sky, grumbling away.

Australia.

The public relations department of the university — where every detail of his post has been confirmed — has considerately sent a photograph and description of the residence assigned to him and his family. It is larger by several rooms than their Suburb house where they’re handing round the photograph and obviously has no history of the kind this house has, taken over from the community of the Gereformeerde Kerk transformed into a Dolphin pool; it is the colonial version of open-plan Californian, attractive, which suits sunny countries like South Africa and Australia. There happened to be a racing bicycle against the façade wall when the picture was taken. — Is that my bike — Gary in joking anticipation.

— Is there a pool? — Sindiswa speculated. Some of her boy- and girlfriends at the school she will be leaving have swimming pools at home taken for granted; she has been the exception.

There are conditions her father could not meet in the adventure, another country, which her friends see privileging her. — I shouldn’t think so — but there’s an Olympic-size one along with a gym, apparently the team swimmers compete nationally. — Quote from a brochure. Sindi takes the photograph of the house. — I’ll borrow it to show Aretha. — A friend whose family have a house on a Greek island.

Gary flips it from her. — Give here, I’m going to let the Mkizes see. — But on the way he changes direction and goes to the Dolphins. The pool is a watercolour painted by the setting sun. The men are in the house, with Marc and Claire, he remains part of the Dolphin family although she is, in a sense, a foreigner, they are drinking wine and watching election meetings, exclaiming over speeches on TV as Gary would heckle at a televised football match. — This’s the house my father’s got for us, over there (he’s picked up the geographical colloquialism) isn’t it fantastic. I’m not taking my old bike. I’ll be getting a new racer, like this. Cool. — The notion momentarily dismissed the co-education school about which he never speaks. But the Dolphins and the woman pass the photograph between them with abstracted glance taken from the screen or hand it on without notice. Marc gives him a welcoming punch on the shoulder while his attention stays with that of the passionate crowd hailing a bear-hug of Msholozi Zuma and his pop-star acolyte Malema, who, going beyond confidence of his own presidency, he predicts as a future candidate some day. — Where’re the folks — Gary Elias is just a sprig of the Reed entourage. — At home? Be a good guy and call them to come over. — The boy draws past his buttock the mobile in his pocket — although he hasn’t yet been granted one of his own, has filched his sister’s. There’s some sort of questioning from the other end — what’re you doing at the pool , you said you were going to the Mkizes’—but in a short while Steve and Jabu arrive amid welcoming laughter at the invitation coming from their son. Who then leaves to proceed to where he was supposed to be, the Mkizes’; in the interim he, too, has been watching the crowd out of habit as at any spectacle on TV, without taking in the exhortation of the speeches, he’s too young to be recruited as a Malema disciple — or just not black enough, only half-half and middle-class nourished, Julius Malema at the age of nine was a poor black child demonstrating protest against apartheid and rejoicing Mandela’s release from prison.