Nadine Gordimer - Jump and Other Stories

But now it was he who need not be afraid: she had no inkling of anything real behind his fairy tales. — Well, the nature of your work — always moving around, no time for roots.—

— No trees. — He lifted his shoulders, culpable. — What about family…—

Should he have a family? — Dispersed. I don’t have what you’d call a family, really.—

— Your wife? No children?—

— I had one once — a wife. I have a grown-up daughter — in Canada. A doctor, a paediatrician, bright girl.—

That was a mistake. — Oh where? I have a brother who emigrated to Canada, he’s a doctor too, also a paediatrician, in Toronto.—

— Vancouver. She’s the other side of the country.—

— They might have met at some conference. Doctors are always holding conferences. What’s her name — She held out her hand to take his glass for a refill, gesturing him to be at ease. — Good lord, I haven’t asked you yours — I’m, well, I’m Sylvie, Sylvie—

— That’s enough. I’m Harry.—

— Well, maybe you’re right — that’s enough. — For someone met on a bus, when you haven’t travelled on a bus for, say, thirty years; she laughed with the acknowledgement to herself.

— I’ll leave you my card if you wish. — (His card!) They were both laughing.

— I’m unlikely to need the services of a construction engineer.—

— Your husband might. — He was enjoying his recklessness, teasing himself.

She put down her drink, crossed her arms and began to swing, like a child wanting to go higher and higher. The couch squeaked and she frowned sideways, comically. The whisky made her lips fuller and polished her eyes. — And how would I explain I got to know you, may I ask.—

Re-establishing reserve, almost prim, he ended the repartee. When he had emptied his glass he rose to leave. — I’ve imposed upon you too long…—

— No… no… — She stood up, hands dangling at her sides, bracelets slipping. — I hope you’re refreshed… I certainly am. — She pressed the button that opened her fortress and saw him to the gates. — Maybe — I don’t know, if you’re not too busy — maybe you’d like to come round sometime. Lunch, or a swim. I could ring you—

— Thank you.—

— When my husband is back.—

She gazed straight at him; as if he were an inferior reminded of his manners he produced a thank you, once more.

— Where can I reach you? Your phone—

He, who could pass a police station without crossing to the other side of the street, tingled all the way up from his feet. Caught. — Well, it’s awkward… messages… I’m hardly ever in—

Her gaze changed; now she was the one who was put in her place. — Oh. Well drop by sometime. Anyway, it was nice meeting you. You might as well take my number—

He could not refuse. He found a ballpoint in his trouser pocket but no paper. He turned his left hand palm up and wrote the seven digits across the veins showing on the vulnerable inner side of his wrist.

The number was a frivolous travesty of the brand concentration-camp survivors keep of their persecution; he noticed that when he got back to the house that was sheltering him at the time. He washed off her identification; it required the use of his hosts’ nailbrush. The Movement wanted him to slip out of the country but he resisted the pressures that reached him. He had been in exile too long to go back to that state of being, once he had come home. Home? Yes, even sleeping on the floor in somebody’s kitchen (his standard of shelter was extremely varied), going to football matches, banal movies, wandering the streets among the people to whom he knew he belonged, unrecognized, unacknowledged — that was home. He read every newspaper and had the rare events of carefully-arranged clandestine meetings with people in the Movement, but these were too risky for both himself and them for this to happen often. He thought of writing something; he actually had been an academic once, long ago, another life, teaching the laws that he despised. But it was unwise to have bits of paper around you, anything written down was evidence of your existence, and his whole strategy was not to exist, for the time being, in any persona of his past or present. For the first time in his life he was bored. He ate peanuts, biscuits, biltong, buying these small sealed packets and tearing them open, tossing the contents from his palm into his mouth before he’d even left the shop, as he had done when he was an overweight schoolboy. Although he walked the streets, he had thickened, rounding into that mound under the diaphragm. Whatever he thought of to fill the days and nights, he stopped short of doing; either it would involve people who would be afraid to associate with him, or would endanger those who would risk it. Oddly, after more than a week the phone number came back to him at the sight of his own inner wrist as he fastened his watchstrap. Sylvie — what was her name? Sylvie. Just that. Sylvie, Sylvia Pass. Perhaps the name was also the invention of the moment, out of caution, self-protection, as his ‘Harry’ had been. May I speak to Sylvie? Who? I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong number —it would be the husband’s voice. And so she never had done anything stupid like picking up a man on a bus.

But from the point of view of his situation if anyone was safe this ‘Sylvie’ was. He went to the telephone in the silent empty house, his present precarious shelter, from which everyone else had gone to work for the day. She herself answered. She did not sound surprised; he asked if he might take up her offer of a swim. — But of course. After work? — Of course — after he’d left the dust and heat of the building sites.

She was dressed to swim, the strap of a two-piece suit showing above the neck of some loose-flowing robe, and the ridge of the bikini pants outlined under the cloth somewhere below where her navel must be. But she did not swim; she sat smiling, with the thigh-high split in the robe tucked closed round her leg and watched him as he emerged from the chintzy rustic change-room (my god, what luxury compared with his present sleeping quarters) and stalked down to the pool holding in his belly and conscious that this effort — with that diaphragm bulge — made him strut like a randy pigeon. She gave encouraging cries when he dived, he felt she was counting the lengths he did, backstroke, butterfly, crawl. He was irritated and broke water right at her bare feet with his greedy grin of a man snatching life on the run. He must not let that grin escape him too often. She wiggled her toes as water flew from him, his dripping pelt of chest hair, the runnels off his strong legs, spattering her feet. A towel big as a sheet provided a toga for him; wrapped in his chair, he was modestly protected as she was, whether or not she had sized him up like a haunch in a butcher’s shop.

The whisky and ice were wheeled out. The kitchen was forewarned this time; there were olives and salami, linen napkins. — Am I going to meet your husband before I go? — The man surely would be driving up any minute. It would be best for ‘Harry’ to get out of the towel and into his clothes in order to seem the stranger he was. He wanted to ask how she had decided to explain his presence, since she must, indeed, have so decided. The question was in his face although he didn’t come out with it. It suddenly seemed impatiently simple to him. Why not just say they’d met in a bus, what was there to hide — or were the circumstances of the casual acquaintance indeed too proletarian for the gentleman, beneath his wife’s dignity! If only they’d met in the Members’ Pavilion at the races, now!

— Not here. — It was brusque. — It was necessary to go to Hong Kong after Japan. Apparently opportunities are opening up there… I don’t know what it’s all about. And then to Australia.—