Nadine Gordimer - Jump and Other Stories

She had dropped ice in his drink and was handing it to him. — It is nice.—

He closed his fingers round hers, on the glass.

After they had eaten, she asked — Are you going to stay? Just for tonight.—

They were silent a few moments, to the accompaniment of those same frogs. — I feel I’d like to very much. — It was sincere, strangely; he was aware of a tender desire for her, pushing out of mind fear that this, too, was an old trail that might be followed, and awareness that his presence was just a pause in which tomorrow’s decision must be made. — And what about you.—

— Yes, I’d like you to. D’you want to swim—

— Not much.—

— Well it’s maybe a bit chilly.—

When the servant came to clear the table she gave an order. — Ask Leah please to make up the bed in the first guest-room, will you. For Mr Harry.—

Lying side by side on long chairs in the dark, he stroked her arm and drew back her hair from her shoulder to kiss her neck. She stood up and, taking his hand, led him indeed to that room and not her own. So that was how it was to be; he said nothing, kissed her on the forehead in acceptance that this was the appropriate way for him to be dismissed with a polite good night. But after he had got naked into bed she came in, naked, drew back the curtains and opened the windows so that the fresh night blew in upon them, and lay down beside him. Their flesh crept deliciously under the double contact of the breeze and each other’s warmth. There was great tenderness, which perhaps prompted her to remark, with languid frankness, on a contrast — You know you were awful, that first day, the way you just thrust yourself against me. Not a touch, not a kiss. — Now between a sudden change to wild kisses he challenged her knowingly. — And you, you, you didn’t mind, ay, you showed no objection… You were not insulted! But was I really so crude — did I really…?—

— You certainly did. And no other man I know—

— And any other woman would have pushed me into the swimming-pool.—

They embraced joyously again and again; she could feel that he had not been with ‘any other woman’, wherever it was he had disappeared to after last week. In the middle of the night, each knew the other had wakened and was looking at the blur of sinking stars through the open windows. He was sure, for no logical reason, that he was safe, this night, that no one would know, ever, that he was here. She suddenly raised herself on one elbow, turning to him although she certainly could not read his face in the faint powdering of light from the sky. — Who are you?—

But he wasn’t found out, he wasn’t run to ground. It wasn’t suspicion founded on any knowledge relevant to his real identity; she knew nothing of the clandestine world of revolution, when she walked in the streets of the dirty city among the angry, the poor and the unemployed they had ‘nothing to do’ with her — she’d said it. Who he was didn’t exist for her; he was safe. She could seek only to place him intriguingly within the alternatives she knew of — was there some financial scandal behind his anonymity, was there a marriage he was running away from — these were the calamities of her orbit. Never in her wildest imagination could she divine what he was doing, there in her bed.

And then it struck him that this was not her bed: this time she had not taken him into the bed she shared with the husband. Not in those sheets; ah, he understood this was the sign he knew he would divine, when the time came. Clean sheets on that bed, not to be violated. The husband was coming home tomorrow. Just for tonight.

He left early. She did not urge him to stay for breakfast on the terrace. He must get back to bath and change… She nodded as if she knew what was coming. — Before getting to the site. — She waved to him as to a friend, down there at the gates, for the eyes of the manservant and a gardener who was singing a hymn while mowing the lawn. He had made a decision, in the respite she granted him. He would take a chance of leaving the city and going to a small town where there was an old contact, dropped out of activity long ago, who might be prevailed upon to revive old loyalties and take him in.

It was perhaps a mistake; who knows. Best safety lies in crowds. The town was too small to get lost in. After three days when the old contact reluctantly kept him in an outhouse in the company of a discarded sewing machine, stained mattresses and mouse droppings, he went out for air one early morning in his host’s jogging outfit looking exactly like all the other overweight men toiling along the streets, and was soon aware that a car was following. There was nothing to do but keep jogging; at a traffic light the car drew up beside him and two plain-clothes men ordered him to come to the police station with them. He had a fake document with him, which he presented with the indignation of a good citizen, but at the station they had a dossier that established his identity. He was taken into custody and escorted back to Johannesburg, where he was detained in prison. He was produced at the trial for which he had been the missing accused and the press published photographs of him from their files. With and without a beard; close-cropped and curly-headed; the voracious, confident smile was the constant in these personae. His successful evasion of the police for many months made a sensational story certain to bring grudging admiration even from his enemies.

In his cell, he wondered — an aside from his preoccupation with the trial, and the exhilaration, after all, of being once again with his comrades, the fellow accused — he wondered whether she had recognized him. But it was unlikely she would follow reports of political trials. Come to think of it, there were no newspapers to be seen around her house, that house where she thought herself safe among trees, safe from the threat of him and his kind, safe from the present.

I’m standing here by the road long time, yesterday, day before, today. Not the same road but it’s the same — hot, hot like today. When they turn off where they’re going, I must get out again, wait again. Some of them they just pretend there’s nobody there, they don’t want to see nobody. Even go a bit faster, ja. Then they past, and I’m waiting. I combed my hair; I don’t want to look like a skollie. Don’t smile because they think you being too friendly, you think you good as them. They go and they go. Some’s got the baby’s napkin hanging over the back window to keep out this sun. Some’s not going on holiday with their kids but is alone; all alone in a big car. But they’ll never stop, the whites, if they alone. Never. Because these skollies and that kind’ve spoilt it all for us, sticking a gun in the driver’s neck, stealing his money, beating him up and taking the car. Even killing him. So it’s buggered up for us. No white wants some guy sitting behind his head. And the blacks — when they stop for you, they ask for money. They want you must pay, like for a taxi! The blacks!

But then these whites: they stopping; I’m surprised, because it’s only two — empty in the back — and the car it’s a beautiful one. The windows are that special glass, you can’t see in if you outside, but the woman has hers down and she’s calling me over with her finger. She ask me where I’m going and I say the next place because they don’t like to have you for too far, so she say get in and lean into the back to move along her stuff that’s on the back seat to make room. Then she say, lock the door, just push that button down, we don’t want you to fall out, and it’s like she’s joking with someone she know. The man driving smiles over his shoulder and say something — I can’t hear it very well, it’s the way he talk English. So anyway I say what’s all right to say, yes master, thank you master, I’m going to Warmbad. He ask again, but man, I don’t get it— Ekskuus? Please? And she chips in — she’s a lady with grey hair and he’s a young chap — My friend’s from England, he’s asking if you’ve been waiting a long time for a lift. So I tell them — A long time? Madam! And because they white, I tell them about the blacks, how when they stop they ask you to pay. This time I understand what the young man’s saying, he say, And most whites don’t stop? And I’m careful what I say, I tell them about the blacks, how too many people spoil it for us, they robbing and killing, you can’t blame white people. Then he ask where I’m from. And she laugh and look round where I’m behind her. I see she know I’m from the Cape, although she ask me. I tell her I’m from the Cape Flats and she say she suppose I’m not born there, though, and she’s right, I’m born in Wynberg, right there in Cape Town. So she say, And they moved you out?