Nadine Gordimer - Life Times - Stories 1952-2007

He’s on particularly good terms — a calling-out exchange — with a young couple who happen to be white, like most of the shoppers. Of course he doesn’t know that the husband is a junior partner in an advertising agency, TV and print media, and the wife a lawyer in a legal aid centre for people who can’t afford paid representation in the courts, but he recognises the up-and-coming. Their car regularly bypasses other vacant bays to occupy one of their man’s, under his surveillance, as he would expect. Later he uplifts a palm coaxing encouragement as he or she approaches with a burden of shopping achieved, and saunters over his territory to help load the stuff, questioning, commiserating along with them the robbery cost of everything.

While talking one Saturday he was looking at the young woman’s shoes, gave the calculated observation: ‘Same size as hers’, jerked his head back to his wife and as if at a command, she waved to the couple. ‘Haven’t you got a pair for her you don’t like to wear?’ As naturally, in the winter: ‘She ought to have a better coat — you can see. Maybe you can spare.’ If the suggestion was forgotten or overlooked (he never accepted the offence that it was ignored), he gave a reminder: ‘What happened to the shoes [coat, sweater] you had for her?’

The wife has never been seen wearing any of these items that were duly supplied. The young lawyer was too respectful of the privacy everyone was entitled to, to enquire: ‘What happened to. .’ Everyone’s lives are unpredictable. The predicaments and unheard-of resorts turned to, as related to her at her legal aid desk. How unexpected (he lets her lie drunk on the grass) that now, a Saturday morning, the wife has her lap spread and he’s sitting there locked by her crossed arms, her drinking coterie prancing applause around them. The young couple come shopping are drawn in. Their man struggles up and puts an arm on the shoulder of each, sways them into laughter at him, with them: it’s not that they’re one with the people, the people are one with them.

They don’t have to remark upon it to one another, that would be unconscious admittance of what they were before: bleeding heart syndrome, believing they didn’t have any class, let alone race feelings of superiority. Now this freedom of spirit is coming in its validity, granted, from the most unlikely quarter, on the other side of the divides. Here was a man, Lucas, organising people who have no recognised place, told they’re Informal, a definition without function — except, of course, expected to create — whatever — for themselves. In his self-appointed domain of the shopping street, there is — something? — in him that brings coherence.

‘Without property, the principle of ownership?’ The lawyer knows the sources of the economy. ‘But isn’t that just it: they don’t have the incentives we have’ — she tries again.

‘Don’t have the access.’ That’s her advertising man’s response.

To herself, unspoken: They have found a way, and we haven’t.

She sometimes bumped into him along the shops — literally, he would be in what was bantering argument or his tutoring advice with a few of his Parking Tax men in the middle of the pavement, assumed that people would step round them in recognition of their responsibility for the order of the street. He might follow beside her into the supermarket or the liquor store as if he also just happened to be shopping, talking about the new extended shopping hours, row over liquor on sale on Sundays, the church kicking up a fuss, local gossip (did she hear, that old man with the sports car — yes — the red one — bashed into a police patrol car) and loading her shopping cart for her, pushing it before her to her car that was his charge. In his chatter there were threads of reasoning and disciplined logic that made her think — no, shamed her that he had no real occupation to draw on what were probably his capabilities and provide remuneration earned, not handouts in small change.

Over Christmas he was seen helping out at the liquor store, on the pavement loading boxes of party supplies into delivery vans. When they exchanged the usual greeting, she called, congratulatory, ‘You’re working here now?’ He grinned vociferously. After New Year he was back outside the church, where one of the residents of the park toilets had been standing in for him. He turned away his head as at an intrusion when she remarked, ‘You’re not at the bottle store?’ (Local jargon on the shopping street.)

It seemed he forgave her, and closed the subject. ‘They don’t know how to treat people.’

She knew what he meant. He’s not the proprietor’s ‘boy’. When she dashed to pick up food at the shops as an unwelcome distraction from her day’s absorbed involvement in gaining redress for people whose ignorance of rights complicated their need, she was conscious — again, he really ought to have some proper employment. All the prevarication of authorities, and the frightened sycophantic obfuscation of victims she met with at Legal Aid — in this street man there’s at last found something else; the only principle you can live by, now, another kind of respect. The something — can’t define, within his presumption, crudity, that she can trust. He lets his woman lie drunk on the pavement. As if he’d just step over her. But drink is her only occupation; he’s got nothing else to offer her but tolerance, her only freedom, to do what she’s resorted to. He accepts people’s laughter at this; it’s his share of the informal situation. That’s how one must recognise it.

Your Parking Tax pet, the young husband teases, over her concern. A colleague of his own trips from the Olympic level of drinking tolerated among the publicity fraternity, goes into rehab, loses his job and, incidentally, his wife.

One Saturday there is no encouraging beckon when she approaches a church bay and no saunter to help load the contents of her week’s provisions into the car. The man’s preoccupied with some other of his regular shoppers to whom he’s pointing out the problem of a flat tyre leaning their station wagon against the kerb.

Meanwhile a tenant of the toilets in the park belays her insistently, desolately, old, unshaven, dirty in worn cast-offs those people beg from the church. He doesn’t ask for money: ‘Please, please just buy me tin of sardines. Please.’ He sticks a forefinger down a toothless mouth. ‘Just one tin. Sardines.’ She has tuna in her trolley load. She’s fumbling in a carrier bag when he breaks away from his other regular clientele and thrusts between her and the imploring man. Ignoring her, he’s shouting at the bowed head, words are blows in a language she doesn’t know. Battered to less than a man, the other cringes, presses arms to his body, bends with knees locked, disowning himself. The ruthless debasement sets a shudder through her, the tin she’s found drops from her hand. He, more than a man, an elect, among the rulers of the world, swiftly bends to retrieve the tin and toss it back to the trolley.

‘He’s hungry, what are you doing!’

‘Hungry? — don’t give him anything. Nothing. He doesn’t eat it, he takes it to the park and sells it to get money to buy drink.’ A hand of dismissal gestured not as at anyone worth threatening, but chasing a dog out of the way. He takes a deep chest-raising breath, snorts to clear his head of the interruption, and smiles. He’s there to protect her from exploitation by the Informal Sector.

In her car driving away she sees she’s got it all wrong — there’s no new way. Nothing’s changed. He’s fitting himself for the Formal Sector. Some day.

Christians await the return that will raise the dead from the grave as He was raised. They rehearse this each Easter. Kafka records in his diaries ‘On Friday evening two angels accompany each pious man from the synagogue to his home; the master of the house stands while he greets them in the dining room.’ Every Friday night Seder an extra place is laid at table. Maybe the one the Jews are expecting is not an angel but the Messiah, the lost son. Muslims don’t anticipate the final physical presence of the Prophet Mohammed, they bless his name as if he were always among them.