Nadine Gordimer - Life Times - Stories 1952-2007

I was waiting my chance to speak, all the time, and I felt Josias was waiting to talk to someone who had caught the signal. I said quickly, while she went on and on, ‘But even on that road there are some cars?’

‘Roadblocks,’ he said, looking at the floor. ‘They’ve got the signs, the ones you see when a road’s being dug up, and there’ll be some men with picks. After the truck goes through they’ll block the road so that any other cars turn off on to the old road there by Kalmansdrif. The same thing on the other side, two miles on. There where the farm road goes down to Nek Halt.’

‘Hell, man! Did you have to pick what part of the road?’

‘I know it like this yard. Don’t I?’

Emma stood there, between the two of us, while we discussed the whole business. We didn’t have to worry about anyone hearing, not only because Emma kept the window wired up in that kitchen, but also because the yard the house was in was a real Tembekile Location one, full of babies yelling and people shouting, night and day, not to mention the transistors playing in the houses all round. Emma was looking at us all the time and out of the corner of my eye I could see her big front going up and down fast in the neck of her dress.

‘. . so they’re going to tie you up as well as the others?’

He drew on his pipe to answer me.

We thought for a moment and then grinned at each other; it was the first time for Josias, that whole evening.

Emma began collecting the dishes under our noses. She dragged the tin bath of hot water from the stove and washed up. ‘I said I’m taking my off on Wednesday. I suppose this is going to be next week.’ Suddenly, yet talking as if carrying on where she let up, she was quite different.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, I have to know because I suppose I must be at home.’

‘What must you be at home for?’ said Josias.

‘If the police come I don’t want them talking to him ,’ she said, looking at us both without wanting to see us.

‘The police—’ said Josias, and jerked his head to send them running, while I laughed, to show her.

‘And I want to know what I must say.’

‘What must you say? Why? They can get my statement from me when they find us tied up. In the night I’ll be back here myself.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, scraping the mealie meal he hadn’t eaten back into the pot. She did everything as usual; she wanted to show us nothing was going to wait because of this big thing, she must wash the dishes and put ash on the fire. ‘You’ll be back, oh yes. Are you going to sit here all night, Willie? — Oh yes, you’ll be back.’

And then, I think, for a moment Josias saw himself dead, too; he didn’t answer when I took my cap and said so long, from the door.

I knew it must be a Monday. I notice that women quite often don’t remember ordinary things like this, I don’t know what they think about — for instance, Emma didn’t catch on that it must be Monday, next Monday or the one after, some Monday for sure, because Monday was the day that we knew Josias went with the truck to the Free State Mines. It was Friday when he told us and all day Saturday I had a terrible feeling that it was going to be that Monday, and it would be all over before I could — what? I didn’t know, man. I felt I must at least see where it was going to happen. Sunday I was off work and I took my bicycle and rode into town before there was even anybody in the streets and went to the big station and found that although there wasn’t a train on Sundays that would take me all the way, I could get one that would take me about thirty miles. I had to pay to put the bike in the luggage van as well as for my ticket, but I’d got my wages on Friday. I got off at the nearest halt to Kalmansdrif and then I asked people along the road the best way. It was a long ride, more than two hours. I came out on the main road from the sand road just at the turn-off Josias had told me about. It was just like he said: a tin sign ‘Kalmansdrif’ pointing down the road I’d come from. And the nice blue tarred road, smooth, straight ahead: was I glad to get on to it! I hadn’t taken much notice of the country so far, while I was sweating along, but from then on I woke up and saw everything. I’ve only got to think about it to see it again now. The veld is flat round about there, it was the end of winter, so the grass was dry. Quite far away and very far apart there was a hill and then another, sticking up in the middle of nothing, pink colour, and with its point cut off like the neck of a bottle. Ride and ride, these hills never got any nearer and there were none beside the road. It all looked empty but there were some people there. It’s funny you don’t notice them like you do in town. All our people, of course; there were barbed-wire fences, so it must have been white farmers’ land, but they’ve got the water and their houses are far off the road and you can usually see them only by the big dark trees that hide them. Our people had mud houses and there would be three or four in the same place made hard by goats and people’s feet. Often the huts were near a kind of crack in the ground, where the little kids played and where, I suppose, in summer, there was water. Even now the women were managing to do washing in some places. I saw children run to the road to jig about and stamp when cars passed, but the men and women took no interest in what was up there. It was funny to think that I was just like them, now, men and women who are always busy inside themselves with jobs, plans, thinking about how to get money or how to talk to someone about something important, instead of like the children, as I used to be only a few years ago, taking in each small thing around them as it happens.

Still, there were people living pretty near the road. What would they do if they saw the dynamite truck held up and a fight going on? (I couldn’t think of it, then, in any other way except like I’d seen hold-ups in Westerns, although I’ve seen plenty of fighting, all my life, among the location gangs and drunks — I was ashamed not to be able to forget those kid-stuff Westerns at a time like this.) Would they go running away to the white farmer? Would somebody jump on a bike and go for the police? Or if there was no bike, what about a horse? — I saw someone riding a horse.

I rode slowly to the next turn-off, the one where a farm road goes down to Nek Halt. There it was, just like Josias said. Here was where the other roadblock would be. But when he spoke about it there was nothing in between! No people, no houses, no flat veld with hills on it! It had been just one of those things grown-ups see worked out in their heads: while all the time here it was, a real place where people had cooking fires, I could hear a herd boy yelling at a dirty bundle of sheep, a big bird I’ve never seen in town balanced on the barbed-wire fence right in front of me. . I got off my bike and it flew away.

I sat a minute on the side of the road. I’d had a cold drink in an Indian shop in the dorp where I’d got off the train, but I was dry again inside my mouth, while plenty of water came out of my skin, I can tell you. I rode back down the road looking for the exact place I would choose if I were Josias. There was a stretch where there was only one kraal, with two houses, and that quite a way back from the road. Also there was a dip where the road went over a donga. Old stumps of trees and nothing but cows’ business down there; men could hide. I got off again and had a good look round.

But I wondered about the people, up top. I don’t know why it was, I wanted to know about those people just as though I was going to have to go and live with them, or something. I left the bike down in the donga and crossed the road behind a Cadillac going so fast the air smacked together after it, and I began to trek over the veld to the houses. I know that most of our people live like this, in the veld, but I’d never been into houses like that before. I was born in some location (I don’t know which one, I must ask Emma one day) and Emma and I lived in Goughville Location with our grandmother. Our mother worked in town and she used to come and see us sometimes, but we never saw our father and Emma thinks that perhaps we didn’t have the same father, because she remembers a man before I was born, and after I was born she didn’t see him again. I don’t really remember anyone, from when I was a little kid, except Emma. Emma dragging me along so fast my arm almost came off my body, because we had nearly been caught by the Indian while stealing peaches from his lorry: we did that every day.