Nadine Gordimer - Burger's Daughter

But he didn’t want to know, he wanted only to show his confidence in worldliness, which quality in him gained the envious support of the schoolmaster, the hangers-on and one or two others, and was despised by his attackers. A handsome man, on the fine line between muscular over-development and fat, on the point of being flirtatious with women and patronizing with men; in shirt-sleeves he had the pectorals softening into breasts that mark an ex-boxer. He rested a promoter’s arm round my shoulders a moment, haranguing. — Boxing’s not a team sport, man. It’s not a question of selecting for show a black who hasn’t had the chance to train like the blokes from white clubs. This business of blacks not having proper facilities like the whites doesn’t come into it. I’m not talking about soccer and golf and so on — that’s different. A boxer’s got his manager, his trainer, his sparring partners — everything. The best.—

— And if he ever gets a fight with a white South African he has to fight as a stranger in his own country, a foreigner, he’s a ‘Zulu’ or a ‘Msutu’, not a South African like the white.—

Orde Greer had his supporters — When’s your great Tap-Tap Makatini going to get a title fight here in S.A.? Yes. Can you tell me that, man?—

Fats answered from the assurance of sources it was implied he wasn’t prepared to reveal. — That’s coming, that’s coming. That’s coming soon. You’ll see. We’re negotiating—

The young man in denims was rocking back and forth on his heels, the muscles of his backside pursed taut. — Your boy can negotiate to go to Germany and America and hell. He’s still a ‘boy’ that’s been let out like a monkey on a string.—

The heat was drawn to him and the man who pushed a face forward, shiny with beer-sweat. — Where’s it going to get you? All you heroes, man, who don’t play sport and want to tell us what to do. Agh!—

— You’ll do what the white man tells you.—

— Listen. Listen a minute, man — if my boy wins a big fight overseas—

— So what? You’ll make a lot of money and he can show his medal with his pass when he gets back.—

— then there’s no white champ in his weight here who can refuse him a fight and still think he holds the title. Isn’t that so? Isn’t that true? Isn’t that a real breakthrough?—

— You’ll do what the white man wants. Breakthrough to get them accepted back in world sport again. That’s it. And when your ‘negotiations’ for a black to win an overall title here come off, you’ll be satisfied. And if next year or the year after white soccer clubs play blacks, and take in black members, the soccer players will shout there’s no more racism in sport. But everywhere else in this country the black will still be a black. Whatever else he does he’ll still get black jobs, black education, black houses.—

— What do you want, then? I’m talking about sport. —

— Blacks will be in sport only if there is one sports body — one controlling council for everyone, every sport. When that happens then you people talk to whites. Not before. If you must talk — if you think playing games with the whites is what we blacks want.—

Orde Greer’s patriarch’s head was unsteady with excitement, his mouth remained open for a chance to interject. — Is it a question of tactics against racialism in sport or sport as a tactic against racialism—

The collar-bones of the young man in the denim shirt open to the waist moved under black skin with decisive energy. — Tactics! Money money money — He clicked long fingers under our noses to offer the smell.

— We’ breaking it down, Bra. — Fats claimed the intimacy of the exclusive (in the basic sense of the word) form of ‘brother’ taken over by young militants from tsotsi jargon. — What’s the good, passing up the openings, saying no all the time — I don’t go with that. — He seemed admiring of the vehemence with which he was challenged, inviolably tolerant and masterful. — No, no, no, keep on shouting, boycotting, making the speeches — our guys overseas, SANROC and that crowd, the politicals in exile, and you guys here — that’s okay with me. Don’t think I haven’t got a lot of time for you, my brother… But meantime we’ the ones giving black sportsmen a go getting up to international standard, we’re showing the world what we can do, isn’t it? And what about the whites then? It’s how you look at it. You only live once, hell—

The young man spoke about Fats as if he were no longer in front of him. — These people will always let themselves be used by the whites. They are our biggest problem; we have to re-educate—

Fats was laughing for our benefit. — I finished Orlando High before you were at your mother’s breast. I was ANC Youth League with Lembede at fifteen—

— Always the same story, Mandela, Sisulu, Kgosana on Robben Island — same as Christians telling you Christ died for them.—

Marisa was suddenly there, with her husband’s name. She could not have heard the context in which it had been invoked; the perfume and dash of her presence, her gay low voice, surrounded by the wash of her hangers-on as they trooped in, broke up the composition of the room. She held Fats’ and Margaret’s little boy on her hip a moment; hugging and whispering to him, carried along in the orbit of Margaret and the grandmother; took the smart girls at the wall by the waist in easy schoolgirlish greeting; discovered me. — Rosa…oh good! Orde, look, I want to talk to you about something you may be able to do for me. No, Fats — her adorned hands touched from one to the other distributing the unconscious grace of great beauty — just a cold drink. Anything. — In their own language: —It’s Tandi’s friend — Duma Dhladhla? That’s right? You’re at Turfloop? — She drew from the young man in denim a punctuation of cool nods and at last a proud curling smile that had not yet been seen, resisting her beauty with his own, as contestants of equal strength entwine forearms and try to force a fist to the table. — You promised to send me your newsletters. — She was as tall as he, he could not look down at her. — The last two happened to be banned. — Oh I know that. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get a copy.—

— I’ll see what I can do.—

— Get it to Fats.—

— What’s that? Now I’m paper-boy for the students’ pamphlets—

She presented him fondly — D‘you know, this is the nicest man in Jo’burg. Whatever you ask, it’s never too much trouble. Even if he’s my cousin, I have to say it. What’d I do without him, ay, Margaret—

Before her, Duma kept his smile as detachedly as a male dancer holds his stance for the ballerina.

— I wanted to make sure you’d come. — Marisa referred to the arrival of Orde Greer on my doorstep.

— I meant to, anyway.—

— I don’t trust you. We should stick together, Rosa. This morning I thought — it’s terrible…—

Orde was watching us.

She looked at him bewilderedly for a second, but spoke to me. — You remember the night at Santorini’s after Lionel was sentenced…—

I prompted — You said, whose life, theirs or his.—

— This morning in the shop I thought: but it was his. I couldn’t even go to the memorial meeting. — There were tears in her gaze. She had made a joke and an anecdote of her visit to the Island; a current lover was probably in the room. No one can predict in what form anguish takes hold. She didn’t know it was the day, a year ago, my father died but she seemed to me to have given the sign that had not come from me. I felt a dangerous surge of feeling, a precipitation towards Marisa. (The poor creature who betrayed my father must have felt the same impulse towards my mother, in the beginning: an internal avalanche which at last brought her broken to Lionel’s feet, unable to look at him.) A longing to attach myself to an acolyte destiny; to let someone else use me, lend me passionate purpose, propelled by meaning other than my own.