Nadine Gordimer - Burger's Daughter

— There’s no one outside? — Orde Greer meant the sort of discreet car from which the Special Branch agents make their surveillance.

— It’s all right. I haven’t been back to my place at all, so my man’s still waiting for me to arrive from Cape Town. — People like Marisa — like us — are on terms of acquaintanceship with the men who watch their houses and trail them. It’s part of the aura that attracts the Conrads of this world to me.

— You could have been followed from the airport. — Greer took on exaggerated whisky-wariness and good sense. He couldn’t be one of our kind; we who can’t afford not to take chances. Marisa was casual. — No it’s okay, I don’t think…anyway, I’ve been running around all over the place today, I must’ve shaken anyone off… he’d be dizzy by now… — The unshed tears glittered amusement.

— I’m not so sure. — Orde Greer’s terse concern suggested a tender authority — surely she hadn’t accepted him as a lover? I saw only his inexpressive body, dressed in a confusion that made him somehow physically inarticulate — the foot with the humped, foreshortened arch in boots meant for those who walk or climb, the shorts worn by youths who tinker with motorcycles, the don’s black sweater on which his own blonde combings had matted, and the — thinker’s? left-winger’s? child of nature’s? holy man’s? down-and-out’s? — head blurred with hair.

Tandi and her friend kept pushing cassettes into the player and pulling them out again. Music blared interjection and was cut off while talk kept continuity. Fats’ friends were discussing racing bets. Perhaps because I had only been in the midst — listening without speaking — of his argument with the young man Dhladhla who was a student or teacher at a black university, Fats was drawn to secure further witness. He brought me whisky. — They think I can make them rich because of my father. Ha! That’s the one for tips. I wish you’d meet him. Marisa’s mother’s brother, Marisa’s mother’s my auntie, you know… My old man started as a stableboy and now he runs the whole show. Ten grooms and stableboys. The owner wouldn’t buy a horse without he says ‘go ahead’. He’s built a five-roomed house for my father there at the stables near Alberton and when the municipality says, who’s staying there? he says — you know what he says to them? — look — my stable manager, I can’t do without him, so don’t tell me he can’t live in a white area. My father’s one of the top experts in Jo‘burg. In the country! Even the white jockeys come to ask him advice how to handle this horse or that one. I think he’s seventy years and you should see him on those race-horses. Those fast things, man! Hell! he loves it. — A man like that — he’s happy. You know? Some of these older people… I can tell you — he’ll say Kgosana’s a great man, but himself — he’d be afraid of a black government, d’you know that? These kids with their strong ideas, they don’t realize there’s a lot of people like that. What can you do with people? Isn’t it? They don’t want to run to trouble — He gave a confidential tilt of the head towards the kind of life led by Marisa.

— That’s exactly what certain whites do realize — bank on. — Orde Greer deferred, was determined to talk to me about such things.

It’s easy enough to satisfy; to slip back into this kind of exchange; to toss on the small kindling demanded.

— You’re talking about liberals? Or Verligte Nats?—

— Oh both. It’s not peace at any price, it’s peace for each at his price. White liberalism will sacrifice the long odds on attaining social justice and settle for letting blacks into the exploiting class. The ‘enlightened’ government crowd will sacrifice the long odds on maintaining complete white supremacy and settle for propping up a black middle class whose class interests run counter to a black revolution.—

The girl Tandi had left her friend and ignoring the rest of us was murmuring in a sulky, flirtatious undertone to Duma Dhladhla, but he thrust his voice back among us — The black people will deal with those elements. The whites won’t get a chance. You liberals can forget it just the same as the government.—

— Who says I’m a liberal?—

Dhladhla sharply gestured lack of interest in Orde Greer’s protest on grounds of objectivity. — Whites, whatever you are, it doesn’t matter. It’s no difference. You can tell them — Afrikaners, liberals, Communists. We don’t accept anything from anybody. We take. D’you understand? We take for ourselves. There are no more old men like that one, that old father — a slave who enjoys the privileges of the master without rights. It’s finished.—

— The black people? You think you’re the black people? A few students who haven’t even passed their final exams? — The man who looked like a headmaster stood up and ran a hand down his fly in the gesture of setting himself to rights.

Dhladhla gave him a fiery patient glance. — We’re bringing you the news that you’re the black people, Baba. And the black people don’t need anyone else. We don’t know about class interests. We’re one kind. Black.—

— Oh you’ve discovered something in your classroom at Turfloop? Have you ever heard of Marcus Garvey? Yes?—

Orde Greer jolted attention swiftly back to Dhladhla. — But five minutes ago you said ‘those people’ were the greatest problem. The ones who’ll take exemption — in sport, or anywhere, the same thing and they’re the same people.—

— We don’t deny the problem. We just know that it cannot exist once we rouse the people to consciousness.—

— But it does exist at present… a possible future black exploiting class — all right, let’s not argue over terms — a group, a sector consisting of quite a considerable number of people. It exists. And the Americans, the British, the French, the West Germans — they wouldn’t object either, the Americans would certainly take the heat off at U.N. and in Congress if white South Africa were to opt for survival by taking in that black sector. What I’m asking is just this — could a capitalist society which throws overboard the race factor entirely still evolve here?—

Voices went into the air like caps; from the schoolmaster, the host’s other friends, over the heads of the hangers-on who sipped from their beer cans and passed cigarettes between them.

— But definitely, man!—

— All people want is the same chance as whites!—

— That’s what 90 per cent are asking for—

— They’re asking for what they could never get, because 90 per cent are peasants and labourers who haven’t a chance of joining any privileged sector. — James Nyaluza had come in with Marisa, an associate of Joe Kgosana, one of those unaccountably overlooked through all the years of police vigilance. I have known him my whole life. He was in detention in the Sixties, but that was all. Even his continued friendship with Marisa has not saved him from being ignored. He speaks somehow from the margin, one of those fatalistically denied what the Russian revolutionary Vera Figner called living to be judged—‘ For a trial is the crowning point of a revolutionary’s activity’. In this sense, Lionel’s and Joe Kgosana’s lives are fulfilled: and Marisa carried this unspoken assurance around with her in the room as she did the perfume on her body.

Even Fats was treating James with the sort of respect that discounted him. — It’s natural — people want the chance to get on. There’s always those who can make something of themselves, no matter how poor they are. You take our tycoons here in Soweto, how many of them got more than Standard Six? They come from the farms and the locations. Their mothers were servants in the backyard. Grocer-boys, milk-boys, garage-boys—