Nadine Gordimer - Burger's Daughter

— And your husband? What was he?—

— Bagnelli? — A long-drawn ah-h-h-h, amused, the touching on things that couldn’t be explained even in the easy lucidity of wine and fine weather, in half-an-hour’s understanding. — D’you know what he was when I met him — a captain in the French navy. In Toulon. But here, oh he did a lot of things up and down the coast, a wine agency, once it was motor-racing, a tin mine in Brazil — oh lord. And always yachts, yachts — he had shares in them, or was promised shares in them, he sailed them for other people, he even designed them—

— I shared a cottage with someone who planned to go round the world. But to see a yacht being built in a backyard four hundred miles from the sea—

— You? — The smiling woman allowed herself to look at the girl as she had wanted to since she first settled recognition upon her at the airport.

Dissolving in the wine and pleasure of scents, sights and sounds existing only in themselves, associated with nothing and nobody, Rosa Burger’s sense of herself was lazily objective. The sea, the softly throbbing blood in her hands lolling from the chair-arms, time as only the sundial of the wall’s advancing shadow, all lapped tidelessly without distinction of within or around her. — Like someone in prison. Everything it might do or be — but it couldn’t function. Locked. Landlocked.—

— You never saw it launched? When they slip into the sea — oh yes, it’s true, marvellous, it’s a coming to life — I used to cry — The woman produced liquid brilliance in her eyes, a past seductiveness. The carefully-oiled and tanned flesh between her breasts wrinkled shinily under the pressure of folded arms like a skin forming on cooling fatty liquid. — Tell me — did you know me? Or — (the girl’s down-turned considering smile) — of course you saw I was the one who’d recognized who you were and so — I mean have you ever seen a photograph?—

— When I went through Lionel’s things. There were one or two taken in England and in Russia. Damn it — I should have brought them. The Soviet Union ones — one can recognize them at once, even if the background doesn’t give much indication. The same with those of my mother; you know Ivy Terblanche? And Aletta?—

— Oh I knew them all, all of them. So long ago!—

— My mother with Aletta on a railway station, holding flowers. You can see at once which are the Russian ones — you all look so exalted.—

— Yes, yes. — A wailing laugh. — Like pop-star fans. Come. The last drop between us. Although it’s warm by now. Warm champagne makes you drunk. — She sat with her knees apart and her belly forgetfully rolling forward. — Moscow, Moscow, Moscow! I auditioned with the Maryinsky, you know. What a wonderful time we had. Too late, too old, nineteen or twenty, lazy already — but they took a fancy to us and what a time we had. Their parties went on all night; you breathe vodka like a dragon, after. I had to ask the maid in the hotel to change the pillow-cases — they gave back vodka fumes just from our breathing. We missed whole sessions of their bloody Congress; well, one whole session… Lionel — that father of yours — (a pause, genuine or assumed, of incredulity, looking at the girl lying in the chair) he gave them a most convincing yarn about having to sit up all night preparing papers for a committee, what a reputation for Party diligence but it started with a different kind of party… You look like him. In spite of the eyes. You wouldn’t be able to judge, because you think of him as he is — was. But then in Moscow…I see it while I look at you! You know, when you have lived with different men, lived a long time, like me, you’d be surprised, you forget what they really were like. When I wrote to you when he died, it was a public figure that I… looking at you I see that: because here he is as he really was, in Moscow. Like your father… but I think — I should say, after being with you for exactly — what? — one-and-a-half hours — after this long acquaintance, my dear Rosa, I would say you are more your mother. Yes. I didn’t know her well — although in the Party we all ‘slept in each other’s underwear’ (I’ll never forget: someone once shocked us stiff by telling us that, someone who’d been expelled, naturally —I’ll never forget the blasphemy against the comrades!). How could I know her well — anyway, she was so young. It must have been round about 1941. Your mother was simply — at once — my idea of a revolutionary. —

She was looking at her daughter, the girl smiling, fending off with a languid fascination the play of attention that quickly shifted again.

— Me in a cloche hat? Down to my eyebrows? Oh my god — The body squatted, spread-kneed, as if on the lavatory; nowhere to be found in this woman the marmoset face showing itself out of fur hat and fur collar, the slim pointed shoes lined up beside Lionel Burger’s outside the hotel bedroom. Laughter and chatter trailing behind or bursting ahead, the solid, over-blown figure came and went, preparing food, between rooms vague and dark with objects not yet seen as more than shapes, and the radiance, the sweet hum of the village, on the terrace. The innocence and security of being open to lives all around was the emotion to which champagne and more wine, drunk with the meal, attached itself. All about Rosa Burger, screened only by traceries of green and the angles of houses, people sat eating or talking, fondling, carrying out tasks — a man planing wood and a couple leaning close in deep discussion, and the susurration of voices was as little threatened by exposure as the swish of shavings curling. People with nothing to hide from, no one to elude, careless of privacy, in their abundance: letting be. The food was delicious and roused a new pleasure, of greed. Rosa Burger had not known she could want to eat so much; but the Manx cat sniffed the fish-bones fragrant with herbs as an everyday offering. An Englishwoman came in the tight little hat, chiffon scarf and gloves of one who keeps up some bygone standard. She forestalled any possibility that she was unwelcome by the air of having her mind on more important matters than her friend’s guest, and being too busy to be expected to stay. — I’ve an appointment at the bank.—

— You know the bank doesn’t open till three. Come on, Alice—

— Not just the bank. There are plenty of things I have to see to.—

— Such as, for instance?—

— Don’t pry into my affairs, Katya.—

Madame Bagnelli laughed, pouring coffee. — Ah, if you had any, Alice, I’d be dying of curiosity. Here, just as you like it, strong, in a thin cup. We saw Darby on the way to her liquid lunch.—

— In the bar tabac?—

— No, on the hill.—

— Oh yes. She must have been down to the aide sociale office about her rent.—

— Not on a Tuesday. Thursday’s for interviews.—

— What’s today? Are you sure? Well perhaps she went to the clinic. She never tells when there’s something wrong. Likes to think she’s not flesh and blood like the rest of us. But I notice how she’s short of breath on the stairs. I can hear her when she goes past my door up to the second flight.—

— And who else did I see, before I went to the airport — Françoise, yes, Françoise without Marthe, trying to makeup her mind whether to buy sardines at five francs a kilo. She didn’t see me.—

— Oh Marthe’s in Marseilles. Didn’t you know? For three days. She came round to ask if she could do anything for us, there. Darby said some of those green peppercorns we had last time.—

— Well she probably phoned. I’ve been in and out — Rosa coming. But you can get them here, why bother?—

— Not the Madagascar kind.—