Nadine Gordimer - Burger's Daughter

— Yes, the Madagascar ones. In the shop behind the post office. Yes, yes, right there, Monsieur Harbulot has them. Exactly the same, I assure you.—

— Well I’m not so sure. Have you seen Georges?—

— They’ve gone to Vintimille to buy shoes. And some place where they get their olive oil. Manolis doesn’t like any other.—

— He’s lucky if Georges can afford to indulge his whims, that’s all I can say.—

— Donna and Didier went along.—

— What for?—

Madame Bagnelli appealed to her house-guest against the absurdity of the question. — For the ride. For fun.—

— Spoiling that boy, too. Just as she did the others. You’ll see.—

A French voice flew through the house like a trapped cuckoo. Another woman arrived and the same sort of conversation continued in French. The first woman stopped in the doorway to talk another five minutes. — Well, I hope you enjoy your holiday or whatever it is. Did Darby meet her, this morning?—

— Of course, for a moment. Why?—

With the Englishwoman hardly out of earshot Madame Bagnelli was explaining — Wanted to be the one to tell Darby she’d met the girl at Katya’s — did you see that! — It was repeated in French and she and the Frenchwoman rose to a heightened pitch of laughter, each cutting across the comments of the other. There was an anxious attempt at English now and then. — But you have the beautiful sunshine too, êh…it’s a wonderful country? I know. I like to go there, but — The Frenchwoman pulled the enchanting face of a woman twenty years younger and rubbed first-finger and thumb together. The two women then fell into a discussion about money, serious and with twitches of pain in the expression about their mouths, calculations reeled off in which Rosa distinguished only milles and cents colliding along chains of hyphens as the bees did sottishly round the dregs of wine. A young man had appeared; she turned her chair away from the sun, and found the battlements of the castle up there behind her in the sky, the flags luminous as stained glass, and down in the indoor shadowy hush of the house was aware that one of the objects detached itself and moved into human shape. She saw him eavesdropping before he made himself known. Out in the light of the terrace, he had come upon them all on bare feet, tightly bound in blinding white pants to just below the navel and naked above it. Two sea-pumiced brown hands over Madame Bagnelli’s eyes and she seemed to know the touch instantly. — But you’re in Vintimille — What happened?—

He bent round to her face and kissed her, then ceremoniously, leisurely, went over to bend to the face of the Frenchwoman. When he had kissed her she took his face in her palms and said something whose cadence was adoring and admiring, motherly-lustful.

— What are you doing here? Didier!—

He leaned against the balustrade before his audience. — I didn’t go. — In a dark-tanned face the nostrils had the pink rawness of one who has been diving.

— And Donna?—

— She went.—

— Didier? But why?—

The Frenchwoman said of the lost opportunity, things were so much cheaper over the border in Vintimille; he had seen the leather coat Manolis got there last winter?

— Didier? What’ve you been doing all day alone, then?—

— Fishing. Spear-fishing. You don’t need anyone to do it with. — They were introduced but he didn’t address himself to Rosa Burger. The questions and comments of the women fawned round him inquisitively and appreciatively; he seemed not to address anyone, eyeing himself in an accompanying vision of himself, like a mirror. He went purposefully about the table under the awning finding morsels he ate quickly, licking his fingers. He waved down offers to fetch something more for him to eat; wiped round the salad bowl, soaking bread in the oil, served himself cheese wrapped in straw, with a certain professional deftness. His dark cloudy blue eyes under lashes so long he seemed to trail them on his cheeks, his chewing jaw, followed the return of the women’s talk to the subject of taxes. Now and then he put in an objection or correction; they argued. He belched, hit flat belly-muscles, ran fine hands over smooth pectorals. They laughed;—Like that cat, Didier. Come for titbits and just stalk off. — He was embracing the women again, swinging gracefully from one to the other. He said goodbye to the girl in English used in the casual manner of an habitual tongue but with a marked French and slight American accent.

— When are they coming back?—

The voice was caught before the slam of the door. — How should I know?—

— Naughty boy! What are you sulking about? — Madame Bagnelli yelled, bold and laughing, out of range. She performed a little caper of activity and swooped on the table, scooping up dishes, emptying bees and dregs among the flower-urns. The Frenchwoman left. They tidied away the remains of the meal, lingering in the cool livingroom to talk, Madame Bagnelli’s voice flitting without cease from where she bent into the refrigerator in the kitchen, or sank suddenly, legs crossed at the ankle balletically, to a little sofa. Her guest had opened the suitcase and brought out the offerings that are part of the ritual of arrival. The girl eyed them warily now that they had found their recipient — safe options chosen for someone not known, they might seem only to do for anybody , the interchangeable airport gifts she herself had had her share of, all the years she had stayed at home. Only one suggested a particular being imagined, asserted associations that might not exist, or might be unwelcome: a double necklace of finely-carved hexagonal wooden spools separated by cheap store beads.

The woman looked at it looped in her hands; quickly at Rosa Burger; at the necklace, and parted a bead from a spool. — See what they’re strung on. What’s it called…that palm… Ilala . Ilala palm thread spun by rolling the fibres up and down on your bare thigh. I’ve seen them do it. Look, not cotton! Ilala palm — She broke into pleased pride at the verification, identification in herself. — And the wood — don’t say, wait — His daughter stood there before her. — Tambuti. Yes? That scent! It’s Tambuti.—

— I think so. They’re the things the Herero women wear. There’s a shop…very occasionally you find something—

— It’s from Namibia — even the Afrikaners don’t call it South West anymore, eh? — She wandered round her livingroom considering the disposition of a strange blood-dark head of Christ on leather embossed in flaky gold, staring almond eyes; a picture of a nude girl with an eel or other sea-monster mutilated beside her; a great iron key; jagged with age and an ancient fervour that had hacked it from the whole, a fragment of a rigid wooden saint raising a pleated hand and upright finger over the fireplace. She hung the necklace from a candle-bracket marbled thick with the lava of wax. — When I’m not wearing it, I want to enjoy seeing it.—

— The day before yesterday’s. I thought you might like to— Rosa Burger hesitated before dumping along with crumpled wrappings the South African newspaper that had been standing up from her bag when the woman first singled her out.

— Good god. How many years… — Madame Bagnelli sank down holding the paper at arm’s length. — Same old mast-head… In the kitchen, you’ll see a pair of specs. Probably on the shelf where the coffee-grinder…on the fridge or in the fridge — sometimes I take something out and put them down without… — She dismissed herself with a twirl of fingers. — You were still there. Only the day before yesterday. — She was looking at Rosa Burger as at someone whose existence she, too, could not believe in. His daughter wagged her head slowly; they were together. — Have you ever been out before?—