Nadine Gordimer - Burger's Daughter

He brought roses for Madame Bagnelli. Wearing an elegant navy blue blazer he came to fetch Rosa Burger in a sports car — Not mine but it’s nearly the same thing, you understand — when my friend finds a good buy in a newer model, I’ll take over this from him. — He ordered an elaborate dinner and expanded volubly in the busy to-and-fro of tasting each other’s dishes. — This’s what I like, to be with a girl who appreciates good food, an atmosphere — I don’t go out if it’s not somewhere first-class. No discos — He danced expertly and his attempted caresses as they danced were as expertly calculated not to exceed the line at which they could, for the time being, be ignored. She understood most of what he said; when she did not follow the words, could follow the dynamo that moved him, the attitudes and concepts turning always on his private needs, fears and desires. He boasted innocently of familiarity with his patron —I’m at his house for casse-croûte every day — at the same time as he complained of the responsibility he was expected to carry in comparison with what he earned, the taxes he paid.

— But isn’t your union a strong one, in France?—

She hadn’t got it right; he was eager to guess past her mistakes. There was laughter and he squeezed her a moment.

— Ah, but you’re intelligent, you know what’s going on in the world, I can tell… What a pleasure, to be with a girl you can talk to… and you tell me you can’t speak…! Let me explain, the unions — they don’t work, those fellows — we work for them, and they get fat on it—

The subject distracted him from his awareness of her body and his determination to make her aware of his; she could see in his face he didn’t want to get caught up in such talk, yet someone who would listen was not to be resisted, either.

— And if the socialists come to power? — She had to construct sentences experimentally in her mind, before she spoke.

— Mitterrand? He would sell out to the Communists—

— Then the workers will be strong. Not the patrons .—

He stopped dancing, broke the rhythm. He held her away from him. — I want what is mine, êh? My parents worked for it. When my father dies, his house is mine, êh? The Communists won’t allow that. I would be robbed of my own father’s property — you know that?—

Katya called him ‘Rosa’s mason’:—The first time you’ve been out with a brick-layer, I’ll bet. — The two women were amused at this example of sheltered childhood.

— I want to see the house you are going to inherit.—

— Comment? —

Again her sense was not clear; at last he understood, but was still surprised. — Ah it’s nothing to see. Old people without money, it needs a lot of fixing up—

It was a small farmhouse-cum-villa with the burnt umber and rose tiles the people of the region had always used, and an automatic washing-machine in the kitchen. His mother brought out fancy glasses and the father a bottle of his own wine; they exchanged smiles with the strange girl but did not attempt to talk to her, and she could not make out the dialect they spoke with their son, only that the conversation was the kind that takes the opportunity to cover a lot of ground when parents have a chance to consult with an adult son or daughter. The three became a family, briefly, while she walked with them down the hillside garden: the son leaping ditches in his elegant boots, the mother and father padding along in muddy slippers, all talking, explaining, objecting. Father and son were absorbed in disagreement over how to deal with a tree that threatened to fall. Rosa was taken by the mother to see drills of young vegetables she bent to lift, here and there, rumpling the grey soil; through leafy shelters and rickety sheds where seedlings were green and transparent, past baskets of stored walnuts and a bucket — alive as a cheese with worms — of swarming snails gathered for eating. Under olive and cherry trees a long table was covered by flowered plastic below a lamp wired in the branches: there was a pet sheep staked to mow the grass within the radius of its rope, and a swing for grandchildren. Rosa sat eating the cherries the father filled her lap with, and the son ran at her, head lowered to make them all laugh, and sent her up into the air; she got back to her feet at last, laughing, holding her throat as if something were about to fly from her. — I like your inheritance.—

— Ah, when the mistral starts, that tree’s going to smash the power line — that will cost plenty! I’ve told my father. It’s a serious offence in France to obstruct installations—

Madame Bagnelli invited the friends Georges and Manolis to share the home-grown asparagus Rosa was given. One of the intimates ‘smelled them cooking’ as Madame Bagnelli said, and called up, at the gate just as Rosa carried the settings for the table onto the terrace. Bobby was the immensely tall Englishwoman with beautiful legs who at sixty still wore without looking ridiculous bullfighter’s pants that ended at the knee, and toenails shaped and painted like fingernails. If Rosa came upon her sitting on the place on her usual bench she seemed to think they might have had an arrangement to meet; she would jump up, moving her mouth welcomingly, kiss the girl and insist on buying her a coffee, taking up as if the two had been involved in it together some local story of a dispute or crisis in the village. — Well, the great event didn’t come off yesterday, after all. They waited for a phone-call, but it was only when the brother-in-law turned up — you know, the little fat one, from Pegomas, unappetizing if you ask me — In the straw bag she carried rubber gloves and often a newspaper, magazines (that was the source of the Vogues and copies of Plaisirs de France Katya placed in her guest’s room) or a flowering branch from the large, locked house with a majolica virgin on the façade she looked after for absentee owners. As far as Madame Bagnelli knew, she was smuggled into France by a Free French officer who had fallen in love with her when she was in the British women’s navy during the war. The village crones derided the claim that she had been in the Resistance. — She was part of the village when I came. He used to have a house, he used to come every few months — they tell me at one time he actually lived there with her. Since I’ve been here, he would come when he could, just like Ugo… We were waiting for his wife to die. Well she was so ill… We used to ask about that woman’s health, it seemed so hopeful, she had every disease you could wish for. He died first. Oh I don’t think by then…Bobby never expected — she’s lived here so long, she has her ways… Sometimes now if you mention her Colonel she’ll answer as if she knows who you’re talking about but it’s the way you cover up when you haven’t really caught on.—

Manolis’s voice preceded the pair of invited guests, giving directions in his Greek French as if advising how to steer an awkward burden through Madame Bagnelli’s dark little house. The fragile cargo was Georges manoeuvring himself. — He has hurt his leg. Last night. He should not walk up steps, I tell him. — Manolis switched to the English he had learned from Georges, so that it was spoken with both French and Greek accents. His smooth, narrow, yellow face with its dark moles and sorrowful glittering black eyes was dramatic in haughty disapproval and anxiety. Georges made an entrance, leant on a cane. — I had to ask one for him all around — in the end, it was old Seroin, but what a trouble: it’s from his papa, it’s from when he was a gouverneur en Indochine, if it should be damaged ta-ra-ra—

Georges grinned with a free arm held out for the women to come and kiss him. — Manolis had new curtains ready, I was standing on top of the armoire, you know, the treasure Katya found for us in Roquefort-les-Pins — yes — I must have fallen two metres — He smelled of suede (the supple shirt he wore) and lemon cologne and his blue eyes and white hair cut like Napoleon’s were close to Rosa, a presence sure of its androgynous vitality, while he talked past her ear and hugged her. Bobby looked on with head raised from the preoccupations she carried comfortably around like a piece of invisible needlework. — Outside my door it’s been like that for a month. You could break your neck. Not a light, pitch dark. The gang of Arabs just leave their picks and spades at five o’clock — they don’t care.—