Nadine Gordimer - Burger's Daughter

‘Baasie’—she doesn’t say it but it’s there in the references of her voice, their infant intimacy — I asked if you’d come and see me — or I’d come to you, tomorrow, but you—

— No, I’m talking to you now.—

— D’y’know what time it is? I don’t even know — I just got to the phone in the dark—

— Put on the light, Rosa. I’m talking to you.—

She uses no name because she has no name for him. — I was fast asleep. We can talk tomorrow. We’d better talk tomorrow, mmh?—

— Put on the light.—

Try laughing. — We’d better both go back to bed.—

— I haven’t been in bed. — There were gusts of noise, abruptly cut off, background to his voice; he was still somewhere among people, they kept opening and shutting a door, there.

— The party going strong?—

— I’m not talking about parties, Rosa—

— Come tomorrow — today, I suppose it is, it’s still so dark—

— You didn’t put the light on, then. I told you to.—

They began to wrangle. — Look, I’m really not much use when I’m woken up like this. And there’s so much I want… How old were we? I remember your father — or someone — brought you back only once, how old were we then?—

— I told you to put it on.—

She was begging, laughing. — Oh but I’m so tired, man! Please, until tomorrow—

— Listen. I didn’t like the things you said at that place tonight.—

— I said?—

— I didn’t like the way you went around and how you spoke.—

The receiver took on shape and feel in her hand; blood flowing to her brain. She heard his breathing and her own, her breath breathing garlic over herself from the half-digested sausage.

— I don’t know what to say. I don’t understand why you should say this to me.—

— Look, I didn’t like it at all.—

— I said? About what?—

— Lionel Burger, Lionel Burger, Burger—

— I didn’t make any speeches.—

— Everyone in the world must be told what a great hero he was and how much he suffered for the blacks. Everyone must cry over him and show his life on television and write in the papers. Listen, there are dozens of our fathers sick and dying like dogs, kicked out of the locations when they can’t work any more. Getting old and dying in prison. Killed in prison. It’s nothing. I know plenty blacks like Burger. It’s nothing, it’s us, we must be used to it, it’s not going to show on English television.—

— He would have been the first to say — what you’re saying. He didn’t think there was anything special about a white being a political prisoner.—

— Kissing and coming round you, her father died in prison, how terrible. I know a lot of fathers — black—

— He didn’t think what happened to him more important.—

— Kissing and coming round you—

— You knew him! You know that! It’s crazy for me to tell you. —

— Oh yes I knew him. You’ll tell them to ask me for the television show. Tell them how your parents took the little black kid into their home, not the backyard like other whites, right into the house. Eating at the table and sleeping in the bedroom, the same bed, their little black boss. And then the little bastard was pushed off back to his mud huts and tin shanties. His father was too busy to look after him. Always on the run from the police. Too busy with the whites who were going to smash the government and let another lot of whites tell us how to run our country. One of Lionel Burger’s best tame blacks sent scuttling like a bloody cockroach everywhere, you can always just put your foot on them.—

Pulling the phone with her — the cord was short, for a few moments she lost the voice — she felt up the smooth cold wall for the switch: under the light of lamps sprung on the voice was no longer inside her but relayed small, as from a faint harsh public address system in the presence of the whole room.

She hunched the thing to her head, clasping with the other hand the wrist of the hand that held it. — Where did they take you when you left us? Why won’t you tell me? It was Transkei? Oh God. King William’s Town? And I suppose you know — perhaps you didn’t — Tony drowned. At home.—

— But he taught us to swim.—

— Diving. Head hit the bottom of the pool.—

— No, I didn’t hear. Your little boss-kid that was one of the family couldn’t make much use of the lessons, there was no private swimming-pool the places I stayed.—

— Once we’d left that kindergarten there wasn’t any school you could have gone to in our area. What could your father or mine do about that. My mother didn’t want your father to take you at all.—

— What was so special about me? One black kid? Whatever you whites touch, it’s a take-over. He was my father. Even when we get free they’ll want us to remember to thank Lionel Burger.—

She had begun to shiver. The toes of her bare feet clung, one foot covering the other, like those of a nervous zoo chimpanzee. — I just give you the facts. He’s dead, but I can tell you for him he didn’t want anything but that freedom. I don’t have to defend him but I haven’t any more right to judge him than you have.—

His voice danced round, rose and clashed with hers — Good, good, now you come out—

— Unless you want to think being black is your right? — Your father died in jail too, I haven’t forgotten. Leave them alone.—

— Vulindlela! Nobody talks about him. Even I don’t remember much about him.—

The shivering rose like a dog’s hair along its back. — I want to tell you something. When I see you and we talk. Not now.—

— Why should I see you, Rosa? Because we even used to have a bath together? — the Burger family didn’t mind black skin so we’re different for ever from anyone? You’re different so I must be different too. You aren’t white and I’m not black.—

She was shouting. — How could you follow me around that room like a man from BOSS, listening to stupid small-talk? Why are we talking in the middle of the night? Why do you telephone? What for?—

— I’m not your Baasie, just don’t go on thinking about that little kid who lived with you, don’t think of that black ‘brother’, that’s all.—

Now she would not let him hang up; she wanted to keep the two of them nailed each to the other’s voice and the hour of night when nothing fortuitous could release them— good, good , he had disposed of her whining to go back to bed and bury them both.

— There’s just one thing I’m going to tell you. We won’t meet, you’re right. Vulindlela. About him and me. So long as you know I’ve told you. I was the one who was sent to take a fake pass to him so he could get back in from Botswana that last time. I delivered it somewhere. Then they caught him, that was when they caught him.—

— What is that? So what is that for me? Blacks must suffer now. We can’t be caught although we are caught, we can’t be killed although we die in jail, we are used to it, it’s nothing to do with you. Whites are locking up blacks every day. You want to make the big confession? — why do you think you should be different from all the other whites who’ve been shitting on us ever since they came? He was able to go back home and get caught because you took the pass there. You want me to know in case I blame you for nothing. You think because you’re telling me it makes it all right — for you. It wasn’t your fault — you want me to tell you, then it’s all right. For you. Because I’m the only one who can say so. But he’s dead, and what about all the others — who cares whose ‘fault’—they die because it’s the whites killing them, black blood is the stuff to get rid of white shit.—