Nadine Gordimer - July's People

She flung back at him his uprightness, his moralizing — whatever the rigmarole of form he had always insisted on establishing between them. — Why not, July? Why not? Just walk into the hut when we’re not there and take it. Steal it.—

— Now-now?—

— Bam discovered it now. But it might not have been this afternoon. It could have been any time.—

— When he’s see it last time?—

— Doesn’t seem to know himself. But it was still there when we came back from the chief’s. We talked about it. I saw it.—

— You sure the gun it’s there before this afternoon? Because everybody he’s there at the music. You see everybody was there, hey? Nobody can come to the house that time.—

— How do I know if it was still there then? I told you. I know everyone was at the music.—

— Night-time. — He let the two of them visualize it. — Night-time, you all sleeping, you all in the house. Who can come.—

— It’s not Victor. — July knew that possibility as well as anyone. — You can forget about Victor.—

— No, no, Victor he’s so nice. Naughty boy sometime but so nice. And if he’s take, he’s show his friend, he’s put back, isn’t it. Not Victor. Well, everybody here so nice at the music today, everybody know that gun it’s your gun—

— Where’s Daniel?—

She was distracted by something misplaced. What would appear for her from beneath the vehicle, from the ruined huts, so often a silent presence while not yet noticed: now he surely would come forward to July’s call with his young man’s easy stroll.

— Daniel wasn’t there — Her voice alight; at the same time, some kind of fear and amazement came like a sack thrown dark over her head. — Where’s Daniel?—

— Daniel he’s not come any more. — A hand lifted, at large a moment, slid under the neck of the shirt. The gauze round of moon had become opaque and polished with the light of the vanished sun; it began gently to reflect, a mirror being adjusted. The shadow of the vehicle fell upon them and reached out in its blown-up detail, roof-rack and spare tyre, over the bright, watery lacings of sunset in grass and bushes. — One, two day now he’s going.—

— But you know where he is. He told you where he was going?—

He spoke of these young ones. — They not asking anyone, anyone. Not even the father.—

— But he told you, he discussed it with you, he must have talked to you. You and he are together all the time. You were like his father, weren’t you. You can’t say to me he didn’t tell you? — Two gnats she had swatted against her face stuck drowned in sweat on her cheek.

— Don’t tell me what Daniel he tell me. Me, I know if he’s say or he’s not say nothing. Is not my business, isn’t it?—

She sat down on the mud wall that was warmed to life all through the heat of the day and whose colour had risen, amber, blood-purple out of terra-cotta in the thick layer of last light suspended at a man’s height across the earth.

— You’ve got to get it back. — She knew those widened nostrils. Go, he willed, go up the hill to the hut; as he would to his wife.

He could smell her cold cat-smell she had when she sweated. The only way to get away from her was to walk off and leave her, give up to her this place that was his own, the place he had found to hide the yellow bakkie and keep it safe.

He stuffed the note-book into his shirt-pocket torn and neatly sewn back with unmatched thread by Ellen. — How I must get that gun? Where I’m going find it? You know where is it? You know? Then if you know why you yourself, your husband, you don’t fetch it?—

— The gun’s gone, Daniel’s gone. He handled it, he was allowed to fire a shot with it … Bam’s nonsense. He was at the chief’s listening to all that talk about guns. He fancied it for himself. Didn’t he? Thinks he’ll kill some meat. Or he’s got a customer for it. — Her lids blinked sharply at him. — Perhaps the chief. You must know where to look for him, he’s with you (a gesture towards the bakkie) every day.—

He was feeling up round his neck and over his chest under the shirt while she talked at him. The hand came out swiftly and stiff fingers tapped at the centre of his being, there on the plate with its little shining black cups of hollow where the breast-muscles joined the bone. — Me? I must know who is stealing your things? Same like always. You make too much trouble for me. Here in my home too. Daniel, the chief, my-mother-my-wife with the house. Trouble, trouble from you. I don’t want it any more. You see? — His hands flung out away from himself.

— You’ve got to get it back.—

— No no. No no. — Hysterically smiling, repeating. — I don’t know Daniel he’s stealing your gun. How I’m know? You, you say you know, but me I’m not see any gun, I’m not see Daniel, Daniel he’s go — well what I can do—

She was stampeded by a wild rush of need to destroy everything between them, she wanted to erase it beneath her heels as snails broke and slithered like the shell and slime of rotten eggs under her foot in the suburban garden. — You stole small things. Why? I wouldn’t tell you then but I tell you now. My scissors like a bird, my old mother’s knife-grinder.—

— Always you give me those thing!—

— Oh no, I gave you … but not those.—

— I don’t want your rubbish.—

— Why did you take rubbish? … I said nothing because I was ashamed to think you would do it.—

— You — He spread his knees and put an open hand on each. Suddenly he began to talk at her in his own language, his face flickering powerfully. The heavy cadences surrounded her; the earth was fading and a thin, far radiance from the moon was faintly pinkening parachute-silk hazes stretched over the sky. She understood although she knew no word. Understood everything: what he had had to be, how she had covered up to herself for him, in order for him to be her idea of him. But for himself — to be intelligent, honest, dignified for her was nothing; his measure as a man was taken elsewhere and by others. She was not his mother, his wife, his sister, his friend, his people. He spoke in English what belonged in English: —Daniel he’s go with those ones like in town. He’s join. — The verb, unqualified, did for every kind of commitment: to a burial society, a hire purchase agreement, their thumbprints put to a labour contract for the mines or sugar plantations — I don’t know — maybe he’s need the gun for that. — He leaned back, done with her.

— I know. — Daniel’s raised first in greeting had seemed a matter of being fashionable, for the young milkman returned to his backward village from town, just as dropping to the knees before the chief was surely no more than a rural convention for him and July. — I know. — ‘Cubas’: it was he who had supplied the identification when the chief could not name the foreigners he feared. — So he’s gone to fight. Little bastard. He only took what he had a right to.—

July might not have understood the claim granted, or was not going to be obliged to speak. His familiar head, newly shaved by a villager who barbered under a tree, his broad soft mouth under the moustache, his eyes white against the dark of the face blurred by the dimness, now, of all things at the earth’s level under the high light of the sky, faced her. Together in this place of ruin that was the habitation of no living being, only a piece of machinery, their words sank into the broken clay walls like spilt blood. Would be buried here. The skin of her body was creeping with an ecstatic fever of relief, splendid and despicable to her. She told him the truth, which is always disloyal. — You’ll profit by the others’ fighting. Steal a bakkie. You want that, now. You don’t know what might have happened to Ellen. She washed your clothes and slept with you. You want the bakkie, to drive around in like a gangster, imagining yourself a big man , important, until you don’t have any money for petrol, there isn’t any petrol to buy, and it’ll lie there, July, under the trees, in this place among the old huts, and it’ll fall to pieces while the children play in it. Useless. Another wreck like all the others. Another bit of rubbish.—