My Son's Story (15 page)

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Authors: Nadine Gordimer

BOOK: My Son's Story
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Sonny gave an authoritative high laugh.—Look, you take your bag and get out of here. Just go.—
—I've got something to tell you. But inside. From a friend of yours. I was with her the day before yesterday.—
—I'm not expecting any messages from anybody, and I want you out of here. I don't want to know who you are and where you come from.—
The young man listened with assurance and condescending understanding. –All right. I have some sort of fancy credential. 'Sermons in stones, and good in everything'.—
 
 
The young man was living in the cottage while he was back at the house with his son, Will. It was what Hannah asked of Sonny, her message: let this person stay in the cottage, give him the key. The key? He stood in a hardware store while a duplicate was cut, and a slow depression sank his gaze to the tools and gadgets that furnished other people's lives—his own, part of Saturday purchases, when he did house-proud repairs in the first, the ghetto home.
The man called himself Nick, since there had to be something to address him by. She must have thought the clandestinity of the cottage was ready-made for another kind, as well; a good place for an infiltrator. As it was known she was away, no-one would have any reason to approach it. And the people in the main house? What about them? Sonny was choked with such questions during the phone calls, unable to ask her anything, unable even to indicate that the guest had arrived and was in the room while the call was made, since he went out only at night. Did she understand it was dangerous for her lover to be in the cottage with this guest even for the duration of the phone call? If the man were discovered to be in the country, were followed and picked up, Sonny would be picked up with him and detained for interrogation about his association with him, charged with aiding and abetting whatever it was he was doing—and what that was Sonny could not ask. The discipline of the
struggle prevailed between them; each to his own task. But when the young man was asleep (he slept during the day) Sonny went through the cupboards and likely places in the cottage where guns or explosives might have been stowed away; he would not allow such material to be there to compromise her with some charge that her cottage was in fact a cache for arms. He could not warn her that she might come back and step straight into a Security Police vehicle. He could only say: don't hurry back, take your time …
The young man slept in the big bed close to the earth. He did not wake, when being observed. His socks hung on the radiator where her intimate garments had. Sonny left food for him in her kitchen each time and went away for another two days. When he got back home he would call out, Will? But he always knew whether or not the boy was there; like his mother's, his presence could be sensed.
All dogs love me, no problem, the young man had told him when he asked about the dogs raising the alarm when a stranger came and went through the garden. But the people in the main house must nevertheless notice there was someone coming to and fro at the cottage. Someone other than himself, the man they must think of as her man. Perhaps, unlike himself, they expected a woman like her, free-living, alone, doing some kind of leftish good works, content to hire converted servants' quarters, to have men coming and going. Perhaps they had known of some other man before himself.
One afternoon the young man was gone. When Hannah phoned, on time, he couldn't tell her that, either, but the spirit in his voice and the caressing chatter that came from him must have told her for him. He felt strongly sure she would soon be back. He had never cleaned house before—in his kind of family women cooked and cleaned, only his son, wanting to differentiate
himself in every way, helped out in the kitchen—but he stripped the bed, swept the room, found the product with which to wash the bath. The man had left behind, shed, his hitchhiker's outfit. Must have changed persona for the next stage of his mission. In the bathroom was an open bottle of hair bleach with a picture of a grinning blonde combing flying tresses. But Sonny's Hannah needed no bleach or paint. He threw out the bottle with the bundle of clothes, it was the day of the week the dustmen came to take away the white suburb's trash and he saw, in the lane as he left the cottage by the hidden gate, one of the black men rummage the bundle out of the mess of newspapers and kitchen debris and consider the usefulness of the garments as other than a disguise. Sonny smiled, felt that it was right. A conclusion that restored balance to something he found distasteful and distorted, a means he did not want for his ends. Sermons in stones, and good in everything; that was not to be used as a password, in the mouth of a third person.
She's cut off her hair.
I had come back from classes to the empty house and parked my motorcycle on the stoep as I always did for safety, and when I opened the door someone was standing there. She'd heard me thumping the bike up the steps and she was waiting, presenting the surprise of her return. I recognized her as you do someone in a photograph taken at a time and in a place when you didn't yet know them, or after they were as you had known them. The shape of her face was changed by the short curls brushed around it, the small flat ears with, always, some little decoration dangling from the lobe, had disappeared, the polished curve of the forehead was hidden by a fluffed-up fringe. She flung her arms round my neck and hugged me. A line drew between her beautiful eyes with the joyful intensity with which she looked at me, took me in. My mother was never demonstrative like that. But they were her eyes.
—What happened?—
She was laughing with pleasure.—Oh everything's fine. Baby is blooming. You wouldn't know her, so grownup, completely in charge …—
—What have you done? Why did you do it?—
—You mean this?—she poked her fingers through the curls. —Oh this. All those years. It was enough. Don't you like it? Don't you think it's nice, Will?—
I could only smile and move my shoulders; I'm not her husband, she doesn't have to try to please me.
We went into the kitchen, our old place to talk. She took my mother's chair at the table, she made tea. She was telling me about where Baby lived, what good friends Baby had, responsible people who looked after her, not at all what one thought it would be, considering some of the people she'd mixed with here.—They made me so welcome. She shares the house, of course, but can you imagine, she's planted herbs in the garden—Baby!—
—She didn't leave to go gardening, though. What does she do—or couldn't she say.—
—Well, you don't ask questions, of course, but she was quite open, she seems to be busy with the reception of refugees—not exactly refugees, people like herself, who come out. They have to be investigated. You know.—The big eyes moved over me.
So my mother understands the ambiguities of liberation, now, the screening and interrogation carried out not by the Security Police but by her daughter. Baby has instructed her.
—Was it Baby's idea?—She knows I mean the hair.
—Will! You'd be so pleased to see how she is … She was watching me brushing it one day and she said, how old are you now, Ma? She never remembers! She always thinks I'm younger
than I am. So I reminded her. She said, and how much of your life have you spent doing that—so next day we went to the hairdresser and I had it off.—
She turned her profile to me as if to let me acknowledge the full effect.
I said nothing.
—I feel so much lighter.—She was looking at me shyly to see if I would not be glad of that.—And has everything been all right?—
We don't mention him by name, not yet. She's thinking of police raids, no doubt; of his safety. Could I tell her something else, that he's been home a lot, even playing chess with me? But I can't because that would be a comment on what we're both not supposed to know, the reality I protect her from.
—Oh as usual. Except the yard's a bit of a mess. I did get round to cutting the grass once, but my work-load's quite tough, I've had a lot of reading to do.—
—Did you eat?—
And now we both smile.—I cooked. It seemed to be okay.—
She knows I fed him, she could count on me, now she wants me to like what Baby has done to her, her hair.
—There's more to tell but we'll wait until your father comes in.—
So he's there, spoken out loud between us.—What's it all about? Why not now?—
—Because I'd only have to tell it over again.—
This woman with dull permed curls. She's never put us in the same category before, him and me; since when are our unspoken confidences the same as the sort of silences between them?
She never came back. Cut loose. She was gone for good: my mother.
 
 
Aila's mission was the kind to be expected of her; she has brought women's tidings, a mother's news. Baby is married. But for security reasons not even that domestic intelligence could have been transmitted over the telephone or by letter; not to this house. Baby hadn't told her father herself. Couldn't. Sonny was informed along with his son, by his wife. A family matter. There should have been kisses, handclasps, a Saturday tea-party with beer for the uncles, Aila with her shining coil of hair, wearing a new dress home-made for the occasion.
The boy said nothing, as usual. Apparently he had no feeling for his sister. Aila had met the man, Aila thought he was nice, steady, good enough for their—Sonny's—daughter, his Baby; he had not been asked. On the contrary, the fact was accomplished without him and now he was the one humbly to put questions. Aila confirmed that the young man was someone Baby had known before she left: so they left together, then, and that was something else that had not been confided in her father. She went away with a man, she had been living with a man while he was with his woman in the cottage. As discreet, not only politically, as the father himself.
The young man—husband!—was one of their own kind, not some white foreigner (apparently poor Aila had feared that?) his Baby might have been expected to pick up. ‘Steady'—as if Benoni standards could apply to the life of a Freedom Fighter …poor Aila! He was known by his code name, was something quite important among the younger people in the movement, one didn't ask, he and Baby didn't talk about it, maybe even she does not know exactly. He has been trained in other parts of Africa and overseas. He has a family here at home but thinks
it best they should not be contacted to toast the alliance—for security reasons.
—His family aren't involved at all.—Aila is quite self-assured about the whole business, for once she's taken on responsibility for something all by herself, she's the one who's given approval in this matter of his daughter's future.
Out of his hurt, Sonny felt a heavy sense of lack of occasion in all three of them, Aila, Will, himself. He made some effort, before them, for them.—Well, that's good news, let's hope they'll be happy …and strong in their work.—
The presence of the boy makes everything he says sound fatuous; the moment the boy's mother is back he withdraws again from any male understanding. And Aila gave instructions: —We won't talk about the marriage to anyone.—
What idea was that? Since when did Aila decide what was politically expedient? Since when did she think she understood such things? Did she really believe the Security Police weren't aware by now where Baby was and what she was doing? —Why not?—
She felt the gibe in her husband's remark and turned her head away from the two men.—I have to be able to go back.—
The day of her return ended as all days do in a marriage, with them alone in their bedroom. Sonny and Aila. No matter what has happened during the day, there is no escaping that dread conclusion. They performed the rituals of preparation for bed that had preceded all kinds of nights, years of nights, for them; drawing curtains, washing, brushing teeth as had been done to be pleasing in the taste of kisses, undressing before each other as they had done in the delightful gaze of desire. His bundle of sex hung like something disowned by his body. She folded her garments one by one over the chair, the stockings holding the form of her legs and feet. She began to unpack toilet things from a floral-printed bag.—I didn't want to say in front
of Will—Aila stood there in her nightgown in the middle of the room as if it were somewhere she had entered without knocking. He was setting the hour on his bedside alarm radio, and he looked at her at last.—He's not a child—what's the matter? What is it?—A thrill of fear for Baby flashed through him impatiently.
—She's expecting.—
The genteel euphemism carried over from back-yard gossip in their old life. He laughed, gently correcting:—She's pregnant. I don't think Will is unaware of these possibilities … So. So that's the reason for the marriage.—
—Oh no.—She paused to have him acknowledge another possibility.—They would've married anyway. They love each other.—
He pulled back the covers on his side of the bed and sat down.—Family life—babies—it doesn't go too well with activism like theirs. Doesn't really do, anywhere, but particularly in exile.—
—Well, they have permission to live outside the camp.—
—Yes you told us. Her vegetable patch.—
—She's very pleased about the baby. You wouldn't have thought she'd have such strong maternal instincts, would you?—
—When they grow up …what can one know about them.—
—And they're even sure what it's going to be—a boy. There's a test you can have, these days, imagine that!—
Yes, Aila has been brought to life—that's how he sees it—by the idea of a birth, a new life coming out of the old one he left her buried in. Aila looks like any other woman, now, with that same hair—do they wear it to make them seem younger. She'll never sit at the dressing-table before bed, brushing that long, straight shining hair, again. He's rid of Aila. Free.
He slowly swung his legs onto the bed and dropped the covers over himself up to the chest. With closed eyes, a moment,
he heard her moving about the room, saw Baby dancing, coming to kiss him on the ear, saw her glittering eyes smeared with mascara. Married. Baby. How could she know her own mind, so displaced, far from home. But in the struggle no-one is underage, unprepared for anything, children throw stones and get shot.—She's so young.—He hardly knew he had spoken aloud: Aila heard it as a momentary lapse into intimacy. She said:—So was I.—
He opened his eyes. Much younger. Eighteen-year-old. Aila had taken a long shining black plait from the toilet bag. It was tied with a scrap of ribbon where the hair had been severed. There was the rustle of a sheet of tissue paper Aila smoothed before she folded the plait within it and put it away in a drawer.
 
 
The other woman came back the same week. He had longed for her so painfully it seemed at times he couldn't get enough oxygen into his lungs, breathing was constricted by the intensity of the fear she would not be allowed to cross the frontier, and he would never get a passport so that he could go to her. And yet his only relief from tension over the ambiguities and intrigues that were growing in the movement was to turn to this other anguish, his need of Hannah. And from that anguish back to dismay at the position he was being manoeuvred into by certain comrades.
When she told him on the phone that she was cleared, she'd received a visa and was arriving at the weekend he begged, insisted she let him meet her at the airport although that would be an offence against discretion as well as security—that moral code he and she strictly imposed upon themselves.
He wouldn't come into the terminal arrivals hall, he'd be there in the underground car-park, she'd make her way with her suitcase towards him in the echoing daylight dusk of the
cement cavern smelling of exhaust fumes … The empty cottage where he was holding the telephone receiver was already rein-habited by her. He was wild with anticipation: what Hannah could make him feel! Never in his life before—fifty years, my god—had he been capable of such emotions. He was old when he was young, that was it; a reversal: it was only now he knew what it should have been like to be young. The night before Hannah was to arrive he took a sleeping pill to subdue his excitement; to blot out the presence of Aila beside him in bed.
While he was waiting in half-dark, underground, surrounded by the inert relics vehicles become when they are stationary, by footsteps fading, footsteps approaching and passing on the periphery of his senses, he suddenly felt all life and will leaving him. All at once. It was again the moment when, driving somewhere in the Vaal Triangle, full of purpose directed towards the meeting he was going to address, he had had the awful impulse to let go of the steering-wheel, had seen himself careering in a car out of control, to an end, an abandonment. Now in the garage he got out of the car to master himself; he arranged himself standing to meet her when she would appear. He kept swallowing and his hands felt thick and dull. The place was cold, a vast burial chamber. An old black man slopping a mop from a bucket over a luxury car was a menial entombed along with a Pharaoh. She would appear with her suitcase; nothing would stop that happening. There she was, as she had to be: she had seen him, she was coming towards him slowly, ceremoniously, solemnly after so long and difficult a parting, walking sturdily on her pale freckled legs, her body tilted sideways by the weight of the suitcase, her blondness back-lit by the shaft of light coming from the stairs. He felt nothing. He stood there smiling and managed to open his hands away from his body to make way for her; there was nothing behind these gestures. She
took his silence and the hard abrupt embrace as an excess of emotion stifled by prudence in this strange public place where there seemed to be no witness except an old cleaner; but of course she was back here, where one could never be sure to be unobserved. She herself was laughing and in tears. On the way to the cottage she poured out all the details of the visa affair she had had to keep back, over the telephone. Her hand came to rest, spread gently and firmly on his thigh as he drove; a claim upon him.

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