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Authors: Nadine Gordimer

BOOK: My Son's Story
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Once they were again in the bed it was as if what had happened down in that cavern had never been. Close to the earth; Sonny was back to earth, human and struggling, able to touch and feel and scent the wonderful upheaval of life.
— … He slept here. I used to come in and see him snoring there on your bed …—He shook his head, and she smiled and kissed his neck.—But why did you give him that password, Hannah? Why couldn't you have thought of something else?—
—What else could I have sent that would make you absolutely sure? What else is there that belongs only to us?—
—Well now there's a third person.—
—Oh never. To him it's like anything else that's used. Once the purpose is served, it's over. You know. He's forgotten already. It's only to us …for him, there are other things on his mind. He's quite extraordinary …what he's brought off …in and out, here, several times.—
—Don't tell me. And forget whatever that is, yourself. I don't know how successful he was. Whether he was ever followed, whether they played the old game of letting him lead them to his contacts, including this cottage. How do I know? I couldn't watch the place all the time …and he was so cocky and relaxed, didn't give a damn, never said anything. And that telephone was frustrating. I couldn't tell you, ask you anything
about the fellow. He could have been picked up and I along with him, and you wouldn't have known.—
She was considering, a moment, whether this was a reproach. But between them, that wasn't possible; you don't live for each other, the loving is contained within the cause, and there would be no love if you were to refuse, because of personal risk, something expected of you by the struggle. She didn't know how to phrase this; did not have to because he was speaking again.—I hope you investigated him thoroughly before you let him use us. You know that, with me, it's not only myself—there's always the risk of the movement being infiltrated through me; any one of us.—
—My dear love, don't you trust me?—
—I've told you before what you are for me.—
She hid her face against him, muffling her voice.—‘You are the only friend I've ever had.'—
He pulled her head away, distorting between his long hands her soft pastel cheeks in pressure against the brilliant blue chips of her eyes, and kissed eyes, nose, mouth as if to efface her. They made love again, the kind of love-making that brings the dependent fear that one could never live, again, without it.
When they were lying quiet, she made her usual principled acknowledgement of the limit of her claim.—How are things at home? Is Aila back yet?—
—She arrived a few days ago. Will behaved quite reasonably with me …even cooked some meals …—
She squeezed his hand.—Of course, he's a good boy, he's just like you, underneath. You'll see how he'll turn out.—
She might have been a wife, reassuring him about his children. What games are played, between lovers!—My daughter's married, you may be surprised to hear. I was.—
Hannah laughed.—No, not surprised at all. She's a very
attractive girl. Not as beautiful as her mother, but still lovely. Who's she married? Someone in Lusaka, of course?—
—But like the rest of us, originally from the ghettos. I've never met him. Aila likes him. So I hope it's not a big mistake.—
—Why should it be a mistake?—
—Marriage, these days. In their circumstances, the instability, exile, no home—what for? Marriage implies certain social structures, and we're busy breaking up the existing ones, we have to, it's the task of our time, our children's time. I don't know why she wants it; she's got a head on her, young as she is. At least I thought she had.—
—You think they should just live together?—
They look at each other: like Baby's father and his lover.
—Yes, while they can. There'll be long separations, each will have to go where they're sent. Marriage is for one place, one way of life. It's a mistake for them. Live together while you can, as long as it's possible, and then, well—
—Aila surely wouldn't want that. Isn't she pleased?—
He put his hands up over his face a moment and breathed out through his fingers.—She's pleased.—
He did not continue with what he was about to say; he did not tell Hannah his daughter was going to have a child.
 
 
I wonder how she feels making love with a grandfather. That didn't stop him either. I wonder how he could go on doing it knowing he was so old—what's it? Over fifty—and some other man was also doing the same thing to his darling daughter.
Fucking his pudding-faced blonde (pink blancmange like my mother used to make for us out of a packet when we were kids) while he ought to be dandling his grandchild on his knee. It's disgusting to think like this about him, I know, but he's the
one who's brought it about. That's the educational opportunity the progressive schoolteacher arranged for me.
I should have thought—I did think, when my mother told me about my sister's baby—that, at last, would have been the end of it, for him. Even if he hadn't stopped when my sister tried to kill herself because of him, his old obsession with self-respect might have stopped him now. A grandfather, the great lover! My father, who has never looked ridiculous in his whole life. If not his famous self-respect, then self-esteem, vanity, I should have thought—I notice in the bathroom in the mornings he has quite a paunch, there's grey in his chest-hair. When he yawns, his breath is bad. He must have some dignity left, after all.
But no. Everything goes on as it has for—how long is it already? I keep thinking of it as an interlude, something that will be over; but it's our life. When I'm his age and I look back on my youth, that's what it will be.
Of course he's never seen the baby boy. Only the photographs my mother brings back. She tells him the infant looks like him, just as I did when I was born, she says. It already has quite marked eyebrows. But he says babies look like other babies. The lover wants to acknowledge no paternity, neither for me nor his grandchild; unfortunate about the eyebrows …and my mother so innocently proud of the proof of succession, something no other woman of his can take away from her. Maybe it's not so much innocence: perhaps women really want men only to supply them with children; when that biological function has been fulfilled down to the second generation, and they themselves can't bear children any more (my mother must be close to that stage now? Like Baby, I always think of her as young) they don't need us. I realize I don't know enough about women. It's not a subject of instruction he's keen to pass on.
My mother goes to visit Baby and the little boy in Lusaka often. Of course—she said ‘I need to be able to go back'. Before the birth she was busy knitting and sewing while he was out at his meetings and ‘meetings' in the evenings. She pinned the shapes of small garments to the padded ironing board and pressed them under a damp cloth; the smell of warm wool steamed up. Sometimes I was studying in the kitchen to keep her company. There was no-one to collect the pins with the horseshoe magnet.
She went to Lusaka once more before the child was born, and again for the birth. She has no trouble with the authorities; why should they harass the poor woman: they did search her luggage at Jan Smuts airport on that third exit—she was, after all, Sonny's wife—and how foolish they must have felt to have their counter strewn with her beautifully-made baby clothes, emblems of embroidered rabbits instead of subversive documents, white and blue ribbons in place of the colours of a banned political organization. She said they were very nice to her; congratulated her on being about to become an
ouma
. My father remarked, yes, sentimentality is the obverse side of thuggery. He knows that from his prison days. The doctor for whom my mother works is most understanding and accommodating—he doesn't seem to object to her taking frequent absences from the surgery. I suppose it must be unpaid leave; but my mother is used to managing with little money, she doesn't skimp us, in the household, and yet apparently she is able to save enough for the airfares. I suppose that's why she doesn't look like she used to—it's not only that hair, now—she doesn't dress with the care she did, goes off on these trips to my sister in pants and flat shoes, the clothes and toys for the little boy stuffed into my duffel bag. When she comes back she doesn't ask how we—I've managed. And she seems to have made more friends here;
friends of her own, not my father's with whom she was always on the fringe. She's quite often out when I arrive home and her day's work at the surgery is over. The other evening, he came in and I heard him call out from the kitchen as he hasn't done for I don't know how long: Aila? Aila?
But he was mistaken; he's lost the instinct for sensing my mother's presence in some other room. They were empty. She was not there. Not for him, not for me.
As Sonny believed he had found in Hannah the only friend he ever had, so he had believed he had found in the risks of liberation, on public platforms and at clandestine meetings, in prison, the only comrades he had ever had. If that friendship meant for him the blessed reception of sensuality as part of intelligence, then that comradeship meant he and his colleagues in common faith would live or die together. They did not speak each other's names under interrogation. Since they had been equal to that, no other form of betrayal could find a crack to enter between them.
Once a great Shakespearean reader, reverent amateur of the power of words, Sonny must have known that if a term is coined it creates a self-fulfilling possibility and at the same time provides a formulation for dealing with it. ‘Disaffected' was coined in political jargon to handle, with prophylactic gloves, the kind of men who came to see him one night when he was alone in the house. He turned them away; as he was certain others would. They were best left to fizzle out through lack of notice taken of
them; the acknowledgement of any kind of ‘disaffection' in the movement was merely a means of letting the government smell blood. Individuals discussed such visits in confidence, they were known about; the subject was not on the agenda of the executive. But several of those night visitors sat blandly on that executive. Perhaps they were awaiting a more propitious time to act again, rather than affirming contrite submission, a lapse—just once—accepted by the leadership as such. These options in themselves caused conflict. Some thought the men ought to be talked to, privately, by strong personalities; they needed to be dealt with, have it made clear to them, once again, that unity and no other was the condition of resistance—with the underlying message that they didn't stand a chance of getting away with anything they had in mind. Some felt this must be managed with the greatest care, they mustn't feel in danger of expulsion anyway—it would encourage them to pre-empt and make a face-saving announcement of a split. And of course the disaffected cabal scented the sweat of this indecision and moved to take advantage of it. They lobbied (that inappropriate term for a movement that came into being because its entire great constituency was excluded from parliament) among the other executive members where they saw concern for caution might become support. There were leaks interpreted by the press: LEADERSHIP'S BREAKING BRANCH—THE OLD GUARD HANGS ON.
Sonny had read warning signs for a long time; somehow partly misread. Before Lesotho; that man asleep in the bed close to the earth; before the return with news from Lusaka—months ago Sonny had talked over with Hannah the peculiar attitude of a comrade with whom he had always been in close accord. —‘All smiles, and the next thing, you've got a palace revolution.' —He had said it without knowing fully what he said. And Hannah, she'd reassured that any potential troublemakers
would have to believe they could capture the executive before they could attempt anything. Neither he nor she had thought they already might be convinced of success. However well a human being is known, it is never known what is moving in him towards a decisive act, something ‘out of character', it's not to be seen how it is slowly coming about, what is preparing for it: the turning aside, the betrayal. You run away and leave the dying man. Just once.
Sonny had to accept that disaffection wasn't going to fizzle out. The learning process is endless. One of the fellows (as he still, sometimes, in schoolmaster brotherliness, privately thought of his comrades) who had been in detention with him was now part of the palace revolution. It was incredible; a wound in Sonny's side. This was one of the comrades Hannah had visited.
—And he used to write such good letters, so spirited—
—You wrote to him, too?—
—Yes, to everyone, it's our policy, keeping in touch as much as possible. You know that.—
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Although Sonny, with his credentials and his articulacy, would have been many people's choice to ‘discipline' the disaffected individuals, it was decided that anyone who had been approached by them was ruled out for the task. The candidates must be among those who had not already shown these men the door. The meeting-ground must not be that of assumed hostility. But he was in caucus meetings with trade union leaders and a delegate to secret meetings with other affiliated radical groups, to discuss their support in the matter. Between meetings and travelling from centre to centre around the country for consultation there were the private-within-private obligations to be available to this one or that who must speak to him alone; the
rumours to be considered, the reports coming from those on the other side who were in fact acting as informers for the movement; and the suspicion, to be compared, that this one or that was spying on the movement's deliberations for relay to the disaffected. He scarcely had time or mind to fulfil his other responsibilities—the attention owed to what he'd taken on for himself, the two establishments he kept up, the home and the cottage. Fortunately Aila was kept busy either with preparations for her visits to see her grandchild or actually was away on such a visit, and Hannah knew what priorities were. So Aila did not seem to notice when he forgot the date she was to be off again and he looked blank, a moment, when she came into the kitchen with the boy behind her carrying her luggage, to say goodbye.
—What time's your plane? I'll take you to the airport.—
No, there was Will, Will was driving her, he'd bring the car straight back.—You're sure you can manage without it for now?—Aila's usual considerateness made him suddenly remember she must have asked him the previous night if this would inconvenience him; she knew he was hard-pressed although he did not tell her much.
At the cottage, after a few days' absence, he arrived for an hour; at one in the morning Hannah woke instantly to hear the car stop in the lane and flew stumbling to the door. He was in a state of high tension from talk and exhaustion, and the touch of her sleep-hot skin made him start and shudder. His eye-sockets were purple as if from a blow. Don't talk, don't talk any more, Hannah said, although she was the one he talked to, she was the one with whom he shared what there was to live for outside self, she was the one friend he ever had. They quickly made love—no, he fucked her, it was all he had left in him to expend. And then he had to get dressed and go; to put in an appearance for his son, at breakfast, to prepare himself with
some rest for the decisions of another day. If he could get to sleep;
But then begins a journey in my head, to work my mind
. The old consolation of fine words become a taunt.
Why was
he
approached that night?
How could he ever have imagined anyone could construe something significant out of that unexpected and insulting visit?
But it actually was remarked to him: Why you?
Said lightly. He could not believe the obvious implication, unsaid: what is there about
you
that made you seem a possibility? There must have been something, why else …? The irreproachable comrade, the popular Sonny …not such clean hands, after all? Nobody—sometimes not even those who repeated these things, murmur to murmur—knew where they came from; whether from buried malice within themselves, churned up in the mud of uncertainty and suspicion fear of disaffection created, or whether discreetly dropped by the enemy—which was no longer definitively only the government, the police, the army, but also the disaffected; and maybe these last were allied?
Why him?
How was it possible those people should have had the presumption to come to him? What made them think they could? Now it was no longer a simple matter of showing them the door. The idea that he had ever opened it to them filled him with dismayed revulsion. The idea that his comrade prisoners of conscience could expect him to ask himself such a question prised at the wound in his side.
—There are some whose trust I'd have laid my life on, but who don't dismiss these things, raise no objections …can you credit it?—He had to find time to talk to Hannah, needed to talk to Hannah.
—The bastards.—Blood showed patchy in her cheeks, bright blue tears stood in her eyes, she was blowzy with anger.
He shook his head at the uselessness.—I'd have put my head on a block for them, they'd never … they're the best …—
—No, I mean those others—don't you see—
they
want to set you at each other's throats. They want you to discredit each other, make trouble among yourselves. You've got to put a stop to it.—
—‘Not such clean hands, after all'—
—You must have it out. Sonny?—
—I suppose so. But to me … to have to admit that such things are possible among us—
She wondered whether her touch would humiliate him; whether he needed to close off all his resources to feel intact, unreachable by tenderness as well as assault. But she took his hand and felt the bones, one by one. –No-one who really matters can doubt your integrity for a moment. You know that.—
He had it out with the top leadership; they discussed how best it should be dealt with and chose a method that showed their unquestioned confidence in and value placed on him. For a time they kept him at their side in the most important of discussions and displayed him as privy to critical decisions, even if these had been made without him. He ignored his wound in fervent devotion to see unity restored, purpose made whole again.
 
 
I have a little girl of my own. ‘Little' not because she's physically small—although she is, she's about the same build as my mother—but in the sense the adjective is often used. She's not important—I don't go in for great loves. She's a nice enough little thing, very fond of me and I'm quite fond of her. I sleep with her at her place, on the couch in the sitting-room
when her parents are out, or sometimes in the room a friend of hers lends her.
Just like Dad. My sex life has no home.
It's a sweet and easy experience she takes very seriously. She's intelligent (don't worry, I wouldn't take up with an uneducated girl …) and we go to the movies and the progressive theatre I've been brought up to have a taste for, when we can afford to. Her salary as a computer operator would be adequate to support us in a small flat, although I'm still a student and earn only from part-time work, and she keeps suggesting this. Then we can sleep the whole night together, she says, innocently awed. But I can't leave my mother alone, and because my mother counts on me to be there with him when she's away, I can't leave him.
The little girl is proud of being the girl-friend of someone in our family. I know she tells everybody I'm the famous Sonny's son; her parents ‘trust me' with her because they are impressed by the high moral standards of a family who live for others; frightened to death to participate in liberation politics themselves, they belong to the people who see ‘Sonny' as a kind of hero and I suppose always will; although I notice lately that among his peers he seems to count for less than he used to. The big shots in the movement don't come round for private talks so often. I have the impression he's being eased aside; don't know why, and he wouldn't talk to me about it anyway. He's selective; it's not the sort of secret it suits him to share with me. I suppose in politics as with everything else: you have your day, and then it's over, someone else's turn. And that, again, isn't something he's good at accepting.
I can see my mother's pleased about the little girl. I wouldn't sleep with her in our house even when there's the opportunity, my mother in Lusaka and he in bed on the floor in that love-nest,
but I've brought her home for tea. I knew my mother would like that; it's the way things used to be, ought to be, for her. And she was quite like she used to be, before; she had put on stockings and high-heeled shoes.—Oh your mum's beautiful—My girl was enchanted.
—Was. When she still had her long hair.—
The two females at once reached some unspoken accord. The little girl instinctively knows my mother would like to see me—at least one of her children—‘settled' with a conventional domestic life, nearby. And hang liberation, eh. Live in the interstices that were once good enough for her and her husband, when they were young; and these are wider, more comfortable, now, no more Benoni-son-of-sorrow ghetto, but illegal occupation of a house in a white area, cinemas open to all. Good enough for me, the stay-at-home, the disappointment (to him) and the mama's boy (to her). She, too, has a role for me: tame Will keeps the home fires burning while noble Sonny and Baby defend the freedom of the people.
I said to her when I brought the results of my first-year studies—distinctions all the way—What am I doing this for? Who's going to employ a business-school graduate in a revolution? —And I laughed. So she took it as a joke.—It's wonderful you've done so well, Will.—
—Oh yes, my father will be proud of me.—
She was looking at me, unguarded for a second, her eyes then quickly lowered, a faint twitch in the left lid. I shouldn't have said it; it was the nearest we've ever come—to what? Betraying him? I don't know what sense there is in this compact, but I see she still wants it observed although the consolation of the grandchild, the visits to Baby—a kind of life of her own—have somehow brought her to terms with what she must feel about her husband.

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