No Time Like the Present: A Novel (33 page)

Msholozi has the infallible instinct to take in his upraised fist the failure of the rival party to meet the demands of its followers and vow his government will not tolerate the deprivation of the people of their rights anywhere in the country, he’s in process of nationwide inquiry, those responsible must answer for their neglect and lack of action. As if the water has begun to flow into the taps with his words the angry disarray of the crowd has become a song and dance of celebration for the presence among them: ZUMA ZUMA ZUMA. He is them they are him, their suffering, the man of the people, is his.

A flick of the control in the father’s hand dismisses whatever might follow, on- or off-screen.

Baba leads her out to the veranda where Sindiswa and the girls are drinking Coke, the boys lobbing their football into the midst, demanding a share, the sight of Baba and the appearance of aunts with the mother quietens the scene without lowering the pleasure. Some of the Elder’s fellow members of the church governing committee arrive with homebrew and the women mock protest, two of them striding their bulk zigzag to bring out as well the hospitality of the house. One of the men has been to see the site for a stadium to be built for the World Cup event that has been won, against all other world contenders, for South Africa next year. KwaZulu is to have the honour of one of the stadia which will hold fans coming from all over the world to see international countries compete. The boys are all gabbled questions. What’s it look like, how big, bigger than—but the man can’t find any comparison grand enough. Gary Elias from the city is fully informed, these country people haven’t a clue.—The Orlando one’s m-u-c-h bigger. But they’re all e-normous.—One of the boys insists—So what’s it look like?—The man who’s been there is grinning, lifting his chin to the scale of magnificence planned. But Gary Elias has the answer before him.—It’s not up yet!—

—Yes, they’re only clearing the ground, sixty-one thousand three hundred and twelve square metres they told me—

—Wow!—

—D’you hear—

—So how big would that look?—

—
Mfana awazifundi izibalo zakho na?
Don’t you learn your maths,
umfaan
—

The boys tease excitedly, punching each other. Gary Elias triumphs, he’s been with the Mkizes to see the vast changes already in progress at the stadium in Orlando.—That’s where the action’s gonna be.—

—And we’ll have our stadium in KwaZulu, d’you hear—

—And we’ll be there, we’ll all be there!—Chorus, the boys are linked, Gary Elias in the middle.

The headmaster reminds.—That depends whether you’ve passed your exams you must all be going up to grade nine or ten—

—Except Thuli—

—Yes well he is a year younger so he’ll have to be up to grade eight, he’ll be the exception if he’s worked hard this year.—

—Baba’s getting tickets for everyone in the team—you’ll come.—Vusi with assurance to Gary Elias as one of them.

Baba never needs to acknowledge boasts on his behalf, it is understood he has influence on this occasion as in many others that concern the community of the family.—We must not count the chickens before they are hatched.
Ungabali amatshwele engaka chamuselwa
, the tickets will only begin to be available perhaps early next year, it’s going to be a process, a great many, whole lot reserved for the people overseas, all the other countries with teams taking part, America, England, France, Brazil—At the pronouncement of that South American country a cry goes up even though you don’t interrupt Baba; after the home team Bafana Bafana the Brazilians are the favourites.

He allows the enthusiasm.—I have arrangements, soon as tickets will be available for us in our own country.—

The women laugh and slap open palms of one another.

Baba and her alone together, he had not for a moment taken attention from her in a hold that penetrated, appropriated from the statement of her pauses anything being withheld in what she was saying to him, for him. Here among the company where they belonged, his wife, her mother, the boys and the girls half-grown women among the family women, he did not pass a word or glance to her, it was as if she had taken her leave of him, already in her car, gone. Later there were the customary farewells, turnabout, as there had been the gifts of arrival, new-laid eggs from the ranging hens, mealies from the winter’s store, all in baskets where purpose and beauty met in the first art form she had, unconsciously, known, that of the extended family women who gathered the reeds and stripped sheaths of cobs to weave strength, each in a personal pattern through the agility of fingers. For some reason—parents never seem to think it necessary to give this honestly—this visit was to be shorter than usual. Gary Elias had been brought late in the second half of the school holidays, and this time his mother would come back to fetch him after a stay of only a few days. He happened to hear from one of the uncles who would be making the trip to Egoli where a son, once an outstandingly clever pupil nurtured in the headmaster’s school, had just been made a director in a food-chain enterprise—the uncle would be happy to have the chatter of the boy to accompany him. The proposed date coincided with the end of the school holidays. Gary Elias was eager to accept. If he took the lift with the uncle he’d gain four more days with the team. Wethu would stay on, too, and take the same ride with the man who was known to her by some generic in the complex of family relations.

Baba has come to the car with the women, as is not his custom, although he keeps his space from them, he’s there. She and Sindiswa open the doors, linger, get in, lower the windows so they are still in contact.

The football team has run up in claimed possession of Gary Elias. Which one calls out, not needing to name Jabu—You gonna bring him for the World Cup?—

No matter from where.

As she turns the ignition key it comes. The realisation that Baba’s ignoring her among the goodbye talk of others is his acceptance that if this is not the last time, before she is gone farther and further than any other time life has taken her; it may be.

Australia. Leaving like the men, the sons who for generations have left to work down in the gold mines, and now are gone Home-Boys, she’ll be coming back maybe as they do for a funeral. The long flight for the World Cup; the boy Gary Elias to witness it with his team.

Withdrawal now while they were among others is her Baba’s final permission for the future she and her chosen man have made without her father. It is Baba’s unspoken blessing on Down Under. Another journey. Beyond any he could or had ever planned for her, an unspeakable kind of freedom he couldn’t foresee.

It’s not something to tell.

Sindiswa is gossiping with her father about Gary Elias’s clever snatch at the chance to stay on with his football mates and get a lift later with some man who’s coming to the city.

—So you don’t have to go.—He’s guiltily relieved she won’t have to fetch Gary Elias, a trip he ought to have offered to make if there hadn’t been a solution.

—I won’t go back.—

When they are alone, she says it again—I won’t go back.—

So she has said something other, told something different from casual understanding of an alternative arrangement.

—Wha’d’you mean…?—

—It’s only a few months to November.—

He’s waiting.

—We don’t have to say…—She cups a hand on his arm, a little pressure on the biceps.—Goodbyes would be so disturbing for them
eih
, and Baba doesn’t like emotional things. I always had to make the partings with mama, and then he’d put me on the bus or train whatever with that sort of salute he has—you know.—

Yes, he sees it; commending the daughter to God, her father has this authority conferred by belief—she’s wrong, there, it’s surely the highest emotion there is, something genuine about it even while you don’t believe in its reality.

—Baba’s got the privilege to buy advance tickets for the World Cup match that will open the stadium that’s going up, great coup for KwaZulu—tickets for the boys’ football team and it’s somehow understood we’ll be there with Gary Elias, make a visit next year.—

He’s drawn a slow breath of time for comprehension.

—I don’t think I have to go back. Before we leave.—She is smiling almost with anticipation that seems to have come, as a gift to her, from her father.

Arm around his neck bending his head to her, breasts nudging, mouth on his. Embracing Australia with him. He knows as the kind of total sense of being which is happiness, that what he has not been quite sure of: he has not forced her against some instinct in her, she is an African as he after all can never be, to become an immigrant in someone else’s country.

The municipal cleaners’ strike had lasted so long the rat guerrillas who exist holed up in every city had multiplied on the abundance, resource of rotting trash in the streets and when the strike ended and the feast was cleared away they began to appear scavenging in the suburbs. In the Suburb. Blessing screamed high and shrill at confrontation with one in her kitchen, Peter thought she was being attacked by a thief who’d somehow breached the electrified security system and he grabbed the Peace handgun as he would his AK-47 back in the Struggle.

On the first day of August telecommunications workers began a strike of 40,000 union members. The workers at the zoo in the capital city Pretoria were on strike; local animal lovers called upon themselves to help feed the animals and clean cages. A metropolitan railway strike continues. The union says the offer they’ve rejected would have resulted in members losing pay because overtime would be cut. In some provinces no trains to get other workers to their work; where there are a few manned by scabs a commuter has died and four were injured, falling in the crush from packed trains.

As if turning momentarily in the subconscious away from all this—the Suburb’s place in citizenship responsibility, comradely identification with workers existing on no-work-no-pay; and unexpected new middle-class frustration felt at disruption of telecommunications—Marc suddenly tells what’s come up. The sale of the house arrangement. He’s speaking as if from a lost note scribbled during an unwelcome interruption.—The guy’s chickened out. Our deal’s off, I’m sure he’s lying about a change in his life, the partner, some hint—he’s pissed off and he’s going to forget the idea of a move to the Suburb.—

What can he say—giving her the news, such as it is in comparison with the news within which, still here, they are living. A house to vacate. Sell. The shacks of how many homeless thousands: no market value upfront. You don’t have to say it—her brisk silence, getting up, jutting the chair from her, the pause with which she stays herself as she strides to the door, turns to him with a lift of shoulders, is admission and defiance for them both. The TV screen is filled with footage that could have been that night’s or last night’s reportage, same thing, heaving arms thrust as weapons of bone and flesh against batons and guns.

Later she is her pragmatic self: the house must go public, handled by an estate agent for possession after they are in Australia. No rent-paying clauses. There will be a board outside, now, For Sale. She’s right. Departure. It can’t be a Suburb comrades matter.

While he shaves and she’s in the bath next morning he, also, is practical.—What about the money. You know we can’t transfer the lot.—

She bloats a sponge with suds and draws it the length of her lovely thigh, bends the knee up out of the water and carries the gesture down the muscle of her calf.—The Centre could administer it with my father. I think they’d do that, for me…One of my comrades. For use when Gary Elias comes. When there’s a visit…any of us.—

Zuma on the poster.

KwaZulu. The man standing apart, at the entrance to the house unlike any in the community of the Elder of the church where the Gumede clan have served and been honoured for generations, the headmaster whose faith in education, achieved under strict discipline the best results in the province against a national record of dropouts and failures.—He’d be willing?——He’ll take it on.—Although he hasn’t been asked: she is the daughter.

She is right, her Baba doesn’t oppose, no matter how much he must be in pain against it within the fundament of his being, his identity, ancestral and present—that she is through her identity with her generation’s experience of Struggle, and her educational opportunities bringing understanding of the existence of Struggle throughout the world—a free citizen of the world. She fought for liberation of her people. It must be granted as earned that she does not have to take on the present Struggle, in place of promises, promises, the better life for all.

Experience in the world outside may make her think differently. White kept choice to itself, Black has choice now.

They don’t make love much these days—or rather nights, too many things to complete, do. It’s not premature, what they decide must be taken has to be set aside in the mind, from what is left behind. The bulk of their lives, what they decide must be taken will have to go by sea and that means well in advance, the road transport to port in Durban, the ship in a time warp of one of Captain Cook’s voyages, crossing the Indian Ocean. What each of the four—Jabu, Steve, Sindi, Gary Elias—find can’t be left behind is an insight to what they don’t know about each other. Gary Elias doesn’t want to take his racing bicycle, pride of his last birthday, where somehow has he got the idea that there’ll be a better model waiting Over There? Sindiswa insists that the version of the ancient Greek statue of Antigone, high and heavy, carved by the art students at Aristotle and presented to her in honour of the performance, must be cargo, and Jabu for some reason that doesn’t match her lack of attachments to objects so easy to transport, such as elegant KwaZulu baskets, includes a hairdryer—must be a special type? He and she go through the shelves of their books (there’s the shelf where she came upon his cuttings, Australia) setting aside the essential while dumping others to be given to the university libraries. There was the sacrifice of some law volumes, apocryphal here, famous so-and-so against such-and-such, but unlikely to be of interest anywhere else, and education reports in the same category. Before throwing away: a last look at reports of a university where white students pissed in a stew and forced four black women and a black man, cleaners at the student hostel, to eat it. They’ve apologised since. What’s left behind is that no one so far has brought to the courts the case of the cleaners to receive justice as victims.

There was nothing, nothing he wanted that it is possible to transport.

‘Our members are determined as hell. End apartheid wage gap, black workers are still earning lowest pay.’ Now the post offices stay-away, that euphemism for strike.

Who cares, everybody has email, SMS, Facebook, who needs some face behind the post-office counter. Metro rail not running, clinics closed, patients not receiving their HIV and AIDS antiretrovirals, threat of darkness as the National Treasury refuses to give money to meet claims of electricity workers: people live with all that. The newspaper falls and slides rustling under the bed.

They have not kissed goodnight. Inert beside him, dozing, there’s barely awareness of her there—out of nowhere the hand—her hand on his penis. The pyjama pants cover is a token, he’s there. She’s found him.

She’s there amidst everything else that surrounds them. He does not wait in the erotic response but turns to her along with the other, to all that is desolately happening in that better life for all. He’s able to confirm in their embrace: confirmation we’re leaving, casting behind all we ‘cadre veterans’ are useless to change, street dirt only the shit symbol of it.

Or there’s just the confirmation of persistence of desire. That equality in rich and poor; even in this country, which he’s just read is the most economically unequal in the world.

Can’t live the cheat, travesty. What use an assistant professor and a lawyer where education is the sum of schools producing pupils to be accepted as university students without the level of comprehension for their course; the law dodges corruption charges of guilty comrades high in government. It’s a worn holier-than-thou to cite your children when you make decisions. But Sindiswa and Gary Elias growing up to
all that all this
. Children in whose very conception there was faith in a present that hasn’t come. No sign of the equality of their black-white fusion in the country, born of Struggle, which is the most unequal in the world.