No Time Like the Present

by Nadine Gordimer

  —And then. He was angry. So then—

  She pinches in her nostrils a moment, concentration to repeat her Baba faithfully, of course they would have been speaking in isiZulu. —He changed to English, ‘There are many white people going there, I read they call it something, relocating, that must be the word they took when they put us, black people into Locations outside the towns.’—

  —That’s all? Didn’t ask anything, more about you.—

  What about her; first thing she knew was coming upon the cuttings wasn’t it.

  She smiled with closed lips and paused—before the evocation of Zuma’s man, the father. —Uzikhethele wena impilo yakho! You made your life, I let you choose, you must live the way it is in this time.—

  What is she saying, comrade Jabu, that whatever her betrayal of her Baba, his bitter sorrow, her rejection of him; her betrayal of herself, Ubuntu, her country: a woman, in the order of her Baba’s community, she will live this time as ever on the decision of her man.

  Australia, I am leaving with him, leaving our country, KwaZulu, leaving you. The woman goes where her man goes, that’s the ancient order understood, but he knows, Baba knows, had his own kind of revolution in nurturing his female child to independent being. Wouldn’t be deluded, would accept that she was emigrating—that reversal of what brought foreigners to take the continent, Africa which was not theirs—as a wife obedient to her husband. Baba will still force her to meet him on common if not equal ground—he is the father, ultimate authority after the Word of God—he had provided for her. She has to defend herself on the choice made for the children, hers and thereby Baba’s lineage, children of Africa, of the Zulu nation.

  Protect herself from knotted liens of nature her man must recognise, always should have recognised, liens he didn’t have. Being born here is not enough. Even in the equality of the Struggle.

  Sindiswa is about to be fourteen. When she’s asked what she wants as her birthday present she says one of the new mobile phones where you can see movies and read books, the pages passing, you don’t have to turn—her cell phone is old stuff.

  —Oh please—must she be like all the kids (and his students) a clamp on her ear, apparently talking aloud to themselves.—

  He keeps his ‘old style’ mobile in the car—for hijack emergencies . . . ? There are breaks in real communication in the faculty room just when someone is putting together an argument worth hearing and he/she is claimed by a singsong sounding somewhere under clothes like a digestive gurgle. When a student comes to him to discuss a formula not clearly grasped—that’s what he’s there for, a teacher always available—he has bossily made it a rule that the thing must be switched off. He’s not cool, Prof Reed, although they say he was one of the whites in Umkhonto.

  —Everybody has them. Gary’s nagging too.—

  —Exactly.—

  Brenda has called—for Jonathan’s sake, Steve is a brother after all, even if their ways were parted during the bad years—everyone agrees now they were that, although not personally involved except in being white. Brenda keeps tally of family anniversaries and birthdays as calendars mark Christmas and now Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and so on, holy days. She’ll just pop round and drop a little something for Sindiswa, big girl, no more toys, what would she like?

  —Your aunt—

  Sindi comes from her room enquiringly —Baba’s place?—

  —Your aunt Brenda.— They chatter, Brenda has an assumed understanding of young people (it works) who are balancing on the edge of adulthood.

  The outdated landline is handed back happily to Jabu. A natural connection has been made by her daughter and the wife of Steven’s brother. —Won’t you and Jonathan eat with us when you come to wish happy birthday, no party, I’m sorry, because she’s taking her school friends to celebrate at McDonald’s that evening, believe it or not.—

  The receiver resounds Brenda’s dismissal. —Of course I believe it!—

  —Just lunch. On Sunday, then. How many of you?—

  —Only Jonny and me. As you know, Ryan’s overseas and the others all make weekend plans.—

  —Should we have a braai.— Jabu’s suggestion, for his approval. She’s such a South African, this descendant of amaZulu warriors!

  —Whatever’s going to be easiest for you, m’love.—

  She doesn’t mind family occasions, even on his side (why does he make the distinction) although their kin, his-and-hers, are the comrades. That progeniture is the one they live, survivors, while Ruth was blown apart as she opened a parcel, the gift sent to her, Albie lost an arm and the light of one eye . . . who else? The great ones.

  They’re moving to eat on the terrace, the garden table upgraded with a cloth. Jonathan is volunteering to carve the leg of lamb that was decided on, although there’s putu with beans as well as roast potatoes Reed style (or what Jabu knows as white style). Steve grants expertise to his brother. While Jonathan tests the knife for keenness he’s telling of his son Ryan. —It seems he’s been working hard, and the great standard of the courses—you know he got into the London University School of Engineering? He’s still found time, ay, to fall seriously for a girl, sister of one of his top student friends. He’s bringing her to show her, not us—Africa, sometime next year, the swimming pools and the lions.—

  Brenda proudly amused. —Sindiswa, you better get ready to be a bridesmaid. A wedding in the family. We’d like him to graduate first, but it’s not our affaire to decide!—

  She has given Sindiswa a beribboned packet. Sindi is fitting something from it round the principal recognition of her birthday, the iPhone she has chosen. The gift is an elegant cover for the mobile. Sindi must have told Brenda in the kitchen, Steve didn’t want her to be just ‘talking to herself’. —But these things are educational as well as a good safeguard for us parents, your child can always reach you if she’s in trouble in any way, this place, you never know . . . this dangerous city.—

  The weekend papers he was out early to buy in addition to the two subscribed to. Scattered about, the image of Jacob Zuma is the front page.

  When he has made coffee, his share of tasks of a meal, with some aside of excusing himself nobody hears under the table’s rally of voices, Jonathan is teasing flattered Gary Elias about the sporting prowess he’s sure of the boy, Brenda has another social gift, orchestrating subjects and gossips about celebrities which animates herself, Jabu and Sindi in femininity if not liberation, he goes to the living room and snaps on the screen, the roar—

  Awuleth’ Umshini Wami

  Weeks go by, when they don’t speak of whether he’s still in contact with the possibility/opportunity, Australia. Normal life takes up attention and energy. The immediate on its track. There was a connection apart from what they customarily share when a winter school on the interface between law and social sciences was organised at his university and she, Jabu the freedom fighter-cum-lawyer was one of the invited participants, some from other countries in Africa, the USA, Brazil, India. He left the Science Faculty the day she was a panellist on the connection between law and public access to power and heard her speak, with interruptions of applause for the points she expounded. As part of an audience, to see, hear, one you know intimately, sexually, intellectually, in temperament, oddities, as nobody else does is to find that no one knows anyone utterly. He’s sat in on a few court cases but there she was a modest member of a legal team, one of the attorneys assisting advocates, a combined presence. Here, up at a microphone with the attention of all around him on her become oddly, strangely one of them, sees the supple length of her brown neck above the small well between her collarbones as she raises her head to acknowledge the audience in her relation to them; the iconic image in the elaborately wound cloth giving height to the piled hair it holds, a few locks painted with coloured strands free from it, moving in emphasis while she speaks. She is in African dress not the businesslike garb for the courts. Which is hers: Jabu’s? Why is she dressed in this one for an occasion whose subject is the
law. You have to be in an audience to come upon, why; what you should know and don’t.

  In the July school holidays Gary Elias went as usual to spend part of the time with his grandfather and the boys of the KwaZulu collateral. It was for him a privilege above his sister, a girl of course, he wanted to offer his buddy Njabulo to share. They—the authority of his parents who were also always his friends, said there might be other plans made for Njabulo, and when Gary was sent by Steve and Jabu to ask Peter and Blessing if the boy could come along, this was so. That family was going to Blessing’s sister whose husband had landed a job in the parliamentary complex—through knowing the right ANC person at the right time, Peter tells confidentially—wouldn’t Gary like to join Njabulo there instead? Gary’s unspoken denial in wide-opened eyes and straightened body brought from Blessing and Peter, oh after all wouldn’t it be a better idea . . . opportunity for Njabulo to go with Gary to his grandfather’s place? KwaZulu. The Mkize roots there had long ago been dug up and transplanted to more industrialised parts of the country. But Njabulo opted for the sea. And there’s no question that Gary Elias would forego his princedom in Baba’s kingdom.

  She was putting together Gary Elias’s clothes and necessities when he walked in to their boy’s room. —D’you want me to come with you.—

  She sends her free hand out behind her to feel for his, pressed a moment, then she needs two hands to fold a shirt. —It’s all right.— Australia between them: he would bring it with him in his very presence before Baba. If she’s alone that might give some sort of assurance, however false, it’s not going to happen.

  She left early drove without pause, the chatter of Gary Elias and Wethu the accompaniment—a present for her mother a warm shawl, a book for Baba, reprint of Dhlomo’s An African Tragedy he might not have, and after eating with the family, the aunts celebrating as usual the visit from the city, left the same day with Wethu. Australia was not present; she was not led apart to the privacy of Baba’s cubby-hole.

  Steve and Sindiswa had prepared dinner or rather shopped together for takeaways at a supermarket owned by a Greek South African, maybe Sindi was a schoolmate of his children.

  —You can see how happy Gary Elias is! Doesn’t ever want to come to say goodbye to his Babamkhulu. Too busy-busy with the boys. Hai! I never see him here like with them, they are best friends to him—and they make a fuss for him, eish!— Wethu entertains in Zulu and in English, because Steve only half-understands the Zulu tongue. Wethu has by now made her transformation to the country the government tells the people is in the process of becoming. Eish—we are all South Africans. She comes back from the home village to her converted chicken run in the Suburb, at home in both.

  MIGRANTS SOUGHT TO STIMULATE ECONOMY

  He had attended—that’s the inadequate word for action of a kind not relevant to his life—their life—a free seminar. Migrants sought to stimulate economy. The flattering inference, for those wanting to leave their country for another, that they would not be immigrants simply received charitably but would indeed be serving the needs of that grateful country. The Australian consultancy was particularly interested in—first of a list of desirables—people with degrees. He had in fact sat through the process as if secretly—clandestine form self-awareness: what are you doing here? There was among the attentive gathering in a conference room of one of the five-star chain hotels a single face recognised while looking to typify the attendants by class, the crude tape-measure, businessmen in suits and ties, others in informal outfits declaring their difference—someone from a faculty of the university. Unknown by name, but seen about, as he himself must have been recognised by the individual. Brothers under the academic gown invisible over their shoulders, no acknowledgement called for. One black man only. Difficult to read in classification because while wearing an elegant dashiki, not the cheap ones for sale in the passage at the Methodist Church, his crossed legs were in pinstripe trousers, his briefcase unscuffed fine leather. Why be so surprised? If there were some millions of black men invading South Africa out of poverty at home, why should there not be a bourgeois black man for his own reasons wanting to emigrate. Over there. Down Under. Some have already gone to the West, doctors opting for higher pay and better working conditions in hospitals.

  One of the unimagined circumstances in the clandestine possibilities of what he had not abandoned was that you still had no one to talk to about it; an inhibition. Not even her.

  The Australian representatives conducting proceedings were unpompous and friendly in their speech-making, even when warning the proviso ‘conditions apply’, and affable in exchange with those who asked complex questions, from educational policy to health insurance, income tax. Nobody asked about crime; whatever the safety situation might be, must be better than the one prospective emigrants would leave behind. Flee. Wasn’t that a morally acceptable reason, against betrayal of patriotism.

  An immigration lawyer, registration number supplied, would be available for any one-on-one consultation. ‘Cost applies.’

  Peter and Blessing play a tooted phrase twice in greeting whenever they drop Gary Elias after fetching him with their Njabulo from the chosen school. It was Wednesday, rugby training (that English game) after classes, so late afternoon.

  —Comrade Steve home yet?— Peter calling from the car.

  She was on the terrace helping Sindiswa with some research for homework—hoping to win the argument that the child should go to the encyclopaedia instead of, as second nature to her, Internet to save the trouble of turning all those pages.

  Through the house to show herself at the front door. —He’s not back. But come in.—

  —No, won’t disturb you, Jabu.—

  —I’m pleased to be let off Sindi’s homework—you’re welcome, nafika kahle!—

  A slamming of car doors, Njabulo and Gary Elias immediately disappear about their own affairs, the regular thump of the oval ball panting through the house. The three embrace cheek-about-cheek as comrades signal one another. Wave a hand—there’s Sindi at the computer on Internet . . . Exchange parents’ tussles with their children’s ideas of education, laughing critically; Blessing’s proud and jealous. —They can learn anything, we were stuck in our little books.—

  The precious books decoded in detention. Without them how ever would Jabu have become a lawyer. There’s a swerving crunch over gravel in the yard and he’s arrived, Steve. It’s often a reminder—how attractive, to her, he sometimes is, other times you don’t really notice each other; today it’s as if he’s gone away and then come anew, there again, in everyday.

  He carries radio batteries she asked him to remember, along with his university stuff, and an early edition of the evening paper under his arm although it’s delivered every evening. It drops on the cane and glass table (survivor of Glengrove Place) beside Peter, as if for him. —News of what the principal’s doing about it?— no need to identify as the head of that other university.

  —They’re going to ‘deal’ with it in the university before a disciplinary committee. How does that sound to you.—

  —Oh it’s just a student prank.— Peter’s lips twist and work. He makes the word a foreign one.

  —Oh sure, high spirits, a jol that went a bit over the top.—

  Across whatever Jabu is beginning to say. —They’re not going to expel them?— Blessing’s high voice cuts in —Not even the guy who— A gesture will do.

  Steve reaches for the newspaper. It’s one that just gives the facts. —The disciplinary committee will decide on ‘appropriate action’.— With his files of student work brought home to mark he has another newspaper, less cautious in producing what’s coming before the disciplinary committee, board, whatever. It’s a press that is attacked as a rag by politicians who don’t want to see in print some of the things they’ve said or done. Open it and here’s again the picture taken from the video one of the students kept as a souvenir, trophy?—didn’t have the sense to destroy. Gloating grinning faces applauding the st
ream of urine going into the potjiekos from one whose back’s to camera. Legs sturdily planted apart.

  —I don’t want to see.— Blessing’s hand up to her eyes.

  Peter with a laugh bursting as a rude noise. —I don’t know why you’re all in such a state—man, isn’t it what you’d expect? Having what’s for them a good time.— But turning seriously on himself —So if the principal expels a couple of them, which ones? And divide the rest up, some of the guys sent to this hostel, some to that? Punish them by having to live with students who see them as rubbish? Must be some in that place who know what that is, even in the Free State University. But what’ll they care, the rubbish. They should be kicked out. Not accepted at any university.—

  So. Anger. Revulsion to be satisfied by in-house punishment rap-over-the-knuckles of the ‘rubbish’. The law, justice as she learnt early on in an LLB correspondence course, is founded on the principle of perpetrator and victim. —None of us—not the newspapers he’s brought—is talking about the cleaners, the lowest at the bottom of our pile. Who’s thinking about the men and the women invited to the ‘party’? Who’s asking if the university Convocation, their academic justice is justice for these people? There’s the law, redress under our Constitution. That’s the only justice.— The comrades (surely he) ought to see that. She’s donned authority like a black gown worn in court. —A university committee, senate, convocation—go as high as you like—they cannot send down a decision in terms of the Declaration of Human Rights. The students must come to account. A criminal indictment against them. Charged. Nothing else. Nothing less.—

  The relation, lover and comrade, to each other, is contesting, come alive. He trusts her suddenly come out in this aspect of herself, from her withdrawal that first day. A lawyer is for the victims, not one of them, no matter other, personal identification.