No Time Like the Present

by Nadine Gordimer

  While they were away Wethu continued her comfortable habits as if they were there, church on Sunday, settled that evening to the house TV with its wide screen in contrast to her small set, all there was space for in her cottage. The volume high for her to follow while she was heating inkomo stew to accompany ground corn isitambu, but she heard a repeated call from what must be the back gate, imploring again and again. She remembered to switch off the gas flame beneath the pot, picked up the gate key and went out into the twilight yard: must be one of her friends calling to the cottage. She pushed up her glasses, they were only for TV, she was farsighted but in this half-light couldn’t recognise either of the figures at the gate, just hands stretching through the bars as she appeared —Ousie, mama, please some water! Please please, just some water, water, we been running far, please.— In English like hers, whoever they are, expecting a white person to come from the house.

  Poor boys—she signalled a hand and went back into the kitchen; didn’t want strangers drinking out of one of Jabu’s good glasses, filled a plastic mug and hurried, slopping water a little, to the gate. As she handed the mug between bars it was dashed from her hand, the key chain dragged from her wrist tearing the skin over knuckles and twisting fingers. Panic knows no pace. At once, the two men were in the yard, she screamed and a fist was half in her mouth, she gagged and was thrust arms pinned behind her back, to the kitchen door, thrown into the house. —Where they keep the money, the guns— One was pushing her into the passage, a smooth strong young arm tight round her neck against the chin, the other man legs wide prancing backward —Checha wena! You know! Money and guns!— She struggled her head free, gasping a shout —Don’t know! How can I see they put . . .— There was a hefty canvas boot tramping on her belly, she was screaming and suddenly saw the youth’s face as it came up in the moment before he hit her —I can be your grandmother!—

  As it was still too cold for the pool to keep him on form one of the Dolphins working out on his bicycle and making for home in half-dark after completing four kilometres he’d set himself, heard screams coming from the direction of Steve’s house. The Suburb’s not a squatter settlement or sleazy Hillbrow where domestic quarrels and gang rivalries mean this is normal; but sometimes the children of these straight comrades play games that raise alarms. Once home, he thought he better call the Steve and Jabu house anyway, to see if all was well. When the phone rang and rang, not picked up, he hitched the mountain bike out of its stand again, thought he’d go round. No one came when he shouted at the front gate against the screams and gabble for help coming from the house, the back gate was open and light was a path from the open kitchen door. Kitchen empty. In what must be Steve and Jabu’s bedroom the woman who’s some sort of relative of Jabu lay sobbing and calling, tied up, in the midst of wardrobe doors gaping, desk drawers spilled to the floor, a dressing table with mirrors pushed wildly away, reflecting make-up, purses, a rifling search, bedside tables overturned—that’s where there’d be a gun . . .

  The Dolphins were wonderfully efficient; more than could be expected even of comrade neighbours. They summoned police and watchfully accompanied them in the search of the house—these days some of them might be light-fingered—helped hysterical Wethu with her statement, made coherent her familiarity with what she could tell had been taken, the widescreen she had been enjoying, the machines—didn’t know what a word-processor, fax, photocopier, were called—all was gone along with clothes, DVD player. Cut loose of her bonds she went frantically from room to room taking stock—even Sindi’s TV shame, shame, they should be ashamed of themselves— She had Steve or was it Jabu’s cell number but for some reason it made no connection, Wethu knew they’d gone to look at animals but didn’t remember the name of the place. The comrades from the Gereformeerde Kerk transformed in the time of the country’s freedom and their genders also, took Wethu home with them for the night, calmed and cared for her. As if she had been their grandmother.

  Steve, Jabu, Sindiswa and Gary Elias arrived back in the Suburb on Monday afternoon of the weekend apart.

  That was what was happening while we were reconciling with Africa in the bush. He doesn’t say it. As if it could be heard as some contribution to justification for the approach of November.

  The house: it was not there. He was seeing it, deserted, displaced. She is with Sindi and Gary Elias at the Dolphins’ being cared for in shock along with Wethu.

  The house.

  Things were gone—material things, don’t matter: order is gone. In advance. What’s been taken? Perhaps that’s relief, fewer things, less stuff to be packed up with what’s stacked already.

  Jabu took Wethu for an extensive examination at the family doctor. She was badly bruised, trampled purplish the brown pigment of her flesh, fortunately no ribs cracked or vertebrae damaged. While describing over and over under the doctor’s attention to her body, what the attackers had done to her she included or perhaps his hands released recollection—one of the men was someone among the out-of-work she’d seen often hanging about the garage where she’d come to know a petrol-pump attendant, he gave them odd jobs in return for some bread or a couple of cigarettes.

  This alerted Jabu professionally, away from the guilt she was struggling with, in herself acknowledging to Baba that she had left helpless Wethu alone in the city climate of savage lawlessness in which—yes, there’s no racism, Wethu’s black as you are while you kick and hit her.

  Jabu stops Wethu’s monologue. —You are sure. You’d recognise him? We’ll go to that garage and you’ll point him out. Show me. If you are sure, quite sure.— There’ll be a warrant for his arrest. Grounds for bodily harm as well as house-breaking, robbery. —To the doctor, fellow professional —I need a detailed report on her condition as result of the attack on a woman her age, physical and psychological.—

  —Yes, blood pressure’s high, that could be stress. I suppose you don’t know what her level was, before—at her age . . . blood pressure problems quite common.—

  Wethu is weaving her head as if being accused of the crime of age. And Jabu as if deftly discarding a piece of evidence likely to be negative. —I don’t think back home she will have had blood pressure check-ups . . .—

  Several visits to the petrol station with Wethu bring no possibility of arrest, of finding the attacker among the people-within-the-people, potential burglars and hijackers, street muggers. The young man whose face was recognised as he hit her was not to be seen. Eish, she was sure, Wethu was sure. She talked with her petrol attendant friend, they exchanged description of eyes, dreadlocks, scars, nose and ears; the man was no longer among the layabouts at the filling station. Did he, streetwise, know she might remember him? And the other attendants didn’t want to be connected with any trouble, have the police questioning them, a presence alarming to clients—where the police are there’s suspicion that crime is a risk to your person and your car—better drive on and fill up somewhere else.

  Sindiswa has moved Wethu into the house: her room. Sindi did not ask permission. With Gary Elias’s help simply carried Wethu’s bed from the outhouse cottage while Steve and Jabu were at the Dolphins’ in one of their many needs to thank them for what there were no adequate thanks. The move was discovered only when already accomplished.

  The daughter gave the order.

  —She can’t live there alone in the yard any more.— Sindi has a dependency of attachment to the member of Baba’s extended family she doesn’t have to—whom? Her mother, her father? She is a member of the extended KwaZulu family now.

  It’s something unexpected; to be understood. Sindiswa’s in a way more affected than Wethu herself. Whenever they can be alone, away from the laboratory, the Centre, Gary Elias—Wethu—Sindi—they must try to reason about this. Sindiswa’s disturbed by everything that’s happening—it’s not only the awful travesty of Wethu, the Wethu she loves—at that school (it’s what we wanted for her) the seniors are made aware, they’re kept informed, there’s no privileged shelter from facts that
there are schools without electric light or desks, no libraries or laboratories, the kids live in cardboard and tin shacks, this winter a candle or paraffin lamp fell and children were burned, died . . . And what about us? We adults, we’re always talking strikes, the rights of workers—some of the kids on scholarships at her school come from slum townships, the father isn’t paid enough to provide decent food, back in their homes.

  So what Jabu is saying: even children cannot be innocent.

  She has her precision. —Not guilty of the exploitation but not innocent of knowing about it . . . it’s all too confusing. For a child who isn’t really a child any more—not here. She told Wethu and me—one of the girls saw how the man who has a township store near where her family lives was beaten and the store set on fire, the girl’s proud of this, says he was cheating people, charges high prices for bread and baby food and firewood. Was he a man everyone knew, one of themselves? From the description given by the girl, and passed on by Sindi, seems to have been a Somali.—

  Xenophobia is being discussed while senior lecturer from department of psychology and adjunct professor of sociology are drawing coffee. Steve remarks aside to Lesego how what is externalised as xenophobia has wormed itself into a schoolgirl, classmate of his daughter, against the high human principles taught at that school.

  The man was a foreigner? But if he’d been a local who was overcharging? You don’t believe he’d be attacked, you don’t see that a capitalist (oh, a capitalist now, even a spaza shopman’s screwing the poor is a class issue, my Bra, economic). You think he’d’ve been allowed to exploit them if he’d been one of their own?—

  —Long as he was home black—

  They can have a down-mouth laugh, just between them at Steve’s, the white man comrade’s subconscious fear of racism in reverse—a local strain of xenophobia? That’s economic, too, isn’t it.

  Wethu lives with Sindi in the house yet still holds court during the day in her cottage with city friends, women from her church and the petrol attendant from the filling station, his seems more than the empathy from the church women; a kind of responsibility expressed for what her association with him brought upon her, the disrespect of vicious blows from a man who could have been her grandson.

  The right thing to do is send her, take Wethu home to KwaZulu. Baba. She would have had to be returned in good time before November anyway, that had been decided upon for unwanted emotional farewells, now more certain than ever. Wethu must feel threatened; horror proven to her there is no shelter, in the Suburb from the city that Baba’s daughter and her husband could provide, good people, family, though they were.

  Nothing is what’s expected: the old woman appeared not to hear when she was told she’s going home, even when Jabu went to her in the privacy of Sindiswa’s room, that temple of female adolescence, and gently explained in isiZulu, with all the traditional reverence between young and aged, that she would have been parting from this extended family soon; she knows they are going to another country.

  Sindiswa had walked in and listened.

  She followed her mother out, and to the living room, where her brother and father were about to play chess. Gary Elias set up the board and men while Steve watched at the flimsy distance of a television screen municipal strikers threatening weapons—sticks, clubs, anything they could pick up—against nurses, before angry, terrified patients in a hospital, a plaster-encased arm flung back and forth jerking across the camera’s vision.

  Sindiswa’s voice reduced everything else to mere noise. —Wethu’s coming to Australia.—

  Jabu’s eyes sharply silenced, stopped him, her knee rocked the chess table shivering the men as she cut off the other reality, of the city in whose midst they were. —I hope you haven’t given her that idea, Sindi.—

  The child (could you be a child while grown-ups made violence around you, entered this house of theirs and tied down trampled on the body) wasn’t to be deflected. Not only could Wethu not be returned to the chicken coop he had converted into a cottage, she could not be left behind where there is no respect for one of the grandmothers who could be attacked and beaten in exchange for a television set.

  —Wethu will go home, to Baba, she’ll be able to forget what happened here.—

  Sindiswa was scraping her foot up and down the floor in hard-won patience. —She won’t. She came here, she wants—she’ll go with us when we go.—

  Now he speaks to forestall Jabu. —Sindi. She’d be lost. Absolutely. In Australia. There’s no one there for her, lonely, lonely.—

  —She’ll find friends.— Sindiswa turns to challenge their discrimination. —If we are going to, why shouldn’t she.—

  —She speaks hardly any English . . . It’s entirely different, we have the same language, we’ve led the same kind of life—

  Does he, how can he explain to this exception, this child of—‘intimate integration’, love unknown to racism: the facts of life in this society aren’t the story of the bees and the birds . . .

  Fact is. The Suburb is the bourgeoisie of the comrades. We’re not, even in our mix, like the old-style whites, but we’re not living the life of the people though some of us are black—the Mkizes and Jabu, our syntheses Sindiswa and Gary Elias. Out of the mouths not of babes and sucklings but adolescents from the privilege of progressive schools your own pretensions are brought to you.

  —She’s got spirit, all right!— Jabu grants, Jabu exclaims.

  —But our Antigone standing for the wrong cause, your Centre wouldn’t brief her.—

  —Oh I think we would, not in this case, but for some other . . .—

  Bed is their tribunal, so little privacy when handing over, packing up not only the furnishings at what is resolving as a stage of life (as he had to carry her from the clandestine hideout over a threshold to the first house) but the certainty—the Absolute of the Struggle, left behind along with a present: a liberation, in a form that could never have been believed could come about. Happen. Well. A signal of the new generation always comes to take over. Mandela and Tambo from Luthuli, and on and on, the next and the next, an insolent Antigone . . . The freedom-born generation and how they’ll deal with the travesty that’s being made of freedom. ‘A better life’ lyric of a pop song outdated, into the trash emptied on the street by workers paid a wage the price of a cabinet minister’s cigars. How to get to sleep. Only animals can sleep at will. But it’s possible to do so on authority of at least one conviction.

  If the present could never have been foreseen you don’t therefore have the right to condemn Sindiswa and Gary Elias to grow up in it.

  The groups of the Left—communists, Trotskyites, probably no old Stalinist survivors—’are hardly more than a curiosity’ (triumphal sneer wheezed by Professor Craig-Taylor in the coffee shelter) a luta continua having been taken over as a black national rhetoric by an innocent-faced young man with a resuscitated Munich Beer Hall delivery, Julius Malema—he may be the Antigone in the era of sex change (that’s Marc’s quip as one of the Dolphins who’s got himself married, to a woman).

  There is a force which does not belong to the colonialist past that has asserted its rights in the African millennium: a political party. Traditional leaders in parliament, whether or not they are representative of all tribal origins with all nine languages, they support the customary rights of each. The amaZulu don’t circumcise, the AmaXhosa do. And this rite of entry to manhood has become money-making. —Like everything else.— Peter Mkize at a meeting in the city called under some acronym of human rights on the report that in the winter season of circumcision twenty boys are dead. —Why doesn’t our Minister of Health prosecute the crooks who butcher our young on the cheap, cut-price offered to parents who don’t want to pay the cost of the traditional practitioners in circumcision ‘schools’?—

  As a Zulu comrade Peter better be careful about sticking his neck out like this on the subject of manhood rites . . . The amaZulu rite decrees that their young males kill a bull with their bare hands—inc
luding prodding out its eyes, slow torture of the huge animal. An animal isn’t human, of course, but there has been an outcry by animal rights groups since this year’s performance of the ritual, made public when cameras reproduced the agony of the death. Zuma himself must have taken part in the ritual long ago, and you don’t go around questioning the humanity, morality of how the President attained his proven manhood with many wives and other women. Although she is the one who wanted them to accompany Peter to the meeting—Baba, did her father fulfil the rite, too . . . before, along with the rites of the church? It’s not a thought to repeat to her.

  In the coffee bar they turn to afterwards, restless with their reactions, a young man attached himself, confronting Peter where they sat along the counter. —Man, you one of those educated who want us to stay for ever doing what whites do, all the white shit, let men marry men that’s better custom not circumcision to make men, your brain from the old colonial time, it’s not Africa, for us, now.—

  —My brother, that’s not what I said. We keep our ideas, what’s called customs. But we must also keep them right, way they were before, you know what that means, they weren’t a way of making money—you hear what I’m saying? Circumcision, always done by our special men—experts, you understand? They knew how to do it and nobody died, no boy had what he was going to be as a man’s body messed up for him? Now anybody with a kitchen knife tries to do it, it’s cheap, you don’t pay much and you’re finished, for life.— Peter made a slashing gesture between spread thighs.