None to Accompany Me

by Nadine Gordimer

  The man whom experiences had bowed to one side and shorn of his hair turned up at Vera’s office to see if there might be something for him—a research job, anything; he had been back three months and could not find work. He had been a journalist on an often-banned small paper when they knew one another long ago. While she tried to make some suggestions, where he might find employment and—she had to offer—she would be able to put in a word for him, there lay between them the knowledge that he was—had been—suspected of being a police agent at one time, and when he fled the country, although apparently cleared of this suspicion, he was mixed up in some schismatic defection. This was what he was, to her; she did not know whether he had been reinstated among the exiles abroad and whether or not he had returned with the status of one fully accepted within the Movement—knowing him only in the persona of the past, she saw that that persona might have inveigled by some subterfuge the status to return under indemnity, supposedly vouched for by the Movement.

  But if there were ambiguous feelings subsuming the enthusiasm of welcome and the obligations it carried, there was also the overwhelming sense of good times impossibly restored. Among the people who were returning were some the sight and sound of whom, their very mannerisms and turn of phrase, were proof that such times are carried along within the self.

  When a railway line is abandoned, the tracks aren’t taken up. Under weeds and grass, they remain, marking a route. For the Starks, with Sibongile and Didymus Maqoma suddenly sitting in the Starks’ living-room again after more than twenty years, there was the unexpected warmth and understanding, across the conditioned inhibitions of colour, between couples sharing youth and the ties of children. Now again, in the presence of Sally and Didy, the Starks were the lovers in an affair continuing in the protection of domesticity, expansive towards others in the bounty of sexual happiness. Vera had not seen Ben as the woman at a party once had, his male allure, for a long time, had not even been aware, in her familiarity with him and her preoccupations, of not seeing him. He, Bennet Stark, was still there, with only the deep lines from the corners of those lips to that fine jaw to mark him, as if in the conduct of his life he had sculpted his own face.

  She exchanged again with him the side-glance smile of complicity, displayed the coquetry of joking reproaches that claimed him as hers, the recognition of his judgment in quoting him on this matter or that, which was the atmosphere the young couples used to generate between them. The class difference set by white privilege had been rather less than was usual between whites and blacks. Didymus was an articled clerk then, in a law firm, as Vera had been a few years before, Sally ran a black cooperative and ambitiously attended the extramural classes Bennet taught at the university, moonlighting for the money. That was how they met—through Bennet, and made the discovery that there was a link in that both their partners had chosen law. Of course, Vera had the house that had come to her with divorce, and the Maqomas lived in Chiawelo, Deep Soweto; Didymus carried a pass. But the Maqomas, both politically active, even then had open confidence that they would be among those who would destroy white privilege sooner or later, and pragmatically made use, as of right—and this was recognized unembarrassedly by the Starks—of the advantages the white couple had. It was more pleasant to pool the children in the Starks’ run-wild garden on a Sunday than to have the Starks over in the two-roomed Chiawelo place, although the Stark couple enjoyed breaking the law of segregation, from the comfort of their side, by coming at night into Chiawelo to listen to jazz recordings—Didymus was a collector and himself played the trumpet in those days!—and drink and perhaps dance, bumping into Sally’s well-polished furniture.

  Sally and Didy now back in the same living-room in the same house where the four of them had been together so many times, talking across one another in the same animation. The Maqoma boys might have been there, in Vera’s house, as they often used to be, come to spend the weekend, Ivan might have been there, sharing his schoolboy room with them, and, down the passage, the disdainful small girl, Annie, against whom they ganged up.

  It was not nostalgia Vera was experiencing on such occasions, but something different: a sense of confrontation with uninterpreted life kept about her, saddled on her person along with the bulging shoulder bag always on her arm, her briefcase documenting inquiry into other people’s lives.

  Didymus Maqoina, whose whitening curls sat like the peruke of a seventeenth-century courtier worn stately on his black head, and Vera Stark with the haircut of a woman who has set aside her femininity, in this joyful reunion of friends gave no sign, even to one another, that it had not been twenty years since these two had seen each other. One Saturday morning five years ago Vera, alone in the house, had answered a ring at the door. A black man with a scanty peppercorn beard round lips and chin, wearing thick glasses and the collar of a clergyman, stood there. He did not speak, or before he could, she gave her usual response to anyone in the racket of purporting to collect church funds. —Sorry, I’ve nothing for you.—

  The man smiled. —How mean of you Vera.—

  It was long before the encounters in the street where people waited to be reassured by recognition, to have confirmed the claim that they were back. There were no indemnities, there was no lifting of bans on political movements. The last thing the man looked for was to be recognizable. To be recognized was to be hunted. Didymus, he said.

  As if she had dropped up to the neck in a pit alarm for him engulfed her. She took his arm and pulled him inside, kicking the door shut. She did not need to be told that he somehow had been smuggled into the country, and that he had a purpose about which she must not ask. Her nervous amazement broke hysterically. — Umfundisi! You look so funny! No—no, you look dead right, that kind of Sunday suit, and the collar frayed, where did you get kitted out so perfectly—

  They were both grinning with emotion. —We have our network in the shops down Diagonal Street. One week I’m a labourer with cement on my shoes, torn overalls and a woollen cap down to my eyes, next week I’m in a three-piece blue with a white cap, a soccer promoter from Jabulani.—

  They were walking through the house, weaving about each other, she was out of breath.

  —Are you all right? Do you think they know—

  —No, so far it’s okay. But I can’t stay in the same place too long. I can’t stay with anyone who has any connection … As soon as neighbours want to be nice to me, I have to disappear. Move on.—

  —I’d heard you were ill, you had something awful— leukemia?—you were being treated in Moscow.—

  —Yes, that’s right, I’m out of action sick in Moscow. I’ve been here six months.—

  She was looking at him, head on one side, thrilled by the audacity. —Six months!—

  They were in the kitchen, she was distractedly picking up cups and putting them down, turning on her heels to rummage in a drawer for spoons, forgetting whether she had or had not switched on the kettle.

  She talked fast at him, as if the house were surrounded and at any moment there would be a hammering on the doors—and what would she say? Where would she hide him? She tugged the kitchen curtains across the window. —D’you need money— how do you manage, I mean. I haven’t much in the house, but I could go quickly to the bank—oh god, no, they close early on Saturdays—but how stupid, I can use my card at the machines—

  —Money is one thing I don’t need. That’s taken care of, thanks, don’t worry.—

  —Does Sally know?—

  —That I’m not dying in Moscow, yes. But not where I go. And other comrades in London believe I’m sick.—

  She was shaking the coffee jug to make the liquid drip more quickly through the filter, she didn’t know whether she wanted to get rid of him or take him and hide him away. —Ben’ll be home soon. Wonderful for him to see you. Can’t believe it! But I’m so afraid for you, what they’ll do to you if they catch you —you could just disappear, you know that, they keep infiltrators in solitary for months under interrogation, months a
nd months before they piece together enough to bring them to trial. If they ever do.—

  He looked as if he really were an old preacher, tranquilly breathing in the aroma of coffee steam, adding another spoon of sugar like a poor man making the best of luxury. But coaxing irony surfaced from his own identity: —You’ll defend me, if I come to trial, Vera, I count on you.—

  —Lot of use I’d be.— What would she do if the police did come, what if they were waiting somewhere hidden in the street, sitting in a car, ready to take him as he walked out of her gate? —I hope Ben won’t be long.—

  —I must go before Ben comes. Vera, there is something I do need. I’ve got things here I want you to send overseas for me. But not by post. If you have someone, if you know someone who’s flying out and won’t ask questions—they can post them somewhere in Europe, doesn’t matter, anywhere.—

  She took the letters and a package, claiming trust, not necessary to add any assurances. As she saw him to the door, a rush of rejection of fears swept her, she walked out with him into the street, they were ambling together in full view of neighbours, police, anybody who might be witnessing them from watching houses, the eyes of windows, crossing and rounding the corner in the middle of the street where they could not fail to be seen, arm in arm to where, for discretion so that it would not mark her house, he had left a car. And there they embraced goodbye: the open stare of the street fixed on them.

  If no one finds out, it’s as if it never took place.

  It was not the first time Vera had experienced something she never revealed. Only five years of silence had passed this time; but Ivan was more than forty years old. So it comes about that the precedent of lying by omission becomes a facility that serves a political purpose just as well.

  Sibongile and Didymus Maqoma regained their names when they came back. In exile they had had code names; there would always be many people in the outside world who would know them by no other. Addressed by these names, they would react—answer—to them as they would to the names given them, attached as an umbilical cord to the location outside a coalmining town (Sibongile, daughter of a Zulu mother and Sotho father) and the steep hut village folded in maritime hills (Didymus, in the Transkei) where they were born and first answered to a name at all.

  They did not go back to the little house where they were young—probably a slum by now, with the crush of people doubling-and tripling-up for somewhere to live—unthinkable to live in Chiawelo, anyway. They spent the first few weeks in a Hillbrow hotel that had been taken over as a reception centre for returning exiles. It had been a drinking-place for working-class white toughs and their women, and the cheap orange carpeting was stained with beer and pitted with cigarette burns. Stretched tapes on the music diffusion system repeated themselves through twenty-four hours, day and night. Sibongile stripped the beds to look for vermin. She felt them on her skin, sleepless, although they were not there.

  The plane-loads of returning exiles who were arriving every few days were awaited at the airport by chanting and dancing crowds; when they came through the automatic doors that closed behind them on the old longing for home, when they emerged pushing squeaking chariots charged with the evidence of far places, carrying airport store giant teddy-bears, blind with excitement in the glare of recognition—not, at once, of who they were individually but of what they stood for, the victory of return—a swell of women’s ululating voices buffeted them into the wrestle of joyous arms. Children seen for the first time were tossed from hands to shoulders, welcome banners were trampled, flowers waved, bull-horns sounded, the hugging, capering procession of transit to repossession, life regained, there outside the airport terminal, was a carnival beyond belief it would ever be possible to celebrate. Home: that quiet word: a spectacle, a theatre, a pyrotechnic display of emotion for those who come from wars, banishment, exile, who have forgotten what home was, or suffered not being able to forget.

  The Maqomas of course had not come on one of the crowded charter flights and their reception was less flamboyant though no less emotional. Didymus was a veteran of the inner circle in exile, one who for all those years had been involved in international missions and certain other important activities, and they were met by comrades equal to him in rank within the internal organization. A car was waiting for them, driven by one of the young returned Freedom Fighters now deployed as Security men. Home. They slept, that first night, in what used to be a forbidden white suburb at the house that had been acquired for one of the most important leaders. But it was understood they could not stay; the room would be needed for other transients in the to-and-fro now established between representatives from the Movement’s missions in other countries. A comfortable room with the niceties of bedside reading lamps, a supply of Kleenex, a television set, a room where bags were never unpacked. Until a house or flat could be found they would have to live in a hotel —there was, in fact, a hotel provided for just such an unavoidable interim.

  Sibongile came to Didymus with a blanket held draped over her raised palms. He had no idea what for, but was always patient with her sense of drama.

  —I can’t live like this.—

  —What is it?—

  A crust of something whitish-yellow dried in a smear on the hairy surface.

  —What is it!— Her rising laugh, a cry. She thrust the evidence at him.

  —Oh. That. Yes.— Semen, someone’s seed.

  —I can’t live like this, I can tell you.—

  —Sibo, you’ve lived much worse. It didn’t kill us.—

  —At the beginning, years ago, yes. It was necessary. In Dar, in Botswana. But now! My God! I’m not running for my life. I’m not running from anybody any more, I’m not grateful for a bit of shelter, political asylum (the blanket dropped at her feet, her hands lifted, palms together in parody of the black child’s gesture of thanks she had been taught as a little girl). This’s not for you and me.—

  —What can they do about it? They can’t find accommodation for everyone overnight. Give it another week or so … —

  —Accommodation. How long can we be expected to carry on in this filthy dump, this whore-house for Hillbrow drunks, this wonderful concession to desegregation, what an honour to sleep under the white man’s spunk.—

  —What about all the others living here … it’s no better for them.— He was confronting her with herself, as she was every time she entered the foyer of the hotel or walked through the room smelling of cockroach repellent that was the restaurant, embracing unknown women, men and children in the intimacy of shared exile and return.

  She had a way of screwing up her eyes and opening her mouth, lips drawn back, mimicking the expression of someone straining to hear aright. —If you’re happy to come back to this from your meetings of the NEC, your big decisions, no complaints … —

  —How can I have complaints when so many have come back to nowhere at all. At least we have dirty blankets.—

  She ignored the smile. —And how does that help them?—

  It was Vera Stark to whom she suddenly felt she could unburden herself; the farce of self-sacrifice when it was not necessary might have to be kept up with the wife of the leader in whose house she and Didymus had spent the first night, but Vera, while counted upon to understand perfectly the necessity for such tactics within that circle, was outside it. There were whites who had been in exile, but Vera had not; there were whites who shared the wariness of return, Vera was not one of them. Unburden to her and, by implication of a grant of intimacy, place responsibility on her.

  When Vera answered the telephone with the usual cheerful how-are-you, there was a pause.

  —Lousy.— And then that cry of a laugh.

  Vera, good old Vera, didn’t make the usual facilely sympathetic noises. —Let’s have lunch today. Have you time?—

  —I just have to get out of this place.—

  On the site of the small restaurant where young Vera and her wartime lover had sat longing to embrace, the place now transformed into a
takeaway outlet with additional vegetarian menu and tables open to all races, Sibongile was first to arrive. Her crossed legs were elegant in black suede boots draped to the knee.

  —I love those boots. London boots.—

  Vera had the generosity, towards women who still make their appearance seductive, of a woman confident that she was once successfully seductive herself and now knows she may only occasionally, and in an abstracted way, herself be merely pleasing.

  The two women kissed and each gave a squeeze to the other’s arm as men greet one another with a mock punch.

  —Do you? Yes, London. I suppose they give me away.—

  They ordered a meal. Vera, whatever was the special for the day; her guest reading up and down the menu and asking for what was not on it—fish, was there no fish? The waiter smilingly patient, addressing her respectfully as mama, persuasive in what he somehow correctly divined was their shared mother tongue that this dish or that was (back to English) very, very nice, tasty.

  Vera read the message of the fish. Lousy; everything lousy, not even possible to get what you wanted to eat.

  With the waiter gone the required time had passed for her companion to be able to speak. She described the hotel—the ‘accommodation’ she kept calling it, by turns derisive, angry, disgusted, despairing, and—being Sibongile, Sally—giggling sharply. —But Didy! I don’t know, he seems ready to accept anything, he’s meek! Like a rabbit, quiet, nibbling at whatever’s given to him.—