None to Accompany Me

by Nadine Gordimer

  Ben—Ben was negotiating finance for the new enterprise in which he had involved himself. Promotional Luggage. She made staggering, clownish movements of hands and head when, that evening, she heard the name, the term. What did it mean?

  The gestures offended. He read scorn or ridicule into them, and she felt exasperation at having to deny these. He had to be coaxed to explain coldly. Suitcases and briefcases designed exclusively for executives, to their requirements and incorporating their logos in materials superior to some embossed stamp. Custom-made. Business has its jargon just as the test-cases of the Foundation have. After a bath to wash away the ancestral instruction from beneath the earth and the sense of lying, herself, buried in One-Twenty-One with reality windswept and forlorn ignored above her head (for if you deny any time, any part of your life, you have no continuity of existence), she dressed and perfumed herself to go with Ben to a business dinner. They agreed it was inexplicable that people in business seem to have no feeling for the privacy of leisure; apparently they are lonely after the occupation of the day and want to fill this vacuum with a continuation of the same company and the same talk over an extended taking of food and drink.

  He looked at her in detail, a sculptor’s eye for line and volume, her legs patterned in a filigree of lacey black stockings, her waist marked with a wide belt, her face made up sufficiently to conform with what would be expected of her. For her it was a calculation; for him it put something of the fascinating distance between them that had existed when he first saw her, unapproachable, somebody else’s wife.

  —You look lovely.—

  —My old glad rags.—

  In the car he took up what her banal show of modesty provided the opportunity to say. —Unless I do something about making some money now we’re going to be without resources when we’re really old. (My god, I’m beginning to use their vocabulary.) Hard up. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what Promotional Luggage is about.—

  They had never talked about provision for some long survival. A country where there was so much death—why should you need to choose your own solution. —If you can believe we’re going to live so long.—

  —It’s easy to think there’s the option of dying before you run out of cash.—

  —We’ll always have somewhere, Ben. We’ve always got the house.—

  She had taken him in there, into the booty from her relationship with another man; he had given up the idea of becoming a sculptor to provide for her through Promotional Luggage. She put out a hand and squeezed his thigh, a compact, one of the bargains constantly negotiated by marriage.

  The restaurant is called the Drommedaris, after the ship that carried the first European to the country; it’s fashionable for cartels that own hotels and restaurants to feel they honour history and claim patriotism with such names. History and patriotism implying settler history and patriotism. They are the clubs whose entry requirements are that the applicant shall be expensively dressed and willing to pay one hundred per cent profit on a bottle of wine. The password comes from the client’s own cabalistic vocabulary—promotion—and is evidenced without being pronounced: up-market. Everyone’s main course is served at the same moment by waiters who, taking the cue from the senior among them like members of an orchestra with one eye on the conductor, simultaneously flourish silver-plated covers from the plates. Revealed are not four-and-twenty blackbirds (she catches Ben’s eye across the table) but attempts at culinary distinction and originality that combine incompatible ingredients in—fortunately—an unidentifiable mixture. Eat. It’s expensive, therefore it’s a privilege, she admonishes herself. It you don’t like it, you’re a prig. Between courses a fake silver egg-cup of watery ice cream is served that coats the palate it is supposed to clear for more eating; a ritual someone in the cartel has picked up in eagerness to claim elegance as well as history, patriotism etc.

  The galleon decor is not inappropriate to the conversation, for the men frequently speak of this or that absent colleague being ‘taken on board’ some enterprise. And there are others referred to as small fry; the fingerlings in the sea of business. Women are expected to talk to other women, she knows that, and does not attempt presumptuously to engage the host, on whose right hand she has been placed (the position to be interpreted as recognizing a woman’s husband having been taken on board). He assiduously signals a waiter to fill her wineglass and passes with surface attention friendly remarks suitable to feminine interests (Just like my wife, she’s always removing those chunks of ice they put in the water. Where do you have your holiday house—Plettenberg?—do try some of this, looks exciting doesn’t it oh I agree the Cape is too windy but I’m out in my ski-boat, that’s my passion, Yvonne’s a girl for winter holidays, game parks, you know, all that).

  There’s one exception to the contented dinner table purdah in which women chat to one another under the vociferous competitive exchanges of the men. An Afrikaner, dressed, coiffured and made up in the television-star style of an indeterminate age that will never go beyond forty while at the same time adopting every change of fashion, flashing her mascara-spiked eyes from this speaker to that, clinking gold and ivory bracelets and neon-coloured jumbo watch as she laughs in the right places, calls out a tag punch-line now and then that reinforces attention to the male speaker rather than draws it to herself. Some group’s public relations director, a prototype of how, in the choice of a female for the job, the display of possible sexual availability may be exploited to combine with suitably acquired male aggression. Poor thing; she comes clip-clopping into the ladies’ room on high-heeled hooves and behind the door there is the noisy stream of her urine falling, she’s even taught herself to piss boldly as a man. Or perhaps that’s wronging her—she comes out and smiles, My God I was bursting, hey, sorry.

  At the table the host stands courteously to see his right-hand partner seated again, they know how to treat a lady. There are cigars and small fruits encased in glassy hardened sugar, as Coca-Cola and buns are distributed at treats in the townships whose workers are being discussed. A recent strike in the cardboard container trade is being compared with that in the tanning industry. Opposite Vera a man keeps pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and breathing heavily in readiness for an opening to speak. At last: —We told them—called them all together with their shop steward, I don’t talk to those fellows on their own, eh, you only get told afterwards he didn’t have a mandate—we said, look, you can bring your wives (hands chopped edge-on to the table, then lifted) you can bring your children (hands again) you can bring the whole bang shoot, we’ll give you blankets, we’ll supply food, so you won’t have to risk anything coming to work. Most of them said fair enough, you know? I feel sorry for them, we genuinely wanted to help, they can’t afford to lose two days’ pay and they can’t risk being beaten up if they come to work—so it’s a solution. But there was one guy who said no, he has to stay away. Not for political reasons, no, no. So he said. But because he can’t leave his house for two days, in the township. He hasn’t got locks on the doors … So I said … (waiting for the laugh) so I said, all right. Don’t come to work Monday and Tuesday. All right. But then don’t come back on Wednesday.—

  Through muffled background music inescapable as a ringing in the ears a cry comes from farther down the table: —Hands in the till! Everywhere you look. I could tell you many more instances … this Government’s become as corrupt as the blacks’ states. If they’re going to lose power, they’re going to make sure they give over a ruined economy. Positively last sale. Everything up for grabs. D’you know what’s happening in the pension funds—

  There’s another who sits back with the care of one who has drunk too much, but a rush of words upsets the balance: —I think I’m a damn fool to be negotiating labour deals with the black unions. I ought to be learning how to get my hand in the till and get out. First thing they’re going to do when they get into power, you can own only one property. So bang goes my trout farm, no more invitations for you boys
to come down and fish …—

  How she sees them laugh it off, their confidence in themselves makes a joke of their fears, they will always find a way to dine on board the Drommedaris no matter what government comes, the power of being white has been extrasensory so long, they feel it within them like a secret ability to bend metal by looking at it. If they ‘get out’ they will come back; we shall ask them to. She is the only woman who has accepted a cognac (the public relations director made the approved female choice of a sweet liqueur) and she’s joined the party on the ship of fools but (too much wine, as well) for her it’s a listing oil tanker she’s on that will spill its cargo to slick territorial waters round the new state.

  Why do I drink on these occasions? Why does duty make me drink? She sat in the car beside Ben, going home. What have I done, to put him in such company, what have I done to him.

  But why me? What has he done to himself?

  In the morning, they were in the mood to laugh over the evening. ‘Hand in the till’ became itself a password between them for ironic judgments in their private language.

  The pulsations of perception throb, and die down. Throb again. How, in the end, between the swirling newspaper and slimy drains of the roof-top hidden from the streets and One-Twenty-One, evidenced as testimony bared to the sky; the probabilities in London of fulfilment or unhappiness in attachment to a redhead whose photograph was not sent; the claim of the ancestors and its codification in a land policy paper that may deprive business associates of river frontage for weekend trout-fishing, Better I see nothing, Don’t come back on Wednesday— how, between all these, will you know, will you recognize the beat: this is my self.

  Chapter 9

  What happens, happens early in the morning, when the hand with the blue vein raised from outer wrist-bone to the base between first and second finger feels for the switch on the radio. Sometimes as he draws the hand back she takes it for the return to life, and closes her eyes again, waiting for the news; his hand and hers, the warm pulse palm-to-palm of a single creature who exists only while bodies are still numb in half-consciousness. The news is brought to you by this bank or that with its computer services and thirty-two-day deposit convenience at maximum interest. There are wars and famines too far away to stir response: there are coups and drought drawing nearer, there are the killings of the night, still closer. Some mornings, attacks on farms; a white farmer shot, the wife raped or killed, money and car missing. Taken. ‘Taken’ to mean the motive is robbery; as if robbery has a single meaning in every country at every period. Take cars, take money, take life. These mornings robbery means taking everything you haven’t got from those who appear to have everything: money, a car to sell for money, a way of life with house and land and cattle. Otherwise, why kill as well as rob? Why rape some farmer’s ugly old wife? No violence is more frightening than the violence of revenge, because it is something that what the victim stands for brings upon him. It is seldom retribution for a personal deed, of which innocence can be claimed. The rape has nothing to do with desire; the penis is a gun like the gun held to a head, its discharge is a discharge of bullets.

  She lies in a body-warmed bed, the first refuge after birth and the last, for those fortunate enough to die a natural death.

  What happened one morning was the sudden startle of the word ‘Odensville’ in the newsreader’s bland recital. ‘Nine people were killed and fourteen injured in violence at the Odensville squatter camp last night. The clash occurred when a local farmer, leading a group of armed supporters, tried to evict the squatters. Police report that it is unclear whether the bullet wounds sustained were the result of the group’s action or of cross-fire from the squatters. An AK—47 and three Makarov pistols were recovered at the scene. The farmer, Mr Tertius Odendaal, said that he had called by radio the local farmers’ defence commando when the squatters were spotted approaching his house under cover of darkness, carrying stones and weapons.’

  The Foundation had been unsuccessful in keeping any contact with the farmer Odendaal. The day he shut his door in the face of its lawyer, her driver, and the squatters’ spokesman, Zeph Rapulana, was the end of negotiation with him. Communication was with his lawyer. Rapulana came to the city a number of times to confer with Vera on the squatters’ options in a course of action. It had become clear to her that it was best for the Foundation to be guided by this man, rather than the other way about. He read, enquired, informed himself of all the intricacies of legislation, so that her task was simply to formulate procedure; there was a zest in working together with a plaintiff rather than taking over decisions for the helpless, which was her function most of the time. He sat quietly watching her, in her office, while she walked about going over exasperatedly her attempts to talk to Odendaal. His alert patience had the effect of taking the place of her own customary manner in that office; he was the one listening to her without showing reaction, as she listened to others. It was a curious kind of release, almost a pleasure, that created ease between them. He had ready what he was going to say, but a natural respect for the views of others made him hear out what might modify his own. There were homely colloquialisms in his command of English, a little out-of-date, with its careful grammatical construction, in comparison with the spliced improvisations—TV jargon, Afrikaans and tsotsi slang, mother-tongue syntax, mixed with English—of city people like Oupa or the Foundation’s black lawyers. —Odendaal won’t budge. We can abandon any idea of that nature. Our only possibility is to sup with the devil. Take a long spoon. Yes … The agents of the Government who put us in our position are the ones we must shame into getting us out of it.—

  —Count on the Provincial Administration? Well … —

  —Odendaal has threatened to bring the AWB 1 with their guns to evict us. It doesn’t look very nice, does it? In the present political climate, the Government surely doesn’t want too many press reports of blacks being forced out of their homes. That still going on.—

  —Their hands would look clean. It would be the work of the right-wing rebels.—

  —Even so. They’d be asked why they didn’t do something about it. That’s where we step in. Take the bull by the horns. He applied to the TPA2 to build a black township on his land, we apply now to the TPA to appropriate the farm and declare it a transit settlement, for a start.—

  —Worth a try. Our case would be that it’s an initiative to avoid violence in an area of dangerous contention. I suppose we could lead with this.—

  Making light of their ‘conspiracy’, they grasped hands that day; sat down together over the formulation.

  That other clasp, two hands joined to make one creature, broke apart. Out of bed she stumbled to find the sling bag with the address and telephone book she kept handy when away from the office. She summoned the well-trained orderliness of her working mode in order not to think—anything— not to ask of herself the name of one of the nine dead until she reached the telephone and heard it answered. Zeph Rapulana was a squatter but he had given her the number of a relative in a nearby township who had a store and lived behind it; there was a telephone, whether in the house or the store she didn’t know. It must have been in the store, and so early in the morning the store was not yet open. The telephone rang and rang. It seemed to her an answer: Rapulana would never reply again, anywhere. She called through the bathroom door to Ben in the shower, something terrible has happened, she has to go at once—he came to the doorway streaming. —What? What is it all about? What happened?— He naked, she dressed, it was an encounter between strangers. He called out after her, Don’t go there alone! Vera, do you hear me!

  But she was alone. He didn’t know the man, Zeph Rapulana. He hadn’t stood before Odendaal’s anger, Odendaal’s barred door, with him, made decisions affecting families with him, hadn’t come to read the dignity, the shrewdness of confidence and intelligence in that calm black face of the man. She drove first to the empty Foundation—no one at work yet—to pick up documents relating to the Odensville affair. Well alon
g the highway, she remembered she had not left a note, and turned off at a petrol station to telephone her office. The young switchboard operator could hear the voices of the petrol attendants, laughing and arguing over a game of cards set out on the ground, and the jabber from their radio. —Where you partying already, in the day, Mrs Stark!—

  She drove; a mind caged back and forth between the witness of the empty office where Zeph Rapulana had talked reason and strategy, the desk from which she had sent the letter to the TPA, and the collage, made up of so many press photographs, so many leaping and falling, running figures on TV, so many burning shacks, so many dead slumped on the earth as so many bundles of blood-stained washing. There was no connection. Before a reply to the letter, hers and Rapulana’s, could be received through the authorities, before bureaucracy had ‘taken steps’, the solution to everything had taken steps—deaths, again deaths.