Loot

by Nadine Gordimer

  He did not come to claim love-making as often as he had back in that other hotel, her country. He had a great deal of work, a staff to direct, and she knew there was the apartment in some other part of the city where he lived with his wife; he had not talked about his family before he brought her to Italy, they couldn’t talk much then or now because of their lack of a fluent common language, their tongues in love-making were the only real form of communication they had in common. But now he would mention that he wouldn’t be coming to her from his offices next afternoon because his son had to be met at the airport or his wife was giving a cocktail party for her visiting relatives and he had to be home early. Although the city was a marvel surging around her she was more and more anxiously impatient to have work and belong to the city instead of being its spectator. Work and foreign currency to send back where she came from. And she also had the illusion—she knew it to be one—that she would pay him back, for the hotel, the trattoria, the clothes, in time; she would have liked the love-making not to be paid for in any way but the pleasure exchanged. But that, she knew, belonged to being in love. Men loved their wives. He loved his wife, she was sure of it, felt it; she had never had the chance to be in love.

  He found something for her. And for himself as well.

  It was not work, in Milan where he would be supposed to keep coming to her—perhaps there was some new woman for that diversion, or his wife was getting suspicious and difficult. But he treated his women kindly and it so happened that a solution came up to benefit everybody, satisfy what he felt was his wide family responsibility, uncles, aunts, cousins, as well. He told her, one weekend (she did not usually expect him in those periods it was taken for granted he would spend with his wife and children), he wanted to introduce her to someone in his family. Perhaps there was an opportunity because the wife was away, or the relative was one with whom he exchanged confidences over affairs with women, someone to be counted upon to be discreet. But she was surprised and shyly touched at this sign of letting her into his life. After an hour’s drive when the Alps were always present, approaching, withdrawing, as she followed this landscape that was Italy, the world, they came to a town, a large family apartment filled with imposing old dark furniture, generous food and wine laid out among the cries of people welcoming someone he told them he had saved from the chaos in Russia. They knew what a good man he was, generous. There was an aunt, another ample woman who might be her sister, a half-grown boy playing a computer game, the uncle, and a man who was the couple’s son. The Russian stranger had observed, in Milan, how difficult it was to gauge the age of certain foreigners; they might look slim and briskly young seen from the back and turn age-seamed faces in which the bones of the nose were almost emerging from the thin skin, or they might appear to be well-fleshed, stout-muscled young men, thighs and buttocks stretching tight pants, the fleshy jaws and earlobes not necessarily giving away middle age. The son was one of these, and his mature vigour was the epicentre of the gathering. He had his own apartment; the Russian girl and the cousin from Milan who had brought her were taken by the man—Lorenzo, the name was, among all the names presented to her—to see his apartment almost as if there were a reason for this, such as an estate agent showing a prospective dwelling to a client.

  There was a reason. The middle-aged son was not married; his parents did not know exactly why—there were a number of nice, goodlooking girls whose parents would have been only too pleased, lucky, to have a successful man with three butcher shops, two in town and another in a nearby village, as a son-in-law. There was some story of a love affair that had gone on for years with a married woman who wouldn’t divorce; apparently it was over, she’d moved down south with her husband to Naples. Confidentially, the aunt and uncle in family council had told their worldly Milanese nephew to look out for a suitable wife from among the many women he must know, it was time for a man of Lorenzo’s age and status to settle down. At the time, the Milanese nephew had raised high his eyebrows and pulled down his mouth; what city woman would want to come and live in a dull provincial town, among a few small factories and half-abandoned farms, nothing happening? But now there was a Russian girl he had brought from her wretched existence to his beautiful country out of kindness—yes, he fancied her for a while—and who would become a legal citizen by marriage to the son of one of the oldest families in a provincial town, what better solution to looking out for something for her! A well-off husband, every comfort, a man who could even afford to be generous and let her send money to her mother etc.—something she’d never have earned enough both to support herself and provide, by whatever humble work he might have found for her, a woman unable to speak the language, no qualifications but those of a chambermaid. He certainly wasn’t going to pay her keep forever, and anyway the particular arrangements through which he’d made her entry possible had a time limit about to lapse.

  Lorenzo came to Milan several times, something to do with a deal in hides, he tried to explain; he took her out to dinner in restaurants where the champagne bottles lolled in ice. He too, had a little English and praised her attempts at Italian, covering her hand with his in congratulation. He did not kiss her or make overtures to go to bed with her as she resignedly expected.

  No, he was getting to know her. It had been proposed that she would be a suitable wife. She was an émigrée in doubtful legal standing, she was not in a position to decide whether she’d prefer to live in the city with the Duomo or in a small town, she had no prospects of a job other than to improve her Italian enough to sit at a comfortable desk and answer the telephone, greet customers as the wife of the owner in his high-class butcher shop—it would add to his local prestige to be shown to have settled down. And maybe even if the wife was a foreigner that would only evidence his superior flair in matters other than the way he prepared each customer’s individual cut of meat with the skill and finesse of a surgeon.

  Her Milanese came to her little hotel room with a view of the Duomo not to make love to her but to tell her that there was a great chance for her. The papers he had arranged for her in a certain way were no longer valid; she would be deported, nothing he could do about that. Lorenzo was ready to marry her. She would become an Italian wife, belong to this beautiful country. Lorenzo was a good man, not old, a man any woman would—he stopped, spread open his hands. Love; he didn’t need to say it.

  He came from Milan for the wedding. The aunt had been with her to a friend of the family who owned a shop in the town that was a modest version of the shops whose perfectly-composed windows made clothes works of art in the narrow streets of Milan; she had a wedding outfit and hat but not the girlish convention of white and long veil. The vigorous maturity of the bridegroom would have made this unsuitable; who knew what her background was, anyway, in that savage unknown vastness, Russia. They had not made love before the marriage, as if that was part of the arrangement. His love-making was concentrated, nightly regular as his butchering during the days. They couldn’t talk much because of the language difficulty, again. There was no tenderness—but then she had not known any since that of her mother and grandmother towards her—but there was generosity: he insisted she buy herself whatever fine clothes she liked and presented her with jewellery, looking on at it with calculated pride, round her neck and on her wrists and fingers. Love-making between husband and wife was part of the rest of the days and nights, she went with him to his principal butcher shop in the morning, his customers who were all friends or long acquaintances of his family were introduced to her, smiled and congratulated her, lucky woman, and at night the couple came back to his apartment, cleaned and left in perfect order by a woman he could afford to employ daily. They lived on the primest of prime beef, cheeses and fruits exotic to her. She had never eaten so well in her life. In the first month of the marriage she was pregnant. He announced this to the whole family, his pride was theirs.

  She brought out her picture book of her city, where she was conceived and born, where she was the child, and displaye
d the photographs taken when she and her mother visited the ancient churches (maybe they were the most beautiful in the world). How else can the stranger show she too has her worth—she hasn’t come without a heritage. The husband’s mother was enchanted; look, look, she thrust the book at his father, tried to distract her sister’s adolescent grandson from his computer games. Lorenzo was again proud: so! His choice was not just some poor little foreigner from a frozen barbaric country ruined by communists, she had a provenance of ancient monuments, opera houses, churches, almost as Italy had her—unequalled, of course—treasures, which the family had never visited beyond those of Milan but knew of, owned by national right.

  He wanted to show this woman, carrying his child, where he was born. Not in the town with his two butcher shops, where his parents had retired? No. No, the farm that had belonged to his great-grandfathers, grandfather and father. Now was his. Over a weekend extended by a religious holiday on a Monday—some saint’s day or other—he was going to give her a treat there hadn’t been the opportunity for in what was supposed to be their courtship. He would take her into the country to see his cattle farm developed from the old farm, source of his wealth, of the good life he provided for her. Another uncle and cousin run the operation for him, with their wives, in the old homestead he’s renovated for them. Microwave, satellite TV—you’ll see. The latest model installations, raising cattle for the supply of high quality beef he sold not only in his shops but supplied to supermarkets and restaurants in Milan, Turin and beyond.

  She takes with her, shyly, knowing she won’t be able to have much conversation with these relatives, either, the picture book and the photographs of the city she has had to leave behind. She puts on her gold bracelets and the necklace with an amber pendant (she’d chosen that because amber comes from her part of the world) which falls at the divide of her wide-apart breasts he appreciates so much.

  It is a long drive—beautiful. Now and then she puts the flat of her palm on her stomach, she thought there was already a faint swell of the curve there; but really is amused at herself, all the prime meat they eat has made her less gaunt anyway. Whoever is in there—boy, girl—hasn’t grown enough yet to make the presence evident. She is very well, no morning sickness his aunt had warned her of; a healthy Russian woman become an Italian wife. She feels a sudden—yes, happiness, it must be? At thirty, a new sense of life. As he drives, she looks from the landscape to this man dutifully received so weighty on top of her every night, with a recognition that he, too, must need this sense.

  The old farmhouse shows its transformation to be his, as his gifts of fine clothes and jewellery transform her. When she uses the bathroom, it is all mirrors and flowered tiles. The new relatives embrace her, there is coffee and wine and cakes. Again the picture book and photographs go round; she summons her breathlessly hesitant words of their language to tell them the names of squares and churches, palaces. These glories that have survived are once more his wife’s distinctions—she, his acquisition. He is gratified by the enthusiasm for Russia’s old glory of these relatives who depend on him for their living:—You must go there one day.—In America it is said that people are booking trips to the moon …

  Then it was time for the uncle and cousin to take her, led by her husband who owns it all, round the cattle-breeding installation. To her, cows graze in fields in summer, they are part of the green peace of a landscape as clouds are of a sky. There are brilliant fields stretching way behind the house. But no cows. There are sheds huge as aircraft hangars, and a great machine beside a solid wall of crushed maize that smells like beer.

  Five hundred beasts. The owner knows his possessions exactly. In the hangars are five hundred beasts. The party is walked along the cement passage between each row, where the heavy heads face their exact counterparts on the opposite row. In front of each bowed head is a trough filled with the stuff that smells like beer. The huge eyes are convex blacked-out mirrors, expressing no life within. The broad, wet, black soft noses breathe softly upon the food. Some are eating; those that are not are in the same head-bowed position. They are chained by the leg. The bulk of each animal is contained—just—by the iron bars of a heavy stall; it cannot turn round. It can only eat, at this end of its body. Eat, eat. The butcher owner tells her: at six months, ready for slaughter. Prime.

  Then she is led down the backs of the rows. Vast rumps, backsides touch the iron bars, hide streaked and plastered with the dung that falls into a trough like the one for food. The legs are stumps that function to hold up bulk.

  She spoke only once—no need, the butcher owner keeps a running commentary of admiration of his beasts’ condition, market prices. She puts together in English, out of the muddle of languages that inhibit her tongue:—When they go out in the fields?—

  Never. They spend the six months in the installation. That is the way meat production is done today. They are gelded—know what that is—he demonstrates. That’s why they grow so fast and well!

  She puts out a hand to touch the head above the shining eye-globes and the creature tries to draw away in fear but cannot move more than a few centimetres to either side, or front and back of the iron bars.

  She turned from the men, absorbed in their talk and gestures, and walked out of the hangar looking only at the concrete under her feet. If the eyes followed her as she passed, she could do nothing for them. Nothing.

  She stands outside, the sweetish beer smell from the wall of crushed maize in her nostrils as in theirs. She is swollen with such horror, her body feels the iron bars enclosing her, the bars are before her eyes, she cannot turn about, escape to the house. She does not know where it comes from, this knowledge—happening to her—of how it is for them, beasts born dumb as a human being can be made dumbly unable to free itself. It is as if that brief moment of awareness—happiness—had opened her to something in her she didn’t, shouldn’t know, a real memory she couldn’t have had. There are many bad things endured in her abandoned, escaped life back—home—where the basilica from past centuries was world-renowned and her grandmother begged in the famous streets, her pension unpaid for years. But there is nothing, in her own record her life keeps, like this. And there is now, here, a child inside her seeded by the owner of these beasts in iron bars.

  When the men come out, he takes her arm.—Tired?—And to the other men, in their language—She’s expecting, you know.—The news is repeated, over grappa, at the house. This aunt embraces her. There is a toast to the new addition soon to be welcomed in the family. A child with an inheritance—going to be born lucky.

  She collected her picture book and photographs. At that moment she decided she would go there—home.

  Back.

  But to what?

  Instead she found someone who, with the exchange of her few words, money, agreed to give her an abortion. And she told the butcher she had miscarried.

  ‘The individual’s choice of a future earthly body is limited, however … ’

  No. Whoever the interpreter was who wrote that was in ignorance. Choice? That’s a temporal concept. There’s no choice because choice implies a fixed personality to make it. I am an old being Returned in the being of a child; I find I’m back as a man, or Returned again to continue his experience in another time, place, as a woman. The gender is only one of the forms of Return. But if there can be any remnant of what I once really was—‘really’: how meaninglessly relative that is in so many, many Returns—it is the sense that I’m somehow more fully inhabited, as a male, than when the Return is female. And to carry over being from the earthly death of a young male to a woman, with the vestiges of what he endured inevitably continued somewhere in her—I inhabit her, I am her—that something in me of course becomes part of her, her personality her character as a being, although she doesn’t know the reason.

  And within her, a maleness I harbour resents this being—hers—as the victim she is in this phase of possible existences.

  The first fish propelling itself by its fins over the sli
me to sand. That’s when it all started.

  They tell so.

  And death: that’s the end. Dead. They think I’m gone, but it’s a process, lingering, between this past and that, lived. Can’t call it memory? Something not even collective memory, because nobody comes back from the dead do they, to tell? I’m only some kind of answer—invented, dreamed into being?—to their awful fear of death everyone has from the beginning of earthly consciousness.

  They think I’m disappearing, but always they’re disappearing from me. Left behind. For this time.

  I don’t know in which Return I first heard about it. Read about it, it seems. I wish I never had. I believe if you don’t know of some possibility, you’ll never have to live it. Outside your orbit. Absurd, really, because I then must already have been a Return, the only sure, actual beginning is the fish—and even it had had a form of being in another element.

  It must have been one of the Returns in which I had become middle-aged, even old—certainly adult, with a developed intellectual curiosity. Most times I was young, or a child. Short-lived: at once available again. Must have been when I was a being dissatisfied with the explanations of human life on offer: given in churches, synagogues and mosques; or simply had the kind of restless mind that seeks out explanations in etymology and philosophical tracts and treatises. ‘Karma. The sum and consequences of a person’s actions during the successive phases of his existence, regarded as determining his destiny. Fate, destiny. Sanskrit karman (nominative karma), act, deed, work, from karoti, he makes, he does.’ The garble of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. And there are other interpreters. ‘The doctrine of karma or transmigration … is intimately associated with the philosophy of the Upanishads.’ I don’t believe I ever read the Upanishads. Then there’s: ‘Officials, too, are subject to the laws of karma—that sooner or later every action brings its retribution, in this existence or in one to come.’ And another: ‘ … karma can be seen as the law of “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth” … but such an interpretation is not only a simplification, but also a severe limitation. ’