My Son's Story

by Nadine Gordimer

  What is the meaning of the death of nine comrades we honour today? Nine young people who were hardly yet grown to be men but who were men in their resistance to the people who have surrounded and terrorized you in your homes. These young comrades and thousands of others who have been killed by apartheid’s agents, the police, the army, the witdoeke, have given to the struggle their share of the future the struggle is going to win for us. They will never share with all our people in the country’s wealth, instead of working to provide thirteen percent of the population with the highest standard of living in the world, while the majority of the people cannot feed their children. They will never know what it is to get out of ghettos like this one and live where there is electricity and clean running water in decent houses. They will never know the time when our sick will no longer lie on the floor in apartheid hospitals while there are wards full of empty beds in hospitals for whites; when our old fathers and mothers will no longer have to starve on pensions a fraction of those whites get. They will never know the single and open education for all, never mind colour or race, our democratic education will establish, and they will not know that the migratory labour system, which now divides husbands and wives, parents and children, and has created the prostitutes, the homeless children of the streets, and the spread of the terrible disease called AIDS, will be a horror of the past. They will never walk on our land, our land restored to the people, instead of being sent away after the day’s work to urban rubbish heaps like this and to rural resettlement slums in areas of our country given tribal names and called foreign states’. They will never live in the unitary, non-racial, democratic country our struggle is going to create. They have died without freedom; but they have died for freedom. Our freedom. We have heard from a young comrade who is not up there on the hill pointing a gun at us, although he is white. The presence of our white comrades from the city here today is surely proof that the nine died also for their freedom. They died for the freedom of all the people of this country who want to see oppression destroyed and are ready to join the people’s struggle to achieve this. That is the meaning of the death of the nine, for us.

  When such young men die it’s usual to speak of a senseless death. There’s anger that a life should be so short and brutally ended. Well, for those who shot and killed these nine young comrades last week these really are senseless deaths, because this killing, and all the other killings of our people in the ghettos and in the prisons, will not stop us from winning our freedom. That, for this government, is the meaning of the deaths of the nine young comrades who lie buried here. That is the message. They are senseless deaths, because no amount of killing will mean that the oppression of our people can continue to survive. No violence against us can shoot down the struggle for peace and justice.

  How much of this blew over in the wind to the formation on the hill is not known, but the litany of freedom cries that interrupted Sonny at expected points (he knew when to pause for them) certainly must have. Father Mayekiso’s closing prayer did not, for a minute or two, quiet calls that still came from here and there. The Amen stirred deeply through the crowd, seemed to sway them towards the graves. The comrades held them back; there was silence. Gusts of wind sculpted the soft earth mounds. The silence came from there, down there outside time, so that Hannah did not know if it lasted seconds or minutes, only that for its kind of duration she had no awareness of him, Sonny, he did not exist in it. And then the nun came forward and knelt on the earth, laying a flower. A thick straggling queue shuffled past the nine mounds with their new bright tin numbers. The township people stretched out everywhere for flowers. Small children took them to be gifts for themselves. Hannah’s irises were laid by many hands. Soon the mounds were transformed by a disguise of the lovely temporal; colours and fragrance and petals that would not last. She saw Sonny again. He was delivering his daughter’s rose to the dead. In a sideways glance with only a few feet between them they acknowledged each other across the graves like people who cannot put a name to a face.

  The crowd began to thin at the edges, slowly turned away from the graves. The small children were running with the treasure of their single flowers. The young people were singing, We greet you, Mandela, call us, Mandela …in the rhythm of a walking song, gently harmonizing rather than rousing, parting from the dead with respect. Hannah and the other whites took their pace, flowing with people, people flowing past, life draining out of the graveyard. Somewhere behind, Sonny, Father Mayekiso—the official group—were waylaid by members of the street committees and crones and drunks who wanted to take their hands to receive the vague benediction believed to emanate from important people. Then a kind of seismic tremor went through the trooping crowd. There was no shout, but everybody began to bump into everybody else; some had stopped abruptly: up there, from the hill, the men with pointing guns were racing down upon them. The broad swathe of people broke into a hobbling run from which the young surged out ahead. As people ran they pulled rags from somewhere in their clothing, doeks from their heads, and tied them across noses and mouths. The whites trotted embarrassedly: they were not used to having to flee anything or anyone. Some foolish idea of dignity, some armchair idea of courage, inhibited them. Even Hannah had never before experienced what the blacks, with their rags kept on their persons as protection against tear-gas as white people carry credit cards, were ready for every day. Canisters were exploding at the tail of the crowd; the foul cloud pursued them and a shot—in the air, perhaps only triggered by the scramble of the police and soldiers through trash and bushes—cracked a whip over them.

  Hannah was young and her strong freckled legs could carry her fast, but an agonizing brake of resistance fought against the instinct. She wanted to stop her legs; she stopped and ran, stopped and ran, crashing into the path of others, looking back, looking everywhere. Now there was a scream; the police had plunged down into the crowd, long wails of terror were cut through by the dry syllables of shots, a sound hard as the steel that flies and pierces flesh and bone, goes to the heart that is bursting with the effort to run away and to the throat where the yell rises. She was running back, sideways, thrust aside, sometimes clutched by someone determinedly making a way, she caught a whiff of the gas, the wind had blown it back to the hill, her eyes were streaming and there he was, there was Sonny, his shiny black curls, the bar of his eyebrows above desperate eyes like black holes in his head. He clutched her arm so that it was almost wrenched out of its socket; she thought she was weeping at the sight of Sonny, the tear-gas tears were something else.—Get to the combi! Get to the combi! Go!—She pulled against leaving him, he pushed her away; and then amid shots and screams he began to run with her, run as if he were chained to her. The people were racing and flying into their street-burrows in the township. From there came the stare of hundreds of others gathered on walls, on roof-tops, afar. their murmur a tumultuous lament. Mayekiso appeared level with Sonny and Hannah. His arms were raised, he was shooting, intoning in his own language; but the people tore past the crucified one’s representative in their midst, nothing could cast out their fear. There was a shot like all the other shots: this time a young man fell face-down in the path of Sonny, Hannah and Father Mayekiso. People shrieked and backed off, struggling to get away from what had become a target; a single woman dropped to her knees at his side, calling out, tugging to turn him over. Blood came glistening through the black fibrous mat of his hair and, as she moved him, ran, obliterating the slogan on his trade-union T-shirt An Injury To One Is An Injury To All.

  Buffetted on all sides, Sonny and Hannah were dragged on, managed to resist, turned to fight their way back to where the boy lay. Mayekiso was with him, the woman was hysterically beating the ground. They saw this one second and the next it was obliterated by the press of fleeing people, appeared again, disappeared. They were forcing their way back against shoulders, backsides, flailing arms, and now there were shots smashing right past their heads. Sonny suddenly was looking at her as if he were making a terrible dis
covery. His face was distorted by anguish and incoherence. He pressed down her head with his raised arm and they ran, ran away with the crowd.

  In Sonny’s car, Hannah sat gasping, saliva at the corners of her open mouth.—The others will look for me … combi won’t go without me.—

  —The drivers saw us. They’ll tell them you left with someone else.—

  —I’m afraid they’ll think something happened to me.—

  He did not answer for a moment. He dropped his head on his hands, on the steering wheel. Then recovered himself. —Nothing’s happened to you, Hannah.—

  Her hand was squeezed bloodless where it had been in his clutch. She was sure, as lovers imagine at such times, that she would relive the sensation of that grasp to the end of her life.

  What was she slipping out to do for him, now? What were they saying in the passage? They have nothing private, from me, now. She has no right to talk to him behind my back.

  I went to the kitchen window and then I saw—ah, she’s given him the carryall, that was what it was all about. I saw him throw the carryall into the boot before he got into the car.

  My sister shoved my plate away from under my nose as I came back to the table.—What’re you spying on him for? What d‘you think you’re trying to do, man, hinting … ‘I never asked for it’—

  —Oh I know you’re quite happy to take bribes—him letting you go off and live away from home. Leaving Ma. Leaving me with them.—

  —If you’re so pure why did you take it, then!—The motorbike again.

  —Leave me alone. You don’t live here. Coming to kiss him all over and bringing your bloody dresses for her to sew like a servant.—

  —Listen, man. The trouble with you, you don’t grow up. Oh a big hulk with hair on your chin, but a case of—of arrested development. Voluntary.—

  Now I couldn’t help laughing at my sister, how could I give her the satisfaction of taking her seriously.—My, where did you pick that up? Got some new boyfriend studying psychology? Or would it be medicine? Is that the sort of stuff you rap among your disco pals? My, my.—

  —You have no friends, that’s your problem. Hang around the house glowering. Obsessed.—She paused, threatening, eyes staring insolently wide at me, to say with what.—There’s more than a family.—

  —Yes, smoking pot and sleeping around and bumming off anybody. I don’t believe you even work, half the time. We don’t know what you’re doing.—

  Her aggression dropped like a weapon laid down.—That’s right.—

  I wondered what was the matter with her. She sat breaking the crusts she had left; my mother always had made her eat her crusts. The thought came startlingly, reasonably to me: —You’re not pregnant, are you, Baby?—

  She laughed in the affected way she has adopted since she was about fourteen, throwing her hair and head back for men—including even me.—Of course what else could you imagine could happen to me! Oh little Will!—And I laughed, too, in relief; for my mother.

  But when my mother came in fresh from whatever the discussion had been with my father before he departed on one of his important missions (there are so many funerals, so many ‘cleansings of the graves’ among blacks, he had a good chance of getting away with this Sunday’s alibi) I didn’t look at her, so that she might not see my disgust. She knows—we know—that if I withdraw she is without support—it’s not that I can guide my mother, I’m too young and ignorant for that, but that my attention is a bit like an ordinary old pocket torch that I hold, walking backwards before her as she manages to keep to her way in its light. That Sunday morning I couldn’t do it. I know what’s in the carryall. When she’s out of the house—and he’s nearly always out of the house—I look in their things. It’s a strong compulsion; has to be strong because one of the rules of respect he taught Baby and me was never to open drawers or read letters belonging to others. (As a result, we used to tell on each other when we filched each other’s toys or books, giving occasion for another contradictory lesson in ethics, eh—one doesn’t betray. The only thing he left me to find out for myself was his own contradictions.)

  She keeps the carryall in the cabinet on her side of their bed—poor thing, must have it right there beside her so that she can lay her hands on it at once if he’s taken in the middle of the night. On the shelf at the top are the creams with which she takes care of her skin—for him. I used to smell the scent on her hands if she came into our room—Baby’s and mine, the Benoni house—when one of us had a nightmare. In the carryall she keeps toothpaste and a new toothbrush still in its plastic film, towel and soap, clean underpants, socks, pyjamas, a pullover. The list is a code of her fears that he might be taken away next time as he was the first, without the means to keep himself clean—the means of self-respect so important to him—and warm: the pullover is her means of love, whether that’s important to him or not. And she gives the carryall to him to take along with that briefcase! How could I look at her.

  I could feel her dismay at my rejection, hear her timidly determined efforts to put together, for her daughter and son and herself, a leisurely Sunday lingering at breakfast, pouring herself tea, murmuring whether anyone would like another slice of bread toasted. But Baby was staring at her, I saw Baby take breath to begin to speak, twice, flicking her long eyelashes, before she actually did. And as she did, I quickly looked to my mother, at least I was with my mother when Baby spoke. —Ma, I want to tell you. I don’t want to give you a fright again …—

  Aila found the carryall in the boot of the car when she wanted to load a bag of potatoes she had bought. She unpacked the new toothbrush, the toothpaste, the towel, soap and clothing and put them where they would be in daily use: the toilet articles in the family bathroom cupboard, her husband’s clothes in the wardrobe acquired on hire purchase in Benoni—on the first Saturday of each month it had been part of the family outing to make the regular payment from the schoolteacher’s salary.

  He watched what Aila was doing, going back and forth, emptying the carryall.

  —It’s surprising she told you when I wasn’t there.—

  Aila couldn’t get a full drawer to take the thickness of the pullover. She was refolding it slowly and carefully.

  —After I’d gone out, I mean.—

  Aila pressed the pullover into the drawer and shut it.

  —Didn’t you know.—A statement. She looked at him unchallengingly.

  —If I’d known, wouldn’t I have told you!—

  What a thing to have let slip his lips—as if he told her anything, now.—How could I have known? What do you mean? You don’t think I had something to do with it! Do you? Is that it?—

  Aila stood in the middle of their bedroom. It was ridiculous—Alia, so quiet and dignified and harmless—but he felt he couldn’t get past her, if he tried to walk away she would step in front of him.—It’s the kind of thing I thought you’d know about.—

  —Well I wouldn’t. The less each group knows of the activities of the others, the better. But you’re perfectly aware of that—you are. Particularly in the matter of recruitment to proceed outside. The people I work with don’t deal with that. There are others. She must have been with them—perhaps all these months, and we didn’t know it. She’s been well schooled, that’s clear. Didn’t want to involve you—us—Paused, yearningly; but there was nothing to be shared with Aila, standing there. —Clever little girl, after all.—

  —Perhaps you can still see her. We won’t know when she’s going.—

  —You want me to persuade her …—

  Aila was slowly moving her head, dipped to one side, not in denial but in doubt at his success.

  He had an urge to take the risk of talking to Aila, really talking to her, he felt everything pressing up against his diaphragm: speak, speak.—I don’t know what to feel about it, the whole thing.—

  —It’s not what you have to feel about it, it’s how you feel.—

  —I suppose I can’t believe it. Baby. So I don’t feel. She’s been ou
t of the house, I miss her because of that, I’ve missed her all the time, it’s not the same …without her … And now she won’t be here, for another reason.—But everything he was saying seemed to be something else; he stopped with a loss of breath like a groan. He felt himself in great danger; one move from Aila, Aila—

  She picked up the empty carryall and pressed it flat under her right arm. She waited; but was it only her politeness, that had never been neglected, even in the days of their intimacy? Aila, Aila. A terrible temptation to tear off her clothes, burst into tears, enter her, destroy himself as surely as his Baby could have done when she cut her wrists.—You’re not too upset, Aila? What I could do …I could try to arrange that she doesn’t have to get into anything too risky … But you seem to be taking it pretty well …?—

  She looked at him with great sorrow in her face. He had never seen that face before, although he knew he had deserved it. And now there was the pain that he could not be sure it was for him.

  —It’s not so bad as the other time.—

  Aila, Aila, what has she said. The other time, he was not making a speech at a graveside, he was in bed with his woman. He remembered the only thing he had found to say to Aila: Will there be scars. Now she believes, she does, she does, he has made his daughter into a revolutionary, sent her into exile, to live in a camp, never to come home, perhaps to die even if she didn’t bleed to death that other time. He has done this although it is the truth that he did not even know she had joined the military wing of the movement. That truth is not all the truth.