My Son's Story

by Nadine Gordimer

  A stay-at-home wife—and mother. There was the question of Baby, as well. The Security Police surely knew about Baby; but maybe not, the illegal movements of young people presumed to be erratic and adventurous could pass unnoticed until and unless someone was picked up and gave out names under interrogation.

  Sonny knew where Aila would go.—And a visa?—He spoke almost humbly.

  She had one; everything was arranged through a lawyer both knew well. Lawyers have the habit of discretion sometimes to the point of absurdity or unintentional slight; he saw the man frequently, he was a close adviser to the trade unions, and there had been no mention of a passport for Aila. Well, the lawyer, too, had other things on his mind. Anyway, it was necessary to feel assured Aila had been in good hands.

  As Baby’s mother and father, they discussed money.—I thought I’d take some clothes. I’m making warm things—they say it gets quite chilly there in winter.—Yes, lately the sewing-machine had to be put aside when the table was used for meals, he’d noticed, without attaching any significance to Aila’s preoccupation. —She’ll always need money. Wherever you are—(he stopped himself from citing his prison experience, the inference would be alarming to Aila).—You don’t know the value of money until you’re in certain situations—He laughed, as an explanation, confession: he and Aila had begun their child’s life in a situation where money was associated with greed.

  He knew best in political matters; they had some small savings she would withdraw from the bank and take with her.

  —How much is there, exactly?—

  She fetched the savings booklet and they stood heads together reading the figures.—Oh, it’s more than I thought. I’d forgotten about the interest.—Aila was smiling almost as she used to.

  —You can’t take all that. It’ll exceed the exchange-control allowance, I’m sure. The allowance is smaller for neighbouring countries than for overseas.—

  —How will they know? I’ll take the notes in cash.—

  —Aila …—He had gone back to excising articles from a newspaper, running a blade along columns.

  —Somehow. I could.—

  Impatience was something new in him; like the moustache he had grown to show he was someone else, now. This person still had responsibility for her, nevertheless.—Aila, for god’s sake, you can’t do things like that. D’you know what’ll happen if you’re caught out? Can you imagine yourself in prison? Go and see Baby and enjoy it. Forget what I said about money. Take the dresses and whatever. Those kinds of games are not for you.—

  He turned pages of the paper without seeing them, then forced himself to read and began pressing the blade cleanly along a margin. His hand fumbled for a pen to mark the date; she was still in the room, he knew it in spite of the silence—he thought of the special quality of her presence he used to sense when he would come into the house calling out her name. —You’re so lucky you’re going to see Baby.—

  What was she doing—looking at him? Turned away? He would not lift his head and the blade sliced dryly through the fibres of newsprint, a faint domestic echo of the electric saws that destroyed the trees from which it was made; the pine tree … But his words were as feeble an echo of the surging envy he felt—of her option of distancing herself from the struggle, of the passport, of the right to go to the girl as the one who had been there to bandage her wrists.

  —I know.—

  Was that all? All to be expected of his wife when they were talking of their first child? Who could tolerate Aila’s tranquil blamelessness!

  He heard her double step, high heels touching the floor before the soles came lightly down, and thought she had left the room. But she had paused:—I wish you could go.—

  With her? With Aila? On his own? In place of her? Aila never had much relish for journeys, she didn’t know how to deal with officialdom, she had found it difficult even to speak in the presence of his warder.

  Or she wished he had not done all he had done, all that she would not reproach him with ever, to the boy, to Baby, to her—so that it would not be only his lack of a passport, his commitment to political action that took away from him the right to be in her place.

  Is it because of me?

  Since my mother’s been away he’s been spending time at home. He even brought out the chess board. We’ve played together a few evenings. But I’m careful. I don’t know what he may be trying to get me into, now. I cook supper for us. Once I found the nerve to say something:—Haven’t you got a meeting?—

  He waited for a moment, showing me he knew, strictly between ourselves, my real question, and he replied to it. —No. No meeting. I’ll be at home.—

  At once I fetched my helmet and bike keys and put my head round the door.—Well, I’m off.—

  He was playing that record he likes so much, some Mozart overture, he thinks he’s only got to set up the scene and we’ll do something educational together or watch soccer on the tele, dad and his boy. But he also knew I hadn’t been going anywhere.

  When I came home, late, the lights were still on. I thought he was waiting up for me and I went straight along the passage to my room. But there I became aware that there were voices, men’s voices, in the house. They became more audible—their insistence, their cross-talk—as whoever it was must have left the sitting-room and been pausing in the entrance. There was the sound of the front door being closed and bolted by him, and the creaks and subdued clatter of his movements, tidying up, clicking off lights. He knocked at my door. After me again. I didn’t say come in, I said, Yes?

  He looked slowly round my room; I suppose it must be a year, more, since he’s been in it. There was the beginning of a crinkling round his eyes, affirmation rather than recognition, at what I’ve kept, and he went over and stood a moment, head back, as if he were in an art gallery, not his son’s bedroom, before a poster of a desert. That’s new. Just space. I don’t know what desert, where—I hoped he wasn’t going to expect me to say.

  He sat on the end of my bed and his weight tightened the covers over my feet, I felt pinned down.—There was a meeting, after all. Here.—

  My father has such a wonderful smile, all the planes of his face are so strongly defined, so encouraging, the open feelings sculptured so deep—no wonder he is attractive to crowds, and to women. My mother and the other. I resemble him but my face is a mask moulded from his and I only look out through it, I don’t inhabit it as he does. I suddenly was alarmed that he was going to talk about her, his woman, about the cinema, yes, at last, the whole story, that’s what he’d come into my room for, Baby was right, you can’t live with them, you ought to get away from them.

  I had to speak quickly.—I heard someone leave.—

  —I know. It’s unfortunate. Something turned up soon after you’d left. I was settling down to read, for once …when did I last finish a book. I get halfway through and by the time I can get back to it I’ve forgotten the first part. D’you get any reading done, Will?—

  Everything we say to each other has a meaning other than what comes out. That’s what makes it difficult to be in the house with him. Now he was admitting he doesn’t know anything much about me except that I know about the woman, who she is, where she lives. He has no hand in enriching my life (as he would think of it) anymore. Although we couldn’t be members of the library when we lived across the veld, I mustn’t forget he bought children’s books and read to us.

  I didn’t tell him that in the past year I’ve read almost everything in his bookcase. If he’d been interested enough, if he’d come into my room for any reason other than his own concerns (what was it now, the danger of confession was averted but there must be something else) he might have found his Gramsci or his Kafka among the clutter on my table. I opened my hand towards Dornbusch and Fisher’s Macroeconomics, on the reading list for my second-year courses.

  —Well, that’s essential. Of course I did it the other way round …you know, the other kind of books first. Poetry and stuff. I had a different idea of what’s n
ecessary. When I was your age. The wrong way round—He lifted his hands, seemed about to place one on the mound of my feet, touch me, but did not.—Ignorance.—

  I was yawning uncontrollably, I didn’t mean to be rude to him. I didn’t know whether I was tense to get rid of him or I wanted him to stay.

  —Will, you didn’t hear anyone here tonight. You didn’t hear anyone talking and you didn’t hear anyone leave.—

  After he’d said what he’d come for he continued to sit with me for—how long—a few moments, it seemed a long quiet time. Then he got up and went out softly, as if I were sleeping.

  So that was it. Someone on the run, or an infiltrator from outside. Or there was a meeting with some of his people he doesn’t want the rest to know about; since he’s been home more, I’ve seen that he’s in some kind of trouble with his crowd: these emotions don’t have to be concealed in quite the same way as his love affair. There are long discussions with this one and that one—who come here openly, I don’t have to pretend, for my own safety and his, I haven’t seen them. There are reports in the newspapers speculating about changes and realignments in the organizations, including his, that make up the movement. That’s his business; he doesn’t need any complicity with me, beyond warning me to keep my eyes closed and my mouth shut. Which is already what he has taught me to do for other reasons. That’s ended up being his only contribution to my further education.

  Perhaps my mother said something to him about keeping an eye on me while she’s away, and he feels he ought to do that much for her. So he’s sacrificing the nights he could be spending in the big bed on the floor. As if I would ever know what time he crept in, midnight or dawn, I’m young and when I sleep, I sleep. Only older people wait up.

  Home every night. Is it possible it’s because he wants to be with me? It’s for me?

  Every third day, at the agreed hour, he waited alone in the room for a call from Lesotho, where she had gone because her grandfather had died. The cottage was locked up. She’d left him the key. Of course she was often alone in that room but he had never been there without her before. He tried to read but could not; the room distracted him, beckoning with this and that. He was a spectator of his own life there; the edge of the table he often bumped against when he went, dazed with after-love sleep, to the kitchen or bathroom; the shape of the word processor seen from a particular eye-level, now viewed from a different perspective; the huge painting with all its running colours that was more familiarly felt than seen, since when he stretched an arm behind his head, on the bed, he came in contact with the lumpy surface of what she had told him was the impasto. An ugly, meaningless painting, to him; there is always something about the beloved—some small habit—some expression of taste—one dislikes and about which one says nothing, or lies. Also she might have taken into account his background—lack of cultural context for the understanding of such work, so he had had to pretend (to protect each’s idea of the other) that he thought it fine. Now he was alone with its great stain of incoherence spreading above the bed from which, at least, it had been out of sight. Of course, for her it was something handed down, like the old studio photograph of a bespectacled lady with cropped white hair—probably her grand-mother—which stood in a small easel frame on top of the bookshelves. These things belonged to a life not followed, a continuity set aside; somehow he never thought of her in connection with a family. She wasn’t placed, as he was, whatever he felt or did, with wife and son and daughter in the Saturday afternoon tea-parties.

  Some days the call was delayed. She used a post-office booth for discretion, and they had agreed he should not call her at her grandfather’s house, where others were likely to be around to overhear. He saw traverse the empty bed the stripe of sun that used to move like a clock’s hand across their afternoons, over their bodies. Once he tidily took off his shoes and lay down on the bedcover’s tiny mirrors and embroidered flowers. He must use the time to return to the problems of his relations with his comrades; this was the room, after all, the only room, where such matters could be examined openly; no fear of anyone taking advantage of frankness or admissions. But without her, Hannah, it was a stranger’s room, a witness; while the house without Aila was unchanged, as if Aila were simply out of his way in some other part of it—maybe it was because the boy was still there, he and the boy among all Aila’s family trappings.

  He lay on the bed, a tramp who has broken in. He got up and wandered, looking at the jottings in Hannah’s handwriting, but did not read open letters addressed to her. And then, the telephone: and with its croo-croo croo-croo it was their room again he was padding over intimately in his socks, to hear her. Each did not use the other’s name (for discretion); there was always a lot of smiling and laughter, and certainly she must hear in his voice that he was at once sexually aroused by the sound of her, but on this day after the initial pleasure there was an urgent break, out of which she told him:—Don’t be alarmed …not good news. I’ve been P.I’d4—I think.—

  —Oh my god. How d’you know?—

  —A letter came yesterday. I’m duly informed I must apply for a visa. But I’m sure it’ll be all right.—

  —Have you told London?—

  —I spoke to my director right away. They’re already working on it. And several people here … By the time I’ve wound things up I’m sure it’ll be fixed. I couldn’t come back for another few weeks anyway—I’ve got to decide what to do with the old house, the books—I’m giving away the furniture, such as it is, but the books …and the papers …the papers must be preserved. What d’you think? They want them for the little archive here but … I’m inclined to believe I ought to look after them—

  Agitation was invading his whole body.—Listen. Something must be done at this end. I’ll find out.—

  —Don’t, don’t. Please don’t. I don’t want you to get mixed up …—

  An unexpressed struggle between them hummed across the distance. He severed it for both.—But you must come back, you must come back.—

  When he had put the receiver down, it seized him: because of me. Because of this room, it’s happened. But she was gone. He was desperate not to be able to pick up the receiver at once and tell her, it’s because this place has been an everywhere and they know it and they think you’ve been seduced—not to lie in that bed but to run as courier for the jailbird and his cause.

  But when they talked again on the next third day he could not tell her; he could say nothing over the telephone. He could not tell her how, playing chess with his son to steady his nerves and enable him to think rationally (thank god Aila wasn’t there, thank god he wasn’t alone) he examined and discarded different ways to set about getting the order against her re-entry rescinded. He tried out, in his mind, taking one of the comrades into his confidence, a militant, worldly priest whose liberation theology would include an understanding of a man’s responsibility for loving, inside or outside conventional morality. Father, I need advice. But no. A prisoner of conscience, you sit in detention, on trial, convicted for the liberty of all your people. That conscience takes precedence over any conscience about a wife and family left to shift for themselves, and over any woman you have need of. The comrades might know about her; probably did. But as an irrelevance. The struggle is what matters; and he and they are at one in dedication to that. Nothing that could be seen to deflect his attention from the struggle should be evidenced in him, who has even given his daughter for liberation. Particularly in the present phase, of factionalism. He thought of the merchant, by colour one of their own, who gave money—as insurance for a future or maybe out of real conviction, a Bakunin—but who also must know high government officials who would woo his support for their policy of privileging a middle class; perhaps he was the man to approach. He thought of the white newspaper editor who was challenging the government, front and editorial pages, over suppression of press freedom, and was too influential among whites to be refused meetings with cabinet ministers. A small favour might be asked of him
… But newspapermen—they sniff out the perfume of a woman the way certain creatures (the schoolmaster picked up such oddities of information in his reading days) can detect the presence of truffles under the ground. ‘Sonny’ the platform speaker ex-political prisoner and Hannah Plowman, representative of an international human rights organization. Next thing, there would be a reporter at the door, and if he himself were not there, well, the son would be better than nothing. Will would be asked if he could say anything about the refusal of a visa to this friend of the family who monitored political trials.

  As a hypochondriac runs to his doctor with every personal problem transmuted into a diagnosable ache or pain, he went to the lawyer who had represented him during his detention and trial. Metkin looked like a rabbi and listened as his client thought a psychiatrist would listen; in this presence of contemporary and ancient wisdom, divination, surviving between the telephone and intercom on a desk, Sonny felt humiliation as he might have been experiencing some physical urge. He was explaining that he wanted to hand the whole matter over to the lawyer; he himself could do nothing to help anyone in conflict with the authorities. This person had no-one else to speak for her, within the country; she was not in contact with her few relatives, and they were not the sort of people to act in this type of matter. Whatever the government did they would believe was justified.