Burger's Daughter

by Nadine Gordimer

  —I’ll see what I can do.—

  —Get it to Fats.—

  —What’s that? Now I’m paper-boy for the students’ pamphlets—

  She presented him fondly:—D‘you know, this is the nicest man in Jo’burg. Whatever you ask, it’s never too much trouble. Even if he’s my cousin, I have to say it. What’d I do without him, ay, Margaret—

  Before her, Duma kept his smile as detachedly as a male dancer holds his stance for the ballerina.

  —I wanted to make sure you’d come.—Marisa referred to the arrival of Orde Greer on my doorstep.

  —I meant to, anyway.—

  —I don’t trust you. We should stick together, Rosa. This morning I thought—it’s terrible...—

  Orde was watching us.

  She looked at him bewilderedly for a second, but spoke to me. —You remember the night at Santorini’s after Lionel was sentenced...—

  I prompted:—You said, whose life, theirs or his.—

  —This morning in the shop I thought: but it was his. I couldn’t even go to the memorial meeting.—There were tears in her gaze. She had made a joke and an anecdote of her visit to the Island; a current lover was probably in the room. No one can predict in what form anguish takes hold. She didn’t know it was the day, a year ago, my father died but she seemed to me to have given the sign that had not come from me. I felt a dangerous surge of feeling, a precipitation towards Marisa. (The poor creature who betrayed my father must have felt the same impulse towards my mother, in the beginning: an internal avalanche which at last brought her broken to Lionel’s feet, unable to look at him.) A longing to attach myself to an acolyte destiny; to let someone else use me, lend me passionate purpose, propelled by meaning other than my own.

  —There’s no one outside ?—Orde Greer meant the sort of discreet car from which the Special Branch agents make their surveillance.

  —It’s all right. I haven’t been back to my place at all, so my man’s still waiting for me to arrive from Cape Town.—People like Marisa—like us—are on terms of acquaintanceship with the men who watch their houses and trail them. It’s part of the aura that attracts the Conrads of this world to me.

  —You could have been followed from the airport.—Greer took on exaggerated whisky-wariness and good sense. He couldn’t be one of our kind; we who can’t afford not to take chances. Marisa was casual.—No it’s okay, I don’t think...anyway, I’ve been running around all over the place today, I must’ve shaken anyone off... he’d be dizzy by now...—The unshed tears glittered amusement.

  —I’m not so sure.—Orde Greer’s terse concern suggested a tender authority—surely she hadn’t accepted him as a lover ? I saw only his inexpressive body, dressed in a confusion that made him somehow physically inarticulate—the foot with the humped, foreshortened arch in boots meant for those who walk or climb, the shorts worn by youths who tinker with motorcycles, the don’s black sweater on which his own blonde combings had matted, and the—thinker’s? left-winger’s ? child of nature’s ? holy man’s ? down-and-out’s ?—head blurred with hair.

  Tandi and her friend kept pushing cassettes into the player and pulling them out again. Music blared interjection and was cut off while talk kept continuity. Fats’ friends were discussing racing bets. Perhaps because I had only been in the midst—listening without speaking—of his argument with the young man Dhladhla who was a student or teacher at a black university, Fats was drawn to secure further witness. He brought me whisky.—They think I can make them rich because of my father. Ha! That’s the one for tips. I wish you’d meet him. Marisa’s mother’s brother, Marisa’s mother’s my auntie, you know... My old man started as a stableboy and now he runs the whole show. Ten grooms and stableboys. The owner wouldn’t buy a horse without he says ‘go ahead’. He’s built a five-roomed house for my father there at the stables near Alberton and when the municipality says, who’s staying there? he says—you know what he says to them ?—look—my stable manager, I can’t do without him, so don’t tell me he can’t live in a white area. My father’s one of the top experts in Jo‘burg. In the country! Even the white jockeys come to ask him advice how to handle this horse or that one. I think he’s seventy years and you should see him on those race-horses. Those fast things, man! Hell! he loves it.—A man like that—he’s happy. You know? Some of these older people... I can tell you—he’ll say Kgosana’s a great man, but himself—he’d be afraid of a black government, d’you know that ? These kids with their strong ideas, they don’t realize there’s a lot of people like that. What can you do with people ? Isn’t it ? They don’t want to run to trouble—He gave a confidential tilt of the head towards the kind of life led by Marisa.

  —That’s exactly what certain whites do realize—bank on.—Orde Greer deferred, was determined to talk to me about such things.

  It’s easy enough to satisfy; to slip back into this kind of exchange; to toss on the small kindling demanded.

  —You’re talking about liberals ? Or Verligte Nats ?—

  —Oh both. It’s not peace at any price, it’s peace for each at his price. White liberalism will sacrifice the long odds on attaining social justice and settle for letting blacks into the exploiting class. The ‘enlightened’ government crowd will sacrifice the long odds on maintaining complete white supremacy and settle for propping up a black middle class whose class interests run counter to a black revolution.—

  The girl Tandi had left her friend and ignoring the rest of us was murmuring in a sulky, flirtatious undertone to Duma Dhladhla, but he thrust his voice back among us—The black people will deal with those elements. The whites won’t get a chance. You liberals can forget it just the same as the government.—

  —Who says I’m a liberal ?—

  Dhladhla sharply gestured lack of interest in Orde Greer’s protest on grounds of objectivity.—Whites, whatever you are, it doesn’t matter. It’s no difference. You can tell them—Afrikaners, liberals, Communists. We don’t accept anything from anybody. We take. D’you understand ? We take for ourselves. There are no more old men like that one, that old father—a slave who enjoys the privileges of the master without rights. It’s finished.—

  —The black people ? You think you’re the black people ? A few students who haven’t even passed their final exams ?—The man who looked like a headmaster stood up and ran a hand down his fly in the gesture of setting himself to rights.

  Dhladhla gave him a fiery patient glance.—We’re bringing you the news that you’re the black people, Baba. And the black people don’t need anyone else. We don’t know about class interests. We’re one kind. Black.—

  —Oh you’ve discovered something in your classroom at Turfloop ? Have you ever heard of Marcus Garvey ? Yes ?—

  Orde Greer jolted attention swiftly back to Dhladhla.—But five minutes ago you said ‘those people’ were the greatest problem. The ones who’ll take exemption—in sport, or anywhere, the same thing and they’re the same people.—

  —We don’t deny the problem. We just know that it cannot exist once we rouse the people to consciousness.—

  —But it does exist at present... a possible future black exploiting class—all right, let’s not argue over terms—a group, a sector consisting of quite a considerable number of people. It exists. And the Americans, the British, the French, the West Germans—they wouldn’t object either, the Americans would certainly take the heat off at U.N. and in Congress if white South Africa were to opt for survival by taking in that black sector. What I’m asking is just this—could a capitalist society which throws overboard the race factor entirely still evolve here ?—

  Voices went into the air like caps; from the schoolmaster, the host’s other friends, over the heads of the hangers-on who sipped from their beer cans and passed cigarettes between them.

  —But definitely, man!—

  —All people want is the same chance as whites!—

  —That’s what 90 per cent are asking for—

  —They’re asking fo
r what they could never get, because 90 per cent are peasants and labourers who haven’t a chance of joining any privileged sector.—James Nyaluza had come in with Marisa, an associate of Joe Kgosana, one of those unaccountably overlooked through all the years of police vigilance. I have known him my whole life. He was in detention in the Sixties, but that was all. Even his continued friendship with Marisa has not saved him from being ignored. He speaks somehow from the margin, one of those fatalistically denied what the Russian revolutionary Vera Figner called living to be judged—‘For a trial is the crowning point of a revolutionary’s activity’. In this sense, Lionel’s and Joe Kgosana’s lives are fulfilled: and Marisa carried this unspoken assurance around with her in the room as she did the perfume on her body.

  Even Fats was treating James with the sort of respect that discounted him.—It’s natural—people want the chance to get on. There’s always those who can make something of themselves, no matter how poor they are. You take our tycoons here in Soweto, how many of them got more than Standard Six? They come from the farms and the locations. Their mothers were servants in the backyard. Grocer-boys, milk-boys, garage-boys—

  The trance of a common resentment fell momentarily upon those who had been bitterly opposing each other and would do so again in the next breath. Dhladhla, James, the schoolmaster, Fats’s satellites, celebrated that romance of humiliation by which and from which each in his different way draws strength and anger to revenge it.

  —treated like nothings, living worse than dogs, eating dry mealie-meal, not even shoes for your feet in winter-time... today they’ve got everything they want, man. Businesses, big cars—

  —You’ve got the nucleus of a black bourgeoisie ready and willing to be co-opted to the white ruling class ?—Orde Greer had the air of leading towards answers he wanted to be given.

  Dhladhla stated and accused impersonally and passionately. —The chance—you know what your chance is? You know what you’re talking about? Race exploitation with the collaboration of blacks themselves. That is why we don’t work with whites. All collaboration with whites has always ended in exploitation of blacks.—

  —Do you believe that was always the whites’ object? All whites ?—

  I spoke to Dhladhla for the first time. My voice sounded to me in a tone of quiet enquiry; Orde Greer’s face dramatized it, to me, as tight-lipped.

  —Even if they didn’t know it. Yes, it was! It is! We must liberate ourselves as blacks, what has a white got to do with that ?—

  Orde Greer was pressing.—Whatever his political ideas ?—

  —It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t live black, what does he know what a black man needs? He’s only going to tell him—

  —You don’t believe there is any political ideology, any system where the beliefs of a white man have nothing to do with his being white ?—

  —I don’t say that. I’m talking about here. This place. Where Vorster sits. Some other country perhaps the white man’s political ideas can have nothing to do with white. But here, he lives with Vorster. You understand ?—

  —And if he goes to jail ?—Orde Greer was possessed, inspired.

  So it was all for my benefit, this interrogation.

  —To jail with you ?—

  —In jail!—A splutter of accusing laughter.—He goes for his ideas about me, I go for my ideas about myself—Dhladhla stabbed at his bare chest, a medallion on a leather thong jumping there.

  Orde Greer produced me.—He died in jail. This girl’s father. You know that ?—It was irresistible, inevitable.

  I don’t know how I look when I’m being used, an object of inquiry, regarded respectfully, notebook in hand, or stripped by you and my Swede to assess my strength like a female up for auction in a slave market. Perhaps I smiled ‘offensively’ before Duma and Orde Greer; you complained of that in the cottage—I produce a privacy so insulting that those well-disposed towards me don’t feel themselves considered worthy of rebuff; even the slap of the ‘cold fish’ is withheld.

  Orde Greer had his drink held in the curve of his hand, away from him, for emphasis or balance. Dhladhla didn’t look at me but spoke for me to hear. He was aware I had been watching his face all the time, when he talked and while he was preparing to talk again, his replies flickering over it in soft flashes of energy. It was a face of such plastic beauty, one would think of such a head as ‘made of’—that is, solid, cast of a single perfect material all through, smooth and dark, formed alluvially under the pressure of time and race. —He knows what he was doing in jail. A white knows what he must do if he doesn’t like what he is. That’s his business. We only know what we must do ourselves.—

  The schoolmaster blinked with impatience and distress.—How many people believe you can turn your back on white people? It’s rubbish! They won’t disappear. They’ll turn around with guns... and how many blacks want to fight...we don’t want killing, we know it’s our blood it’s going to be. People would rather see some leaders—(he fended off objections) I’m not talking about the political leaders in jail, I mean just people in the community who’ve come up, even businessmen, big shots in Soweto, people who can meet whites on their own level in commerce and so on—they’d rather see these people get a footing from where they can push. Then others feel they will be able to follow.—They want to be alive.—

  James Nyaluza smiled at what he could have expected to hear. —Of course. But they don’t realize the racial exclusiveness of the white ruling class’s economic and political power is a primary feature of the set-up. If whites are frightened into taking in some members of the black middle class, this is only going to be in an auxiliary and dependent capacity. There wouldn’t even be the perks of political office. Not even a puppet ministry. Not even the token power you get if you’re a Matanzima or a Buthelezi in your Bantustan ‘homeland’.—

  —You mean they’d be like the black police are already. As Dhladhla said—just collaborators in a continued system of race repression ?—

  But nobody took up Orde Greer’s analogy; he doesn’t have the curious tactfulness necessary towards the question of the black police who, although they have never yet refused to act against their own people, are still regarded as fellow victims, bullying and raiding under the orders of a common oppressor. Whites, not blacks, are ultimately responsible for everything blacks suffer and hate, even at the hands of their own people; a white must accept this if he concedes any responsibility at all. If he feels guilty, he is a liberal; in that house where I grew up there was no guilt because it was believed it was as a ruling class and not a colour that whites assumed responsibility. It wasn’t something bleached into the flesh.

  I was carried into the talk as one’s feet carry one into some pattern of movement—a boxer’s footwork, a runner’s crouch—for which they have been trained. My voice crossed against and raised itself with others.—But is that so, James ? In the last ditch, mightn’t the whites be prepared to bring in enough black capitalists to create a class-across-colour identity and solidarity—and consequently a common interest in holding down the black masses ?—

  Marisa spoke with the authority of the Island.—I know that’s what Joe’s afraid of—he thinks it would link up with the ‘homeland’ leaders, a way of keeping cheap labour, migrant labour, with a payoff for the ‘homeland’ crowd and the favoured blacks in the white areas.—

  —That’s what I mean. The sort of thing the liberal opposition discuss when they try to get together. And the white Progressives are even talking about ‘shared power’: they actually do have in mind something in the nature of political office—for the ‘right’ black people, of course. That could have tremendous appeal for middle-class blacks. It goes further than offering Fats a voice on the national Boxing Board, or a black businessman a seat among the directors of Anglo-American.—

  Orde put a palm out in a staying gesture to James on one side, me on the other.—D’you think a black group like that can have a place in the national movement ?—

  Jame
s answered as I knew, marking off each word in my mind, he could be counted to.—Never. Its interests would stand in complete contradiction to those of the people as a whole, even in the context of national aims.—

  —So what you want me to do ?—not let my boy fight overseas until you decide how we’re going to smash apartheid?—Fats turned in almost comic dismay to Marisa.—Will it really help Joe and Nelson get out ?—He slopped a gout of whisky into James’s glass, stopped with a grin before Dhladhla, who did not drink and whose abstinence was eloquent disapproval of the corrupting effect of white men’s indulgences on others.—Wait for him to raise black consciousness so high Vorster and Kruger are going to see this big thing falling on them ?—

  —So there’s no danger—no hope, if you like to put it that way for some people—that group could have any place in the national movement—

  Dhladhla interrupted Greer.—What national movement do you know?—

  But it was inconceivable to anyone else in that company that Orde Greer was referring to anything but the African National Congress.—The fact is surely that the African bourgeoisie is being discovered—invented—by whites much, much too late to play the classic role, never mind the one they think it’ll serve. That’s the point. Not whether some black people want it or not. Do you realize—now he was addressing the room, the house, the streets, the whole ‘place’—for you black promoters and businessmen and teachers to come out on top the entire normal process would have to be reversed because the real class formation of a bourgeoisie would have to follow and not precede political power.—