Burger's Daughter

by Nadine Gordimer

  At the farm I asked to be put in one of the rondavels instead of the main house. They didn’t argue on grounds of offended hospitality; when people are in trouble they somehow become more understanding of unexplained needs or whims, don’t they. Walking at night after these dousing rains, the farm house, the sheds sheer away from me into a ground-mist you can lick off your lips. Wine still isn’t served at the table but Uncle Coen made us drink brandy. I moved unevenly through drenched grass, I bumped into the water-tank, I thought only my legs were affected but I suppose my head was. I put my ear to the side of the stone barn wall where bees nest in the cavity, and heard them on the boil, in there. Layer upon layer of night concealed them. I walked round, not through, the shadows of walls and sheds, and on the bonnets of the parked cars light from somewhere peeled away sheets of dark and shone. Like fluttering eyelashes all about me: warmth, damp and insects. I broke the stars in puddles. It’s so easy to feel close to the soil, isn’t it; no wonder all kinds of dubious popular claims are made on that base. The strong searchlights the neighbouring farmers have put up high above their homesteads, now, show through black trees. Headlights move on the new road; the farmlands are merging with the dorp. But it’s too far away to hear a yell for help. If they came out now from behind the big old syringa trees with the nooses of wire left from kids’ games in the branches, and the hanging length of angle iron that will be struck at six in the morning to signal the start of the day’s work, if they loped out silently and put a Russian or Cuban machine-gun at my back, or maybe just took up (it’s time ?) a scythe or even a hoe—that would be it: a solution. Not bad. But it won’t happen to me, don’t worry. I went to bed in the rondavel and slept the way I had when I was a child, thick pink Waverley blankets kicked away, lumpy pillow punched under my neck. Anyone may have come in the door and looked down on me; I wouldn’t have stirred.

  One day there may be a street named for the date. A great many people were detained, arrested or banned on 19th October 1977; many organizations and the only national black newspaper were banned. Most of the people were black—Africans, Indians, Coloureds. Most belonged to the Black Consciousness organizations—the Black People’s Convention, South African Students’ Organization, Soweto Students’ Representative Council, South African Student Movement, the Black Parents’ Association, and others, more obscure, whites had never heard of before. Some belonged to the underground organizations of the earlier, long banned, liberation movements. And some belonged to both. All—organizations, newspaper, individuals—appeared to have been freshly motivated for more than a year by the revolt of schoolchildren and students on the issue of inferior education for blacks. Hundreds of teachers had accepted the authority of the children’s school boycott and resigned in support of it. No persuasion, bribery, or strength of threat by the government had yet succeeded with the young and the elders to whom they were mentor; and the government, for its part, refused to abolish the separate system of education for blacks. However the situation was summed up the explanation remained simplistic. The majority of children in Soweto had never returned to school after June 1976.

  A few white people were detained, arrested, house-arrested or banned on 19th October 1977, and in the weeks following. The Burger girl was one. She was taken away by three policemen who were waiting at her flat when she returned from work on an afternoon in November. The senior man was Captain Van Jaarseveld, who to make her feel at home with him under interrogation in one of the rooms with two chairs and a table, reminded her that he had known her father well.

  She was detained without charges. Like thousands of other people taken into custody all over the country, she might be kept for weeks, months, several years, before being let out again. But her lawyer, Theo Santorini, had reason to believe—indeed, a public prosecutor himself had indicated in a moment of professionally-detached indiscretion during one of their frequent encounters when the courts adjourned for tea or lunch—that the State was expecting to gather evidence to bring her to Court in an important breakthrough for Security—a big trial—at last—of Kgosana’s wife. —That one—he said; and Santorini smiled his plump, sad cherub smile. That was the important one. For many years he had been engaged with the same prosecutor in the running battle for tattered legalities by which he had got Marisa Kgosana acquitted time and again. The government—police probably even more so, because as they complained to her lawyer, she ‘gave them a hard time’, offering not so much as one of her red fingernails’ length of co-operation when they were only doing their duty—the Minister of Justice wanted her out of the way, inside, convicted for a long stretch. The public prosecutor, so far as Kgosana was concerned, made a suggestion for her own good, quite objectively, in the form of a warning to Santorini. It would be better for this client of his not to risk airing, in answer to allegations being made about her at the Commission of Inquiry into the Soweto Riots then in session, any line of defence that might be useful to the prosecution in the event of a future case brought against her. He would do best not to press for her to be ‘produced’—for Marisa was in detention, too.

  Prisons for women awaiting trial and women detainees are not among the separate amenities the country prides itself on providing. Where Rosa and Clare Terblanche found themselves held there were also Coloured, Indian and African women; different colours and grades of pigmentation did not occupy adjoining cells or those served by the same lavatories and baths, nor were they allowed into the prison yard at the same time, but the prison was so old that actual physical barriers against internal communication were ramshackle and the vigilance of the female warders, mini-skirted novices dedicated to the Chief Matron as to the abbess of an Order, could not prevent messages, the small precious gifts of prison economy (cigarettes, a peach, a tube of hand-cream, a minute electric torch) from being exchanged between the races. Or songs. Early on, Marisa’s penetrating, wobbly contralto announced her presence not far off, from her solitary confinement to Rosa’s, and Clare’s. She sang hymns, piously gliding in and out of the key of ‘Abide with me’ to ANC freedom songs in Xhosa, and occasionally bursting into Miriam Makeba’s click song—this last to placate and seduce the wardresses, for whom it was a recognizable pop number. The voices of other black women took up and harmonized whatever she sang, quickly following the changes in the repertoire. The black common law prisoners eternally polishing Matron’s granolithic cloister, round the yard, picked up tiny scrolled messages dropped when Rosa and Clare were allowed to go out to empty their slops or do their washing, and in the same way the cleaning women delivered messages to them. Marisa was at once the most skilled of political old lags and the embodiment, the avatar of some kind of authority even Matron could not protect herself against: Marisa got permission to be escorted to Rosa’s cell twice weekly for therapeutic exercises for a spinal ailment she said was aggravated by sedentary life in prison. Laughter escaped. through the thick diamond-mesh and bars of Rosa’s cell during these sessions. Although detainees were not allowed writing materials for any purpose other than letters which were censored by Chief Warder Magnus Cloete before being mailed, Rosa asked for sketching materials. A ‘Drawing Book’ of the kind used in kindergartens and a box of pastels were delivered by her lawyer and passed scrutiny. The wardresses found baie, baie mooi (they talked with her in their mother tongue, which was also hers) the clumsy still lifes with which she attempted to teach herself what she had claimed was her ‘hobby’, and the naive imaginary landscape that could rouse no suspicions that she might be incorporating plans of the lay-out of the prison etc.—it represented, in a number of versions, a village covering a hill with a castle on the apex, a wood in the foreground, the sea behind. The stone of the houses seemed to give a lot of trouble: it was tried out in pinks, greys, even brownish orange. She had been more successful with the gay flags on the battlements of the castle and the bright sails of tiny boats, although through some failure of perspective they were sailing straight for the tower. The light appeared to come from everywhere; all
objects were sunny. At Christmas detainees were allowed to send home-made cards to a reasonable number of relatives or friends. Rosa’s was a scene banally familiar to Chief Warder Cloete from any rack of greeting cards—a group of carol singers, and only the delighted recipients could recognize, unmistakably, despite the lack of skill with which the figures were drawn, Marisa, Rosa, Clare, and an Indian associate of them all; and understood that these women were in touch with each other, if cut off from the outside world.

  Theo Santorini did not repeat, even to those closest to Rosa Burger’s family over many years, the strong probability that the State would try to establish collusion of Rosa with Marisa in conspiracy to further the aims of Communism and/or the African National Congress. The charges would allege incitement, and aiding and abetting of the students’ and schoolchildren’s revolt.

  His discretion has not prevented speculation. What Rosa did in her last two weeks in London is unclear. She did have contact with Leftist exiles, after all. She was at a rally (informers are inclined to up-grade their information) for Frelimo leaders, where her presence was honoured by a speech, delivered by one of his former close associates, lauding her father, Lionel Burger. That much was under surveillance, and will certainly appear in any indictment. She apparently abandoned without explanation an intention to go into exile in France, where the French Anti-Apartheid Movement was ready to regard her as a cockade in its cap. She told no one, no one, how she occupied her time, between the meeting with old associates at the rally or party and her return. It’s reasonable to suppose she could have been planning with others, putting herself at the service of the latest strategy of the struggle that will go on until the last prisoner comes off Robben Island and the last sane dissident is let out of an Eastern European asylum. Who could believe children could revolt of their own volition? The majority of white people advance the theory of agitators (unspecified), and the banned and underground organizations adopt the revolt as part of their own increased momentum, if not direct inspiration. Sailors gag on stinking meat, children refuse to go to school. No one knows where the end of suffering will begin.

  A woman carrying fruit boxes and flowers stood among a group at the prison doors.

  She had pressed the bell with more force and a few seconds longer than would seem necessary. The few people outside could hear it ringing thinly in there. Nevertheless there was a wait for any response; she chatted with them—a black prostitute holding bail-money in a gold plastic purse and moving a tumour of chewing-gum from one side of her jaw to the other, two women arguing in whispered Zulu expletives, a youth accompanying an old relative smoking a pipe with a little chain attaching its cover. They were patient. The youth danced, as one hums inaudibly, on heel and toe of blue, red and black track shoes. The woman was white, she knew her rights, she was used to regarding officialdom as petty and ridiculous, not powerful.—Are they asleep ?—The high, penetrating voice of a rich madam.—How long’ve you been here ? You shouldn’t just stand—they’re supposed to answer, you know.—The blacks were used to being ignored and bypassed by whites and were wary of any assumption of common cause, except for the young prostitute, who knew white men too intimately to be impressed by the women they were born of. She pulled a face. —They did come, but they say we must wait.—

  —Wait! Well we’ve waited long enough.—The white woman put her thumb on the bell and made a play of leaning all her weight against it, smiling back at everyone jauntily. Her hair was dyed and like the dark windows of her sunglasses, contrasted with her lined white forehead; she was a woman in her mid-fifties with the energetic openness of a charming girl. The hand that pressed the bell wore jade and ivory. The prostitute giggled encouragement—Ouuu, that’s beautiful, I’d like to have a ring like that. For me.—

  —Which one ?—No, this little one’s my favourite—you see how it’s made ? Isn’t that clever—

  The speak-easy slot in the doors opened and a mime’s face appeared in the frame, two taut thin bows of eyebrows, eyes outlined in black, cheeks chalked pink.

  —I’ve got some things for detainees.—The woman was brisk; the painted-on face said nothing. The slot shut and the woman had just turned her head in exasperated comment to her companions when there were oiled sounds of bolts and keys moving and a door within one of the great doors opened to let her in. It closed at once, behind her alone; the wardress who owned the face said—Wait.—

  The woman’s cream pleated skirt and yellow silk shirt reflected light in the dark well of brick and concrete, so that some creature with rags tied to protect the knees, washing the floor, gazed up. An after-image appeared before the eyes that returned to mop and floor. The scents of fine soap, creams, leather, clothes kept in cupboards where sachets hung, a lily-based distilled perfume, and even a faint natural fruit-perfume of plums and mangoes was an aura that set the woman apart in the trapped air impregnated with dull smells of bad cooking and the lye of institution hygiene, the odour under broken nails leached to the quick. The visitor had been here before; nothing was changed: except the outfit of the wardresses, black and white—they were got up in what seemed to her to be the remaindered uniforms worn five years ago by air hostesses —she travelled a good deal. Under the stairs on the left were suitcases and cardboard boxes tied with rope and labelled, even a few coats; possessions taken from detainees on their reception, awaiting the day or night of their release. She saw the bright sunlight enclosed in the jail yard. The fat ornamental palms, the purplish shiny skin of the granolithic. She skilfully glided a few steps forward to take a quick look, but there was no one out for exercise—supposing they were to be allowed anywhere near the entrance, anyway.

  Tiny skirt winking on a round high bottom, the tilted body on high heels led her to the Chief Matron’s office.

  Like—like...to describe Chief Matron to people afterwards it was necessary to find some comparison with an image in a setting that was part of their experience, because she was a feature of one in which they had never been and an element in a scale of aesthetic values established by it alone. Like the patron’s wife in a bar or dance-hall in a nineteenth-century French painting—Toulouse-Lautrec, yes—but more like those of a second-rater, say, Felicien Rops. Her desk was wedged under barathea-covered breasts. She wore service-ribbons, and gold earrings pressed into fleshy lobes. The little wardress’s eyebrows were a fair imitation of her red-brown ones, drawn high from close to either side of the nose-bridge. Her little plump hand with nails painted a thick, refined rose-pink tapped a ballpoint and moved among papers she looked at through harlequin glasses with gilt-scrolled sidepieces. There were gladioluses in a vase on the floor. A wilting spray of white carnations with a tinsel bow stood in a glass on the desk—perhaps she had been to a police ball.

  The visitor carried two wooden fruit-trays and a big untidy bunch of daisies and roses from her own garden.—Rosa Burger and Marisa Kgosana. Their names are on labels. Plums, mangoes, oranges and some boiled sweets—loose. In open packets. I can’t bring a cake, I understand ?—

  —No, no cake.—The tone of someone exchanging remarks on the oddities of the menu in a cafeteria.

  —Not even if I were to cut it right open, in front of you ?—The visitor was smiling, head inclined, flirtatious, corner of her mouth drawn in contemptuously.

  The Chief Matron shared a little joke, that was all.—Not even then, no, it’s not allowed, you know. Just put the boxes on the floor there, thank you so much, we’ll see they get it just now. Right away.—No one was going to equal her in ladylike correctness. —Sign in the book, your name please.—

  —And the flowers are in two bunches...could you perhaps put them in a bucket of water ? It was so hot in the car.—A couple of Pomeranians were sniffing at the visitor’s shoes. The Chief Matron reproached them in Afrikaans:—Down Dinkie, down boy. You’ll tear the lady’s stockings—Flowers are not allowed any more. I don’t know what...it’s a new order just came through yesterday, no more flowers to be accepted. I’m very sorry, ay ?�
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  —Why ?—

  —I really can’t say, I don’t know, you know...—

  —My name’s on the boxes.—

  —But just put it down here please—the wardress jumped to offer a large register almost before the signal—Let me see, yes... that’s right, and the address—thank you very much—The manner was that of getting amiably over with a mere matter of form: the necessity for well-intentioned sympathetic ladies to commit themselves in their own hand to acquaintance, to association with political suspects. The Chief Matron moved her lips over the syllables of the name as though to test whether it was false or genuine: Flora Donaldson.

  People detained under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act are not allowed visitors, even next of kin. But when later Rosa Burger became an awaiting-trial prisoner she was entitled to the privileges of that status, and in the absence of any blood relative, Flora Donaldson sought and was given permission to see her. Other applicants were refused, with the single exception of Brandt Vermeulen who, no doubt through influence in high places, was suddenly there, when Rosa was taken to the visitors’ room one day. These were not contact visits; Rosa received her visitors from behind a wire grille. It is not known what Brandt Vermeulen talked about in the category of ‘domestic matters’ to which the subject of prison conversations is confined, under surveillance of attendant warders. He is a fluent, amusing talker and a broadminded man of many interests, anyway, not likely to be at a loss. Flora reported that Rosa ‘hadn’t changed much’. She remarked on this to her husband, William.—She’s all right. In good shape. She looked like a little girl, I gather Leela Govind or somebody’s cut her hair again for her, just to here, in her neck... About fourteen... except she’s somehow livelier than she used to be. In a way. Less reserved. We joke a lot—that’s something the bloody warders find hard to follow. After all, why shouldn’t family matters be funny ? They’re boring enough. You only realize quite how boring when you have to try to make them metaphors for something else...Theo tells me Defence’s going to give the State witnesses hell. He thinks she’s got a good chance of getting away with it this time—the State may have to drop charges after the preliminary examination. In which case she’ll probably be house-arrested as soon as she’s released...well all right, anything rather than jail?—there’re a lot of things you can do while house-arrested, after all, Rosa’ll get out to go to work every day—