The House Gun

by Nadine Gordimer

—Oh I find the teenage is the worst! In our culture, I mean, you don’t kiss your auntie, but you must greet her in the proper way we’ve always done.—

  Harald, under his conversation with others heard; Claudia was laughing, talking about Duncan.

  —You’re in the legal game, with Hamilton?—The brother-in-law, or was it some other relative.

  —No, no, insurance.—

  —That’s also a good game to be in. You pay, pay all your life and if you live a long time before you die the insurance people have had more of your money than they’re going to give out, isn’t it.—

  There was head-thrown-back laughter.

  —That’s the law of diminishing returns.—

  The different levels of education and sophistication at ease in the gathering were something that didn’t exist in the social life Harald had known; there, if you had a brother-in-law who was a meat packer at a wholesale butchery (the first man had announced his métier) you would not invite him on the same occasion when you expected compatibility with a client from the corporate business world, and an academic introduced as Professor Seakhoa who would drily produce an axiom in ironic correction of naïve humour. Hamilton put a hand on either shoulder, Harald’s and the meat packer’s.—Beki, my friend here doesn’t come knocking on your door selling funeral policies, he’s a director who sits away up on the fifteenth floor of one of those corporate headquarters where bonds for millions are being negotiated for industries and housing down there below—the big development stuff.—

  —Well, that must be an even better game, nê. More bucks. Because the government’s got to pay up.—

  New faces appeared with the movement in and out, about the room. Some young friends of the adolescents, their voices in the higher register. The academic, whose belly wobbled in appreciation of his own wit, turned to tease them. Claudia—where was Claudia—Harald kept antennae out for her—she was talking to the son, no doubt about the prospects of a career in medicine, he had been captured by his father and delivered to her. A glimpse of her face as she was distracted for a moment to the offer of samoosas: Claudia’s expression with her generous frown of energy; probably about to suggest that the boy come to her clinic, put on a white coat, lend a hand where it could be useful and try out for himself what the practice of medicine should mean in service to the people and the country. She laughed again, apparently in encouragement of something the boy was saying.

  A tiny, light-coloured old man had already scented substantial food and sat with a heaped plate on his knees eating a chicken leg warily as a cat that has stolen from the table. Everyone sauntered, talking, colliding amiably, to another room almost as large as the one they had left, where meat, chicken and potatoes, putu and salads, bowls of dessert decorated with swirling scripts of whipped cream were set out. Harald found his way to her.—We didn’t expect a party.—But she only smiled as if she were still talking to another guest.—Oh I don’t think it’s really that. Just the way the family gets together for the weekend.—

  He had the curious feeling she wanted to move away from him, away among others choosing their food, among them, these strangers not only of this night, but of all her life outside the encounters in her profession, the dissection of their being into body parts. Here, among closely mingled lives that had no connection with hers and his—even the connection that Hamilton had in his chambers was closed off by an entry to his privacy—if she lost herself among these others she escaped from what held the two of them bound more tightly than love, than marriage, a bag tied over their heads, unable to breathe any air but that of something terrible that had happened on another Friday night. There was the hiss of beer cans being opened all around but Hamilton, who had filled his clients’ gin-and-tonic glasses several times, brought out wine. His own glass in hand, he went about offering one bottle after another; Harald didn’t refuse, as he customarily would, to mix drinks—anything that would maintain the level of equanimity attained would do. A man holding his plate of food carefully balanced before him came dancing up with intricate footwork as if with a gift; not of food, but with an unspoken invitation to partake—of the evening, the company, the short-term consolations. A man who had overheard that Harald was in the business of financing loans was taking the opportunity to corner him for advice, with heckling interruptions from others.

  —It’s no win, man, without the collateral you can’t get the kind of money you’re dreaming about. Ask him. Ask him. Am I right? If you want to build a little house for yourself somewhere, that’s a different thing, then go to one of the government agencies, housing whatyoucallit, you get your little cents for bricks and windows—

  —A casino! And where’ll you find a licence for that—

  —Oh licence is nothing. Don’t you know the new laws coming in about gambling? He’ll get that. But if he finds the property, the piece of land and maybe there’s something on it he wants to convert, or maybe it’s empty—then the trouble begins. Oh just wait, man. Objections. Objections from the people in the neighbourhood, applications to the city council—you don’t know what hit you, it can drag on for months. And still you won’t win. I know, I know. Freedom. Freedom to object, object.—

  —That’s how whites see it. Live anywhere you like but not next door to me.—

  —Let him answer Matsepa—

  —We don’t have capital. What is this ‘collateral’ but capital? For generations we’ve never had a chance to create capital, tonight’s Friday, every Friday people have had their pay packet and that’s what they ate until the next pay day. Finish. No bucks. Collateral is property, a good position, not just a job. We couldn’t have it—not our grandfathers, not our fathers, and now we’re supposed to have this collateral after two years of our government. Two years!—

  —But let Matsepa ask, man!—

  —The people your company gives money to for projects, where is their collateral? Where do they get it?—

  —Look—the route to take is by consortium. That’s how it is done. We are talking of sizeable projects which require development funds; yes.—Harald hears his Board Room vocabulary in his own voice coming on as at the accidental touch of some remote control: who is that holding forth?—It’s a matter of the individual who has the vision, the idea … project … finding others who will come in … most have studied … the project requires … criteria laid down … our co-operation with the National Development Council … viable economically … benefit to the population … employment … production of commodity … The man may have the brains—and the empty pockets; he has to link up with people whose position in some trustworthy way …—He was being heard by a young man, a son, lying in a cell looking up at a barred window.

  —So I must look for another Dr Motlana or Don Ncube?—

  —Man, they’ve got all the ideas already, they don’t need you, Matsepa.—

  —I’m coming to see you, anyway, Mr … Lindgard, that right? I’ll contact your secretary, she can call me when you’ve got free time. I move around a lot but at least I’ve got a cell phone, there’s my collateral.—

  Hamilton came by.—Gentlemen, no free consultations. We’re here to relax. My people, Harald … I can’t get out of my car in town without someone blocking my way and wanting to know what they must do about some shop that’s repossessed their furniture or their wife who’s run away with their savings.—

  Harald’s neighbour turned to his ear against the volume of laughter and music.—But you don’t know how he takes everyone’s troubles, doesn’t forget them. I’m telling you the truth. Although he’s a big man today. Helps many who don’t pay him. We were kids together in Alex.—

  The professor was holding the beauty, Motsamai’s daughter, by the elbow.—Did you meet this niece of mine, Motshiditsi?—

  She laughed as with long-suffering indulgence.—Ntate, who can pronounce that mouthful. I’m Tshidi, that’s enough. But Mr Lindgard and I have already met.—

  —She’s my protégée. I saw her potential when she was
this high and asking questions we dignified savants in the family couldn’t answer.—

  He says what’s expected of him.—And she’s fulfilled what you saw.—

  —Well, let me tell you she started off shrewdly by being bom at the right time, growing up at the right time. That’s the aleatory factor that counts most for us! Her father and I belong to the generation that was educated at missionary school, St. Peter’s, no less … Fort Hare. So we were equipped ahead of our time to take our place eventually in the new South Africa that needs us. Then came the generation subjected to that system euphemistically called education, ‘Bantu education’. They were equipped to be messengers, cleaners and nannies. Her generation came next—some of them could have admission to private schools, to universities, study overseas; they completed a real education equipped just in time to take up planning, administering our country. That’s the story. She’s going to outshine even her father.—

  —You’re a lawyer, too.—

  —I’m an agricultural economist at the Land Bank.—

  —Oh that’s interesting … there are things that are unclear to me, in the process of providing loans for housing—although our field is urban, of course, the same kind of problems in principle must come up in the transformation I understand is taking place at the Bank.—

  This young woman is too confident to feel a need to make him acknowledge any further her competence to answer, he’s passed the test, he’s placed himself on the receiving end of their exchange.

  —In principle, yes. But the agricultural sector was not only integrated broadly into the financial establishment, through apartheid marketing structures, the Maize Board and so on—in fact in many ways it could afford to be independent of it—the Land Bank was there for them, essentially a politically-based resource for the underwriting of white farmers. The government, through the Bank, provided loans which were never expected to be paid back. The agricultural community, by definition white, because blacks were not allowed to own land, they weren’t even statistics in the deal —the white farmers were expected to make good only in terms of political loyalty coming from an important constituency.—

  —And now this is changing.—

  —Changing!—

  —How d’you see it’s going to happen?—

  He has only half her attention for a moment—she has caught the eye of, and makes a discreet signal with a red-nailed hand graceful as a wing to, someone across the room.

  —By making it happen. New criteria for raising loans. Small grants to broaden the base of the sector, instead of huge grants to the few: all those who didn’t really have to worry whether their crops grew or not. You could always be bailed out by the Land Bank.—

  —No more automatic compensation if the crop fails?—

  —Fails? That means there’s been poor farming.—

  —Natural disaster? Floods, drought?—

  —Ah, failure may be compensated for; it won’t be rewarded.—She laughs with him at her own brusqueness.

  —Excuse me—someone’s calling for me. We must talk about these things again, Mr Lindgard. The housing aspect, from you …—She has her father’s beguiling flash of warmth; the dop of brandy.

  Motsamai’s children—at last, they too have professions; economists, prospective doctors, and lawyers and architects, God knows, there are other children of his in the room. Their grandfathers and fathers having survived so much, does this mean they’re safe; these will not bring down upon themselves something terrible.

  Where was Claudia?

  Claudia was dancing. Someone had replaced the children’s rock and rap with music of the Sixties, changing the rhythm of the room, and he followed the familiar, forgotten twists and pauses of her body, the skilful angles of her feet in response to her partner’s as if the arms and thighs and feet of the man were his own. Where is the past. Obliterated by the present; able to obliterate the present. What brought Claudia out among the dancers, was it a heavy, downcast woman who had been sitting alone, who now danced by herself in self-possession, stomping out on swollen legs the burdens within her? Or was it the music that was the metronome beat of student days when she boasted to her friends with excitement and bravado that she was pregnant, his happy wild love-making with her had evaded the precautions of the know-all young doctor-to-be. Or was it Hamilton’s libations. Or all these at once. Claudia had been found by a man who came from a different experience in every other way but this one: the music, its expression in body and feet, of the Sixties, it didn’t matter where he had performed its rituals in shebeens and yards, and she had carried them out in student union halls, they assumed the form of an assertion of life that was hidden in each. The impromptu straggle of dancers wove about in relation to one another with the unconscious volition of atoms; she disappeared and reappeared with her man—or was this a new partner—and passing near, lifted a hand in a small flutter of greeting. When they drove home she did not say, Why didn’t you dance with me, although he was asking it himself. He had had only to go over and take her hand, his body, too, knew that music which did not, like César Franck, reach into the wrong places. Remarks surfaced here and there, between them—Hamilton’s family connections: who was what?—impressions of the house, whom might it have belonged to originally; giggles at what the first owners would think of how it was inherited outside their dynasty now; at home, they shed clothes and were asleep in mid-sentence.

  In the morning Claudia stood, dressed, in the doorway. You know I was drunk last night.

  I knew. God bless Hamilton.

  It wasn’t a manner of speaking; coming from Harald.

  When the girl failed to arrive on the appointed day on two occasions, Senior Counsel Motsamai took over the telephone call made by his secretary for the third one and made clear to Ms Natalie James that she was expected without fail. This time she came, and sat herself down on one of the chairs facing the broad and deep moat of desk without waiting for the formality of his inviting her to do so. She was in charge: he read. For his taste, he did not regard her as beautiful, but he could feel how her manner of confrontation, distancing and beckoning at the same time—those yellow-streaked dark eyes with the pin-point gaze of creatures of prey which fix on you steadily without deigning to see you—was a strong attraction: male reaction to which was, Here I am.

  Here he was; but he was in charge, in the chambers of the law. He had his notes before him. He went over with her once more the events of the Thursday evening in January. She had the ability, unusual in his experience of witnesses, of repeating exactly, word for word, the replies she had given before. There were no interstices to be taken advantage of in the text of testimony she had edited for herself. She and Duncan had not quarrelled—not that day, though they often did.

  —So there was no particular provocation that perhaps led to your behaviour that night?—

  She paused, slight movements of her head and twitch of lips in puzzled innocence. Her reactions, calculated or not, were inexplicably contradicted by her words, as if someone else spoke out of her.—I don’t do what I do because someone provokes me.—

  It was while they were continuing in this way, the rally of his questions and her answers that he was enduring with the undeflected patience of professionalism, sure of her faltering to his advantage in the end, that she simply let drop the subject of the exchange, and made a remark as if reminded of something that might not be of interest to him.

  —By the way, I’m pregnant.—

  If she expected some sudden reaction she should have known better. Counsel conceals all irritation and anger in court—a discipline that serves to control the reception of any unforeseen statement. The art is to be quick in deciding how to use it. He nudged his back against the support of his chair. Ah-hêh. And simply asked another question.

  —Is the child Duncan’s?—

  She smiled at the accusation behind the question.

  —It doesn’t matter.—

  —Natalie … why doesn’t it matter?—
He tries the fatherly approach.

  —Because then they won’t be able to make any claim. It could be from that night, couldn’t it. They won’t claim.—

  —What d’you mean, they won’t claim?—

  —They’d want something of him. If something terrible happens to him.—

  —The Death Penalty is going to be abolished, my dear. Duncan will go to prison and he will come out. Surely, for yourself, it must matter whose child it is you’re going to have. You must know, don’t you? You do know.—

  —We made love—Duncan—that morning before we went to work, it was all in the same twenty-four hours. So who can say. It doesn’t matter.—

  —No? You don’t care?—

  Oh she is in charge, she is in charge.—I do care; it’s going to be my child, that’s who it is, mine.—

  It was Counsel’s task—everything was his task, no wonder his wife complained that he had little attention to give at home in the fine house he had provided—his task to tell his client and the parents what might or might not be a new element in their life as people in trouble.

  On their next half-hour in the visitors’ room Harald referred to it as a fact, without mention of any circumstances the girl related.—Hamilton has told us Natalie James is expecting a baby.—

  Duncan faced them kindly, as if looking back at something from afar.—That’s good for her.—

  Do you love her.

  I suppose so.

  And now.

  Change the subject.

  Claudia is talking to him of other things, she’s telling him what a nice boy Sechaba Motsamai is to have around helping at the clinic on Wednesdays, Claudia is able to feel herself close to her son, these last days before the trial, she looks forward to the visitors’ room, now, they’ve found the communication is there, all along, in just seeing each other between the barriers of the unspeakable.

  Harald hears their voices and does not follow.

  I suppose so.

  He and Claudia will never know what it was that happened. What happened to their son.