Muslim girls, daughters of Indians themselves third- or fourth-generation South African; he sees them on campus, buttock-sculpted pants, asserting breasts, high heels, film-star faces, and heads shrouded to the shoulders in widow’s black cloth.
—You’ll come.— His brother spoke with assurance.
—Love, you don’t have to.— He had told her.
—But of course I’m coming— and then —You don’t want me to.— It was not a question but an accusation, were there still situations in his life where she would be considered out of place. (Were there any likely in her life where he might be.)
He gently denied the ridiculous. —Just don’t want you to be subject to this kind of thing.—
Jabu consulted Brenda about what to wear; the outfit she’d be expected to by her father elder in his church, on a special occasion in the calendar of worship? He would give the eye of approval, according to the season, to modest summer dresses or skirt, blouse and jacket, Western style, like the three-piece Sunday suit he wore although Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the Anglican Church had introduced traditional African robes in which he even danced down the aisle as part of church services.
—African! Your lovely skirts and those beaded collars.—
—Do you cover your heads?—
—Oh no, your hairdo looks marvellous. The Jews and Africans are such ancient people, they both had their special get-up for women, yours’s great, but thank God we won’t be likely to have anyone arrive wearing wigs.—
—Women had to wear wigs? Over their hair?—
—Their heads were shaved. I’ve picked up all about this while Ryan’s been at school to the yeshiva, that’s religious school, like the Muslims’ madressa.—
She has a maze of pathways round and across her head. You trip over pavement hairdressers in the city but hers is achieved in some fancy salon she goes to. What women will allow to be done to themselves. Fashion; or conformity. What’s in fashion’s a conformity of some kind? I loved her first with the busy halo of African hair she had. To my hand it was the hair at the place I go into her.
He wears a hat borrowed from Jake, although it turns out there are skull caps laid ready at the entrance to the place of worship they’ve been given on the invitation instructions to reach. They are led in by a young man who takes his function ceremoniously, hesitating before the rows of seats, indicating the best choice. The synagogue is large, high-ceiling but without the elaborations of a church of such proportions, no graven images, bare of chapels where special favours are asked of this saint or that, like highly qualified doctors specialising in different pardons, benedictions, solutions for various spiritual conditions. It is simple in spacious lack of distraction from the only focus, the curtains behind which there must be something holy hidden, on the far wall above a platform with a discreet pulpit-podium to one side.
Seats are comfortable as those in a luxury cinema, very different she finds them from the benches in her grandfather’s and her father’s church; Steve doesn’t remember how his young backside might have been accommodated accompanying father Andrew on one of his rare obligatory occasions to show up in church, a wedding perhaps, or a funeral. In front of them are books slotted in pockets on the backs of the next row of seats. The woman beside him—he gives a quick glance of polite acknowledgement, but she is passing the time pushing back the cuticles on her fingernails, the man on Jabu’s side is praying, just audibly, a white shawl falling round his neck. Jabu’s careful not to disturb him by jolting the chair arm and she manages with her usual natural grace to succeed in taking a couple of the books without doing so.
There is pervasive talk, even giggles from young boys apparently corralled to a block of seats across the aisle.
Is this an orthodox or a reform synagogue. The woman is satisfied with the condition of her nails and he can ask her. It’s orthodox. Jabu is turning pages to verify something she’s finding in one of the bilingual books, there’s movement of her lips—she’s trying to mouth Hebrew words, she who speaks at least four languages other than the natal isiZulu he’s picked up under her tutelage. If you’re black you’ve had to improvise communication with unilingual whites, she’d probably easily acquire this ancient one, too.
The rabbi welcomes the congregation in Hebrew and with colloquial English, not the tone Jabu’s accustomed to in church, whether spoken isiZulu or English, implicit chastening against inattention to the presence of the Lord. His Hebrew is poetry, there’s a choir singing in that language, you don’t have to be able to read music in order to understand the beauty of it.
Steve has been looking about to see where Jonathan is sitting, if he’s not behind the scenes, who knows what the protocol may be for the father in this male ceremony.
Andrew and Pauline—must be here, Jonathan’s and his parents, the boy’s grandparents. He has passed over the man in robes and a turban-like headgear, fringed prayer shawl, some ecclesiastical functionary among those in the gathering, although standing, not seated, where yes, the parents Andrew and Pauline have been spotted. He glances that way again as if to mark, we’re here too, Jabu and I. Family solidarity in the most unlikely circumstances after the years when I had to be removed from the way of life expected for me.
The rabbi or whatever he is: he has the face of Jonathan. He is Jonathan. That’s my brother. How could I not have seen. Known him.
Can those stage props have changed him; the sign of change, this one way: his. What was it he said that day, it isn’t enough to be black or white, finish and klaar the way it was in the bad old days, you belong to something . . . what was it, ‘more real’. What’s more real than what we are, now! My Jabu is a woman the same as your Brenda is a woman, same rights—must I spell them out. Your Ryan and our Sindiswa are growing up not tattooed White Master/Swart Meisie just as the Nazis tattooed numbers on the inmates of concentration camps. Why d’you need that ghetto disguise to make you real?
This Jonathan, the functionaries, the boy, are now grouped on the platform.
Jabu senses beside her that Steve is not aware of the address being given about the significance for the boy to be bar mitzvahed, he’s not even hearing the edict taken not only to be faithful to Judaism but to fulfil human responsibilities to everyone, the people and the country. Good sense to hear; she turns to him—and there are his hands splayed palm-down on his thighs. The male gesture of tense reaction she knows in him although she doesn’t, this time, know a cause. Her hand like a secret between them goes over his. There is some sort of text reading announced to which the assembly apparently is to respond at points from the pages and lines given in the books supplied. In the church most know the Bible but here at the occasion there is scuffling and consultation of Torah and prayer book among the congregation, which certainly includes Jonathan’s business associates of various backgrounds religious or otherwise, some Afrikaners, ambitious brother capitalists no longer the master race. There’s one black man among them, must be member of a board; an example of forward-looking recognition of Black Empowerment policy in the second Leninist definition of power, ‘first gain the political kingdom then the kingdom of finance’.
She is the only black woman.
Jabu flutters the pages of the right volume and speaks the responses at the right moment in the English version along with the Hebrew of the old man in his fringed prayer shawl. During pauses when nothing seems to be required of respect while there is activity of some sort going on up at the platform, Jonathan’s alter ego stands as if awaiting orders, there are men in the same kind of dress and in conventional dark suits coming to put a hand on the shoulder or briefly round the arms of the boy Ryan with instruction, advice or homage, the boy’s not seen to do more than nod slow and repeatedly. Brenda leaves her seat and goes up to the official group, comes down again, then once more summoned. There is no word seen to be exchanged between her and the figure of her husband. At some stage there is a rustle of hush in the congregation-cum-audience; a moment has come. The boy walks up to
the podium-pulpit with back intently bent, straightens, swallows (you can’t see the movement of the Adam’s apple from the distance of the seats but everyone knows that brave pause) and delivers his candidacy speech in the English version and in Hebrew for which he has been under tuition for several years. Then comes the other Moment, the revelation by the young hand about to be that of a man, of what is most holy in this house of God, as the revealing of the likeness of the rebel Jew, Jesus, is in the other religion He inspired. The boy takes hold of a cord, the curtains sway on the wall, shake folds and curl back either side with the flourish of a retreating wave. He lifts out the Scroll of The Law. Jabu’s half-turned in her seat as if she’s about to applaud, but knows better than this secular impulse, in a house of worship.
And that’s only the beginning of the spectacle, there are ceremonial embraces up there, it’s like a scene from a religion ancient as an archaic Greek frieze, it looks as though some in embrace are going to succumb to the floor. And the solemnity changes key to something different, an order is being made of the rabbi, his cohort of family men and male friends, doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, businessmen, some transformed by a token enrobement, family women in whatever is their individual best (just as down in the congregation Steve’s wife is in hers) with the inducted boy carrying aloft like a trophy the Scroll of The Law on its staff. He leads the parade down from the ceremonial platform and everyone rises, the ignorant taking cue from the conversant, Jabu from the devout old neighbour and Steve from her. The procession is coming slowly down the first aisle, slowly round the second, apparently held back in pauses, by those congregants nearest. As it approaches the row where he and she sit, the woman on his left stands and pushes past their feet to get to the aisle, hampered by the unsteady old man already risen. Jabu, Steve see those who are closest enough to the aisle lean a hand straining to touch in the procession’s passing the holy object carried by the celebrant. There is silence except for the stir of feet and clothing.
The held breath is released. The Scroll back hung in place. In a gush the procession breaks, interrupted, disbanded by everyone crowding in with congratulation on the way out the doors, the excited, half-schoolboy-chaffing boys burst from their exclusion to entrap this one of theirs who has just breasted the tape on the finish line of the instruction they shared.
There are strangers who arrest Steve, knew him as a little boy, take the opportunity to recall incidents he hasn’t retained; time overlaid. There is a garden to this place of worship and food and drink laid out on decorated tables under the trees. Jabu provides plates for him and herself and keeps up a running commentary to him this looks good, aren’t you going to try that, and in friendly asides to others, before the choice. Jonathan has emerged from his robe and headdress, he comes over to his brother it seems to present himself in uniform dark suit and tie. He is carrying two glasses to take up from a tray another to hand to Jabu. Instructs her: Mazeltov! She’s congratulating him again—she and Steve were caught up with the family on the way outdoors—and he leans to be kissed cheek by cheek. —So glad you came.—
Is it to confirm to the revolutionary brother that she is today converted. Or that he’s not himself conventional, isn’t this ritual just concluded, another kind of sign. In reverse? Or is it that he’s sexually attracted to her—they shared toys in brotherly compact. Anyway, she’s a better guest than Steve, she moves and talks easily among the crowd.
She is the only black woman, yes.
—Who’s the black beauty?—
The speaker is waiting with Brenda a turn in the ladies’ room. The heavy kosher wine releases polite social inhibitions.
—That’s Jonathan’s sister-in-law, his brother’s wife.—
—How did it happen?—
—Oh they were in the Movement.— Brenda knows the terminology, if her friend doesn’t. —In detention here, or over the border somewhere in camps. His family never knew where he was while he was supposed to be at university, between times he got his degree, mysterious guy. Yes, she’s lovely; sharp as well.—
—You knew him? The brother. Never mind the racist thing . . . it still must be strange, with a black woman . . . at least at the beginning, no?—
—Oh ask some of the respectable husbands you know!—
The occupants of the two toilets are taking their urinary meditation, whoever they are.
In the female privacy Brenda emerges from the persona the occasion makes of her, traditional wife of traditional Jonathan and traditional mother of the son inducted to manhood.
—I’ve always wondered. Something else. Not the same but. What’s it like, to have that . . . a black cock coming into you. Are they really black or like the inside of their mouths when they laugh, and the palms of their hands, sort of rose-colour, always wanted to know.—
The friend contrives to look as if this confided attraction has not been said, coinciding with an avalanche whoosh behind one of the doors, and the occupant comes out.
Alan was there unnoticed among the seated in the synagogue but not to be missed balancing heaped plate and glass in the style of a partygoer. They meet one another, these other brothers of the one become a real Jewish boy’s father, with an unspoken you here too. Alan laughs; it’s for himself, he’s no longer what’s queer in the family—in the dictionary not the sexual gender sense, it’s sibling Jonathan who’s for some reason deviated from the non-observant but accepted the identity of Christ inherited from their father, given up what may be protection against anti-Semitism that hasn’t disappeared with the smoke from Auschwitz. He tweaks one of Jabu’s coloured-thread-plaited locks. —My favourite woman.—
—That’s not saying much, considering.— Steve’s endurance of being there diverted to one of the sharp exchanges that began in boyhood fun against the solemnity of grown-ups.
—Where’s Tertius?—
—Jabu sweetie, I didn’t know, with what’s going on with Jonathan, whether it’d be kosher, as a couple . . .—
—Well you’re the one that’s read up all the religions—
—Except Marx, Che and Castro, my brother—
—They say the Torah has some good advice, you’d know if God’s quoted there, as the Gereformeerde Kerk says the Bible does declaring an abomination?—
Daughter of the other abominated, the sons of Ham, Jabu enjoys family jokes for the occasion.
Steve judges they can decently leave ‘Jonathan’s farce’ and go back home to reality.
They’re alone apart, she and he, each, in his brother’s family celebration. They have been together in the meaning of so many situations, in that each has chosen resistance, revolution, it isn’t one of the conventions that order existence in white suburb or black ghetto. It’s a place of encounter in an understanding that hasn’t existed before. As with falling in love.
What’s he mean by ‘farce’? Nothing unusual in reviving a custom. Your people are your people, Baba is my Baba, I still serve him the way of a daughter of our people although I moved on.
Back home to reality, Sindiswa under care of a widowed relative of Jabu’s father who has come to live with them; not exactly a nanny employed as in the old order of the whites (a quick denial) but at the request of father to daughter. Some solutions to what she knows are his too many responsibilities to church and extended family. Steve grew up of course in his, Pauline and Andrew’s home, where servants were taken for granted as part of the household, black, separately housed in the yard, with what was decided a decent wage considering they were also fed.
He could not have a servant, man, woman, doing what everyone should be doing for himself. In Glengrove he and Jabu washed their clothes and dishes, sucked away their own dirt into the vacuum cleaner. His guilt at the obliging presence of Wethu, specially attentive to him in the subservience owed to males in the Elder’s extended family—he had to take out of her hands his shoes she expected to polish—was something he saw Jabu didn’t share; he insisted Jabu’s distant cousin or whatever she was must be paid.
But of course that makes her a servant; in the extended family at the coal-mine village women in her dependent position are sheltered and granted respect but not paid. Jabu hadn’t thought of money; to her, that he did—more than sense of the revolutionary equality, justice; it was a sign of sensitivity, one of the qualities of her man. Wethu occupied what was supposed to be the room for comrades in need of a bed when passing through the city from their dispersed lives—but she told Jabu by way of her tears she couldn’t explain even in the language they shared, my child, I want a place, you can fix the window in that shed.
And it was so; she was without their intention, left out when Jabu and Steve animatedly exchanged opinions of what they’d heard, read and seen on the news, and told of what each experienced with whom, achieved or been frustrated by in the working day; Wethu’s vocabulary in English didn’t include the references and slang understood between them; she was in communication only with the child, or when Jabu remembered to say something that might be of interest to her, in their language.
His isiZulu, taught—passed on—to him by Jabu so that he could speak to his daughter in her other heritage, and in linguistic aspect of intellect as one a little less inferior in his efforts to communicate sociably with his students invited home, who were voluble in up-to-date hip-hop English —this also wasn’t isiZulu usage familiar to this woman, Wethu. So he was experiencing in himself: class difference could take over from colour in what’s going to be made of freedom.
Steve had the shed of the empty chicken run pulled down and a room with a bathroom built in its space by a friend of Peter Mkize, a construction worker at a white consortium who had taken the chance of setting himself up independently as a builder. The house owner approached through the estate agent had no objection to the improvement of the amenities of his property. Wethu’s all-purpose tears again; Steve had gently to return the pressure of his hand to that of hers wringing his in gratitude. May God bless you. May God bless you.
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