No Time Like the Present: A Novel

by Gordimer, Nadine

  —‘Xenophobia’, a future no one in the bush the desert thought of.—

  —Just a minute, hold, my brother—how could we know then our countries round us would turn their liberation into dirty power struggles with their own people, the Amins the Mobutos and now Mugabe, so their refugees would flood in on us.—

  Seen it all before.

  In Lesego’s car, it occurs.—Isn’t umlungu going to be unwelcome whitey. I don’t want to make them suspicious of you.—

  Lesego doesn’t so much as consider this.—They know me, their non-racial frontman. At least I’m a black prof of African Studies at a university where white profs used to study us. They’ll think you’re a journalist I’ve brought to write about what happened to them back home. Not to worry.—

  Wasn’t worried about the possibility of being abused, harsh words, anger that might spill over an emigrant from his local white world no, but that people could be offended at being a spectacle for him.

  Once Lesego left the highway there was a jumble of burned tyres on a road to be manoeuvred through. It seems from newspaper pictures and TV coverage there’s an endless source of these, they are the flags, the logos of protest. Lesego, as if remarking on a passing foreign landscape—Must have been cleared from where they barricaded the highway.—The road was a ploughed track of swerving levels, boulders washed up exposed from past rainy seasons, holes to be avoided or if too deep and wide, bumped through in low gear. Taxi buses taking their right of first way somehow missed hitting the car as they aimed for it: Lesego’s experienced with these conditions. There were the remains of vehicle skeletons. A couple of stick-limbed and a lumbering fat boy yelled from the game they were busy with in one of them. (Can paediatricians explain why undernourished children can be either painfully thin or somehow blown up like empty bags.) Now there was the beginning rather than entrance to the place. Men stood about talking each other down and an old woman sat on a packing case before what might have been a house was someone’s life exposed, three walls of the same kind of cardboard she was seated on, one buckled sheet left of a tin roof, the fourth wall missing or never existent, a neatly made bed there with a bright floral cover, shoes, pots, some shirts hanging on a wire, a tin bath, a poster of a football star.

  Some man who recognised Lesego gathered him among men telepathic awareness brought from behind what was left of shacks and houses. Nothing appeared intact, not as if explosives had fallen indiscriminately but wrecked by individual intention. This place, invaders have simply moved in on local people living there perhaps years and somehow become settled enough to acquire possessions. Probably gleaned stuff dumped by white suburbans who have too much clutter, or stolen by the jobless turned housebreakers—no refugee could have brought with him the old upright piano lying among its torn-out white keys, a creature that has lost its teeth. A spaza shop which had the enterprise of displaying special offers with grinning client posters as in the supermarkets gaped on empty shelves and the spilling of loot, trampled, apparently not worth taking. Someone was picking over the remains of a TV—no electricity here, but television can be run on a car battery—the few cars were not more damaged than they normally would have been—windscreens one-eyed with patches, autograph dents from daily encounters on that single road; the owners must have driven them off to a safer place when violence began brewing potently.

  The Zimbabweans didn’t flee, this time, this place, they resisted the violence of rejection with violence. The men about Lesego indeed must think he’s brought someone who’ll make the world hear their story of invasion, so it has to be told in a language the white man with him will understand; what’s vehement must be sent out in English. The voice fired from the coming and going babble of the group.—Who is give them pangas and guns, where they do get, who give them knives from butcher shop, who paying those people come to kill us, they want this our place.—A woman lifted a wail that drew theirs from under the black shawls of her old women companions. And suddenly a note with the cadence of Afrosoul soared somewhere on the low horizons of destruction. Whose voice. She’s just one of those who’re growing up in this place; an inspiration not interruption—Where’re our jobs they take. There’s jobs at the paint factory, the building going on over there-there Jeppe Street, the cleaners for the hotel—those people they take our jobs, they take any small pay, the bosses don’t want our wages they must pay us the union says—

  Lesego breaks away with one of the men and signals.—He asks us to go with him.—The shrug for the man’s privacy. He questions him under his breath.

  Too difficult to follow the gist of the isiZulu that follows; so without being able to make out the purpose, just be an appendage of Lesego. Seeing more ‘on the ground’. Women have three-legged pots standing in fires, children are bowling, quarrelling over turns with the wheels of a bicycle corpse. Another woman, backside assertive, is stirring cement rather than food alongside a man patching bricks to close gaps broken in a house that had a luxury of a wall instead of corrugated tin and cardboard. There’s an instinct in human settlement to be aligned as if you were in streets but some shacks are faced away, at the choice of the individual, from what is the rough conformation of a line of occupation; that’s the freedom of destitution. Lesego calls his greeting to men swinging rhythmical hammer blows on what’s left of a scrap-metal roof and they call back cheerful with the acknowledgement. There are everywhere underfoot—kick aside to get along—the twisted plastic containers of whatever, cigarette stubs, crumpled publicity handouts, beer cans—only in greater accumulation than what is shed to the gutters of formal living in the city.

  Here at the shacks there’s no municipal service to pick it up. Why should the parents of kids teach them not to throw away trash when their home is made of trash.—So they’re not to be allowed to learn self-respect?—Not even that. She’s not there with him but often when he’s with others it’s as if she’s presenting him with unexpected aspects of himself. And sometimes he’s giving her some of herself she’s not aware of.

  A shebeen coterie although they’re in what are obviously rescued chairs from somewhere, each different with a lopsided leg or a seat replaced by double cardboard, drink beers from the bottle, maybe this battered shed is or was a shebeen, it’s withdrawn, can’t say protected from whatever’s happened to it, by a tarpaulin as a devout Muslim woman hides behind a veil the compensatory visions for the ugliness of life. Children rat-scatter; and there are a few hens, not much shattered glass you’d expect of violence, because shacks generally don’t have windows but there are shard reflections from smashed mirrors, whatever else people can’t have, it’s clear from mirrors seen still to survive in wrecked shelters, hung up somehow, men and women must have their image, to shave and (young Afrosoul voice) make up; have sight of themselves not just as others choose to see them.

  The man stops evidently come to what he’s making for. It’s a shack like any other but iron railing, the kind of screen put up to protect a store front in a risky street stands propped over what would be the entrance, and some piece of broken furniture hung with a cloth image of the President in leopard-skin regalia blinds anyone from being able to see inside. A woman with the facial bone structure recording she was once beautiful (as Jabu the lawyer is beautiful) interferes with Lesego’s man shaking the bars for attention.—They say there’s somebody very sick, that’s why you mustn’t worry the people—The man jerks a shoulder to back her off in reproaches. A voice comes from in there, questions, and gets an answer in their shared language that satisfies identity. A man pregnant with a belly that means his belt only just holds up his pants below it at the crotch appears round the side of the curtain. He signs to approach and heaves the iron screen sideways, it’s not flab, that belly, at an angle for the arrivals to push in.

  There’s a double bed with nobody lying in it. A young woman tending a baby among jars, mugs and a head of cabbage on the table. Confusion. A shack is a dwelling-place all purpose in one, a motorbike, piled clothing, mobile phon
e, stroller strung with limp toys, a car seat has two neat white pillows on it, must double as a bed.

  Lesego was introduced to the man who bore his belly so confidently, names, elaborate greeting exchanged. And Lesego presents:—Steve, my good friend.—The man might or might not have been reassured by what came from a white, the traditional handshake—forearm grasp. The young woman with the baby on her hip drew up: and as if now remembered—My daughter.—Lesego asked the name as he greeted her and touched the baby in salute.—This’s Steve. We teach at the university together.—

  —Oh great, that’s nice.—

  What to say.—Are you all right? It must have been terrible for you.—

  —They were trying to get in but that iron—they tried and tried and there was such fighting in the street they got mixed up in it and went to another place, a woman we know just near us, she was killed.—

  Her father is impatient with the platitudes of circumstance. He swings the belly to a stained blanket hanging from where the tin sheet of wall meets the tin roof and lifts it enough for the three men to see—a gap there; it’s open on a lean-to shed made of whatever, propped to the battered relic of a truck door. There’s a man standing. Looking straight at them, where he would have been thrust before they were let in past the storefront guard.

  He’s a young man and he’s wearing one of those bold bright-patterned topknot balaclavas women sell among sweets and single cigarettes on city pavements this year. It crowns and covers—his identity?—over the ears and down to join under the jawbone.

  There is close and intermittently argumentative exchange between Lesego, the master of the shack and the man who led to this confrontation with what has become circumstance rather than a crisis. It’s the dialogue all over the country.

  What purpose in being here with them. What are any of us veterans of the Struggle doing about it. (Sitting around…shocked…Eish.)

  The exchange has ended in abrupt conclusive silence. Lesego turns from it.—We have to get him out of here.—

  The company stoops back under the cloth of the shed, hidden man follows. The girl looks about with random instinctive foresight, taking up this and that, the foresight of what can’t be done without anywhere, piece of soap, razor, into a plastic bag, underpants and small towel, chemist-labelled pill bottle along with a leather lumber jacket folded into a carryall she empties of baby clothes.

  He doesn’t take off the elaborate headgear that surely will draw attention; he’ll be exposed a moment when he comes out from behind the storefront guard to Lesego’s car. But no—of course the thing is what every young black is buying this winter for warmth—shows you’re cool, man.

  The young man is talkative in the back of the car beside the one who led the way to the hideout. In the rear-view mirror see the topknot bobbing with nervous loquacity. He speaks English with more confidence than many South African brothers although obviously he isn’t one of the class of some immigrant Zimbabweans, teachers and doctors—reminder that Mugabe started off well, reforming and advancing education out of its colonial limits.—I can’t follow what’s got into them, the people around Josiah’s place, we were good mates, we worked in the same kinds of jobs we could get, Nomsa and I, we all partied together I was best man at the wedding of one of her friends—that I have to be afraid when I’m living with her…Some of the others, Somalis with their shops, they think a lot of themselves, annoy people, but most of us in those shacks, we give each other a hand. I couldn’t believe Joseph first when he told—I mean even the people next door, round about, we drink and dance together between our shacks, we did, this Christmas even—now they’re after me! All of us! Out! Out! They think if we’re thrown out, they kill us, they’ll be rich in our jobs can you believe it, the pay we get? They’ll stay poor like we are—

  But where will Lesego take him; Lesego must be thinking in the silence between our seats. The shacks are left behind, no one stones us from the trap of the dirt road to be travelled to the highway, no one’s recognised an enemy from Zim known to them and tried to drag him from the car where a white man was one of his protectors.

  The silence, against the man’s monologue as Lesego drove, held, with the response of occasional throat-clearing sounds, syllables to show the victim he was being listened to.

  —Where to take him. Who will.—Lesego in low bass just for that shared silence.

  You can’t ask the young man if he knows anyone, anywhere. So there’s no answer, and that confirms they must keep thinking: where. The Methodist Church asylum the last place, now, must be overflowing the usual overflow—unless it’s been raided for its Zims.

  Lesego seemed vaguely to be following the way to the Suburb, maybe considering somewhere else: or first to drop off the comrade seated beside him without hope that either will have a solution to offer.

  As if come to a realisation he began again in the same confidential bass.—Jabu’s whatever-she-is, she doesn’t live in the outhouse now?—

  —She moved in with Sindi—after what happened.—

  Lesego doesn’t take his gaze from the road to accompany what he’s saying.—He could be there, couldn’t he—An observation. As if in anticipation of an obstacle in mind—Jabu might not like the idea…—A moment has to be left for response. But in the delay—I can’t take him to our place, the parents are with us these days, there isn’t even a bed—Jabu—oh maybe Jabu can fix something so at least he can become a legal immigrant.—

  —Forget it. The Centre acts for people who’re being denied their Constitutional rights as South Africans. Anyway since when does ‘xenophobic’ ask whether or not you’ve been let in legally?—

  What the purpose is in being there, in a passenger’s seat, in having been there in the shelter of shacks and the bashed relic of a truck door. What any of us is doing. Brought down the crowned centuries of colonialism, smashed apartheid. If our people could do that? Isn’t it possible, real, that the same will must be found, is here—somewhere—to take up and get on with the job, freedom. Some must have the—crazy—faith to Struggle on. Past the Gereformeerde Kerk pool choppy with winter wind to the house that will be occupied only until November; the outhouse is already empty. The passenger door opens just as Lesego switches off the ignition.—I want to go in and tell Jabu we’ve brought someone. Who…again?—There was a name, mumbled by the authority of the belly. Lesego thinks, Albert-somebody.

  Saturday afternoon, Gary Elias and Njabulo in their football shorts and pullovers after the game, sprawled at ease while another sports match on television is vociferous blast. Concentrated by it they don’t hear Gary’s father come into the house. This generation inured to disturbance, muzak the atmosphere, commentary the broadcast chatter in public places, registering only the one side of cell-phone intimacies and banalities. Their aural senses are going to be worn ragged before beards begin to sprout. (Yes. But didn’t you have the Beatles going strong while you studied.) Sindi’s not there—where would she be but absent with her friends on a Saturday. Jabu’s taking notes from tomes dealt out around her—brought home some research from the Centre, concentration stops her ears against noise. She jumps up in welcome and dread.—Was it awful…why isn’t Lesego coming in.—

  She gets the signal. Not that the boys would overhear. In the passage he makes for the kitchen but she takes his elbow, there’s the rhythm of chopping something, Wethu must be busy in there.—A man’s in the car—he was hidden by the family he’s been living with in the shacks. He wasn’t among all the other Zims attacked last week but people know where he is and they’re after him, now.—

  She’s waiting.

  —Lesego doesn’t know right away where to put him.—

  Is some suggestion, solution expected from her.

  —Lesego’s place isn’t possible, full house, the parents are there. We’ll have to take him.—

  Her head is still lifted questioning; but not the unexpected.

  —Lesego remembered Wethu’s place. I didn’t want just to walk in on
you without a word.—

  She turns without one, instead her lips, a quick kiss, not explained.

  Lesego and the man came in and were welcome.—Would you like some tea. Or a drink, maybe that’s better. I’m Jabu Reed—our son Gary and his pal.—She’s silenced the sports match.

  The stranger now takes off the headgear as the boys titter appreciatively, this is a sharp guy. He sets down the carryall; in this house.

  It’s a claim recognised by Jabu.—I’m not going to ask what happened to you, it’s all been—we see it. On TV…the papers, hear the radio…—But the man: become by Lesego, their Zimbabwean.—It’s terrible—our people, whatever our people here feel—

  He has a beer and again tells his history, the packer at a wholesale electrical appliance firm, truck driver, fast-food waiter. A dossier, three years of acceptance.

  When Lesego swallows the last of his beer—he wasn’t offered his usual red wine, it’s not a usual gathering—and gets up to leave the other does not attempt to follow; it’s understood. But to be sure.—You say I can stay here…Meantime.—He thanks Lesego under Lesego’s dismissing protest.

  Jabu appeared with bedding under her arm.—Steve’ll show where you’ll sleep, it’s not part of the house but there’s a bathroom and so on. If you need anything…Supper’ll be late we don’t hurry when there’s no school next day.—

  In the brief argot of domestic intimacy—That camp bed, when we went with the Dolphins to the Drakensberg—oh Gary Elias knows where you put it, Gary?—

  And then as he leads the stranger out to Wethu’s chicken-house cottage.—Shouldn’t you slip him some clothes, your jeans’ll be best, he’s smaller than you but you wear them tight they won’t be much too big…that shopping bag all he has with him.—

  Gary Elias and Njabulo are rounded up by her to find the dismantled camp bed, release its bandy wooden legs in flourishing style and stretch the canvas its length. Gary Elias is roused to a grievance—When can we go camping again, we never go any more.—Any more. Not the distracted moment for a father to remind him what he’s been told, there’s another wilderness of bush Over There; just as the bush that has been his adventure holiday place here is not the Angolan desert, bush, where his mother and father were in the Struggle. So what. That the boy, their boy, my boy, knows the bush as happy adventure, that’s a small gain—in the better life that hasn’t reached people in the shacks, so that they need to defend with fire and panga possession of the scraps of the survival they can’t share.