Love in the Time of Apartheid

by Frederic Hunter

  “Sick of your nobility!” She took a swing at him. He caught her arm, grabbed her, and embraced her. He pushed her back into the car.

  They drove on, passing wretched homesteads. Gat caught sight of their inhabitants: farm laborers bound to peonage, wind-bitten, sun-burnt Afrikaner farmers, their wrinkled faces set grimly against all that opposed them in this land that desired to be desert.

  Petra had been watching him. “Let’s both start fresh,” she suggested. “We’ll disappear and become new people.”

  “I need to do that.”

  “If we were married, we could go to Australia together.”

  “How?” Gat asked. “Do you have a passport with you?” Petra nodded. “Oops!” Gat laughed. “I shouldn’t have asked.” He was quiet for a time. “I thought Mozambique,” he said. “Or even Madagascar.”

  “I’d prefer Australia. They speak English.”

  Gat watched the road, realizing that it was indeed possible for them to get on a plane together for Sydney or Melbourne or Perth. Who could stop them? After a time he said, “You know, we don’t have to be married to go to Australia together.”

  “I’m not going with you to Australia, unmarried, and have you leave me two weeks after we get there.” She considered a moment. “We’d have to agree to stay together for a year.”

  “Six months,” said Gat. He realized with a kind of horror that they were bargaining the way one did in an African market. That by saying “six months” he had accepted the basic framework of the arrangement she proposed. Now he was merely negotiating the details. “In two weeks you might find that you couldn’t stand being with me.”

  “You’d still need to take care of me for a year. Until I got on my feet.” As soon as she made the statement, Petra knew she must revise it. “We’d take care of each other.”

  As they moved past a stand of trees, their view suddenly opened onto a farmhouse edging a field. In their speed Gat saw a flash of a white man standing over a laborer. Was he beating him with a cane? He and Petra both heard the piteous cry—“Nie, baas! Nie, baas!”—and the whack of the cane. Gat took in the scarlet of blood running down the man’s yellow face. By then the scene was gone. He and Petra looked at one another.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror, suddenly pulled on the steering wheel, and swung the Ford across the road and in a half-circle. Thrown against the door, Petra gasped, “What’re you doing?” The scene flashed past again. Once again Gat pulled on the wheel. Petra slid toward him, grabbing the dashboard. By then the Ford was heading onto the farmhouse lawn, directly toward the white man whose arm was raised and his mouth open as the Ford bore down on him. Gat held down the car horn. Three other laborers stood nearby—Gat had not noticed them—uncertain what to do. Gat skidded the car up to the white man, the horn still sounding, and shouted, “Stop that!”

  The white man was well into middle age. Enraged by this impudence, he brought the cane down onto the hood of the Ford. Gat shot out of the car. The white man started away. Gat overtook him. He grabbed the cane and wrenched it from his grasp. The man stopped to confront Gat. Gat raised the cane. The man turned to hurry away. Gat brought the cane across his buttocks. The man looked back, his eyes fiery with anger. He screamed toward the house. Gat turned toward the fallen laborer. Petra shouted to him, “Get to the car! He’s called for a gun!” The other laborers had lifted the wounded man. They were running, carrying him away. One of them shouted, “Dankie, baas!” Petra took Gat’s arm, propelled him toward the car. A shot rang out. They ran for the car. The white man brandished a rifle. He took aim at Gat. Gat and Petra dove for the car. Gat slithered behind the wheel. Petra hunkered below the dashboard. Gat floored the accelerator. The car fishtailed across the yard. The white man aimed his rifle. He fired another shot. And another. And Gat and Petra were off down the highway.

  As soon as it was clear they were safe, Gat burst out laughing. Petra watched him, astonished. She began to laugh. “What in God’s name were you doing?”

  “I was going to ask for directions,” Gat replied mildly.

  Petra shook her head. “You only made it worse for that kaffir, you know.”

  “Maybe,” Gat said. “But they’ll be talking about that moment for years.” Pleased with himself, he reached over to tousle her hair.

  “You’re right,” she told him. “I really know nothing about you.”

  THEY PICNICKED in a field on food left over from the previous day. When they got to Kimberley where the diamond rush had occurred in 1871, they stopped at a bar. Gat had a beer while Petra went to a telephone booth to report their progress to Gillian Prinsloo and get directions to the farm outside Vryburg. After calling her friend, Petra telephoned her mother who had now flown back to Cape Town. “How was Father’s meeting?” she asked when her mother came on the line.

  “Darling, where are you?” Margaret exclaimed. “How are you?”

  “I’m wonderful, Mum!” she said. “I think I’m in love.” As they drove north, saying little after escaping bullets, Petra pondered the best way to advise her mother not to worry. This seemed the best approach; she would call when her father was still at his office.

  “Oh, Pet!” her mother reacted.

  “Aren’t you happy for me?”

  “Of course, darling. Is it anybody we know?”

  “Don’t tease me, Mum! I know Kobus called you. He must’ve been terribly upset.”

  “He talked to your father.”

  “He tried to seduce me. I wouldn’t let him.”

  “Really? I don’t think he told your father that.” The two women chuckled together across the miles. “Where are you?”

  “I can’t tell you because I know Father has the police out looking for us.”

  “I told him that was not a good idea.”

  “I’m safe and happy. I just wanted you to know.” She added, “And in love.”

  “Do you and Captain Gautier— Make love?”

  “Whenever we can,” Petra said. Then she giggled. “We’re very restrained,” she insisted. “Only when we go to bed and when we wake up. Isn’t it fun?”

  “Be careful, Pet. You don’t want to get— You know, preggers.”

  “We may get married,” Petra said, just to keep her parents off balance.

  “Oh, darling, please be careful. Where are you?”

  “I can’t tell you, Mum! Tell Father that I love him. We expect we’ll get to Joeys tomorrow.”

  While Petra phoned, Gat nursed his beer, thumbing through a month-old South African newsmagazine. The advertisements seemed pale copies of those displayed in Paris Match or the European edition of Life. One of them showed a woman of means, trim and very pretty, late thirties, standing beside a locally manufactured Ford convertible. A balloon rising out of her head shared her secret thought: that the vehicle would be the perfect getaway car for a romantic weekend with her husband. “Hello there, chum.” Gat heard the voice; he knew it was in his head. “How are you these days?” The woman in the advert was the actress he’d spent the night with in Cape Town. She looked good.

  “I called my Mum,” Petra said as she rejoined him. “I told her we might get married.” Gat said nothing. “She asked if we made love. I said, ‘Whenever we could.’ ”

  “We missed yesterday.”

  “I couldn’t bear to tell her,” Petra said.

  AS THEY approached Vryburg, they encountered a roadside market and a crowd of people, standing in the highway. Petra, who was driving, slowed the car and pulled onto the shoulder. Bystanders surrounded the car, jabbering in a language Gat could not understand. “There’s been an accident,” Petra told him. “A woman’s been hit by a car.” Gat got out and pushed through the crowd.

  In a small open space, fetid with the heat and stench of bodies, a young, pregnant woman lay in the road. Littered around her were the vegetables she had been carrying in an enamel pan. It rested nearby. Gat crouched beside her. She looked up at him, imploring him with her eyes for help. Gat rose erect, sti
ll on his knees, and gestured for the onlookers to give the woman air. Petra came beside him, holding a thermos. She knelt beside the woman, put an arm under her shoulders and, holding up her head, poured water into her mouth. Gat stood and urged, “Stand back! Please, stand back!” Flailing his arms, he opened a pathway out of the crowd.

  A white woman suddenly appeared. “Thank God you’re here!” she said. “I was afraid there might be an incident.” The woman was perhaps thirty-five. A boy of about ten stood at her side.

  “Let’s go, Mum,” the boy said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I don’t know how this happened,” the woman told Gat.

  “It was your car that hit her?” he asked.

  “She came out of nowhere. I was driving along very carefully. Suddenly she was there. Under my wheels. I couldn’t stop!”

  “Have you sent for an ambulance?” Gat asked. It was obvious she hadn’t.

  “I don’t think we should move her,” the woman said.

  “You just want to leave her in the sun? It could take hours.” The woman seemed not to know what to say. “Can we put her in your car?” Gat asked.

  A look of confusion swept across the woman’s face. “In my car?”

  “Do you know the area?” Gat asked. “We’re strangers here.”

  “I can’t have her in my car,” the woman said. “I’ve got my son here.”

  Gat gave her a friendly, reasonable smile. “But you hit her.”

  The woman looked as if more was being asked of her than she could manage.

  “Let’s get out of here!” the child said again.

  “If we put her into my car,” Gat asked, “can you lead us into town?”

  “But I have no idea where the Bantu hospital is,” the woman said. “I suppose I could ask, couldn’t I?”

  “Mum, let’s go!”

  “You find out where the hospital is,” Gat said, taking command. “We’ll get her into my car. Then we’ll follow you.”

  “Good idea.” The woman grabbed her son’s hand decisively and started through the crowd.

  Gat again pushed through the bystanders to kneel beside Petra. “I guess it’s up to us to get her to hospital,” he said. “The woman who hit her can’t cope.”

  “I’ll go fix the car,” Petra said, starting off. “Can you carry her?”

  Gat knelt close beside the woman to lift her into his arms. When he reached his arms toward her, she looked terrified. Tears filled her eyes. A wail escaped from her lips and with it a rush of breath that carried the odor of her fear. “It’s going to be all right,” Gat reassured her.

  As he crouched, he could feel the crunch of vegetables beneath his knees. “I’m just going to lift you,” he said quietly. As he moved an arm around her shoulders, the woman grabbed his shirt with one hand and his neck with the other. “We’ll get you to the car.” She whimpered as he slid an arm beneath her legs. As he lifted her, she swooned. As he stood, she sobbed. She jabbered frightened words, gesticulating for the enamel pan. Someone handed it to her. As Gat moved her toward the Ford, he saw the white woman and her son speed off toward town and disappear.

  HE AND Petra got the injured woman onto the backseat. Gat felt a pride in Petra that in an emergency, a peasant woman injured, she did not think about her belongings. She found an adolescent who said he knew the way to the hospital for non-whites. Gat and he and Petra, who held the woman’s hand, got into the front seat. Gat started off. The boy proved not to know where the hospital was; he merely seized an opportunity to ride in a car. But by stopping passersby and asking directions they found the facility at last. It was a bungalow in need of a new roof, more a clinic-dispensary than a real hospital.

  Even at midafternoon lines of people waited in its courtyard for attention from the doctor: ancients hobbling about on makeshift crutches, a blind woman led by a child, men with knife wounds received in fights over women or with them, bawling babies with open sores. Some of these patients stood tiredly, half-asleep, worn out beyond emotion, all vigor drained from their faces. Others yakked and laughed, even in their misery. The relatives of patients were camped before cook fires in the yard.

  When Gat and Petra emerged from the car, the courtyard fell silent. All eyes turned toward the whites who had suddenly appeared in this realm of blacks. Children began to howl. Those who could scurried or limped behind their mothers’ legs, then peeked out. Petra glanced at Gat, a look of puzzlement on her face. Just then a nurse hurried toward them across the courtyard. Her speed and the officiousness reserved for whites embarrassed Gat. When the nurse saw the woman he and Petra helped from the car, she shouted commands at an orderly. He brought a stretcher. He and Gat moved the injured woman onto it and carried her inside the bungalow past people who seemed to have waited since the dawn of time. The doctor, an Indian, came at a run. When he saw the patient was black, he relaxed and assured Gat he would attend to her as soon as she was admitted.

  Admitting the woman proved more complicated than Gat expected. While Petra waited in the car, he filled out papers. He agreed to pay the woman’s medical fees, stressing that it was not he who hit her. A second batch of papers demanded Gat’s attention; he must explain what he knew of the accident.

  The Indian doctor reappeared. With a smile he said, “The nurse tells me you are not South African. Is that correct?”

  “I’m a Belgian. Just driving through.”

  “Come to my office,” the doctor urged. “It’s more comfortable there.”

  “This is fine,” Gat told him.

  “Please come.” The doctor spoke with a tone so importunate that Gat examined him. “I insist that you be comfortable at my clinic.”

  Gat followed the doctor to a small office in an adjoining building. Its desk overflowed with medical files, patient charts, and requisitions for supplies. The doctor cleared space for Gat to work at the desk, stacking the medical files on one of the wooden chairs facing it, leaving a second chair empty. Nodding toward the empty chair the doctor commented, “You never know when a patient will enter.”

  “This really is unnecessary,” Gat assured the man. “I had plenty of space in the waiting room.”

  The doctor closed the door. He said quietly, “Two Africans were killed this morning.” He looked at Gat with such intensity that Gat heard no other sounds. The doctor repeated his query, “You are not South African?”

  “No.”

  The doctor lowered his voice to a whisper. “They were killed by the police.” Gat nodded. “Special Branch officers brought them here, hoping to extract information from them. But they both died.” The doctor smiled apologetically. “Things are a little tense right now. I thought it might be easier for you here.”

  “The young woman with me is out in the car,” Gat said. “Should she—”

  “No, no.” The doctor gestured assurance. “She is perfectly safe. In fact, I will go talk to her until you are finished. Excuse me.”

  The doctor left the office. Gat returned to work on his short narrative of the accident. As he wrote, he heard footsteps on the porch outside. The door opened. A man entered the office without knocking. Gat glanced at him and said, “The doctor’s in the clinic.” The man nodded, shut the office door, and lowered himself into the chair that the doctor had emptied. He studied Gat in silence, his body bent forward, elbows resting on the chair arms, hands folded together. Gat returned to his narrative. Without looking at the man, Gat scrutinized him. He was an African, middle-aged, but he did not belong among the impoverished supplicants outside. Dressed in a coat and tie, wearing glasses and boots made for walking, he carried himself with the self-respect and quiet confidence of a white man. Finally he said, “I see that you are a friend to Africans.” The man spoke in a voice so low that Gat could hardly hear it.

  “Not everyone would say so.”

  “I can see that it’s true.”

  Gat glanced at the man and continued with his work.

  The man said quietly, “I need to get to Lobatse.
Could you take me there?”

  The man did not seem like any African Gat had ever encountered. “I don’t know Lobatse,” he said. “Where is that?” He returned to his work.

  “Due north. Not far. In Bechuanaland. Just across the border.”

  Gat did not look up from his work. He replied, “We are headed to Joburg.”

  “It’s a matter of great urgency,” the man said. “Even life or death.”

  “Are you from South Africa?” Gat asked without looking up.

  “I’m a Xhosa. From the Transkei. I’ve been in America for fifteen years. Sometimes I’m taken for an American.”

  “And you’ve come back here. Why is that?”

  “To help my people. But there are dangers here just now.” Gat scrutinized the man. Through his glasses he met Gat’s gaze. Gat judged that he was perhaps forty and educated and possessed a certain presence. “I thought I might make a small difference in South Africa now,” the man continued. “Things are happening here. But to do my bit, I must get to Bechuanaland.”

  Gat asked, “What makes you think you can trust me?”

  “One develops a sense about such things.” The men stared at one another. Finally the African added, “Also I’ve run out of options.”

  Gat returned to his writing and said nothing until he finished. “I’ll be here tomorrow morning. To check on a woman’s progress. If you’re here, I may be able to help you.”

  “Thank you, my friend,” the man said. He offered his hand. Gat shook it. “Till tomorrow.” The African left the office quietly. Gat heard his footsteps moving off along the porch.

  NEITHER GAT nor Petra spoke as he drove through Vryburg. Once he had turned onto the unpaved road leading to the Prinsloo farm, Petra said, “The children shrieked when they saw us. Why was that? Because we’re white?” Gat nodded. “Those dear people,” Petra said. “They’d been waiting all day in the sun and no one to help them. We got helped immediately.” Gat grunted, thinking that her noticing this was good for her.