Love in the Time of Apartheid

by Frederic Hunter

  “You know America very well,” Gat said, his voice seeming to offer an innocent conversational gambit. “You must have done well there. What made you return here?”

  “All these African countries getting their freedom. I thought things in the Union might be changing too. Maybe I could lend a hand.”

  “Now that you’re here, do you still think that?” Petra inquired. She looked back at him.

  “The best way for me to lend a hand is to get across the border.” Garvey laughed as if to reassure them.

  As he drove, Gat continued to make conversation, posing questions about the man’s background. The picture that emerged was this: Garvey had spent his first year of college training in America studying religion. In the succeeding years he’d added classes in business and finance. Once he’d finished his schooling, Garvey had moved to Washington, DC, a southern city where a black elite was wealthy and other blacks were expected to know their place. There he distanced himself from the church, partly because he had begun to wonder, so he said, what relevance Jesus had to his future.

  Gat took this to mean what relevance Jesus had in black people’s quest for better conditions in a world run by whites. This experience of the States struck Gat as credible.

  Continuing his story, Garvey said he had gotten a job as a teller in a bank. The position was probationary. No Negro had ever held such a position. However, the bank president wanted to encourage racial harmony even though he worried that customers might close their accounts. There was the promise of a loan officer’s position, if all went well.

  But after a year, when Garvey was still being paid less as a teller than whites just hired, he realized that the bank had no call for a black loan officer. This was partly because it had few black borrowers, whom it considered bad loan risks, and partly because white borrowers in Washington were affronted by the idea of seeking money from—or giving personal financial information to—a Negro banker.

  An associate at the bank had had a business on the side, chauffeuring clients in limousines. To cover the shortfall in his earnings, Garvey worked in his spare time as a limousine chauffeur. He soon began to wonder about moving full-time into the limo business. When he talked to his bank associate about it, the man advised him to drive a taxi for a year. That way he would learn the ins and outs of the business. So Garvey researched the best cab company in the area that would hire a black driver, got a job driving for it—it was in Maryland—and worked the job for a year.

  He learned how to be courteous to passengers, how to engage the interests of black clients, and how to satisfy the desires of white clients who felt they were bettering race relations by allowing him to serve them and tipping him well. The cab drivers owned their own cars and paid for their own insurance. The company believed that if they owned the cars, the drivers were more careful with them.

  With borrowings from friends and a small loan from his bank, Garvey made a down payment on his own cab. After a year with the cab company, Garvey went out on his own. He built up a regular clientele and augmented it by soliciting patronage from firms, embassies, and professionals he met. In the first year he made $7,000—he had hardly made $4,000 at the bank—and did better every subsequent year.

  “Things are beginning to change in the States,” Garvey explained. “Young blacks in the South are making small steps, sitting in at drugstore lunch counters mainly. Small steps meet big resistance, but the young people are determined and it’s clear that change is coming. I thought change might be coming here too.”

  Considering this account, still assessing Garvey, Gat decided much of it was probably true. If it were, Garvey seemed to have talents that could prove useful to people across the border.

  “Do you have a family in America?” Petra asked.

  “I have a wife in Pondoland,” Garvey said. “We have not lived together since I went to America. But even so I’m a Christian.”

  “But surely you had—” Gat said without finishing the thought. “A man with a successful business.”

  Garvey shrugged and gazed out the window at a shepherd boy tending sheep, wearing a hat and a cloth and leaning against a long, thin pole. “Please don’t be offended, Miss Joanie, at what I’m going to say. Things are different in America.” He stopped talking for a moment, his eyes fixed beyond the window on some memory. “I became involved with a white woman.”

  Petra turned to watch Garvey speak. Gat glanced at her, her surprise evident. This would be the kind of tale she had never heard before.

  “She was the wife of a member of Congress. Four or five nights every week they went to parties and embassy receptions. I would take her to the parties where she would meet her husband. If he had meetings or interviews, I would also take her home. He returned to his district two or three weekends a month to keep his face before the voters. His wife had a very lonely existence; sometimes she told me about it.”

  He paused for a moment. “I shouldn’t talk about her because she is a wonderful person.” He shrugged. “We came to have a kind of friendship. One night, returning with her after we had taken her husband to the airport, I carried some packages into the house. And spent the night with her.”

  Both Gat and Petra wondered if this were true. But neither spoke.

  “That began to happen fairly regularly,” Garvey continued, seemingly with regret rather than boastfulness. “Then the congressman began to suspect what was going on. I was afraid he would have me deported. Or have the green card that allowed me to stay in the States revoked. So it seemed like a good time to return to help my black brothers.”

  Garvey fell silent. Petra faced forward in the passenger seat and stared at the highway, hardly noticing the Africans who walked at the roadside. Inside her head she wrestled with conflicting feelings about the story she had just heard. She felt an uneasiness in her stomach at the thought that the wife of an American congressman, elected by voters, slept regularly with the unremarkable man—“this kaffir” was how she thought of him—sitting behind her. But she felt sympathy for the loneliness that drove the woman to such ends and a sadness for two people torn apart by circumstance. She glanced at Gat, wondering if circumstance would tear them apart.

  For his part Gat doubted the account of the love affair. Garvey had related it, he suspected, to make himself more interesting, perhaps to titillate the attractive young white woman. Probably he had often repeated his account of being an American congressman’s wife’s lover. True or not, it would certainly credential him with young Africans.

  Gat himself had been invited into women’s homes when their husbands were away. But his experience was that they set high value on the prestige their husbands provided. They did not jeopardize it. What was more likely, he thought, was that Garvey had made a pass at the woman, had been rebuffed, and lost the clientele. If the clientele ever existed at all.

  Gat wondered what role Garvey played in the African National Congress or in its MK, the military arm that he’d read about, the Umkhonto we Sizwe, The Spear of the Nation. He wondered what was in the suitcases Garvey had placed at the back of the trunk. He watched the road and he checked regularly in the rearview mirror.

  AS THEY approached Mafeking, Garvey informed his companions that getting him across the border might be somewhat more complicated than they realized. Because of the treason trial—yes, they had heard about that—an African traveling into Bechuanaland with two whites might be examined rather carefully. And not merely turned back, but arrested, and the whites with him. They would have a better chance, he thought, if they took one of the unmarked roads to cross the border. If they moved between midnight and dawn, there would be little chance of detection, especially if one of the brother members in Mafeking guided them.

  Gat replied by suggesting that the obvious approach might be the surest. Why not simply drive through a border post? If explanations were necessary, he would simply lay out the truth: that he was a Belgian furniture manufacturer, considering relocating his operations to South Africa. He
wanted to visit Bechuanaland to assess potential labor supply. The girl was acting as his translator and guide. Given his experience in the limousine business, Garvey might want to act as driver.

  “But it’s the driver they see at the border post,” Garvey objected.

  “Let me drive then,” Petra suggested. “Perhaps we’ll say you aren’t feeling well.”

  Gat ultimately agreed to let Garvey off at a Bantu township outside Mafeking. There he would seek other arrangements for getting across the border or perhaps find someone to guide them at night. Meanwhile Gat and Petra would get something to eat. When they left him at the township, Garvey insisted on keeping the two suitcases in his possession. They agreed to meet again in two hours.

  “What’s in those suitcases?” Petra asked as she watched Garvey walk into the township. “Explosives?’

  “Maybe. Or money,” Gat said, driving quickly away. “It doesn’t matter. We are not going to see him again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I want to take you to a hotel for the afternoon.”

  “Why not?” Petra repeated.

  “You don’t want to go to a hotel with me?”

  “Take me there for lunch. Why aren’t we seeing him again?”

  “Because it’s too dangerous.”

  “For me? You going to leave me in the hotel and go with him?”

  “It’s too dangerous for both of us. He knows we’re not who we say we are. If he has a guide take us across at night as soon as we’re in Bechuanaland, they’ll kill us and take the car.”

  “He’d kill us?”

  “Without hesitation.” Gat glanced at Petra as she began to understand how dangerous their enterprise might be. “Of course, he might take you along as his girlfriend.”

  They drove into the town of Mafeking and stopped for lunch at Dixon’s Hotel in the center of town. Since they were in cattle country, Gat ordered steaks and salad for both of them.

  As they waited for their food, Gat excused himself. He went to the reception desk and engaged a room. When he returned to the table, he took Petra’s hand and said very firmly, “You are to stay here this afternoon.”

  “No. I’m coming with you.”

  “I’ve taken a room for you. You’re to stay here.” He placed the room key before her. She ignored it. They did not speak for several minutes.

  Finally she asked, “Why should I stay here?”

  “So you won’t get hurt.”

  “Will you get hurt?” Gat shrugged. “Killed?”

  He did not reply.

  “If I were going to shut up and do as I’m told, I wouldn’t be here with you.” Gat could not keep himself from admiring her obstinacy. “You’ve had a good time with me this week because of the way I am.”

  “Even so, you’re to stay here.” Before she could ask why, he said, “Because I’m in command of this operation.”

  Again they sat in silence. Finally Petra spoke quietly, “If you leave me, don’t expect to find me here when you come back. I’ll go live my life.”

  The waiter brought their lunches. As they began to eat, not speaking, Gat wondered if Petra’s habit of challenge would actually push her to take off on her own to Johannesburg. He glanced at her, stoking her anger while eating with the fine manners Margaret Rousseau had taught her. What he really wanted, he knew, was to take her up to the room for an hour before she went off to live her own life. In a day or two they would be living their separate lives.

  They finished their lunches without speaking. When the waiter cleared the plates, Gat ordered coffee. Petra shook her head, still defiant. When the waiter withdrew, she said quietly, “You’re acting like my father, giving instructions, treating me like a child. Why is that?”

  “You’re a woman whose safety is of interest to me. That’s not treating you like a child.”

  “Then talk straight to me.” She added, “Your safety is of interest to me.”

  The waiter arrived with the coffee and Gat drank, watching Petra without looking at her. Perhaps she was right. He wanted to take her to bed, but he did not have her around merely for the pleasure of that. Perhaps he should give her the respect he would give a friend. “Two Africans were killed outside Vryburg the day we arrived,” he told her. “By police who were hunting them.”

  She challenged him immediately. “How do you know it was police?”

  “The doctor at the hospital told me. Police brought the men there and tried to extract information from them before they died.”

  Loyalty to her father made Petra lift her head and thrust out her chin. Then she looked away and settled back in her chair, her challenge shifting through momentary anger to resignation. Gat moved beside her. “Let’s go up to the room,” he suggested. “What’s Garvey to us? Let him take care of himself. We’ve brought him this far.” He took her hand, but she would not look at him. “We can spend a couple of hours upstairs. We’ll get into Joeys tonight.”

  “We’ve got to take him across,” Petra said quietly. “As homage to Lumumba!”

  “That’s none of your affair. I’ll drive him to Lobatse and come back for you.”

  “What if he tries to kill you? It’s better if there are two of us.”

  “Please stay here.”

  “It’s safer if we’re together.” She smiled as if the matter had been decided. “Once we get to Lobatse, we can find a hotel.” Gat shook his head without looking at her. He drank more of his coffee. “If you leave me,” Petra warned again, “don’t expect to find me here when you come back.” She rose and walked from the dining room. Gat watched her go.

  WHEN GAT returned to the Ford after finishing his lunch, he found Petra standing beside it wearing a wide-brimmed sunhat. He unlocked the door for her and said, “Get in.”

  As they drove back toward the African township south of Mafeking, Petra asked, “Do you like my hat?”

  “Very nice.”

  “How was the last of your coffee?”

  Gat said, “I enjoyed the quiet.”

  They fetched Garvey outside a general store run by an Indian near the township gate. Leaving the Ford, Gat examined the documents that Garvey expected to present at the border. The South African identity papers he proposed to offer were authentic, but the photograph might arouse the suspicions of a zealous official, for close inspection revealed that the subject was not Garvey. “You think this will do the job?” Gat asked, looking from the photo to Garvey.

  “It’s the best I could come up with,” the African said. “This is a Tswana name. That’s important.” Gat looked back at the photo. “I will be in this coat and cap I used to wear on the job.” Garvey showed Gat a lightweight black coat and a black brimmed chauffeur’s cap. “You will explain that I’m your driver. They will look at you and, if we’re lucky, not at me. Often they don’t really look at us.” Gat was not persuaded. “If I’m stopped, you explain that you had no idea who I am. And you haven’t.”

  Gat wished that Petra had stayed at the hotel. The girl was very headstrong; she had no idea of risks they were taking. If things went wrong, she would be considered a conspirator. Her father would get her released only at the sacrifice of his own career. So things must not go wrong. He asked Garvey, “Are you armed?”

  “No,” Garvey replied. The two men measured one another.

  “I need to be sure,” Gat said. “I won’t endanger my life or my friend’s.”

  Garvey regarded Gat with eyes that might be stone. “I am not armed.”

  “Turn around and put your hands on the top of the car. Spread your legs.”

  Garvey did not move. “You are humiliating me.”

  “Two men were killed outside Vryburg a couple of days ago. Terrorists.”

  After a moment Garvey corrected, “Freedom fighters.”

  “Were you with them? Or were you supposed to meet them?” Garvey said nothing. Gat told him, “We are trying to help you. But she and I are not going to get hurt doing it, either by the police or by you.”

>   “By me?”

  “I can pat you down or you can walk to Lobatse.”

  The men stared at one another. Garvey looked at Gat with such humiliation and hatred that it seemed to drive all sound from the air. The birdcalls and chatter of the township hushed. Noise from the nearby road abated.

  “Not on the street. People are watching us. Come into the store.”

  Garvey handed his chauffeur’s coat and hat to Petra and led Gat into the store. After the brilliance of the sunlight it was a place of darkness. In the airless heat its smells of spices and sundries clung to the flesh. As a realization spread through the store that a white man had entered, the chatter of shoppers hushed. Patrons and attendants stared at Gat. Even their breathing seemed to stop. In the sudden quiet the only sound to be heard was the whiney wailing of a radio playing Indian music. Garvey led Gat to the counter where the cash register stood. He leaned across it, whispered to the Indian standing there. The man nodded. Garvey signaled Gat to follow him.

  They went down a hall, entered a small office. Garvey gestured Gat inside the room and closed the door. He turned his back to Gat, spread his legs, and put a hand and a foot against the door. Gat quickly ran his hands over the fabrics of the man’s clothes, felt the sinews of his arms, the beginning flab of his torso, the warmth of his groin, the solid muscles of his legs. Someone tried to open the door. Garvey leaned against it. Above his right ankle Gat felt the hard shape of a knife in a holster. He said, “Take that off. Give it to me.”

  Garvey removed the knife and holster and presented them to Gat. He said, “You’re not a manufacturer of furniture.”

  “No.”

  The person outside the door knocked urgently. “Let me in, please,” called a woman’s voice. She spoke in a singsong accent. “I must come in.”