The Pickup

by Nadine Gordimer

  —Shall I go with you to this lawyer you know of? You’d like me to be with you?—

  She feels an unwarranted relief from anxiety, based on nothing, just because of this spontaneity from someone who cannot help her. No, no, she and her lover must go together.

  —Any time, any time, I’m here. Sharon and I, at home. You can call, you can come. Ask the lawyer if any sort of letter of recommendation—I don’t know what the form might be—would be useful. Some guarantee for your man from this respectable and law-abiding old citizen.—

  He went with her past the women gazing up to greet him from their place in the waiting-room, leading her along the corridor to the lifts, waiting, so that she would not be alone with doors gliding closed on her.

  It is a fact that the Senior Counsel no longer practises law. She finds out in a roundabout way since she could not ask her father without giving an explanation of why she wants to approach the man. One among the friends—it’s David—is her source through abandoned connections he takes up on her behalf. The Table is unanimous: get in touch with the guy anyway, even if he doesn’t practise any more, he’ll still have all the stuff in his head, he’s not going to refuse advice to you, he’s seen you, he’s seen Abdu, you say, at your father’s place. How can he refuse. No way!

  Joining them at The Table, the victim, the accused, the endangered, their friend Julie’s pickup—what is he to have the sense of, as himself?—he has listened to them closely.

  —That’s what I tell her.—

  You know why I’m reluctant. (In case the word escapes him): Don’t much want to.

  They are like any of the combination of lovers who come and go, having a private spat between them in the protection of The Table.

  So if he speaks to your father? That can be something good. If it comes from him, an important man your father likes. So if he speaks!

  She gets the general secretary on the line when she calls a corporate headquarters at the number she’s been given, reaches the private secretary, then the personal assistant, and finally Mr Hamilton Motsamai himself. She has had to introduce herself to the personal assistant as Nigel Summers’ daughter. The lawyer is (in the corporate jargon she’s familiar with among her father’s associates) affable, how is Nigel, I expect to be in a meeting with him next week, very good—of course I remember you, your father’s house is a special place to relax in … yes. He has a deep soft voice, black voice, that sounds as if it would resonate from a tall broad man but she remembers he is small and agile-looking. If it’s urgent, of course. Very good. After all, this is Ackroyd’s daughter—but then oddly, as if in contradiction, she adds something awkwardly.

  —I hope you don’t mind my asking—would you please not mention I’ve called you, if you do happen to be in touch with my father.—

  So at once there is a secret between her and this stranger that he, her lover, will not know of. Although everything in her, is his. This is a mere filament of the strands of deviousness she is aware of having to learn in a circumstance she, in all her confident discard of conventional ones, finds she had no preparation for. He, her find; it was also this one, to be discovered in herself.

  She is asked by the personal secretary, who makes the appointment, to give the registration number of her car so that she may be granted parking in the corporate headquarters’ underground bays. The good second-hand Toyota the garage mechanic obtained for her finds a place in the cavern. She looks for a moment at his avatar, presenting himself aggressively handsome in the silk scarf at the neck of the shirt that becomes him best. She smiles but he knows she is trying to measure with other eyes the impression he needs to make. They emerge through security turnstiles where they slot the plastic cards given them when the guard at the entrance verified the registration number; are guided by another uniformed man to sign (her name serves for both), time of arrival and other particulars of identification in a gold-tooled leather-bound book; are taken over by a smart young woman programmed to preface with And how are you today her instruction of which elevator goes up to the 17th floor. The doors open on a reception area before interleading halls and alcoves, like a five-star hotel; palm trees lean up to a glass dome, a fountain dribbles from the beaks of bronze cranes and under lamps there are pale leather sofas and chairs grouped for conversation. Some sort of luncheon is going on, spilling from one of the alcoves. There is the curve of a small bar, silver-bright ice buckets on stands, a buffet concealed by people helping themselves to an accompaniment of laughter and voices from which the treble jets as another kind of fountain. He and she stand: the lights have gone up in a theatre.

  Mr Motsamai’s suite is reached through his secretary’s office and his personal assistant’s office, both women seal-sleekly blonde. He receives his associate’s daughter and the young man (foreign) not in the formality of his office where he does business but in his adjoining reception room, not too large for one-to-one contact, amply comfortable, with TV console and a fan of financial journals on its glass tables. His sparse pointed beard, quaintly worn as seen on engravings of ancient tribal kings, is matched in distinction by the fresh white carnation in his lapel beside a rosette of some Order.

  It is evident that Summers’ daughter will be the one to speak.

  His face changes as he listens to her story. It’s as if he has been returned by her to another life: this is the withdrawn and acutely attentive face of Senior Counsel, not the affable deputy chairman or whatever-he-is in the headquarters of this banking conglomerate or whatever-it-is. The girl’s story becomes a confession in all the detail she has learned carefully by rote and, it’s obvious from her wary delivery, she’s aware her companion is silently monitoring.

  In that other expression of his powers of intellect, of professional mastery, the lawyer has heard and analysed countless confessions while they were in progress. He alternates concentration on her words with unapologetic examining glances resting on the companion—yes, to verify, in his own interpretation of what he is hearing, the likely actions and motivations of this lover.

  When she ends—or rather stops speaking—she has to control rising emotion, she wants to go on, to plead, to state her case, her lover’s case; the lawyer is familiar with the symptoms in many bearing witness over the years in court. He sits back in his chair and presses his shoulders against the cushioned rest, invisible robes are adjusted round them— Senior Counsel was an Acting Judge for a period, and could be permanently His Honour Mr Justice Motsamai on the bench of the High Court now if he had not decided for that other, more profitable form of power over human destiny, financial institutions. He is also only too well accustomed, from his past career, to the gaze that waits upon him as an oracle. It is one of the rewards of having doffed those heavily-goffered robes in exchange for a custom-tailor’s cut of light-weight suit that he doesn’t have to be the object of that sort of expectation any more; he himself sometimes had had to fight emotion in knowing, vulnerable man he was himself, black man whose old parents had been supplicants themselves, that nothing more oracular than management of dry facts would come from him.

  He let his moments of silence tell them this, these two.

  Then he spoke. —You are not married.—

  —No. Oh no.—

  There comes from him a kind of organ note, something between an exclamation and a groan—an old African affirmation. It could be a comforting or a warning—she is at home with the particular non-verbal expressions that are natural to Africans as Greeks or Italians or Jews have their characteristic ones, but her familiars are the young who have lost the more grandiose, eloquent, traditional African resources in self-expression, and have passed on easily to The Table, the bars, the streets, only those adapted to general usage, across all local cultures, heard all over coming from those of their generation, all colours and kinds.

  —The chances of appeal succeeding for Mr … ? would have been perhaps marginally better if you had been married. He would have had the advantage of the provision that the spouse o
f a national—and of course, Julie—Miss Summers, you are unquestionably that—has the right of permanent residence. A moment: wait… To resort to marriage now—at this stage—would only prejudice your case further; it would be seen as a device to gain residence, that’s all. Marriage to a national as a positive factor in seeking entry to a country or appealing for permanent residence, a stay of expulsion order, has to have been of a duration—proof that it is a genuine relationship. You follow. Too many would-be immigrants are ready to pay some woman for a marriage certificate—the consummation’s only on paper, the divorce follows after a suitable interval. Home Affairs, who presented you with your order to leave (he points the beard gently at the young foreigner) is aware of these tricks. So: useless, at this crucial stage, for you.—

  Some sort of guarantees—support of the application— good character and financial means—would these be of any help? There’s this business of someone becoming a burden on the state?

  Nigel Ackroyd Summers’ daughter, of course. But she had said, don’t tell my father I’ve approached you … Well, most likely the girl has money already settled on her independently—common practice among people of means to ensure death duties are reduced when that bad day comes.

  —Letters of support, presumably from people of solid reputation … yes, could have been useful to you in a less, how shall we put it, already prejudiced situation. Hopelessly prejudiced. What else can one say. Here is a young man who entered by dubious means and once his permit was expired was ordered to leave how long ago—

  The beard singles her out and she does not answer; confirming the length of time is like a criminal’s admission of guilt. The beard tips to the young man in question, in the dock.

  —One year and five months some weeks.—

  —There you are. Ah-heh … You were ordered to leave one year and more than five months ago, you—disappeared—you stayed on in contravention of the law, you managed to evade the law, you made yourself guilty of transgression of the Immigation Act, you defied Home Affairs. And fortunately for you, because of their inefficiency I’m only too aware of from the time I was in legal practice, your case slipped into some crack in a filing system, got lost in their computers, they smoked their cigarettes and chatted and looked at their watches for the time to go home and they forgot about you! Perhaps we can say you were lucky. Forgotten! You had your reprieve, your time… I don’t know if this was fortunate, if we look at your position now.—

  But they are seated before him now, the young woman and the man who came to her from where he disappeared, under a car on a dirty garage floor, months and weeks have been theirs, he’s not for you, she’s not for him but they have been, they are, for each other!

  His flow can’t be challenged, he can’t be interrupted, he is presenting his Heads of Argument, it’s habitual, unstoppable.

  —You have placed yourself in the position where you have a criminal charge waiting against you, let alone an order to quit the country. That is the sticking point. That is what weighs against however many testimonies to your character, your desirability as a future citizen, your possibilities of financial guarantees, security etcetera you might submit. I regret very much to tell you these incontrovertible facts! You were told your permit had expired and would not be renewed; you elected to stay on illegally, you shed your identity and took on an assumed name. If you had left, gone back to your country of origin or wherever you might have thought you would get in, if you had re-applied for immigration from there, outside these borders—then the testimonials from prominent citizens here might indeed have served you well … guarantees … Money is always useful. Yes—(the deep note sounded, drawn out again). Ah-heh. These people take bribes. You know that. We all know that. Ah-heh. It is the epidemic that attacks the freedom won for our country, sickening us from inside, one of the running sores of corruption. All right. With money no doubt—enough money—you could buy someone’s hands to tear up that latest order to quit the country. You could keep your fake name some more months, find another one, disappear once again for—I don’t know—maybe another year, but some other functionary with a grudge against the first will find your record come up on a computer, there will be another criminal charge against you, yours will become an habitual status, evasion of the law plus bribery.—

  —So you can’t suggest anything, Mr Motsamai?—

  He continues to look deeply at her, his eyebrows rise slowly.

  A flush of resentment: he’s not for you, that’s what he’s really saying: the famous lawyer is one of them, her father’s people and their glossy Danielles comparing the purchase of Futures and Hedging Funds, sitting here in his corporate palazzo, it doesn’t help at all that he is black; he’s been one of their victims, he’s one of them now. He, too, expects her to choose one of her own kind—the kind he belongs to.

  She stands up to leave. But it is as if his old skill in reading distressed supplicants has given him intuition of what she is judging of him; he has ignored her and is turned to her foreigner.

  —I know how it is. Man, my people were turned back at many emigration and immigration gates. Many years, centuries. Myself, when I was young. When I had the opportunity of going abroad for further study. The Sixties—it took three years—always yes-no, yes-no—for the papers finally to be refused. Exit permit, one way—out and don’t come back—that’s the stamp I had to take then.—

  Thank you. Goodbye. She too, has her intuitions, she knows what he’s up to, claiming his rightful brotherhood of his people’s suffering along with his present successful distancing from it. But he has yet other skills at his disposal, mastered in court and in the board rooms, he knows how to respond disarmingly to witnesses’ hostility and that of difficult trustees. He will answer, in his own time, the question he ignored. —Well… I have taken on many apparently hopeless cases in my day, so I suppose I must suggest you go to a lawyer who is stupid enough to take on such cases and clever enough to see what he can do with yours. I could call a former colleague.—

  —Thank you. No. Thank you—

  She is stayed by the grasp on the forearm of the hand that supplies her with caresses.

  —That will be good. Thank you very much. Can it be now? Can you do it? We can go any time, straight away.—

  —Well, I have a meeting, papers to go through—but I’ll get my assistant to call my colleague the moment I’m free, and when I’ve spoken to him she’ll call you—she has your number, Miss Summers, you have a cell of course—

  Thrusts the car keys at him.

  All right. All right. There is his beautiful smile, for her, from the first days.

  Pompous fart.

  All right. All right. Before he starts the engine he does the necessary thing, hooks an arm round her and kisses her tense cheek.

  We can find our own lawyer. Shouldn’t have gone to him anyway. I might have known what he’d be thinking about all the time: what my father would say! And I don’t believe he really knows anything about this sort of problem, he wouldn’t have been that kind of lawyer, not spectacular enough for him, not murder.

  You are wrong, you know. He knows about taxes. How not to pay, yes. But that also is difficult. That is the world, like the other friends of your father, he knows how it works the same kind of all sorts of ways for other things.

  David knows lawyers.

  What kind of lawyers can David know. This man is important, his people are big. Listen, Julie.

  That was the message of that grasp on her forearm: I am a man. I am the one who is not for you but who possesses you every night: listen to me.

  The call came on the cellphone the public relations people she worked for insisted she carry with her at all times. This call was not the chaffing exchange of media jargon which was the communication they favoured. The name of Mr Motsamai’s colleague, his telephone number, his rooms, the date and time of the appointment made. Julie and her problem were at The Table. Background music was particularly intrusive that day, but everyone shut th
eir ears to it: the friends followed her lips as she repeated the information. One of them gave a ballpoint to the lover so that he could take it down, but he had no paper and the poet, who often wrote lines that came to him out of his echo-chamber of the babble in the EL-AY Café, and who suspected that the foreigner might not get the facts right anyway, noted the information for her among the tantric doodles in his chap-book.