The Pickup

by Nadine Gordimer

  But apparently, unusually, whatever the private talk was about, the father had been present; been required? The three sat ranged together.

  Ibrahim’s mother’s breast, prow of the family, rose and fell deeply; his wife saw it, ominous. At a signal to Maryam, the handing round of tea stopped and talk broke off, the gaiety of children was reduced to whispering.

  The mother called her son and his wife over to her where room had been made for them to sit. She drew herself up and leaned forward, took another of her deep slow breaths that customarily ended in a sigh (she would rise from prayer with a breath like that) but now gave weight of importance to what she was about to say. It was an announcement, yes, but not for the one who awaited something.

  The mother looked slowly at her son and his wife, singling them out as if her hands were laid upon them, and spoke in the language of which his wife, suddenly inexplicably tense, forgot all she had learnt and could make out only the name of the Uncle—Uncle Yaqub, Uncle Yaqub, repeated, and the familiar invocation, Al-Hamdu lillah. When the mother had done, the son, lover, husband stood; at bay. That was what she, who had found him, followed him restored to his family, saw he was. With a lifting of spread-fingered hand to his forehead, and the drop of the hand to his side, a strange kind of obeisance, it seemed he took permission to himself to turn to her and translate in a low even voice from his mother tongue.

  He thinks about, he thinks to make me his workshop manager.

  The father summoned his own small store of English and understood what had been left out. —Your Uncle Yaqub, he can take you into his business …—

  Everybody—poor Khadija is nobody—was animated in congratulatory exclamations, murmurs, a happy confusion of interruption with admiration for the Uncle’s generosity and the transformation he has the power to bring close to their lives.

  It was hardly necessary for Ibrahim to respond: the family was doing it for him. Wonderful. Uncle Yaqub! In business with Uncle Yaqub! But his mother was gazing at him with proudly raised head. At once the message flashed: she had done it for him.

  Julie was surrounded by the excited talk, unable to follow much, hearing approximations she could invent from the joyous cadence, what an opportunity, how lucky, how good, how generous an Uncle. And one of the brothers, Ahmad the slaughterer whose only opportunity was to have blood on his hands, jumped up with another kind of generosity and spoke for the brothers, a voice raised out of normal pitch by emotion. Ibrahim heard in their language: —We are full of joy for you, you deserve this. It’s great, my brother, for us to have you back with us as we were when we were kids! It has never been right, without you. Allah be praised. May you and your wife be blessed with happiness and prosperity. And now that this has happened, please—let our parents and your brothers and sisters see you married in our law, let us have a real wedding, we were not invited to the wedding before you came home.—

  Laughter from everyone at this last. Maryam quickly translated breathily in her friend’s ear, and the two young women laughed and nodded, together.

  His mother, perhaps alone of the gathering, was waiting for him to have the chance to speak for himself what everyone knew he must be feeling, what he wished to say to his Uncle, who had singled him out among her sons, the blessed one, the success.

  Ibrahim was vaguely lifting and lowering his outspread hands—to quiet the affectionate voices answering for him, or to take in those hands—a lovely gesture, some interpreted—the opportunity offered him. In all the attention that pinned him down he felt that of his wife and he turned a moment to her and gave her a version—strange, final, its awful beauty—a culminating version of that smile she always awaited from him. He addressed his Uncle in the full formality of their tongue, as if there were no-one else present: He did not know what to say. It was an offer he would never have thought of, never have expected. Never. He knows how much the business his Uncle has created means to him. He thanked him, with the greatest respect, for his generosity, on behalf of his mother and father, brothers and sisters, for what he had done now, this day. He asked, with the greatest respect to have … a little time… to realize …

  He did not turn to her. He sought the eyes of his mother; now she was the only one present.

  And they all understood: overcome! They clapped and passed him from one to the other, men and women, in their embraces.

  She kept somewhat in the background, although she, too, was embraced. She had had from him that smile that couldn’t be explained.

  Something else was not explained: out of delicacy of feeling, among the family present, although all were aware of it. The Uncle has decided to take Ibrahim in; workshop manager? This means heir apparent. Of the vehicle repair workshop that has valuable contracts for maintenance of provincial government vehicles, the mayor’s fleet, whatever other notables this poor district has, and a franchise for sales of parts, a dealership in sales of both second-hand and new models of the best German and American cars. There is no son of the Uncle’s own begetting, alive, alas, and the son-in-law and prospective son-in-law of the educated daughters are not interested in learning the business by dirtying their hands—they want to have government positions, sitting on their backsides in air-conditioned offices in the capital. So when Uncle Yaqub retires—long may he be granted life in good health—and dies, Ibrahim will inherit the business, and live in a house with fine carpets and furniture in the style of gilt and velvet French kings used to have, with a maid to clean it all, as the house of the notable employs Maryam to do. That is Ibrahim’s blessed future. Al-Hamdu lillah. Praise be to God.

  Chapter 32

  Ibrahim has declined the offer to take charge of his Uncle’s workshop. The chance of a lifetime.

  Are you crazy?

  She had said to him, It might still be months before we get visas, at least you’d have something a bit more… I don’t know, responsible, in the meantime.

  Meantime.

  Permanent residence. That’s what it means.

  Like I was back there, under somebody’s car.

  You wouldn’t be doing any of that kind of work yourself, the way you are, helping out, now—

  Telling the others to do it, yelling at them like my Uncle has to. Sticking my head under the bonnet to see if they’re doing it right, waiting for my Uncle to die. Are you crazy.

  At night she felt him turning in bed, rubbing his feet one against the other in affront, in turmoil. And was afraid to comfort him in case she said the wrong thing, or made a gesture that could be interpreted as referring to some rejected aspect of a conflict within him. He had made the decision, why was he still tormenting himself? When she made a decision that was the end of it; of leaving The Suburbs, leaving the doll’s house and charades at the EL-AY Café: while they were waiting she was at peace, at her place in the desert. Yet she herself was not sure of her reactions to what had suddenly been thrust before him, never thought of, never. Something he had cast himself about the unwelcoming world to put far away as possible from his life. When he stood there, at bay: did she think he had already said no, the refusal had surged and burst, his heart was sending it through the vessels of his blood. Did she expect anything else?

  Brooding in a bed in the dark has a kind of telepathy created by the contact of bodies when words have not been exchanged. Whether she might be asleep or awake—he spoke. You thought I would take it.

  A faceless voice. I don’t know what I thought. Yes or no. Because there’s so much I don’t know—about you. I’ve found that out. Since we’ve been home here. You must understand, I’ve never lived in a family before, just made substitutes out of other people, ties, I suppose—though I didn’t realize that, either, then. There are … things … between people here, that are important, no, necessary to them… I don’t mean the way you are to me … that doesn’t fit in with anybody, anything else, and that’s all right, but … You could have reasons for ‘yes’ I couldn’t know about because they’re … unconnected with me, with you and me, d’you
see?

  So she’s talking of my mother. He does not discuss his mother with her; he will not.

  She certainly did not know there would be another family gathering the week after his decision was made known. She was aware he must have told his mother of it before he told her—but that might have been because he believed she, his wife, surely must have known, from the moment the announcement was made by the Uncle, his decision was a foregone conclusion. Only in the dark had he come to the possibility of her betrayal—You thought I would take it.

  The decision had been conveyed to the Uncle by his mother. It appeared that such a decision could not properly be made by a young man on his own. He had ignored the due process of discussion within the family of whatever reasons there could possibly be for a rebuff—an insult, considering the Uncle’s position in the family, in the whole community— of this nature.

  The story of the amazing action of a young man from a poor family like their own, who had taken himself off to foreign countries and made nothing of himself there, come home with only a foreign wife to show for it, had gone from house to house and café to market stall, wafted up to homes of the few wealthy and important people—the wife who employed a member of the family inquisitively extracted inside information from her maid, the young man’s sister, Maryam.

  The BMW outside the house again. There was no question of tea and sweetmeats, or the couple preferring to occupy the lean-to. He said, we have to be there, and they were seated, a little apart from the rest of the family, when the Uncle entered and everyone rose. His greetings were less mayoral, but proper.

  It had come to the Uncle’s ears that his dear sister’s son and the son of his respected brother-in-law was getting mixed up in politics. Everyone agrees that a young man must have friends to meet and talk to, a little pleasure men enjoy away from the house and the women. His self-confidence allowed him to make a joke even in this situation, but nobody tittered; the men, knowing their indulgences, of which he hinted, smoking a bit of kif and taking alcohol in a disguised bar, the women wise in not enquiring where the men went at night, and all were subdued, as if sharing some sibling guilt for the brother’s misdemeanours that went beyond these. Well—kif and whisky and even the occasional woman—the Uncle had been young himself; he did not need to say what, for his manhood, he assumed was understood. But Ibrahim— his sister’s son like a son to him—it is known, it has now become known to him, and with sorrow, mixes with a certain crowd. This comes as a shock to his dear parents, and it is for them that a senior member of the family speaks now. This young man the whole family loves is spending his time with a type of malcontents who blame everything in their lives on others—on the authorities, on the government. Everything they do not have the ability to do for themselves, work hard as the older generation, his generation (a hand flat against his own breast), was willing to do, sacrifice, for the honour of the family, raise themselves up—all this is the fault of the government. Government owes them everything. The Lord has given them what a man needs to live a good life in the Faith, their families have educated them, they can marry and bring up children in security, there are no foreigners from Europe flying flags over our land any longer—what more do they want? They want to bring down the government, aoodhu billah. That’s the evil they want. They have in their heads the ideas that set brother against brother. They want to smash everything, and they don’t know—don’t they see what is happening in those countries that have done this?—a country ends up with nothing, everything lost. The young men already have so much that we, their parents, never had. And why not? We are glad of it. From outside, from progress. Isn’t it enough to have your car and cellphone and TV. What else is really worth having out there in the world of false gods?

  All he wants to say: it is mixing with this group who are dangerous, a danger to themselves, to us, to our government—they must be the sad reason for a young man giving up an opportunity that would bring advancement, comforts, everything anyone could want for a good life, eventually a high place in the community and honour to the family. This opportunity that was offered comes out of sorrow, but was a way of making something joyful result from pain, ma sha allah, some good to come to the family out of—he placed his hand on his breast, softly, now—a tragedy. Inna lillah.

  There was silence in which everyone in the room was alone. The children felt it and gazed about at the grown-ups in awe. Tears were running down the composed face of the mother as some revered statues are said to shed tears on certain auspicious dates, while their features remain cast in stone or bronze.

  The Uncle, her brother, had spoken seated beside her; but her son, the nephew, stood up.

  —No-one in this village, in this place, has anything to do with why I cannot accept the offer you have honoured me with, Uncle Yaqub. I do not have any interest in the government. It is not going to govern me. I am going to America.—

  Chapter 33

  The Uncle spoke measuredly and clearly—to her ears—in contrast with the quick speech of the young people in the family whom she found difficult to follow, probably because they spoke colloquially while she was studying the language out of primers, and those who had volunteered in the friendly exchange of languages over tea also thought it respectful of theirs to teach her only its conventional formulations.

  Afterwards, Ibrahim gave her full account of what the Uncle had said. So she was able to piece together the words and phrases she had understood in the Uncle’s own voice and to correct for herself, with that echo, the paraphrase and lack of emphasis in what she was being told in the medium of Ibrahim’s English. She needed an explanation to the reference to sorrow, a tragedy, at the end, that had produced such a strong effect on everyone, she had felt it herself?

  Didn’t she remember that the only son was dead? Ah yes—the heir apparent—she did, how was it?

  A terrible thing. He burned in his car, an accident. And no-one says it, but it was when he had taken alcohol. Drunk.

  So she understood; the reference was used to wind up with something to shame the one who was refusing bestowal of a privilege to which he wasn’t really entitled anyway. Like the other women of the house, she hadn’t known, hadn’t expected to be told every time her man was out at night, where he went and what he did; this attitude came naturally to her, from the mores of The Table at the EL-AY Café—everyone free to come and go, particularly in the code of intimacy, no-one should police another; even in the ultimate intimacy called love, monitoring was left behind with the rejected values of The Suburbs. The reference—his own—to America, which she had understood as he pronounced it evenly in his mother tongue, had brought an immediate urge of protectiveness towards him, she had wanted to get up, go to him, shield him from the pathetic humiliation he was exposing himself to before the eyes of the family, when everyone knew, everyone, how since his return, deported from one country, he was always making applications for immigration visas to other countries and coming back from the queues in the capital with a piece of paper; refusal. He was going to Canada, Australia, New Zealand. The neat file in the canvas bag was full of such documents.

  To save him embarrassment, she did not refer to the pretext he had given for his refusal; she knew the real reasons. The grease-stiff overalls and the stink of fuel from which he had emerged in the garage round the block near the EL-AY Café. And perhaps he felt it was—what?—distasteful, bad luck, somehow not what should be, to fill the empty space of someone’s sorrow, occupy the place of a young man he must have known, a family sibling, as a child. He could not tell them that; he brought up a pretext nobody could believe in.

  It was not the end of it, for him, of course. His father had the right and obligation of long homilies addressed to the son, the family kept out, the house subdued to the death-watch-beetle tlok-tlok of the ornamental clock (also a gift from the Uncle). His mother, rising from prayers that he must feel were for him, summoned him aside and their mingled voices were so low it sounded merely as if prayer were continuing
. But if the supreme authority of the Uncle could have no influence on their son, no-one, nothing else would.

  What passed between mother and son must have been an apocalypse for both, a kind of rebirth tearing her body, a fearful thrusting re-emergence for him. His wife who had never known, never would know, such emotions—Nigel Ackroyd Summers, and the mother someone imagined in California—felt the force of his with humility and offered all she had in recognition: love-making. In her body he was himself, he belonged to nobody, she was the country to which he had emigrated.

  In some accommodation reached with the Uncle by family council, the prodigal nephew was continuing to help out at the vehicle repair workshop as if nothing had happened, to have use of the car, and to go off to the capital during working hours on affairs of his own. He also still pursued family matters since it was felt his education made him the one best qualified to, and one day actually was able to bring news of the brother, Khadija’s husband, Zayd—at the agency there was a letter, a bank draft. Whatever explanations for the long silence were, the withdrawn Khadija did not say whether or not she accepted them. Khadija used a strong perfume, it was the assertion of her presence in the house, constant pungent reminder that she was deserted by a son of this family; when Ibrahim’s wife was impulsively bold enough to approach her and say how glad she was that this sister-in-law’s husband was safe and well, the woman gave a proud wry smile—and then, suddenly, she who never touched anyone but her own children, embraced Julie. Perhaps it was because Julie spent much time with one of the children. Leila had fallen in love with her, as small girls will with some adult who offers activities different from those of a parent; as Julie had fallen in love with Gulliver-Archie. Her kind of Uncle.