A Sport of Nature

by Nadine Gordimer

—Daddy said. Rose somebody. I see she goes to Eastridge High. Horrible school.—

  Pauline’s vivid expression waited for its import to be comprehended. —That’s Rosa Burger. Both her parents are in prison.—

  Theirs was one of the trials in which Joe was part of the legal defence team. The red-haired handsome woman with the strut of high insteps who had accompanied the Burger girl was also one of the accused, though out on bail, like the old black gentleman who came to stay in Pauline and Joe’s house for a few weeks. There were discussions about this, at table, before it happened; the old man had some illness or other and dreaded, Joe said, the strain of travelling from Soweto to the court in Pretoria every day. Hotels did not admit black people. Sasha’s room was made ready for the guest; then Pauline decided it was too hot, the afternoon sun beat through the curtains, and Carole and Hillela were moved out of their room, for him.

  There was a rose in a vase on the bedside table. Although Alpheus occupied the converted garage, no black person had ever slept in the house before. The old gentleman really was that—a distinguished political leader and also a hereditary chief who was to be addressed by his African title specifically because the government had deposed him. The ease of the house tightened while he was there. Other people who came to stay were left to fit in with the ways of the household, but there was uncertainty about what would make this guest feel at home. When he was heard hawking in the bathroom the girls shared with him, they looked at each other and suppressed laughter and any remark to members of the family. Joe put out whisky but the old gentleman didn’t take alcohol; Pauline got Bettie to squeeze orange juice; it was too acid for him. He drank hot water; so a flask was always to be ready, beside the rose. He had a magnificent head, Pauline explained; he ought to be painted, for posterity. She phoned her sister Olga, patron of the arts (let her move on from the 18th to the 20th century for once) who could tell one of her artist friends of the opportunity for sittings with someone a little different from the wives of Chairmen of Boards, someone whose life would go down in history. —My poor sister—her first reaction is always to be afraid of trouble! Would it be all right? Not cause any trouble? I think she was nervous her famous friend would land in jail for so much as committing the shape of Chief’s nose to paper.—

  The old man put his hand to his nostrils as one dismayedly adjusts a tie before being photographed.

  —More likely her famous friend would be nervous of getting no more contracts for murals in government buildings, after such a commission.— Joe made one of his corrections.

  It was not a painter but a sculptor who came. The old black man had agreed to a portrait—Oh I have been photographed I don’t know how many times—as courteously as he accepted every other necessity of being in strange hands. Pauline and Joe’s open-plan house had no doors except those of the kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms; everyone went to and fro, some considerately lowering the volume of voice of activity, past the chosen sunlit corner where the old man sat, one polished shoe slightly extended, the other drawn slightly back so that knee and stout Zulu thigh were at an angle of painfully-maintained relaxation and confidence. The sculptor built up thick clay scales, mealy and dun; the old man’s own great head shone, cast in black flesh and polished with light, the broad shining nostrils wide in dignity, the cross-hatched texture of the big mouth held firm under majestic down-scrolls of moustache, the small fine ears etched against the heavy skull. He felt the presence of the schoolgirl watching; the eyelids came to life and drooped slightly over black eyes ringed with milky grey, as if they had looked at white people so long they had begun to reflect their pallor.

  The two guests in the house—the permanent one and the temporary one—met face to face again. She was in her skimpy cotton pyjamas, running barefoot at dawn to the bathroom, he was coming from there, the big slow black man, knotted calves bare, feet pushed into unlaced shoes, wearing an old army surplus greatcoat over his nakedness. Against the indignity, for him, the child and the old man passed each other without a sign. It is not possible he could have lived long enough to have reason to remember; but she might have kept somewhere the impression of the grey lint in the khaki furze of the coat and the grey lint in the furze of the noble trophy, his head.

  The trial went on so long it became part of the normal background to the life of adults, Pauline and Joe, while from month to month nothing is constant for adolescents, looking in the mirror to see the bridge of a nose rising (Carole’s), the two halves of a behind rounding (Hillela’s) and changing a gait, the very act of walking, into some kind of message for the world. In the newspapers were photographs of blacks burning their passes, raising fists and thumbs, staring elated defiance. Then there were the photographs that, like memory, hold a moment clear out of what goes by in such blaring, buffeting, earthquake anger and flooding fear that the senses lose it, like blood lost, in an after-shudder that empties all being. Close black dots of newsprint cohered into the shout as it left an open mouth and the death-kick of bullets that flung bodies into a last gesture at life.

  Newspapers are horror happening to other people. Hillela was invited by her Aunt Olga to the special dinner connected with Passover (Olga liked to keep up these beautiful old Jewish traditions which the girl, named in honour of her Zionist great-grandfather, would certainly never be given any sense of in Pauline’s house); the talk round the unleavened bread and bitter herbs of deliverance was of Canada, America or England. Olga and Arthur thought of leaving the country. Pauline and Joe cancelled their annual family holiday so that they could donate a substantial sum to funds for victims: maintenance for the dependants of political prisoners and money for needs that could not be publicly earmarked, that they did not want to be told about by those who received it, or to mention in their frank information confided to their children on the question of priorities at such a time: Yet the children must realize—people were living ‘Underground’, which meant they were fugitive, spending a night or a week here or there, always in fear of arrest for themselves and bringing danger of arrest to those who hid them.

  There was some sort of argument on the telephone between Pauline and Olga, also not fully explained, but as a result of which Hillela, alone, went on holiday after all—with Olga, Arthur and their sons. Joe annoyed Pauline by refusing to see the holiday in context. —Plettenberg Bay’s beautiful. You’ll have a wonderful time. The beaches are so long you feel you can walk round Africa. And you’ll go to the Tsitsikamma Forest—

  Pauline, cutting sweet peppers for a stew and crunching slices as she worked, could not be silenced entirely. —Olga suddenly wakes up to the fact: she has ‘as much right over you’ as I have, I’ve no right to deprive you of a holiday. For reasons of my own. That was her phrase exactly: ‘for reasons of your own’. That’s all Sharpeville and sixty-nine dead meant to her. She is also Ruthie’s sister, etcetera. She has you to dinner a few times a year … but suddenly she’s Ruthie’s sister, she feels responsible—Pauline turned her anger into a grin and popped a wheel of pepper into the girl’s mouth.

  Joe put a hand on Hillela’s head in absolution. —Really beautiful. Hillela ought to see it.—

  The day Hillela returned from the holiday a woman was sitting with Pauline under the dangling swags of orange bignonia creeper that made private one end of the verandah. The old dog came up barking blindly behind his cataracts, then recognized Hillela’s smell under new clothes and swung about panting joyfully while Pauline jumped up and stopped her where she had approached, hugging her, admiring—Olga, eh? Everything she chooses to wear is always exquisite—her voice whipping around them distractedly, a lasso rising and falling.

  —Shall I bring out some tea when I’ve dumped my things?—

  —No, no. I won’t be long: As soon as I’m free … I’ll come and hear all about …— Behind her, Hillela saw crossed legs, the stylized secondary female characteristic of curved insteps in high-heeled shoes, the red hair of the woman who had come that time with the Burger girl, Rosa.
r />   Everyone else was out; Carole must have had a friend sleeping over, there were short pyjamas that didn’t belong under the pillow on the second bed. The kitchen was empty; Bettie in her yard room. Beginning to move again along the familiar tracks of life in this house, Hillela went into the dining area of the living-room to see if there was any fruit in the big Swazi bowl kept there. The voices on the verandah just beneath the windows did not interest her much. Pauline’s less arresting than usual, evading rather than demanding attention: —The woman who works for me sleeps in; her friends come and go through the yard all the time … she has to have a private life of her own. There’s someone Joe’s given a job to—we’ve converted the second garage for him. So even if I had some sort of out-house … it’s just not possible … even if I got a promise from Bettie and that young chap not to say anything … how would I know that their friends … We’re right on the street, it’s not a big property. There’s nowhere anyone like that would be safe.—

  —It wouldn’t be for long. Haven’t you somewhere in the house; anything.—

  —If it were somebody I knew. I’d feel the obligation, never mind the consequences, I assure you. But what you tell me—it’s just a name. And you don’t know the person, either, I mean, through no fault of yours it might just be a plant … a trap.—

  —These ‘strangers’ are more than friends. There are times when personal feelings don’t come into it. Now … well, people are expected to put their actions where their mouths have been.—

  At supper Sasha was there but Carole had gone with a youth camp project to build a clinic for blacks in the Transkei.

  —Tell us about Olga’s house—is it lovely? Up on the hills or near the beach? Oh of course it must be lovely! What heaven, just to run out of bed straight onto the beach, and on that side of the headland, completely private, right away from the crowds. And did you eat lots of gorgeous crayfish—oh crayfish straight out of the sea, with lemon and butter … Pure ozone going down. No wonder you look so well, Olga’s transformed you as only Olga can. Even waterskiing lessons! She just has a gift for giving pleasure, a special sort of generosity of her own.— Pauline herself seized upon a generosity and sisterly pride as if something sadly discovered to have been packed away in herself. Her interest in Olga’s beach house, in the outings and beach parties (—And they liked your guitar-playing in the moonlight, eh?—) worked up intoxicatingly in her, that glance of hers that always seemed to create its own public found an agitating response invisible to others at table. —So you didn’t only see the dolphins, you actually swam among them? Those wonderful creatures. Joe, what about that record? Wasn’t there once a record of dolphins singing or talking? Made under the sea? Cousteau or somebody. It would be a nice present for Hillela to give Olga, to thank her, I must see if I can get it—She began to eat stolidly, eyes down on the plate like a child who has been forced to do so. The withdrawal of animation left a vacuum from which no-one could escape. Another voice came out of her, for Joe alone. —And there’s your work to think of. That’s what I should have said. That’s the point. If we—all right, I, but it’s the same thing, no-one would separate the culpability, would they—if we were to get involved in this kind of thing … It’d only have to come out once, and your credibility—

  He closed his eyes momentarily and opened them again.

  —I mean professional integrity would be finished. For good. And what you can do in court is of far more importance—

  He moved his head, prompting correction.

  —No, well, I’m not making any excuses. We know nothing is more important than what people like that have done … but your work’s absolutely necessary, too, in the same context. One has to be sensible. I should have made that point. She should go to others for this kind of thing. I should have told her. Not lawyers’ houses. I should have said, if you were to be accused of being involved in any way other than professionally, you’d never be able to take on such cases again … would you? They ought to understand they also need people like you.—

  —You acted correctly. That’s the end of it.—

  The boy and girl saw Pauline’s hands falter on knife and fork. She put them down and her hands sought each other, each stiff finger pushed through the interstices between those of the other hand. —‘People are expected to put their actions where their mouths have been.’ You can imagine how the word will get around. She’s the kind who’ll see to that.—

  Joe dismissed this with a twist of lip and tongue to dislodge a tomato pip from a tooth.

  Pauline drew her hair back tightly held on her crown a moment, exposing her nakedness, the temples that were always covered, then dropped the thick hair again. —Dolphins, Hillela. I love those stories about how they save drowning people and push sinking fishing-boats to shore. I wish they were true.—

  Whatever the reason, the parents must have gone out later that night. They couldn’t have been there? Sasha and his cousin helped Bettie wash up and gossiped in the kitchen. Bettie’s nails, outgrown the patches of magenta varnish in the middle, flashed through the dirty water. —Did Miss Olga take her girl with her or her boy?—

  —Jethro and Emily came. At least, they followed by train.—

  —Lucky, lucky. I want to go to the sea. Sasha, why don’t you take me sometimes?—

  —Come on, Bettie … when we go on holiday you go on your own holiday, you don’t have to do the same old housework in a different place.—

  Bettie’s laughter jiggled her like a puppet. —I want to swim and get a tan same like Hillela.— They all laughed—she flung her arm, wet hand extended, round Hillela and Hillela’s head rested a moment under her cocked one, cradled against her mauvish-black, damp neck.

  Sasha had his mother’s insistence on facing the facts. —You wouldn’t be allowed on the beach. Isn’t that true, Hillela?—

  —Well, Jethro’s afraid of the sea anyway, but Emily used to go down early in the morning, when nobody was there.—

  —They lucky, like I say. Miss Olga gave them a fridge for their rooms. Emily’s pay is very high, very high. I wish I could be working for Miss Olga!—

  —Better than your pay?—

  —Better than my pay, Sasha? More than ninety pounds a month.—

  —My parents wouldn’t take you to a place where you couldn’t even walk on the beach.—

  Bettie wiped the sink with the absent vigour of a task performed through a lifetime. —I’m not thinking about walking, I’m thinking about money, what I must pay my mother for looking after my children, what I must pay for schoolbooks, for uniform, for church—

  —We’re not rich people like Olga.—

  Bettie laughed. —Maybe you not rich, I don’t know.—

  —You know how hard my mother works to help—black people, I mean. And she doesn’t get paid.—

  —Yes, she works hard. I work hard and I’m thinking about money. Money is the thing that helps me. Are you going to lock up, lovey?—

  She took out of the oven a pot containing her man’s supper and a jug with the remains of the dinner coffee and went off across the yard to her room.

  The two young people played the records they liked as loudly as they wished. They sat on the floor in the livingroom under rocking waves of the rhythm to which their pleasurable responses were adjusted by repeated surrender to it, as each generation finds a tidal rhythm for its blood in a different musical mode. Hillela gazed at her feet, transformed by the sun and sea into two slick and lizard-like creatures, thin brown skin sliding satiny over the tendons when she moved her toes. Her attention drew the boy’s.

  —What was all that about?— A tip of the head towards the dining-table.

  She took a moment to make sure he was not referring to Bettie. —Someone was here when I came home today.—

  —Someone we know?—

  —Not you. You weren’t here when she came before. Quite long ago. Before the Chief stayed.—

  —But you don’t know who?— After a moment he began again. �
��Were you there?—

  —I was unpacking my things. They were on the verandah.— She bent her head and began stroking over her feet and ankles. —I heard them talking when I went to fetch a banana—

  —And?—

  —I was thinking about something else.—

  —A-ha, some chap you got keen on at Plett, mmh?—

  She mimicked Bettie. —Maybe, I don’t know.—

  He rolled onto his stomach and began playing with her toes to help her remember. —But you understand what they were talking about, now.—

  —Well, I remember some things.—

  —Such as?— He scratched suddenly down the sole of her foot and her toes curled back over his hand in reflex.

  —Oh you know.—

  —Me? How could I?—

  —You heard what Pauline said, at dinner.—

  —Yes. It’s about someone on the run from the police, isn’t it.— He traced down her toes with his forefinger. —Look how clean the sea has made your nails. You’ve got a funny-looking little toe, here.—

  —Pauline told me that toe was broken when I was two years old, in Lourenço Marques with my mother.—

  —Do you remember?—

  —I was too small.—

  —Not your mother either? What’s she like?—

  —No. —I suppose like Olga and Pauline—

  He laughed. —Olga-and-Pauline, how’s it possible to imagine such a creature!—

  —She’s a sister.—

  —Well, yes. I don’t remember her, either.—

  —Sasha, would you say I look Portuguese?—

  —How does Portuguese look? Like a market gardener?—

  —My short nose and these (touching cheekbones), my eyes and this kind of hair that isn’t brown or black; the way it grows from my forehead—look.—

  He took her head in his hands and jerked it this way and that.

  —Yes, you look Portuguese—no, more like an Eskimo, that’s it, or a Shangaan or a Lapp or a—

  —I don’t look like you, any of you, do I.—