A Sport of Nature

by Nadine Gordimer

  Violence is pain and death. That was an after-world that might not exist at all, like heaven or hell, for her—a girl who did not have the Jewish faith under which one school had listed her, nor the Christian faith in the promises and threats of morning prayers at the next school; at most, something like old age, in which no seventeen-year-old can believe for herself. They—the voices elsewhere in the house—had thoughts that did hot reach her; and she had some—and some experiences relived and pondered not more than the thickness of a room’s wall away from, but unknown to them: inconceivable. The girl must have known that: they never made the emotional show Olga did, but she knew she was their own child to them, just as their son was.

  It is unlikely that Hillela will have remembered at any time the exaggerated emotions and highly-coloured scroll of unrolled life that absorbed her totally when she was seventeen. It is the torn streamers that were to come back to her: killing is killing, violence is pain and death.

  Sasha worked in a bottle store that winter’s school holidays and his cousin and her current band of friends came in one lunchtime to buy beer and a yellow concoction they had a craze for, called—the sort of useless detail that is all that remains of a period—Neptune’s Nectar, made of cane spirit and synthetic passion-fruit flavouring. Sasha, stacking wine bottles, lifted his head from behind boxes only to meet Hillela’s eyes (she gave him an imitation of himself for Carole’s sisterly amusement, later) and then disappeared as if he had not seen the band. For her it was the old game of shop, from the occasions when all the cousins played together. The band surrounded him. It was his turn as shopkeeper; but Sasha refused to serve them. —You’re under age.—

  Sasha changed so much each time he was away at school; once it was his voice, now it was his jaw which, anticipating the man’s face it would one day support, had set out the structure of a squared chin dented where the two halves of his face had joined in Pauline’s womb. It always took a few days for Hillela to forget what he had looked like the last time he was home; to find him again.

  —Oh don’t be wet.— She balanced between irritation and wariness, and he knew it, knew Hillela. By claiming family influence over him, she would gain prestige if he gave in, but if he refused, she would on the contrary be associated with his ‘wetness’.

  —Go and ask one of the others.— He indicated, eyes on his uninterrupted activity, two men attending to customers along the aisles of bottles glaucous as cabochon rubies and emeralds.

  —The hell with it, let’s push off.—

  —There’s another place right on the corner.—

  Hillela stood willing him to turn round and do her bidding. Two girls and a boy began pulling bottles at random out of cases and clinking them onto shelves all around Sasha, pushing and laughing. —Let’s give him a hand, man.— —Slow’s a funeral.—

  Hillela looked at them as if she had just walked into the shop and had had her attention to her own errand momentarily distracted by an incident taking place there. The cashier’s head was turned; the pudgy ears of the man behind the counter responded with shopkeepers’ alertness, specific to petty theft as a hunting dog’s to gunshot. They were Hillela’s friends; Sasha could have turned, now, and cried out—Hillela …! To save his pocket-money job, schoolboy well-fed by Pauline and Bettie, being educated for higher occupations at a school open to all races? (There were things Sasha was cursed, from the beginning, to know beyond his years.) Or to give her ‘friends’ the satisfaction of confirming that he didn’t have his share of their mindless boldness, happily, swaggeringly defying harmless conventions of behaviour while remaining perfectly safe within the terrible conventions of this country. Hillela! He didn’t cry. She didn’t hear.

  Hillela walked out of the shop. The manager came down the aisle, his male breasts spread by shoulders drawn back authoritatively. —These are your friends? I don’t want them here.—

  —Calm down, old man. We don’t want to be here either, old man.— They talked all over him agilely. Looked for Hillela, but she was gone; out they sauntered.

  Only when they had left did Sasha commit his kind of disloyalty to her, that she would never know. —I don’t know any of them. They walked in and started.—

  That evening brother, sister and cousin gathered in the girls’ room; Hillela was at home, for once. Carole was grateful and shyly expressed her pleasure in whatever small ways she could when Hillela stayed in; they did not listen to, but she played again and again a record singing about love in a hoarse, laryngitic style that had become her unconfessed mating call. Carole was working in the library of a newspaper; Hillela was a temporary hand in a depot for a photographic laboratory. Like rookies in an army, these recruits to the world of daily bread-winning compared and gossiped about their holiday jobs. —I’d rather dig ditches. Anything’s better than selling people stuff for more money than you’ve paid for it.— The great-grandson of a Lithuanian pedlar was generations away from his progenitor’s necessity; and he was also Pauline’s son. —What about writing out dockets for little rolls of film all day long—‘Why aren’t they ready?’, ‘This print’s got a scratch’, “There’s something wrong with the colours’.— —Well at least developing film is a service, it’s doing something for the money— —But Hilly’s not the one who does it, is she? She’s just in between.— —Most of the people in the big cities are just that. Taking money, handing over something they know nothing about. I’d rather dig ditches.—

  The record had come to an end and Carole glided to place the arm at the start again without the other two noticing. Hillela addressed her male cousin’s lowered eyes and the mouth that adults interpreted as sulky but was an expression of need for answers they could not give him. —Most people know nothing about anything they do. About why they do anything. It’s just because they feel like it … it’s fun. Doesn’t mean anything. They just go ahead.—

  If that might have signalled the surfacing of what had happened at the bottle store in her lunch hour, a confession or a defiance, how could one tell, with Hillela—incidents of that magnitude in the adolescent world which would have caused a family rumpus at Olga’s, where political passions were the politics of family relationships, at Pauline’s could not expect to attract any attention. Certainly not in comparison with what was about to happen in her house that night. Before Sasha could respond—if he would have responded at all—Bettie came in (Bettie never knocked on the children’s doors, even though they were grown up, now). —There’s someone who wants Miss Pauline. I told him she’s out but he says no, then he wants someone else to come.—

  —Who is it? Man or woman?—

  —A boy. (Bettie’s way of indicating a black man.) I think I see him sometime here before … He won’t say the name.— She was used to Pauline’s semi-clandestine black visitors; pulled a you-know-the-kind face: these people always got money out of Pauline, while she had to work for hers.

  Sasha followed her, but came back at once. —He says he knows you, Carole. I’ve never seen the guy.—

  He sat at the kitchen table with his elbow resting on it and the chair turned away, legs stretched and spread, smiling, a man in the self-confidence of his rotundity and charm. It was as if the three young people were arriving before him by appointment, for an interview. He leaned forward and held out a hand. —Carole, how’s it? Your mummy not here? You remember me, mmh?—

  Carole’s voice rose to cover embarrassment at Bettie’s confining a friend of the family to the kitchen. —Oh yes! But come inside!—

  —Donsi. Donsi Masuku. And I’ve seen your sister, too. So this’s the young man of the family—

  In the livingroom he made himself comfortable. —When do you think she’ll come, your mother? Okay, whenever it is, that’s all right—I’ll wait. What’s your name? Sasha. Sa-sha. That’s a Russian name, ay? Sasha, can you get me a beer—why don’t we have a beer together? What kind of records have you got—I heard some music going … You got any Duke? How I love that man. I used to play trumpet, I used
to play drums, one time … I was even with a group. Did you ever hear of the Extra Strongs—the name comes from those peppermint sweets, you know them, XXX Mints. Yes. That was our group. We took part in the Big Band shows, Soweto, Cape Town, Durban. We cut a disc. Old seventy-eight. One day if I find it, I’ll bring it to play for you, Carole, you’ll see. But nowadays I haven’t got the wind (slapping his belly) or it’s got stuck there inside (making them laugh at him). Haven’t got the time, maybe haven’t got the heart for it … Now—come on, Donsi, what’s the matter with you, man! Must never lose the heart, you know that—I’m telling you, kids, never lose the heart, because if you lose that … they’ve got you!—

  Pauline and Joe walked in on him dancing with Carole and Hillela. Pauline’s eyes had a moment of stillness, hesitation, when she saw who he was: one of those whose followers said things, now, she had read out aloud. I want them to call us baas. Their wives are going to wash the clothes for our wives. I don’t want to be equal with Europeans. We left the African National Congress because we saw Europeans among us. But the innocent bodily warmth, the faint odour of black beneficed the house, absolved whiteness; she came forward in irresistible pleasure of release. Joe offered more beer and then excused himself; he had work to finish. —You legal men do your best for us, we know.— Joe smiled his creased smile. The compliment tossed at him was a convention of guestly graciousness, total insincerity innocent of critical innuendo: the delightful man knew Joe was aware he was an initiator of a move that blacks should not take bail and should refuse defence in the white man’s courts against the white man’s laws. —Lovely kids you’ve got. They’ve been giving me a good time. Really nice. And she can play the guitar—this one!—

  —I’m so glad they looked after you. How are you, Donsi? Good god, you come out of detention looking as if you’ve been on holiday—I saw your name listed in the paper and I was so pleased … but I didn’t know where you’d be—somebody told me your wife and the children had gone to her mother somewhere in Natal.—

  —Yes, mealie-pap, mealie-pap, nothing but mealie-pap, you put on weight, they fatten you up for the kill.—

  —Well, you were never exactly dainty.—

  —But it was muscle, you know? I’ve always been keen on body-building … but in there, man! Look—can I talk to you now?— He leaned in a swift sketch of urgency and confidentiality, then looked up beaming dismissal at the three young people. —Bye-bye girls, and thanks, hey. Bye, Sasha.—

  As they left the room sharing the mood of his good nature he was already speaking at a different pitch, his chair pulled close to Pauline. —Bongi and our kids are there in the car. Outside your house.—

  In the passage, Carole stopped. —All this time, in the car! Ma’ll be furious with me. Why didn’t he say …— Her brother, at once irritated by his sister’s subservience to their mother, left them, and her cousin soothed her by closing their bedroom door on the adults and making her giggle: —Can you just imagine Pauline sitting for an hour in a dark car while Joe was inside dancing?—

  They read in bed. Then Pauline was there, as a window flies open in a storm. —Now listen—you are not to mention this to anyone. D’you understand? Anyone at all. Give me the extra blankets out of your cupboard. You don’t need two pillows, Carole … They’re going to sleep here for a couple of hours and then they’ll be gone. If ever anyone mentions his name, you’ve never heard of him, all right?—

  The wind of pursuit, of exposure, the wind snuffed by police dogs entered the frail shelter of personal talismans, blew on the Imari cats and the records of love songs. In the night, there was the refugee wail of a baby; very early, the unmistakable sounds of Pauline, her pace, her pattern of movements producing clinks and clatters in the kitchen, accompanying dreams with the sound-track of consciousness. Carole probably woke as well, but did not speak. Before she sank back to sleep again, or perhaps in the precious shallows before it was time to emerge for school, Hillela heard with the obscure anguish of the subconscious, Donsi Masuku’s laugh. Happy dangerous laugh, affirmation that, like the baby’s cry of protest, could prick the ears of straining dogs and vibrate the antennae of police cars.

  Sasha had slept in the livingroom. The wife had neatly made up again Sasha’s bed after she and her husband had occupied it. There were still-warm places on the rug where the black children had been bedded down. One of them must have been a boy; a small toy car with one wheel missing was left where it had rolled. Sasha did not hoard souvenirs, posters and photographs the way the girls did. When he was away at school, there was nothing of him in his room at home that could not as well have belonged to the household in common: books, chess set, squash racket. He rescued the little car from some other small boy’s childhood, and kept it on his desk.

  The house had the air of having been suddenly quit. Joe always left early; Pauline was not there. The night visitors were gone; Carole went into the yard to feed the cat: —Their car’s still here.— A horn of hair stood up on her brother’s unbrushed head. She twirled it, he batted at her hand. —You look like a unicorn. No, a cross rhino.— —Leave me.— But the girls’ teasing attention was a kind of homage. His cousin came to the breakfast table in pyjamas. Her softness rose and fell here and there against the pink cotton knit, thinned by many launderings, as she helped herself to jam or juice. She spoke with her mouth full, smiling and gesturing, instinctively choosing her moment. —You should have seen him yesterday, when a couple of us went to say hello—he stuck up his neck behind a pile of boxes just like an ostrich, you know that snooty look they have, looking down at you.—

  While the family were eating the early supper Bettie had cooked, they heard a familiar car rattle into the yard; Pauline’s imminent presence was, as always, like the turn of a tide. Expressions changed. Then she was among them, her hair smelling of dust, a streak of red from inner corner to pupil in one of her great eyes. No-one asked where she had been. —What has Bettie given you? Chicken and rice and potatoes—nice and starchy. Oh, I bought a box of avocados on the road—Carole, let’s have a salad—there’s a dear.— Sasha was suddenly smiling at his mother in amazement, amusement, in love; another benediction on the house. He left the table and came back with a glass of wine for her. —I don’t know if it’s all right. There’s a bottle open in the fridge.—

  Someone must have come to fetch the car Masuku left behind. Next evening Carole remarked that it was gone, to Sasha and Hillela, who seemed to have forgotten it was ever there.

  Pauline kept the mood, like a heightened colour rising to the cheeks, of having allowed herself to act purely on the impulse of her nature, which was simply to give. Principles, political allegiances with their attendant reservations were the rational and intellectual restraints laid upon this instinct; she revered them, and so the mood alternated with a kind of nervous shame. She had commandeered all the money in the house that night—her own, Sasha’s first week’s pay, even got Joe to drive to his office at midnight to fetch whatever might be in the petty cash kept there—to give to the family in flight. The spectacle of the woman with her open-mouthed sleeping baby on her back, trooping into the kitchen, the two other children dressed for the journey to exile in white knee-socks, as if for the only occasions the young woman had to go by, roused in Pauline some sort of atavistic consciousness of like journeys she herself with her children could have been propelled on—the panic of pogroms, the screech of cattle trains leaving a last station, the crawl of the homeless along the roads of war. Alone in the kitchen at five in the morning, she cooked food for the family to take along; she prepared a suitcase of medicaments and clothes. Without comment, at her request, Joe helped Donsi Masuku siphon petrol from his car to fill the tank of hers.

  Bettie had found cupboards left in disorder, the kitchen raided. Pretending not to know, she demanded where the big plastic container was. And the flask to keep the breakfast coffee hot?

  To the young people, Pauline added an awkward rider to her warning. —Nothing—to anyone. Is t
hat clear? Not to any of my friends, either.—

  This time Pauline had not refused succour; and the man who sought it was not one of those whom she ‘supported’. She had known this Donsi as a young black party-goer at white houses. Everybody knew him, then; a messenger in some editorial office who tagged along with those favoured invited guests, black journalists, for the free drinks, and paid for his presence by his ability to enjoy himself and generate in his hosts the pleasure of getting on well with blacks. He was (to the perception of whites, anyway) too much of a fat and happy light-weight to be of use in the political struggle, which in those circles meant the African National Congress. His name began to come up as a regional leader of those who left the Congress because they did not want to mix with whites until, they said, white power was broken; it was only later it was noticed he wasn’t at parties any longer. His people did not want to dance or sit with whites. But she had found him dancing with her daughter and niece; and she had risked arrest by driving him and his family to a place near the border where someone was waiting to smuggle them across. Donsi Masuku had learnt from a relative in the political branch of the police (there were family connections who betrayed, there were family connections who saved) that he was about to be rearrested and charged, this time in a major trial for treason. What she had done was not something she could explain to friends with whom she supported the African National Congress, and who (no doubt) had heard of her failure to give asylum in a context she might be expected to. Joe had witnessed; but Joe would riot confront her with the paradox. Joe could not, because he himself never would share her fierce faction partisanship or her ferocious doubts: Joe (as she taunted him) defended all who needed defence against a common evil.