My Son's Story

by Nadine Gordimer

  My father surged with elation, he had the grin and strength of gaze he had when Baby and I were children, held high in the air by him, and that he had had when we went to see him shut away in prison.—They not only won’t be able to prove she knew what was in the storeroom, it won’t be possible for them to prove they didn’t plant the lot. Not beyond reasonable doubt—can’t, once it’s clear they planted the rockets. All their evidence will be totally discredited! If the police have lied on the main charge, how can the case hold up? The judge’ll have to throw the whole thing out—there’s a good chance of that!—

  We were at the lawyers’ for consultation. I was at its centre for this, the only time. I was nobody’s conspirator, I had found my own point of reference through my own experience. The lawyers were not as certain of the outcome as my father, but I’d become the pivot of their defence, their principal witness. I heard the aside from one of them to my father:—He’ll have to be two hundred percent sure he cannot be caught out in uncertainty—not even in tone of voice—on any detail, doesn’t matter how small and apparently irrelevant. Because Lombard’s going to play on the fact that there’s special sentiment involved, a young man naturally will lie, if it’s a question of family …after all, it’s his mother.—

  My mother—Aila—listened to everything with her new intentness and did not look at me. I felt strange that she wouldn’t look at me. It was as if she wanted to deny this new bond of intimacy between us. I believe I began, then, to think (but I may have known all the time?)—I began to think, very deep within myself, no-one will ever get at it, that Aila knew there were those ugly and deadly things wrapped in the material she had left over when she sewed my curtains. She knew, and she didn’t want me to know—I, who’ve known so much about her that others don’t, he—my father—doesn’t. When the men had all talked a great deal, the lawyers trying out my answers on one another, and my father, Aila and I had got up to leave, the Senior Counsel told Aila she and I had better come back for briefing with him next day. Aila emanated a stilling atmosphere; the parting jabber stopped. It was as if everyone found he had unnoticingly entered a strange house, and it was hers; she stood there.—I don’t want Will to give evidence.—

  Preposterous. So shocked, one of the lawyers laughed; they couldn’t take her seriously: the lawyers, my father. Naturally the poor woman was confused, they would explain to her, she would come round, they would convince her. No harm would come to the boy. No harm. A woman, after all, she was thinking of her son—

  Mama’s boy! There was a thrust of rage in me; against myself, against her. Now they were raising their voices, talking over each other, about me. Any moment someone would remember and turn to ask And what are you going to be when you grow up?

  I drove. She sat beside me and he behind her. I drove fast, with the slamming movements of my mood, and neither cautioned me. For once I felt in charge of them. He was leaning forward, not to be excluded from whatever she and I might say. But he would have missed nothing by being less eager. We did not speak. What I might say to her wouldn’t be said before him. On the periphery of my vision I saw him squeeze her shoulder and let his hand lie a moment. Poor Aila poor Aila. Was he telling little wifey it’s all right, she has her strong clever leader-of-the-people husband, turned up at last to talk her out of her foolish notions?

  She asked me to drive by the chemist’s. While she was in the shop, he sighed and fidgeted.—It’ll be all right. She’s upset. It’s a bit much for her to take in. Against her nature, Will.—

  She came out of the shop and smiled at us, frowning in the sun, it was as if we were expected to take her photograph. He was encouraged to begin again.—It’s a matter of the truth, Aila. It’s not even just a personal issue, it’s not just you involved. Will has to speak the truth. That’s a chance to challenge the system itself.—

  I had started the engine but I let it stall with a jerk.—Let’s leave all this until we get home.—

  He ignored me; he was still my father.—Believe me, Aila, there’ll be no action against him just because he’s a witness. No question of complicity. No-one’s going to arrest Will! Not because of this; not because he’s my son or your son. It’s the duty of any Defence to subpoena anyone they need. You know that, surely? But I’m not a lawyer, am I, ready to win my case at any cost … He’s my son. He’s my son, too. Would I put him in any danger? Believe me. Would I lie to you?—

  And we don’t challenge him. Imagine! Neither of us bursts out laughing when he finds the nerve to ask that question. Neither of us affirms, yes, yes, and yes again. Is it all forgotten then, washed up, are the three of us survivors of his shipwreck, under his command to build a new shelter for some dream of family he wants to come back to?

  I tilted my head to look at her sidelong. She licked her forefinger and rubbed at a mark on the back of her other hand. She caught me looking at her, dropped the hand and turned her head away. When she knew she had shaken off my glance she spoke to my father and to me.—It’s enough. It’s enough.—

  I don’t know what he understood by this but I heard what she was saying. My father the famous Sonny, Baby the revolutionary exile, Aila the accomplice of Umkhonto weSizwe: they are our family’s sacrifice for the people, there’s no need of me, who needs someone like me? They are the heroes.

  Nothing would change her mind. The Defence team appealed to the seasoned activist who was also the person closest to her—her husband—he must be the one to make her see reason and sense. Through the influence of all the years they had lived together; though the lawyers didn’t say it: through love.

  It’s enough, she said. Enough: enough for her to bear without having the boy involved in any way. That was horribly distasteful to her. Frightened her. She was not afraid to act courier for ruthless, shameless Baby in Lusaka and brave enough for god knows what else she had done, but she feared this. Their boy; but it was tacitly accepted, way back, that Will was her child, and although Sonny had Lear—like lost his, his Baby—Best thou had’s not been born, than not t’have pleas’d me better—Aila still claimed a tender unspoken priority in matters concerning the boy.

  Through love. Sonny could argue the reason and sense—none better—at his command the simplicity of the schoolmaster who had been her mentor and the wisdom of the veteran of the struggle. Love. Sometimes he thought the way to do it was to tell her everything, to confess Hannah, every night he had spent close to the earth in the cottage, the weekends among the orange blossom, even the perverse pleasure (how could innocent Aila understand that; how awful if she could) he took in seeing her, Aila, his wife, and Hannah in the same company. But then that would have meant telling Aila, too, how he kept Will in the know, how it had started when he bumped into the schoolboy Will when he took his blonde openly out in public, to a cinema. How would Aila forgive him that. What love could convince her after that.

  But perhaps Aila could tell him why it all had to happen to him. If he confessed all, exposed all, kept nothing for himself, gave away for ever all that belonged to him in his need of Hannah. Oh Hannah. Oh schoolmaster taunted by the tags of passion he didn’t understand when he read them in the little son-of-sorrow house. Oh Hannah.

  Beat at this gate that let thy folly in.

  She mustn’t think she can count forever on the child who used to put himself to sleep stroking his lips with the tail of her long black plait. The plait’s cut off, she’s shorn, I’m a man. I thrust myself into women as my father does.

  I got her out of the house, away from him. She took a walk with me. I wanted air. There wasn’t anywhere much to walk to; three blocks down and you come to the discount liquor store, the take-away and the general store the Portuguese calls his supermarket, three blocks the other way and you reach the Dutch Reformed Church where our white neighbours pray on Sundays to their god who doesn’t admit people like us in his house. We pass the houses of these neighbours; they’ve changed several times since my father moved us defiantly into this shabby suburb that seemed so grand t
o us after our place in the veld. More of our people have moved in as we did, some of the whites have gone because of this and been replaced by poorer ones who can’t afford to live anywhere else. Most of our people are like we were—they’ve fixed up the houses they occupy—paint, tiled stoeps, fancy front door. The whites have the hulks of old cars in the patches that are supposed to be gardens, and cardboard where windowpanes are broken.

  The neighbours who used to greet us (my mother such a real lady) seemed not to see us as we walked by; looked away. Perhaps they were different neighbours, I’ve never taken much notice, all the same to me. Or they had seen the headlines, and the newspaper photographs of Aila, living among them, one and the same woman who’d seemed such a lady you’d greet her just as if she were white.

  Aila kept in step beside me. –Ma. You can’t decide for me.—

  —The whole business is my affair. It’s not for the lawyers to defend me in any way they like. It’s my right to instruct them, isn’t it.—

  —That’s not what I mean. You must listen to what I mean, you think you know how things should be for me, but you don’t realize …—

  —I do, I do. I don’t want you mixed up in this. I don’t want your life decided by mine. It’s you who don’t realize, Will.—

  I stumbled against a stone, she waited for me. I said it aloud at last: –Aila.—

  Her black eyes brightened and narrowed, she pursed her mouth wryly and amazedly. But fondly. She—only just—put her hand a moment on my forearm.

  —Why do I have to say this again. Why must I be the one excepted, the one left behind, left out, why is it assumed—by you, by him, by Baby, everyone—I haven’t any part in the struggle. Why is it just accepted I’m the one who lives the sham normal life you’ve all rejected, I’m to be happy on the edge of the white man’s world of big business, money, going to be smugly settled in a year or two in some big firm or multinational if there’re any left here, given loans to build a house just as good as theirs where they say I can, driving a company car, marrying some girl presentable enough by their standards for their annual dinner, producing kids I can afford to send to some private school that takes kids like ours—why? Why is it decided that that’s for me? Who decided it? What’s wrong with me? Why me? Is there some birthmark or something that says this is what I must be?—

  Her shoulders were hunched in distress but I didn’t stop. After so long, I couldn’t stop.—It’s like a curse, I’m supposed to take it as my fate. And now you, you, when I can act like the rest of you, when I can face them in court and tell them they’re liars, liars, those thugs who’ve been let into our house—and I let them in, I’m the one who’s let every kind of destruction into our house, I’m always there, handy, Will is going to do it, well-named, he’ll do it—now you say, It’s enough. Enough! There’s nothing for me in the struggle to change our lives. I’m needed at home. I am home. It’s enough! I’ve had enough of it!—

  She was flinching as if I were hitting her; I was hitting her and I stopped only for breath.

  —I can’t do it. Then you must do it some other way. Not through me. I can’t part with you, Will.—

  —What’s so special about me? So I’m your stake in something, I’m to be something you and he don’t really want to give up? Not even for the revolution? The token place in the boardroom you don’t really, somewhere in you—you don’t want to destroy? Am I your hostage, your middle-class nostalgia for nice things? You don’t really want to see your flowered curtains used for a better purpose than dolling up the bedroom in the house meant for a white man.—

  We walked on in terrible silence for a while. My heart was thudding with the excitement of my cruelty.

  —I don’t think it’s like that. It won’t be like that.—

  I gave a snort of rejection,

  There was no way out for her, even though she hadn’t said as much. She had no way to stop me speaking the truth for myself. We walked quietly down the street where we lived. From some way off we could see something hanging on our gate; in the dusk it looked like a black sweater, perhaps it had been found in the street and displayed there for its owner to reclaim. It was a dead cat, and tied to its strangled neck was a piece of cardboard lettered in red: BLACK COMMUNIST BITCH GET OUT OF HERE. Aila was fumbling desperately to untie the cat. I said, It’s dead, Ma, it’s no good, it’s dead. Leave it. Let’s go inside. I’ll see to it afterwards.

  Somehow our arms went out around each other. Close, we walked calmly up the cement path and shut the front door behind us. That was all anyone watching the house would have the satisfaction of seeing.

  From where did Aila’s obstinacy come? Obduracy, rather. That was not in her nature, either; before.

  Sonny had to define to himself what he meant by ‘before’. Yes, there was a blank in his chronology of her life; he knew little of the changes in her for which, he believed, he was responsible. He had noticed she’d cut her hair, that’s about all—women’s whims. Meant little to him at the time.

  He tried to keep calm and confine himself to reason; he submitted himself to self-criticism as an intelligent man, who had freed his mind through the struggle, should. There must be method. He knew he was having difficulty in accepting Aila as a comrade. He had consciously to rid himself of an outworn perception of Aila. Consciously; that was the problem.

  Perhaps if (as he had read, long ago, Jesuit educationists said) character is formed, for life, in the first three years of human existence, the idea of the loved partner remains fixed, arrested at the first few naive years of a relationship. Reason told him that if he could accept Aila as a comrade like any other, as well as his wife, they might revive and deepen the old Sonny/Aila life together. It would be their life, even if she were to be imprisoned, and he might be, once again, at some time. He knew that to bring this about there were certain requirements. Aila had to be reinstated as his wife. He had done this. He also knew that it was necessary to forgive himself as well as be forgiven by Aila—guilt is self-indulgent and unproductive.

  Sonny forgave himself; but this was futile. Aila had never reproached him, so there was nothing for her to forgive. And nothing in her behaviour recognized that anyone but she herself was responsible for it. Even the harm he had done her was no claim on her; he saw that. Perhaps he flattered himself Aila had needed to suffer his love of another woman to change. Perhaps it had nothing to do with that, with him. Perhaps she had freed herself just as he had, through the political struggle. He would never be able to ask her; the question of his woman was irrelevant, now.

  The lawyers tacitly understood it was no use depending on Sonny to influence Aila. Consultations, at which he sat in, were becoming more and more difficult. The Defence asked for and was granted an extension of the remand for preparation of fresh evidence. It was to Sonny the Senior Counsel came privately, as a doctor informs a relative, not the patient, of a terminal diagnosis, to say that he was withdrawing from the case. Sonny implored him to reconsider; Aila, when told, merely nodded quietly and cleared her throat, gave no indication of wanting to change the man’s decision. Although the advocate had lost patience with her angrily at their last meetings, she thanked him ‘for all he had done’ and—strange for Aila!—when he shook her hand, suddenly kissed his cheek.

  Tuesday the fourteenth of June.

  That was the afternoon when I came home and my father was alone. He was standing about at the telephone as if he had just used it or was expecting it to ring. Five o’clock, the time when they went for the second report to the police station every day; one of the routines that order our kind of life. I was so drilled and disciplined to it that I even felt anxious they were going to be late.—You haven’t been yet?—

  —No.—He stood there.

  —Has she gone on her own?—

  —I haven’t seen her.—

  —Did she have to go to town?—‘Town’ meant the lawyers’ chambers.

  —I phoned. She’s not there.—

  —Oh I suppose sh
e’ll come in any minute.—

  It was his hands that alarmed me.—The car’s in the garage.—

  I noticed his hands; the thumbs rubbing against the inner surface of the fingers in the unconscious trembling motion of those old men whose nervous system is deteriorating.

  —She must’ve gone out with someone, then. Weren’t you here?—

  —Ben gave me a lift—there was a meeting, so I left the car for her. He brought me back an hour ago.—

  —There must be a note. I’ll look in the kitchen.—

  —I’ve looked.—

  We waited for her. The winter cold coming up from the floor and the darkening of the windows to glassy black splintered by streetlights marked the passing of time although he and I avoided being caught, each by the other, looking at a watch. So long as the length of time that had passed was not measured we could believe she would come in soon.—Shouldn’t you phone the police station and make some excuse, she’s sick or something?—

  He looked at me as if what I had just said had the effect of making him recognize what he was avoiding. He held a deep breath.—That’s the last thing we ought to do.—

  —I can’t see why not. They’ll withdraw bail if she doesn’t report, won’t they? We can get a note from Jasood, she was ill.—

  —An excuse …it’s a sign. It alerts them.—

  —To what?—