None to Accompany Me (15 page)

In the weeks that followed when Zeph Rapulana was back
and forth at the Foundation on the matter of Odensville she slowly came to understand—not so much thinking about it as accepting, unknowingly as a physical change or change of mood come about—that what had disturbed her as a mimesis of the past was the beginning of some new capability in her, something in the chemistry of human contact that she was only now ready for. This country black man about whose life apart from his place in the Odensville case she knew nothing (wife, children, web of relatives and friends) already had this capability. That was why he was able to claim her with what was neither a sexual caress nor an impersonal handshake such as they customarily exchanged. He understood her fear that he was dead was an indication that for reasons not to be explained, nor necessary to try to explain, he was not one more individual at risk in the course of her work. There was between them a level of knowledge of one another, tranquil, not very deep, but quite apart from those relationships complicated and profound, tangled in their beings, from which each came to it, a level that was neither sexually intuitive nor that of friendship.

The circumstances of the lives backed up behind them each had lived so far were an obstacle to the shared references of ordinary friendship. She a middle-class city woman—that was as much decisive as whiteness, ordering the services of her life by telephone or fax, taking for granted a secretary and a bay for her car at the office; his status in his rural community marked—it was not difficult to picture from experience of these places—by neat clothes hanging on a wire and the small pile of books and papers in a shack—what did they share of the familiar, outside the Odensville affair?

His sexuality in late middle-age was no doubt satisfied elsewhere; although it was clear, from the sense even of her reserved persona behind her office desk, that her whiteness would not be
taboo for him, or his blackness for her, sex had no part in their perception of each other except that it recognized that each came from a base of sexual and familial relations to a meeting that had nothing to do with any of these. Vera had never before felt—it was more than drawn to—involved in the being of a man to whom she knew no sexual pull. And it was not that she did not find him physically attractive; from the first time he sat across from her desk, his face wide-modelled and firm as polished basalt, his heavy but graceful back as he walked out of a room, his hands resting calmly palm-down on his thighs as he spoke, brought her reassurance she had not known she no longer found elsewhere with anyone. It was as if, in the commonplace nature of their continuing contact through the Foundation, they belonged together as a single sex, a reconciliation of all each had experienced, he as a man, she as a woman.

 

Didymus's left eye flickered open while the other stayed gummed with sleep. In the artificial night when curtains kept out the early morning—she stood, a burglar caught in the act. The eye held her. But this was no intruder: Sibongile off an early plane, the swirl on tarmac coming up in the silence as the taxi that brought her home turned in the empty street.

She released herself. Put down the suitcase. He closed the bleary greeting ashamedly, better pretend to be asleep, drop back into sleep. She drew the suitcase on its wheels across the carpet, fluttered papers and clicked objects against surfaces. Then the waterfall of the shower in the bathroom. The bed dipped to the side as she entered. He knew she wanted him to know she was trying not to wake him: as if she were not there; or had never been away.

He spoke. How was it?

He couldn't dredge up in his mind where she had been sent, where was it this time, Japan, Libya, not the UN, no. Better not risk how was Qaddafi.

—Ex-tr-a ordinary.—

She lay willing sleep, all she had heard and done alight
inside her, could not be extinguished, as he himself had felt when he returned from his missions about which she could not have asked, How was it.

The thick atmosphere of the world of discussion and negotiation came from her hair and skin as smoke clings to the clothing of one who has been in a crowded room. He scented it as a dog sniffs the shoes of its master to trace where he's been.

She was a stranger and she was as familiar as his own body; that must have been how he was for her, those years when he came and went; if he thought of it at all, he had thought that was how it was; something for women. She slept, suddenly, with a snorting indrawn breath. This body beside him invaded the whole bed, lolled against him. His own felt no stir of desire for it.

He must have slept. Both woke at the sound of the door slamming as Mpho left for school, and Sibongile was out of bed instantly, padding over in her slippery nightgown to the half-disgorged suitcase and packages on the floor. —Look what I found for you.— People are happy bringing the consolation of presents to those left behind.

It was a handsome staff (he saw at first), no, a walking-stick, ebony, carved with a handle in the form of a closed fist over a ring, and chased all down the shaft to a copper ferrule. —Isn't it great? Look at the work that's gone into it. I knew you'd love it. I'd looked everywhere in the market but I had so little time—and then there was this damned hawker pestering outside the hotel, one day the moment he held it up I knew, that's for you. See—all carved in one piece—

She
loved it, she sat back on the bed as he received the stick from her and followed its features under her eyes, her feet with magenta-painted toenails waving, her thighs shaping shifting curves of shine on the satin that covered them (he always had
been proud of her clothes, her ingenuity in devising the appearance of flamboyant luxury, even to go to bed in, even when they were poor in exile and this had to be contrived out of odds and ends). —And look at the grain, here, these lighter stripes going down the fingers—isn't that amazing—and feel how solid—

He duly held the object horizontally, raised from the pillows, weighing it on his palms. —Where shall I hang it? Above the desk, or here over the door perhaps.—

She slapped her thighs, sending the satin shivering. —It's not an ornament! It's to walk with! Keep your weight down! Don't think I bring you presents without a double motive, dear— Her voice climbed its scale of laughter. She swung herself off the bed and he could hear her going from room to room, inspecting the traces of her absence, closing cupboard doors in Mpho's little room, clanging the kitchen bin shut on something he or Mpho had neglected to throw away. The walking-stick rested across his chest. He opened his eyes. She appeared in the bedroom doorway, as she had from a distant country at dawn, but in her dressing-gown, her arms crossed under her breasts. —Aren't you getting up?—

—What's the hurry.—

—Oh come on. I'm hungry.—

So she wanted him there in the kitchen to deliver to him a lecture on the results of her trip while they prepared breakfast together. She was trying it out on him—he was a comrade, experienced in such presentations, after all—before she prepared a report. It has been an assignment in Africa—where else could that stick have come from—she'd been sent to negotiate the takeover by that country's Government of a school for exiles' children and various other buildings the Movement had had there. The National Executive left it to her diplomacy to see
whether these assets, no longer needed, should be handed as a gift to a country that had given asylum, or whether it might be possible to expect some sort of compensation—the Swedes had funded the school and added living quarters for the teachers, so there was some improvement to the property since the host government donated the land. —Dinner with the President, flowers sent to my hotel room and all (I like it better when they send fruit, but only Europeans do that, aih, on our continent people don't think fruit's a treat). A lo-ong explanation from him on how we should run things here, my God, if you wrote out all the advice we get it would circle the world—not a word about any compensation deal for the property. The next day there was the great ceremony of the handing-over, President's guard, military band, more speeches, mine as well, but the best I could do when I got the Minister in his office was to get out of him the promise of an agricultural training project, quite small, they'd arrange for a few students we could send up there, tuition free but living expenses
our
responsibility. I don't think I can recommend that as worth taking up? Better that I come back with empty pockets than something we don't want.—

—And the camp?—

She signalled two slices of bread to be put in the toaster. She went into one of her repertoire of elaborate gestures, throwing hands wide, bringing them together with a slight clap that mocked the attitude of prayer, leaning elbows on the kitchen table with a slumping sigh.

—Did you see Matthew or Tatamkulu?—

—Who … —

—You know.—

—Not there any more.—

—So you did go.—

—I had instructions. Just delivering I didn't ask what—
some documents.— It was said as if this were to be the last word on the subject. But he, not she, had once operated in that camp, it was one of the periods when he disappeared from the exiled homes they occupied in Europe and Africa. His was a right to ask about that camp where spies who infiltrated the Movement were imprisoned, although it was not a subject for general discussion. Recently there had been released by the Movement a public report of things done there; unspeakable things. When the report was about to come out he had thought he'd better tell her what he had never told her: that for a time, a desperate time when the Freedom Fighters and the Movement itself were in great danger by infiltration, he had been an interrogator— yes—a jailer, there. He'd told her the code names of others who were running the place and how two of them had joined him, eventually, in protest against the methods being used to extract information. She knew, all right, about whom he was enquiring when he mentioned those names.

—It's not closed down, then.—

She lifted her chin and blinked wearily. —In the process of. I didn't see much sign of life.—

—Did anyone say what arrangements are made when inmates are released, who is it that brings them back here? Is it the government agencies who sent them to infiltrate—or are they just being abandoned, that sort of outfit wants to pretend it never existed, these days. They seem to get here anyway, ready to be used against us in other ways. Recycled … Well, we couldn't think that far ahead; there were a lot of things we couldn't think about in that place.—

—No one talked to me, I handed over what I had to. That was that.—

—It's not like you to be satisfied to be a messenger.— He put plates in the sink, his back to her; turned his head.

She was yawning and yawning as if her jaw would dislocate with the force and she wandered out of the kitchen. Gone back to bed to sleep off the journey: but no, she appeared, dressed, eyes made-up, briefcase and keys in her hand, on her way to her office. He sat in his pyjamas over the mug of coffee he had reheated for himself. Ashamed, was that it? She was ashamed that he had ever been involved in that camp where the methods of extracting information by inflicting pain and humiliation learnt from white Security Police were adopted by those who had been its victims. Ashamed, even though he'd finally got himself out of the place, refused to carry on there. Refused, yet understood why others could do the terrible things they did; she was a woman, after all, she could understand revolution but she didn't understand war.

He sat on in the kitchen aware of the irritating drizzle of the tap he had not fully closed but unable to distract himself by getting up to turn it off.

No. Not ashamed; wary of her political position, calculating that since his code name had not been listed in the public report, she was not tainted, through her connection with him, under the necessity of leadership to discipline and perhaps in some cases expel from the Movement anyone who was involved.
Unspeakable:
even the subject, for Sibongile. She does not want, even in private, any reminders, any familiarity with names, from him. She has her position to think of. He had the curious remembered image, alone in the kitchen, of her frantically and distastefully scraping from the sole of her shoe all traces of a dog's mess she had stepped into.

She had made the bed and placed the walking-stick on the cover. Mpho had ear-rings and trinkets from her mother's part in delegations to a number of countries; he had this.
It's to walk
with.
A present for a retired man, who should be content to pass time pleasantly taking exercise.

Sally Maqoma chose the restaurant and is known to the waiters. She orders sole. —You know how I like it, grilled, not swimming in butter or oil, and plenty of lemon, bring a whole lemon.— She and her old friend Vera Stark have tried many times to get together (as they term it) and for once Sally has a free hour to squeeze between morning appointments and a meeting in Pretoria at two-thirty for which a driver will pick her up. They talk politics on a level of shared references—Vera through her work and connections is privy to most of the negotiations which go on while the political rhetoric suggests that there can be no contact—but Sally rarely lets slip any political confidences. Vera is aware of this and knows how to respect evasions while yet interpreting them. As they eat, and drink mineral water Sally has been advised by her doctor to take copiously, Vera is both listening to her friend and piecing together rumours to fill lacunae in the spontaneity of the discourse. What Sally doesn't say suggests or is meant to suggest that the delegation to Pretoria (Sally has spoken of ‘the three of us' having hastily to go there) is to meet some Government minister on the education crisis, but it might well be that the meeting was one of those of the Movement rumoured to be taking place with right-wing groups at those groups' request. Vera tried to superimpose the bearded and side-whiskered outline of a figure in commando outfit over the lively, sceptical black face so voluble opposite her. She could try a general question. —Is there anything in the newspaper speculation that the AWB and their kind want to talk?—