No Time Like the Present: A Novel (9 page)

In the Globe they stood in the audience as in Shakespeare’s time, in its open auditorium. The endless conversation of English downpour drowned the beautiful delivery of the cast and drenched her; bewilderment at this primitive worship of the Bard’s shrine—What’s the idea of having people stand out in the rain?—

Their comrade hosts offered as
their
treat a Soho night club: a black singer from home (she’s made it in London, a wow) sang with the instrument of her whole body along with the voice, music by Todd Matshikiza, the composer and jazzman from Johannesburg who had died in exile, some other country in Africa. Too wide awake with the beat they lingered together before giving up the evening. In the shared living room the West Indians and their friends had left empty glasses, the shed coats of bananas, and a mat of newspaper sheets, open bottle of wine, as if welcoming, Steve was stretched out on the floor with his head against the base of the sofa between Jabu’s feet as she sat. He was playing with the spindle heels of those sandals of hers, scuffed by London streets, as a light late-night context to what he was saying to their comrades—When are you coming back?—

There was a pause. Perhaps the English rain had stopped, outside. A silence when something that shouldn’t have been said has been said. A subject the speaker knows is taboo. The woman, Sheila, began—But why?—and the man snatched from her—Why do you think of that, what would the reason—

To go back.

—Home.—Jabu addressed nobody in particular, as one stating the obvious. The two doctors had been avid for details of the mounting number of AIDS infections and deaths in the country they had left.—There’s a shortage of doctors.—

—And you two are good ones.—Added, perhaps it was the wine in him that found plain speaking from Steve.—You had your training at our medical schools.—It could be a reproach.

—I believe you’ve got doctors from Pakistan and even Cuba. It’s a choice, where you do your work as a doctor. Your obligation to the patient, the profession…it’s the same.—

His woman Sheila came to his rescue perhaps to prevent giving away before comrades in this hour of indiscretion released by beat of rhythms and drink, more personal and questionable reasons. Isn’t there a right to ambition and professional prestige, after years that these had no claim against dedication to the Struggle. What do you owe; after.

He spoke for himself.—I’m getting skills for the care of babies and children that don’t exist at home, no such facilities.—

When they stirred for bed and the usual token goodnight embrace, he hung back to be last beside Steve, and shaking his head to dismiss his woman’s loyal justification on his behalf along with his own—I envy you. And Jabu.—The voice the murmur allowed oneself in the dark; he switched off the lights.

They hadn’t missed the children. Didn’t have to confess or tax one another with this unnaturalness. Those two weeks in London, mother lair of the imperialism they along with their comrades at home saw lingering while the USA was the successor imperialist, were freedom they never had tasted. Free of the discipline of the Struggle, free of the discipline of the Aftermath, the equally absolute necessity to resist, oppose the underside prejudice and injustice persisting, whether with the witnesses she must coach when the Justice Centre is to testify for their defence or whether he must be regarded in the academic establishment as a Leftist troublemaker self-righteously supporting students in their ungrateful demands of the higher education system granted them by a Constitution. Time; to be alive for each other, without other commitment. Is the term for a first ever like that—holiday.

The children. Sindiswa had quickly become a directing personality not the guest of hospitality, she didn’t want to hear anything about London—the place the presents came from, yes—unable to tell fast enough in her splendid shrill tumble of words everything said and done in the adventure of Isa and Jake’s home. Isa said Sindi was an entertainment she didn’t want to part with.

Gary hung back. He had the air of someone nowhere, self-misplaced. If such, an adult state, can be attributed to a child. With that guilt upon them, Steve and Jabu were back in the Suburb and with the exploited coming for redress at the Centre and the students coming from their university, circumstances centuries-long in measure against a two-week desertion.

The rent has been raised; he remarked with a mock sigh to Jake—Your comrades and gays’ Suburb’s going upmarket.—

—Yes my brother, the bourgeoisie created by the landlord capitalist…Well well whatever.—He and Isa had bought their house.

Was it after Steve one month paid the rent again among other obligations, online, that he and Jabu first thought of buying the house. It had made claims of being their home—Gary Elias learnt to walk there, Wethu’s quarters evolved out of a chicken shed, grease marks on the wall behind the divan-doubling-as-a-sofa where comrades had leaned their heads, garden progressed under Jabu’s hands from initial planting of the Dolphins’ welcoming hibiscus plant—ownership wasn’t legally justified. Jabu looked up the lease: they could be given three months’ notice to evacuate, relocate was the term she used for the clause, if the owner decided to sell the house. Wasn’t that rather unlikely. But if the landlord has a relative or a chum, now that there was a shortage of housing and the enclave was indeed going upmarket, it might be sold over their heads. They were able to raise a bond without much difficulty at the bank; both members of a couple in middle-class level of employment, professional. If in his case, the lower financial echelon of the academic; she in the legal one, non-profit making, but could become an attorney in commercial practice any time.

—So we’ve bought ourselves a house while others including comrades…millions are still under tin and cardboard.—Who takes census in squatter camps.

The statement is for both of them. It’s also the accusation. They are sitting in the dark on that terrace where the neighbour’s tree leans and hides before them a wall defining a limit, this side, of what they’ve just exclusively acquired.

The tsk tsk tsk of cicadas is in the silence. Where is the difference to be felt between this occupancy of the house as owned property, or living in it, paying for the privilege to some other property owner. Principles are so impractical in the compromise reached of the ideal envisioned when it didn’t exist.

—It isn’t a big smart place with I don’t know how many rooms.—She sounds indulgent of him, as if she were not involved. He thinks too much; didn’t used to be like that. In the Struggle you acted, gave yourself orders in response to what came up had to be done, this day, this area of operation.

—Just enough for two kids, the mother and the father. And just one collateral, Wethu. Own that space.—He waves: I know.

—So you’re sorry we bought the house.—

He stiffens head back nostrils flared. Doesn’t speak.

—Sweetheart—The childish call that was picked up from whites’ vocabulary of affection when first she was at the college in Swaziland.—We’ve lived all over. Why shouldn’t we have a small home now, we’re not taking it away from somebody else.—

—Well so far as that’s concerned you’re right, it’s a bit late, how do we know whose
kraal
this once was, here where the Tswana were before Mzilikazi came down on them, and then the Boers, and the English.—That’s her own history.—You’ve never seen the remains of those ancient gold—or was it copper—workings, not far from here?—we must show the kids.—

—But how far can we go back. How far are we supposed to…—

—Yes, you’re right, that’s archaeology, anthropology…the restitution of land doesn’t include the city suburbs, that’s for sure…aren’t we lucky.—

He so often comes out with contradictions of himself that bring her to laughter, it’s one of the things that make him unique, her lover.

The gentle laugh draws him in; together under the cicadas rasping their legs to give voice after rain. Jabu comes from the dispossessed, she doesn’t have to feel guilty, even of betraying any revolutionary principle that property is theft. Maybe she’s right again, that’s archaeological too, by now. To live with someone her kind is, for a white, a reassurance that’s safely out of reach of analysis. She is. We are. Us.

Personal and public situations have been a synthesis in them since they happened to meet in Swaziland and this doesn’t change in freedom. Before the interlude, London, there had been rumours trailing after allegations that arms deals for the country’s defence force were ‘subject to possible irregularities and offences’. An addition to Steve’s collection of euphemisms: these for corruption. Names involved included the brothers Shaik among comrades who were not black. These Shaiks were just unfamiliar names. Of course many people had names other than their own during the Struggle, a resort against identification. Accusations fall protracted thick and thorny hooking one to another. A key finding is that no irregularities could be laid at the door of Mandela’s successor President Thabo Mbeki and ministers: the National Prosecuting Authority had issued more than a hundred summonses obtained statements from witnesses, numerous documents, searched premises in France, Mauritius as well as conducting raids in South Africa—a French company in the Thomson-CSF group with a German frigate consortium were contractors for the arms deals.

These become part of daily chronicle when the circle of the Suburb rounds. Peter Mkize bitterly despondent.—Who’d believe it. This what we fought for? Tell me? This is why we were burned and chucked in the Komati River?—Everybody understands his authority to say this.

Translate every statement as if it were in a foreign language: a Shaik is go-between of the arms dealers, whom he claimed gave their bribes to Zuma.

Steve feels for and with Peter Mkize the shamefulness of the human race, not personal, worse than that.—Why do we expect to be different. Mexico after their revolutions. Russia after
the
revolution, and after the end of the Soviet Union, revolutionised this time by capitalism.—

Marc is the one among the Dolphins who is passionate about justice beyond discrimination against men and women who don’t fit emotional conventions.—The fat cats are always with us. Just have to get on with it.
Ubuntu!
—

—We must expect—we must be different! What are you all saying?
Ubuntu
—you know what that is? Do you? What is happening to it, why it comes to mean that because those comrades were in the Struggle they can drive their Mercedes and buy palaces for their wives with bribe millions from foreign crooks! Sell us out! How can you take it like that!—Jabu’s whole body restless with outrage.

Who can respond.

Jake will make an effort; she’s got guts, that woman of Steve’s.—Can somebody tell us? One of us
say
? Shit.
Ubuntu
—we’re all one, I am you, you are me! What power do we have. We thought we would have, that’s what getting rid of apartheid and all the props meant. International finance cartels neo-colonialism call it what you like. The arms trade. Bribes are its accounting system. Crooking the books for customers, with money in exchange for tenders. This isn’t selling pizzas across the counter! So come on, what can ordinary guys like us ex-combatants do? It’s the Shaiks hand in pocket with the Zumas who inherit the earth in dollars sterling euros, whatever the currency up for the deal.—

Well, it’s not a response.

It’s too feeble to say what some are thinking: wait for the next election and the next. And according to what has come out of this meeting of minds: there will be a change of personnel, maybe, but the same world accounting system, Left or Right.

She went home, that unchanging destination, to the Methodist Church Elder’s, headmaster’s village, to KwaZulu at intervals as unthinking as change of season. It’s not expected, perhaps not even particularly wanted, that her husband would always come, with the exception of a Christmas visit or a funeral—there respect was obligatory whereas weddings were more women’s affair. Sindiswa was entering the phase when school friends were closer than family, and usually elected to spend time with them instead. But Gary Elias jumped into the car beside his mother in eager anticipation of the enthusiasm with which he would be received by boys who seemed all to be his cousins or at least in some way part of him. Jabu was pleased because she wanted her father, the man who could read the being of male children, to cast an eye over him, his development, from time to time. If grandfatherly it was dispassionate, professional, experience; Steve, though an educationalist, one must admit knew more about young adults the university age, his son he saw relived as in his own boyhood which was happy. The behaviour of rejection—in his situation necessary because of the imprint of his white hands conceived in privilege—had come only with adolescence. Gary Elias would not have to ‘grow out of’ a false situation into the real; he was born into reality.

Her father had called to invite her son to spend Easter school holidays at the KwaZulu family complex of which by his mother’s birth he was a member.—Baba, but wouldn’t it be better in the winter holidays, you’ll be so busy with the church over Easter.—

He dismissed delay with his old adage from a school primer.—No time like the present.—

She takes it that in her father’s wisdom he’s judged the boy is ready to bring ceremonies of the two experiences of living, which are his heritage, together in full self-confidence.

So she’s sitting again in her father’s cubby-hole of privacy: the perfectly refolded and stacked newspapers—of course her Baba’s an assiduous follower of what is evolving of the country’s freedom to which he can allow he took his part, risked to direct his daughter. But they are too engaged by her father with the decision whether Gary Elias will sleep in Baba’s house or stay with one of his mother’s brothers who has boys around the same age—to speak of what her father must have read in those papers. Jacob Zuma, the Mtowethu Zulu who before he attained the second highest position in government, Deputy President to President Mbeki, was Umpathí Wesigungu Sakwazulu-Natal, the KwaZulu head of Executive Council, these days is suspected of collusion in bribery for arms deals.

She has delivered Gary Elias to Baba.

Driving back to the city, home and Suburb where arms are the subject of speculation and questioning preoccupation between comrades—herself among them; like a tap on the shoulder: I didn’t ask. My father. What he makes of this. The Brother Zulu was one of the old Freedom Fighters out there among the best, close to Mbeki, he served his years on Robben Island. What this means. In the present.