Burger's Daughter Page 11

  Ivy lifted her hair theatrically through the outstretched fingers of both hands, suddenly someone unrecognizable.—About him.—

  Dick, commenting, not participating, confirmed hoarsely. —Sounds like her.—

  —When I saw the signature it didn’t strike me for a moment. She doesn’t use Lionel’s name.—

  —And she calls herself Katya ?—

  —Ivy, they must have been married already when I met you.—

  —You’re right. Ay. I don’t think he’d’ve found it easy, otherwise, with her.—

  —Perhaps he wouldn’t’ve asked.—Dick drew his lips in over his teeth, turning on his wife an old man’s bristled jaw and frown.

  Rosa contemplated them as a child opens a door on a scene whose actions she cannot interpret.—It is true you didn’t marry without the Party’s consent ?—

  —Some of us were required not to marry at all.—Dick’s formal, Afrikaans-accented phrasing quoted; he relaxed the grim jaw and smiled her fondly away from matters she shouldn’t bother with.

  —Colette Swan was not the wife for Lionel by anyone’s standards. —Ivy thrust out the teapot.

  Rosa got up to have her cup refilled.—And she wrote about you, Ivy.—

  The nostrils opened pugnaciously, the wattles shook at Dick. —Good god, what could she have to say about me.—

  He gave his slow, Afrikaner’s smile.—Wait, man, let’s hear.—

  —‘You did what she would have expected.’—

  Dick pulled an impressed face and Ivy made it clear she hadn’t listened; there are people whose approval or admiration is as unwelcome as criticism.

  —So it was all right for Lionel and my mother to marry ?—

  —How d’you mean ?—

  But Dick looked at his wife and she spoke again.—Cathy was right for everything.—

  It was not what the girl had asked.—They were approved first, before they married ?—

  Dick began to giggle a bit to himself at the past.—Hell, it’s not exactly that everyone, I mean it’s not as if...—

  —If you’d ever known Colette Swan you wouldn’t talk about her in the same breath as Cathy.—

  Like many people who have high blood pressure, Ivy Terblanche’s emotions surfaced impressively; her voice was off-hand but her eyes glittered liquid glances and her big breast rose against abstract-patterned nylon. Lionel Burger once described how, when she was still permitted to speak at public meetings, she ‘circled beneath the discussion and then spouted like some magnificent female whale’.

  —Oh Ivy man! After all, it was someone her father was married to the first time! Have a heart!—

  The Terblanche daughter who had stood pregnant outside the prison had left the country long ago with her husband. It was the younger one who came in raking down dun wet hair.—What’re you getting het up about now ?—

  —Nothing, nothing. Things that happened before you girls were ever thought of, nothing.—

  With the ease of being a contemporary of the guest, the girl wandered before the glass louvres Dick had fitted, flicking her comb at the avocado pips growing in jam-jars on the sill, her head interrupting the sunlight.—Where’re you staying now, Rosa ?—

  —A little flat, not bad.—

  —Sharing ?—

  —No. It’s my own.—

  —What d’you pay ?—

  —Clare my girlie, look what you’re doing.—

  She twisted her head clumsily, sent another shower of drops over her father’s bare knees in shorts, laughed—Don’tfuss—and mopped him with the end of her long denim skirt.—I mean I’ve been looking for a place for someone—a girl with a kid, she’s coming up from Port Elizabeth—but the rents are terrible.—

  —Well, mine’s just one room. I don’t know whether that would do, with a child. But I know there’s an empty flat in the building—or was, anyway, last week.—

  Clare poured herself tea, paused critically at the array on the tray, poured the tea back into the pot and filled a cup with milk. —What happened to that garden cottage ?—

  —It disappeared with the freeway.—

  —Not even a biscuit—I’ve had no breakfast you know. You two have filled yourselves up with scrambled eggs. Why do old people and babies get up so early ?—

  Ivy took the wet comb from where it had been dropped beside her papers.—Well go into the kitchen and fetch yourself something. There’re baked apples. But don’t cut the date loaf Regina’s made—if it’s cut while it’s hot it gets sad. She’s vegetarian these days, is Clare, and she thinks it gives her the right to priority with everything that isn’t meat.—

  The girl ignored her mother, amiably sulky.—You’re still at the hospital.—

  —No, that’s over, too.—

  Dick had gone into the kitchen and come back with a thick slice of date loaf.—Here, man, eat.—Before Ivy could speak, his patient-sounding Afrikaner voice assured—With Regina’s permission. —A quick, comedian’s twitch of the nose for Rosa alone.

  The skin bridging Clare’s heavy eyebrows was inflamed by dandruff. Between bites, she was preoccupied with details of a toilet to which she turned probably infrequently: pushing back the cuticles of her nails with smoke-blued teeth, looking at the strands of hair that came away in her fingers when she tested the length of the ends against her shoulders, noticing intently—as if the presence of the other, Rosa, brought her attention down to these things—her pink feet (thick as her father’s hands) like strangers in curling brown sandals.

  —You’re not looking for a job, I suppose. With us.—

  —Us ?—Rosa took in Ivy and Dick. Ivy’s match waved denial, extinguishing its tiny flame invisible in the sun.—She’s working with Aletta.—

  —Aletta—oh that’s wonderful. How’s she these days ?—

  —A red-head, for the moment.—

  —Ma, I must say I think she looks great.—

  —But if I did it, you and Dick—

  He gazed at Ivy the way familiars seldom consider one another. —You’d look like a bloody Van Gogh sunflower.—

  Laughter drew them all together, so that Ivy said what might have been remarked only after she had gone.—And this business of Eckhard—how long’s that going to carry on ?—A second’s glance not at but in the direction of Dick, as if an invisible thread had been tugged, was followed by quick, smooth deflection:—I mean, aren’t you bored yet, Rosa ?—

  The chance given her to speak, if she could. A swift temptation to talk. To ask—

  —It’s a job.—

  Rosa had her old childhood self-possession of being able to evade opportunities as well as advances, stubborn little girl in the woman. And she would not make it easier for anyone by changing the subject; other people were both held off, and held to it.

  But an atmosphere of convalescence was still allowed her. Ivy strewed commonplaces over the moment.—Oh it could be quite interesting. Yes, useful, give you a practical insight, the way economic power manipulates in this country...one can always learn something...for a while, I mean—She looked around generously.

  —A job like any other.—Rosa’s stillness opposed the other girl’s roaming self-awareness, Ivy’s ample concern, Dick’s restless inklings. He kept nodding, as if patting a hand or shoulder.

  Clare spoke without malice.—I suppose it must be something to be decently paid for once.—

  —The usual typist’s salary. Nothing out of the ordinary. But nothing’s expected—of you, either. It’s the faceless kind of job 90 per cent of people do. You only really understand when you do it... there’s nothing to show at the end of the day. Telephone calls and paper looping out of the teleprinter, vast sums of money you never see, changing hands—you never touch the hands.—Her father’s smile.

  Clare rubbed at the inflamed patch between her eyebrows.—Well come down to our place. We’re weighing and lugging sacks about—that stuff we sell smells like baby-sick, Aletta says. No, really, Mum, it’s okay at first, you think it’s pleas
ant, but with each load, after a few weeks, it’s cloying! Can’t get the smell out of your hair and clothes. Tactile and whiffy enough for you, I can tell you. But nourishing, nourishing.—The affectation of a mimicking, didactic air, the eyebrows she had inherited from her father, tousled:—You just have to see Aletta with some of these women who come along. She snatches their babies from them, yelling the place down, prods their pot-bellies—you know Aletta—look at this! look at this!—The girl demonstrated on her own slack body, stretched on the frayed grass matting; wobbled with laughter—And then out with the slides showing what awful things happen to bones when they lack vitamin C and skin when there’s not enough vitamin B...they get hell for the bits of fur and beads and god knows what they tie round their kids’ necks—you know how she is about tribalism. Oh but she’s fantastic, eh. They take it from her. They just giggle—Her latest thing, she’s going to show them films. This weekend she’s seeing that chap who makes short documentaries.—

  —A film ?—Ivy counted stitches along her knitting.

  —Her nutrition education film. I told you. The fellow who borrowed the Mayakovsky. The Bedbug.—

  —Clare! Get it back from him for me? So that’s where it is! I bought that book thirty years ago in Charing Cross Road. I managed to keep it when the police took away everything in sight that was printed. And then some lad of yours walks off with it...—

  Dick was led to recollect, for his guest.—Colette started a theatre group, you know. Must have been about 1933. She was in charge of the cultural programme, class consciousness through art and that.—

  —Invented her own programme for herself, more likely. I don’t remember anyone else being asked much about it. Her way of getting out of teaching in the night school. You couldn’t get her to work for anything she couldn’t take the credit for initiating. Not her! But Clare—I mean it, you tell that young whoever-he-is from me—

  —We went in a truck to black townships up and down the Reef, Krugersdorp and Boksburg... She made up the plays and I think the songs too. We acted Bloody Sunday and I was Father Gapon. And what was the one about the Gaikas and the British Imperial troops, Ivy ? Blacks from our night school were the Gaikas. We used to have the Red Flag flying on the bonnet of Isaac Lourie’s old produce truck.—

  The laughter of Dick and Rosa attracted his daughter.—Those were the days, old man. We can’t even get into the Transkei with our thrilling kwashiorkor slides.—

  —Wait until I’m put out to grass next year. I’mna fit you out a mobile unit in a caboose. You’ll see. Bappie’s promised to get a lot of the equipment through his father-in-law’s wholesale business.—

  Ivy brought Rosa up-to-date.—Bapendra Govind’s home from the Island, you know. Since last month.—

  —And how is he ? I gather he hasn’t been banned again, so far. I haven’t seen anything in the paper, anyway.—

  —Yes, his wife wants them to apply for exit permits and go to Canada before it comes.—Ivy gestured, letting the knitting sink in her lap.—Leela says she won’t go with her mother and father. But you know how clannish Muslims are.—

  —What does Leela do ?—

  —Oh she’s been working with me for about six months now. She’s an efficient little thing, is Leela! She takes down the send-outs, over the phone, she gives a hand in the kitchen. Oh anything. She goes to the market for me and buys most of my supplies.—

  —You have quite an organization, Ivy.—

  Ivy looked round.—Ay...we all eat. That I can say. Beulah James is in with me, too...Alfred has another seven months to go. (They’ve transferred him to Klerksdorp which is a nuisance for her, Pretoria Central was handier.) We’re moving away from the sandwiches and rolls, concentrating more on soup and curry and so on. Hot things are very popular. And then we have salads, of course. I see quite a few of the people I used to work with... I may not be allowed to put my nose into factory premises but the whites still send out blacks to buy their lunch... Yes, it wouldn’t be too bad if we knew what Dick...he has to find something to do...—

  —I wouldn’t mind taking Aletta’s Follies on a country-wide tour.—Dick grinned; the joke of a man confined to the magisterial district around the house they sat in.

  Ivy tensed back her shoulders and stretched the grand folds of her neck, a challenging goose.—I don’t think I could face the Bantus-tans, thank you very much. Even if I could get in. Mantanzima, Mangope—any of that crowd—the sight of their ‘capitals’ with their House of Assembly and their hotel for whites.—A heave of disgust.

  —Oh come on, Ivy. If Aletta gets someone in...there are still people there...old friends. There’s work to be done.—

  —Where are they ? You know where; the black Vorsters have got their detention laws, too.—

  —There must be a few still around, contact’s been lost, yes—

  —You were right not to try it, Rosa. Personally, for me to put my foot in those places... It’s a denial of Nelson and Walter—of the Island. Of Bram and Lionel.—

  The pause settled round the presence of Lionel’s daughter. The black woman walked into it.—You having lunch with us, Rosa. I made nice roast potatoes.—But the guest had already risen, she could not stay, they went through the ritual of remonstrances and excuses, Rosa pretending to accept the childhood authority of Lily Letsile’s counterpart, the Terblanches’ servant taking upon herself the role of disappointed hostess. Ivy put her arms right round Rosa. —Don’t stay away.—The girl called out over the mother’s shoulder to the daughter.—Ring me if you want to do anything about a flat.—There was a wave of casual agreement between the two girls.

  Dick’s tread accompanied Rosa to her car, taking a chance, through the man-high dead khakiweed of the lane, his arms crossed over his chest bundling up the pockets and flaps of his jacket. He stood beside her window and she put the key in the ignition and then did not turn it, looking at him. He was humming softly, stumbling and repeating notes.

  —Trying to remember one of the songs...Katya... Something like this: ‘Lift your spade from the field, raise your pick from the ditch, lift your shi-eld, match your step wi-th your bro-ther’—His voice was deep, strangled and shaky, his Adam’s apple keeping time under coarse sunburned folds intricately seamed with bristles and blackheads.—Oh lord I haven’t thought about it for donkey’s years. I never had a memory for that sort of thing. A pampoen-head. When I was in solitary I used to try—even just to remember what I learnt at school, man—you know, poems and that. You read about people who can keep their minds active, saying over whole books to themselves. It’s a wonderful gift. But sometimes I—big hands rested on the bevelled edge of the window—I made things, in my mind; I carved a whole diningroom table and chairs, the one for the head of the table with arms, like the one my grandfather had ...barley-sugar uprights with round knobs on top...man, it was craftsmanship... But the stoep at home, I planned it when I was inside, it was all worked out to the last inch of frame and pane of glass. And when I checked the measurements, they weren’t half-an-inch out, I could go along to the hardware shop, just like that. No problem. I scratched the plans on the floor of my cell with a pin. There was trouble—they were suspicious it was an escape route I was working on. Can you beat it ? Anyone’d be stupid enough to draw that where every warder saw it? It was just after Goldreich and Wolpe got away; they were jumpy, I suppose they felt their whole security system had been made nonsense if two politicals could get out on their wits and come back in again without even being seen when arrangements went wrong, and repeat the whole business without a hitch the next night... Well chances like that won’t come again. They’re keeping politicals in maximum security these days.—

  She was following a current between them on another level. —After next July, Dick.—

  He was shyly flattered at what he took to be curiosity about an experience that was approaching him alone.—It’s Ivy’s worried. I’m not. I’ll find something. What d’you think about Flora ? Any point? They say her husband wants
her to keep clear. She goes for liberal committees and so forth, now. He’s warned her off anything else. I don’t know whether he’d want to give me a job.—

  —There’s a kind of obstinacy, always, in Flora.—Rosa was looking at him, suggesting, questioning.—William doesn’t get past it, he only circumvents it, whatever he persuades her to do.—

  —She’s proud of the connection with us. There’ve been people like that. I know the kind. And even now. She’s been useful. Ivy says it’s the English middle-class idea of personal loyalty, nothing more. Well, okay. Whatever...—

  —She’ll be pleased if you ask.—

  —Anything just to show I’m harmlessly occupied for the next year or two.—He looked away, out over the blackened weed with leonine patience, a restless inward gaze of one in whom will or belief is strength. Then he placed his forearms on the window and carried his face forward, chin held, there, near her.—Not long now, Rosa. Angola will go, and Moçambique; they won’t last another year. Someone’s just been in touch. There’s going to be a revolt in the Portuguese army, they’re going to refuse to fight. Gloria’s husband’s in Dar es Salaam and this—other one—came back from Moçambique—it’s true, this time. Someone with strong Frelimo family connections, he’s close to Dos Santos and Machel. It’s coming at last. Some of us will still be around when it happens. Too late for Lionel, but you’re here, Rosa.—

  The girl could not speak; he saw it. Her face drew together, the wide mouth dented white into the flesh at its corners, she held a breath painfully and pressed the accelerator, turning the ignition so that the old car engine was startled. Dick Terblanche put a big hand, cuffed quickly and away again over the hair at the curve of her skull to her neck, afraid he had made her weep. And then he jumped back and began to direct the reversing of the car like a parking ground attendant, making feints with his arms, nodding and urging. Rosa saw in the rear mirror his old man’s legs slightly bent with effort at the back of the knees, the safari jacket lifted over the behind.