Jimmy found the house, and stood for a while under a mango tree that grew close against the wooden steps. He was getting back his breath. He then climbed noiselessly on to the veranda and knocked on a dark window-pane.
After some time, Elias’s face appeared, dark against darkness, frightened, ready to duck.
Jimmy said: ‘Elias, it’s me.’
Elias said: ‘But baas, but baas …’
‘It’s me,’ said Jimmy, in appeal against the ‘baas’.
‘Wait,’ said Elias, after a moment’s silence.
He disappeared from the window and the door opened. Elias was wearing his shirt and his legs were long and bare. He stood just inside the door dragging on his trousers.
‘I want to talk to you,’ said Jimmy.
Elias said: ‘Baas, you shouldn’t be here. I told you, you should not come here.’ A strong smell filled the tiny stuffy room. A light went on in the next room. The sound of a woman’s voice and then a child crying. Of course he has kids, Jimmy remembered, remembering how last time he had been here, early one evening, the place had been full of small children.
He said: ‘Elias, I must talk to you.’ He smelled the sharp smell again. He understood it was Elias, sweating. He thought, understanding slowly, Elias is so frightened that he’s sweating.
The idea that Elias was frightened because of him, Jimmy, made him angry, though not with Elias.
‘Listen, mate,’ he said, in soft and urgent appeal, ‘I’m not doing any harm. I must talk. I’ve come to talk.’ Elias, now fully dressed, stood close by the door, waiting, his hand on the knob.
‘What is it?’ said Elias resentfully, his eyes continually returning to the square of the window.
‘I want to discuss plans.’
‘Plans?’
‘We’re socialists, Elias. We’re comrades. I want to talk to you about the future. I’ve got an all-night pass. I thought we’d spend the night talking.’
At the word comrades, Elias’s body gave a sharp tug of fear. ‘You should not be here,’ he said, now sharp and angry.
The next room was dark again, and silent, but there was a soft movement beyond the door. Jimmy thought: His wife is listening on the other side of the door. For the first time it struck him that he should not have come: After all, he thought, it’s common enough for a wife not to agree with a man’s politics. Perhaps she doesn’t know.
‘But, Comrade Elias, I want to discuss with you how we can work to deliver your people from their bondage.’
Elias was silent. Jimmy realized he had used the words: deliver from bondage. They struck him as inaccurate unpolitical. But they filled him again with a warm and protective emotion, and he laid his hand on Elias’s shoulder and said: ‘We must help each other, comrade.’
Elias’s voice rose in a wail of angry fear: ‘You must go now, baas, you must not be here. Go now.’ He shifted his shoulder away from under Jimmy’s hand, and opened the door, pushing Jimmy out. ‘Go now, baas. Please go now.’ His voice was high on the please. Jimmy said: ‘I’ve got free time tomorrow afternoon. Can I come and talk then?’
‘No,’ said Elias. ‘No. Go away now, please, baas.’ He shut the door. Jimmy stood, feeling the blood pour up over his face. He was shaking with the heat of his body, a dry pounding heat which shook him like hands. Then he, too, was in a drench of sweat and felt cold. He turned slowly from the house and walked past the mango tree, whose leaves shone hard, almost green, the size of moons, all over the branches. Careless of police, he stumbled off across sharp dusty ruts. He was careless from tiredness and from sorrow. The sharp reflecting moonlight on leaves, stone, windows was like eyes mocking him. He found himself on a lot of empty rutted earth where the food-stalls were. A dozen little vans with shutters that could be let down to make selling counters stood untidily in the lot. He leaned against one of them. It had painted roughly on its side: MRS SMARTS HOT DOG STORE. BEST HOT DOGS. BEST FANCY CAKES. BEST TEA IN TOWN. WE HAVE THE BEST IN THE WORLD! COCA-COLA. FRIED FISH. BOILED MEALIES.
Jimmy thought: If I go back to camp across country I’ll have to go through all that dirty grass, and then those beetles or whatever they are. The river too – his trousers still flapped heavy and wet around his ankles. A mile up town was the Coloured Quarter. He would go and sleep on the floor in Ron’s room.
He turned out of the Location gates into the main road which ran south, here a narrow hump of tarmac that gave off a grey glitter of cold light. Soon he passed the white cemetery, its trees and monuments all a pale gleam of light above black jagged shadows. Then came the railway lines, a double line of whitely-glittering steel. He stopped. The power station beyond raised cooling towers against the shoulder of a steep hill. The white towers curved finely inwards under clouds of dark smoke that were solidified by the surrounding clarity of chill white light. Across the lines, arising out of a mess of soiled grass, railway sleepers, old tin cans, was a small tree, white-stemmed, a cloud of fine leaves rising into the moonlight like the spray of a fountain. The swollen sore place inside Jimmy slowly cooled and soothed. He was conscious of a feeling of emptiness. He stared at the proud young tree, the squat shapes of the cooling towers, the great masses of dark smoke carved like thunder clouds by star-light and moonlight, and understood that ever since that afternoon he had been driven from action to crazy action, not knowing what he was doing, not responsible for himself.
I’m a silly sod, he said aloud to himself, standing alone on the Location side of the railway lines, shivering with cold. Yet it was not quite enough to say it: it still hurt, what had happened between him and the jazz-players, between himself and Elias.
He’ll see things different in the morning, he decided, refusing to believe that Elias did not trust him, and that he was really rejected by the jazz-players. He set himself to walk on, down into the Coloured Quarter. When he came to the court where Ronald lived, it was silent and dark. He moved quietly along the veranda and knocked. He had to knock several times. He expected Ronald to come to the door – recently he had been better, apparently over his fever, and able to walk and talk to his RAF visitors. Now he remembered Ronald’s mother. It was odd he had forgotten her, for when he had told Martha that he had ‘found a better woman, a fine working-class lass like his own kind,’ he had meant Mrs Spikes, Ronald’s mother. Yet he had done no more than talk to her in Ronald’s presence and dreamed wildy of inviting her to England when the war was over.
After a long wait, and repeated soft knocking, the door opened to show Mrs Spikes. She had flung an old coat over the petticoat she had been sleeping in. She blinked at him, sleepily – too sleepy to be frightened.
‘Mrs Spikes,’ said Jimmy in a low confidential tone, ‘I came to ask Ron if I could sleep on the floor until morning.’
Mrs Spikes clung to the door-frame for steadiness, because she was so weary, and said: ‘Ron went to the hospital this afternoon in the ambulance. He’s bad, and they came in the ambulance. He will die, the doctor says.’
A child started to cry in the room behind. He had forgotten the little girl, Ronald’s sister.
Mrs Spikes said into the dark room: ‘Hush there. Hush and be quiet.’ She shut the door and leaned against it, yawning. It was quite bright on the veranda, because of the moonlight in the court. Jimmy gazed at the half-clad woman and thought she looked young and pitiful. A thin coil of dark hair had come undone and lay on her thin neck. Jimmy looked at the shadow under the hair, and wanted to dive into it and be forgotten. She was still vague from tiredness. Her eyes were not on Jimmy, but on the doors ranged along the wall opposite. She returned her eyes to him, from politeness, and said: ‘In this place everybody knows everyone’s business.’
He saw he was embarrassing her. He could not sleep here with Ronald gone. He thought bitterly that even while he was consumed by a passion to protect her, even while he yearned to sink into the comfort of the shadow which was her hair and her arms, he was embarrassing her and making things hard for her. This thought came out of the
sober self that had been revived in the cool mood that had come on him while he stood by the railway lines.
He said in a different, responsible voice: ‘Sorry, Mrs Spikes. I’ll go. And don’t worry about Ron. Those doctors don’t know nothing.’
‘He’ll die,’ she said, her voice hard and angry. ‘You got somewhere to sleep? There’s the hostel in town.’
‘Yes. I’ll go to the hostel.’ He hesitated. He was on the point of saying: ‘Mrs Spikes, I like you. Please marry me.’ Realizing this, he told himself: You silly sod, you’re crackers.
‘I’ll be seeing you soon,’ he said. At the tone of his voice, she put up a thin hand and began twisting at her loosened coil of hair, regarding him with thoughtful troubled eyes. It struck him that the first thought she had, in a moment when she knew a man liked her was trouble. This made him angry: only then did it strike him that the trouble she expected was more simple; he had again forgotten he was a white man in forbidden territory. Meanwhile the whole set of her body had changed; she looked wary and stubborn. She was waiting for him to go.
‘Good night,’ he said.
‘Good night,’ she said, with a quick smile. Because she was now free to go inside, away from the neighbours’ eyes, away from him, her smile showed a touch of consciousness, acknowledged him as a man. As the door closed softly in his face, he hated her for the smile, and remembered that across the yard, men from the camps came to lie with the women of the court. She’s probably had offers enough, he thought bitterly, offers enough and to spare, it was only with a great effort that he conquered this bitterness, thinking: She’s a decent woman, she’s not that sort …
He stood silent on the veranda, wondering where to go. As he did so, a door opposite opened and he saw a man’s shape emerge. It was one of the men from the camp. Jimmy thought: I’ll stop him and ask him where he puts up at this time of night – too late to get to the hostel now, it’s nearly morning. He changed his mind, remembering the girl from the room, whom he had seen often enough when visiting Ronald. She was pretty, sinuous and male-antagonistic.
He waited until his fellow from the camp disappeared. The he crossed the court and knocked on the door. He was thinking: I’ll explain to her, I’ll tell her … for he was again filled with a passionate pity for women, and loathing for the man who had left. Phrases passed through his mind: this life you are leading; victims of economic system; men, women …
He knocked again and the door opened an inch. ‘What do you want?’
Before he could answer, the door opened fully. The girl stood there half-naked, her arms thrust roughly into a wrapper. A rich full smell of sex and sweat came from her and made his head turn.
‘How much?’ she said, standing in front of him, twisting up the long masses of her black hair.
‘I don’t want it,’ he said. Then, as she laughed, he said, ‘Don’t you remember me? You’ve seen me.’
‘Yes, I remember,’ she said. She looked him up and down and said something in Afrikaans over her shoulder. An old woman came out, ducking under her daughter’s naked arm where it was propped against the door-frame. She held in her hand a candlebox and was jamming an old hat on her head, skewering it into place with broken knitting needles. She passed, muttering obscenities at him, but impersonally, for her bright old eyes searched his face curiously, until she had set the candlebox down full in the moonlight by the veranda, and had sat herself on it, swaying to and fro, while the knitting needles in her squashed hat flashed out light.
‘Come in,’ said the girl.
Jimmy, his throat thick, half with lust and half with a longing to cry, said: ‘But listen, I just want to …’ ‘You coming in or not?’
Behind her a candle-flame appeared in the dark, floating at first on deeper dark, like a flame on dark water. Then the shape of a bottle appeared beneath the flame and the candle, and then a naked arm. Jimmy saw the inside of the room dimly lit. A bed, already slept in, from which the girl and the man who had left the court had emerged. A rough mess of blankets on the floor, where the old woman had been settling herself down before being disturbed by this new customer. And another narrow bed by the wall, where another girl lay, her sharp chin dug into a cushion, watching him with interest. Behind her a man lay sleeping.
Jimmy said: ‘Sony, mistake.’ He turned and fled out of the court. He heard sharp angry voices and a door slammed.
He stood quiet in the street, waiting for his blood to run more tranquilly. The sky was greying, the stars going out.
In the few minutes he had been in the court, the night had ended. There were sounds of movement in the street. A couple of bicycles went past, men bent over the handlebars. A group of men came, sleep-wearily, carrying hoes, then a couple of young women, pedalling slowly, not noticing anything, the machines swaying clumsily because of the sleepiness of the riders. Then all at once the street was crowded with people, on their way to work on foot or on bicycles.
Jimmy loitered along the pavements, watching them, and thinking: At home I’d join in, I’d be one of them, but just because I’ve got a white skin … He remembered his uniform – he was doubly separated from them.
He would have to lie low for a couple of hours. It was only just after four now. Or perhaps he could walk slowly back to camp and present himself at the gates in plenty of time for breakfast, Jimmy set himself to walk the five miles back, thinking: I’ll get hold of that silly clot Elias this afternoon and talk some sense into him.
Meanwhile, Elias was on his way to Mr Maynard, after an agitated frightened quarrel with his wife. About the time that Jimmy reached the centre of the town, which lay silent in the grey dawn, Elias was banging on Mr Maynard’s front door.
Mr Maynard had gone to bed very late the night before, and heard the banging with annoyance. Swearing steadily under his breath, while looking over his shoulder at his wife’s shut bedroom door, he went to the veranda in his pyjamas. Ellas stood there, grey with fright.
He babbled about insurrection, about communism, about RAF inciting the Africans to an uprising.
Mr Maynard told him to stay where he was, and went back into the house to find himself a dressing-gown and a finger of whisky. Then, standing like a magistrate in front of Elias, he cross-examined him until he got the story.
He perceived that what troubled Elias was that he was afraid that other people, most probably old Mathew, the other Court Messenger, who lived in the house opposite to his in the Location, would come with tales about him, say that white men had been visiting his house at night. Were it not for this fear, Elias would not be standing here.
Mr Maynard continued to cross-examine Elias until he was convinced that his lies and stumbling were from fear and not from policy, and out of contempt for the man and for his whole race, began to laugh at Elias, making jokes.
‘So the RAF men are making a revolution, is that it?’
‘But sir, he was in my house this morning at three and a half minutes past three o’clock. You can ask my wife, she wrote down the time.’
‘And we can expect the Red Flag to fly over the Location any day now, is that it?’
‘But sir, it is the truth. I swear it is the truth,’
‘Oh, go back home,’ said Mr Maynard, and went indoors with a slam of the door. Elias walked down to the Magistrates’ Court, where he laid himself down on a bench and slept.
Mr Maynard also slept. At the breakfast-table he told his wife that it would be advisable if she communicated certain names to her cousin in the Administration of the Airforce, in order that they should be posted at once. The names were Aircraftsmen James Jones, William Bolton, and Murdoch Mathews. Andrew McGrew was not mentioned, because in his fright, Elias had forgotten him.
Mr Maynard made his way to the Court, regretting that he had been so sharp with Elias. After all, he did not want this source to dry up. He would tip him well – ten shillings, or something like that.
Part Three
My friendship for him began by my being struck by the stan
d he took on certain political questions.
OLIVE SCHREINER’S LETTERS
Chapter One
For several weeks of group meetings the little office above Black Ally’s was filled with civilians; the grey-blue uniforms had withdrawn themselves. Then, unheralded, Bill Bluett walked into a meeting and, begging their permission to insert his item thus arbitrarily on to the agenda, stood in the middle of the room and read them a resolution on behalf of the communists in the camp. This was a document of two foolscap pages, beginning: Comrades!
It stated that the group in town were petty-bourgeois social democrats infected with Trotskyism, right-wing deviationism and white-settler ideology and that because of these facts the RAF members intended to sever all connection with them.
Having finished reading this statement, Bill crumpled it up into his pocket, and stood waiting for their comments. As there were none, he began again, in a different tone: ‘Comrades, it’s really much simpler this way. We’ll run our group in the camp and maintain a liaison with yours.’ Wry smiles appeared on various faces, but it seemed Bill could see no reason for them. ‘We’ll need you, anyway, to get supplies of pamphlets and The Watchdog. I’ll drop in one of these days and make arrangements with Matty – that is, if she’s still Lit Sec and not too absorbed in welfare work.’ Here he offered Martha a lopsided grin that said he approved of the welfare work, looked at his watch, nodded with perfect friendliness all around and left them. They saw him no more: he, Jimmy and Murdoch were posted from the Colony that same week.
Andrew returned to his place on the bench beside the literature cupboard as if nothing had happened. This man, whose respect for discipline was as great as Anton’s, seemed unaware that his behaviour had been at all incorrect. And Anton said nothing. More: from that time on, men from the camp announcing themselves as communists from this part of the world or that, would drop in to group meetings, coming in late, leaving early, as if the group were no more than a club. And still Anton said nothing. It seemed that for them, for these individuals from the armed camp, discipline need not exist. Meanwhile, for the people in the town, discipline had reached a point where, if someone arrived two minutes late, the group felt a collective grief on his or her behalf, coupled with a collective determination to assist and support this comrade to better self-organization.