“Things are hotting up a bit before the Congress,” Aleke offered, as if that were simply to be expected. He and Bray and Rebecca were drinking tea to give some purpose to their standing about in Aleke’s office. Now, while Selufu was without the best men of his small force, some obscure trouble had started between the Young Pioneers of PIP and the workers at the fish — meal and lime factories, down in the industrial area of Gala town itself. It spread to the townships after working hours, and there was even a triumphant roving gang who wandered through the town and the main street. Rebecca had encountered them driving home; she repeated, “I hooted and they sort of parted to let me through, yelling all the time, but I don’t think it was at me.” Perhaps she wanted to be told she had been foolhardy, or insouciantly bold; what she questioned was her own behaviour rather than the gang’s. He said to her, “Well, you should have been able to make that out?” pretending to chide her as her instructor in the language. “All I could hear was something about ‘we are coming’ “—she repeated the phrase in Gala, for confirmation.
“People like a bit of excitement, that’s all, that’s the impression I got this morning.” Aleke had been called to the township to drive around with the mayor, Joshua Ntshali. Selufu was no fool and thought that a show of civil service and civic authority might not only disguise his shortage of police but even suggest that the presence of policemen was not necessary. “Quite a few people were home from work for no reason — we saw them standing about outside the houses, they ought to’ve been out of the way at work by that time. — People who’ve got nothing to do with the fish — meal factory or the lime works. One said he’d taken the day off because his wife and mother didn’t want to stay home alone. Another one’s wife wouldn’t let him go because she was afraid he would get into trouble in town. And so on. It’s ridiculous. Josh gave him a lecture that covered everything from how to keep a wife in place to his responsibility for the health of the famous city of Gala. Turned out he was a cleaner at the abattoir.”
But there was more than excitement at the hostel, the big new block on the hill that once separated white Gala from the native town, keeping it out of sight. “If these youngsters are out — of-works who attach themselves to the Young Pioneers what are they doing living there?” Bray asked. The hostel was supposed to accommodate unmarried men who were employed in industry and public works.
“That’s what I said to old Ntshali. It’s a municipal affair. That hostel is full of people who haven’t any right to be there — they have no jobs, they just move in and share the rooms of their relations who are working in the town.”
“Then PIP should disown them.”
“PIP doesn’t disown any of our people,” Aleke said.
“My dear Aleke, PIP can and does — what about the iron miners who defied the union?”
Aleke granted it with a smile, passing no judgement. “That hostel’s a bad idea anyway, whoever it was thought it up.”
“Of course. Too much like a compound. It was planned by people who still thought in terms of migrant workers.” He added, for Rebecca, “—The last white village board, before Independence; it was their baby.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Aleke said. “How do you go about getting everyone to know there’s going to be a curfew tonight, in a place that hasn’t got a newspaper? Selufu insists we need a curfew for a day or so.”
Rebecca said, “The radio?”
“Well, no … I don’t know.” Aleke and Bray both knew the objections to that; one didn’t want to publicize over the whole country the impression — hardly borne out — that Gala was in a state of emergency.
He looked at Aleke. “Of course, it’ll probably be in the news service — curfew imposed and so on.” But that was different from broadcasting an injunction to the people of Gala, a warning that everyone else would hear.
“Selufu wants a van with a loudspeaker to go round.”
“That’s certainly the best.”
“But he hasn’t got a police van to spare — they’re all up in the bush at the railway.”
“What’ll you do?” Rebecca said. She came and stood beside Bray. They were looking out across the neat boma garden (hibiscus had been planted where the Christ — thorn had pierced the toe of an Aleke child) down the slope of the town half — hidden by the cumulus of evergreen, where a part of the market with its splotches of vegetable colour, a top — heavy, faded yellow bus with its canvas flaps waiting at the open ground of the bus depot, the yard of Parbhoo’s store with its Five Roses advertisement on the roof, and the comfortable, squatting queue of women and babies outside the clinic, were all in the frame of vision. The usual bicycles and pedestrians moved in the road, bicycles bumping down over the bit where the five hundred yards of tar that had been laid in front of the boma ended and there was a rutted descent to the dirt. He had the feeling — parenthetic, precise — that they were both suddenly thinking of the lake at the same time. The lake with its upcurved horizon down which black pirogues slid towards you. The lake still as a heat — pale sky.
Aleke said, “Borrow PIP’s, I suppose. They’re the only people who’ve got one ready fitted — out.”
For some reason or other Rebecca wanted him to come to the Tlumes’ for lunch — usually she was busy fetching the children from school and feeding them, unless they happened to be going home with school friends and she could come to him. He agreed without thinking about it, anyway, because he had had a call at the boma about noon from Joosab, and had to go off and see him, knowing before he got there what the urgent and apologetic summons would be about. Sure enough, I.V. Choonara of the Islamic Society was in Joosab’s tailor shop. There among the ironing board, the sewing machine and the counter with its long — beaked shears attached to a string, the two elderly gentlemen “expressed the worries of the community” about the Gandhi Hall and School. He was giving his twice — weekly class to the local PIP branch there — the economic basis necessary for Pan — African aims. The Islamic committee members wondered whether it was wise to have these young men gathering at the Indian school just now.… What they really hinted was that they wanted to close the school and workshop to the adult education centre while there was disturbance about. He was not surprised; though he privately doubted whether this PIP class would have been likely to turn up anyway, for the time being. Several Indian stores in town had kept their wooden shutters down, he’d noticed that morning.
At the Tlumes’ Rebecca and the assortment of black and white children she had brought home from school were already at table. There was lemonade and a cake. “They insisted you must be here”; he realized that it was her birthday, not one of the children’s. “Didn’t I know when your birthday was?” She laughed— “I think I once must have told you. When I wanted to know your astrological sign.” “Mine’s a fish,” the little one, Clive, said.
He could kiss her for her birthday, in front of the children. Although she was apologetic for making him suffer the noisy and not very palatable lunch — party she was rather happy and flattered at being the centre of the children’s attention. They had presents for her — drawings and painted plaster — of-Paris objects made at school. Clive reminded that Daddy’s present was on top of the wardrobe. A fancywrapped box held a transparent stone on a silver chain. The kind of thing that comes from Ceylon and is set by Indian jewellers in Dares — Salaam or Mombasa. Suzi made her put it on and all through the meal it dangled where those breasts of hers were pressed against their own divide in the neck of her dress. She must have kept the parcel specially to open on her birthday.