When she had said to me, D'you expect him to be moping around like you? — was she trying to defend my father? Did she think, then, I didn't know, and probably would find out? Good god. Had she, all this time, been taking his part against my mother? As I tried to shield my mother against him? Female against female. Male against male. So what could we have done for her. To stop her cutting her wrists when she couldn't manage.
What could my mother have done for her.
What could I, her own brother, have done for her.
What a family he made of us.
Poor Tom's a-cold.
And now joy came often. After prison, where there was nothing to please the senses, where there was not even enough light to read and study by, came this bounty. It flowed from such slight stimulation. They met again for the first time at a house meeting. It was called a debriefing; those who had been inside related their experiences in resisting interrogation, intimidation, solitude, for the benefit of those who might sometime find themselves inside, and for individuals and organizations who sought the best means of supporting those on trial, of which there were many. She sat there with her knees broad apart under one of her long skirts, balancing on her lap the briefcase that served as a table for the notebook. She wrote earnestly. While others spoke, while Sonny spoke. When he paused, her gaze flashed up, narrow-blue, the blonde eyelashes met at the outer corners of her eyes as the lids pleated in a slight smile of encouragement.
Joy.
Hannah met Sonny for coffee, for further discussion. It was possible — to take one's dark face into a coffee bar. And with a white woman companion; to pull out her chair for her and sit opposite her. It had been possible for some time, although, coming from a small town where such barriers fell more slowly if at all, and after two years in a segregated prison, Sonny still had a strange feeling: that he was not really there, a commonplace meeting of this kind was not happening to him. Then they drank coffee and she smoked and said, through the wraiths that undulated between them, he hadn't changed. In two years. — You look very well. Fine. I thought that at the meeting.—
Her approval was sun on his face. He closed his eyes a moment as he smiled. — Aila was ready to feed me up. But as you can see… I put on weight inside. But not fat, really? I've never exercised so regularly in my life! Never had the time, before.—
— You look so much better than you did when I saw you in prison.—
— Ah well. detention is terrible. Much worse than a sentence, where you're sure when the end will come, even if it's years ahead — you know as well as I do.—
— Not as well as you do. Or anyone who's been inside. I know only from the consequences I find, if I get to see people.—
— I never want to live through that again. — It was a confession; both knew he might be detained once more.
— It was still great to find you in such good shape after two years of the other kind of inside. I suppose it wouldn't have been so striking if I'd seen you during that time.—
He suddenly found it easy to say to her, in her warming presence: —The letters were almost like visits, to me. In some ways, better. because you can read them over. A visit ends quickly. You and the other person never say what you want to say. Tell me — there's something I never asked you when I wrote back, I wanted to ask you like we are now. I mean, actually here… When you wrote that first time, you said something… you knew I'd come out happy for battle—
— Well you have, haven't you. — It was spoken simply, with admiration, no flattery.
There was a beat of silence.
In it, Sonny looked at her face without a decent reserve, as he had not freed himself to, before. Thick-fleshed, pearly-skinned modelling with slight scuffed redness here and there when her fingernail or some rough cloth had brushed it; the defining presence in the colour of the eyes, as the enamelled eyes brought to life the beige stone of colour plates in his book on the art of ancient Egypt. He was aware that there was saliva in that mouth and that blonde hair would have a scent of its own.
—'Happy for battle'.— He murmured it over. — I've wanted to ask where it comes from — I've wanted to find out who said it. — He laughed, excited at the idea: —To read what goes with it, for myself. — She watched him, enjoying his enthusiasm, her chin drawn back underlined by the flesh of her neck.
— Rosa Luxemburg, writing to Karl Kautsky. I'll bring you the book. Oh there's so much in her letters! I look forward to what you'll have to say—
Joy. That was what went with it. The light of joy that illuminates long talk of ideas, not the 60-watt bulbs that shine on family matters.
A long time had passed since his political activity had been confined to his own kind — the sub-division of blackness decided by law — and the single issue of removals. In prison he learnt more than the correspondence courses in local government Aila had arranged for him. He had been educated by his fellow political prisoners in the many tactics that evolve from principles of liberation, and how they are unceasingly extended, adapted and put into practice as each issue, however big or small, provides the opportunity, wherever and however. Where people lived in wretched conditions in a ghetto he was one who would be sent to help them set up a residents' association; when they understood that a rent boycott was a good way to protest, he would be among those to teach them how to organize the campaign. Where miners or municipal workers or workers in a sweet factory or brickyard were on strike, meetings in their support had to be held, T-shirts and stickers had to be seen on the streets until they provoked a ban, and even after, by those people who were prepared at least for a small defiance displayed bobbing against pectorals or breasts. Days of commemoration were arranged in honour of those who had died in uprisings, strikes, school and rent boycotts, street battles with police and army. And all this had to be done anonymously, clandestinely, hoping to escape the eyes of the police, on days and nights when it was better for no-one to know the whereabouts of an absent member of a family.
Sonny was not a major figure but he was frequently one of the principal speakers where it was possible to hold a public meeting in the semi-legality of some church or university. Hannah was always there. One day of freak cold in April (snow on the Drakensberg too early for winter) the jostle of the group with whom he was coming down from the platform of a city church hall converged with some rows of the audience leaving by a side door, and Sonny and Hannah found themselves drifted together. It was not unexpected, just lucky; he had seen her in the fifth row of seats. They left the hall into the cut of icy wind, into the sights of the police movie crew's cameras which await people who attend such gatherings as in other countries television crews wait after galas to record the emergence of film stars.
They turned the corner in the direction opposite to that being taken by the crowd. His face screwed up against the wind, he smiled at her. — So now we've had our snap taken.—
— D'you think they'll send us a print?—
He was high-shouldered against the cold and laughing; they paused a moment, didn't know where they were headed, along that street. He had on only a shirt and light jacket, but she always had garments to spare, it was her style. She took off her striped knitted scarf. — Please. Put it on, you'll catch pneumonia. Go on.—
It was all matter-of-fact. Comradely. — Thanks.—
He wound that scarf round his neck, tucked the fringed ends under his jacket. The scarf was warm with her warmth. In the gritty cold of the street, the sensation lay upon his nape.