He knew best in political matters; they had some small savings she would withdraw from the bank and take with her.
— How much is there, exactly?—
She fetched the savings booklet and they stood heads together reading the figures. — Oh, it's more than I thought. I'd forgotten about the interest. — Aila was smiling almost as she used to.
— You can't take all that. It'll exceed the exchange-control allowance, I'm sure. The allowance is smaller for neighbouring countries than for overseas.—
— How will they know? I'll take the notes in cash.—
— Aila… — He had gone back to excising articles from a newspaper, running a blade along columns.
— Somehow. I could.—
Impatience was something new in him; like the moustache he had grown to show he was someone else, now. This person still had responsibility for her, nevertheless. — Aila, for god's sake, you can't do things like that. D'you know what'll happen if you're caught out? Can you imagine yourself in prison? Go and see Baby and enjoy it. Forget what I said about money. Take the dresses and whatever. Those kinds of games are not for you.—
He turned pages of the paper without seeing them, then forced himself to read and began pressing the blade cleanly along a margin. His hand fumbled for a pen to mark the date;
she was still in the room, he knew it in spite of the silence— he thought of the special quality of her presence he used to sense when he would come into the house calling out her name. — You're so lucky you're going to see Baby.—
What was she doing — looking at him? Turned away? He would not lift his head and the blade sliced dryly through the fibres of newsprint, a faint domestic echo of the electric saws that destroyed the trees from which it was made; the pine tree. But his words were as feeble an echo of the surging envy he felt — of her option of distancing herself from the struggle, of the passport, of the right to go to the girl as the one who had been there to bandage her wrists.
— I know.—
Was that all? All to be expected of his wife when they were talking of their first child? Who could tolerate Aila's tranquil blamelessness!
He heard her double step, high heels touching the floor before the soles came lightly down, and thought she had left the room. But she had paused: —I wish you could go.—
With her? With Aila? On his own? In place of her? Aila never had much relish for journeys, she didn't know how to deal with officialdom, she had found it difficult even to speak in the presence of his warder.
Or she wished he had not done all he had done, all that she would not reproach him with ever, to the boy, to Baby, to her— so that it would not be only his lack of a passport, his commitment to political action that took away from him the right to be in her place.
Is it because of me?
Since my mother's been away he's been spending time at home. He even brought out the chess board. We've played together a few evenings. But I'm careful. I don't know what he may be trying to get me into, now. I cook supper for us. Once I found the nerve to say something: —Haven't you got a meeting?—
He waited for a moment, showing me he knew, strictly between ourselves, my real question, and he replied to it. — No. No meeting. I'll be at home.—
At once I fetched my helmet and bike keys and put my head round the door. — Well, I'm off.—
He was playing that record he likes so much, some Mozart overture, he thinks he's only got to set up the scene and we'll do something educational together or watch soccer on the tele, dad and his boy. But he also knew I hadn't been going anywhere.
When I came home, late, the lights were still on. I thought he was waiting up for me and I went straight along the passage to my room. But there I became aware that there were voices, men's voices, in the house. They became more audible — their insistence, their cross-talk — as whoever it was must have left the sitting-room and been pausing in the entrance. There was the sound of the front door being closed and bolted by him, and the creaks and subdued clatter of his movements, tidying up, clicking off lights. He knocked at my door. After me again. I didn't say come in, I said, Yes?
He looked slowly round my room; I suppose it must be a year, more, since he's been in it. There was the beginning of a crinkling round his eyes, affirmation rather than recognition, at what I've kept, and he went over and stood a moment, head back, as if he were in an art gallery, not his son's bedroom, before a poster of a desert. That's new. Just space. I don't know what desert, where — I hoped he wasn't going to expect me to say.
He sat on the end of my bed and his weight tightened the covers over my feet, I felt pinned down. — There was a meeting, after all. Here.—
My father has such a wonderful smile, all the planes of his face are so strongly defined, so encouraging, the open feelings sculptured so deep — no wonder he is attractive to crowds, and to women. My mother and the other. I resemble him but my face is a mask moulded from his and I only look out through it, I don't inhabit it as he does. I suddenly was alarmed that he was going to talk about her, his woman, about the cinema, yes, at last, the whole story, that's what he'd come into my room for, Baby was right, you can't live with them, you ought to get away from them.
I had to speak quickly. — I heard someone leave. — I know. It's unfortunate. Something turned up soon after you'd left. I was settling down to read, for once. when did I last finish a book. I get halfway through and by the time I can get back to it I've forgotten the first part. D'you get any reading done, Will?—
Everything we say to each other has a meaning other than what comes out. That's what makes it difficult to be in the house with him. Now he was admitting he doesn't know anything much about me except that I know about the woman, who she is, where she lives. He has no hand in enriching my life (as he would think of it) anymore. Although we couldn't be members of the library when we lived across the veld, I mustn't forget he bought children's books and read to us.
I didn't tell him that in the past year I've read almost everything in his bookcase. If he'd been interested enough, if he'd come into my room for any reason other than his own concerns (what was it now, the danger of confession was averted but there must be something else) he might have found his Gramsci or his Kafka among the clutter on my table. I opened my hand towards Dornbusch and Fisher's Macroeconomics, on the reading list for my second-year courses.
— Well, that's essential. Of course I did it the other way round. you know, the other kind of books first. Poetry and stuff. I had a different idea of what's necessary. When I was your age. The wrong way round— He lifted his hands, seemed about to place one on the mound of my feet, touch me, but did not. — Ignorance.—
I was yawning uncontrollably, I didn't mean to be rude to him. I didn't know whether I was tense to get rid of him or I wanted him to stay.
— Will, you didn't hear anyone here tonight. You didn't hear anyone talking and you didn't hear anyone leave.—
After he'd said what he'd come for he continued to sit with me for — how long — a few moments, it seemed a long quiet time. Then he got up and went out softly, as if I were sleeping.
So that was it. Someone on the run, or an infiltrator from outside. Or there was a meeting with some of his people he doesn't want the rest to know about; since he's been home more, I've seen that he's in some kind of trouble with his crowd: these emotions don't have to be concealed in quite the same way as his love affair. There are long discussions with this one and that one — who come here openly, I don't have to pretend, for my own safety and his, I haven't seen them. There are reports in the newspapers speculating about changes and realignments in the organizations, including his, that make up the movement. That's his business; he doesn't need any complicity with me, beyond warning me to keep my eyes closed and my mouth shut. Which is already what he has taught me to do for other reasons. That's ended up being his only contribution to my further education.