I got her out of the house, away from him. She took a walk with me. I wanted air. There wasn't anywhere much to walk to; three blocks down and you come to the discount liquor store, the take-away and the general store the Portuguese calls his supermarket, three blocks the other way and you reach the Dutch Reformed Church where our white neighbours pray on Sundays to their god who doesn't admit people like us in his house. We pass the houses of these neighbours; they've changed several times since my father moved us defiantly into this shabby suburb that seemed so grand to us after our place in the veld. More of our people have moved in as we did, some of the whites have gone because of this and been replaced by poorer ones who can't afford to live anywhere else. Most of our people are like we were — they've fixed up the houses they occupy — paint, tiled stoeps, fancy front door. The whites have the hulks of old cars in the patches that are supposed to be gardens, and cardboard where windowpanes are broken.
The neighbours who used to greet us (my mother such a real lady) seemed not to see us as we walked by; looked away. Perhaps they were different neighbours, I've never taken much notice, all the same to me. Or they had seen the headlines, and the newspaper photographs of Aila, living among them, one and the same woman who'd seemed such a lady you'd greet her just as if she were white.
Aila kept in step beside me. — Ma. You can't decide for me.—
— The whole business is my affair. It's not for the lawyers to defend me in any way they like. It's my right to instruct them, isn't it.—
— That's not what I mean. You must listen to what I mean, you think you know how things should be for me, but you don't realize…—
— I do, I do. I don't want you mixed up in this. I don't want your life decided by mine. It's you who don't realize, Will.—
I stumbled against a stone, she waited for me. I said it aloud at last: —Aila.—
Her black eyes brightened and narrowed, she pursed her mouth wryly and amazedly. But fondly. She — only just — put her hand a moment on my forearm.
— Why do I have to say this again. Why must I be the one excepted, the one left behind, left out, why is it assumed — by you, by him, by Baby, everyone — I haven't any part in the struggle. Why is it just accepted I'm the one who lives the sham normal life you've all rejected, I'm to be happy on the edge of the white man's world of big business, money, going to be smugly settled in a year or two in some big firm or multinational if there're any left here, given loans to build a house just as good as theirs where they say I can, driving a company car, marrying some girl presentable enough by their standards for their annual dinner, producing kids I can afford to send to some private school that takes kids like ours — why? Why is it decided that that's for me? Who decided it? What's wrong with me? Why me? Is there some birthmark or something that says this is what I must be?—
Her shoulders were hunched in distress but I didn't stop. After so long, I couldn't stop. — It's like a curse, I'm supposed to take it as my fate. And now you, you, when I can act like the rest of you, when I can face them in court and tell them they're liars, liars, those thugs who've been let into our house— and I let them in, I'm the one who's let every kind of destruction into our house, I'm always there, handy, Will is going to do it, well-named, he'll do it — now you say, It's enough. Enough! There's nothing for me in the struggle to change our lives. I'm needed at home. I am home. It's enough! I've had enough of it!—
She was flinching as if I were hitting her; I was hitting her and I stopped only for breath.
— I can't do it. Then you must do it some other way. Not through me. I can't part with you, Will.—
— What's so special about me? So I'm your stake in something, I'm to be something you and he don't really want to give up? Not even for the revolution? The token place in the boardroom you don't really, somewhere in you — you don't want to destroy? Am I your hostage, your middle-class nostalgia for nice things? You don't really want to see your flowered curtains used for a better purpose than dolling up the bedroom in the house meant for a white man.—
We walked on in terrible silence for a while. My heart was thudding with the excitement of my cruelty.
— I don't think it's like that. It won't be like that.—
I gave a snort of rejection,
There was no way out for her, even though she hadn't said as much. She had no way to stop me speaking the truth for myself. We walked quietly down the street where we lived. From some way off we could see something hanging on our gate; in the dusk it looked like a black sweater, perhaps it had been found in the street and displayed there for its owner to reclaim. It was a dead cat, and tied to its strangled neck was a piece of cardboard lettered in red: BLACK COMMUNIST BITCH GET OUT OF HERE. Aila was fumbling desperately to untie the cat. I said, It's dead, Ma, it's no good, it's dead. Leave it. Let's go inside. I'll see to it afterwards.
Somehow our arms went out around each other. Close, we walked calmly up the cement path and shut the front door behind us. That was all anyone watching the house would have the satisfaction of seeing.
From where did Aila's obstinacy come? Obduracy, rather. That was not in her nature, either; before.
Sonny had to define to himself what he meant by 'before'. Yes, there was a blank in his chronology of her life; he knew little of the changes in her for which, he believed, he was responsible. He had noticed she'd cut her hair, that's about all — women's whims. Meant little to him at the time.
He tried to keep calm and confine himself to reason; he submitted himself to self-criticism as an intelligent man, who had freed his mind through the struggle, should. There must be method. He knew he was having difficulty in accepting Aila as a comrade. He had consciously to rid himself of an outworn perception of Aila. Consciously; that was the problem.
Perhaps if (as he had read, long ago, Jesuit educationists said) character is formed, for life, in the first three years of human existence, the idea of the loved partner remains fixed, arrested at the first few naïve years of a relationship. Reason told him that if he could accept Aila as a comrade like any other, as well as his wife, they might revive and deepen the old Sonny/Aila life together. It would be their life, even if she were to be imprisoned, and he might be, once again, at some time. He knew that to bring this about there were certain requirements. Aila had to be reinstated as his wife. He had done this. He also knew that it was necessary to forgive himself as well as be forgiven by Aila — guilt is self-indulgent and unproductive.
Sonny forgave himself; but this was futile. Aila had never reproached him, so there was nothing for her to forgive. And nothing in her behaviour recognized that anyone but she herself was responsible for it. Even the harm he had done her was no claim on her; he saw that. Perhaps he flattered himself Aila had needed to suffer his love of another woman to change. Perhaps it had nothing to do with that, with him. Perhaps she had freed herself just as he had, through the political struggle. He would never be able to ask her; the question of his woman was irrelevant, now.
The lawyers tacitly understood it was no use depending on Sonny to influence Aila. Consultations, at which he sat in, were becoming more and more difficult. The Defence asked for and was granted an extension of the remand for preparation of fresh evidence. It was to Sonny the Senior Counsel came privately, as a doctor informs a relative, not the patient, of a terminal diagnosis, to say that he was withdrawing from the case. Sonny implored him to reconsider; Aila, when told, merely nodded quietly and cleared her throat, gave no indication of wanting to change the man's decision. Although the advocate had lost patience with her angrily at their last meetings, she thanked him 'for all he had done' and — strange for Aila! — when he shook her hand, suddenly kissed his cheek.