— Why should she, not Jewish, is she. Not so far as I know, I’ve been away from them so long. — He slides his mobile out of his pocket. — I’m going to ask him what’s it all about.—
— No, Stevie no — She’s beguiling, her hand on his wrist, there’s a mock tussle, always good to grasp one another but he prevails.
Jonathan has an evasive easy answer for his brother who surely knows him well even if different politics meant they were out of touch during the years when Steve disappeared from family life. — I think Ryan is happy with the idea.—
But what, whose? Why shift it onto the child.
— Well…we didn’t have much idea who we were, when we were kids, did we, Andrew and Pauline didn’t seem to think it mattered, then.—
— The human race.—
Oh yes, the Leftist in the family; knows the answer we got wrong. We businessmen golf players — except that the black president plays golf now.
— Whatever. Did we know the difference between our mother and father. I don’t remember anyone telling us. Andrew Christian Pauline Jewish, and us…—
— Did categories matter.—
— Stevie, there’s so much that has, if you’re going to talk about categories. Everything you were was decided just like that. It isn’t enough to be black or white, finish and klaar, the way it was, in the bad old days — you belong somehow to something closer…more real, you can, it’s possible…right.—
Muslim girls, daughters of Indians themselves third- or fourth-generation South African; he sees them on campus, buttock-sculpted pants, asserting breasts, high heels, film-star faces, and heads shrouded to the shoulders in widow’s black cloth.
— You’ll come. — His brother spoke with assurance.
— Love, you don’t have to. — He had told her.
— But of course I’m coming — and then — You don’t want me to. — It was not a question but an accusation, were there still situations in his life where she would be considered out of place. (Were there any likely in her life where he might be.)
He gently denied the ridiculous. — Just don’t want you to be subject to this kind of thing.—
Jabu consulted Brenda about what to wear; the outfit she’d be expected to by her father elder in his church, on a special occasion in the calendar of worship? He would give the eye of approval, according to the season, to modest summer dresses or skirt, blouse and jacket, Western style, like the three-piece Sunday suit he wore although Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the Anglican Church had introduced traditional African robes in which he even danced down the aisle as part of church services.
— African! Your lovely skirts and those beaded collars.—
— Do you cover your heads?—
— Oh no, your hairdo looks marvellous. The Jews and Africans are such ancient people, they both had their special get-up for women, yours’s great, but thank God we won’t be likely to have anyone arrive wearing wigs.—
— Women had to wear wigs? Over their hair?—
— Their heads were shaved. I’ve picked up all about this while Ryan’s been at school to the yeshiva, that’s religious school, like the Muslims’ madressa.—
She has a maze of pathways round and across her head. You trip over pavement hairdressers in the city but hers is achieved in some fancy salon she goes to. What women will allow to be done to themselves. Fashion; or conformity. What’s in fashion’s a conformity of some kind? I loved her first with the busy halo of African hair she had. To my hand it was the hair at the place I go into her.
He wears a hat borrowed from Jake, although it turns out there are skull caps laid ready at the entrance to the place of worship they’ve been given on the invitation instructions to reach. They are led in by a young man who takes his function ceremoniously, hesitating before the rows of seats, indicating the best choice. The synagogue is large, high-ceiling but without the elaborations of a church of such proportions, no graven images, bare of chapels where special favours are asked of this saint or that, like highly qualified doctors specialising in different pardons, benedictions, solutions for various spiritual conditions. It is simple in spacious lack of distraction from the only focus, the curtains behind which there must be something holy hidden, on the far wall above a platform with a discreet pulpit-podium to one side.
Seats are comfortable as those in a luxury cinema, very different she finds them from the benches in her grandfather’s and her father’s church; Steve doesn’t remember how his young backside might have been accommodated accompanying father Andrew on one of his rare obligatory occasions to show up in church, a wedding perhaps, or a funeral. In front of them are books slotted in pockets on the backs of the next row of seats. The woman beside him — he gives a quick glance of polite acknowledgement, but she is passing the time pushing back the cuticles on her fingernails, the man on Jabu’s side is praying, just audibly, a white shawl falling round his neck. Jabu’s careful not to disturb him by jolting the chair arm and she manages with her usual natural grace to succeed in taking a couple of the books without doing so.
There is pervasive talk, even giggles from young boys apparently corralled to a block of seats across the aisle.
Is this an orthodox or a reform synagogue. The woman is satisfied with the condition of her nails and he can ask her. It’s reform. Jabu is turning pages to verify something she’s finding in one of the bilingual books, there’s movement of her lips — she’s trying to mouth Hebrew words, she who speaks at least four languages other than the natal isiZulu he’s picked up under her tutelage. If you’re black you’ve had to improvise communication with unilingual whites, she’d probably easily acquire this ancient one, too.
The rabbi welcomes the congregation in Hebrew and with colloquial English, not the tone Jabu’s accustomed to in church, whether spoken isiZulu or English, implicit chastening against inattention to the presence of the Lord. His Hebrew is poetry, there’s a choir singing in that language, you don’t have to be able to read music in order to understand the beauty of it.
Steve has been looking about to see where Jonathan is sitting, if he’s not behind the scenes, who knows what the protocol may be for the father in this male ceremony.
Andrew and Pauline — must be here, Jonathan’s and his parents, the boy’s grandparents. He has passed over the man in robes and a turban-like headgear, fringed prayer shawl, some ecclesiastical functionary among those in the gathering, although standing, not seated, where yes, the parents Andrew and Pauline have been spotted. He glances that way again as if to mark, we’re here too, Jabu and I. Family solidarity in the most unlikely circumstances after the years when I had to be removed from the way of life expected for me.
The rabbi or whatever he is: he has the face of Jonathan. He is Jonathan. That’s my brother. How could I not have seen. Known him.
Can those stage props have changed him; the sign of change, this one way: his. What was it he said that day, it isn’t enough to be black or white, finish and klaar the way it was in the bad old days, you belong to something…what was it, ‘more real’. What’s more real than what we are, now! My Jabu is a woman the same as your Brenda is a woman, same rights — must I spell them out. Your Ryan and our Sindiswa are growing up not tattooed White Master/Swart Meisie just as the Nazis tattooed numbers on the inmates of concentration camps. Why d’you need that ghetto disguise to make you real?
This Jonathan, the functionaries, the boy, are now grouped on the platform.
Jabu senses beside her that Steve is not aware of the address being given about the significance for the boy to be bar mitzvahed, he’s not even hearing the edict taken not only to be faithful to Judaism but to fulfil human responsibilities to everyone, the people and the country. Good sense to hear; she turns to him — and there are his hands splayed palm-down on his thighs. The male gesture of tense reaction she knows in him although she doesn’t, this time, know a cause. Her hand like a secret between them goes over his. There is some sort of text reading announced to which the assembly apparently is to respond at points from the pages and lines given in the books supplied. In the church most know the Bible but here at the occasion there is scuffling and consultation of Torah and prayer book among the congregation, which certainly includes Jonathan’s business associates of various backgrounds religious or otherwise, some Afrikaners, ambitious brother capitalists no longer the master race. There’s one black man among them, must be member of a board; an example of forward-looking recognition of Black Empowerment policy in the second Leninist definition of power, ‘first gain the political kingdom then the kingdom of finance’.