— I’ll kill for Zuma, the ANC should outlaw Malema — call him Baby Face but he’s no innocent. — Like the cry of a passing bird over the pool a voice from one of the Dolphins as he takes a dive; the Sunday morning swimming party has fallen away, as attendance at the Gereformeerde service did with the transformation of the church into a commune free of cages, political and gender, the Suburb drifts round there for discussion, not the pool. This young man defies the necessity: plunges enjoyment.
Jake is senior not alone in age but analysis, he’s telling — Yes, we need the youth, even the brat — if Mandela and Sisulu hadn’t come along and broken with Luthuli’s knocking on the back door, we wouldn’t have had Umkhonto, yes? But that youth group didn’t waste energy bad-mouthing, ridiculing opponents, the tactics of Julius Malema. If they felt anti-white, and Gareth’s right, why shouldn’t any black after the Boers the British and all the other rag-tag-and-bobtail from across the sea — I’m myself descended from them, ay — stole the country. The Fifties young got down to the business of taking back—taking power.—
A lawyer’s a professional listener; she comes with what perhaps has not been caught by others in flash back and forth. — Zuma’s glad to have someone ready to kill for him to be President. He’d better look out for Julius Malema planning to take over from him, not too far off, one of these days.—
Blessing is offering some small flag — seems out of character. — When he’s President, I mean — Zuma won’t be fighting to get up there, any more. Zuma may be good for us. — What is she saying: everyone condemning bad-mouthing is also bad-mouthing, in advance, the Brother who is going to be only the third Freedom President? Impulse or fairness? More likely she has a Baba, distant authority; troubling to discard.
They are reading aloud to one another from a batch of school prospectuses which have come with a friendly letter for parental concern from a civic educational organisation he found a way to contact. Over There. He rests the affirmative length of a hand on spread pages. — This’s the one for him.—
— For her. — It’s co-educational.—
— Yes yes — but for him now’s the time — that’s the chance going to a new country, everything will be different. When you’re that age you’re adaptable — (She’d forgotten she’d been sent off alone to Swaziland) — we’ll all be together.—
— He doesn’t like being at school with girls.—
Remember Aristotle. Another place another time. — Give him a year, a year older and he’ll be chasing curves. — They’re laughing. — That’s the advantage he doesn’t know about yet.—
Shouldn’t he be called from the garden and fruit-box wicket, he and Njabulo are teaching Wethu’s protégé to play cricket, the game popular at their school where bats are also weapons for another kind of initiation, shouldn’t their boy have a say. These are parents who respect children’s rights, don’t they, not only at the protection level of the Constitution familiar to her as ABC. — What does he think…considering—
The new life to be served upon him and his sister.
His mother — Jabu pronounces authority — We decide. We’ll apply for him at that co-educational. Him and Sindi. — The tone final, not in manner of judgment handed down in court; something parentally fundamental making itself heard to her.
— We’ll think about it some more — over this weekend. — It’s Easter interregnum anyway, when Gary is expected to be brought for the holiday weekend with Baba in KwaZulu.
Yet then — she’s gathered the prospectuses now, cover on cover of impressive school buildings laid out in gardens, the kangaroo emblem as the lion is in Africa; she looks up not at him; no. — I don’t want to go. — As if speaking to herself. — Will you go. Mama told me on the phone yesterday, there’s going to be a huge gathering — election — he’s organised, he’ll introduce the speakers, his choir from the church, freedom songs she says, if Msholozi doesn’t come himself it’ll be one of his closest. Can you take Gary.—
The moment outside the Glengrove Place door. But no threshold to carry the bride over. She asks him, alone to take the boy to spend the usual promised weekend there, her home KwaZulu.
I don’t want to go.
Her Baba. The consequence: meaning this — it can’t be questioned, dissuaded — what an intrusion he feels that would be of the commitment of love, the confidences kept, you for me, I for you, in areas I don’t, others don’t, have access to. The mystery of sexual intimacy, that’s called upon, unknown.
All he could ask in response to their need, the specific need of Jabu in her torn bonds with her father was take to her what practical reason could be the lie he must produce. But he has it: she is involved in a difficult case, cannot miss the sessions of preparation required of her by her senior advocates — what else, the Elder of the church, headmaster of the boys’ school is one who strictly observes the pre-eminence of duty.
Sindi of course had other plans anyway. Wethu has also cried off. She has become so popular in the women’s league of the city church she chose that they insist they need her with them for the rising from the dead of their saviour.
There’s the poster he was told by Jabu she saw after she attended the rape trial. It was honouring the not guilty judgment in celebration then, still does; many more posters are tacked up now, including an example of one of Msholozi’s marriages, picturing him and whatever wife in full guise of flesh and leopard skin.
Even without the daughter of the village who had given legitimacy to the presence of the white man in the extended family by marrying him, he was familiarly welcomed with accompanying grandson of their churchman, schoolmaster. Elias Siphiwe Gumede observed male protocol, greeting him before allowing the interrogation of questioning eyes: was his daughter back gathering something from the car, women always at that sort of arrival fuss — and here is the boy, tall enough, this holiday come home, to put his arms round his Babamkhulu in joyous cityman style, why not, that the other grandsons around would not dare. The high greetings were in their language; standing smiling by, he caught the assurances not questions coming from the grandfather that the boy was happy, happy to be back, heh, and the boy’s gush of names, how’s Sibiso, is Xamana here? — Where is your mother, already with the women?—
His Zulu could pick that up. And he began in isiZulu but had to resort to English. — Babawami, Jabulile sends a special message to you (quiet a moment, Gary!) she asks me to tell you, explain for her, she couldn’t come home for Easter although she very much wants to be here with you and Mama — there’s a terribly important case coming on and she has to be with the advocates the whole weekend, meetings preparing for it, no way out of this, she instructed me — she apologises, she said, but Baba he’ll understand.—
Not home for Easter, sorry sorry (she would have used that bowed-head jingle before him as a little girl); these are the inspiration come to him in a lie.
— What trial is this? Did you bring papers?—
No lie stands; it has to lead to others. But necessity makes this glib. — Too bad, it hasn’t come to court yet so there’s nothing in the papers, she would have given me these for you…there wasn’t any document she could, unfortunate…she says—
And the next lie, to offset any mood, absence darkening over the occasion. — At least I’ve brought Gary Elias for you, that’s what she absolutely insisted, and you know what Jabu is when she wants you to do something!—
— You are always welcome here. — Out of a phrase book. As if granted, between Jabulile’s two men, that without her he doesn’t count.