They have not kissed goodnight. Inert beside him, dozing, there’s barely awareness of her there — out of nowhere the hand — her hand on his penis. The pyjama pants cover is a token, he’s there. She’s found him.
She’s there amidst everything else that surrounds them. He does not wait in the erotic response but turns to her along with the other, to all that is desolately happening in that better life for all. He’s able to confirm in their embrace: confirmation we’re leaving, casting behind all we ‘cadre veterans’ are useless to change, street dirt only the shit symbol of it.
Or there’s just the confirmation of persistence of desire. That equality in rich and poor; even in this country, which he’s just read is the most economically unequal in the world.
Can’t live the cheat, travesty. What use an assistant professor and a lawyer where education is the sum of schools producing pupils to be accepted as university students without the level of comprehension for their course; the law dodges corruption charges of guilty comrades high in government. It’s a worn holier-than-thou to cite your children when you make decisions. But Sindiswa and Gary Elias growing up to all that all this. Children in whose very conception there was faith in a present that hasn’t come. No sign of the equality of their black-white fusion in the country, born of Struggle, which is the most unequal in the world.
It’s been taken without mention that Wethu will simply go back home to KwaZulu. What sort of goodbye gift would she like, when the time comes; but shouldn’t the time be now, when all the other sorting out of what departs from what remains is being done. There’s also the circumstance that what’s been applied to Baba, the emotional one applies here: avoidance of a vision of Wethu insisting on being at the airport farewell. Sindi is particularly attached to her, she’s been a kind of extension of schoolgirl friendships, probably confided in with secrets as mother Jabu is not. Wethu will go back these few months earlier in a sense as one of her usual visits; only this time it will be homecoming.
— Perhaps we shouldn’t be putting it — telling it quite like…I mean… — Baba’s daughter and a human rights lawyer is sensitive to what might seem to be dismissal.
— D’you think she would’ve spent the rest of her life here if it hadn’t been—
The expressive face goes through considering changes. Of course Wethu’s not a servant; family, in a way. An accessory life: is that a Better Life. What is said is different. — In the things she sees in the streets, the abandoned old buildings that some of the friends she’s picked up — through the garage men — they live in, the way she’s become streetwise, they’ve taught her don’t go into this park, keep away from the traders at that taxi station, don’t go out of the Suburb when you hear there’s a crowd of strikers on the freeway, shots can fly wild and hit you while you’re watching — how can she want to live here.—
— She’s been, well, it looks as if she has. — The chicken coop cottage he built for her: her independence. Away from the collateral family under the jurisdiction of Baba. — Her emigration.—
They give a shrug-smile at the category, he goes on — Who knows how this applies to other people.—
There’s still so much to conclude. Professional colleagues, comrades, are moved to mark them with recognition of their work, their loyalty, their different modes of friendship, understanding, support — despite Down Under. The cop-out.
They are even involved in obligations to the appointments of their successors in the niches they’ve functioned from. Steve at the university, his activism beyond teaching, to transform the institution in its needs. Jabu, her commitment to justice as legal defence for the country’s people too poor to pay for it; above any ambition to become a better life phenomenon, a highly paid black advocate (maybe on the bench some day?). He is taken in by the dean of the Science Faculty and called privately for his opinion on the successors considered for his place in the laboratories, lecture halls (the coffee room never mentioned although, for him, it was from there he achieved anything — which was doubtful — that had been argued for and conceived). At the Centre she was asked to add her informal talks to interviews with applicants as essential advice in the Centre’s choice for her replacement. Rather the way as a novice in law, she had been assigned the task of preparing in the languages she shared with them, nervous black witnesses for answers to be given under cross-examination. The way she had made herself useful in the case of the young girl, not Zuma’s victim, raped.
It seems there are more occasions to be together, get together than usual. Lesego’s brother is down from Uganda where he’s in some international conflict-resolving position, the brothers in general are spread all over, now, in various opportunities. There’s a big bash on Saturday, it’s a family reunion but you and Jabu must come along, open house and go on most of the night into Sunday, a getaway from the troubles in Uganda and ours, here. Marc comes back from rehearsals in Cape Town of the play he’s at last found — may have found — financial backing, only here for three days, up to the eyes in hassles with the money bags, but will Jabu and Steve, must see them…Peter and Blessing have a calendar when they come over. — There’s the long weekend, ay? Njabulo said something the other day, all the boys at school talk about the parks they’ve been to, elephants round the camp at night, lions eating a kudu, I don’t know what else — but we’ve never taken our kids. And you? Your Sindi and Gary Elias ever seen their Africa. They all know it on TV like the English and the Yankees, right?—
He and Steve take, grinning privately: ‘our Africa’ shared in Umkhonto bush camps — but this, something other, their children ought to have now outside the animal prison of a zoo: a sense of the birthplace they share with animals. Used to be a luxury only white children had, the Kruger Park; while blacks were barred entry, except for warders and camp servants. Peter made the booking and Blessing would provide the food from her catering business. — What are we going to bring, my man? — The booze of course. Steve, you load up the beer, Coke for the kids. — They occupied thatched rondavels with bathroom blocks and took their place in bush and riverbed, shared the vast enclosure of freedom with animals as the ancestors must have shared the whole of Africa — Sindi contributing unexpectedly what she had learned at her enlightened school. Africa is the origin of all humans in the world — despite that the Suburb comrades were moving in warders’ vehicles not on foot among the three-toed elephants, the hooves and claws of buck, leopard and lion. Time out. Nothing to do with either present or departure.
While they were away Wethu continued her comfortable habits as if they were there, church on Sunday, settled that evening to the house TV with its wide screen in contrast to her small set, all there was space for in her cottage. The volume high for her to follow while she was heating inkomo stew to accompany ground corn isitambu, but she heard a repeated call from what must be the back gate, imploring again and again. She remembered to switch off the gas flame beneath the pot, picked up the gate key and went out into the twilight yard: must be one of her friends calling to the cottage. She pushed up her glasses, they were only for TV, she was farsighted but in this half-light couldn’t recognise either of the figures at the gate, just hands stretching through the bars as she appeared — Ousie, mama, please some water! Please please, just some water, water, we been running far, please. — In English like hers, whoever they are, expecting a white person to come from the house.