Didymus wanted to go up after the session and say to his old comrade-in-arms — what? But the man was apart from the general throng, apparently drafting something in a corner with two others. An approach looked like curiosity. Or envy. Once there has been rejection, nothing is certain, even between old intimates.
The giant sky cracked its knuckles far off in an approaching assault. Under the bedroom lamp Sibongile was sewing back the loose metal catch on the neckband of his black tie. Her eyebrows were lifted stoically at the last-minute task; he was to accompany her to a reception given at the close of the Patriotic Front Conference by one of the new embassies opened in Pretoria. He looked at his feet, shiny in black shoes acquired along with homecoming. — What a loud silence when Dave spoke this morning. What did it mean?—
Sibongile had a way of breaking off whatever she happened to be doing and staring into a statement she found suspect.
— What should it mean?—
— I expect someone to stand up and support a speech like that, I’d expect enthusiasm for it, coming from everyone there.—
She went on sewing. — There was plenty of applause.—
— For him. It’s always done — applaud Chris, applaud Joe, applaud Dave. They’re hailed for what they are—whatever they might say.—
— Of course the applause was support for what he said! You’re getting morbid.—
— But not a word of comment, not a word, not a single reference, as if he’d never spoken at all. As if no one wanted to hear.—
— Because everyone’s committed against corruption, no need to jump up and shout ‘I agree’, everyone believes it, everyone takes it for granted. Except you.—
— Except Dave. He thought you ought to hear.—
At the open window the sky thickened as if with inky murk expelled by an octopus. The drawn breath of the coming storm stilled birds, crickets, everything; the breath was cold against summer’s surfaces — leaf, cloth, metal, skin. It seemed, in the small room, to be created by Sibongile, it was her chill of annoyance, the presage of the storm came to him as the realization that she took ‘you’ to be directed at her instead of, as he had spoken it, the entire assembly. In place of hastening to reassure her he was overcome — with the sweep of a sudden gust that ran before the storm, slamming the window — by resentment. A lit fuse-wire of lightning racing across the sky struck and the house lights failed, providing a domestic diversion; Mpho stumbled in from her room with a shriek. She giggled and nuzzled her father. They hugged. He reassured her teasingly in Xhosa; Mpho had learnt something of an African language by now but she would never get accustomed to African storms like an African-born girl.
On the slow drive tunnelled through rain where their headlights poked a direction, tapes of old Dizzy Gillespie recordings, the kind of music that had accompanied their life together wherever they were, repaired fragility between husband and wife; an old remedy — if only this had been a lovers’ quarrel. Sibongile allowed herself a gesture from some television serial repertoire, straightening his black bow-tie with an appreciative expression as they entered the residence of the ambassador recently arrived from the Far East. How confidently and attractively Sibongile, in African robes and turban she wore for such occasions, picked up whatever conventions of ceremony and protocol came from different cultures! The kind of contacts they had had in exile around the world as obligation and privilege of various positions he held there might have been more important but were less social; a liberation movement in exile may be received secretly by foreign ministers, commissars, army and Secret Service generals whose self-interest (shared ideology, future access to raw materials, trade privileges, military co-operation, expansion of spheres of influence) in the defeat of a particular regime offers support to the liberation movement, but neither supplicant nor donor, for reasons of security or their other alliances, had ever wanted these deals displayed in the disguise of full dinner dress Didymus wore now.
Sibongile was the one more suited to present roles. Moving from group to group about the room, she paused with equal amiability among members of the white Government, comrades from the Movement, and a loud huddle that included the sometime apologist for having sat in a white’s seat in a train. Now Didymus heard her familiar singing rise of voice as she joked with the man, drawing attention to his resemblance to the huge ink-and-wash panel of a Chinese sage on the wall behind him, his wispy beard and straggle of hair over his collar therefore referred to without offence, flatteringly. Delighted, taking the reference as to his wisdom, he was making some remark Didymus could not catch, and put his arm in avuncular flirtatiousness round her bare shoulders, half-complimenting, half-patronizing femininity.
While Didymus stood talking to others, in his mind he walked across the room and pulled her away, punched the face with the smile that had forfeited self-respect in apology for what should have been taken as right, and slapped the woman who tolerated his touch. Slapped Sibongile. As if Sibongile were a woman craven as the man, and would accept restriction on her actions; as if he, Didymus, belonged to the tradition of men who took it as their right to hit their women. Sibongile had been, was his comrade-in-arms, something along with and beyond his woman. The fantasy enacting within him had no sense or usefulness in real time. Sibongile was on a mission, in action suited to particular circumstances, as often he had been. He said nothing to her of the incident. He was tender to her when they got home that night. Sibongile had the feeling he thought he had to atone to her for something — something that had been said to her or about her? That she had been wounded — had a wound of public life (by now she knew well enough about those) she herself was not yet aware of, but that would evidence itself, throb in harm, in time, sometime? — What did you think of it?—
— Of what?—
— Well, the ambassador, the evening, the whole do—
He answered in her language, that they used in intimacy. — Just like all the others now. Exchange compliments with foreigners for trade deals, alliances, maybe arms if we should need such things again. Eat and drink with friends and enemies even if once they drank your blood. Our fathers did it under a tree but they had their impis ready. (In English:) Public Relations. —
She unwound the turban, feeling through her freed hair as if for some inkling of what he saw had happened to her. Nothing; one of his mysteries. — I knew you were bored.—
But the fantasy sprang from convictions, however unreasonable and inappropriate, outdated, they might be, that could not leave him. He had lived a whole life by them; whole lives, different personae. Traitors come large and small, and those who commit petty treachery, apologizing to the enemy, abasing, licking backsides, are no more fit company than the informers who infiltrate a liberation army and are confined in camps where no one may admit to being an interrogator, no one may admit to knowledge of what that meant. What has to be done in war is terrible and if this is to be forgotten then so has that committed by traitors — that’s it? Yes, that is it.
This was Didymus’s mystery. His moods, the contradiction he could not speak of, turning inside himself without the acceptance that is resolution. The old silences that were necessary between him and his wife when he came back to their exile home from a mission, the weeks and months he could not speak of, had returned between them although now they were really at home, together.