Perhaps because of the break in continuity this was so. If the satin skin had been seen slowly bruising dark with age and heavy drinking, if the blond curls had been observed, in the course of ordinary encounters, thinning, if Jonah had been heavier, maturing each time he dropped in for talk and a beer with Ben, the changes would have wound away naturally in the reel of years. But there was no tape running between the state of being they had been in when they left for exile or prison and their sudden reappearance back here where they had left: the weight their lives had was the weight of the past, out of storage and delivered to those who had stayed behind.
The man whom experiences had bowed to one side and shorn of his hair turned up at Vera’s office to see if there might be something for him — a research job, anything; he had been back three months and could not find work. He had been a journalist on an often-banned small paper when they knew one another long ago. While she tried to make some suggestions, where he might find employment and — she had to offer — she would be able to put in a word for him, there lay between them the knowledge that he was — had been — suspected of being a police agent at one time, and when he fled the country, although apparently cleared of this suspicion, he was mixed up in some schismatic defection. This was what he was, to her; she did not know whether he had been reinstated among the exiles abroad and whether or not he had returned with the status of one fully accepted within the Movement — knowing him only in the persona of the past, she saw that that persona might have inveigled by some subterfuge the status to return under indemnity, supposedly vouched for by the Movement.
But if there were ambiguous feelings subsuming the enthusiasm of welcome and the obligations it carried, there was also the overwhelming sense of good times impossibly restored. Among the people who were returning were some the sight and sound of whom, their very mannerisms and turn of phrase, were proof that such times are carried along within the self.
When a railway line is abandoned, the tracks aren’t taken up. Under weeds and grass, they remain, marking a route. For the Starks, with Sibongile and Didymus Maqoma suddenly sitting in the Starks’ living-room again after more than twenty years, there was the unexpected warmth and understanding, across the conditioned inhibitions of colour, between couples sharing youth and the ties of children. Now again, in the presence of Sally and Didy, the Starks were the lovers in an affair continuing in the protection of domesticity, expansive towards others in the bounty of sexual happiness. Vera had not seen Ben as the woman at a party once had, his male allure, for a long time, had not even been aware, in her familiarity with him and her preoccupations, of not seeing him. He, Bennet Stark, was still there, with only the deep lines from the corners of those lips to that fine jaw to mark him, as if in the conduct of his life he had sculpted his own face.
She exchanged again with him the side-glance smile of complicity, displayed the coquetry of joking reproaches that claimed him as hers, the recognition of his judgment in quoting him on this matter or that, which was the atmosphere the young couples used to generate between them. The class difference set by white privilege had been rather less than was usual between whites and blacks. Didymus was an articled clerk then, in a law firm, as Vera had been a few years before, Sally ran a black cooperative and ambitiously attended the extramural classes Bennet taught at the university, moonlighting for the money. That was how they met — through Bennet, and made the discovery that there was a link in that both their partners had chosen law. Of course, Vera had the house that had come to her with divorce, and the Maqomas lived in Chiawelo, Deep Soweto; Didymus carried a pass. But the Maqomas, both politically active, even then had open confidence that they would be among those who would destroy white privilege sooner or later, and pragmatically made use, as of right — and this was recognized unembarrassedly by the Starks — of the advantages the white couple had. It was more pleasant to pool the children in the Starks’ run-wild garden on a Sunday than to have the Starks over in the two-roomed Chiawelo place, although the Stark couple enjoyed breaking the law of segregation, from the comfort of their side, by coming at night into Chiawelo to listen to jazz recordings — Didymus was a collector and himself played the trumpet in those days! — and drink and perhaps dance, bumping into Sally’s well-polished furniture.
Sally and Didy now back in the same living-room in the same house where the four of them had been together so many times, talking across one another in the same animation. The Maqoma boys might have been there, in Vera’s house, as they often used to be, come to spend the weekend, Ivan might have been there, sharing his schoolboy room with them, and, down the passage, the disdainful small girl, Annie, against whom they ganged up.
It was not nostalgia Vera was experiencing on such occasions, but something different: a sense of confrontation with uninterpreted life kept about her, saddled on her person along with the bulging shoulder bag always on her arm, her briefcase documenting inquiry into other people’s lives.
Didymus Maqoina, whose whitening curls sat like the peruke of a seventeenth-century courtier worn stately on his black head, and Vera Stark with the haircut of a woman who has set aside her femininity, in this joyful reunion of friends gave no sign, even to one another, that it had not been twenty years since these two had seen each other. One Saturday morning five years ago Vera, alone in the house, had answered a ring at the door. A black man with a scanty peppercorn beard round lips and chin, wearing thick glasses and the collar of a clergyman, stood there. He did not speak, or before he could, she gave her usual response to anyone in the racket of purporting to collect church funds. — Sorry, I’ve nothing for you.—
The man smiled. — How mean of you Vera.—
It was long before the encounters in the street where people waited to be reassured by recognition, to have confirmed the claim that they were back. There were no indemnities, there was no lifting of bans on political movements. The last thing the man looked for was to be recognizable. To be recognized was to be hunted. Didymus, he said.
As if she had dropped up to the neck in a pit alarm for him engulfed her. She took his arm and pulled him inside, kicking the door shut. She did not need to be told that he somehow had been smuggled into the country, and that he had a purpose about which she must not ask. Her nervous amazement broke hysterically. — Umfundisi! You look so funny! No — no, you look dead right, that kind of Sunday suit, and the collar frayed, where did you get kitted out so perfectly—
They were both grinning with emotion. — We have our network in the shops down Diagonal Street. One week I’m a labourer with cement on my shoes, torn overalls and a woollen cap down to my eyes, next week I’m in a three-piece blue with a white cap, a soccer promoter from Jabulani.—
They were walking through the house, weaving about each other, she was out of breath.
— Are you all right? Do you think they know—
— No, so far it’s okay. But I can’t stay in the same place too long. I can’t stay with anyone who has any connection … As soon as neighbours want to be nice to me, I have to disappear. Move on.—
— I’d heard you were ill, you had something awful— leukemia? — you were being treated in Moscow.—
— Yes, that’s right, I’m out of action sick in Moscow. I’ve been here six months.—
She was looking at him, head on one side, thrilled by the audacity. — Six months!—
They were in the kitchen, she was distractedly picking up cups and putting them down, turning on her heels to rummage in a drawer for spoons, forgetting whether she had or had not switched on the kettle.