She talked fast at him, as if the house were surrounded and at any moment there would be a hammering on the doors — and what would she say? Where would she hide him? She tugged the kitchen curtains across the window. — D’you need money— how do you manage, I mean. I haven’t much in the house, but I could go quickly to the bank — oh god, no, they close early on Saturdays — but how stupid, I can use my card at the machines—
— Money is one thing I don’t need. That’s taken care of, thanks, don’t worry.—
— Does Sally know?—
— That I’m not dying in Moscow, yes. But not where I go. And other comrades in London believe I’m sick.—
She was shaking the coffee jug to make the liquid drip more quickly through the filter, she didn’t know whether she wanted to get rid of him or take him and hide him away. — Ben’ll be home soon. Wonderful for him to see you. Can’t believe it! But I’m so afraid for you, what they’ll do to you if they catch you — you could just disappear, you know that, they keep infiltrators in solitary for months under interrogation, months and months before they piece together enough to bring them to trial. If they ever do.—
He looked as if he really were an old preacher, tranquilly breathing in the aroma of coffee steam, adding another spoon of sugar like a poor man making the best of luxury. But coaxing irony surfaced from his own identity: —You’ll defend me, if I come to trial, Vera, I count on you.—
— Lot of use I’d be. — What would she do if the police did come, what if they were waiting somewhere hidden in the street, sitting in a car, ready to take him as he walked out of her gate? — I hope Ben won’t be long.—
— I must go before Ben comes. Vera, there is something I do need. I’ve got things here I want you to send overseas for me. But not by post. If you have someone, if you know someone who’s flying out and won’t ask questions — they can post them somewhere in Europe, doesn’t matter, anywhere.—
She took the letters and a package, claiming trust, not necessary to add any assurances. As she saw him to the door, a rush of rejection of fears swept her, she walked out with him into the street, they were ambling together in full view of neighbours, police, anybody who might be witnessing them from watching houses, the eyes of windows, crossing and rounding the corner in the middle of the street where they could not fail to be seen, arm in arm to where, for discretion so that it would not mark her house, he had left a car. And there they embraced goodbye: the open stare of the street fixed on them.
If no one finds out, it’s as if it never took place.
It was not the first time Vera had experienced something she never revealed. Only five years of silence had passed this time; but Ivan was more than forty years old. So it comes about that the precedent of lying by omission becomes a facility that serves a political purpose just as well.
Sibongile and Didymus Maqoma regained their names when they came back. In exile they had had code names; there would always be many people in the outside world who would know them by no other. Addressed by these names, they would react — answer — to them as they would to the names given them, attached as an umbilical cord to the location outside a coalmining town (Sibongile, daughter of a Zulu mother and Sotho father) and the steep hut village folded in maritime hills (Didymus, in the Transkei) where they were born and first answered to a name at all.
They did not go back to the little house where they were young — probably a slum by now, with the crush of people doubling-and tripling-up for somewhere to live — unthinkable to live in Chiawelo, anyway. They spent the first few weeks in a Hillbrow hotel that had been taken over as a reception centre for returning exiles. It had been a drinking-place for working-class white toughs and their women, and the cheap orange carpeting was stained with beer and pitted with cigarette burns. Stretched tapes on the music diffusion system repeated themselves through twenty-four hours, day and night. Sibongile stripped the beds to look for vermin. She felt them on her skin, sleepless, although they were not there.
The plane-loads of returning exiles who were arriving every few days were awaited at the airport by chanting and dancing crowds; when they came through the automatic doors that closed behind them on the old longing for home, when they emerged pushing squeaking chariots charged with the evidence of far places, carrying airport store giant teddy-bears, blind with excitement in the glare of recognition — not, at once, of who they were individually but of what they stood for, the victory of return — a swell of women’s ululating voices buffeted them into the wrestle of joyous arms. Children seen for the first time were tossed from hands to shoulders, welcome banners were trampled, flowers waved, bull-horns sounded, the hugging, capering procession of transit to repossession, life regained, there outside the airport terminal, was a carnival beyond belief it would ever be possible to celebrate. Home: that quiet word: a spectacle, a theatre, a pyrotechnic display of emotion for those who come from wars, banishment, exile, who have forgotten what home was, or suffered not being able to forget.
The Maqomas of course had not come on one of the crowded charter flights and their reception was less flamboyant though no less emotional. Didymus was a veteran of the inner circle in exile, one who for all those years had been involved in international missions and certain other important activities, and they were met by comrades equal to him in rank within the internal organization. A car was waiting for them, driven by one of the young returned Freedom Fighters now deployed as Security men. Home. They slept, that first night, in what used to be a forbidden white suburb at the house that had been acquired for one of the most important leaders. But it was understood they could not stay; the room would be needed for other transients in the to-and-fro now established between representatives from the Movement’s missions in other countries. A comfortable room with the niceties of bedside reading lamps, a supply of Kleenex, a television set, a room where bags were never unpacked. Until a house or flat could be found they would have to live in a hotel — there was, in fact, a hotel provided for just such an unavoidable interim.
Sibongile came to Didymus with a blanket held draped over her raised palms. He had no idea what for, but was always patient with her sense of drama.
— I can’t live like this.—
— What is it?—
A crust of something whitish-yellow dried in a smear on the hairy surface.
— What is it! — Her rising laugh, a cry. She thrust the evidence at him.
— Oh. That. Yes. — Semen, someone’s seed.
— I can’t live like this, I can tell you.—
— Sibo, you’ve lived much worse. It didn’t kill us.—
— At the beginning, years ago, yes. It was necessary. In Dar, in Botswana. But now! My God! I’m not running for my life. I’m not running from anybody any more, I’m not grateful for a bit of shelter, political asylum (the blanket dropped at her feet, her hands lifted, palms together in parody of the black child’s gesture of thanks she had been taught as a little girl). This’s not for you and me.—
— What can they do about it? They can’t find accommodation for everyone overnight. Give it another week or so … —
— Accommodation. How long can we be expected to carry on in this filthy dump, this whore-house for Hillbrow drunks, this wonderful concession to desegregation, what an honour to sleep under the white man’s spunk.—
— What about all the others living here … it’s no better for them. — He was confronting her with herself, as she was every time she entered the foyer of the hotel or walked through the room smelling of cockroach repellent that was the restaurant, embracing unknown women, men and children in the intimacy of shared exile and return.