She sat suddenly on their bed to read the thing over again. He stood in the room as if he were already the stranger ejected from it. And so she wept and flung herself at him and he had no reassurance for her in the arms that came about her. They were unsteady on their feet. She struggled free and drew up the piece of paper. She took him by the hand for them to sit and read it over again, together. But he sat beside her, lifted his shoulders and let them fall, did not follow the lines with her. He knows the form, the content, the phraseology; it is the form of the world’s communication with him. She looks for loopholes, for double meanings that might be deciphered to advantage, that he knows are all stopped up, are all unambiguous. Out. Get out. Out.
Then she became angry. Who told them? How did they find out? After how long? How long? Two years—
Two years and some months.
Who? But who would do it, what for?
Anyone. Someone who wants my job, maybe. Yes. Why not.
Why not! What harm do you do anybody, what did you take away from anybody, that lousy job and a shed to live in!
Julie. Somebody who’s here in his own place.
And now his eyes were penetrating as searchlights seeking her out, his lips were drawn back in violent pain in place of that beautiful curved smile. Even this I’m wearing, this dirty … even whatyoucallit, a shed, a corner in the street to sleep in, that’s his, not mine. That’s how it is. Whatever I have is his.
A gust of what was unknown between them blew them apart. In distress she wanted somehow to reach and grapple with him as he was borne away, as she was borne away.
Why do you take it like this! What are you going to do about it! There must be something — protest, apply — this Home Affairs place, can’t you go to them right away, tomorrow morning — how can you just—
Leave me, leave me: he knows that is what this girl is really saying; to her — of course — expulsion means she loses her lover, this bed will be empty, at least until — she’s free, secure and free, she finds another lover. To calm her — and himself: I go there. Nothing will be done. They’ll look up the other paper from nearly one year and a half. They know I was supposed to get out then.
So you knew this would happen. Even after so long.
I knew, yes. I thought perhaps, they lost the paper, maybe they have so many papers of people like me, they could forget me. That was my chance. That’s how it is. I could go there to them, but what for. It will be better if I do nothing, I didn’t get the letter, I’m not at the garage any more, I’m somewhere …
Well they don’t know you’re here with me. You don’t live at that address, that’s something. I think they’ll know.
That horrible man at the garage! He’s bad news, he’s not for you, he’s not even allowed to be in the country. What about your job? Even if no records are kept… you’d have to disappear from that as well …
Disappear (she has given him the word he needs), yes.
Again. Again! And again another name!
He sees her turning her head this way and that, in the trap. That’s how it is.
If he says that one more time! So how it has to be is not what he will do about this letter, this document passing a sentence on his life, but what we are going to do. She has friends, thank his gods and hers, anybody’s; her friends who solve among themselves all kinds of difficulties in their opposition to establishment officialdom. They have alternative solutions for the alternative society, and there is every proof that that society is the one to which he and she belong: that letter makes it clear. She abrogates any rights that are hers, until they are granted also to him. This means she will follow no obedience to truthfulness ingested at school, no rules promulgated in the Constitution, no policy of transparency as in the Board Rooms where the investment business code applies.
Julie does not tell him this; only by pressing herself against him, he’s palpable, he hasn’t disappeared from her, and holding her mouth against his until it is opened and lets her in, to the live warmth and moisture of his being.
He receives her, but cannot give himself. She understands: the shock, the letter finally come, followed him, tracked him down; for her, outrage, high on alarm, for him a numbing. Let’s go to the EL-AY. We have to talk about this.
Ah no. No, Julie. Not now, tonight. Let us stay alone. Strangely, he began to take off the grease-darkened overalls as if he were shedding a skin, letting them fall to the floor and stepping slowly out of them. Perhaps he meant to get into bed, bed is the simplest offer of oblivion? But no.
I want to take a bath.
She heard the water gushing a long time. She heard it slapping against the sides of the tub as he moved about within it.
She picked up the paper and sat with it in her hand. That first time; he asked to take a hot bath, she heard him there; when he came out holding the neatly-folded towel he was barefoot in his jeans and she saw his naked torso, the ripple of ribs under shining smooth skin, the dark nipples on the pad of muscle at either side of the design of soft-curled black hair.
That’s how it is.
Chapter 10
They are to meet at The Table in his lunch break. That’s the arrangement; she would not come by at the garage for him to join her — if one did not know what was to be done, at least here was a procedure begun, that trail that led through her from the garage to the cottage must be deflected. Look for him somewhere else.
She was there before him.
It’s happened. See her face.
The friends in the EL-AY Café also had been lulled by his presence become accepted in their haven; they received her with gazes of alarm and curiosity, darting suppositions. (It’s bust up. He’s walked out on her. She’s seen through her oriental prince and told him, enough. Her dear papa’s heard about the affair and cut off her allowance. What else?)
So she had time to tell them, to discuss what had happened before he joined her. Their reactions duplicated hers when it came to surface manifestations; the others, the depths of fear and emotions, they hesitated to approach so precipitately — even the habit of intimate openness quails before situations not in the range of experience. Indignation went back and forth across the cappuccino. That bastard at the garage! That man! Must have been him, who else! You can’t tell me any of the fellows he works with would want to go near to report to the fuzz! What a shit!
— Wait a moment. — The political theorist thinks before allowing himself to indulge in hasty accusations. — The garage owner would not be the one to report that kind of employee. If he did, he’d be reporting himself as hiring an illegal. That’s a criminal charge, you know, my Brothers. — His quick, hard laugh is not offensive — a correction of the limitations of his white friends’ awareness of the shifty workings of survival.
— The first thing, make an application for the order to be reviewed. You don’t take it lying down.—
— You go with him to a lawyer, not one of those divorce and property sharks, a civil rights lawyer, what about Legal Resources, they must know a hell of a lot about this kind of situation.—
— No, no, you do go to a shark, and you pay him well— come on Julie, you can find the cash—
David, who is house-sitting at present, has his time to offer her. — I rather think it’s a matter provided for in the Constitution. Maybe. Could he make the case of political asylum — maybe not … I’ll go with you to the law library — my cousin’s an advocate and he can do something useful for once, he’ll get us in. You need to know all the relevant stuff, the small print, ready to throw at Home Affairs, you need to trip them up somehow—