Nadine Gordimer - None to Accompany Me: A Novel

NOVELS
The Lying Days / A World of Strangers / Occasion for Loving
The Late Bourgeois World / A Guest of Honour
The Conservationist / Burgers Daughter / Julys People
A Sport of Nature / My Sons Story / None to Accompany Me
The House Gun / The Pickup / Get a Life / No Time Like the Present

STORY COLLECTIONS
The Soft Voice of the Serpent / Six Feet of the Country
Fridays Footprint / Not for Publication
Livingstones Companions
A Soldiers Embrace / Something Out There
Jump / Loot / Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black / Life Times

ESSAYS
The Black Interpreters / On the Mines (with David Goldblatt)
Lifetimes under Apartheid (with David Goldblatt)
The Essential Gesture Writing, Politics and Places (edited by Stephen Clingman)
Writing and Being
Living in Hope and History: Notes from Our Century
Telling Times: Writing and Living, 19542008

EDITOR, CONTRIBUTOR
Telling Tales

What happens, happens early in the morning, when the hand with the blue vein raised from outer wrist-bone to the base between first and second finger feels for the switch on the radio. Sometimes as he draws the hand back she takes it for the return to life, and closes her eyes again, waiting for the news; his hand and hers, the warm pulse palm-to-palm of a single creature who exists only while bodies are still numb in half-consciousness. The news is brought to you by this bank or that with its computer services and thirty-two-day deposit convenience at maximum interest. There are wars and famines too far away to stir response: there are coups and drought drawing nearer, there are the killings of the night, still closer. Some mornings, attacks on farms; a white farmer shot, the wife raped or killed, money and car missing. Taken. Taken to mean the motive is robbery; as if robbery has a single meaning in every country at every period. Take cars, take money, take life. These mornings robbery means taking everything you havent got from those who appear to have everything: money, a car to sell for money, a way of life with house and land and cattle. Otherwise, why kill as well as rob? Why rape some farmers ugly old wife? No violence is more frightening than the violence of revenge, because it is something that what the victim stands for brings upon him. It is seldom retribution for a personal deed, of which innocence can be claimed. The rape has nothing to do with desire; the penis is a gun like the gun held to a head, its discharge is a discharge of bullets.

She lies in a body-warmed bed, the first refuge after birth and the last, for those fortunate enough to die a natural death.

What happened one morning was the sudden startle of the word Odensville in the newsreaders bland recital. Nine people were killed and fourteen injured in violence at the Odensville squatter camp last night. The clash occurred when a local farmer, leading a group of armed supporters, tried to evict the squatters. Police report that it is unclear whether the bullet wounds sustained were the result of the groups action or of cross-fire from the squatters. An AK47 and three Makarov pistols were recovered at the scene. The farmer, Mr Tertius Odendaal, said that he had called by radio the local farmers defence commando when the squatters were spotted approaching his house under cover of darkness, carrying stones and weapons.

The Foundation had been unsuccessful in keeping any contact with the farmer Odendaal. The day he shut his door in the face of its lawyer, her driver, and the squatters spokesman, Zeph Rapulana, was the end of negotiation with him. Communication was with his lawyer. Rapulana came to the city a number of times to confer with Vera on the squatters options in a course of action. It had become clear to her that it was best for the Foundation to be guided by this man, rather than the other way about. He read, enquired, informed himself of all the intricacies of legislation, so that her task was simply to formulate procedure; there was a zest in working together with a plaintiff rather than taking over decisions for the helpless, which was her function most of the time. He sat quietly watching her, in her office, while she walked about going over exasperatedly her attempts to talk to Odendaal. His alert patience had the effect of taking the place of her own customary manner in that office; he was the one listening to her without showing reaction, as she listened to others. It was a curious kind of release, almost a pleasure, that created ease between them. He had ready what he was going to say, but a natural respect for the views of others made him hear out what might modify his own. There were homely colloquialisms in his command of English, a little out-of-date, with its careful grammatical construction, in comparison with the spliced improvisationsTV jargon, Afrikaans and tsotsi slang, mother-tongue syntax, mixed with Englishof city people like Oupa or the Foundations black lawyers. Odendaal wont budge. We can abandon any idea of that nature. Our only possibility is to sup with the devil. Take a long spoon. Yes The agents of the Government who put us in our position are the ones we must shame into getting us out of it.

Count on the Provincial Administration? Well

Odendaal has threatened to bring the AWB with their guns to evict us. It doesnt look very nice, does it? In the present political climate, the Government surely doesnt want too many press reports of blacks being forced out of their homes. That still going on.

Their hands would look clean. It would be the work of the right-wing rebels.

Even so. Theyd be asked why they didnt do something about it. Thats where we step in. Take the bull by the horns. to build a black township on his land, we apply now to the TPA to appropriate the farm and declare it a transit settlement, for a start.

Worth a try. Our case would be that its an initiative to avoid violence in an area of dangerous contention. I suppose we could lead with this.

Making light of their conspiracy, they grasped hands that day; sat down together over the formulation.

That other clasp, two hands joined to make one creature, broke apart. Out of bed she stumbled to find the sling bag with the address and telephone book she kept handy when away from the office. She summoned the well-trained orderliness of her working mode in order not to thinkanything not to ask of herself the name of one of the nine dead until she reached the telephone and heard it answered. Zeph Rapulana was a squatter but he had given her the number of a relative in a nearby township who had a store and lived behind it; there was a telephone, whether in the house or the store she didnt know. It must have been in the store, and so early in the morning the store was not yet open. The telephone rang and rang. It seemed to her an answer: Rapulana would never reply again, anywhere. She called through the bathroom door to Ben in the shower, something terrible has happened, she has to go at oncehe came to the doorway streaming. What? What is it all about? What happened? He naked, she dressed, it was an encounter between strangers. He called out after her, Dont go there alone! Vera, do you hear me!

But she was alone. He didnt know the man, Zeph Rapulana. He hadnt stood before Odendaals anger, Odendaals barred door, with him, made decisions affecting families with him, hadnt come to read the dignity, the shrewdness of confidence and intelligence in that calm black face of the man. She drove first to the empty Foundationno one at work yetto pick up documents relating to the Odensville affair. Well along the highway, she remembered she had not left a note, and turned off at a petrol station to telephone her office. The young switchboard operator could hear the voices of the petrol attendants, laughing and arguing over a game of cards set out on the ground, and the jabber from their radio. Where you partying already, in the day, Mrs Stark!