A Guest of Honour by Nadine Gordimer Read Free Book Online Page A

in the kitchen herself from six in the morning, and some nights it’s been until ten. She literally hasn’t sat down to a meal….”
    â€œOh, not quite … I must have had hundreds of cups of coffee….”
    â€œYes, with one hand while you were busy stirring a pot with the other. The cook went to the Independence ceremony and we haven’t seen him since—just for the afternoon, he said, just to see the great men he’s seen in the papers—well, what can you say?”
    â€œWe felt it was his day, after all.” The woman showed a well-shaped smile in the dark.
    Bray asked, “How on earth have you managed?”
    She gestured and laughed, but her husband was eager to break in, holding up his hands over the plate balanced on his knees— “A hundred and twenty-two for dinner! That’s what it was on Thursday. And yesterday—”
    â€œOnly a hundred and nine, that’s all—” They laughed.
    Bray raised his beer mug of wine to her.
    â€œWhat about my assistant cook? You mustn’t forget I’ve got help,” she said. Wentz put down his glass beside his chair, to do the justice of full attention to what he was going to say. “Her assistant cook. I got him from the new labour exchange— I thought, well, let’s try it, so they send him along, five years’ experience, everything fine.”
    His wife was listening, laughing softly, sitting back majestically for a moment. “Fine.”
    â€œFive years’ experience, but d’you know what as? —You know the barbers under the mango trees there just before you get to the second-class trading area?”
    â€œOur son’s comment was the best, I think. ‘Mother, if only Barnabas had worked for a butcher and learnt to cut meat instead of hair!’”
    â€œWell, here’s to three crazy people,” said Wentz, excitedly picking up his glass. “Everyone knows you must be crazy to come of your own free will to one of these countries.”
    â€œColonel Bray isn’t going to run a hotel.” She had a soft, dry voice and her accent was slighter than her husband’s.
    â€œI’m not as brave as you are.”
    â€œOh, how do you know?” said Wentz. “We didn’t know what we were going to land up doing, either.”
    She said quietly, “We certainly didn’t think we’d be the proprietors of the Silver Rhino.”
    â€œAnyway, that’s another story. —I heard you were going to the Ministry of Education?” said Wentz.
    â€œOh, did you?” he laughed. “Well, perhaps I am, then. I should think the bar of the Silver Rhino’s as good a place as any to learn what’s really going on.”
    â€œIf you want to hear how much ugliness there is—yes.” Mrs. Wentz had the tone of voice that sounds as if the speaker is addressing no one but himself. “How people still think with their blood and enjoy to feel contempt … yes, the bar at the Silver Rhino.”
    â€œOur son Stephen is looking after it tonight. It’s amazing how he deals with those fellows—better than I do, I can tell you. He keeps them in place.”
    â€œWe promised him a liberal education when we left South Africa, you see.” Mrs. Wentz had put down her food and she sat back out of the light of the fire, a big face glimmering in the dark, caverns where the eyes were.
    â€œHe’s at Lugard High, taking the A levels,” said Wentz, innocently. “—You’re not going to finish?” The white blur of her hand moved in a gesture of rejection—“You have it, Hjalmar.”
    It rained and people felt chilly on the veranda and drifted indoors. There was a group in loud discussion round the empty fireplace where the beer bottles were stacked. “… banging on the Governor’s door with a
panga
when the others were still picannins with snotty noses …” Now