Loot by Nadine Gordimer Read Free Book Online Page A

indicated that the driver-bodyguard must be sociably at home in the kitchen just as he was in Tomasi’s.
    She tucked in to stew and wild spinach, helped herself, under the permissive wave of the host’s hand, to the mound of stiff maize meal smoking vapour like a dormant volcano. There were wheels of sliced tomato arranged as a still life on a glass plate. He was controlledly annoyed to find there was to be no coffee (apparently forgotten when the purchases were made at the supermarket); she noticed then what must have been there all along in him, the attractive tilt of his eyebrows drawn upward at the inner corners enquiringly even when he was not—as now—irritated. A hieroglyph of vulnerability to be deciphered, if one were to be interested enough, in the closed self-possession of this functionary.
    â€”Can I walk round your farm?—She caught herself out in time and did not add the assumption: No mines? This was
something not for flippancy brought about by a full stomach and whisky at an unaccustomed time of day.
    â€”You don’t want some tea?—To compensate for the missing coffee.—I’ll take you. You know I have horses—of course, you come from England, all the English like horses.—
    So together they passed the cattle sheds and the old stonewalled sheep pen (there must once have been another kind of farmer on this land, with his memories of the Cotswolds, and a white-verandahed farmstead she had had in mind). Neat pyramids of cow dung dried and cut in squares for fuel were milestones where small dogs of their own unnamed breed lifted jaunty legs as they panted along. He pointed to the field of chili peppers ready for harvesting; she was intrigued:—They’re red earrings hanging!—A flung arm showed his cattle grazing far off; there was maize stretching away as a head-high forest. —Three thousand bags this year, that’s not bad … but this was many hectares planted, you have to have the land to get a commercial crop like that … This place was nothing. Weeds and rubbish. Like the other.—
    This was the moment for her anecdote. My grandfather owned that mine he lived there —the present moment would grow over the past safely, organically, as the maize and blood-bright peppers and the russet and white pattern of the distant cattle repossessed the land that was colonial booty. But the moment had passed; they’d come to a paddock where three horses seemed, as horses do when they are approached, to be waiting. She said (of course) —They’re beautiful.—And added—Specially the bay.—
    He sucked his lips in round his tongue, used to making decisions for others.—Would you like to ride. She’s a nice animal. The quiet one.—
    â€”Oh I’d love to! Even one that isn’t too quiet! I used to ride a lot, no chance now.—
    â€”You see. I know the English.—
    â€”You ride?—
    He called out and a young boy appeared, was given an instruction.
    â€”I also used to, when I was a kid, on the back of the old horse that pulled my father’s cart. But now, no, I bought these for my son. He’s in the States. His saddle’s here.—
    The boy saddled the bay and her host gave her a leg up to mount the tall horse. The forgotten sensation of co-operative power with the creature carrying her came immediately she set off, the old pleasure in the air swiftly parting against her face. Unexpectedly, he did not give any directions or instructions of where she might ride; she galloped, free, alongside the maize fields disturbing minute birds like clouds of insects, she rode over the open ground towards the cattle, waved at the herdboy squatting with them, she turned back towards the city-slicker house and swerved away to where she made out what must be him, although something about the figure was different, not only from the parliamentary-suited one but also from the one in mufti of sports shirt