None to Accompany Me by Nadine Gordimer Read Free Book Online Page B

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 overher raised palms. He had no idea what for, but was always patient with her sense of drama.
    â€”I can’t live like this.—
    â€”What is it?—
    A crust of something whitish-yellow dried in a smear on the hairy surface.
    â€”What is it!— Her rising laugh, a cry. She thrust the evidence at him.
    â€”Oh. That. Yes.— Semen, someone’s seed.
    â€”I can’t live like this, I can tell you.—
    â€”Sibo, you’ve lived much worse. It didn’t kill us.—
    â€”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.—
    â€”What can they do about it? They can’t find accommodation for everyone overnight. Give it another week or so … —
    â€”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.—
    â€”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.
    She had a way of screwing up her eyes and opening her mouth, lips drawn back, mimicking the expression of someonestraining to hear aright. —If you’re happy to come back to this from your meetings of the NEC, your big decisions, no complaints … —
    â€”How can I have complaints when so many have come back to nowhere at all. At least we have dirty blankets.—
    She ignored the smile. —And how does that help them?—
    It was Vera Stark to whom she suddenly felt she could unburden herself; the farce of self-sacrifice when it was not necessary might have to be kept up with the wife of the leader in whose house she and Didymus had spent the first night, but Vera, while counted upon to understand perfectly the necessity for such tactics within that circle, was outside it. There were whites who had been in exile, but Vera had not; there were whites who shared the wariness of return, Vera was not one of them. Unburden to her and, by implication of a grant of intimacy, place responsibility on her.
    When Vera answered the telephone with the usual cheerful how-are-you, there was a pause.
    â€”Lousy.— And then that cry of a laugh.
    Vera, good old Vera, didn’t make the usual facilely sympathetic noises. —Let’s have lunch today. Have you time?—
    â€”I just have to get out of this place.—
    On the site of the small restaurant where young Vera and her wartime lover had sat longing to embrace, the place now transformed into a takeaway outlet with additional vegetarian menu and tables open to all races, Sibongile was first to arrive. Her crossed legs were elegant in black suede boots draped to the knee.
    â€”I love those boots. London boots.—
    Vera had the generosity, towards women who still make their appearance seductive, of a woman confident that she was once successfully