Occasion for Loving by Nadine Gordimer Read Free Book Online Page A

splendid savagery, a broken ethos, well lost; unspeakable sadness came to Jessie, her body trembled with pain. They sang and danced and trampled the past under their feet. Gone, and one must not wish it back. But gone … The crazed Lear of old Africa rushed to and fro on the tarred arena, and the people clapped. She was clapping, too—her hands were stinging—and her eyes, behind the sunglasses, were filled with heavy, cold tears. It was no place to weep, she knew. This was no place to shed such tears. They were not tears of sentiment. They came from horror and hollowness.
    She held in her mind at once, for a moment, all that belonged to horror and hollowness, and that seemed to have foreshadowed it, flitting bat-like through the last few days: the night in which she had awakened twice, once to her own sleeping house, and once to that other time and place in her mother’s house; Morgan, lying shut away with his radio in the kernel of the afternoon. Her hand went out, and took another’s; it turned out to be the hand of Madge, her daughter, who never took her eyes from the dancers, and it was as cold as her own. Yet slowly it restored her to the surface facts of life, and she was able, at the interval, to troop out with the others, exchanging the dazed smiles of those who have just been entertained, and make her way to the rustic hut where the ladies of the mine were selling tea and cake.
    After the performance, Boaz wanted to have a closer look at some of the musical instruments. He wanted to see how the miners devised substitutes for the traditional materials out of which suchinstruments were made. The Africans grinned at him encouragingly while he turned their xylophones upside down, and they burst into laughter when he played one quite creditably. He lost himself; his sallow face closed with complete and exclusive interest. He kept up a patter, not addressed to anyone in particular. “These tins give quite a lively note, in a way. But you lose that light boum! quality, the round, die-away sound that you get from a proper gourd resonator. It’s important to find gourds of exactly the right size and shape to resonate xylophones.” Ann was taking photographs of the warriors with feather-duster tails. They lined up for the photographers like children in class. “Come on!” she wheedled. “Let’s have some life.” But they only stood more stiffly to attention.
    â€œThe art of making some of these things is dying out, even in the kraals,” Boaz said. “Most of them were not originally home-made, in the sense that everyone made his own. There were men who were instrument-makers, and you ordered your
timbila
or
mbira
or whatever it was from them. Now the old chaps are disappearing, and the young chaps are busy acquiring other skills in the towns. In time, no one’ll remember how to make certain instruments any more.”
    â€œWell, these chaps seem to,” said someone.
    â€œYes, but they come recruited from tribal life—reserves and so on. They weren’t born in the locations. And look how the instruments they make have changed! They’ve had to adapt them to the material they find around them, here. Tin cans. Store stuff. Soon they’ll be new instruments almost entirely.”
    â€œAh well, that’s all right,” said Jessie, speaking suddenly. “Don’t you think that’s the best thing, Boaz?”
    He looked at the woman and spoke almost tenderly. “I don’t know,” he said with a smile. “In my job, I like to find instruments in their true form … But, of course, yes, it must be.”
    â€œIt was marvellous!” Ann came running up to them. “Wasn’t it! I saw you clapping, Jessie!”
    â€œMadge was enchanted,” said Jessie. “The other two fidgeted and lost interest after a bit, but Madge never moved.”
    â€œBoaz,” said Ann, biting on the long, phosphorescent-pink