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

nail of her thumb, and narrowing her eyes, “I want to see the
real
thing. You know? I want to go into the wilds and see—”
    â€œOh of course,” he said. He always parried her, quickly became playful, joked. “Bongo-bongo, savage rites, secret ceremonies.”
    â€œWhat is it that you’d really like to do?” Jessie asked her curiously.
    And unexpectedly, the girl gave weight to the question. She hesitated, and then looked at Jessie honestly, and said, with a laugh, “Oh I like to find new things. Things I don’t know. People not like the people I know.”
    â€œExperience outside what you think you were meant for.”
    The girl laughed.
    â€œThat’s just the sort of thing my mother and father said when I told them I was going to marry Boaz and that he was a Jew.”
    As they walked away, the ancient instruments of Africa struck up the Colonel Bogey march.

Three
    A creature who did not exist any more, the girl Jessica Tibbett aged seventeen, long ago had spent Christmas weekend away at a resort with her mother and stepfather.
    Bruno Fuecht with his European sophistication and Mrs. Fuecht with the assumption of it that she had got from him did not have much taste for the Saturnalian side of the festival; as a rationalist whose only experience of faith had been faith in the political creeds current in his youth, the true occasion did not move him, and although Mrs. Fuecht had once been a devout Anglican, she seemed to feel that through her marriage to him she had lost the right to the meaning of Christ’s birth. Jessie did not remember ever having been taken to church at Christmas (perhaps she had gone once, when she was very small and her father was still alive?) and apart from the excitement in the air, the coloured lights in the streets and the presents in the shops, the occasion was simply a public holiday like any other.
    That year they decided at the last minute that they wanted to get away—the phrase was Mrs. Fuecht’s, and implied a press of guests and gaiety. But the truth was that silent lack of harmony in the house, the deadly peace between three people who did not even guess at each other’s thoughts, became unbearable at the combination of this time of year and this time of the girl Jessie’s life. Even the most vulgar side of Christmas—the family booziness and the money-making sentiment of the shops—was a reproach to them for their lack of human weakness, their disqualification to stand in the comfort of the herd. And the child’s emergence as a grown-up, no longer only victim but also witness of the unexplained state, was something all three must seek protection fromin the anonymous safety in numbers of some place, such as an hotel, where they did not belong.
    None of this was admitted between them, but it set all three going: Mrs. Fuecht said they should get away; Fuecht intimated that he was agreeable if not much interested, and the young girl got busy eagerly telephoning various resorts. At last, one was found that could offer accommodation of some sort.
    When they got there, it was at once clear why the place had room for them. It was a gimcrack building, begun perhaps two or three years before and already falling to pieces before it was completed. The pink colour-wash on the outside was deeply stained with the red earth that spread for miles around it. The windows and doors were set in out of true, and ants wavered along the cracks in a row of brick pillars put up to support an upper verandah that had never been built; a twist of steel cable stuck up out of each pillar like a wick. The dining-room stank of Flit, the lounge was furnished with american cloth chairs showing their springs, and a black pianola. The hotel was full of people like themselves who had not been able to get in anywhere else, and when the Fuechts arrived they were told that there was only one room available for the three of them—an old narrow