The woman had lit the spirit stove and she gave an order, in their language, to the girl. Holding the blanket in one hand and shuffling with her knees together in modesty, the girl fetched a cup and saucer from the dresser, wiped them with a rag, put a spoon of powdered milk in the cup and, chivvied again by her mother, a spoon of tea in a jug. Like a sleep-walker. No one spoke except the woman. But he felt their awareness of him: the old man bewildered as at a visitor he hadn’t been told to expect, the children in unblinking curiosity, the young man hostile, the girl — the girl wanting to sink through the earth that was the shack’s floor; as if he were the threat, and not the marauders whose gales of anger blew about from the road, rising and fading as a wind would gust against the tin walls. The old man suddenly got up and signalled him to take the armchair.
— Please — stay where you are, I don’t need—
The woman brought him the cup of tea, carrying a small tin of sugar. — No, no, sit, sit. You see what this place is like, the rain pours in, you see how we have to try and stuff around the tin with plastic, but we can still greet with a chair.—
While he drank the paraffin-tasting tea she stood above him admonishingly. — You must keep away from here.—
— I don’t usually come so far, it was just only this morning, and I was right on the other side of the main road, there was no one… it happened, I got in the way.—
She pinched her lips between her teeth and shook her head at foolishness. — What do you want to come near this place for.—
Don’t take any chances keep away from the main road— his wife, when he ran sometimes before going to bed at night, possessive, not wanting him to do anything that excluded her.
— I can rather go to my home there in Lebowa, but how can we go, he’s got a job in town, he’s the attendant at underground parking, you’ll see him there by the chain where the cars come in to go down under the building. He’s too old to stay here now alone.—
The baying from the road swerved away out of hearing. Morning sounds, of coughing, wailing babies, and the drumming of water on tin containers, were released. He stood up and put the cup down carefully on the table.
— Wait. — She turned and said something to the young man. He answered with the smouldering obstinacy of adolescence. She spoke once more, and he put his head out of the door. All held the exact position in which the narrow stream of morning sunlight found them; the boy slipped out and closed them into dimness behind him. The woman did not speak while he was away. Darkness danced with the after-vision of the boy’s profile against glare; the waiting was the first atmosphere shared with the one to whom refuge had been given. He could hear them breathing as he breathed.
The son came back surly and said nothing. His mother went up to challenge him face to face. And he answered in monosyllables she drew from him.
— It’s all right now. But you like to run, so run. — He felt she was teasing him, in the relief of tension. But she would not presume to laugh with a white man, her matronly dignity was remote as ever.
He shook hands with the old man, thanking him, thanking them all, awkwardly, effusively — no response, as he included the children, the son and daughter — hearing his own voice as if he were talking to himself.
He opened the door. With crossed arms, she contemplated him. — God bless you.—
The telling of it welled up in his mouth like saliva; he was on the right side, running home to tell what had happened to him. He swallowed and swallowed in urgency, unable to get there fast enough. Now and then his head tossed as he ran; in disbelief. All so quick. A good pace, quiet and even on the soft tarmac, not a soul in sight, and before you have the time to take breath — to prepare, to decide what to do — it happens. Suddenly, this was sensational. That’s how it will happen, always happens everywhere! Keep away. They came over, at him, not after him, no, but making him join them. At first he didn’t know it, but he was racing with them after blood, after the one who was to lie dying in the road. That’s what it really means to be caught up, not to know what you are doing, not to be able to stop, say no! — that awful unimagined state that has been with you all the time. And he had nothing to give the woman, the old man; when he ran, he kept on him only a few silver coins along with his house key in the minute pocket which, like the cushioned pump action of their soles, was a feature of his shoes. Could hardly tip her coins. But if he went back, another time, with say, a hundred rands, fifty rands, would he ever find the shack among so many? Should have asked her where she worked, obviously she must be a domestic or something like that, so that he could have rewarded her properly, found her at her place of employment. Where was it the husband held one of those chains you see before the ramp of a firm’s underground car park? Had she named the street? How shit-scared he must have been (he jeered) not to take in properly what the woman said! She probably saved his life; he felt the euphoria of survival. It lasted through the pacing of half a block. A car with men in golf caps, going to tee off early, passed him, and several joggers, just up, approached and went by with a comradely lift of the hand; he felt that his experience must blaze in his face if only they had known how to look, if only they had learnt.
But don’t exaggerate.
Had his life really been in danger? He could have been killed by a blow to get him out of the way, yes, that sledgehammer — it might have struck a glancing blow. The butcher’s knife, cleaver, whatever the horrible thing was with its sword-point and that woven bracelet like the pretty mats they make and sell on the streets, it could scalp you, open your throat with one swing. But they didn’t even seem to see him. They saw only the one they were after, and it wasn’t him. Under the rise and fall of his feet on the grassy suburban pavement blood drew its pattern on tarmac.
Who knew whether she was telling the truth when she said it was the police who sent them to make trouble?
He read the papers, for all he knew it could have been Inkatha murdering someone from the ANC, it could have been people from the street committees she said the boy belonged to, out to get a local councillor regarded as a government stooge, it could have been ANC people avenging themselves on a police informer. He didn’t know how to read the signs of their particular cause as someone like her would from the rags they had tied round their heads or the kind of weapons they’d improvised for themselves, the cries they chanted. He had to believe her, whatever she’d chosen to tell him. Whatever side she was on — god knows, did she know herself, shut in that hovel, trying to stay alive — she had opened her door and taken him in.
Why?
Why should she have?
God bless you.
Out of Christian caritas? Love — that variety? But he was not welcome in the hovel, she had kept the distaste, the resentment, the unease at his invasion at bay, but herself had little time for his foolish blundering. What do you want to come near this place for. He heard something else: Is there nowhere you think you can’t go, does even this rubbish dump belong to you if you need to come hiding here, saving your skin. And he had shamefully wanted to fling himself upon her, safe, safe, reassured, hidden from the sound and sight of blows and blood as he could be only by one who belonged to the people who produced the murderers and was not a murderer.