You would have thought nothing had happened. We settled into an uncanny sort of normality, an acceptance of the rearrangement of our lives to his convenience. I know for a fact that several times he took my mother to gatherings at the house of some white people where that woman of his was also present. My mother had to sit down and eat with her.
And I have been to where she lives. Where he goes to her. He sent me. Could you believe it?
There was someone who always knew where Sonny was.
The Security Police. He knew that, Hannah knew that. It did not count as witness, as intrusion. The Security Police work secretly as any love affair.
A man who has been convicted of a crime against the State will continue to be watched as long as his life or the State that convicted him lasts; whichever endures the longer. A woman who associates with such a man will be watched. The third presence in the lovers' privacy is the Security Police; anonymous, unseen: a condition of the intimacy of political activists. The men who had taken Sonny away and locked him up in detention, knew. Knew about him. Were in it with him. It was not in their interest to blow this kind of cover. If he had been an important revolutionary figure they (easily) might have arranged with a country hotel to bug the rondavel, and leaked tapes to the Sunday press to smear his character. They could have got the Minister to place a ban on his movements. But they did not, because while he was without restriction, running to the rendezvous of his lady-love, he might also lead them to those of his underground associates still unknown to them.
After what nearly happened that Saturday night (this was the only way he could allow himself to formulate it) Sonny realized that someone else ought to know where he could be found. In case something actually happened. There in the house. But to whom could he go? Whom could he tell, if my daughter is bleeding to death in the bathroom, fetch me from this address? If Aila collapses in that kitchen, if he — Will — gets electrocuted fixing a light-plug, call me from Hannah's bed, close to the earth. He would be driving alone — once it was to the ghettos of the Vaal Triangle, where the community organizations' rent boycott was becoming a major campaign, he was thinking how best to respond to their problems of spontaneous violence against corrupt councillors — and, suddenly, he would have an impulse to lift his hands from the steering-wheel. Let go. The car skidding, careering, turning over and over, taking him. He would gain control of himself in a sweat. Had not let go; had not let his mind swerve back to what might have happened that Saturday night.
Hannah did not know about these moments — it was perhaps the first thing ever he kept from her — but she had the instinct, for her own protection, that he ought to be encouraged to talk about his daughter — Baby. The very name of the girl came awkwardly from him: Hannah saw he was hearing it now as he imagined she must — silly, sugary, cheap lower-class sentimentality of the ignorant poor in the ghetto of a small town where you couldn't even use the library. It embarrassed him to realize, indeed, how stupidly, crassly, the substitute for a name was stuck upon the grown girl. The woman; a woman, now, like Aila and like Hannah. — D'you remember her at all, dancing, the night you were at my house for a party?—
— Of course. — How could she not remember every detail of that party, the second time only that she had seen in their own home the family to which he belonged by right, and when he was still, just out of prison, a materialization she couldn't take her eyes off.
— The party the women arranged, music and so on.—
— Yes, you invited me…—
— I saw the fellows looking at her, you know… the way men look at women, and I looked too and saw her little round backsides, the cheeks, riding up and down in that skirt or dress, whatever it was, and nipples showing under thin stuff as she moved—
— And how fantastically she moved! — Hannah wanted to coax him to laugh with her and accept lightly what he was innocently confessing, that he had been sexually stirred by his daughter.
— That little girl who used to make me ashtrays out of backyard mud although I never smoked. She was a lovely young woman. Even though I say it, she was beautiful, hey, and a lovely expression, too. So full of spirit.—
— But you're talking about her as if she's dead! — Hannah was distressed, strangely laughing. — Sonny, she's alive. It's not 'was'! She is, she is!—
What would I do if I did not have you, Sonny said to Hannah when he was safe, still inside her after love-making — she liked to keep him there, held by her broad thighs that trembled when she walked naked about the room. And tranquilly, because it was all one, in them, they turned from caresses to worried discussion about the action of police agents provocateurs among church groups in the rent boycotts.
There was Will. What would he have done if there hadn't been Will. Only to Will could he find some way of indicating where he could be found if something happened. Like the Security Police, Will would be in on it; Will already was in on the mystery of his absences. Will could not evade being drawn further in.
Sonny had no choice. Needing Hannah.
I went on the motorbike. I had it by then. They gave it to me for my birthday. He said to me with that smile of a loving parent concealing a fine surprise, you can get a licence at sixteen now, can't you. So I knew he was going to buy me a bike. I never asked for it but they gave it to me. With the latest, most expensive helmet for my safety; he must have had to promise my mother that.
I went with the helmet and chin-guard and goggles hiding my face. You can't see the place from the street, where he goes. Dogs at the gate, and a black gardener had to come to let me in; I suppose they wag their tails for someone who comes often, is well known to them by his own scent. There was a big house but that's not where he goes. She lives in a cottage behind trees at the end of the garden. Maybe there's even a private entrance from there I didn't know about, he didn't like to tell me. All open and above-board through the front entrance.
He must have told her, she was expecting me. Oh it's Will, isn't it — as if the helmet and stuff prevented her from recognizing me, from remembering the cinema that time. It also playfully implied, determined to be friendly, that I was rude, not taking the helmet off. So I did. So she could see it was me, Will, yes. I gave her whatever it was he'd sent me with. It was a package, books or something, he told me 'Miss Plowman' needed urgently. — You're the family Mercury now, with that wonderful machine of yours — off you go, son, but don't tear along like a Hell's Angel, hey. — A perfect performance in front of my mother.
This was where he came. It must be familiar as our house to him, where we live now and where we lived when we were in Benoni, because our house is where we are, our furniture, our things, his complete Shakespeare, the smells of my mother's cooking and the flowers she puts on the table. But this isn't like a house at all; well, all right, a cottage, but not even any kind of place where you'd expect a white would live. The screen door full of holes. Bare floor and a huge picture like spilt paint that dazzles your eyes, a word-processor, hi-fi going with organ music, twisted stubs in ashtrays, fruit, packets of bran and wheat-germ, crumpled strings of women's underthings drying on a radiator — and a bed, on the floor. There was the bed, just a very big wide mattress on the floor, covered with some cloth with embroidered elephants and flowers and bits of mirror in the design — the bed, just like that, right there in the room where anybody can walk in, the room where I was standing with my helmet in my hand.