Sol, who spent his nights in such talk, could not lean forward in confirmation of points as he wished to, because the yellow chair was one that held its occupant rigidly back in repose, and tipped him out if he tried to make it more accommodating. But his face broadened in the relief of agreement, now and then, and now his lips lifted away from his big, uneven teeth and his mouth opened in a gesture of receptiveness, warm, encouraging. He and Shibalo held one another’s eyes for a few moments, drank the brandy, and felt the comfort and reassurance of an old complementary friendship. When Ida came back with the food they were loud in talk again.
“I don’t want blood! I don’t like blood!”
“… no, be honest, man — what’s the real reason? Why have you stayed with Congress, why have I stayed? No, it’s not because of non-violence—”
“I don’t want blood! I don’t like blood!” Sol got carefully out of his chair and took another brandy; this was one of the interjections he always murmured.
“We want guns, like everyone else. We’re prepared to fight with guns. We’re waiting here for guns, like manna from heaven. We’ve got round to feeling we can’t do anything without guns, isn’t that so? The only difference is that Congress doesn’t say this out loud, and the Africanists do.”
“Wait a moment, wait a sec … we don’t want to have to use guns, that’s the difference, but they don’t see any other way—”
“But we don’t see any other way, either, do we? Isn’t that exactly what we’ve been talking about all this time? We’re a banned organisation, man — you can get arrested tomorrow if you hold up your pants with a Congress badge.”
The young woman cut the bread and the meat. She did not take part in the talk, except to laugh occasionally, but she listened with the air of one who hears her own views expressed, and when she was in other company she always repeated what Shibalo said. She was a nurse, which, along with school-teaching and social welfare work, had been the ambition of most African girls with intelligence and drive above the average until a few years ago; now such girls wanted to be models or actresses. Influenced by them, she dressed in the latest fashion to filter down to mass-production, but had not straightened her hair and wore it grown long into a high bun on top of her head. There was no indication in her face of how old she might be; it was simply a statement of adult womanhood, that would last fresh and firm for a comfortable time. Shibalo had paid a lot of attention to her at a party one night, and then people had begun to ask them to parties together, as a couple. He was always affectionate with her at parties; there was something about her that fitted in with a light mood, that demanded that one should tease her about her gilt choker necklace and put one’s head on her shoulder after too many drinks. She knew that this display was misleading; they were not really a couple, that she could tell, though she had lived with him on and off for a year, and she did the things — like taking his washing away for him — that a casual bed-companion does not do, but that a woman does for her man.
“Ida — you want to sit here?” Sol made as if to get up when she brought him a plate of food. “Stay there, stay there—” she sat on the bed next to Shibalo. She felt very friendly and easy and fond, with Sol; to be one of them produced a welling-up in her, relaxing and secure. If they joked, she felt witty and lolled back on the bed; if they were at each other, hammer and tongs, she was excited; when they spoke of what she thought of as “taking over”, she felt an intoxicating superiority, the stiffness of face of one who has witnessed prophecy.
Sol was made slightly anxious by a certain shift in Shibalo’s thinking that he himself had not caught up with; this was how it occurred to him, but he was also aware that it might mean that Shibalo was moving off, abandoning a position that he, Sol, had thought was as immovable, for both of them, as the earth they stood on. He continued to argue disbelievingly: “You’re not serious about wondering why you’ve stayed with Congress? If you just like to talk, man, then it’s all right.”
Shibalo settled himself quietly and patiently. “I’m used to the people I work with. We’ve gone through a lot together — there’s this business of loyalty, eh?”
“Sure, sure.” Sol was warming, but wary.
“Right. But I didn’t begin to work with Congress as a friendship club, eh? I wanted to work to get things moving for us, eh? So why should I, or anyone else with an eye on the real objective, the only thing that counts, stick with any crowd if I see that some other crowd is getting something done? What does another name and another slogan mean to me? I’ve got no ambitions to climb up a party ladder, Sol. I just want to see the blacks stand up on their hind legs, that’s all. I don’t care if they give the thumbs-up or bow three times to the moon. The chaps in the street have got the right idea, man; I used to get wild when I’d see them join any campaign that looked like scaring the whites. If it was a Congress thing, yes, they were Congress men; if it was a PAC thing, yes, they were Africanists. But why not? I’m not sure I shouldn’t do the same thing.’
“Ah-h, you’re crazy,” Sol said disgustedly; his voice touched upon the idea again, the toe of a boot gingerly up-turning a dubious object. “What do you call that?”
“Guerilla politics, that’s what it is.”
“Again you talk as if there were no principles. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
Shibalo handed the brandy bottle to him. “Good God, Sol, no one’s going to care a damn for our principles in this business, in a hundred years’ time. They’ll simply write it down — they took control at such-and-such-date. They made a go of it, or they made a mess of it.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You used to go on about ends determining means, now you only scream for results. What about the difference in principles between the Africanists and us?”
“There isn’t any in the long run. There won’t be any. They want to get rid of the white man any way they can; Congress wants to submerge him in a non-racial state without cutting his throat first. The Africanists will find it necessary to hang on to the white man and employ him and his cash, Congress will find that he won’t come quietly. See?”
Sol began to laugh with savour at the neatness of it, and they laughed together. He felt that they had landed up side by side on the solid ground of accord, and said again, as they ate, “My God, it is something to feel the whole continent of them free up there — whenever I pick up the paper, man—”
But the death-embracing surrender of his will to paint had given Shibalo, in some unsought exchange, by a law of balance, a firm assurance and detachment in his approach to other things. He had gone through a form of submission so final that he could manage very well without illusions of any kind about the other circumstances of his life. He said serenely, “My brothers. My brothers. I’m not so sure about that.”
Later the two men went out to the house of a third friend. He was out, at the house of a fourth, and so they went on there. It was a night like others before and after, that ended neither late nor early, since no one thought of such conceptions; eventually, no one came in or out any more, and the last knot of talkers dissolved into the dark.