The Pickup Part 3

Don't be too sure you know what's to come, that set struck and rebuilt for the same scene every Sunday all over The Suburbs. These guests are not exposed, in every sense, half-clad to the sun on plastic chairs round a swimming pool, her father is not bending a belly over grilling meat. This is a different level of suburban entertaining. The guests are on a cool terrace opening from a living-room that leads through arch-ways to other reception rooms of undefined function (to ac-commodate parties?), and the cushioned chaises longues and flower arrangements are an extension rather than a break from the formal comforts, mirrored bouquets and paintings in the rooms. The food, already set out by the time the daughter of the house arrives, is the cold poached Norwe-gian salmon with sauces and kaleidoscope-bright salads that Danielle has taught the cook to produce perfectly. The margaritas (host's speciality) have their rime of salt and the pewter beer mugs and wine gla.s.ses are misted by contrast of temperature between the warm day and their chilled contents. It is all very pleasant, the offering of this kind of Sunday make no mistake about it; Julie comes upon it as always: sinking into a familiar dismay. But he is at her side, one of those invisible shields that turn aside arrows and keep the bearer intact.

When her father was introduced to her Someone there was across his face a fleeting moment of incomprehension of the name, quickly dismissed by good manners and a handshake.

What was the immediate register? Black*or some sort of black. But what she read into this was quickly confused by what she had not noticed*there already was a black couple among the guests*amazing: the innovation showed how long it must have been since she came to one of the Sunday lunch parties in that house Nigel Ackroyd Summers had built for his Danielle. Her father's pragmatic self-a.s.surance knew easily how to deal with half-grasped names now common to the infiltration of the business and professional community by those who bore them. She might have realized by now that her father, as an investment banker in this era of expanding international financial opportunities and the hand-over-list of black political power on the way to financial power at home, must have to add such names to the guest lists for a balance of his contacts. He let her complete the introductions: *This is my daughter Julie, and her friend ...*

It was the name that was not his name that he responded to.

There was the bob this-side-and-that against her cheek that Danielle would have given without noticing, if she had a figure from a shop window placed before her for greeting, and then she turned to whoever it was Julie had brought along: her welcoming upward tilt of the head and smile. Either no reaction other than hostessly: or more likely one of no surprise that the girl would turn up with what was no doubt the latest wearying ploy to distance herself from her father.

The Someone Julie produced smiled back, and this convention matched that which each one had at hand, in the reflex, purely aesthetical, sincerity irrelevant, the facility of a particularly beautiful transformation of the visage. (He smiled at Julie, out of his reserve, in the sombre greasy shades of the garage, or was it in the street, that first time.) And Danielle*

her smile was a kind of personal announcement of her beauty. She was beautiful; trust the father for that. Her social intelligence was well managed to suggest, to anyone able to appreciate this, that her real intelligence went drier and deeper. Her stepdaughter saw her, as so often, drawing away with the bait of some flattering request a female guest from a man being bored by chatter on matters the poor thing knew nothing about; moving with a sway of her graceful backside (she had been an actress, interpreter of sophisticated comedies set in London, Paris or New York, out-dated now by the changes that had also changed her guest list) as she mingled the guests like the deft shuffle of a pack of cards, slipping in a remark here and there (... I want you to come and tell that amazing ...) particularly among the men, to show that she read the newspapers, was privy to gossip about entrepreneurs and politicians; picking up, among the usual three or four women whom nothing could induce to leave their huddle, variations on domestic anecdotes, and teasing an unsuspected elderly feminist who suddenly stood, gla.s.s in hand, to heckle two males who were enjoying men-talk witticisms about women members on their Board.

Apart from replenishing his rounds of margaritas, her father left this general company to his Danielle. He and what must be the princ.i.p.al guests he was cultivating (his daughter believes she knows him well) were gathered round the issues of the day, the week; for her. their lives were always in control, these people*talk around her, 'buying into futures'

(whatever that might be) was a mastery they took, from the immediate present, of what was to come: the future, of which any control for the Someone beside her did not exist. The emanation of his presence, bodily warmth and breath, was merely a haze which hid him from them; their reality did not know of his existence.

*Gold ... hardly the issue any more. When you think of the crisis, nearly floored us not so long ago ... first London sales that sent the market crashing ... *

*a full vault somewhere doesn't earn anything*

*well exactly. Wasting a.s.set. For any country. Sell it, sell, sell for dollars deutschmarks whathaveyou and buy blue-chip stocks. a.s.sets must earn, law of survival, ay!*

*pretty sure AngloGold's going to reduce its forward hedge position within a year ... more than fifty percent of production's probably there, with a big drop likely in the physical market*

*thirty-three thousand tons of the bright stuff in the vaults*

*Shift over and make room for platinum, wha'd you think*

*No profitable future in mining gold here, anyway*

*all that outcry about robbing the poor of their jobs, killing the industry*the unions, the government must face facts*economics of the past don't work, unemployments not going to be solved by shoring up an industry that's lost its place in terms of global finance. It's the end of an old industrial era, not just something on a calendar*

*With an increase in operative efficiencies some mines*

*strikes? Huge labour problems?*

*Look, it was a bad day, sector down twenty-three percent*

*relief buying, block traders*

*I don't know ... pretty broad-based recovery, a dedicated programme of expansion ... chromium ...

*software*more hostile take-over bids*

*oh and more unbundling coming, you'll see*

*You must have at least a whole day for Ellora and Ajanta even though the road, my G.o.d. you can't believe your bones won't rattle apart.* A counterpoint of voices was exchanging enthusiasm about a holiday in India; as if she had spied a familiar artifact or perhaps out of a well-intentioned move to draw into conversation someone who did not seem to be heard anywhere in the company, a woman wearing individual handcuffs of silver bangles turned, jangling, to speak to the stranger.

*I long to go again, can't explain, so belonging there, I think I'm some sort of old soul who once had a previous existence ... I suppose you were born here, but your ancestors ... have you ever been home to India?*

*I'm not Indian.*

He doesn't offer an ident.i.ty. She jerks her head in dismissive apology (if that's what's called for) and makes some remark about the delicious food: *I m on my way for seconds of Danielle's fish.* The set of her back is the conclusion: some sort of Arab, then.

*but when the Dow and Nasdaq differ significantly*

*a twenty-one percent rise in headline earnings, four billion*

*ah but that's well below expectations*

*how'd the Minister put it*'toughing it out against inflation'*I mean three and six percent as a test case at the whim of the global financial system*

*how to hammer into their thick heads ... their survival, privatizations the only answer, when a service must make profit it's made to work cost-efficiently, and that's when the public gets what it needs*

*I have a hunch, everyone rushing in, it's going to boom or bust with IT*

*our company's been reaping the benefit of rising exports in base metals and chemicals, pretty satisfying*

*look, nothing*zero* nada will happen unless the Reserve Bank*

The other black man among the guests was sitting forward in his chair, palms on knees. *Ah-heh ... I don't dispute diversification, no no not at all. But our real problem is that there is not enough venture capital. Not enough in equities.*

The Pickup *no question, global buffeting has queered our pitch for growth in many ways, currency down-down, oil prices up-up*

*turnover more than thirteen billion, futures dominat-ing*

The enthusiastic interruption by the guest returned from India has deflected Julies companion's attention only momentarily; his reply a polite aside. She watches how he listens to this intimate language of money alertly and intently*as he never listens at the EL-AY Cafe; always absent, elsewhere, entering whatever discussion only now and then, when confronted. She is overcome by embarra.s.sment*what is he thinking, of these people*she is responsible for whatever that may be. She's responsible for them.

Suddenly she has left, through the living-room, through the shadowy indoors and up the staircase.

But it is another house she's running away to hide in; she has never lived in this one. This is not the upstairs retreat of the house where she was a child. Each room she looks into up there*no one of them is the room that was hers, with the adolescent posters of film stars and on the bed the worn plush panda her father bought for her once on an airport. It is not that house she is wandering, pausing, listening to herself. The shame of being ashamed of them; the shame of him seeing what she was, is; as he must be what he is, away beyond the dim underworld of the garage, the outhouse granted him, the anonymous name she introduced him by, his being in the village where the desert begins near your house. Rejection implies hidden*her rejection hid this origin of hers now expansively revealed before him, laid out like the margaritas and the wine and the composed still-life of the fish-platter, salads and desserts. She blunders to one of the bathrooms; but cannot succeed in retching to humiliate herself.

*Enjoying yourself, sweetheart*it's an order to settle down again, after wherever she disappeared to, from her father who is standing up apparently about to propose a toast.

*We're not going to weep and implore don't leave us, we're not even going to complain about being deserted, but we do want to tell you we'll get flabby on the squash court without your smashing serve, Adrian, not to mention the darts with which you hit*infallibly, you shrewdy*predic-tion in the rise of interest rates and fiscal matters. Always been there for us before the tax man cometh ... and Gillie, her open house down at the coast in summer, her open heart ... Danielle and I have brought friends together just to wish you enormous luck and happiness, may you triumph over Down Under, Adrian, with the huge expansion in relocation of your interests, this splendid recognition of your global-cla.s.s expertise the communications giants have had the good fortune to take advantage of. You don't need any advice*

just don't eat kangaroo meat if it's patriotically served at Aussie corporate dinners, that's strictly for Gillie's two lab-radors I hear she's taking with you ...*

With laughter and clinking of gla.s.ses the talk is of Australia, in place of Cisco Systems, gold or India. The women show appropriate interest in the house the emigrants will choose, suburban or out-of-town, lovely climate anyway. The man explains that he has a complete set-up ready*excellent Australian staff chosen by himself on preparatory visits.

*You'll perhaps not be surprised to hear of the exception, my old driver*Festus, remember? Yes*his wife died recently, he wants to try a new life, he says, so he's being relocated with anything else we feel inclined to pack up.*

The young foreigner (coloured, or whatever he is) moves from Nigel Summers daughter's protection into the general exchange.

*Was it easy to get entry?*

n.o.body must laugh at this: the idea that a man of such means and standing would not be an a.s.set to any country.

The executive director of a world-wide website network, kindly, only smiles, gives a brief a.s.suring movement, the chin and lower lip pursing, at the naivety.

The foreigner looks back from a no-entry cave of black eyes: *I don't mean you. I mean your driver.*

*Oh I left that to my colleague here, Hamilton*Mr Motsamai. Hamilton's a wizard, he knows exactly what one has to get together, whom to approach, doc.u.ments and so forth.

Bureaucratic stuff. It's been tremendously useful, in our oper-ation here, to have a top lawyer on the Management Board, a bonus quite apart from his invaluable financial nous, of course*

The voice was raised for the benefit of the compliment to reach the ears of Mr Motsamai but he was too centred in other animated company to hear it above his own ba.s.s.

Glances turned to place the one so favoured and a woman pleased to be in the know offered an aside. *That's the black lawyer who saved the son of the Summers' great friends.

Such nice people, awful affair. Got him off with only seven years for that ghastly murder a few years ago*the son shot the h.o.m.os.e.xual who seduced his girl, and he'd had an affair with him, himself. Could have been life in prison.*

'Relocate' they say. The couple are 'relocating'.

If one were to overhear this*do they know what they're talking about?

When in doubt go to the dictionary.

'Locate: to discover the exact locality of a person or thing; to enter, take possession of.'

To discover the exact location of a 'thing' is a simple matter of factual research. To discover the exact location of a person: where to locate the self?

To take possession of*a land-claim, a gold mine, etc.?

The land-claim, the gold mine*the clever lawyer who's just been praised can tell how to go about taking possession of the land, the gold mine, (if it's worth possessing at all according to present inside information) may be gained by a take-over or merger. To discover and take over possession of oneself, is that secretly the meaning of 'relocation' as it is shaped by the tongue and lips in subst.i.tution for 'immigration?

Relocate they're saying. It's the current euphemism for pulling up anchor and going somewhere else, either perforce or because of the constrictions of poverty or politics, or by choice of ambition and belief that there's an even more privileged life, safe from the pitchforks and AK-47s of the rebellious poor and the handguns of the criminals. It's riot a matter of unpacking furniture in new premises. Some of the dictionary definitions of the root word locate' give away the inexpressible yearning that cannot be explained by ambition, privilege, or even fear of others. Promised land, an Australia, if you like.

A farewell is also a celebration of immigration as a human solution. No-one here brings to mind it's not the first time. Giles Yelverton. Hein Straus. Mario Marini. Debby and Glen Horwitz. Top (nickname) Ivanovic, Sandy and Alison McLeod. Owen Williams. Danielle (nee Le Sueur) and Nigel Ackroyd Summers and his daughter Julie. Generations have buried this category of theirs along with the grandfathers but all these are immigrants by descent. Only the lawyer Motsamai, among them, is the exception. He was here: he is here: a possession of self. Perhaps. Lawyer with the triumph of famous cases behind him, turned financier, what he has become must be what he wishes to be; his name remains in unchanged ident.i.ty with where his life began and continues to be lived.

The feted couple are about to be immigrants. Sitting among the gathering Julie is seeing the couple as those*her father's kind of people*who may move about the world welcome everywhere, as they please, while someone has to live disguised as a grease-monkey without a name.

Her father appeared as they walked towards her car. They already had said their obligatory goodbyes. He halted her a moment with a staying gesture barely touching her shoulder.

She turned to meet a face restored from childhood. *You're all right?* The voice for her alone. And in the moment that would instantly seem as if it never happened, there was in her returning gaze, for him only, the understanding that she was asking the same: about him, her father, that there was between them this question to be shared, to be asked of him, his life, too.

That Sunday ended. There never need be another; he should be convinced, now. Her mother lives in California; that introduction, if he thought it necessary, would take place sometime if she accompanied her husband to his casino investments back in this country. That would not add much; all there was to tell him, confess, had been shown before him today. In the car he had found for her, going home to her cottage, they were silent, needing rest. She was grateful he said nothing about the experience; not yet. She placed her palm on his thigh and he took a hand off the wheel and touched hers lightly, returning his hand to the business of driving.

In her place*their place*she stood a moment almost giddily and looked at him, an a.s.sertion of her reality, before her. He was glancing about the small all-purpose room with its three chairs, table to eat off, bed to receive them, unmade from the morning, as if looking for somewhere to place himself.

Absolutely stuffed with all that food. What about you?

Something to drink? Tea?

He lifted a hand*no, no. He let himself down spread-eagled on his back, on the bed. She followed his eyes round the room to discover what he was planning to say: then she went over and sat on the bed. And twisted her body to lean and kiss him, on the forehead and then, tentatively, on the mouth. She was at once heated, like a gross blush all over her body and face, by a fierce desire, which she was at pains to conceal, folding away her hands that urged to thrust down over the flat dark-haired belly that she knew under his pants.

Interesting people there. They make a success.

Those were the words he was looking for round the room.

The wonderful desire drained from her instantly.

They'd stamp on one another's heads to make it.

The doc.u.ment must have been lying on somebody's desk, that weekend. Or maybe in the post office from where whatever mail he received was to be delivered in the name that was supposed to be his, care of the garage that was supposed to be his only address. She was to visualize this closed and deserted Sunday post office, uselessly, afterwards, a daymare in sunlight, a conjuring up of foreboding in the dark bed at night. To dignify the piece of paper as a 'doc.u.ment' was more than the brusque demand it made in the guise of citations from this law and that, this paragraph of that section, as promulgated on one date or another. It had come to the notice of the Department of Home Affairs that (his real name) was living at the above address under the alias (the name the grease-monkey answered to) in contravention of the termination of his permit of such-and-such a date to reside in the Republic. This was a criminal offence (paragraph, section of law) and he was therefore duly informed that he must depart within 14 days or face charges and deportation to his country of origin.

These letters that come unstamped. Official Business. She has never received one; her income tax papers, a citizen's routine fiscal matters, go to her family's accountants. He came to the cottage still in his dirty overalls, carrying this*thing. The envelope had been raggedly torn*he knows what to expect from such missives. He had read the news and come just as he was from among the eviscerated cars and the amplified pop music in the garage. *Here it is.

She had almost forgotten; the months that had pa.s.sed since she bought the car he found for her, his coming home to her every evening, the night club jaunts with the friends from The Table, the weekends away in the veld, lying side by side in his silence, the excitement and following peace of love-making, nights and early mornings*these had lulled her.

These (what were those lines that came back to her) postponed the future ... leaving everything in its present state.

She sat suddenly on their bed to read the thing over again.

He stood in the room as if he were already the stranger ejected from it. And so she wept and flung herself at him and he had no rea.s.surance for her in the arms that came about her. They were unsteady on their feet. She struggled free and drew up the piece of paper. She took him by the hand for them to sit and read it over again, together. But he sat beside her, lifted his shoulders and let them fall, did not follow the lines with her. He knows the form, the content, the phraseol-ogy; it is the form of the world's communication with him.

She looks for loopholes, for double meanings that might be deciphered to advantage, that he knows are all stopped up, are all unambiguous. Out. Get out. Out.

Then she became angry. Who told them? How did they find out? After how long? How long? Two years*

Two years and some months.

Who? But who would do it, what for?

Anyone. Someone who wants my- job, maybe. Yes. Why not.

Why not! What harm do you do anybody, what did you take away from anybody, that lousy job and a shed to live in!

Julie. Somebody who's here in his own place.

And now his eyes were penetrating as searchlights seeking her out, his lips were drawn back in violent pain in place of that beautiful curved smile. Even this I'm wearing, this dirty ... even whatyoucallit, a shed, a corner in the street to sleep in, that's his, not mine. That's how it is. Whatever I have is his.

A gust of what was unknown between them blew them apart. In distress she wanted somehow to reach and grapple with him as he was borne away, as she was borne away.

Why do you take it like this! What are you going to do about it! There must be something*protest, apply*this Home Affairs place, can't you go to them right away, tomor-row morning*how can you just*

Leave me, leave me: he knows that is what this girl is really saying; to her*of course*expulsion means she loses her lover, this bed will be empty, at least until*she's free, secure and free, she finds another lover. To calm her*and himself: I go there. Nothing will be done. They'll look up the other paper from nearly one year and a half. They know I was supposed to get out then.

So you knew this would happen. Even after so long.

I knew, yes. I thought perhaps, they lost the paper, maybe they have so many papers of people like me. they could forget me. That was my chance. That's how it is. I could go there to them, but what for. It will be better if I do nothing, I didn't get the letter. I'm not at the garage any more, I'm somewhere ...

Well they don't know you're here with me. You don't live at that address, that's something.

I think they'll know.

That horrible man at the garage! He's bad news, he's not for you, he's not even allowed to be in the country. What about your job? Even if no records are kept ... you'd have to disappear from that as well ...