Free Life Times by Nadine Gordimer Page A

television?
    â€˜Nothing,’ said Eileen. ‘I’d like a little more wine.’
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    It so happened that a day or two later, Stefan’s business took him to Philadelphia. ‘Don’t forget Carlitta and her husband are staying at the Grand Park,’ Waldeck said.
    â€˜Oh, I’ll find them,’ said Stefan.
    But when he came back to New York and dined with his wife, Waldeck and Eileen the same night, he seemed entirely to have forgotten his expressed intention. ‘I had a hell of a job dodging that Edgar Hicks,’ he said, by the way. ‘Wherever I went I seemed to bump into that Elk convention. They were everywhere. Every time I saw a panama hat with a paisley band I had to double on my tracks and go the other way. Once he nearly saw me. I just managed to squeeze into an elevator in time.’
    And they all laughed, as if they had just managed it, too.

Which New Era Would That Be?
    J ake Alexander, a big, fat coloured man, half Scottish, half
    African, was shaking a large pan of frying bacon on the gas stove in the back room of his Johannesburg printing shop when he became aware that someone was knocking on the door at the front of the shop. The sizzling fat and the voices of the five men in the back room with him almost blocked out sounds from without, and the knocking was of the steady kind that might have been going on for quite a few minutes. He lifted the pan off the flame with one hand and with the other made an impatient silencing gesture, directed at the bacon as well as the voices. Interpreting the movement as one of caution, the men hurriedly picked up the tumblers and cups in which they had been taking their end-of-the-day brandy at their ease, and tossed the last of it down. Little yellow Klaas, whose hair was like ginger-coloured wire wool, stacked the cups and glasses swiftly and hid them behind the dirty curtain that covered a row of shelves.
    â€˜Who’s that?’ yelled Jake, wiping his greasy hands down his pants.
    There was a sharp and playful tattoo, followed by an English voice: ‘Me – Alister. For heaven’s sake, Jake!’
    The fat man put the pan back on the flame and tramped through the dark shop, past the idle presses, to the door, and flung it open. ‘Mr Halford!’ he said. ‘Well, good to see you. Come in, man. In the back there, you can’t hear a thing.’ A young Englishman with gentle eyes, a stern mouth and flat, colourless hair, which grew in an untidy, confused spiral from a double crown, stepped back to allow a young woman to enter ahead of him. Before he could introduce her, she held out her hand to Jake, smiling, and shook his firmly. ‘Good evening. Jennifer Tetzel,’ she said.
    â€˜Jennifer, this is Jake Alexander,’ the young man managed to get in, over her shoulder.
    The two had entered the building from the street through an archway lettered NEW ERA BUILDING. ‘Which new era would that be?’ the young woman had wondered aloud, brightly, while they were waiting in the dim hallway for the door to be opened, and Alister Halford had not known whether the reference was to the discovery of deep-level gold mining that had saved Johannesburg from the ephemeral fate of a mining camp in the nineties, or to the optimism after the settlement of labour troubles in the twenties, or to the recovery after the world went off the gold standard in the thirties – really, one had no idea of the age of these buildings in this run-down end of the town. Now, coming in out of the deserted hallway gloom, which smelled of dust and rotting wood – the smell of waiting – they were met by the live, cold tang of ink and the homely, lazy odour of bacon fat – the smell of acceptance. There was not much light in the deserted workshop. The host blundered to the wall and switched on a bright naked bulb, up in the ceiling. The three stood blinking at one another for a moment: a coloured man with the