Free Loot by Nadine Gordimer Page A

strongly tipped to be made a Minister in the President’s cabinet reshuffle. So—just that you understand motives. See him from right kind of background perspective we use, you and I—all of us in Agency work. A respect for the others’ mores—traditions. Doesn’t imply you—we—have to adopt them, of course.—
    What Alan Henderson didn’t tell her was that in the conclusion of discussion of the startling proposition with his wife, Flora had brought up another perspective on the future cabinet minister’s proposal to take Roberta Blayne as number two wife. —She’s not the type to go out to attract a man for herself, is she;
this’s a chance with a man who’s somebody, plenty to offer for a woman like her, she’d have a high position, she loves this country, that farm of his, she’d be able to continue her commitment to development with his influence right up top … Not many chances likely to come her way, New York, Geneva … Not so young anymore.—
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    So her colleague the Administrator tacitly understood the rejection she was having to formulate for her lover. She rehearsed to herself in many different, useless ways, how she would have to tell him she couldn’t believe he, so completely in charge of himself, a man of the present, free, could want to dredge up into his life some remnant from the past—how could he not have seen that it was offensive, surely to him as to her; how disguise the aversion.
    What was the protocol for this.
    Then there came to her—Buffalo Mine. How he had received her shame: her taking from him the release of orgasm, blurting the dinner-party story, as if the pleasure were not what her blood-line disqualified her to share, illicit, an orgasm stolen from past betrayal of all that makes up human feeling between people. Every Monday on foot to I. Saretsky every Friday back on foot with the case of whisky head hard as a log. Grandfather’s ‘my man’; her man, making love to her. He had shown no shock; no revulsion as she blubbered out the shame. He calmed her matter-of-factly, how was it—‘It was their tradition’. And now she was primly struggling to conceal how she disdained him for expecting her to accept something he chose from his past; an honour; her ugly past was not his. He absolved her from her burden
of ancestry—it’s got nothing to do with you: she was indicting him for his. It’s accepted, Flora said. Their tradition.
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    Her Administrator had shut the door of his office, once again. —How’s it going?—
    â€”I haven’t found a way yet.—
    â€”Look, I can arrange for you to go back ahead of me, reports—some such—I want headquarters to evaluate with you before I’m debriefed, you can prepare for me, answering their questions and so on, expanding … You could leave right away. Wouldn’t that help?—
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    Of course it would.
    The official car arrived. He came to make love with her and it seemed to her the right ending for both of them. He had withdrawn into his old silent self-composure, awaiting her answer without any mention. When they lay together, afterwards, it was the time, coming out of the consolation offered that she still desired and received him.—I am going back to New York the day after tomorrow.—
    Out of his silence.—You will resign there.—
    â€”No. I have a new posting somewhere.—
    She had not found the right words to explain that love affairs are a cul-de-sac on the marriage map. The shining official car concealed in the yard, the royal coach, had turned into a pumpkin. She was again a member of an aid agency’s changing personnel, walking away barefoot.

VISITING GEORGE

    Y ou remember; we were coming from a conference in that city and I had just noticed we were near the street, the block where the old friends lived. I was thinking—about to say to