Free No Time Like the Present: A Novel by Nadine Gordimer

first name, first names all round, she addresses him formally as she has been inducted since childhood in approaching an elder and anyone of obvious rank; the other siblinghood, of comrades, hasn’t outmoded that for her even while she’s uninhibited as a result of that comradeship.—The majority of the black majority (she underlines the neat significance with drawn breath in tightened nostrils)—I don’t think would want to see traditions made law, certainly not when it comes to property. I mean, there was so little we could own that all white people had a right to, who would want to have in the Constitution the right to evict a woman, hand over a woman’s home to a collateral—a man, of course.—
    It was a diverting contradiction, appreciated by the Senior Counsel and others; that the member of the population from which traditionalists came should speak treason.
    At the end of the trial, which indeed the S.C.’s lead won for the defence, as she thanked him for her benefit of having been allowed to be even a small part of it, he said as if he suddenly had his attention tapped by a detail overlooked—You should be at the Justice Centre. Why don’t you come along and see the director, I’ll have a word with him.—
    This man of her father’s generation, distanced, distinctive by public achievement, recognised in a marginal note of judgement what was for her the fulfilment of something not to talk about even to comrade, confidant, lover. To come out with a claim as a boast. The purpose of being alert—still as a comrade. The possibility of it. Opportunity.
    In her new employment at the Justice Centre Steve lived with her transformation, the growing confidence in the voice, the certainty of gesture, the pleasure of relaxation evident in intervals between concentration on the current work at night preparing précis from notes taken on an advocate’s sessions with the attorneys and, soon, appointed to what she was gifted for: speaking to witnesses to assess what could be expected of them in the dock—coaching was the disallowed description. Whatever was mandated in this aspect of her professional responsibilities, she took it as her responsibility to give the nervous, frightened or angry people understanding of the fears even of this kind of interrogation; hadn’t she known the other, in a prison cell.
    He found Jabu happy; fulfilment, isn’t that what ‘happiness’ is. That he wasn’t responsible for this part of it—component—is of no account; he shared it. It was unexpected when she brought up something that did involve him. They had made love. Whatever the daily apartness of the worlds of work, in identity, the illusion of exalting into one leaves an echo in which anything can be broached.—We should have another child.—
    Heard.
    Hadn’t they decided for good reasons on which they also were at one, their purpose wasn’t to perpetuate the human race, not even in the advancement the mixture of their distinctive bloods did, there were billions of others just as well equipped to breed, billions of women for whom this honourable task was the best they were equipped for. No condescension, discrimination in this fact. Be fruitful. The father’s church said so, probably Jonathan’s Torah said so, the eyes of the women at her home village said so.
    —Sindiswa needs…to be an only child isn’t a good thing.—
    —Sindiswa gets enough companionship. She’s very sociable, school buddies, kids of our neighbours here, in and out.—
    —But they have the same mother and father.—
    —If you’re going to take Silk one day. An advocate with the kind of twenty-four-hour work that means, you know how Bizos and Chaskelson and Moseneke slave but they’ve had wives to stop the squabbles dry the tears and wipe the bottoms—
    Touch of her lip to the crook of his neck, the skin the softest most vulnerable of a man’s body, before the sandpaper of shaved beard begins—unless male lovers find the anus the most,