Free Honorary White by E. R. Braithwaite Page B

me, man. There’s something else you should see!”
    With that he started off down a narrow alleyway between some shacks, not even waiting or looking back to see if I was following him. I hurried after, not daring to risk losing him. He led me beyond the shacks, across an open piece of uneven ground where some kind of dwelling had been bulldozed away, and on to another group of run-down houses, rotting and ready to cave in on themselves. Outside one of these, a very old woman sat in the middle of some cardboard cartons and paper bags filled to bursting with rags. Here my friend stopped and pointed a thin arm.
    â€œLook at her, my friend. She’s too old to clean the white man’s house or mind his children, so she’s discarded, useless as the stinking stuff around her. She can’t pay the miserable rent for that shack, so they’ve thrown her out of it. Look there.”
    He pointed to the heavy padlock on the rickety door. Unimpressed, uncaring, the aged one sat, staring at nothing in particular, her eyes red and rheumy, her lined face set in final resignation, showing neither pain nor anxiety nor interest in whatever the next unhappy step might be.
    â€œWhat will happen to her?” I asked.
    â€œIf she’s lucky she’ll die soon,” he replied, bitterly. “Maybe someone will take her in for the night. There are lots like her, the white man’s garbage. I can show you some more, if you like.”
    â€œNo, thank you.” I was becoming thoroughly irritated with his sneering and his jibes. I’d not created these ugly situations. He’d invited me to come and see, and now he was treating me as if all this was my responsibility.
    â€œWhy don’t you take her in?” I asked him, striking back.
    â€œMe? Take her where? All I have right now is bed space, and I was damned lucky to find that.”
    â€œSo we’ll both walk away from her, won’t we?”
    â€œYes, my friend, we’ll both walk away. But I won’t walk far. I can’t walk far. I’ll always be near enough to see it and hear it and smell it. Every minute of the day it is with me. So I write about it. Me and others like me. We write about the things that hurt us and degrade us, but unlike you, we have no outlets for the things we write. Shit, man, even there we need the white man, and how he exploits our need! But, let’s get the hell out of here, if you’ve had enough.” Again he was smiling.
    â€œI’ve had enough.” In silence we returned to Johannesburg.
    The next afternoon I went to Dorkay House, a center for the arts in downtown Johannesburg, where I had been invited to hear some black musicians give a private performance for a visiting white American impresario. I was there early and wearily walked up six flights of stairs to a narrow room, with a raised platform at one end, in front of which were rows of metal chairs. The small audience, most of whom were already seated when I arrived, was mostly African with a sprinkling of Whites and Indians who all seemed to know one another. Before the performance began they called to each other in familiar terms, the way artists do everywhere asking about mutual friends, their whereabouts, and whether or not they were working.
    The first group to perform, the Batsumi or Hunters, consisted of a flautist, a saxophonist, a pianist, a guitarist, a vocalist who doubled on a huge bongo drum, and two drummers, one who sat enthroned among a glittering assortment of drums and another who beat dexterously on twin, supported kettle drums with padded drumsticks. Two of this group, the kettle drummer and the guitarist, were blind.
    From the moment the performance began, it became evident that this was no ordinary group of men. They seemed to enter an immediate dialogue with each other, the pianist provoking the conversational pattern which the others took up, shaped and shaded as their impulses and instruments dictated. With