Free Jump and Other Stories by Nadine Gordimer

her he worked in the kitchens of a smart restaurant—her mother had to be sure a lodger had steady pay before he could be let into the house. Vera saw other foreigners like him about, gathered loosely as if they didn’t know where to go; of course, they didn’t come to the disco and they were not part of the crowd of familiars at the cinema. They were together but looked alone. It was something noticed the way she might notice, without expecting to fathom, the strange expression of a caged animal, far from wherever it belonged.
    She owed him a signal in return for his trustworthiness. Next time they happened to meet in the house she said—I’m Vera.—
    As if he didn’t know, hadn’t heard her mother and father call her. Again he did the right thing, merely nodded politely.
    â€”I’ve never really caught your name.—
    â€”Our names are hard for you, here. Just call me Rad.— His English was stiff, pronounced syllable by syllable in a soft voice.
    â€”So it’s short for something?—
    â€”What is that?—
    â€”A nickname. Bob for Robert.—
    â€”Something like that.—
    She ended this first meeting on a new footing the only way she knew how:—Well, see you later, then—the vaguedismissal used casually among her friends when no such commitment existed. But on a Sunday when she was leaving the house to wander down to see who was gathered at the pub she went up the basement steps and saw that he was in the area garden. He was reading newspapers—three or four of them stacked on the mud-plastered grass at his side. She picked up his name and used it for the first time, easily as a key turning in a greased lock.—Hullo, Rad.—
    He rose from the chair he had brought out from his room.—I hope your mother won’t mind? I wanted to ask, but she’s not at home.—
    â€”Oh no, not Ma, we’ve had that old chair for ages, a bit of fresh air won’t crack it up more than it is already.—
    She stood on the short path, he stood beside the old rattan chair; then sat down again so that she could walk off without giving offence—she left to her friends, he left to his reading.
    She said—I won’t tell.—
    And so it was out, what was between them alone, in the family house. And they laughed, smiled, both of them. She walked over to where he sat.—Got the day off? You work in some restaurant, don’t you, what’s it like?—
    â€”I’m on the evening shift today.—He stayed himself a moment, head on one side, with aloof boredom.—It’s something. Just a job. What you can get.—
    â€”I know. But I suppose working in a restaurant at least the food’s thrown in, as well.—
    He looked out over the railings a moment, away from her.—I don’t eat that food.—
    She began to be overcome by a strong reluctance to go through the gate, round the corner, down the road to The Mitre and the whistles and appreciative pinches which would greet her in her new flowered Bermudas, his black eyes following her all the way, although he’d be readinghis papers with her forgotten. To gain time she looked at the papers. The one in his hand was English. On the others, lying there, she was confronted with a flowing script of tails and gliding flourishes, the secret of somebody else’s language. She could not go to the pub; she could not let him know that was where she was going. The deceptions that did for parents were not for him. But the fact was there was no deception: she
wasn’t
going to the pub, she suddenly wasn’t going.
    She sat down on the motoring section of the English newspaper he’d discarded and crossed her legs in an X from the bare round knees.—Good news from home?—
    He gestured with his foot towards the papers in his secret language; his naked foot was an intimate object, another secret.
    â€”From my home, no good news.—
    She