Free Jump and Other Stories by Nadine Gordimer Page A

understood this must be some business about politics, over there—she was in awe and ignorance of politics, nothing to do with her.—So that’s why you went away.—
    He didn’t need to answer.
    â€”You know, I can’t imagine going away.—
    â€”You don’t want to leave your friends.—
    She caught the allusion, pulled a childish face, dismissing them.—Mum and Dad… everything.—
    He nodded, as if in sympathy for her imagined loss, but made no admission of what must be his own.
    â€”Though I’m mad keen to travel. I mean, that’s my idea, taking this job. Seeing other places—just visiting, you know. If I make myself capable and that, I might get the chance. There’s one secretary in our offices who goes everywhere with her boss, she brings us all back souvenirs, she’s very generous.—
    â€”You want to see the world. But now your friends are waiting for you—
    She shook off the insistence with a laugh.—And you want to go home!—
    â€”No.—He looked at her with the distant expression of an adult before the innocence of a child.—Not yet.—
    The authority of his mood over hers, that had been established in the kitchen that time, was there. She was hesitant and humble rather than flirtatious when she changed the subject.—Shall we have—will you have some tea if I make it? Is it all right?—He’d never eaten in the house; perhaps the family’s food and drink were taboo for him in his religion, like the stuff he could have eaten free in the restaurant.
    He smiled.—Yes it’s all right.—And he got up and padded along behind her on his slim feet to the kitchen. As with a wipe over the clean surfaces of her mother’s sink and table, the other time in the kitchen was cleared by ordinary business about brewing tea, putting out cups. She set him to cut the gingerbread:—Go on, try it, it’s my mother’s homemade.—She watched with an anxious smile, curiosity, while his beautiful teeth broke into its crumbling softness. He nodded, granting grave approval with a full mouth. She mimicked him, nodding and smiling; and, like a doe approaching a leaf, she took from his hand the fragrant slice with the semicircle marked by his teeth, and took a bite out of it.
    Vera didn’t go to the pub any more. At first they came to look for her—her chums, her mates—and nobody believed her excuses when she wouldn’t come along withthem. She hung about the house on Sundays, helping her mother.—Have you had a tiff or something?—
    As she always told her bosom friends, she was lucky with her kind of mother, not strict and suspicious like some.—No, Ma. They’re okay, but it’s always the same thing, same things to say, every weekend.—
    â€”Well… shows you’re growing up, moving on—it’s natural. You’ll find new friends, more interesting, more your type.—
    Vera listened to hear if he was in his room or had had to go to work—his shifts at the restaurant, she had learnt from timing his presence and absences, were irregular. He was very quiet, didn’t play a radio or cassettes but she always could feel if he was there, in his room. That summer was a real summer for once; if he was off shift he would bring the old rattan chair into the garden and read, or stretch out his legs and lie back with his face lifted to the humid sun. He must be thinking of where he came from; very hot, she imagined it, desert and thickly-white cubes of houses with palm trees. She went out with a rug—nothing unusual about wanting to sunbathe in your own area garden—and chatted to him as if just because he happened to be there. She watched his eyes travelling from right to left along the scrolling print of his newspapers, and when he paused, yawned, rested his head and closed his lids against the light, could ask him about home—his home.