Free A Sport of Nature by Nadine Gordimer Page B

finally went away, her sisters came in and packed up her possessions as if she were dead. Len had wanted them given to charity. Pauline and Olga took some souvenirs of the life Ruthie had abandoned; might she not come back for them some day?
    Their sister was not dead; here was her daughter; maybe she had come for them.
    The box was padded and covered with water-marked taffeta that buzzed under the girl’s drawn fingernail like breath over a paper-covered comb. There were spill-stains and a seal—rednail-varnish dried stony. Pauline sat on the bed beside Hillela, a fellow schoolgirl, while they picked about together in the box. Pauline explained tarnished metal wings and crowns from the war. —Insignia. Our boyfriends sent them, we had pins attached at the back so we could wear them as brooches. We were so ignorant and silly. And so far from the war. No air raids, no blackout. No rationing. No brothers. There’s something about a colonial society that trivialises. Often I think: the fact that civilians here missed out the war has got something to do with whites feeling they can avoid the reality of the other experience, too. Even though that’s all round them. Being black, living as blacks have to—it’s a misfortune that happens to somebody else … oh what’s this? Old bus tickets … we used to live in Mountain View, one time.—
    There was an autograph book with gilded edges: —‘Speech is silver, Silence is golden’—that was contributed by a teacher, for sure, and what about this one, ‘When in this book you look, and on this page you frown, think of the friend who spoilt it, by writing upside-down’. We kids didn’t think anything could be wittier.—
    A small box within the box held a doll’s comb and hair-rollers. —Oh for her Shirley Temple doll, I remember, she wouldn’t let me touch its hair—
    Hillela found a photograph.
    Pauline looked from the photograph to her, from her to the photograph.
    â€”That’s you, Hillela, that’s you.—
    A little girl whose stomach pushes up her dress stands in a public playground before a seesaw and swings. The shadow of palm fronds lies on the ground. Her long hair is rumpled into a topknot and sand shows in matt swathes clinging to her stumpy, baby legs.
    â€”Where was I?—
    â€”Oh at the sea.—
    â€”Is it Lourenço Marques?— Hillela was looking for landmarks in a tourist’s amateur focus where towers tilt and historic features are cut off.
    Olga explained sexual intercourse when the time came for that; now it was Pauline’s turn to find her appropriate moment.
    â€”Yes. Yes. It must have been Lourenço Marques.—
    Pauline had evidence other than the shadow of a palm tree. —My sister went on a holiday with you to Lourenço Marques when you were two, and it’s not quite the way they’ve told you … if they’ve told you anything. She’s quite unlike me in most ways, but I understand her. You see, she had been handed over from our father to Len, there were his mother and aunts watching her waist to see if she was going to be pregnant, as she should be, in the first year. They were an orthodox Jewish family—oh it’s only thanks to Ruthie, whose name poor old Len never speaks, that he’s been freed to marry his little Cockney waitress! There were the family dinners on Friday nights, the cake sales for Zionist funds, and especially the same old parties—weddings, barmitzvahs; those tribal Jews don’t know what it is to enjoy themselves spontaneously. Ruthie drank whisky and other nice young Jewish wives didn’t, Ruthie danced as if she were not married, with the prospective husbands of other girls. She went on holiday to Lourenço Marques and she fell in love, yes—but it was with what she suddenly imagined real life to be. She fell in love with that wailing
fado
, she wanted passion and