Free Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black by Nadine Gordimer Page B

her butts. He’s challenging a reminiscence of an incident in the friends’ circle his neighbour is recounting, flourishing loudly. All around the wife are references back and forth, a personal lingo—every clique has this, out of common experience. It was the same, among her friends in that past life in Germany. Jokes you don’t understand even if you know the words; understand only if you’re aware what, who’s being sent up. She doesn’t know, either, the affectionate, patronising words, phrases, that are the means of expression of people who adapt and mix languages, exclamations, word-combinations in some sort of English that isn’t the usage of educated people like themselves. There are so many languages in this country of theirs that his friends don’t speak, but find it amusing to bring the flavours of into their own with the odd word or expression; so much more earthy, claiming an identity with their country as it is, now. Anecdotes are being argued—interruptions flying back and forth as voices amplify over re-filled glasses.
    . . . so
they threw him with a stone
, right?—the director’s office,
nogal
. . .
    . . .
In your face
. That’s her always . . .
Hai! Hamba kahle . . .
    . . .
Awesome!
Something to do with a sports event or, once, a dessert someone made? They use the word often in talk of many different kinds; she’s looked it up in a dictionary but there it means ‘inspiring awe, an emotion of mingled reverence, dread and wonder’. And there are forms of address within the circle borrowed from other groups, other situations and experiences they now share. Someone calls out—
Chief
, I want to ask you something—when neither the speaker nor the pal hailed, white or black (for the party is mixed) is tribal—as she knows the title to be, whether in Indonesia, Central America, Africa, anywhere she could think of. Some address one another as
My China
. How is she to know this is some comradely endearment, cockney rhyming slang—‘my mate, my china plate’—somehow appropriated during the days of apartheid’s army camps.
    Smiling, silent; to be there with him is enough.
    The party becomes a contest between him and the woman who sits between them. Each remembers, insists on a different version of what the incident was.
    â€”You’re confounding it with that time everyone was shagging in the bushes!—
    â€”Well, you would be reliable about
that
—
    â€”Listen, listen, listen to me!— He slaps his arm round the back of her neck, under the hair she’s flung up, laughing emphasis. She puts a hand on his thigh: —
You
never listen—
    It’s a wrestling match of words that come from the past, with touch that comes from the past. The hand stays on him. Then he snatches it up palm to palm, shaking it to contradict what she’s jeering, laughing close to his face and drowning out the calls of others. —O-O-O you were still in
kort broek
, My China! Loverboy—you remember Isabella that time water skiing? Kama Sutra warns against games under water—
    â€”No ways! You’re the one to talk—also did some deep-diving in search of marine life,
ek sê
. No-oo,
kahle-kahle
was my line!—
    â€”And what happened to your great fancy from where was it, Finland. That Easter. Well why not—whatever you did’s politically correct with me, they say the grave’s a fine and private place but no
okes
do there embrace.— Among the well-read of the friends this adaptation of Marvell was uproariously appreciated.
    She was alone and laughed—she did not know what at. She sat beside the woman and her husband who were hugging, celebrating each other in the easy way of those who have old connections of intimacy encoded in exchanges of a mother tongue, released by wine and a good time had by all. She laughed when everyone else did. And