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Authors: Nadine Gordimer
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tarnished mirror. So they met again, over a piece of paper in a café near the lawyerâs office where she worked. It was of course still raining, and he was able to make conversation with his cobbled-together vocabulary in the countryâs language, remarking that you didnât have days on end like this where he came from; thatâs how she learnt: from Africa.
South Africa. Mandela.
The synapses and neurons made the identifying connection in the map of every European mind. Yes, he had picked up something of her language, although the course heâd taken in preparation hadnât proved of much use when he arrived and found himself where everybody spoke it all the time and not in phrase-book style and accent. They laughed together at the way
he
spoke it, a mutual recognition closer, with the flesh-and-bone structure, shining fresh skin, deep-set but frank eyes, before him in place of the image in the tarnished mirror. Blond hairâreal blond, he could tell from experience of his predilection for Nordic types, genuine or chemically concocted (once naked, anyway, they carelessly showed their natural category). She knew little of his language, the few words she remembered, learnt at school. But the other forms of recognition were making communication between them. They began to see each other every day; she would take his calls on her mobile, carried into the corridor or the womenâs room out of earshot of others in thelawyerâs office. There among the wash-basins and toilet booths the rendezvous was decided.
He worked for one of the vast-tentacled international advertising agencies, and had got himself sent to her country by yet another kind of recognition; the directorâs, of his intelligence, adaptability, and sanguine acceptance of the need to learn the language of the country to which he would be sent as one of the co-ordinators of the agencyâs conglomerate hype (global, they called it). He was not a copywriter or designer, he was a businessman who, as he told her, had many friends and contacts of his generation in different enterprises and mightâas they were all on the lookout forâmove on to some other participation in the opportunities of their world. By this he also meant his and hers, both of them young. He saw that world of theirs, though they were personally far apart geographically, turning round technology as the earth revolves round the sun.
She shared an apartment with a girl-friend; the first love-making was in his apartment where he lived, alone, since coming to Germany some months past. He had had his share of affairs at homeâthat surely must be, in view of his composed, confidently attractive face, the lean sexual exuberance of his body, and his quick mind; by lapse of e-mails and calls between them, the affair with someone back there was outworn. The girl met by chance probably had had a few experiments. She spoke of âa boy-friendâ who had emigrated somewhere. Of course she might just be discreet and once they were in their sumptuous throes of love-making, what went before didnât matter. Her flesh was not abundant but alertly responsiveâa surprising find. Heâd thought of German female types as either rather hefty, athletic, or fat.
But it was her tenderness to him, the loving
ness
in the sexuality that made this foreign affair somewhat different from the others, so thatâhe supposed itâs whatâs called falling in loveâthey married. In love. Passed that test. An odd move in his life, far from what would have been expected, among his circle at home. But powerful European countries are accustomed to all sorts of invasions, both belligerent and peaceful, and this foreign one was legal, representing big business, an individual proof of the worldâs acceptance of Germanyâs contrition over the past. He was suitably well received when she took him to her family, and as a welcome novelty among her friends. With
South Africa. Mandela.
The synapses and neurons made the identifying connection in the map of every European mind. Yes, he had picked up something of her language, although the course heâd taken in preparation hadnât proved of much use when he arrived and found himself where everybody spoke it all the time and not in phrase-book style and accent. They laughed together at the way
he
spoke it, a mutual recognition closer, with the flesh-and-bone structure, shining fresh skin, deep-set but frank eyes, before him in place of the image in the tarnished mirror. Blond hairâreal blond, he could tell from experience of his predilection for Nordic types, genuine or chemically concocted (once naked, anyway, they carelessly showed their natural category). She knew little of his language, the few words she remembered, learnt at school. But the other forms of recognition were making communication between them. They began to see each other every day; she would take his calls on her mobile, carried into the corridor or the womenâs room out of earshot of others in thelawyerâs office. There among the wash-basins and toilet booths the rendezvous was decided.
He worked for one of the vast-tentacled international advertising agencies, and had got himself sent to her country by yet another kind of recognition; the directorâs, of his intelligence, adaptability, and sanguine acceptance of the need to learn the language of the country to which he would be sent as one of the co-ordinators of the agencyâs conglomerate hype (global, they called it). He was not a copywriter or designer, he was a businessman who, as he told her, had many friends and contacts of his generation in different enterprises and mightâas they were all on the lookout forâmove on to some other participation in the opportunities of their world. By this he also meant his and hers, both of them young. He saw that world of theirs, though they were personally far apart geographically, turning round technology as the earth revolves round the sun.
She shared an apartment with a girl-friend; the first love-making was in his apartment where he lived, alone, since coming to Germany some months past. He had had his share of affairs at homeâthat surely must be, in view of his composed, confidently attractive face, the lean sexual exuberance of his body, and his quick mind; by lapse of e-mails and calls between them, the affair with someone back there was outworn. The girl met by chance probably had had a few experiments. She spoke of âa boy-friendâ who had emigrated somewhere. Of course she might just be discreet and once they were in their sumptuous throes of love-making, what went before didnât matter. Her flesh was not abundant but alertly responsiveâa surprising find. Heâd thought of German female types as either rather hefty, athletic, or fat.
But it was her tenderness to him, the loving
ness
in the sexuality that made this foreign affair somewhat different from the others, so thatâhe supposed itâs whatâs called falling in loveâthey married. In love. Passed that test. An odd move in his life, far from what would have been expected, among his circle at home. But powerful European countries are accustomed to all sorts of invasions, both belligerent and peaceful, and this foreign one was legal, representing big business, an individual proof of the worldâs acceptance of Germanyâs contrition over the past. He was suitably well received when she took him to her family, and as a welcome novelty among her friends. With
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