Read Online None to Accompany Me by Nadine Gordimer - Free Book Online

training for a professional career; a stage when it is assumed the youngster has as yet no responsibilities, has emerged from school, free, to a few years of chasing girls and enjoying himself with his male peers.
Starting out in life
, the saying goes. But of course this one’s start had been delayed so long, he had queued up unable to get into schools, dropped out into political action, spent four years on Robben Island, that before he could start on the lowest rank of a career he had acquired the responsibilities of maturity. Oupa was a man, not a boy. A burdened man, at the same time as he was the Foundation’s bright protégé. For him the business of growing up had not been, could not be, followed in recognized chronology. Of course Oupa had a wife, somewhere, of course he had children. His decent salary was diminished by the rent, the food, the clothing to be provided out of sight, for the anachronism of his life. The wife and children lived in another part of the country, with relatives who were dumped by the Government in some resettlement area. The eager apprentice was in fact an adult already trapped by adult desires, conflicts and responsibilities.
    The Foundation was more than tolerant of the time he took off from work to find a place, a bachelor home among them in what had been the streets where only whites could live. They feared for him on his daily journeys to and from Soweto by train; he could be knifed by gangsters or thrown out of the window to his death by political thugs. Mrs Stark was remiss inbeing too busy, at the time, to telephone around among friends who might know of vacancies or have influence with estate agents who were wary about letting to blacks; it was someone else in the office who found a lead that resulted in the young colleague getting what he wanted. He was elated, although the rent was too high for him to afford; untroubled, although he had signed a lease restricting occupancy to two people, and he was going to split the rent by sharing the place with a couple and their two children.
    Oupa planned a house-warming for everyone from the Foundation. Mrs Stark, to compensate for not having been any help to him in finding somewhere to live, offered to contribute homemade snacks and left with him a little early on a Friday afternoon to help with preparations.
    â€”Where do we go?— Oupa had mentioned enthusiastically to everyone an area where there were numerous apartment buildings but had given no further details. He named a street and chattered on. —It’s an old building, man, but that’s why it’s so nice, big rooms and everything. Here we are—here it is. ‘Delville Wood.’ (Look at that real marble entrance!) Something to do with a war, isn’t it?—
    The car came to a standstill neatly against the kerb. —Delville Wood.— Walking up the steps under packages loaded between them, Mrs Stark turned to him, an odd smile accompanying the banal scrap of information she was giving. —Yes, it’s a battle. Where it happened.—
    He thought there was some unhappy connection with the name he’d ignorantly blundered on. —Someone you knew died there?—
    But she laughed. —That war took place before I was born.—
    He led her along red-polished corridors. Her eyes counted off the numbered doors as they passed.
    â€”That’s it!—
    In his proud moment, she pronounced before his doorway: —One-Twenty-One.—
    He rapped zestfully on the number and echoed her. —One-Twenty-One Delville Wood.—
    In the living-room two junk-shop chairs covered with nylon velvet shaved by wear, a one-legged stand topped with a fancy copper ashtray, and an old box trunk covered with a piece of African cloth. Everything faced the glaucous giant eye of the television set.
    â€”Of course it’s not fixed up yet. Pictures and so on. I need a desk and something for my books. I’m going to do a lot of work