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

here, man! But nice, aih?—
    â€”A desk over there at the window … Ben might have one you could use. Yes, this is a lovely room.—
    He had switched on the television, it was a children’s programme with the squeaky voices of anthropomorphic animals but he did not notice, it didn’t matter, the gesture was that of possession, he was at home in these walls where only whites had lived before.
    â€”Come and see the rest.—
    Talking expansively, he led her to a room with a double bed made up under a fringed bedspread with three cushions propped diamond-shaped against the wall. —I might put the desk in here, because the others use the sitting-room as well. Better for work.— He was assuring her of his seriousness about studying; after all, although she was a motherly friend, she was also one of the seniors in the Foundation that employed him. The second room: a chaos of clothing, toys, pots and pans, hotplate standing on a triple-mirror dressing table, cot filled with jumbled shoes. —They’re moving in.—
    Oupa went to fetch from the car the folding chairs borrowed from the Foundation and when he returned Mrs Stark was in the kitchen unpacking what she called the goodies. He stood about: —I haven’t got the hang of the stove yet— But she had opened the oven door and taken out fat-encrusted shelves, she tried the plates one by one, knowing exactly how everything worked, I’ll show you, she said, just as she calmly and quietly would explain to him some legal question he would bring to her from his correspondence course. He was flattered that she concentrated on the preparations for his little party as if it were of great importance to get everything right, to think of nothing else until this was so. He felt Mrs Stark knew what this occasion meant to him, even if to others it was just another office party.
    The extended family of the Foundation arrived. Husbands and wives, permanent lovers of this sex or that, the other half of unexplained attachments. There was the bonhomie of the special set of relationships between people who work together and find themselves at play, their joking in-house references that others might not follow but which raised the general level of celebration. Somebody’s boy-friend had brought a guitar and he sang his compositions in a mixture of Zulu, English and Afrikaans to a group that stood about or sat with their drinks on the fringed bedcover in the bedroom, while in the living-room nobody was listening, the talk and laughter at a higher volume than the music. Mrs Stark’s hot cheese puffs ran out. She and several others from the Foundation were back in the kitchen opening cans of Viennas that seemed to be Oupa’s sole food supply, when her husband arrived late and had brought along a carrier of wine and beer. With a knife in one hand and the greasy other hand held away from contact with his jacket, shedropped what she was doing and went over to kiss him for the thought. He almost backed in surprise, then held her shoulders a moment; it was so unlike her to make a show of affection public. His contribution to the party hardly called for any special mark of gratitude; perhaps she’d had a few drinks—well, why not?
    The promised desk was picked up from the Starks’ house and delivered to One-Twenty-One Delville Wood by a friend of Oupa who borrowed a bakkie from another friend. Oupa bought a computer, on credit, to complete the equipment; the only problem, he remarked to Mrs Stark some weeks later, was that the friend who transported the desk had moved into the flat with him, the couple, and the two children. —He’s got no place to stay. His place is in Sebokeng and now he’s working here in town.— Soon this friend, who had agreed to contribute to the rent, was joined by another, workless and penniless. This came out when Oupa, bringing his lunch as usual into Mrs Stark’s office, relieved by