Life Times Stories - By Nadine Gordimer Page 0,64

but also because the yard the house was in was a real Tembekile Location one, full of babies yelling and people shouting, night and day, not to mention the transistors playing in the houses all round. Emma was looking at us all the time and out of the corner of my eye I could see her big front going up and down fast in the neck of her dress.

‘. . . so they’re going to tie you up as well as the others?’

He drew on his pipe to answer me.

We thought for a moment and then grinned at each other; it was the first time for Josias, that whole evening.

Emma began collecting the dishes under our noses. She dragged the tin bath of hot water from the stove and washed up. ‘I said I’m taking my off on Wednesday. I suppose this is going to be next week.’ Suddenly, yet talking as if carrying on where she let up, she was quite different.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, I have to know because I suppose I must be at home.’

‘What must you be at home for?’ said Josias.

‘If the police come I don’t want them talking to him,’ she said, looking at us both without wanting to see us.

‘The police—’ said Josias, and jerked his head to send them running, while I laughed, to show her.

‘And I want to know what I must say.’

‘What must you say? Why? They can get my statement from me when they find us tied up. In the night I’ll be back here myself.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, scraping the mealie meal he hadn’t eaten back into the pot. She did everything as usual; she wanted to show us nothing was going to wait because of this big thing, she must wash the dishes and put ash on the fire. ‘You’ll be back, oh yes. Are you going to sit here all night, Willie? – Oh yes, you’ll be back.’

And then, I think, for a moment Josias saw himself dead, too; he didn’t answer when I took my cap and said so long, from the door.

I knew it must be a Monday. I notice that women quite often don’t remember ordinary things like this, I don’t know what they think about – for instance, Emma didn’t catch on that it must be Monday, next Monday or the one after, some Monday for sure, because Monday was the day that we knew Josias went with the truck to the Free State Mines. It was Friday when he told us and all day Saturday I had a terrible feeling that it was going to be that Monday, and it would be all over before I could – what? I didn’t know, man. I felt I must at least see where it was going to happen. Sunday I was off work and I took my bicycle and rode into town before there was even anybody in the streets and went to the big station and found that although there wasn’t a train on Sundays that would take me all the way, I could get one that would take me about thirty miles. I had to pay to put the bike in the luggage van as well as for my ticket, but I’d got my wages on Friday. I got off at the nearest halt to Kalmansdrif and then I asked people along the road the best way. It was a long ride, more than two hours. I came out on the main road from the sand road just at the turn-off Josias had told me about. It was just like he said: a tin sign ‘Kalmansdrif’ pointing down the road I’d come from. And the nice blue tarred road, smooth, straight ahead: was I glad to get on to it! I hadn’t taken much notice of the country so far, while I was sweating along, but from then on I woke up and saw everything. I’ve only got to think about it to see it again now. The veld is flat round about there, it was the end of winter, so the grass was dry. Quite far away and very far apart there was a hill and then another, sticking up in the middle of nothing, pink colour, and with its point cut off like the neck of a bottle. Ride and ride, these hills never got any nearer and there were none beside the road. It all looked empty but there were some people there. It’s funny you don’t notice them