Going Home

On the left stretched some lower hills. There appeared a small white vapour glistening in the moonlight in a gap between the peaks. Over the edge of the gap came a wisp of white cloud, a small tendril, curling down. Then the sky on that side was a whirl of moonlit mist, and instead of one curling finger, cloud came pouring down and through the gap like a flood of celestial milk. It sank as it came, covering first the flank of the mountain, then blotting out the lights of the houses on that side. The lights went out swiftly, and the mist came pouring steadily in, and soon half of the city had gone, and the sky on that side was a high bank of white and shining cloud. Then all the city was gone and the ships and the sea, and below a great white floor of moonlit cloud heaved and rose, and over on the right side the stars were dimming. Then there was cloud overhead, and cloud at my feet, rising. The fir trees just below sank in mist till only their black tops showed. As the cold dampness came up, the trees went.

It took only ten minutes, from the time that the city lay open and glittering to the time when it had gone, gone completely.

And so, when this dream began to recur, together with the dream of the heap of red, sinking earth and dead grass with the trees growing through it, I first restored the house, and then forced the mist back, rolled it back off the city and the sea and the lighted ships and back through the gap in the mountains. It took a long time, but at last the city was free and illuminated again.

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On the morning after my arrival the sun was warm all about the house, the leaves of the creeper on the verandah laid a black sun-pattern on the wall, the pigeons cooed under the roof, the roses blazed on the lawn. In the next garden, the garden boy was cutting wisps of grass even with a pair of rusted old scissors, and a plump black girl was strolling up and down, looking good-naturedly bored, holding a white child by either hand. Daddy was leaving for the office in one car; Mummy was off downtown in the other.

I would now get out of bed, knowing that all the housework was done and the breakfast ready. Imagine that I lived here for so many years and took this comfort for granted! Even worse, that for a period of months before I left, due to a moral compulsion I now think misguided, I insisted on doing all my housework myself.

‘If I’ve got to live in this paradise for the petty bourgeoisie, then at least I shall take what advantages I can – if I’ve got to be bored, then I shall at least be comfortable.’ Thus a friend of mine, an old revolutionary from Central Europe, sucked into Rhodesia by some current of war. Until that moment he had been living on principle in one room, studying and absorbing statistical information about Africa against the day when he could go home to Europe and civilization and the class war. He lived in complete isolation from the white citizenry, who filled him with contempt. He then got himself a temporary job, a pleasant flat and a servant, and continued to study. Two years later he came to see me one evening. ‘Please sit there and don’t say anything. I want to talk and listen to what I am saying. I am in a moral crisis.’ So I sat and made a sounding board. He was saying that no one but a fool could help making money here if he were white; he intended to spend five years making money and beating these white savages at their own game. Then he would take the money and clear out. This brief résumé of what he said can give no idea of the prolonged and dialectical subtlety of his argument. Having proved his case to his satisfaction he became silent, frowning at me. Then, in a quite different voice, with a small, unhappy smile, he said: ‘This is a damned corrupting country. We should get out quick. We should all get out. No one with a white skin can survive it. People like us are too few to change anything. Now get out,’ he said. ‘I’m getting out by the first train.’

Three years later I met him in Bulawayo; he had made a lot of money and was about to get married. He was in a buoyant, savagely sardonic mood which I was easily able to recognize. ‘I want you to meet my fiancée,’ he said. She was a pretty, indolent girl, the daughter of a manufacturer, and on her finger was the apotheosis of all diamond rings, which my friend J. insisted on showing to me, telling me exactly how much it cost, and how much cheaper he had got it than was probable, while she sat fondly smiling at him. He spoke in a voice that was a deliberate parody of a Jewish big-time huckster.

I hoped that this time I would run into him somewhere; but it seems he is now in Johannesburg, with four children and a whole network of businesses.

At breakfast that first morning I felt myself at home because four of us were having that conversation which I have been taking part in now for fifteen years: would he, would she, they or you, be given papers, passports, permits? This time it was about whether I would get into the Union of South Africa.

I had worked out a plan to get in, not illegally, but making use of certain well-known foibles of the Afrikaner immigration officials. But sitting there at breakfast in that comfortable house, it all sounded too melodramatic; and the conversation became, as it often does, a rather enjoyable exercise in the balance of improbabilities.

And besides, it was pleasant to be back in a country where everyone knows everyone else, and therefore gossip is not merely personal, but to do with the processes of government; a country where, unlike Britain, which is ruled by the Establishment of which one is not a member, one is close to the centres of administration simply because one is white. Here, journalists get their information straight from the CID, with whom they have sundowners, and everybody has a friend who is a Member of Parliament or a Cabinet Minister. In this part of the world there are no secrets.

The information at my disposal was, then, that since Sir Percy Sillitoe of the British Intelligence had paid a helpful visit to the political CID of both Central Africa and the Union of South Africa, these departments are now closely linked and coordinated, not only with each other, but with their counterparts in Britain and America.

‘In short,’ we concluded, ‘we are seeing a process whereby the countries of what is known as the free world have less and less in common with each other, and are linked only by that supra-national organization, the departments of the political police.’

But alas, the warmth of the sunlight, the smell of the roses, and the well-being that sets in when one knows there is no cooking, washing-up or housework to do for two months, had already done their work. I failed to draw the correct conclusion from this formulation, and decided to take my chance on getting into South Africa by the ordinary routes.

After all, I said, I could hardly be called a politically active person. For the business of earning one’s living by writing does not leave much time for politics; and in any case, it is one of my firmest principles that a writer should not become involved in day-to-day politics. The evidence of the last thirty years seems to me to prove that it has a disastrous effect on writing. But I do not stick to this principle. For one thing, my puritan sense of duty which nothing can suppress is always driving me out to meetings which I know are a waste of time, let alone those meetings which are useful but which would be better assisted by someone else; for another, I find political behaviour inexhaustibly fascinating. Nevertheless, I am not a political agitator. I am an agitator manquée. I sublimate this side of my personality by mixing with people who are.

My friend N. listened to my hair-splitting with irritation and said that the CID would not be able to follow these arguments, and from their point of view I was an agitator. Much better not go to the Union at all, but stay here with my friends. And besides, Central Africa was in a melting-pot and at the crossroads and the turnings of the ways, whereas South Africa was set and crystallized and everyone knew about apartheid. South Africa was doomed to race riots, civil war and misery. Central Africa was committed to Partnership and I had much better spend my time, if I insisted on being a journalist, finding out about Partnership.

But it was not that I wanted to be a journalist, I said; I had to be one, in order to pay my expenses. And besides it would be good for me to be a journalist for a time, a person collecting facts and information, after being a novelist, who has to go inwards to probe out the truth.

Well, if you are going to be a journalist, said my friends, then wait until you come back from South Africa. In the meantime, let’s go on a jaunt to Umtali.

That was on a Friday morning, and we would go to Umtali tomorrow. Meanwhile a whole succession of old friends dropped in, either to make it clear how they had matured since I had seen them last, and believed in making haste slowly, or to say that a new wind was blowing in Southern Rhodesia; and things had changed utterly since I left, and segregation and race prejudice were things of the past.

Then I went downtown to do the shopping in the car, as one does here. Driving along the glossy avenues, between the pretty houses with their patios, their gardens, their servants; driving in a solid mass of reckless, undisciplined cars which half-remembered the old law of each man for himself, half-paid irritated but erratic attention to traffic lights and policemen – driving along the comfortable streets of my home town, I understood suddenly and for the first time that this was an American small town; it is the town we have all seen in a hundred films about Mom and Pop and their family problems. I do not know why I had not perceived this before. Often, pursuing some character in a story I was writing, or describing an incident, I have thought: But this is American, this is American behaviour. But I had not seen the society as American. It was because I have been hypnotized by the word British.

Southern Rhodesia is self-consciously British; she came into existence as a British colony, opposed to the Boer-dominated Union of South Africa, although she has taken her political structure from the Union. Her turning north to federate with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland is an act of repudiation of the Afrikaner Nationalists, an affirmation of being British. Central Africa is British Africa. But even now the British are in the minority among the white people; there are far more Afrikaners, Greeks, Italians; and with all the people together, dark-skinned and white, the numbers of British people are negligible.

That would not matter: I do not think the numbers of a dominant class or group matter in stamping their imprint on a society. Portuguese territory is unmistakably Latin in feeling, though the Portuguese whites are a small minority.

What is it, then, that makes British white Africa American? What, for that matter, is that quality we all recognize as American? Partly it is the quality of a society where people are judged by how much they earn: it is the essence of the petty bourgeoisie: ‘a man is a man for all that, because in this country there is no class feeling, only money feeling.’

Again, just as America is permeated with the values and attributes of the two groups of people supposedly non-assimilable – the Negroes and the Jews – so the white people here who think of nothing else, talk of nothing else, but the qualities they ascribe to the Africans are inevitably absorbing those qualities.

It is a society without roots – is that why it has no resistance to Americanism? Or is being rootless in itself American?

The myths of this society are not European. They are of the frontiersman and the lone-wolf; the brave white woman homemaking in lonely and primitive conditions; the child who gets himself an education and so a status beyond his parents; the simple and brave savage defeated after gallant fighting on both sides; the childlike and lovable servant; the devoted welfare-worker spending his or her life uplifting backward peoples.

Yet these images have no longer anything to do with what is going on now in Central Africa.

On that first morning I went shopping to try to get the feel and atmosphere of the place.

First into a vegetable shop. Shopping has certainly changed: now the counters are refrigerated, self-service shops everywhere, and above all Coca-Cola has moved in. The Coca-Cola sign is on every second building, from the high new blocks of offices and flats to the scruffy little store in the Native Reserve.

In the vegetable shop were three white people and two Africans. Two of the white people were serving behind the counter; then two African men, with shopping baskets. Then me. I waited my turn behind the two Africans to see what would happen. The woman behind the counter eyed the Africans coldly, and then in the cool, curt voice I know so well said: ‘Can’t you see the white missus, boy? Get to the back.’ They moved back, I moved in and was served. Another white woman came in; she was being served as I went out. The Africans patiently waited.

And for the thousandth time I tried to put myself in the place of people who are subjected to this treatment every day of their lives. But I can’t imagine it: the isolated incident, yes; but not the cumulative effect, year after year, every time an African meets a white person, the special tone of voice, the gesture of impatience, the contempt.

In the next shop, which was a bakery, a young girl in jeans, striped sweat-shirt and sandals, was greeted by a boy in sweat-shirt and jeans. ‘Hiya, Babe!’ ‘Hiya, Johnny.’ ‘See you tonight?’ ‘Ya, see you at the flicks.’ ‘Bye.’ ‘Bye.’

The main street is crammed with cars, with white women drifting along, talking, or standing in groups, talking. They wear cool, light dresses, showing brown bare arms and legs. The dresses are mostly home-made, and have that look of careful individual fit that one sees in the clothes of women in Italy and Spain.

These are the women of leisure; and, having been one of them for so long – or at least expected to play the role of one – I know that their preoccupations are in this order: the dress they are making for themselves or their daughter, the laziness of their servants, and an infinite number of personal problems. Or, as the Americans would say, Problems.

Their husbands are now busily engaged in getting on and doing well for themselves in the offices; and their children are at school. The cookboy is cooking the lunch. They will take back the car laden with groceries and liquor, dress-lengths, bargains. Then there will be a morning tea-party. Then lunch with husband and family. Then a nap. Then afternoon tea, and soon, sundowners. Then the pictures. And then, bed. And, in the words of a personal servant of a friend of mine: ‘The white man goes to bed, he makes love, twice-a-week, bump, bump, go-to-sleep.’

Though this did not occur to me until later, at the end of my trip, when my mind had cleared of the fogs induced by the word Partnership, is it possible that the white men of Central Africa are so anxious to create a class of African in their own image, equally preoccupied with getting on and doing well for themselves – is it possible that one of the reasons for it is that other anxious white myth, the potent and sexually heroic black man? Is it possible that (of course in a very dark place in their minds) they are thinking: ‘Yah, you black bastard! You start worrying about money, too! That’ll fix you!’

A group of these slow-moving, heavy-bodied women turned: one advanced towards me. Another school-friend. ‘My old man heard it from his boss, and he heard it from a friend at the airport, so I knew you were back. Things have changed here, don’t you think so? I hope you are going back to write something nice about us for a change. Hell, man, what have we done to you? You were always doing well for yourself before you left, weren’t you, so what are you getting excited about? Hell, man, what have we done? I’ve had my cookboy for fifteen years, since I got married, and I’ve always treated him right. And what do you think of the lights of London? I was there last spring, did you know? But we went to Paris. Man, I don’t know what they see in Paris. It cost ten pounds for a cabaret and a bottle of some champagne and some night-life.’

‘They were cheating you,’ I said.

‘Is that so? Well, next time we are going to Johannesburg. We’ve got just as good night-life there. And the Belgian Congo, too. They’ve got some night-life just as good as Paris. And if my old man wants to go and see some nudes, then he can go and see them there, because those nudes in Paris haven’t got anything we haven’t got. And it only costs half. Seen our new nightclub? Seen our new restaurant? Jesus, we’ve got as good here as you’ve got in London, I’m telling you. Things have really changed since you’ve left, they have. It’s a fact.’

After this conversation, I walked down First Street. On the pavement, sitting with their feet comfortably in the gutter, five African women, knitting, watching life pass by. They looked relaxed and happy. They wore good print dresses, crocheted white caps, sandals. Clothes have changed much for the better in a decade. Gone are the old blue-printed cottons, which were almost a uniform for African women. A man I know who imports for the African trade said: ‘The days of “Kaffir-truck” are over. Now we import quantities of cheap, bright stuff for the native trade. But already some Africans buy as good quality as the Europeans. In five or six years they won’t be manufacturing special goods for the African trade.’

In Meikle’s lounge, a place where I spent a good part of my adolescence, I drank beer and watched what went on. Women having morning tea, farmers in for the tobacco auctions, everything the same.

At the next table, two women, an American and an Englishwoman. It appeared they were both making trips through Africa, had met in Durban, were travelling back to England together for company. They knew each other previously. Now they were discussing some mutual friend who, it seemed, had come to no good.

AMERICAN: So now I don’t know what he’ll do. You can’t start all over at fifty.

ENGLISH: It seems such a shame. And what can it have been? Yes, of course he always drank too much, but why suddenly … I mean, he never drank too much.

AMERICAN: Well, dear, he had problems.

ENGLISH: But no worse than usual? And there was that nice wife of his. She always pulled him together when – I mean, I remember once, when they were visiting us in London, he was rather depressed, and she pulled him together. It was not that they needed to worry about money.

AMERICAN: He was basically unstable, that’s all.

ENGLISH: But suddenly? There must have been something definite, something must have happened. Of course, people don’t drink too much for nothing. But everything must have suddenly piled up? Perhaps he was working too hard. He always did, didn’t he?

AMERICAN: Now Betty, there’s no point in going on. He had a character defect.