The Pickup

Chapter 9

The document must have been lying on somebody’s desk, that weekend. Or maybe in the post office from where whatever mail he received was to be delivered in the name that was supposed to be his, care of the garage that was supposed to be his only address. She was to visualize this closed and deserted Sunday post office, uselessly, afterwards, a daymare in sunlight, a conjuring up of foreboding in the dark bed at night. To dignify the piece of paper as a ‘document’ was more than the brusque demand it made in the guise of citations from this law and that, this paragraph of that section, as promulgated on one date or another. It had come to the notice of the Department of Home Affairs that (his real name) was living at the above address under the alias (the name the grease-monkey answered to) in contravention of the termination of his permit of such-and-such a date to reside in the Republic. This was a criminal offence (paragraph, section of law) and he was therefore duly informed that he must depart within 14 days or face charges and deportation to his country of origin.

These letters that come unstamped, Official Business. She has never received one; her income tax papers, a citizen’s routine fiscal matters, go to her family’s accountants. He came to the cottage still in his dirty overalls, carrying this — thing. The envelope had been raggedly torn — he knows what to expect from such missives. He had read the news and come just as he was from among the eviscerated cars and the amplified pop music in the garage. — Here it is.

She had almost forgotten; the months that had passed since she bought the car he found for her, his coming home to her every evening, the night club jaunts with the friends from The Table, the weekends away in the veld, lying side by side in his silence, the excitement and following peace of love-making, nights and early mornings — these had lulled her. These (what were those lines that came back to her) postponed the future … leaving everything in its present state.

She sat suddenly on their bed to read the thing over again. He stood in the room as if he were already the stranger ejected from it. And so she wept and flung herself at him and he had no reassurance for her in the arms that came about her. They were unsteady on their feet. She struggled free and drew up the piece of paper. She took him by the hand for them to sit and read it over again, together. But he sat beside her, lifted his shoulders and let them fall, did not follow the lines with her. He knows the form, the content, the phraseology; it is the form of the world’s communication with him. She looks for loopholes, for double meanings that might be deciphered to advantage, that he knows are all stopped up, are all unambiguous. Out. Get out. Out.

Then she became angry. Who told them? How did they find out? After how long? How long? Two years—

Two years and some months.

Who? But who would do it, what for?

Anyone. Someone who wants my job, maybe. Yes. Why not.

Why not! What harm do you do anybody, what did you take away from anybody, that lousy job and a shed to live in!

Julie. Somebody who’s here in his own place.

And now his eyes were penetrating as searchlights seeking her out, his lips were drawn back in violent pain in place of that beautiful curved smile. Even this I’m wearing, this dirty … even whatyoucallit, a shed, a corner in the street to sleep in, that’s his, not mine. That’s how it is. Whatever I have is his.

A gust of what was unknown between them blew them apart. In distress she wanted somehow to reach and grapple with him as he was borne away, as she was borne away.

Why do you take it like this! What are you going to do about it! There must be something — protest, apply — this Home Affairs place, can’t you go to them right away, tomorrow morning — how can you just—

Leave me, leave me: he knows that is what this girl is really saying; to her — of course — expulsion means she loses her lover, this bed will be empty, at least until — she’s free, secure and free, she finds another lover. To calm her — and himself: I go there. Nothing will be done. They’ll look up the other paper from nearly one year and a half. They know I was supposed to get out then.

So you knew this would happen. Even after so long.

I knew, yes. I thought perhaps, they lost the paper, maybe they have so many papers of people like me, they could forget me. That was my chance. That’s how it is. I could go there to them, but what for. It will be better if I do nothing, I didn’t get the letter, I’m not at the garage any more, I’m somewhere …

Well they don’t know you’re here with me. You don’t live at that address, that’s something. I think they’ll know.

That horrible man at the garage! He’s bad news, he’s not for you, he’s not even allowed to be in the country. What about your job? Even if no records are kept… you’d have to disappear from that as well …

Disappear (she has given him the word he needs), yes.

Again. Again! And again another name!

He sees her turning her head this way and that, in the trap. That’s how it is.

If he says that one more time! So how it has to be is not what he will do about this letter, this document passing a sentence on his life, but what we are going to do. She has friends, thank his gods and hers, anybody’s; her friends who solve among themselves all kinds of difficulties in their opposition to establishment officialdom. They have alternative solutions for the alternative society, and there is every proof that that society is the one to which he and she belong: that letter makes it clear. She abrogates any rights that are hers, until they are granted also to him. This means she will follow no obedience to truthfulness ingested at school, no rules promulgated in the Constitution, no policy of transparency as in the Board Rooms where the investment business code applies.

Julie does not tell him this; only by pressing herself against him, he’s palpable, he hasn’t disappeared from her, and holding her mouth against his until it is opened and lets her in, to the live warmth and moisture of his being.

He receives her, but cannot give himself. She understands: the shock, the letter finally come, followed him, tracked him down; for her, outrage, high on alarm, for him a numbing. Let’s go to the EL-AY. We have to talk about this.

Ah no. No, Julie. Not now, tonight. Let us stay alone. Strangely, he began to take off the grease-darkened overalls as if he were shedding a skin, letting them fall to the floor and stepping slowly out of them. Perhaps he meant to get into bed, bed is the simplest offer of oblivion? But no.

I want to take a bath.

She heard the water gushing a long time. She heard it slapping against the sides of the tub as he moved about within it.

She picked up the paper and sat with it in her hand. That first time; he asked to take a hot bath, she heard him there; when he came out holding the neatly-folded towel he was barefoot in his jeans and she saw his naked torso, the ripple of ribs under shining smooth skin, the dark nipples on the pad of muscle at either side of the design of soft-curled black hair.

That’s how it is.