Tales of the Metric System. Imraan Coovadia

kettle on the stove. She cut two thin slices for her companion, one on top of the other, and another for herself, rejoicing in the texture. It was light and aerated. She was good at baking. It was rare that something refused to rise for her.

      —Paul knows everything there is to know about ferns. He is really a Rabie, his father’s son. He trusts authority. Although here you can see through the pretence. I was just meeting with his Geography teacher who wanted me to contribute to their music building to help Paul. They’re brazen about it.

      —Neil said something was going on at the school with Paul. I’m not surprised. My first boyfriend went to Kearsney. We had to keep our relationship a secret from his family. It taught me about their way of doing things. They insist there are rules that have to be followed, but then, when they want, the rules suddenly don’t apply.

      Ann poured two cups of tea and brought the milk from the fridge.

      —What did Neil tell you about Paul?

      —He just said there was trouble and he wasn’t surprised and didn’t want it to interfere with Paul’s schooling. You know that, for Neil, everything comes down to education, how you liberate your mind. He won’t allow us to get involved in demonstrations at Howard College like today. He knows how quick they are to expel a non-European.

      It took some time for Ann to see the cause of her feelings. Nadia dressed tightly, in her thin dress and blue cotton blouse, so that when she was across the table you could not but be aware of her body living and breathing beside you. Before coming downstairs she had repaired her lipstick. You became conscious of her mouth. It was strong and beautiful and nevertheless insinuating. It said to Ann that she would soon be obsolete, that before long her skin would be cracked by sunshine, that her sinews and thighs would dry in the heat, that her body would never again breathe and love and blush and burn as it had with Gert, and that no man would ever run his hand with so much pleasure along her side. It said that her second marriage, this dream of connection to the Hunters, was also finished, and instructed Ann not to resist the alteration.

      Ann was impatient when dealing with a foregone conclusion. She turned to the end of a book before she made it halfway. If a problem put her in suspense, she would do almost anything to bring it to an end. It was for this reason that she had made the decision to marry so rapidly when she met Gert, and, after that, Neil. Now, for a minute, she found she was looking forward to the end of her marriage.

      On the way out she didn’t say anything more to her companion. The car started without further difficulty. She drove to Howard College. The wind was searching through the trees and along the ground among the flower beds in front of the bookshop and the red-brick tea room and the dormitories. There was no sign of police. Two men were pushing a roller over the tennis courts at Golf Road, the cylinder moving ponderously across the clay. The new library building had bronze windows.

      —Thanks for driving me, Ann.

      —You’re welcome. We’ll see you.

      Nadia got out. Then she put her head back into the car.

      —Isn’t the Free University meeting at your house tonight? I might have to take the minutes.

      —Neil doesn’t give me a word of warning. I turn around and the house is full of people wearing disguises. Do they really think it will stop them being picked up? Last time one of them left his false beard next to the sink. I couldn’t make head or tail of it until Paul put it on.

      —I would expect visitors tonight. They also closed down the hall at Howard College, where the workers’ councils were meeting. They used teargas. Some of those people are friends with Neil. They need somewhere to go.

      —I didn’t realise it was so bad. Why didn’t you tell me before?

      —I thought Neil had warned you. He was worried that they were going to come to his office next. Just in case, he was moving some of his books to the department tea room.

      —They may come to the house as well. I should clear up.

      Ann called Neil from the telephone outside the library but the switchboard couldn’t connect her to his office. On their home telephone she sometimes heard the clicking of the recording machine when she picked up the receiver. She drove back home, locked the gate onto the street, and began to collect the books and pamphlets in the lounge. Neil tried to keep them on one shelf: Marx, Kropotkin, and the red-starred workerist journals, silkscreened in the Art Department, which had not been banned because nobody knew about their existence.

      It was a routine. You heard from somebody that a raid was imminent. You put the chain on the door. If it was late and Paul was home from school, you called a friend to collect him. You checked the passports, drivers’ licences, the level of petrol in the car, and the spare money in the glove box, although you couldn’t imagine skipping the country. You made sure there was nothing that could be read on the typewriter ribbon and tore up the blue-and-gold sheets of carbon paper under the Olivetti. You couldn’t remember where you last left the cheque book with the column of subtractions along the side.

      If there was time you called your sister in Schweizer-Reneke to give her advance notice to fetch Paul in case there was trouble, and then the other sister in Graaff-Reinet, the one who was married to a captain in the navy. You hadn’t heard her voice for so long that you wondered if she would recognise you. Your heart was in your mouth until she said your name and it was as if nothing had ever come between you.

      You listened for the rapping on the door, which might come in the early hours of the morning, and tried to think if there was anything you had missed. You went upstairs again and checked the shelves and made sure that any entries in the telephone book had been scratched out. It was impossible to live without creating clues. Suddenly, as if a knife was buried in you up to the hilt, you yearned for life in an ordinary country, ordinary happiness and unhappiness.

      Ann packed the material in one box and moved it into the kitchen. She sat down at the table and realised she had no idea what to do next. Neil usually took charge. Sometimes they heard an hour beforehand there was the chance of a raid. He would put the box of books in the trunk of his Valiant and take it to a friend’s garage, where it sheltered under a warped table-tennis table. Otherwise he would leave the car parked across from the gaudily lit hamburger restaurant and walk the ten minutes back down Essenwood Road, past the old-age homes, in full view of the racecourse. He would be in time to receive any policemen who did arrive.

      For all the energy invested in the problem of their books, multiple visitations from the Security Branch had produced no great interest in the contents of Neil’s library. The major in charge might confiscate a volume or two, if it was prohibited, but it wasn’t his real concern. He wanted to know whether Neil had a certain individual’s current address, whether he had been in touch with any of the persons on a list that he read aloud, whether Neil had advance notice of the student council’s plans and could remember the members of a particular union or branch of the Black Sash, whether either of them knew the whereabouts of the son of the woman who did the neighbour’s laundry. It was only in a place like Paris where knowing the books someone loved, whether they followed Lévi-Strauss or Sartre, was the yardstick by which to measure them.

      Ann was still thinking about what to do with the box when the telephone rang. She rushed to get it, picking up the black receiver, which was as cold as a hammer.

      —Neil, I tried to call you at the department.

      —You heard about the library? I had to go to the bank to make bail arrangements for some of the students. It’s been a tough day.

      She wanted to tell him that the day could only improve. It might even turn into a day like the one, five years before in a jeweller’s shop in Rome, on a holiday subsidised by her mother-in-law, when Neil settled an off-white pearl necklace around her neck, running his fingers around her collarbone until Ann believed she would faint.

      —Nadia was here when I came back. She told me about the demonstration. She thought that we were about to get a visit here from our friends. Before that I was busy with Edward Lavigne. Now I am trying to think of what to do about some of the books. Why didn’t you let me know, Neil?