The Pickup Part 13

Aboulkanim had the women and the father's friend served coffee and gla.s.ses of iced water while he ushered the father to his inner office past lowered eyelids and clamped lips.

The three sat on steel-framed, jouncing chairs in the style of office furnis.h.i.+ngs fifty years ago, and Maryam replied to the secretary's bright questions with schoolgirl obedience.

The friend smoked and eyed the door of the inner office as if he could monitor whether tactics discussed all the way in the car were being pursued by the father, behind there.

Mr Aboulkanim drove them in his own car to the rice field. The father sat beside him; there was in his voice a tone that conveyed to those seated behind that his interview in the inner office had not gone badly; which was to say nothing changed: he still had his connection.

For half-an-hour a road ignored by the desert led them as before; in vast s.p.a.ces of the planet Earth like these the road is one road, not multiplied by alternatives. The father talked volubly as he had in the to-and-fro with the friend, although his patron merely grunted or cleared his throat of mucus in response, the radio was babbling news to which n.o.body listened, part of the smooth function of the handsome German car. In air-conditioned chill the pores on her arms contracted to goose-flesh; but Maryam pulled a little happy grimace and drew her nostrils to take in the coolness as if to store it pru-dently for the heat beyond the windows.

And then the road ended and there was a low cement-block building with a large efficient-looking pit before it where there were pumps and other heavy machinery whose purpose women would not know. The patron addressed Maryam with an explanation as if the other woman brought along were not there. Maryam translated softly. This is where the water is controlled and the rice is*the word she was looking for was understood: threshed. A barefoot worker, eagle-faced and blackened by the sun, stood by silently, breathing with open mouth like a patient attendant dog.

But she was gazing in concentrated distraction on what was suddenly there before her with its own-drawn close limit of horizon and dazzling density, man-high, what seemed to be meshed slender silky reeds, green, green, green. A kind of wooden walkway offered itself*dank water glancing between planks*and she turned away from the others and took it. The intoxication of green she entered was audible as well as visual, the twittering susurration of a great company of birds clinging, woven into the green as they fed; their trem-ble, balance, sway, pa.s.sing through it continuously like rippling breeze, a pitch of song as activity, activity as sons;, filled her head. The desert is mute; in the middle of the desert there is this, the infinite articulacy: pure sound. Where else could that be? That coexistence of wonder. A break in the rice-canes, just at the side of the walkway; a low private glaze of fallow water. A heron awaited her there, standing; she paused and stood; the bird dipped its beak. Ringingly deafened with the music of this sphere she did not hear human voices calling to her and took her own time to make her way back.

She had kept them waiting, the patron's eyes were hidden by sungla.s.ses, but the set of his mouth made that clear. They were lined up as if for a photograph; indeed, it was for a photograph. The father's friend was trying out focus with an instant-delivery camera. She was placed between her husband's father and Maryam; then Maryam posed her just before the building on the concrete surface where rice had spilled. *Pick up, please, go on, in your hands*Maryam laughed and mimed.

She scooped a handful of slippery husks and sifted them through her fingers, smiling, the friend stepped hack a pace, forward again, and the picture was taken. The coloured print came rolling out, he waved it a moment and gave it to her.

On the return journey the father and his friend included Maryam in their exchange, expansive under the influence of the lushness they had come close to, as if they had been drinking. Maryam would not let her be left out. and translated. *They're saying it can be possible, they can buy some part where there is growing now, or look for water*what is it you say*

*Drill. Drill for water, you mean?*

*Yes, make a well. And grow-.*

*Grow rice?*

*Rice, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, many things.

They're saving it can be, if they have the money.*

*You can get permission to drill a well?*

*If they had the money they can do it, even right now.

They will if they had money. Just the money!* Maryam laughed, at them and herself*always it was just the money, for everything you wanted and couldn't have.

*And they'd know how to go about cultivation*growing the rice?*

*They know, Julie, yes, oh from years*learned from Mr Aboulkanim, of course they know ... only the money ...*

On this journey now she was in dialogue with herself.

What's the legal position with funds in a Trust*why hadn't she taken more interest in learning these things about money! All very well to scorn them, turn up your nose at the bad smell, when there's nothing you really want that you could buy with it: the second-hand car he found was fine. She had always known about that Trust*the family lawyer had told her father it was right and proper that she, the benefici-ary, be informed. So she'd once signed some papers thrust in front of her. The Trust had been set up, apparently, to avoid death duties when Nigel Ackroyd Summers died and his daughter would inherit a considerable fortune from him (even if he were to leave most of his wealth to his second wife). Tax reasons*to benefit the heir, of course, lucky girl.

Always tax reasons for what Nigel Ackroyd Summers does.

Perhaps*there must be*some way of drawing on that money? Nearly thirty years old, living in some G.o.d-forsaken country, isn't that a case of dire need, for a rich man's only daughter, without waiting for anyone's death? She remembered*summoned*a term, maybe one the lawyer had used?*pre-inheritance. If she had heard it from the lawyer, that must mean it came up theoretically, but as a possibility-.

So it could be done. Why not? You must write to someone*

the lawyer, of course. No, to Archie. Yes, always it's to Archie.

Ask Archie to look into the principle, the possibility, with a lawyer*not my father's, that one would be alerted to objec-tions on behalf of his client, knowing the daughter's reputation in the family ...

She returned herself to awareness of the company in the car only once, asking Maryam to ask the men what sort of money a piece of an oasis where things were growing might cost? How much? There was some animated cross-talk of disagreement and agreement between the men, and then came a sum p.r.o.nounced, impressively drawn-out as if the flourishes of written Arabic were being rolled forth on the air.

Maryam translated. But she had understood, and she had become used to rapid mental conversion from their currency into the hard currencies that mattered to the world: in those currencies, which the Trust certainly held, rely on Nigel Ackroyd Summers for that, the sum was extremely*unbelievably*

modest, confirming the feasibility: the possibility Probably a derisive sum in terms of what the Trust was worth (the lawyer had carefully concealed from her what that might be). About the dollar, sterling or deutschmark price of a new car on the luxury level Danielle would be provided with by her husband.

*Stop sneering at the rich, you're thinking of making use of the fact of being one, yourself, aren't you! Abdu (still names him, to herself, by the one he had when she discovered him in the garage) was right, back there, when he reproached me for repudiating their value, the makers and shakers.

Dreamed green.

I dreamt it because it exists.

There is another way, not surrogate succession to the Uncle Yaqub's vehicle workshop, not the dirty work waiting in some other, the next country*here, a possibility. A possibility: his favourite dream-word: 'there are possibilities' in whatever country will let him pa.s.s through its barriers of immigration.

Here. You could have it both. The mute desert and the life-chorus of green.

When they arrived back at his parents' house he had already eaten with his mother. The mother enquired, through him, how his wife had enjoyed the trip.

I could never have imagined ... Rice is so beautiful ...

wheat, maize*nothing to compare as a crop ... growing ...

Well we have left some for you to eat. He spoke, amusedly tolerant, in Arabic. His mother smiled royally at her, and lifted a permissive hand to the kitchen. Maryam had sped ahead to prepare a meal for her father, silvery husks falling from the soles of her worn sandals. Mother and son saw his wife pick up a few and examine them, lying in her palm.

In the privacy of the lean-to she was able to give him the kiss of her enthusiasm.

So you had a good time. Hot, ay. He tasted the salt of sweat on her lips.

Have you ever been there?

I've been there. I know Aboulkanim.

It seems a successful business ... and producing food ...

Maybe.

You know I understand now that you have to live with the desert to know what water is.

I told you before you came. Dry, nothing. In this place.

No, no ... that's not what I'm trying to ... Water's*water is change; and the desert doesn't. So when you see the two together, the water field of rice growing, and it's in the desert*there's a span of life right there*like ours*and there's an existence beyond any span. You know?

You are not believing. You always tell me. Not a Christian, since you left your school, not a Muslim like my family, so what is this now?

He felt he was listening to one of those arguments about the meaning of life started by the rambling of the old man with white hair tied in a ribbon at that table in the Cafe he thought of as the home she had left behind to be with him in this annex to his family.

Not heaven, nirvana*this place where we are, what there is here. A kind of proof. Do you get me*I can't explain.

With the thumbnail of one hand he was taking the rind of garage dirt from under the nails of the other; his fastidious-ness, more than anything he said, expressed to her, bringing an empathy of injury, the frustration and humiliation of his return to nothing more than the underbelly of the Uncle Yaqub's vehicles. She lay down beside him and stroked the hand, a moment.

I'm told you can buy part of the oasis already under cultivation. I suppose from a landowner. Or is it from the government? And you can get permission to drill for a well, in the desert. Did you know?

With money you can buy anything from the government.

The landowners who call themselves a government. Same thing. That is what is here, in this place of my people. That is one of the first things for you to understand*what's true, about life in this place. There is no mystery- about our life.

Money*and the government will tell you the deal is done, Al-Harndu lillah.

He was speaking in Arabic.

The price is so reasonable*I asked your father and that friend of his who came with us. I could hardly believe it.

Something I could almost certainly raise*from back there, there's a Trust meant for, well, when my father dies, but there are ways ...

You want to buy a rice concession! You! What for?

She did not look at him but at the unpainted board ceiling, aware of his attention on her profile.

For us.

He lifted his spine and let his body thud back to the bed with a grunt like a laugh. Julie, we do not live here.

Making our own living doing something*interesting?

Useful, different, growing food. Something neither of us has ever done.

Once it was an agency for actors in Cape Town, now rice in an oasis, another adventure to hear from her, from her rich girl's ignorance, innocence.

For her part, she sensed it best to place before him something of hard-headed calculation.

That Mr Aboulkanim obviously makes money.

Not rice money.

He spoke now in fluent mix of English and Arabic, translating himself, leaping from phrase to phrase.

That is his*what do you say*his front, the beautiful rice fields. He makes money all right*plenty of it*and do you know how? Do you? He is a smuggler, he calls it import-export, he's a go-between in arms sales for a crowd of cronies over the border, and that's only what I can tell you about Mr Aboulkanim, there's much more of the same I don't know, that people who know admire him for because he's successful. That's success, here.

She sat up startled and confronted him. Your father works for him.

My father works for what makes him respectable. Your rice field. My father isn't let into the Big Business, my father is the poor devil, may I be forgiven to speak like that, who fills in the right papers to sell rice, only rice, and gets a cash hand-out every few months. So he uses my father's honest name.

And now she confronted herself. Why should I be so shocked at this story: how many lunch guests at Nigel Ackroyd Summers' Sundays are involved in deals that are not revealed, and if known are not talked about along with the price of Futures*not arms deals; but why not? Perhaps even those, pa.s.sing by remote control through the sale of dia-monds in Angola.

If we had a concession it wouldn't have anything to do with all that. Mr Aboulkanim. Just growing rice.

He rolled away from her, rose, and changed his s.h.i.+rt, took from the canvas bag his folder of papers.

I've got a meeting tonight with someone. We'll see if he turns up.

He came to where she sat flushed with the heat of the day, dangling her legs from the iron bar of the bed, shook his head over her, giving her the smile, that treasure so often withheld.

She had not shown him the photograph, the slippery husks of rice sifting through her fingers. Until it faded it would be proof that the place exists: could have been attained.

From the canvas bag standing ready, that carried his life from country to country, he had taken the letters sent by the woman in California.

He said nothing to her; she had been completely dismissive of her mother's likelihood of knowing anyone whose signature could be of use, anywhere, in a situation remote as his.

But more than that: his hopes had been raised so often*the thought of this brought that confusion of resentment and shame that was new to him, a result of coining back to this place. He could not face her philosophical encouragement, real or a.s.sumed, her patience, real, or a cover for the adventure soon to become another to entertain back round The Table: the beautiful suitcase she didn't value stood there, ready for her.

No more news. He would say nothing to her, nothing at all, of the progress he was making, this time, this one time, and she knew so little about the delicacy of such business, she was too ignorant to be able to read the signs. Taking her to a consulate or emba.s.sy for personal questioning indicated nothing to her. Better that way When*if*no!* when, this time, he would have something to say to her, it would be: news.

The Pickup 226.

And there was something else. There was an aspect to the triumph of his refusal to grasp at the opportunity offered by an Uncle Yaqub other young men stagnating in the village would give anything (of their nothing, poor devils like himself) to have, an aspect he had hardly known himself when the great decision*the best moment of his manhood so far*

had been made by him: say no. Even if this girl had failed in the purpose he must not forget (in any tangle of emotion about her) he had counted on her as a source of Permanent Residence in her country, she had somehow in the meantime they happened to be living through brought about in him also an interim of meantime brooding contemplation, moving into thoughts of a kind he had never had before. When he had said, from the very depths of himself: no; it was also no to abandoning the man she had fallen in love with (as they say): no to what would have determined for sure that the adventure would be over, it could not become that of the wife of a future Uncle Yaqub. He would have been left in this place and married off and fathered more sons who could not get out.

He came from the capital that day and as he parked Uncle Yaqub's old car at the gate saw women coming along the street. She*Julie*with Amina and infant, Maryam and the little girl and*he had to look again*Khadija, they were coming from the market, female pack-horses loaded with plastic carriers from which green stalks and leaves over-flowed. Onions or potatoes burst out of one, and gathering them was a game between Julie, the child and Khadija*apparently madam who kept to her own purdah of superiority now would venture out with the other women if Julie were one of them.

He waited in the car. What kind of life. For her. It presented itself in its shame, approaching him. The child pointed him out, broke away from the women and rushed up to 227 Nadine Gordimer demonstrate his presence as if his arrival were some special occasion.

It was.

He greeted and exchanged a few words with his mother where she sat on her sofa in the communal room while Julie and the other women chattered over unpacking the market shopping in the all-purpose kitchen. She waved as she pa.s.sed through to the lean-to; she would not disturb him and his mother.

He came to her. She was dowsing face, hair and hands in the basin of cool water she kept supplied for them, placed on the chair she was kneeling before.

So hot! She turned and looked up, a streaming smile, as if with tears.

He opened his hand. Between finger and thumb were stamped papers round two pa.s.sports.

What?

She stood up, wildly shaking wet hands. What?

Visas. Entry permits. The United States of America.

All in one movement he threw the doc.u.ments onto the bed, overpowered her in a crus.h.i.+ng embrace, a yell of triumph that brought their mouths together through water trickling from her hair.

I am going to America.

Told them, hadn't he.

So it should not have amazed them that he now had the authority stamped in his pa.s.sport and his wife's. There were family embraces of congratulation implicitly apologizing for having doubted if not disbelieved him. Only Khadija referred to that*You were just boasting then, weren't you.* He did not take the jibe kindly; Julie saw this in his face but did not understand what had been said.