Gordimer’s people

It is another hot Jo’burg afternoon and the tree-lined avenue is still, no cars or pedestrians or sounds of life from behind the high walls. The house with no bell, no obvious way of seeking entry is Nadine Gordimer’s. 

Her dog senses a presence behind the wall and the barks summon a gardener to the gate. An appointment with the madam? He is sceptical and fetches the housekeeper who is even more dubious. The madam knows about this? Privacy here is not often surrendered, but after some moments a small figure in white trousers and orange shirt emerges from the kitchen to wave open the gate. 

However much she finds the process disagreeable, the Nobel prize-winning novelist has granted an interview. Despite dozens of books and short stories chronicling the intimacy and complexity of human relations, Gordimer’s personality remains elusive. 

Long ago she was dubbed the symbol of South Africa’s restless white conscience and today, with apartheid a memory and Gordimer approaching her 80th birthday, that is what she remains — a symbol. 

Of the woman little is known. Gordimer’s frame is trim and agile, with straight silver hair framing a face devoid of make-up and unexpectedly youthful. She sits upright on the sofa, pausing before answering each question. 

Little need for body language to emphasise a point when ”indeed” — a favourite word — is sufficient. ”I can’t say I enjoy interviews, but let’s get on.”

There is a new book to promote. Gordimer’s best-known works, The Lying Days, The Conservationist, Burger’s Daughter, July’s People, were written during and, to some extent, about apartheid, dissecting the nuances of race relations in prose. Her new book, Loot (David Philip), a collection of 10 stories, was written in recent years and mostly steers clear of apartheid. 

There is the sexual explicitness of The Diamond Mine, where the parents of 16-year-old Tilla drive on oblivious as a soldier fingers her on the back seat; the loneliness and doubt of an aid worker in Mission Statement; the alienation of university academics who almost become vagrants in Look-alikes.

The title story depicts a coastal community descending on the ocean bed after an earthquake pulls back the sea, exposing shipwrecks, candelabra, coins, televisions, loot. And human bones of political dissidents killed and dumped by the regime. The sea roars back, consuming all, including the looters. 

”It comes out of an actual thing that I saw. I was in Chile and in the area where this earthquake took place. I was told this extraordinary thing, that the sea pulled back and there were all these things.”

Could it also be a metaphor for writers who plundered South Africa’s horrors and ambiguities, only to be stranded when white minority rule fell? 

”Why apartheid?” says Gordimer, the voice sharp. ”Life. As a writer or a painter your loot indeed consists of the themes that come from life around you.” 

Since 1994 it has been the fate of South African writers to be asked what they have left to say, and Gordimer is not alone in her exasperation. ”This is always posed, not as a question but as a statement. What are you going to write about now, as if life stopped because apartheid stopped.”

The stakes are as high in the new South Africa as in the old. ‘We’ve got plenty of problems. ”Contemporaries such as André Brink are cynical about the new establishment’s appetite for flashy cars, designers suits and power, but Gordimer, a long-time member of the ANC, sees herself as a critical ally. Corruption, a scandal-plagued arms deal and President Thabo Mbeki’s controversial views on HIV/Aids are not reasons to abandon the ANC. 

”True loyalty to your country and party is to be critical. To be a yes-woman doesn’t do anybody any good. That leads to dictatorship. I’m critical of the president’s stance on Aids. I’m disappointed in it because I respect him highly.”

Expectations that housing, employment and education issues could be solved in less than a decade were unrealistic. In any case freedom brought its own problems. ”What to do with it? You fear not being able to fulfil all the dreams.”

Gordimer admits that those involved in the struggle did not fully anticipate the crime and social upheaval that came with freeing people who had been trapped in so-called homelands. ”Naturally, like poor people all over the world, they go to the honeypot to get a lick of it. And we didn’t think about that.”

If whites accept rule by the black majority they have a future in South Africa, but for Gordimer the most encouraging development is inter-racial relationships. ”It’s wonderful for someone like myself to see this change, to see a mixed-race couple walking in the park and suddenly embrace and kiss one another.” Almost as an afterthought she adds: ”I find black men so much more beautiful than white men.” A feeble joke to the effect that her comment won’t be taken personally is met with silence, suggesting I could. 

Gordimer’s dog, a German hunter, bounds in and she flaps her arms. ”Out Tilla, get out.” One can name a character after a pet, but not children, she says. Both Gordimer’s children live abroad. Her house was shared with her art dealer husband, Reinhold Cassirer, for many years. If his death in 2001 brought loneliness, she will not say. ”Grief is not something to be written about in newspapers.” But in a biography, perhaps. 

Gordimer reveals she is furnishing letters and documents to a Jamaican-born lawyer, Ronald Suresh Roberts, who is writing what may, if the final draft meets her approval, be an authorised biography. ‘My idea of biography is concentration on the work, not whether [the subject] eats eggs for breakfast, or if he’s a good lover or not.”

If the Booker winner is hoping to set the record straight there is still no intention of letting light shine into matters personal. ‘To ask me if a particular story is autobiographical is impertinent.”

If readers of The Diamond Mine wonder at similarities between Tilla, sexually awakened by a soldier at a training camp near Johannesburg, and an author who as a teenager flirted with trainee pilots at a Royal Air Force base near Jo’burg, that is their affair. ”Fine, let them fantasise but it’s no business of mine. If I had to be everybody that I’ve written a story about I’d have multiple personalities.”

The routine is still to work from 9am to lunchtime and review the output in the evening. ”People who are not writers think you sit around waiting for the muse to come, but that’s not so. When you get to my age and you’ve written so many books, you become your most stringent critic.”

A look at her watch indicates the interview is drawing to a close. Famously, Gordimer is more read abroad than at home but is still recognised in public. ”Yes, unfortunately, sometimes. They come up and say, ”I’ve seen you on TV, I’ve seen your picture in the paper. I mean I haven’t read your books yet, but I’m going to.” Others ask, ”Oh, are you still writing?” And I say ‘No, I’ve taken up flower arranging.’ Very rude.”

Asked about Brink’s latest novel, The Other Side of Silence, Gordimer opines that it is not his best but a wonderful theme. A diplomatic answer, I say, prompting an affronted look. 

In life, as in her literature, directness is the thing. A second look at the watch and time is up. Time for one final question, she says. What did you have for breakfast, eggs? A rare sound, Gordimer laughing, half-way between cackle and gurgle. She is still smiling as the door closes, the contents of breakfast, like so much else, left to the imagination.