Roots of Outrage. John Davis Gordon
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decent education – and these people prefer their own company anyway.’
‘But there are no other Indians for her to be friends with. Can I invite her home one day to have a swim?’
Ooh, yes please, Luke prayed. Patti Gandhi in a swimsuit …
‘Definitely not. I’m not having Indians in our pool!’
Only one Indian … Mahoney prayed.
‘Mother, she’s perfectly clean, you know!’ Jill cried.
‘The subject,’ Mrs Mahoney said, ‘is closed.’
‘Well,’ Jill sulked, ‘can I at least invite her to my birthday party?’
Mrs Mahoney sighed. ‘No darling – she’ll be like a fish out of water. Who’ll dance with her?’
Me – me – me … Mahoney prayed.
‘I’m all for giving the girl a good education, but socializing with her is something entirely different. And what good will it do her? She can’t keep the friendships up afterwards – it’s even unkind to her …’
Jill turned in appeal to her father: ‘Daddy?’
George Mahoney sighed. ‘I think your mother’s right, my dear – if for different reasons. I promised Colonel Visser there’d be no socializing. I’ve got no objection to the girl coming to your party – and, by the way it’s not illegal – not yet – but that is socializing, and it’ll get back to your friends’ parents, and somebody may kick up a fuss, and it’ll get to the police and, well, I’ll have broken the bargain, won’t I, and Patti Gandhi could well be told to leave the convent. It could cause trouble, without her being in any way to blame …’
But Patti Gandhi was to blame for the trouble. It happened in Luke’s second-last year at high school. That was the year the government translocated the people of Sophiatown, the black spot in white residential Johannesburg, to Soweto, the sprawling black township on the outskirts of the golden city. The year of the heartbreak of Sophiatown, the destruction of a whole teeming city within a city, a whole way of life, to replace it with a white middle-class suburb to be called Triomf, meaning Triumph. For months the government had been warning the people of Sophiatown that the day was approaching when vehicles would come to move them; it was the day the lorries and bulldozers arrived that Patti Gandhi, fifteen years old, walked into the public library in Umtata, took a book off the shelf and sat down to read.
‘Excuse me,’ the librarian, nice Mrs van Jaarsveld, whispered, ‘but this library is for whites only.’
Ten minutes later Mrs van Jaarsveld felt obliged to fulfil her threat to call the police. An hour later Patti Gandhi was released by a fed-up Colonel Visser into the custody of her father with a stern warning not to try any funny business like that again. By nightfall it was the talk of the town.
‘Oh, hell!’ George Mahoney groaned.
The next day was Saturday, when the boarders at the girls’ hostel and the boys’ hostel were allowed into town. The big topic of conversation was what that Indian girl, Patti Gandhi, had done. At mid-morning she walked into the Rex Café, where the boarders were all tucking into their ice-creams and milk-shakes and, midst the ensuing sudden silence, sat down at an empty table, held out her money and asked the Coloured waitress for a Coca-Cola. The waitress called the owner. The owner called the police. ‘What,’ the Afrikaner constable demanded, ‘are you doing here, hey?’
‘I am endeavouring,’ Patti Gandhi said, ‘to quench my thirst.’
‘Well, jus’ you ender- whatchacallit along with me, hey …’
This time Colonel Visser was really angry. ‘Is this how you treat my kindness?’ He telephoned her father to come. ‘This is her last warning! Next time it’s straight into Juvenile Court! I hope you give her a bladdy good hiding, hey!’
‘I will, sir, thank you, sir,’ Mr Gandhi said.
He did not give her the hiding ‘which you deserve’ – ‘Don’t you realize we have no rights to even be here under the Group Areas Act?’
‘That’s exactly what I realize. And nor do the people of Sophiatown have any rights!’
‘Sophiatown!’ the old man shouted. ‘I’m sick of hearing about Sophiatown! Just thank your lucky stars you’re not in Sophiatown but in Umtata where people are kind to us!’
‘Kind?’ She rolled her flashing eyes. ‘God help us when they get unkind!’
‘Here we can survive, because of nice people like Mr Mahoney and Colonel Visser whose hand you bite –’
‘“Bite!” Reading a book is a bite? Asking for a Coca-Cola!’ She bared her teeth. ‘Just wait till I do bite …’
‘Don’t you threaten me!’ Mr Gandhi wanted to slap her face but checked himself. ‘Don’t you threaten our existence! We’ve survived and that is an achievement! Your grandfather came here as a coolie to cut cane for a rupee a day, and now look at us! Look at this house! Look at our factories!’
‘And look at my great-uncle! He ended up liberating India from the British!’
‘And I suppose you want to liberate South Africa with your library books and Coca-Colas!’
‘Yes!’ Patti hollered. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’
Quivering with rage, her father sent her to bed for the rest of the day. But as soon as he had gone back to the factory she climbed out of the window, and cycled to her father’s store. She unlocked the back door and went to the hardware counter. With bolt-cutters she sliced off two metres of chain. She selected two stout padlocks and a pair of pliers. Then she rode across town to the municipal swimming pool.
Saturday was a big day at the municipal pool. In the afternoons most of the girls from the high school and convent came to meet their boyfriends. The fenced lawns around the pool were choked with young bodies when Patti Gandhi arrived. She parked her bicycle with the others, then set off to approach the area from the back.
She crept up the storm-water culvert that led up the side of the big fence, then into the shrubbery beyond. She crept up to the hedge that lined the mesh-wire fence. With the pliers she cut a hole.
Nobody noticed Patti Gandhi wriggling through, nobody noticed her until she strolled across the lawn, her lovely young body golden, her breasts bulging and her hips slowly swinging, her soft thighs stroking each other, her long black hair down to her waist, her seldom-seen smile all over her beautiful face: then every head was turning. Patti Gandhi sauntered across the lawn, carrying a little hold-all, her towel trailing languidly, making for the high-diving board. She climbed up it, two hundred pairs of astonished eyes upon her. She had reached the top and sauntered out to the end of the board when the pool manager, Frikkie van Schalkwyk, came bustling out of his office.
‘Hey!’ he shouted furiously. ‘Hey! Get out of here, man!’
Patti gave him a wave and her magnificent smile, dropped her hands to her knees, stuck out her beautiful backside at him and shook it. And a gasp went up from the white boys and girls, then laughter, then scattered clapping that gathered momentum. Patti Gandhi stood on the tip of the diving board, grinning and waving and blowing kisses, and Frikkie van Schalkwyk, of the Umtata Municipality Recreation Department, gave a roar of outrage and charged.
Frikkie ran up the steps onto the lawns, puffed around the top end of the pool, leaping over the gleeful white bodies, heading for the high-dive on the other side. He scrambled furiously up it, huffing his municipal outrage, and as he reached the top Patti blew him a splendid kiss, and she dived.
Patti Gandhi dived in a beautiful beaming swallow, just as Frikkie burst onto the board to roars of derision. She disappeared under the water in a streaming of long black hair. Frikkie blundered