A Sport of Nature Read Free Page A

and she even waved casually back. Arriving for a James Dean she was to see for the second or third time, she said, Where’re you sitting? preparatory to asking if he wouldn’t like to sit with ‘us’.
    He had promised to keep a seat for a friend; wouldn’t she come along with them, instead? His friend did not arrive, or did not exist. He did not shift his leg towards hers or take her hand. Now and then both had the same reaction to the film and instinctively would turn to smile at one another in the dark. The look of him,that had attracted her attention for some weeks, took on a strong bodily presence beside her. She did not expect this one to touch her, was not offended that he didn’t. When the lights went up she was glad to see his face. She liked particularly his eyes, a greeny-grey with hair-thin splinters of yellow sunburst in the iris, whose charm was that they seemed too luminous for his sallow skin and tarnished curly hair—like lights left burning in a room in daylight. His name was Don; he was an apprentice electrician. It was considered a catch to have a boy who was no longer at school; a grown-up. He spoke with an unfamiliar accent—Afrikaans, perhaps, but different from the
Boere
accent from South Africa that was made fun of at school. He explained that his family came from the Cape; they had lived in Salisbury only for the last five years. He had passed his matric in Salisbury; they discussed the subjects he had taken, and those she was studying for a more junior exam, now. He said he really wanted to be a lawyer; he was going to start studying by correspondence; but that wasn’t what he wanted, he wanted to go to a real university.
    A lawyer? —One of my aunts is married to a lawyer. Not the aunt I stay with in the holidays—the other one.—
    He nodded, looking first at her, then away from what he read there. —You’ll go to university, then.—
    She did not seem to like being reminded of what lay beyond school. —Don’t know.—
    â€”Well, maybe you’ll get a job.—
    â€”Maybe.—
    â€”My sisters want to be models and that. But girls like you … you can be anything.—
    She had the instinct to console without thinking for what. —Oh I’m not rich. My father’s a rep, and he’s married again.—
    â€”But your aunt?—
    Out of her mouth came the words she had heard many times: —I’m like the daughter she didn’t have.—
    It was taken for granted that you brought any new conquest into the Saturday group. But this one was very quiet among them; and she wanted to hear him talk. He had told her he played the guitar. She wanted him to play for her, but how could he keep a guitar at his feet in a cinema? They laughed; but halfway through the film they were seeing that day, she put her mouth very near his ear and whispered—Can’t I come to your place and hear you play?—The girls were used to covering up for one another, if someone had something better to do than sit in the cinema. He was silent; then he whispered, Come. They crouched out along the row.
    The walk was long; she thought it would have made more sense to take the bus. He talked less and less, and every now and then touched at the ear as if her breath had burnt it. Soon she saw they were in a coloured township and he didn’t need to say what he couldn’t bring himself to. They came to a small house natty with careful paint and souvenirs—a mailbox in the form of a miniature windmill, a brass bell with imitation pine-cone strikers. There were signs on the doors along the passage: CHARLENE’S PAD, KEEP OUT SLEEPERS AT WORK. In a room with three neat beds Don shared with smaller brothers, he made solemn preparations with the guitar while Hillela sat on a bed and read over a framed illuminated text of that poem she had had to learn at primary school: ‘… If you can talk with crowds and keep