The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer

are to come to him at three-thirty.
    He absents himself from the garage without explanation—that doesn’t matter now. She drives him to the cottage to change; she doesn’t like to tell him it’s not necessary to get into the suit, his elegant jeans will do. They both have that strange constriction of the gullet, as if some drawn breath has lodged there. The expression beneath the flap of flesh, the half-hood, is unchanged. The lawyer shakes their hands; hers, his, and they all sit. When he speaks it is only to the foreigner because it is to him that what he has to say applies—the girl is Nigel Ackroyd Summers’ daughter, Motsamai informed—there is no threat to her, she belongs. All possible avenues have been explored. Up to the highest level, he might add. Motsamai had been most helpful. There is no possibility that permanent residence will be granted. He greatly regrets to say: nothing furthercan be done, by himself or anyone else. He must tell the client this in order to save vain hopes and useless expenditure. —To be frank—even if you were to consider it as a desperate measure, not even money could find the right hand. As you must have read in the papers, there is a big exposure of corruption in that very area, that very Department, right now.—
    What is left to ask; but they wait.
    First the lawyer repeats what he has told; clients often don’t want to hear, don’t take in bad news, they’ve believed in him beyond professional fallibility, beyond circumstances of their own making, beyond repair.
    Now suddenly he talks to the girl as if what he has to say needs to be broken to the client through someone close to him—too blunt to be borne directly. —He will have to leave the country within ten days. I was able to extend that from a week, for him.—

Chapter 13
    They go back—are back—at the EL-AY Café. Where else is there to go, for her? And for him, there never was anywhere, anyone.
    She tells their story to her friends over and over, as this one and that joins The Table at different points in the recounting. They want all the details, it’s their way of showing concern; they repeat them, weighing them over, asking the same questions, a part-song. All around, the coming-and-going, the laughter, scraping of chairs, winding of tape-music, tossing back of hair, flamboyant greetings, murmurs, is unabated: The Table might just as well be having a birthday party.
    â€”Told you before, my Brother, disappear. That’s the only way. Like the Mozambiquans, Congolese, Kenyans, what-not.—
    â€”But he’d better make it somewhere else. Durban, Cape Town, clear out of here.—
    â€”Absolutely
not!
This’s the only one big enough, it’s the labyrinth to get lost in.—
    â€”Of course, else how do all these others get away with it? Tell me. Tripping over their carvings and schmuck on everypavement—you find them everywhere gabbling happily in their Swahili or French or whatever. So many of them no-one can get a hold. Sheer numbers. They can’t be caught.—
    â€”It’s night in there, man. They’re black like me. This guy here, Abdu, he’s not one of them, his face and everything—it tells the story.—
    â€”Schmuck—what’s that—
    â€”Not some kind of dope, I can tell you—kitsch, if you’re able to recognize it when you see it.—
    â€”I still think you had the wrong lawyer. You’re just too well-brought-up, Julie, Northern Suburbs clean-hands stuff, God-on-Sundays only sees a sparrow fall, girl, he doesn’t deliver thou-shalt-not to corporate fixings but he ordains it isn’t
nice
to use crooked lawyers. You can’t tell me something couldn’t be fixed. Christ, the top man down at Home Affairs here has just been relieved of his job, grounds of corruption …—
    Julie is sounding the wood of The Table with spread fingers.