Summary
Maureen Smales, the third-person narrator, wakes up in a mud hut beside her husband, Bam (Bamford Smales). July, their servant, is bringing them coffee as he always has every morning. This morning he doesn’t knock on the door as there is no door. Instead he calls out and pulls back the burlap sack covering the door. The Smales children are asleep on the floor of the hut. Maureen reflects on where she is. She’s been in huts like this in her life, but while camping, for fun. She and her family were driven for three days from Johannesburg, hiding on the floor of a vehicle, to come to where they are now. As her husband wakes beside her, she asks him if he hid it. He says he hid it in the bush.
Maureen describes the vehicle, a “bakkie,” a yellow truck that her husband bought to take on trapping trips a few years ago. It was designed for bush travel. She recalls his excitement and her dubiousness at the time he bought it. Then she thinks that certain objects and people will come in handy in different situations.
She reflects on how everything started: first there was the Soweto uprising of ’76, then the strikes of 1980. But it had been going on for longer. They’d been thinking of leaving for years; but their savings were tied up in De Beers and other accounts. Their house was becoming worthless because of the recurring riots. However, they commiserated with the black struggle and joined political anti-apartheid groups, resisting their own white privilege.
The recent strikes dragged on and led to rioting. Public offices were burned. A bank accountant advised Bam to withdraw as much as he could, claiming that the banks were soon going to close. Bam went in with a Styrofoam camping freezer and took out all his cash. Maureen did the same with a wicker basket. Sure enough, the riots spread and people started to get killed. Heat-seeking missiles shot down passenger jets leaving Jan Smuts Airport. Their loyal black servant, July, came to their aid and told them to come with him to his village, six hundred kilometers away. As they drove, he asked for money from the Styrofoam tub for petrol and food. He always came back with petrol and food.
They bathe in a metal tub. July brings them food and goat's milk. He’s worried about hygiene and that their daughter Gina won’t like the taste. They tell him they can cook for themselves. They feel they should. Maureen and July have an understanding.
They’re not in a village so much as a collection of huts of July’s extended family. They’ve hidden the yellow truck between the huts and covered it from above. There are planes flying overhead and they don’t want to attract the attention of military patrols. Maureen is worried that the villagers will let it be known that there are whites staying there because of the truck. July explains to her that he’s told them the truck is his. Everyone has been looting in the city. They all think he’s stolen it.
Maureen worries about the kids drinking the river water. Bam tells her it’s too late, that they’ve already been drinking it. Her son Vic wants to show the other kids his electric car track even though there’s no electricity. She argues with him.
She meets July’s family, his wife and mother. He introduces the others as a group with a sweeping gesture. There are many women in the small kitchen and children. They move organically, barefoot, a part of their environment. She recalls sending things back with July for his children when they were born, and for his wife. She remembers his other woman, the one he was with in the city. That woman had a child in Soweto. She told Maureen proudly that she’d had herself sterilized.
Analysis
The opening of the novel is filled with a sense of the mixed blessing of being saved but transferred to a place that is uncomfortable. This deep ambivalence is captured in the opening scene as Maureen wakes in the mud hut. It’s like places that she has stayed in for pleasure as a child, on adventures, but she can’t have the same feeling now. She hears the mice and notices the cobwebs on the ceiling collecting dust. Her waking state is a nauseous state; she’s reeling and realizing the gravity of her situation.
Maureen is shown to be respectful of July and appreciative of his help. She has manners. Despite her ambivalence she’s gracious. She doesn’t let on about her discomfort. She also doesn’t dwell in it. She cleans her body in the tub efficiently and builds a fire.
A certain distance between Maureen and her husband is hinted at. As she recalls the time he bought the yellow truck, she describes him as subtly childish. She looks at him in a distanced way.
July is sensitive to Maureen and the family’s sensitivities. His sustained obsequiousness is striking; it feels out of place. They’re at his home, but he continues to treat them as though he’s at theirs, as their servant. He knows their cleanliness and what they’re used to, and he worries that his place won’t be nice enough. One striking irony is that despite the couples’ liberal views and their anti-apartheid sentiments, they keep black servants.
When Maureen stands in the kitchen with the women, the reader can feel her difference, her whiteness. She describes stooping, repeatedly bowing her greeting. She seems tall and out of place. It’s early morning but she remarks that she know where they’re at in their day.
