worst. We had given the Boers the bomb, and so on.There would always be a coda waiving my responsibility for the actions of the American power elite when we had these malentendus, so we could get on with dinner or bed, but the strain was there.
We could never close a certain gap. Everything I was doing in that direction, like fixing up his diet, raising the creature comfort level, I did innocently and because I didn’t think it would hurt anything for him to live a little less exigently. He, for instance, had no stereo. The house I was sitting did, a good one, and a good collection of tapes of Renaissance music. He started listening to them but then made himself stop, abruptly. One evening we were playing Albinoni and making sex—I won’t say making love—nice and protractedly. He couldn’t help turning on me afterward. Clearly the whole thing was too voluptuous for his image. He demanded I stop making custard for him, because it made him feel like a child. Blancmange was another thing I had just learned to make and had to stop making. I had been trying to find out what his favorite foods were and cooking them for him, not such an insidious thing to do. It took ingenuity because of the limits of what can be bought in Botswana: I made clever substitutions. I think I deserved appreciation, not what I got, which was an outburst against Americans for breeding a taste for luxury wherever they went. I tried to be more Spartan. I wanted to avoid fighting. It was too hot for it.
Even if somehow I had been able to overcome being an American, being hypermaternal, being a few years older—which he was sensitive about—there would still have been the question of what discipline meant. I was fascinated by the concept of being under discipline. It took force to get him to discuss it at all, and even then everything was couched so cryptically it was agony.
Martin was under discipline. He would never say whose, even though he knew I knew it had to be ANC. What he seemed perpetually unable to comprehend was that our relationship gave me the right to know something about this situation. I was also interested, in fact initially interested, from a social science angle. If he had been the least bit forthcoming when I first raised the matter we might have slipped past it. Over and over I told him I had no interest whatever in who it was he was under discipline to or what being under discipline was requiring him to do. I was curious about what it meant to be part of a social organism in the way I assumed he was. I wanted help conceptualizing it, was all. I knew his movements were to some extent controlled by orders he got. One reason he put in so much time at my place, I concluded, wasbecause he could get and send phone messages there. There are no phones in Bontleng. But my questioning was never exquisite enough for him. If I asked something like Could you be a member of the movement against apartheid in a
contributory
way as opposed to the way you are now? he would fly into a rage and treat me like a spy.
Could someone who was under discipline ever be an appropriate mate? This was of course the underlying question I wanted answered. I had serious feelings for Martin. Most of the obstacles between us were probably erodable. I wasn’t prepared to spend a life with him in permanent atonement for being American, but I was confident that if he loved me, it would denationalize my image. But I could never be hypothetical enough to have our discussion come off. I had long since given up asking naive—and, he thought, leading—questions like Do you have to have been born in South Africa to join the ANC? But a question like Suppose someone gave someone an order to kill someone he had nothing against except as a symbol? was also inadmissible. Being under discipline was something I may have reacted to too strongly, as a woman, and I told him that. But nothing helped.
I think he needed our relationship to come apart nastily, to make it easier
We could never close a certain gap. Everything I was doing in that direction, like fixing up his diet, raising the creature comfort level, I did innocently and because I didn’t think it would hurt anything for him to live a little less exigently. He, for instance, had no stereo. The house I was sitting did, a good one, and a good collection of tapes of Renaissance music. He started listening to them but then made himself stop, abruptly. One evening we were playing Albinoni and making sex—I won’t say making love—nice and protractedly. He couldn’t help turning on me afterward. Clearly the whole thing was too voluptuous for his image. He demanded I stop making custard for him, because it made him feel like a child. Blancmange was another thing I had just learned to make and had to stop making. I had been trying to find out what his favorite foods were and cooking them for him, not such an insidious thing to do. It took ingenuity because of the limits of what can be bought in Botswana: I made clever substitutions. I think I deserved appreciation, not what I got, which was an outburst against Americans for breeding a taste for luxury wherever they went. I tried to be more Spartan. I wanted to avoid fighting. It was too hot for it.
Even if somehow I had been able to overcome being an American, being hypermaternal, being a few years older—which he was sensitive about—there would still have been the question of what discipline meant. I was fascinated by the concept of being under discipline. It took force to get him to discuss it at all, and even then everything was couched so cryptically it was agony.
Martin was under discipline. He would never say whose, even though he knew I knew it had to be ANC. What he seemed perpetually unable to comprehend was that our relationship gave me the right to know something about this situation. I was also interested, in fact initially interested, from a social science angle. If he had been the least bit forthcoming when I first raised the matter we might have slipped past it. Over and over I told him I had no interest whatever in who it was he was under discipline to or what being under discipline was requiring him to do. I was curious about what it meant to be part of a social organism in the way I assumed he was. I wanted help conceptualizing it, was all. I knew his movements were to some extent controlled by orders he got. One reason he put in so much time at my place, I concluded, wasbecause he could get and send phone messages there. There are no phones in Bontleng. But my questioning was never exquisite enough for him. If I asked something like Could you be a member of the movement against apartheid in a
contributory
way as opposed to the way you are now? he would fly into a rage and treat me like a spy.
Could someone who was under discipline ever be an appropriate mate? This was of course the underlying question I wanted answered. I had serious feelings for Martin. Most of the obstacles between us were probably erodable. I wasn’t prepared to spend a life with him in permanent atonement for being American, but I was confident that if he loved me, it would denationalize my image. But I could never be hypothetical enough to have our discussion come off. I had long since given up asking naive—and, he thought, leading—questions like Do you have to have been born in South Africa to join the ANC? But a question like Suppose someone gave someone an order to kill someone he had nothing against except as a symbol? was also inadmissible. Being under discipline was something I may have reacted to too strongly, as a woman, and I told him that. But nothing helped.
I think he needed our relationship to come apart nastily, to make it easier
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