The Late Bourgeois World by Nadine Gordimer

Author:Nadine Gordimer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

Max’s bomb, described in court as being made of a tin filled with a mixture of sulphur, saltpetre and charcoal, was found before it exploded and he was arrested within twenty-four hours. Others were more or less successful and it all began again, and worse than it had ever been before: raids, arrests, detention without trial. The white people who were kind to their pets and servants were shocked at bombs and bloodshed, just as they had been shocked, in 1960, when the police fired on the men, women and children outside the Sharpeville pass office. They can’t stand the sight of blood; and again gave, to those who have no vote, the humane advice that the decent way to bring about change is by constitutional means. The liberal-minded whites whose protests, petitions and outspokenness have achieved nothing remarked the inefficiency of the terrorists and the wasteful senselessness of their attempts. You cannot hope to unseat the great alabaster backside with a tin-pot bomb. Why risk your life? The madness of the brave is the wisdom of life. I didn’t understand, till then. Madness, God, yes, it was; but why should the brave ones among us be forced to be mad?

Some fled the country, some were held solitary in their cells and, refusing to speak, were kept on their feet under interrogation until they collapsed. Some did speak. Max was tried and sentenced to five years imprisonment but he was called as a State witness after serving fifteen months, and he spoke. He was beaten when he was first arrested, that we know, but what else he was confronted with later, what else they showed him in himself, we do not know – but he spoke. He spoke of Solly and Eve King and the man who was arrested with him, he spoke of William Xaba and other friends with whom we had lived and worked for years.

He is dead now. He didn’t die for them – the people, but perhaps he did more than that. In his attempts to love he lost even his self-respect, in betrayal. He risked everything for them and lost everything. He gave his life in every way there is; and going down to the bed of the sea is the last.

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