Unit4b The bench Richard Rive
“We form an integral part of a complex society, a society complex in that a vast proportion of the population are denied the very basic privileges of existence, a society that condemns a man to an inferior position because he has the misfortune to be born black, a society that can only retain its precarious social and economic position at the expense of an enormous oppressed proletariat!”
Karlie’s eyes shone as he watched the speaker. Those were great words, he thought, great words and true. The speaker paused for a moment and sipped some water from a glass. Karlie sweated. The hot October sun beat down mercilessly on the gathering. The trees on the Grand Parade afforded very shelter and his handkerchief was already soaked where he had placed it between his neck and shirt collar. Karlie stared round him at the sea of faces.every shade of colour was represented, from shimmy ebony to the one or two whites in the crowd. He started at the two detectives who were busily making shorthand notes of the speeches, and then turned to stare back at the speaker.
It is up to us to challenge the rights of any groups who willfully and deliberately condemn a fellow group the rights of any groups who willfully and deliberately condemn a fellow group to a servile position. We must challenge the rights of any people who see fit to segregate human beings solely on grounds of pigmentation. Your children are denied the rights which are theirs by birth. They are segregated socially, economically…
Ah, thought Karlie, that man knows what he is speaking about. He says I am as good as any other man, even a white man. That needs much thinking. I wonder if he thinks I have the right to go into any bioscope or eat in any restaurant, or that my children can go to any school? These are dangerous ideas and need much thing; I wonder what Ou Klass would say to this. Ou Klass said God made the white man and the black man separately and the one must always be “baas” and the other “jong.” But this man says different things and somehow they seem true.
Karlie’s brow was knitted as he thought. On the platform were many speakers, both white and black, and they were behaving as if there were no difference of colour between them. There was a white woman in a blue dress offering a cigarette to Nxeli. That could never happen at Bietjiesvlei. Old Lategan at the store would have fainted if his Annatjie had offered Witbooi a cigarette. And Annatjie had no such pretty dress. These were new things, and he, Karlie, had to be careful before he accepted them. But why shouldn’t he accept them? He was not coloured any more, he was a human being. The speaker had said so. He remembered seeing pictures in the newspaper of people who defied laws which relegated them to a particular class, and those people were smiling as they went to prison. This was strange world.
The speaker continued and Karlie listened intently. His speech was obviously carefully prepared and he spoke slowly, choosing his words. This is a great man, Karlie thought.
The last speaker was the white lady in the blue dress, who asked them to challenge any discriminatory laws or measures in every possible manner. Why should she speak like that? thought Karlie. She could go to the best bioscopes, and swim at the best beaches. Why, she was even more beautiful than Annatjie Lategan. They had warned him in Bietjiesvlei about coming to the city. He had seen the Skollies in District Six and knew what to expect there. Hanover Street held no terrors for him. But no one had told him about this. This was new, this set one’s mind thinking, yet he felt it was true. She said one should challenge. He would challenge. He, Karlie, would astound old Lategan and Balie at the dairy farm. They could do what they liked to him after that. He would smile like those people in the newspaper.
The meeting was almost over when Karlie threaded his way through the crowd. The words of the speakers were still milling through his head. It could never happen in Bietjiesvlei, he thought, or could it? The sudden screech of a car pulling to a hurried stop whirled him back to his senses. A white head was angrily thrust through the window. “Look where you’re going, you black bastard!”
Karlie stared dazedly at him. Surely this white man had never heard what the speakers had said. He could never have seen the white woman offering Nxeli a cigarette. Karlie could never imagine the white lady shouting those words at him. It would be best to catch a train and think these things over.
He saw the station in a new light. Here was a mass of human beings, some black, some white, and some brown like himself. Here they mixed with one another, yet each mistrusted the other with an unnatural fear. Each treated the other with suspicion, each moved in a narrow, haunted pattern of its own manufacture. One must challenge these things the speaker had said… in one’s own way. Yet how in one’s own way? How was one to challenge? slowly it dawned upon him. Here was his chance, the bench. The railway bench with the legend “Europeans Only” neatly painted on it in white. For one moment it symbolized all the misery of the plural south African society. Here was a challenge to his rights as a man. There it stood, a perfectly ordinary wooden railway bench, like hundreds of thousands of others in south Africa. His challenge. That bench, now, had concentrated in it all the evils of a system he could not understand.It was the obstacle between himself and humanity. If he sat on it he was a man. If he was afraid he denied himself membership as a human in a human society. He almost had visions of righting the pernicious system if only he sat on that bench. Here was his chance. He, Karlie, would challenge.
He seemed perfectly calm when he sat down on the bench, but inside his heart was thumping wildly. Two conflicting ideas now throbbed through him. The one said, “I have no right to sit on this bench?” the one voice spoke of the past, of the servile position he had occupied on the farms, of his father and his father’s father who were born black, lived like blacks and died lide oxen. The other voice spoke of the future and said, “Karlie, you are a man died like oxen. The other voice spoke of the future and said, “Karlie, you are a man. You have dared what your father would not have dared. You will die like a man!”
Karlie took out a cigarette and smoked. Nobody seemed to notice his sitting there. This was an anti-climax. The world still pursued its monotonous way. No voice shouted “Karlie has conquered!” he was a normal human being sitting on a bench in a busy station, smoking a cigarette. Or was this his victory, the fact that he was a normal human being? A well-dressed white woman walked down the platform. Would she sit on the bench, Karlie wondered. And then that gnawing voice, “You should stand and let the white woman sit.” Karlie narrowed his eyes and gripped tighter at his cigarette. She swept past him without the slightest twitch of an eyelid and walked on down the platform. Was she afraid to challenge, to challenge his right to be human? Karlie now felt tired. A third conflicting emotion was now creeping in, a compensatory emotion which said, “You do not sit on this bench to challenge, you sit there because you are tired. You are tired; therefore you sit.” He would not move, because he was tired, or was it because he wanted to sit where he liked?
People were now pouring out of a train that had pulled into the station. There were so many people pushing and jostling one another that nobody noticed him. This was his train. It would be quite easy to step into the train and ride off home, but that would be giving in, suffering defeat, refusing the challenge, in fact admitting that he was not a human being. He sat on. Lazily he blew the cigarette smoke into the air, thinking… his mind was far from the meeting and the bench, he was thinking of Bietjiesvlei and Ou Klaas knew everything. He said god made us white or black and we must therefore keep our places.
“Get off this seat!”
Karlie did not hear the gruff voice. Ou Klaas would be on the land now, waiting for his tot of cheap wine.
“I said get off the bench, you swine!”
Karlie suddenly shipped back to reality. For a moment he was going to jump up, then he remembered who he was and why he was sitting there. Suddenly he felt very tired. He looked up slowly into a very red face that stared down at him.
“Get up! I said. There are benches down there for you!”
Karlie asared up and said nothing. He stared up and said nothing. He stared up into very sharp, cold gray eyes.
“Can’t you hear me speaking to you, you black swine!”
Slowly and deliberately Karlie puffed at his cigarette. So this was his test. They both stared at each other, challenged with the eyes, like two boxers, each knowing that they must eventually trade blows yet each afraid to strike first.
“Must I dirty my hands on scum like you?”
Karlie said nothing. To speak would be to break the spell, the supremacy he felt he was slowly gaining. An uneasy silence. Then,
“I will call a policeman rather than kick a Hotnot like you! You can’t even open your black jaw when a white man speaks to you!”
Karlie saw the weakness. The white youth was afraid to take action himself. He, Karlie, had won the first round of the bench dispute!
A crowd now collected. “Afrika!” shouted one joker. Karlie ignored the remark. People were now milling around, staring at the unusual sight of a black man sitting on a white man’s bench. Karlie merely puffed on.
“Look at the black ape! That’s the worst of giving these Kaffirs too much rope!”
“I can’t understand it, they have their own benches!”
“Don’t get up, you have every right to sit there!”
“He’ll get hell when a policeman comes!”
“Mind you, I can’t see why they shouldn’t sit where they please!”
“I’ve said before, I’ve had a native servant, and a more impertinent…”
Karlie sat and heard nothing. Irresolution had now turned to determination under no condition was he going to rise. They could do what they liked.
“So this is the fellow. Hey, get up there! Can’t you read?” The policeman was towering over him. Karlie could see the crest on his buttons and thin wrinkles on his neck. “What is your name and address?”
Karlie still maintained his obstinate silence. It took the policeman rather unawares. The crowd was growing every minute.
“You have no right to speak to this in such a manner!” It was the white lady in the blue dress.
“Mind your own business! I’ll ask your help when I need it. It is people like you who make Kaffirs think they’re as good as white people!” Then, addressing Karlie, “Get up, you!”
“I insist that treat him with proper respect!”
The policeman turned red. “This … this …” He was at a loss for words.
“Kick up the Hotnot if he won’t get up!” shouted a spectator.
“Rudely a white man laid hands on Karlie. Get up, you bloody bastard!”
Karlie turned to resist, to cling to the bench, his bench. There were more than one man now pulling at him. He hit out wildly and then felt a dull pain as somebody rammed a first into his face. He was now bleeding and wild-eyed. He would fight for it. The constable clapped a pair of handcuffs round Karlie’s wrists and tried to clear a way through the crowd. Karlie was still struggling. A blow or two landed on him. Suddenly he relaxed and slowly struggled to his feet. It was useless fighting any longer. Now it was his turn to smile. He had challenged and won. Who cared at the result?
“Come on, you swine!” said the policeman, forcing Karlie through the crowd.
“Certainly,” said Karlie for the first time, and stared at the policeman with the arrogance of one who dared to sit on a “European”bench. |