** spoiler alert ** Shortly before the fall of apartheid, the Afrikaner farmer Marais Van der Vyver accidently shoots and kills one of his young black laborers, Lucas. A staunch opponent of the anti-apartheid movement, Van der Vyver is convinced that the “radicals” will use this incident to fuel the political fires opposing apartheid. He appropriately reports the accident to the authorities, the chief of police being somewhat embarrassed when Van der Vyver weeps during the conversation. Van der Vyver and his wife thoughtfully attend the young man’s funeral, and Gordimer describes Lucas’s family members and Van der Vyver’s awkward and socially shy manner, an affect that has always been characteristic of him from childhood.

In a flashback, the accident itself is described, and there is no question that the death was not only unintentional but deeply regretted. As Van der Vyver’s thoughts and emotions are explored in some detail, what is revealed in the last sentence of the story is the very fact that can never be known by anyone else – except for the young man’s mother – the fact that will not be in the news, that will not be available to either supporters or opponents of apartheid nor by Van der Vyver’s own family and friends, the fact that the twenty-year-old black youth who has been slain was not only Van der Vyver’s “boy,” a laborer on his farm, but that he was Van der Vyver’s own son. Only after the story has thus ended is the reader left to sort out the feelings and conflicts that this revelation leaves dangling. Only then can the reader begin the process of reassessing all he has read, all that he has thought and vicariously experiencing during the course of the narrative. And much therefore must be reexamined, understood in a new and more profound way, re-concluded. The story is not really over – it lingers and takes on new nuances and meanings in the mind of the reader long after the book is closed.

Gordimer, a staunch opponent of apartheid, has sensitively portrayed the life and emotions of someone who could easily be viewed as her enemy, moving inside someone with whom she disagrees to explore and reveal his humanity outside of his political beliefs. She also effectively points out how events can be misinterpreted or even deliberately distorted to make political capital. Most of all, she reveals the extent to which we can seldom really see into each other’s lives, can seldom understand another person’s motivations and feelings, cannot appreciate the path he or she has traveled. In this story, Van der Vyver has broken the laws of apartheid, the prohibition of miscegenation, even as he strongly supports the status quo politically, and in experiencing in this story his humanity, our own understanding and sympathy for the man, if not for apartheid itself, is deepened, and we gain appreciation for the nuances, ambiguities, and complexities of the lives of all people.