Jo'Burg Days: The Researcher
Who is that quiet woman who rides the bus every day, keeping herself to herself?
Barbara Durlacher’s story is a warning that one should never jump to hasty conclusions.
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There she was again. She saw her nearly every day after work, yet it was clear that she did not work in an office. She had none of the usual attributes of the working woman, the capacious shopping bag or the smart accessories and well-groomed appearance of a secretary or personal assistant. This elderly woman, thin greying hair wrapped in a neat braid around her head, with intelligent grey eyes and careworn body gave a different impression entirely.
Every afternoon there she was at the stop opposite the main library, patiently waiting for the 5.15 pm bus. She never talked to anyone, never made eye-contact or exchanged a friendly smile. She had a cool reserve, a remoteness which seemed somehow to make her invulnerable and keep her apart from the others on their way home from a day in the office. Amongst the gossip and banter and easy companionship of the women, superficial acquaintances from their meetings on the bus , she stood alone. Making no attempt to be friendly, she kept her distance and her eyes down.
‘Wonder why she strikes me as so special?’ Maureen thought idly, glancing up from her book, interested despite herself. ‘There’s something different about her, something that separates her from everybody else. It’s almost as if she had a secret that makes her different. She has the air of an intellectual, a searcher for the truth who is seeking wisdom and understanding.’
Marking her place in the book with a forefinger, Maureen watched the woman sitting so still in her seat. Then as the bus rounded the corner, the woman rose and, moving slowly and carefully, alighted. Maureen turned as the bus pulled off and watched as she walked slowly up the road. With her worn leather handbag under her arm, she had an aura of isolation. Maureen noticed that people instinctively avoided her and swerved out of her path. Nobody violated her private space.
The area where she’d got off was one of run-down shops, many of them closed and boarded up. There were small blocks of flats with dark rooms and grubby windows. Drug pushers stood on street corners, hookers beckoned with catcalls and whistles. A heavy smell of stale food and over-ripe vegetables hung in the air from the workers’ cafes and curry dens. Stray dogs nosed the gutters for scraps.
‘How awful to have to live in such an area,’ thought Maureen as the bus accelerated past a municipal park ablaze with flowers and blossoming jacarandas. The driver, changing down, began the steep climb up the hill to the refined residential areas on the heights and the character of the suburb changed imperceptibly, quiet streets and dignified houses replacing the earlier neglect and squalor.
‘No wonder she keeps to herself if that’s where she lives. It’s a matter of self-preservation. Judging from her appearance she must have known better. Poor thing, how awful to have sunk so low to be forced to live in such circumstances. Wonder who she is?’
The months passed and every day the woman caught the same bus, always silent, never acknowledging the glances and smiles of the other passengers, until a year or more had passed.
Then, one day, reading the paper, Maureen noticed a photograph that seemed familiar. It was some hours until she realised with a jolt why she’d recognised the face. It was the woman on the bus. Same grey hair, thicker then, but the aristocratic nose and fine, clear eyes were unmistakeable. It was definitely the same woman. Maureen was amazed and ashamed at what she read in the obituary.
“Wartime heroine dies,” the story went, “Elaine de la Falaise, French Resistance operator, decorated four times for bravery and valour, Croix de Guerre personally awarded by the French President de Gaulle, responsible for the escape of 40 British airmen during the war, credited with killing eleven high-ranking Gestapo officers in a well-planned attack who spent three years in one of the most notorious prison camps when captured, has died at the age of 79 in Johannesburg. After her release by Allied troops at the end of the War, Mademoiselle de la Falaise travelled to South Africa where she lived in obscurity and poverty.
Born in Paris of an aristocratic Russian mother and a French father, a professor at the Sorbonne, Elaine de la Falaise was a brilliant student destined for greatness in the world of science. Her career abruptly terminated by the war, she turned her formidable intellect to saving those fighting for the freedom. She dedicated herself to doing everything she could to save the lives of the airmen who were shot down over France. In her latter years, Mlle de la Falaise spent her time in the Central Reference Library apparently attempting to find answers to the question of what changed a nation, the source of intellectual achievement, music and art, into ravening monsters. She sought to understand how it was that in twelve short years, Hitler and his supporters could have changed the face of Europe for ever. Her intellectual integrity and personal courage will stand as a reminder to everyone that in the times of the greatest crises, there are those who put moral principles higher than personal safety. A very brave woman indeed.”
Despite the fulsome and overblown prose, Maureen finished reading the obituary with tears in her eyes, realising that the slight careworn figure she had wondered about so often was a person of consequence, and blaming herself for an opportunity lost to know one of the great Resistance heroines of the age.
