Bloodlines Read Online Free PDF Page B

with me. I’m disappointed, but that’s not your fault. What I did initially was intended to be an act of self-sacrifice, but in failing to be honest with you it turned into an expression of cowardice, and the passage of time has only compounded my duplicity.
    My medical prognosis is bleak. The type of pancreatic cancer I have offers few treatment options beyond an awful, disfiguring surgery—and I’m not much interested in a procedure that might extend my life by dragging out my dying. I don’t want you to remember my end that way. There will be enough for you to deal with after I’m gone.
    I intend to spend what time I have left getting this story—my confession, I suppose—down on paper. You can read it when you’re ready, and I have little doubt that once you start, you’ll find it sufficiently engrossing to carry you through to the end. In advance, I ask that you not judge me—us—too harshly. I hope for your own sake that you can find it in your heart to understand and forgive. It’s a gift I have not been able to give myself.
    With all my love
    Dad

    Johannesburg, 1953
    I fell in love with your mother as I watched four uniformed policemen escort her out of the Witwatersrand University newspaper office in Johannesburg. She strode tall and defiant in their midst, taken into custody for writing an editorial critical of government policy.
    I had read the editorial the previous day and been struck by the writer’s courage, and by the naiveté of the writing—and I knew that it could only have been written by Michaela Davidson. Her topic was the forced removal of 50,000 mostly black residents from their homes in Sophiatown. The area was to be bulldozed and a white suburb built, and the inhabitants moved to a new area called the South West Townships, which in later years became notorious as Soweto.
    I knew that there would be some kind of backlash—the government didn’t take kindly to criticism. But I expected that they would punish her through the university administration in the form of censorship or reprimand. Instead, infuriated by this young student’s refusal to be silenced by threats of disciplinary action, the police raided the university newspaper office. And they did it late on a Friday afternoon, when there would be few students or faculty around to object to her arrest.
    Your mother and I didn’t know each other well. I was older by a few years, and I had always been uncomfortable with women. But our paths crossed frequently, and it would have been difficult not to take note of her. She was attractive and daring, she smiled easily, her laugh was open and enthusiastic. And in our socially conservative culture, she had no hesitation about flaunting convention. I thought I was invisible to her, but she told me later that she had been watching me for years, a shy, studious boy a few years ahead of her.
    I had just dropped a book off at my professor’s office and was about to push open the front door and walk out of the building when she was escorted down the corridor, two officers in front of her and two behind. Her flushed face betrayed her fear, but she walked with her shoulders straight and her head held high, and as she reached me she came to a sudden stop. The officer directly behind her stepped on her heel and tripped, reaching a hand out before him and shoving her shoulder. He almost bowled her over, barely righted himself, and swore under his breath.
    He was clearly ill-disposed to this pretty, privileged girl with her Jewish name, her English accent, and the trouble she was causing. She was playing with fire, breaking the law, undermining the principles he held dear.
    “Keep going, girlie,” he said. His English had the particularly heavy guttural accent common to those whose first language was Afrikaans.
    “I’m going to give a message to my friend,” she replied coolly, “so that someone knows where I am.” She turned to me. “Lenny, please call my parents and let them know