And then they had a long conversation about business: about André’s business, then about Howard’s business, and I drifted off to look at some of the paintings on the walls. They were political works — some of them quite direct, not symbolic, but slogans, that kind of thing. They were works by a new Black artist, and this was important, so important, how I understood that. We — we who spent time in galleries — understood that. The gallery owner took risks showing this kind of work, he risked the work being censored, even his gallery being shut down, at any time.

The artist himself was there, surrounded by people, raucous conversation, then more serious tones. I thought I should go up to him and meet him, talk to him, but I felt intimidated by the crowd around him, I stood for a few moments on its periphery, I’m sure I looked lost, and so I wandered off again, to look at the paintings.

It was a hot summer night, and the back door was open onto a patio where drinks were being served. I went out then and stood under the black, starred sky, and took a glass of white wine from the server, the glass so cool in my hand.

There were some children, Eric’s nieces and nephews, darting about under tables and chairs and for a moment I wished I was them. And I thought briefly of Stephen and Helena, at home with Emily. Stephen eating a plate of Emily’s stew in the kitchen, the stew he relished and ate only when we were out, and which I only knew about because Emily told me. Helena was probably already in bed. I could have brought them, I thought.

And then I thought: I should bring them to galleries more often.

I REMEMBERED TAKING Stephen once to the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the main art museum of the city, it was a sunny weekday, he must have been five or six years old. We walked up the stone stairs of the multi-pillared entrance, overlooking the park, Joubert Park. It should have been beautiful, but it was not. I felt no pride in that museum, there were old European artists, dark hallways, improperly lit, I felt it to be a place filled with irrelevant art, irrelevant to us, in South Africa. And it was, it was . . . irrelevant. Irrelevant to what was actually going on around us. Stephen must have felt my quietness, my subdued mood, as we wound slowly through the galleries, such a small boy!

I bought him an ice cream from the Black man selling from his cart outside, we sat on a bench as he ate it. I remember the ice cream dripping down his chin, melting, melting: a hot, sunny day.

I didn’t take him there again.

Of course that changed in New York. The children’s early years, their holidays, their weekends, were filled with visits to museums, to galleries, to art openings. But that was different, everything was different, here.