By th.

e same author

Dusklands
In the Heart of the Cou1ttry
Waiting for the Ba.rbcm'ans
Life & Times of Michael K
Foe
• Age of Iron •

J.M. COETZ,EE

Seeker & Warburg

London
 First published in Great Britain in 1990
by Martin Seeker & Warburg Limited
Michelin House, 81 .Fulham Road, London SWJ 6RB

Copyright© 1990].. M. Coetzee

A CIP catalogue r'ecord for this book

is availabl'e from the British Library
ISBN 0 43,6 20012 0

Photoset by Rowland Phototypesetting Limited

Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Printed in Great Britain

by Richard Clay Limited, Bungay,, Suffolk
 For

V.H.M..C.(1904-1985)
z.c. (1912-1988)
N.G.C. (1966-1989)
 T-here is an alley down the
side of the garage, you may remember it, you and your
friends would sometimes play ther,e. Now it is a dead place,
waste, without use, where windblown leaves pi'fe up and rot.
-~e~t.erday, at the end of this alley, I came upon a house of
carton boxes and plastic sheeting and a man cuded up inside,
a man I recognized from the streets: tall, thin, with a weath-
ered skin and long, carious fangs., wearing a baggy grey suit
and a hat with a sagging brim. He had the hat on now,.
sleeping with the bdm foMed under his ear. A dereiict,. one
of the derelicts who hang around the parking lots on Mill
Street, cadging money from shoppers, drinking under the
flyov·er, eating out of refuse cans. One of the homeless for
whom August,. month of ~~iJ!~S the \!!_ors.!_!!l(l!l_!h:_ Asleep
in his box, his legs stretched out like a'-marionette''S;<·his jaw
agape. An unsavoury smell about hinf~:urine, sweet wine,
mouldy clothing, and something eise too . Unclean .
For a while I stood staring down on him,, staring and
smelling. A visitm, visiting himself on me on this of all days.
This was the day when I had the news from Dr Syfret. The
news was not good, but it was mine, for me, mine only, not
to be refused. It was fm me to take in my arms and fold to
my chest and take home, without headshaking., without tears .
. 3 .
'Thank you, doctor,' I said: 'thank you for being frank . ' 'We
will do everything we can,' he said, 'we will tack[e this
together . ' But already, behind the comradely front, I could
see he was withdrawing. Sauve qui peut. His allegiance to the
living, not the dying .
The trembling began only when I got out of the car . By
the time I had dosed the garage door I was shaking aU over:
to stiH it I had to dench my teeth, grip my handbag . It was
then that I saw the boxes, saw him.
'What are you doing here?' I demanded,. hearing the irri-
tation in my voice, not checking it. 'You can'·t stay, you must
go.'
He did not stir, lying in his shelter, [ooking up,. inspecting
the winter stockings, the blue coat, the skirt with whos·e hang
there has always been something wrong, the grey hair cut by
a strip of scalp, old w~man's scalp, pink, babyish.
Then he drew in his legs and leisurely got up. Without a
word he turned his back on me, shook out the black p[astic,
folded it in half, in quarters, in eighths. He produced a bag
(Air Canada, it said) and zipped it shut . [ stood aside. Leaving
behind the boxes, an empty botde and a smeU of urine, he
passed me . His trousers sagged; he hitched them up. I waited
to be sure he had gone, and hea.rd him stow the plastic in the
hedge from the other side .
Two things, then, in the space of an hop~he qe;~s~Js>n_g
dreaded, and this r·~conn.aissance, this ~~_:nnun~atio~l1·)
The first of the carn~1!-b1!'.~2. prompt, unerring~~HOw Tong
can I fend them oft? The scavengers of Cape Town,. whose
number never dwindles. Who go bare and feel no cold. Whoi.
sleep outdoors and do not sicken. Who starve and do not !;,
waste. Warmed from within by akohol . The contagions and 1
infections in their blood consumed in liquid flame. Cleaners-
up after the feast. Flies, dry-winged, glazen-ey~d, pitH·ess.
My heirs. ·~ ·~ ·
With what slow steps did I enter this empty house, from
. 4.
which every echo has faded, where the very tread of footsole
on board is Hat and duUl How I longed for you to be here,
to hold me, comfort me! I begin to-understand the true
....
meaning of the embraoe. We embrace to be embraced. We l ,\~t.l;:
embrace our children to be folded in the arm~ of the future, I\')

to pass ourselves on beyond death, to be g:_a[l~~9rt~~· That is

how it was when I embraced you, always . We bear children
in order to be mothered by them . Home truths, a mother's
truth: from now to the end that is aU you will hear from me.
So: how I longed for you! How I longed to be able to go
upstaiirs to you, to sit on your bed, run my fingers through
your hair,. whisper in your ear as. I did on school mornings,
'Tiime to get up!' And then, when you turned over, your
body blood-warm, your breath milky, to take you in my
arms in what we called 'giving Mommy a big hug,' the secret
meaning of which, the meaning never spoken, was that
Mommy should not be sad, for she would not die but live
on m you.
To live! You are my life; I love you as I love life itself. In
the mornings I come out of the hous·e and wet my finger and
hoM it up to the wind. When the chill iis from the north-west,
from your quarter, I stand a long time sniffing, concentrating
my attention in the hope that across ten thousand miles of
land and sea some breath will reach me of the milkiness you
still carry with you behind your ears, in the fo]d of your neck.
The first task laid on me,. from today: to resist the craving
to share my death. Loving you, loving life, to forgive the
living and take my leave without bitterness. To embrace
death as my own, mine alone .
To whom this writing then? The answer: to you hut not
to you; to me; to you in me.
AU afternoon I trie9. to keep myself busy., deaning out
drawers, sorting and discarding papers. At dusk I came out
again. Behind the garage the shelter was set up as before with
the black plastic neatly spanned over it. Inside lay the man,
. 5 .
 his legs curled up, and a dog beside him that cocked its ears
and wagged its tail. A coUie, young, Httle more than a pup,
black, with white points.

want. no mess.. ' -·

'No fires,' [ said . 'Do you understand? [ want no fires, I
'

He sat up, rubbing his bare ankles, staring around as if not

_ )( knowing where he was. A horsy,. weatherbeaten face with
the puffiness around the eyes of an akoholic. Strange green
eyes: unhealthy.
'Do you want something to eat?' [said.
He followed me to the kitchen, the dog at his heels., and
waited while [ cut him a sandwich. He took a bite but then
seemed to forget to chew, standing against the door-jamb
with his mouth full, the light shining into his vacant green
eyes, while the dog whined softly. 'I have to dean up,' [said
impati,endy, and made to dose the door on him. He went off
without a murmur; but before he turned the comer I was
sure I saw him toss the sandwich away, and the dog dive after
it.
There were not so many of these homeless people in your
time. But now they are part of life here. Do they frighten
me? On the whole, no. A little begging, a little thieving;. dirt,
noise, dmnkenness;, no worse. It is the \ roaming .. gangs [ £ear,
'

the suUen-mouthed _boys, rapa~ious as\sha~-k.~:llo~ whom the

fust shade of the pnson-house ts alre::ufy begmmng to dose.
Children scorning childhood, the time of wonder, the
\ growing-time of the soul. Their souls, their organs of won-
der, stunted, petrified. And on the other side of the great
· divid~"thel.r' white c~sins soul-stunted too, spinning them-
selves tighter and tight,er into their sleepy cocoons. Swim-
ming lessons, riding lessons, ballet lessons;. cri~ket on the
lawn; hves passed within waUed gardens guarded by buHdogs;
chitldren of paradise, blond., innocent, shining with angeHc
light, soft as putti. Their residepce the lin.];bo of the unborn,
their innocence the innocence o~hee-grubs'l plump and white,
~-_....- ~ --
. 6 .

\ r;_ '
 drenched in honey, absorbing sweetness through their soft
skins. Slumbrous their souls, bliss-filled, abstracted.
Why do I give this man food?' For the same reason I would •• l ~ ...- ~
I.

feed his dog (stolen, I am sure) if it came begging. For the

same reason I gave you my breast . To be full enough to give
and to give from one's fuHness: what deeper urge is ther·e?
Out: of their withered bodies even the old try to squeeze
one last drop. A stubborn will to give,. to nourish. Shrewd
was d'eath's aim when he chose my breast for his first
shaft.
This morning, bringing him coffee, I found him urinating
into the drain, which he did without any appearance of
shame.
'Do you want a job of work?' I said. 'There are plenty of
jobs I can give you.'
He said nothing, but drank the coffee, holding the mug in
both hands.
'You are wasting your life,' I said . 'You are not a child any
more. How can you live like this? How c:m you He around
and do nothing all day? I don't understand it.'
It is true: I do not understand it. Something in me revolts
,: at the lassitude, the letting go, the welcoming of dissolution.
He did something that shocked me. With a straight look,
the first direct look he has given me,. he spat a gob of spit,.
thick, ydlow, streaked with brown from the coffee, on to
the concrete beside my foot. Then he thrust the mug at me
and sauntered off.
The thing itself,. I thought, shaken: the thing itself brought
out between us. Spat not upon me but before me where I
could see it, inspect it, think about it . His word, his kind of
word, fwm his own mouth, warm at the instant when it left
him. A word, undeniable, from a language before language.
Fir~t the look and then the spitt~g. What kind of look? A
look without respect, from a man to a woman old enough to
be his mother. Here: take your coffee.
. 7 .

-
 He did not sleep in the aUey last night. The boxes are gone
too. But, poking around, I came upon the Air Canada bag; in
the woodshed, and a place that he must have scratched for
himself amid the jumble of lumber and faggots. So I know
he means to come back.

Six pages already, and all about a man you have never met
and never will.. Why do I write about him? Because he is and
~ecause in the look he gives me I se;;mysarmaway
. . ."'!;, that can be written. Otherwise what would this writing be
but a kind of moaning, now high, now low? When I write
about him I writ·e about myself. When I writ.e about his dog
I write about myself; when I write about the house I write
about myself. Man, house,. dog: no matter what the word,
through it I stretch out a hand to you. In another world I
would not need words . I would appear on your doorstep. 'I
have come for a visit,.' I would say, and that would be the
end of words: I would embrace you and be embraced. But in
this world,. in this time, I must reach out to you in words.
So day by day IL~ndet..m',l~}f i~JQ_~~ and pack the words
into the page like sweets: like sweets for my daughter., for
her birthday, for the day ofher birth. Words out of my body,
drops of myself, f~r-~er to unpack in her own time, to take
J!l, to suck,. to absorb. As they say on the botde: old-fashioned
drops, drops fashioned by the old,. fashioned and pacl£ed with
love, the lov·e we have no alternative but to feel toward those
to whom we give ourselves to devour q! discard ..
~. Though it rained steadily ~fi afte(noon, it was not till dark
that I heard the creak of the gate and, a minute later, the dick
of the dog's claws on the veranda.
I was watching television. One of the tribe of Ministers and
Ondermini.sters was making an announcement to the nation. I
was standing, as I always do when they speak,. as a way of
keepmg what I can of my self-respect (who would choose to
, 8
V'
/
\ ..:\
! l
 '-

face a firing-squad sitting down?). Ons .buig nie voordreigemente

nie, he was saying: we do not bow to threats: one of those
speeches.
The curtains behind me were open. At a certain moment I
became aware of him, th·e man whose name I do not know,.
watcJt:ing over my shoulder through the glass. So I turned up
the sound, enough for., if not the words, then the cadences to
reach him,. the slow, trucule.ll)t Afrikaans rhythms with their
deadening doses, like a hammer beating a post into the
ground. Togeth.er, blow after blow, we listened. The disgrace
of the life one lives under them: to open a newspaper, to
switch on the tdevision, like kneeEng and being urinated on.
Under them: under their meaty bdlies., their fuH bladders.
'Your days are numbered,' I used to whisper once upon a
time, to them who will now outlast me.

I was on my way out to the shops, in the act of opening the

garage door, when I had a sudden attack. An att;ack: it was
just that: the pain hurling itself upon me like_a dog; sinking
its teeth into my back. I cried out,. unable to stir. Then he,
this man, appeared from somewhere and helped me into the
house .
I lay down on the sofa, on my left side, in the only
comfortable posture left to me. He waited. 'Sit down,' I said .
He sat. The pain began to subside. 'I have cancer,.' I said. 'It
has made its way into the bone. That is what hurts.'
I was not at all sure he understood.
A long silence.. Then: 'This is a big house,' he said.. 'You
could tum it into a boarditng-house.'
I made a tired gesture.
'You could let rooms to students,.' he went on relent-
lessly.
I yawned., and, feeling my teeth sag, covered my mouth .
Once upon a time I would have blushed. But no longer.
9'
 '[ have a woman who hdps with the housework,.' I said.
'She is away till the end of the month,. visiting her people.
Do you have people?'
A curious expression: to have peopk Do I have people?
Are you my people? I think not. Perhaps only Florence
qualifies to have people.
He made no reply. There is an air of childlessness about
him. Of having no children in the world but abo of having
no childhood in his past. His face ail bone and weathered
skin . As one cannot imagine asnake's head that does not look
old, so one cannot see behind his face the face of a child.
Green eyes, animal eyes: can one picture an infant with eyes
like that?
'My husband and I parted a long t:ime ago,' I said. 'He is
dead now. I have a daughter in America. She left i~nd
hasn't come back . She is married to an American. T~ave
two children of their ovm.'
A daughter. Flesh of my flesh. You.
He took out a packet of cigarettes. 'Don't smoke in the
house., please,' I said.
'What is your disability?' [ said. 'You say you get a disability
pension.'
He held out his right hand. Thumb and forefinger stood
out; the other thr·ee fmgers cuded into the palm. '[ can't move
them,.' he said.
We gazed at his hand, at the three crooked fingers with
their dirty nails. Not what I would caH a work-calloused
hand.
'Was it an accident?'
He nodded; the kind of nod that committed him to nothing.
'I'll pay you to cut the lawn,' [ said.
For an hour, using the hedge dippers, he hacked lisdessly
at the grass, knee-high by now in places. In the end he had
deared a patch a few yards square. Then he quit . 'It's not my
kind of work,' he said. I paid him for the hour . As he left
. 10 .
he bumped against the cat-tray, spilling litter all over the
veranda.
All in aU, more trouble than he is worth. But I did not
choose him . He chose me. Or perhaps he merely chose the
one house without a dog . A house of cats.
The cats are unsetded by these newcomers. When they
show their noses outside the dog makes playful dashes at
them, so they skulk indoors, peevish. Today they would not
eat. Thinking they spurned the food because it had been in
the refrigerator, I stirred a litde hot water into the smelly
mess (what is it? seal-flesh? whale-flesh?). Still they disdained
it, circling the dish,. flicking the tip.s of their tails. 'Eat!' I said,
pushing the dish at them . The big one lifted a finicky paw to
avoid being touched . At which I ]ost control. 'Go to heU,
then!' I screamed,. and flung the £ork wildly in their direction
-'I am sick to death of £eeding you!' In my voice there was
a new, mad edge; and, hearing it, I exulted. Enough ofbeing
nice to people, enough of being nice to cats! 'Go to hem' I
screamed again, at the top ofmy voice . Their claws scrabbled
on the linoleum as they fled.
U'lw cares? When I am in a mood like this I am capable of
putting a hand on the bread-board and chopping it off without
a s·econd thought. What do I care for this body that has betrayed
me? I look at my hand and see only a tool, a hook, a thing for
gripping other things. And these legs, thes·e dumsy, ugly stilts: 1"
why should I have to carry them with me everywhere? Why
should I take them to bed with me night after night and pack
them in under the sheets, and pack the arms in too, higher
up near the face, and He there sle·epl·ess amid the clutter? The
abdomen too, with its dead gurglings, and the heart heating,
beating: why? What have they to do with me?
We sicken before we die so that we will be weaned from
our body. The milk that nourished us grows thin and sour;
turning away from the breast, we begin to be restless for a
separate life. Yet this first life, this life on earth, on the body
II .

\~
of earth - will there,. can there ever be a better? Despite all
the glooms and despairs and rages, I have not let go of my
love of it. --

In pain, I took two of Dr Syfret's pms and by down on the

sofa. Hours later I woke befuddled and cold, fumbled my
way upstairs, got into bed without undressing.
In the middle of the night I became aware of a presence in
the room that could only have been his . A presence or a smell.
II: was there, then it went away.
From the landing came a creak. Now he is entering the
study., I thought; now he is switching on the light. I tried to
recall whether, among the papers on the desk, any were
private, but there was too much confusion in my head. Now
he sees the books, shelfupon shelf, I thought, trying to bring
back order, and the piles of old journals. Now he looks at
the pictur·es on the waH: Sophie Schliemann decked out in
Agamemnon's treasure hoard.; the robed Demeter from the
British Museum. Now, quietly., he slides out the drawers of
the desk. The top drawer, full of letters,. accounts, torn-off
stamps, photographs, does not interest him. But in the bot-
tom drawer there is a cigar-box Cull of coins: pennies,
drachmas, centimes,, schiUings. The hand with the curled
fmgers dips into it, takes out Lwo five-peseta pieces big
e~9.!1X!J.J()_pa~ for rands, pockets them.
(Not an ~g~l~~ certainly. AD;.!n~ather,: e~erging from
bellirurii1ie skirtmg-boards when-die house ISm darkness to
forage for crumbs.
I heard him at the far end of the landing, trying the two
locked doors. Only rubbish, I wanted to whisper to him -
rubbish and dead memories; but the fog in my head dosed :in
again .

12 .

-.,
 I -
·"·

Spent the day in bed. No energy, no appetite. Read Tolstoy

-not the famous cancer story, which I know all too weU,
but the story of the angel who takes up residence with the ')
shoemaker. What chance is there, ifl take a walk down to
Mill Street, of finding my own ange] to bring home and
succour? None,. I think. Perhaps in the countryside there are
still one or two sitting against milestones in the heat of the
sun, dozing, waiting £or what chance will bring. Perhaps in
the squatter camps . But not in Mil] Street, not in the suburbs.
The suburbs, deserted by the angels. When a ragged stranger
comes knocki;J,g at the door he is never anything but a derelict,
an alcoholic, a lost soul. Yet how, in our hearts,. we long for
these sedate homes of ours to tremble,, as in the story, with
angelic :ehanting'!
Thii}t~s tired of waiting for the day, tired ofholding
]_tselftogctE:ef.The floorboards have lost their spring. The insu-
lation ofthe wiring is dry,. friable, the pipes dogged with grit.
The gutters sag where screws have rusted away or puUed loose
from the rotten wood . The rooftiles are heavy with moss. A
house built solidly but without love, cold, inert now, ready
t:o die. Whose walls the sun, even the African sun,. has never
succeeded in warming, as though the very bricks, made by the
hands of convicts, radiate an intractable sullenness.
Last summer, when the workmen were re-laying the
drains, I watched them dig out the old pipes. Two metres
down into the earth they went, bringing up mouldering brilck,
rusty iron, even a solitary horseshoe. But no bones.- A site
-~

r,yi_~ho~~ a ~humall.~E~s_!:; to seiri~s_•. ~~ !.~'!.fl_g~!s, Qfm:dm~rest.

This letter is ~not a baring of my heart. It is a baring ofl-~
something,. but not-of myti'eart~'\ __j
I

~I--

Since the car would not start this morning, I had to ask him,
this man, this lodger to push. He pushed me down the
driveway. 'Now!' he shouted, slapping the roof. The engine
IJ '
·caught . I swung into the road, drove a few yards, then, on
an impulse, stopped. 'I have to go to Fish Hoek,' I caUed
from a cloud of smoke: 'Do you want to come along?'
So we set off, the dog on the back s·eat, in the green HiUman
of your childhood. For a long while no word passed between
us. Past the hospital., past the University., past Bishopscourt
we drove, the dog leaning over my shoulder to feel the wind
on its face . Up Wynberg Hili we toiled . On the long downhill
swoop on the other side I switched off the engine and coasted.
Faster and faster we went, t:iU the wheel shuddered in my
hands and the dog whined with excitement . I was smiling, I
believe;. my eyes may even have been shut.
At the foot of the hiU, as we began to slow clown, I cast
him a glance. He sat relaxed, imperturbable.. Good manl I
thought.
'When I was a child,' I said, 'I used to do clownhiUs on a
bicycle with no brakes to speak o£ It belonged to my elder
brother. He would dare me . I was completely without fear.
Children cannot conceive of what it is to die . It never crosses
their minds that they may not be immortal.
'I would ride my brother's bicyde down hiUs even steeper
than this one. The faster I went, the more alive I would feel.
I would quiver. J_ife as ifl were aboutto burst through
} ' l i t· h <

my skin. As a 6utterflY'--must feel when it is being born,. or

bearing itsel£ \.. . j'
'In an old car like this you still have the freedom to coast.
With a modern car,. when you switch off the engine the
steering wheel locks. I am sure you know that. But people
sometimes make a mistake or £orget, and then can't keep the
car on the road. Sometimes they go over the side and into
the sea.'
Into the sea. Tussling with a locked wheel while you soar
in a bubble of glass over the sun-glinting sea. Does it really
happen? Do many do it? Ifi stood on Chapman's Peak on a
Saturday afternoon, wou[d I see them, men and women,
. 14 '
 thick in the air as midges taking off on their last flight?
'There is a story I want to teU you,' I said. 'When my
mother wasstiir a child, in the early years of the century, the
family used to go to the seaside for Christmas. This was stiU
in the age of ox-wagons. They would travel by ox-wagon all
the way from Uniondale in the Eastern Cape to Plettenberg
Bay at the mouth of the Piesangs River, a journey of a
hundred miles taking I don't know how many clays. Along
' the way they would camp at the roadside.
'One of their stopping-places was at the top of a mountain
pass . My grandparents would spend the nights in th·e wagon
itself while my mother and the other children had their bed
underneath it. So- here the story begins- my mother lay at
the top of the pass in the stHlness of the night, snug in her
blankets with her brothers and sisters sleeping beside her,
watching the stars through the spokes of the wheels. As she
watched it began to seem that the stars were moving: the
stars were moving or else the wheels were moving, slowly.,
very slowly. She thought: What shall I do? What if the wagon
is beginning to ron? Shall I caU out a warning? What if I lie
silent and the wagon gathers speed and roils ali the way down
the mountainside with my parents inside? But what if I am
imagining it all?
'Choking with fear, her heart pounding,. she lay there
watching the stars, watching them move, thinking., "Shall I?
Shan 1?," listening £or the creak,. the first creak. At last she
fell asleep,. and her sleep was fuU of dr·eams of death. But in
the morning, when she re-emerged, it was into light and
peace. And the wagon re-emerged with her, and her parents
re-emerged,. and all was well, as it had been before.'
h was time for him to say something now, about hiUs or
cars or bicydes or about himself or his childhood. But he was
stubbornly silent.
'She told no one what went on in the night,' [ resumed .
'Perhaps she was waiting £or me to come . I heard the story
I) .
']
many times from her, in many forms. Always they were on
their way to the Piesangs River. Such a lovely golden name!
I was sure it must be the most beautiful place on earth . Y·ears
after my mother's death I visited Plettenherg Bay and saw
the Piesangs River for the first time. Not a river at all, just a
trickle of water choked with reeds, and mosquitoes in the
evenings, and a caravan park fuH of screaming children and
fat barefoot men in shorts braaiing sausages over gas cookers.
Not Paradise at aU. Not a place one would mount a journey
to year after year through valleys and over mountains . '
Up Boyes prive the car was labouring now, willing but
old, Hk~~ocinante': I gripped the wheel tighter, urging her
on.
Above Muizenberg, overlooking the sweep of false Bay,
I parked and switched off the engine. The dog began to
whine. We l·et it out. It sniffed the curbstones, sniffed the
bushes, relieved itself, while we watched in awkward silence.
He spoke. 'You are pointing the wrong way,,. he said. 'You
should be pointing downhill . '
I hid my chagrin. I have always wished to be thought
a capable person. Now more than ever,. with incapability
looming.
'Are you from the Cape?' I said.
'Yes.'
'And have you lived here aU your Hfe?'
He shifted resdessly. Two questions: one too many.
A breaker, perfecdy straight, hundreds ofyards long, roUed
inshor·e, a single crouched figure on a surfboard gliding ahead
of it. Across the bay the mountains of Hottentots Holland
stood out dear and blue. . Hunger, I thought: it is a hunger of
the eyes that I fed, such hunger that I am loth even to blink.
These seas, these mountains: I want to burn. tl:tem upon my
sight so deeply that, no matter where I go,. they will always
be before me. I arp hungt:_y with lov·e of this world.
A fl.ock of spa~rows settled on the bushes around us,.
· I6 ·
preened themselves, took off again. The surfer reached shore
and began to trudge up the beach . Suddenly there were tears
in my eyes. From not blinking, I told myself. But the truth
was, I was crying. Hunched over the wheel, I abandoned
myself, first to a quiet, decent sobbing, then to long wails
without articulation, emptyings of the lungs, emptyings of
the heart . '1 am so sorry,' I gasped; and then, when I was
calmer: 'I am sorry, I don't know what has come ov·er me.'
[ should not have bothered to apologize. He gave no sign
ofhaving noticed anything.
I dried my eyes, blew my nose. 'Shall we go?' I said.
He opened the door, gave a long whistle. The dog bounded
in. An obedient dog, no doubt stokn from a good family.
The car was indeed pointing the wrong way.
'Start in reverse,' he said.
I released the handbrake, rolled back down the hill a litde
way, let out the dutch. The car shuddered and stopped . 'It
has never started in reverse,' I s.aid.
'Swing over to the other side of the road,' he directed, like
a husband giving a driving J.esson.
[ let the car roll further downhill, then swung across the
road . With blaring horn a great white Mercedes shot past on
the inside. 'I didn't see it!' I gasped.
'Go!' he shouted.
I stared in astonishment at this stranger shouting at me .
'Go!' he shouted again, straight into my face.
The engine caught. I drove back in stiff silence.. At the
comer of Mill Street he asked to be let off.
The worst of the smell comes from his shoes and feet. He
needs socks. He needs new shoes. He needs a bath. He needs
a bath every day; he needs dean underwear; he needs a bed,
he needs a roof over his head, he needs three meals a day, he
needs money in the bank. Too much to give: too much for
someone who longs, if the truth be told, to creep into her
own mother's lap and be comforted.
' I7 '
 Late in the afternoon he returned. Making an effort to
forget what had passed, I took him around the garden,
pointing out tasks that need to be done.. 'Pruning, for in-
stance,' I said. 'Do you know how to prune?'
He shook his head. No, he didn't know how to prune. Or
didn't want to.
In the bottom comer, the most heavily ov·ergrown, thick
creepers covered the old oak bench and the rabbit-hutch.
'This should aU be cleared,.' I said.
He lifted one edge of the mat of creepers. On the floor of
the hutch was a jumble of parched bones, including the per£ect
skeleton of a young rabbit, its neck arched back in a last
contortion.
'Rabbits,' I said. 'They used to belong to my domestic's
son. I let him keep them here as pets. Then there was some
commotion or other in his life.. He forgot about them and
they starved to death. I was in hospital and didn't know about
it. I was terribly upset when I came back and found out what
agony had been going on unheeded at the bottom of the
garden. Creatures that can't talk, that can't even cry.'
,,p '
Guavas were dropping, worm-riddled,. making a malodor-
ous pulpy carpet under the tree. 'I wish the trees would stop
bearing,' I said . 'But they never do.'
The dog, following behind, sniffed perfunctorily at the
hutch. The dead long dead,. their smeUs all gone.
'Anyhow, do what you can to bring it back U.!l~er control,.'
I said. 'So that it doesn't become a complete wilderness ..':," ,
'Why?' he said.
'Because that is how I am,' I said. 'Because I don't mean
to leave a ~-e~s..-behind.'
He shrugged, smiling to himself.
'If you want to be paid you wiU have to earn it,' I said . 'I
am not giving you money for nothing . '
For the rest of the afternoon he worked, hacking away at
the creepers and grass, pausing now and again to stare into
· r8 ·
the distance,. pretending not to be aware that I was ke·eping
an eye on him fwm upstairs. At fiv·e o'clock I paid rum. 'I
know you are not a gardener.,' I said,. 'and I don't want to
turn you into what you are not. But we can't proceed on a
basis of charity.'
"-....-~-·
Taking the notes, folding them, putting them in h.its pocket,
looking offto one side so as not to look at me,. he said softly,
'Why?'
'Becaus·e you don't deserve it.'
And he, smiling, keeping his smile to himself: 'Peserve .
Who deserves anything?'
Who deserves anything? In a quick fury I thrust the purse
at him. 'What do you believe in,. then? Taking?' Taking what
you want? Go on: take!'
Calmly he took the purse, emptied it of thirty rand and
some coins, and handed it back. Then off he went, the dog
jauntily at his heels. In half an hour he was back; I heard the
dink ofbotdes.
Somewhere he has found himsdf a mattress, one of those
folding mattresses people take to the beach . In h.its htde nest
amid the dust and mess ofthe woodshed, with a candle at his
head and the dog at his feet, he lay smoking.
'I want that money back,' I said.
He reached into his pocket and he]d out some notes. I took
them. Not all the money, but that did not matt:er .
'If you are in need, you can ask,' I said. 'I am not a stingy
person. And be careful with that candle. I don't want a fire.'
I turned and went. But in a minute was hack.
'You told me,' I said,. 'that I should tum this house into a
boarding-house for students. Wdl, there are better things I
could do with it. I could turn it into a haven for beggars. I
could run a soup-kitchen and a dormitory. But I don't. Why
not? Because the spirit of c_ltarity has perished in this country.
Because those 'Wfio accept charity despise it, while those who
give give with a despairing heart. What is the point of charity
. I9 .
 \ ~
s~-

when it does not go from heart to heart? What do you think

charity is? Soup? Money? Ch~in~: from the Latin word for
the ,h~ar!. It is as hard to receive as to give. It takes as much
effort.. I wish you would learn that. [ wish you would learn
something instead ofjust lying around.'
A he: charity., caritas,. has nothing to do with the heart. But
what does it matter if my sermons rest on false etyJngJo_gies?
He barely listens when I speak to him. Perhaps, despite those
·i-- keeq, bird-eyes, he is more befuddled with drink than I know.
Or perhaps, finally., he does not care. Care:, the tme root of
charity. I look for him to care, and he does not. Because he
is beyond caring. Beyond caring and beyond care.

Since life in this country is so much like life aboard a sink!~

~hl_e"hne of those old-time liners with a lugubrious, Cl!~unken
'Faptain and a surly crew and leaky lifeboats, I keep the
shortwave radio at my bedside. Most of the time there is only
talk to be heard; but if one persists into the unlikely hours of
the night there are stations that relent and play music. Fading
in, fading out, I heard last night- from where? Helsinki.? the
/',·'i"'-+Cook Islands? - anthems of all the nations, celestial music,
~ music that left us years ago and now comes back from the
' stars transfigured., gentle, as evidence that a!l_d:ta_t is given
(ort}J win at length return. A dosed universe, curv~dlfke-an-
:/~)~do51ng-us. · .
--There [ by in the dark, listening to the music of the stars
and the crackling and humming that accompanied it Hke the
dust of meteors, smiling,. my heart filled with gratitude for
this good news from afar. The one border they cannot dose,
I thought: the border upwards,. between the Republic of South
Africa and the empire of the sky. Where I am due to travet
Where no passport is called for.
Still under the spell of the music (it was, I think, Stock-
hausen), I sat down at the piano this afternoon and played
. 20

I
some of the old pieces: preludes from the WeU-Tempered
Clavier, Chopin preludes,. Brahms waltzes, from NoveUo
and Augener editions tattered, mottled, dry as dust. I played
as badly as ever, misreading the same chords as half a century
ago, repeating fingering mistakes grown hy now into the
bone, never to he corrected. (The bones prized above all by~ '
archaeologists., I remember, are those gnarled with disease or
splintered by an arrowhead: bones mark,ed with a history
from a time before history ..) ~
After I had tired of the sweetness of Brahms I dosed my
eyes and played chords, searching with my fingers for the
one chord I would recognize, when I came upon it, as my
chord,. as what in the oM days we used to call the lost chord,.
the heart's-chord. (I speak of a time before your time, when,
passing down the street on a hot Saturday afternoon, you
might hear, faint but dogged from .a front parlour, the maiden
of the household groping among the keys for that yearned-
for, elusive resonance. Days of charm and sorrow and mys-
tery too! Days of innocence!)
'Jerusalem!' I sang softly, playing chords I last heard at my
grandmother's knee: 'And was jerusalem y-buUded here?'
Then at last [went back to Bach,, and played clumsily, over
and over again, the first fugue from Book One. The sound
was muddy, the lines blurred, but every now and again, for
a few bars, the real thing emerged, the real music, the music
that does not die, confident, serene .
I was playing for mysdf. But at some point a board creaked
or a shadow passed across the curtain and I knew he was
outside listening.
So I played Bach for him, as well as I could. When the last
bar was played I dosed the music and sat with my hands in
my lap contemplating the oval portrait on th'e cover with its
heavy jowls., its sleek smile, its puffy eyes. Pure spirit, I
thought, yet in how unlikely a temple! Where does that spirit
find itself now? In the echoes of my fumbling performance
. 21 .
receding through the ether? In my heart, where the music
stiH dances? Has it made its way into the he.a.rt too of the man
in the saggj!!g: trousers eavesdropping at the window? Have
our two~h_eat~~: our organs of love, been tied for this brief
while by a cord. of sound?
The t~lephone rang: a woman from the flats across the road
warning me of a vagrant she had spied on my property. 'He
is not a vagrant,.' I s.aid. 'He is a man who works for me.'
I am going to stop answering the telephone. There is no
one I am ready to speak to except you and the fat man in the
picture, the fat man in heaven; and neither of you wiU,. I
think,. calL
(Heave-~~ I imagine heaven as-.eJ!S~tel lobby with a high
oeiling~;;·d the Art of Fugue coming s~ftly over the public
address system. Where one can sit in a deep leather armchair
and be without pain. A hotel lobby full ofold people dozing,
listening to the music, while souls pass and re-pass before
them hke vapours,. the souls of all . A place dense with souls.
Clothed? Yes, clothed, I suppose; but with empty hands. A
place to which you bring nothing but an abstract kind of
clothing and the memories inside you, the memories that
make you. A place without incident. A railway.staJiQ!Lafter
the abolition of trains. Listening to die heavenly unending
music,. waiting for nothing, paging idly through the store of
memories.
WiU it be possible to sit in that armchair listening to the
music without fretting about the house closed up and dark,
the cats prowHng in the garden,. unfed,. cross? It must be
possible, or what is heaven for? Yet dying without succession
is- forgive me for saying this- so unnatural . For peace of
mind, for peace of soul, we need to know who comes after
us, whose presence fills the rooms we were once at home in.
I think of those abandoned farmhouses I drove past in the
Karoo and on the west coast, whose owners decamped to the
cities years ago leaving fronts boarded up, gates locked. Now
22 .

'1
1.-
washing ftaps on the line,. smoke comes from the chimney,
children play outside the back door, waving to passing cars.
A land in the process of being r,epossessed., its heirs quietly
announcing themselves. A land taken by force, used, de-
spoiled, spoiled, abandoned in its barren late years. Loved
too, perhaps., by its ravishers, but loved only in the bloom time
ofits youth and therefore, in the verdict ofhistory,. not loved
enough.
They open your fingers after the event to make sure you
are not trying to tak~ something with you. A pebble. A
feather. A ~ustardseed.under your fingernail.
It is like a sum, a labyrinthine sum, pag,es long, subtraction
upon subtraction, division upon division, till the head reels.
Every day I attempt it anew, in my heart the flicker of a hope
that in this one case, my case, there may have been a mistake.
And every day ] stop before the same blank waH:. death,
oblivion. Dr Syfret in his rooms: 'We must face the truth.'
That is to say: we must face the wall But not he:].
I think of prisoners standing on the brink of the trench
into which their bodies wm tumble. They plead with the
firing-squad, they weep, they joke, they offer bribes, they
offer everything they possess: the rings off their fingers, the
dothes off their backs. The soldiers laugh. For they will take
it an anyway, and the gold from their teeth too.
There is no truth but the shock of pain that goes through
me when, in an unguarded moment, a: vision overtakes me
of this house, empty, with sunlight pouring through the
windows on to an empty bed, or of False Bay under blue
skies, pristine, deserted - when the world I have passed my
life in manifests itselfto me and I am not of it. My existence
from day to day has become a matter of averting my eyes, of
cringing. Death is the only truth left Death is what I cannot
bear to think. At every moment when I am thinking of
something eise, I am not thinking death, am not thinking the
truth.
. 23 .
 I try to sleep. I empty my mind; calm begins to steal over
me. I am falling,. I think, I am f3m8_g: welcome, ~sweet sleep.
Then at the very edge of oblivion something Iooms up and
pulls me hack, something whose name can only be dread . I
shake myself free. I am awake in my room in my bed, aifis
welt A fly settles on my cheek. It deans itself. It begins to
explore. Tt walks across my eye, my open eye. I want to
blink, I want to wave it away, hut I cannot. Through an eye
that is and is not mine I stare at it. It licks itself, if that is the
word.. There is nothing in those bulging organs that I can
recognize as a face. But it is upon me, it is here: it struts across
me, a creature from another world.
Or: It is two in the afternoon. I am lying on the sofa or in
bed, trying to keep the weight off my hip, where the pain is
worst. I have a vision of Esther WHliams, of plump girls in
fllowered bathing costumes swimming in ef6ordess backstroke
formation through sky-blue, rippling waters,. smiling and
singing. Invisible guitars strum; the mouths of the girls, bows
~')
of vivid scarlet lipstick,. form words. What are they singing?
Sunset .... Farewell .... Tahiti . Longing sweeps through me
for the old Savoy bioscope, for tickets at one and fourpence
in a currency gone forever, melted down save for a few last
farthings in my desk drawer, on one side George VI, the
'-CD
good king, the stammerer,. on the other a pair of nightingales.
Nightingales. I have never heard nightingale-song and never
will.. I embrace the longing, embrace the regret, embrace the
king, the swimming girls, embrace whatever wiU occupy me.
Or I get up and switch on the t~leyjsion. On one channel
footbalL On the other a black man clasping his hands over
the Bible, preaching to me in a language I cannot ev·en put a
name to. This is the door I open to let the world fllood in,
and this is the world that comes to me. It is like peering down
a pipe.
Three years ago I had a burglary (you may remember, I
wrote about it) . The burglars took no more than they could
. 24 .
carry, but before they left they tipped out every drawer,
slashed every mattress, smashed crockery,. broke bottles,
swept aU the food in the pantry on to the floor.
'Why do they behave Hke this?' l asked the detective in
bewilderment- 'What good does it do them?'
'It's the way they ar·e,' he replied. 'Animals.'
After that I had bars installed on aU the windows. They
were fitted by a plump Indian man. After he had screwed the
bars into the frames he filled in the head of each screw with
glue . 'So that they can't be unscrewed,.' he explained. When
he left he said, 'Now you are sa£e,' 'and patted my hand.
'Now you are safe.' The words of a zookeeper as he locks
the door for the night on some wingless, ineffectual bird. A
dodo: the last of the dodos, oM, past egg-laying. 'Now you
are 3}1~<. Locked up while hungry predators prowl outside.
A~dodo):1uaking in her nest, sleeping with one eye open,.
gre'enng the dawn haggard. But safe, safe in her cage, the
bars intact, the wires intact: the tdephone wire, down which
she may cry for help in a last extremity., the television wire,
down which comes the Hght of the wodd, the aerial wire.,
which calls in music from the stars.
Tdevision. Why do I watch it? The parade of politicians
,every evening: I ha.ve only to see the heavy, blank faces so
fammar since childhood to fed gloom and nausea. The bullies
in the last row of school-desks, raw-boned, lumpish boys,
grown up now and promoted to rule the land. They with their
fathers and m9thers, their aunts and undes, their brothers and
sisters: a locus~:~ horde, a plague of black locusts infesting the
country, 'm~!lching without cease, devouring Ji~eJ>. Why, in
a spirit of horror and loathing,. do I watch them? Why do I
let them into the house? Because the reign of the locust family
is the truth of South Africa, and the truth is what makes me
sick? Legitimacy they no longer trouble to daim . Reason they
have shrugged off. What absorbs them is power and the
stupor of power. Eating and talking, munching lives,. bekh::.
. 25 .
 :,f/il'

ing. Slow, heavy-beHied talk. Sitting in a cirde,. debating

ponderously, issuing decrees like ha~mer-blows: death,
death, death. Untroubled by the stench. Heavy eyelids, pig-
gish eyes, shrewd with the shrewdness of generations of
peasants. Plotting ag.ainst each other too: slow peasant plots
that take decades to mature. The new Africans, pot-bell:ied,
heavy-jowled men on their stools of office: Cetshwayo,
i Dingane in white skins. Pressing downward: their power in
their weight. Huge bull-testides pressing down on their
wives, their children, pressing the spark out of them . In their
own hearts no spark of fire left.. Sluggish h·earts,. heavy as
blood-pudding. - ·
And their message stupidly unchanging, stupidly forever
the same. Their feat, after years of etymological meditation
on the word, to have raised stupidiW to a virtue. To stupefy:
to deprive of feeling; to benumb, deaden; to stun with amaz·e-
ment. Stupor: insensibility, apathy, torpor of mind. Stupid:
duUed in the faculties, indifferent, destitute of thought or
feehng. From stupere to be stunned, astounded. A gradient
from stupid to stunned to astonished, to be turned to stone. The
message: that the mess.age never changes. A message that
turns people to stone.
We watch as birds watch snakes, fascinated by what is
about to devour us. Fasdnation: the homage we pay to our
death. Between the hours of eight and nine we assemble and
they show th•emsdves to us. A ritual manifestation, like
the processions of hooded bishops during Franco's war. A
thanatophany: showing us our death. Viva la mue.rte! their
cry, their threat. Death to the young.. Death to life. Boars
that devour their offspring. The Boar War.
[say to myself that I am watching not the he but the space
behind the he where the truth ought to be . But is it true?
[dozed (it is stiU yesterday I am writing about), read, dozed
again. I made tea,. put on a record. Bar by bar the GoMberg
Variations erected themselves in the air. [ crossed to the
. 26 .
 window. It was nearly dark. Against the garage wall the man
was squatting, smoking., the point of his dgarette glowing.
Perhaps he saw me, perhaps not. Together we listened.
At this moment, I thought, [ know how he feels as surdy
as if he and I were making love.
Though it came unbidden, though it fiUed me with distaste,
I considered the thought without flinching. He and I pressed
breast to breast,. eyes dosed, going down the old road
together. Unlikely companions! Like travelling in a bus in
Sicily, pressed face to face, body to body against a strange
man. Perhaps that is what the aftedi£e will be like: not a lobby
with armchairs and music but a great crowded bus on its way
__from nowhere to nowhere. Standing room only: on one's
£eet forever, crushed against strangers. The air thick, stale,
full of sighs and murmurs: Sorry, sorry. Promiscuous contact.
Forever under the gaze of others. An end to private life.
Across the courtyard he squatted,. smoking, listening. Two
souls, his and mine, twined together, ravished. Like insects
mating tail to taH, facing away from each other, still except
£or a pulsing of the thorax that might be mistak·en for mere
breathing. Stillness and ecstasy.
He flicked his cigarette away. A burst of sparks as it hit the
ground,. then darkness.
This house, I thought. This world. This house,. this music.
This.

This is my daughter.,.' I said. 'The one I told you about, who

lives im America.' And through his eyes regarded you in the
photograph: a pleasant-faced, smiling woman in her thirties,
against a field of green, raising a hand to her hair, which is
blowing in the wind. Conftdent. That is what you have now:
the ]ook of a woman who has found herself.
'Thes,e are their children.'
Two little boys in caps and coats and boots and g]oves
. 27 .
 standing to attention beside a snowman, waiting for the
shutter to dick.
A pause. We were sitting at the kitchen taMe. I had set tea
before him, and Marie biscuits. Marie biscuits: food for old
people, for the toothless .
'There is something I would like you to do for me if I die.
Ther·e are some papers I want to s·end to my daughter.. But
after the event.. That is the important part. That is why I
cannot s·end them myself. I will do everything else.. I will
make them up into a parcel with the right stamps on it. AU
you wiU have to do wiU he to hand the parcel over the counter
at the post office. Will you do that for me?'
He shifted uncomfortably .
'h is not a favour I would ask if I could help it . But there
is no other way. r wiU not be here . '
'Can't you ask someone else?' he said.
'Yes, I can . But I am asking you . These are private papers,
private letters. They are my daughter's inheritance. They are
aU I can give her, all she wiU accept, coming from this
country. I don't want them opened and read by anyone else.'
Private papers. These papers,. these words that either you
read now or else wiU never read. Will they reach you? Have
they reached you? Two ways of asking the same question, a
question to which I wm never know the answer, never . To
me this letter will forever be words committed to the waves:
a message in a bottle with the stamps of the Republic of South
Africa on it, and your name.
'I don't know,' said the man, the messenger, playing with
his spoon.
He will make no promis.e. And even ifhe promises., he will
do, fina.Uy, what he likes. Last instructions, never enforceable.
For the dead are not persons. That is the law: all contracts
lapse . The dead cannot be cheated, cannot be betrayed, unless
you carry them with you in your heart and do the crime
there.
. 28 .
 'Never mind.,' I said. 'I had thought of asking you to
come in and feed th·e cats as well. But l will make another
arrang·em·ent.'
What other arrangement? In Egypt they bricked in cats
with their dead masters. Is that what I want: yellow eyes
padding hack and forth,. s·earching for a way out of the dark
cave?'
'I wiU have to have them put down,' I said . 'They are too
old to take to a new home . '
Like water against a rock my words thudded against his
silence.
'I have to do something about them,' I said. 'I can't do
nothing. You would feel the same., in my position.'
He shook his head . Not true. Indeed, not true. One wint•er's
night, sooner or later, when the artificial fire in his veins is
no longer hot enough to preserv,e him, he wm perish. He wiH
die in a doorway or an aUey with his arms hugged across his
chest; they wiU find him with this dog or some other dog by
his side, whimpering, Hcking his face. They will cart him off
and the dog will be left behind in the street and that wiU be the
end of that. No arrangements, no bequests, no mausoleum.
Tl] post your pared for you,.' he said.

. 29 .
 F Iorence is back, bringing
not only the two htde girls but her fifteen-year-old son Bheki.
'Is he going to be staying long, Flm,ence?' I asked . 'Is there
going to be room for him?'
'If he is not with me he will get into trouble,' Florence
repliled. 'My sister cannot look after him any more. It is very
bad in Guguletu,. very bad.'
So now I have five people in the back yard. Five people, a
dog and two cats. The old woman who lived in a shoe. And
didn't know what to do.
When Florence went off at the beginning of the month [
assured her [ could cope with the housework. But of course
I let ,everything slide, and soon a. sour, dammy odour per-
~~,-~~-·----

vaded the upstairs,. an odour of cold cream, dirty sheets,

takum powder. Now I had to follow shamefacedly after her
as she took stock. Hands on hips, nostrils flaring, spectacles
gleaming, she surveyed the evidence of my incompetence.
Then she set to work. By the end of the afternoon the kitchen
and bathroom were shining,. the bedroom was crisp and neat,
there was a smell of furniture polish in the air. 'Wonderful,
Horenoe,' I said, producing the ritual phrases: '[ don't know
what I would do without you.' But of course I do know. I
would sink into the indifferent squalor of old age.
,~---~----..

. 33 .
 Having done my work,. Florence turned to her own. She
put supper on the stove and took the two litde gids up to the
bathroom. Watching her wash them, wiping hard behind the
ears, between the legs, deft, decisive, impervious to their
whines, I thought: What an admirable woman, but how glad
I am she is not my mother!
I came upon the boy mooning about in the courtyard . Once
I knew him as Digby, now he is Bheki. Tall for his age, with
Florence's severe good looks. 'I can't bdieve how you have
grown,' I said. He gave no answer. No longer the open-faced
Iitde boy who, when he came visiting, used to run first ofall
to the rabbit-hutch,. haul out the fat white doe,. and hug her
to his chest. Dissatisfi,ed, no doubt, with being separated from
his friends and hidden away with baby sisters in someone's
back yard.
'Since when have the schools been dosed?' I asked Florence.
'Since last we·ek. AU the schools in Guguletu., Langa,
Nyanga. The children have got nothing to do. AU they do
is run around the stre·ets and get into trouble. It is better that
he is here wher·e I can see him.'
'He will be restless without any friends . '
She shrugged, unsmiling . I do not believe I have ever seen
her smile. But perhaps she smiles on her children when she
is alone with them.

'Who is this man?' asked Florence.

'His name is Mr Vercueil,' I said. 'Vercueil, Verkuil,,
Verskuit That's what he says . I have never come across such
a name before. I am letting him stay here for a while. He has
a dog. Ten the chiidren, if they pby with it,, not to get it too
excited. It is a young dog,. it may snap . '
Florence shook her head.
'If he gives us trouble I wiU ask him to leave,' I said.. 'But
I can't send him away for things he hasn't done.'
*
. 34 .
A cool, windy day. I sat on the balcony in my dressing-
gown. Below me in the ]awn Vercuei] was taking the oM

-
mower apart,. with the little girls watching him. The elder,,
whose name, says Florence, is Hope (she does not entrust me
with the rea] name).,. squatted a few- yards away, out of his
line of vision, her hands clasped hetween her knees. She was
wearing new red sandals. The baby,. Beauty, also wearing
red sandals, staggered about the lawn, kicking out her feet,
sometiQ'les sitting down suddenly.
As I -INatched, the baby advanced upon Vercueil, her arms
heM out wide, her fists clenched. As she was about to stumble
over the lawnmower he caught her'and led her by the chubby
litde arm to a safe distance . Again, on unsteady feet, she bore
down on him. Again he caught her and led her away. It was
on the verge of becoming a game. But would dour Vercueil
play?
Once more Beauty lunged towards him; once more he
saved her. Then, wonder of wonders,. he wheeled the half-
dismantled lawnmower to one side and, offering one hand to
the baby, one hand to Hope, began to turn in circles, first
slowly, then faster. Hope., in her red s.andals, had to run to
keep her footing; as for the baby,. she spun in the air, giving
shrieks of pleasure; while the dog, dosed offbehind the gate,
leapt and barked. Such noise! Such excitement!
At that point Flor·ence must have come on the scene, for
the spinning slowed and stopped. A few soft words, and
Hope let go of Vercue:il's hand,. coaxed her sister away,
disappeared from my sight . I heard a door shut. The dog,
fuU of regret, whined . Vercueil returned to the ]awnmower.
Half an hour later it began to rain.
The boy, Bheki, spends his time sitting on Florence's bed
paging through old magazines, while from a comer of the
room Hope watches and worships . Sometimes when he has
had enough of reading he stands in the driveway bouncing a
tennis ball off the garage door. I find the noise ma.ddening.
. 35 .
 Though I dutch a pillow over my head the remorseless
thudding stiU reaches me. 'When are the schools going to
open again?' I ask peevishly. 'I wm tell him to stop.,.' says
Florence . A minute later the thudding stops.
Last year, when the troubles in the schools began, I spoke
my mind to Florence. 'In my day we considered education a
privilege,' I said. 'Parents would scrimp and save to keep
their children in school . We would have thought it madness
to burn a school down.
'It is dif£erent today,.' replied Florence.
'Do you approve of children burning down their schools?'
'I cannot tell these chHdren what to do,' said Florence.
'It is aU changed today. There are no more mothers and
fathers.'
'That is nonsense,' I said. 'There are always mothers and
fathers.' On that note our exchang·e ended.
Of trouble in the schools the radio says nothing.,. the tele-
vision says nothing, the newspapers say nothing. In the wodd
they project an the children of the land are sitting happily at
their desks learning about the square on the hypotenuse and
the parrots of the Amazonian jungle. What I know about
events in Guguletu depends solely on what Florence tells
me and on what I can learn by standing on the bakony
and peering north-east: namely, that Guguletu is not
l:mrning today, or, if it is burning, is burning with a low
flame .
The country smoulders, yet with the best wm in the world
I can only half-attend. My true attention is aU inward, upon
the thing, the word, the word for the thing inching through
my "body. An ignominious occupation, and in times Hke
these ridiculous too, as a banker with his clothes on fire is a
joke while a burning beggar is not. Yet [ cannot help
mysdf. 'Look at me!' I want to cry to Florence- 'I too am
burning!'
Most of the time I am careful to hold the letters of the word
. 36 '
apart like the jaws of a trap. When I read I rea.d warHy.,
jumping over lines or even whole paragraphs when from the
comer of an eye I catch the shadow of the word waiting in
ambush.
--B~t~in the dark, in bed,. alone, the temptation to look at it
grows too strong. I feel myself almost pushed toward it. [
think of myself as a child in a long whit·e dress .and straw hat
on a great empty beach. Sand flies all around me. [hold my
hat tight, [plant my feet, I brace mysdfagainst the wind. But
after a while, in this lonely place where no one is watcmng, the
effort becomes too great. I relax. Like a hand in the smaU of
my back, the wind gives me a push. It is a reHef to stop
resisting. First walking, then racing, [allow the wind to take
me.
It takes me, night after night, to The Merchant of Venice.
'Do I not eat, sl.eep, breathe Iik·e you?' cries Shylock the jew:
'Do I not bleed Hke you?,.' brandishing a dagger with a pound
of bleeding flesh impaled on its point . 'Do I not bleed like
you?' come the words of the Jew with the long beard and
skullcap dancing in rage and anguish on the stage.
I would cry my cry to you if you were here. But you are
not. The.refore it must he to Florence. florence must be the
one to suffer these moments when a veritable blast of fear
goes out from me scorching the leaf on the bough. 'It will be
an right': those are the words [ want to hear uttered . I want
to be held to someone's bosom, to Florence's, to yours,. to
anyone's,. and told that it wiH be all right.
Lying in bed last night with a pillow under my hip, my
arms pressed to my chest to keep the pain from moving, the
dock showing 3-45, I thought with envy and yearning of
Florence in her room, asleep, surrounded by her sleeping
children, the four of them bre.atmng in their four different
measur·es, every breath strong and dean.
Once I had everything, I thought . Now you have every-
thing and I have nothing .
' 37
 The four breathings went on, without falter, and the soft
ticking of the dock.
Folding a sheet of paper in two, I wrote florence a note:
'Am having a bad night. Will try to sleep late. Please keep
the children quiet. Thank you. EC.' [ went downstairs and
propped it in the middle of the kitchen table. Then, shivering,
I returned to bed, took the four o'clock piUs, closed my eyes,
folded my arms, and waited for deep that did not come.
What I want from Florence I cannot have. Nothing of what
I want can I have.
Last year, when the litde one was still a ba..be in arms,. I
gave Florence a ride out to Brackenfell, to the place where
her husband works.
No doubt she expected me to drop her there and drive off.
But out of curiosity, wanting to see the man, to see them
together, [came in with her.
h was late on a Saturday afternoon . From the parking lot
we foHowed a dusty track past two long, low sheds to a third
shed wher·e a man in blue overalls stood in a wire enclosure
with chickens- puUets reaUy- milling around his legs . The
girl, Hope, tugged herself free, dashed ahead and gripped the
mesh. Between the man and Horence something passed: a
glance, a question, a recognition.
But there was no time for gr·eetings.. He, William,
Horence's husband, had a job and the job could not be
interrupted. His job was to pounce on a chicken, swing it
upside down,, grip the struggling body between his knees,
twist a wire band around its legs,. and pass it on to a second,
younger man, who would hang it, squawking and flapping,
on a hook on a clattering overhead conveyor that took it
deeper into the shed where a third man in oilskins splashed
with blood gripped its head, drew its neck taut, and cut it
through with a knife so smaU it seemed part of his hand,
tossing the head in the same mov·ement into a bin fuH ofother
dead heads.
. 38 .
 This was Wiiliam's work, and this I saw before I had the
time or the presence of mind to ask whether I wanted to see
it. For six days of the week this was what he did. He bound
the legs of chickens. Or perhaps he took turns with the other
men and hung chickens from hooks or cut off heads. For
three hundred rand a month plus rations. A work he had been
doing for fifteen years. So that ]t was not inconceivable that
some of the bodi·es I had stuffed with breadcrumbs and
egg-yolk and sage and rubbed with oil and garlic had been
held, at the last, between the legs of this man, the father of
Horence's children. Who got up at five in the morning, while
I was stHI asleep, to hose out the pans under the cages, fill the
feed-troughs,, sweep the sheds, and then, after breakfast,
begin the slaughtering, the plucking .and cleaning, the fr,eezing
of thousands of carcases, t:he packing of thousands of heads
and feet, miles of intestines,. mountains of feathers.
I should have left at once, when I saw what was going on.
I should have driven off and done my best to forget all about
it. But instead [ stood at the wire enclosure, fasdnated, as the
three men dealt out death to the flighdess birds. And beside
me the child, her fingers grippi]1g the mesh,. drank in the
sight too.
So hard and yet so easy, kiHing, dying .
Fiv·e o'clock came, the end ofthe day, and] said goodbye.
While I was driving back to this empty house, WiUiam took
Florence and the children to the living-quarters. He washed; ,
she cooked a supper of chicken and rice on the paraffin .
stove, then fed the baby. It was Saturday. Some of the other
farm-workers were out visiting, recreating themselves.. So
Florence and WiHiam were able to put the childr.en to bed in
an empty bunk and go for a walk, just the two of them, in
the warm dusk.
They walked along the side of the road . They spoke about
the past week, about how it had been; they spoke about their
lives .
. 39 .
 When they came hack the children were fast asleep. For the
sake of privacy they hung a blanket in front of their bunk.
Then they had the night to themselves, all save the half-hour
when Florence slipped out and, in the dark, fed the baby.
On Sunday morning WiUiam- not his true name but the
name by which he is known in the world of his work - put
on his suit and hat and good shoes. He and Florence walked
to the bus stop, she with the baby on her back, he hoMing
Hope's hand. They took a bus to Kuilsrivier, then a taxi to
the home in Guguletu of the sister with whom their son
lodged.
It was after ten o'clock and beginning to grow hot. Church
was over; the living-room was crowded with visitors, full of
talk. After a while the men went off; it was time for Florence
to hdp her sister with the cooking. Hope fell asieep on the
fl!oor . A dog came in, licked her face, was chased away; she
was lifted, still sleeping, on to the sofa. In a private moment
Florence gave her sister the money for Bheki's rent, for his
food, his shoes, his schoolbooks; her sister put it away in her
bodice. Then Bheki made his appearance and greeted his
mother. The men came back from wherever they had been
and they all had lunch: chicken from t:he farm or factory or
plant or whatever it is, rice, cabbage., gravy.. From outside
Bheki's friends began to call: hurriedly he finished his food
and left the table.
All of this happened. All of this must have happened . It
was an on.iinary aftern:oonin Africa: bzy weather,. a lazy day.
4_.lmost it is possible to say: This is how Hfe should be.
The time came for them to leave . They walked to the bus
stop, Hope riding now on her father's shoulders. The bus
arrived;, they said goodbye. The bus bore florence and her
daughters off. It bore them to Mowbray,. from where they
took another bus to St George's Street, and then a third up
Kloof Street. From Kloof Street they walked. By the time
they reached Schoonder Street the shadows were lengthening.
. 40.
lt was time to give Hope, fretful and tired, her supp,er, to
hath the baby, to fmish yesterday's ironing .
At },east it is not cattle he is slaughtering, I told myself; at
least it is only chickens, with their crazy chicken-eyes and
their delusions of grandeur. But my mind would hot leave
the farm, the factory, the enterprise where the husband of the
woman who lived side by side with me worked, where day
after day he bestrode his pen, left and right, back an.d forth,
around and around, in a smell of blood and feathers, in an
uproar of outraged squawking, reaching down, scooping up, --[
gripping, binding, hanging. I thought o(_~ll the men across
th_e,b:readth of South Africa who, while [ sat gazing out of
the window, were killing chickens, moving earth, barrowful
upon barrowful; of all the women sorting oranges, sewing
buttonholes. Who would ever count them, the spadefuls, the
oranges, the buttonholes,. the chickens? .A universe oflabour,·
a universe of counting: hke sitting in front of a clock ali day.;
killing the seconds as they emerged, counting obe's Hfe away.

Ever since Vermeil took my money he has been drinking

steadily, drinking not only wine but brandy. Some days he
does not drink tili noon, using the hours of abstinence to make
surrender more voluptuous. More often he is intoxicated by
the time he leaves the house in mid-morning.
The sun was shining bleakly today when he returned fmm
his outing. I was upstairs on the balcony; he did not see me
as he sat down in. the yard with his back to the waU, the dog
beside him. Florence's son was already there, with a friend I
had not"se,en before, and Hop,e, devouring their every move
with her eyes. They had a radio on; the scraping and thudding
of the music was even worse than the tennis ball .
'Water,' Vercueil caHed to the boys - 'Bring me some
water.'
The new boy, the friend, crossed the yard and squatted
. 41 .
beside him. What passed between them I did not hear.. The
boy stretched out a hand. 'Give,' he said.
Lazily V·ercueil beat down his hand.
'Give it to me,' the boy said, and on his knees began to tug
the bottle from Vercueil's pocket.
VercueH resisted, but only lackadaisicaUy.
The boy unscrewed th•e cap and poured the brandy out on
to the ground. Then he tossed the bottle aside. lt shattered.
A stupid thing to do: I almost called out.
'They are making you into a dog!' said the boy. 'Do you
want to be a dog?'
The dog, Vercueil's dog, whined eagerly.
'Go to hell,' replied Vercue:il with a thick tongue.
'Dog!' said the boy. 'Drunkard!'
He turned his back on Vercudl and went back to Bheki, a
swagger in his walk. What a self-important child, I thought.
If this :is how the new guardians of the people conduct
themselves, Lord spare us from them.
The Httle girl sniffed at the brandy and wrinkled her
nose.
'You go to heU too,' said Vercue:il, waving her away. She
did not: stir. Then at once she turned and ran to her mother's
room.
The music ground on. Vercueil feU asleep,. slumped side-
ways against the wan with the dog's head on his knee. I
returned to my book. After a while the sun went behind the
douds and it grew chiUy. A Hght drizzle began to faH. The
dog shook itsdf and went into the shed. Vercueil got to his
feet and followed . I gathered my things.
Inside the shed there was a commotion. First the dog
scuttled out, faced around, and stood barking;. then Vercueil
emerged backwards; then the two boys followed.. As the
second boy, the friend, neared him, Vercue:iJ struck out and
hit him on the neck with the flat of his hand. The boy drew
in his breath with a hiss of surprise: even fmm the bakony I
. 42 .
heard it.. He struck hack at: Vercuei[, who stumbled and
nearly feU. The dog danced around, yapping . The hoy struck
Vercueil again,. and now Bheki joined in. 'Stop it!' I shouted
down at them . They paid me no heed. Vercueil was on the
ground; they were kicking him; Bheki took out: the belt from
his trousers and began to lash him.. 'Florence!.' I shouted -
'Stop them!' Vercueil put his hands over his face t:o protect
himself. The dog made a leap at Bheki; Bheki knocked it:
backwards and went on flading Vercueil with his belt. 'Stop
it, you two!' I shouted, gripping the rail . 'Stop it at once or
rn call the police!' '
Then Florence appeared. She spoke sharply, and the boys
backed off. Vercueil struggled to his feet. I came downstairs
as fast as [ could.
'Who is this boy?' I asked Florence.
The boy stopped speaking to Bheki and r•egarded me. I did
not like that look: arrogant, combative .
'He is a friend from school,' said Florence.
'He must go home,' [ said. 'This is getting too much for
me. I can't have brawling in my back yard. I can't have
strang·ers walking in and out.'
There was blood coming from Vercueirs lip. Strange to
see blood on that leathery face. Like honey on ashes.
'He is not a stranger, he is visiting.,' said flor·ence.
'Must we have a pass to come in here?' said Bheki. He and
his friend exchanged glances. 'Must we have a pass?' They
waited for my answer, challenging me . The radio was stiH
playing: an inhuman noise, wearying: [wanted to clasp my
hands over my ears.
'[did not say anything about passes,' I said. 'But what right
does he have to come here and assault this man? This man
lives here . h is his home.'
Florence's nostrils flared.
'Yes,' I said, turning to her,. 'he lives here too,. it is his
home.'
. 43
 'He lives here,' said Florence,. 'but he is rubbish. He is good
for nothing.'
']ou moer!' said Vercueit He had taken off his hat and was
punching out the crown; now he raised the hand with the hat
as if to strike her . 'Jou moer!'
Bheki snatched the hat from him and tossed it up on to
the garage roof. The dog barked furiously. Slowly the hat
tumbled down the slope of the roof.
'He is not a rubbish person,' I said, lowering my voice,
speaking to Florence alone. 'There are no rubbish p·eopk We
are all people together.'
But Florence had no desire to be preached to. 'Good for
nothing but drinking,' she said . 'Drink, drink, drink aU day.
I do not like him here.'
A good-for-nothing: was that what he was? Yes, perhaps:
good-for-nothing: a good old English word, heard too sd-
dom nowadays.
'He is my mess·enger,' I said.
Florence regarded me suspiciously.
'He is going to carry messages for me,' I said.
She shrugged. Vercueil shambled off with his hat and his
dog . I heard the gate-latch dick.. 'Tell the boys to leave him
alone,' I said. 'He is doing no harm.'

Like an oM tom chased off by the rising males, V·ercueil has

gone into hiding to lick his wounds. I foresee m ysdf searching
the parks,. calling sofdy, 'Mr Vercueil! Mr Vercueil!' An old
woman in search of her cat.
Florence is openly proud of how Bheki got rid of the
good-for-nothing, but predicts that he will be back as soon
as it starts raining . As for me, [doubt we will see him as long
as the boys are here. I said so to Florence . 'You are showing
Bheki and his friends that they can raise their hands against
. 44.
their dders with impunity. That is a mistake. Yes, what•ever
you may think ofhim, Vercueil is their elder!
'The more you give in, Florence,. the more outrageously
the children will behave . You told me you admire your son's
generation because they are afraid of nothing. Be careful: they
may start by being ~r~el~s~~of their own lives and end by
being careless of everyone else's. What you admire in them
is not necessarily what is best.
'[ keep thinking of what you said the other day: that there
are no more mothers and fathers. I can't believe you mean it. ~
ChHdren cannot grow up without mothers or fathers. The ,
burnings and killings one hears of, the shocking callousness, .
even this matter of beating Mr Vercuei] - whose fauh is it in
the end? Surely the blame must fali on parents who say, "Go,
do as you wish, you are your own master now, I give
up authority over you." What child in his heart truly
wants to he told that? Surely he wiU turn away in confusion,
thinking to himself, ''I have no mother now, I have no father:
then ]et my mother be death, let my father be death." You
wash your hands of them and they turn into the children of
death.'
Horence shook her head . 'No,' she said firmly.
'But do you remember what you told me last year, Flor-
ence, when those unspeakable things were happening in the
townships? You said to me, "I saw a woman on fire, burning,
and when she screamed for help, the children laughed and
thr·ew more petrol on her." You said, " [ did not think I would
live to see such a thing.''''
'Yes, I did say that, and. it is true. But who made them so
cruel? It is the whites who made them so cruel! Yes!' She
breathed deeply, passionately. W.e were in the kitchen. She
was doing the ironing. The hand that held the ir()g pressed
down hard . ' She gbred..at me . Lightly· I touched her hand.
She rafsed'the iron.. On the sheet was the beginning of a
brown scorch-mark.
. 45 .
 No mercy, I thought: a war without mercy, without limits.
A good war to miss.
'And when they grow up one day,' I said softly, 'do you
think the cruelty will leave them? What kind of parents will
they become who were taught that the time of parents is
over? Can parents be recreated once the !_dea of parents has
been destroyed within us? They kick and beat a inan because
he drinks. They set people on fire and laugh whHe they burn
to death. How will they treat their own children? What love
will they be capable of? Their hearts are turning to stone
before our ey,es, and what do yo~ say? You say, "This is not
my child, this is the white man's child,. this is the monster
made by the white man." Is that aU you can say? Are you
going to blame them on the whites and turn your back?'
'No,.' said Florence . 'That is not true . . I do not turn my
back on my children.' She folded the sheet crosswise and
lengthwise., crosswise and lengthwise, the corners falling
together neatly, decisively. 'These are good children, they are
like iron, we are proud of them.' On the board she spread
the first of the piUowshps. I waited for her to say more. But
there was no more. She was not interested in debating with
me.
Children of iron, I thought. Florence herself, too, not
unlike iron. The age of iron. A£ter which comes the age of
bronze. How long, how long before the softer ag·es return in
their cycle,, the age of day, the age ofearth? A Spartan matron,
iron-hearted, bearing warrior-sons for· the nation. 'We are
proud of them.' We . Come home either with your shield or
on your shield .
And I? Where is my heart in aH of this? My only child is
thousands of miles away, safe; soon I will be smoke and ash;
so what is it to me that a time has come when childhood is
despised, when children school each other never to smile,
never to cry, to raise fists in the air Hke hammers? Is it truly
a time out of time, heaved up out of the earth, misbegotten,.
. 46 .
monstrous? What, after aU, gave birth to the age ofiron ~ut
the ~~ofgra~!~C:~Pid we not have VoortrekkerS,, generation
after generation of Voortrekkers, grim-faced, tight-lipped
Afrikaner children, marching, singing their patriotic hymns,.
saluting their flag, vowing to die for their fatherland? Orts sal
lewe, ons .sa.! sterwe . Are there not stiil white .zealots preaching
the old regime of discipline, work, obedience, self-sacrifice,
a regime of death, to children some too young to tie their
own shoelaces? What a nightmare from beginning to end! The
spirit of Geneva triumphant in Africa. Calvin, black-robed,
thin-blooded,. forever cold, rubbing his hands in the after-
world, smiling his wintry smile. Calvin victorious, reborn
in the dogmatists and witch-hunters of both armies. How
fortunate you are to have put all this behind you!

The other boy, Bhek:i's friend, arrived on a red bicycle with

fat sky-blue tyres. When I went to bed last night the bicycle
was in the courtyard, glistening wet in the moonlight. At
seven this morning., when I looked out of the window, it was
stilll there. I took the morning piUs .and had another hour's
sleep. l dreamed I was trapped in a crowd. Shapes pushed at
me, hit at me, swore in words I could not make out, filthy,
fuU of menace. I hit back, but my arms were a child's arms:
foo,foo went my blows, like puffs of air.
I awoke to the sound of raised voices, Florence's and
someone else's. I rang the beU once,. twice, three times, four
times. At last Florence came.
'[s there someone at the door, Florence?'
Florence picked up the quilt from the floor and folded it
over the foot of the bed. 'It is nobody,' she said .
'Did your son's friend stay here bst night?'

.
'Yes. He cannot ride a bicyde in the dark, it is too danger-
ous .
'And where did he sleep?'
. 47
 Florence drew herself up. 'In the garage. Bheki and he slept
in the garage . '
'But how did they get into the garage?'
'They opened the window. '
'Can't they ask me befor·e they do something Hke that?'
A silence . Florence picked up the tray.
'Is this boy going to be living here too, in the garage? Are
they sleeping in my car, Florence?'
Florence shook her head. 'I do not know. You must ask
them yourself.'
Midday, and the bicycle was still here. Of the boys them-
selves no sign. But when I went out to the mailbox there
was a yellow police van parked across the street with two
uniformed men in ilt, the one on the near side asleep, his cheek
against the glass.
I beckoned to the man behind the wheel. The engine came
to life, the sleeper sat up, the van climbed the sidewalk, made
a brisk U-turn, and pulled up beside me.
[ expected them to get out . But no, there they sat without
a word, waiting for me to speak. A cold north-wester was
blowing. I held my dressing-gown dosed at my throat. The
radio in the van crackled. 'Vier-drie-agt,' said a woman's voice.
They ignored it. Two young men in blue.
'Can I help you?' I said. 'Are you waiting for someone?'
'Can you help us? I don't know, lady. You tell us, can you
help us.'
In my day, I thought, policemen spoke respectfully to
ladies . In my day children did not set fire to schools. In my
day: a phrase one came across in this day only in Letters to
the Editor. Old men and women, trembling with just fury,.
taking up the pen, weapon of last resort. In my day, now
over; in my life, now past.
'If you are looking for those boys, I want you to know
they have my permission to be here.'
'Which boys., lady?'
I

. 48 .
 'The boys who are visiting here. The boys from Guguletu.
The schoolboys.'
There was a burst of noise from the radio.
'No, lady, I don't know anything about boys from Gugu-
letu. Do you want us to look out for them?'
A glance passed between the two of them, a glance of
merriment. ] gripped the bar of the gate . The dressing-gown
gaped, I felt the cold wind on my throat, my chest . 'In my
day,' I said, enunciating dearly each old, discredited, comical
word, 'a policeman did not speak to a lady hke that.' And l
turned my back on them.
The radio squawked like a parrot behind me;. or perhaps
they made the sound come fmm it, I would not put it past
them. An hour later the yeHow van was still outside the gate.
'I really think you shou]d send this other boy home,' I told
Florence. 'He is going to get your son into trouble.'
'I cannot send him home,' said Florence . 'Ifhe goes Bheki
will go with him. They are hke this.' She held up a hand, two
fingers intertwined. '1t is sa£er for them here. In Guguletu there
is trouble aU the time, and then the police come in .and shoot.'
Shooting in Guguletu: whatever Florence knows about it,.
whatever you know ten thousand miles away, I do not know.
In the news that reaches me there is no mention of trouble,
of shooting.. The land that is presented to me is a land of
smiling neighbours.
'If they are here to get away from the fighting then why
are the police after them?'
Florence drew a deep breath. Since the birth of the baby
there has been an air of barely contained outrage about her.
'You must not ask me, madam,' she declared, 'why the police
are coming after the children and chasing them and shooting
them and putting them injail. You must not ask me.'
'Very well,' I said, 'I wiU not make that mistake again. But
I cannot turn my home into a haven for aU the children
running away from the townships.'
. 49 .
 'But why not?' asked Florence, leaning forward: 'Why
not?'
I ran a hot bath,. undressed, and painfuUy lowered myself
:into the water. VVhy .not? I hung my head; the ends of my hair,
falling over my face, touched the water; my legs, mottled,
blue-veined, stuck out like sticks before me . An old woman,.
sick and ugly, clawing on to what she has left. The living,
impatient of long dyings;. the dying; ·envious of the living.
An unsavoury spectade: may it bF over soon.
No bell :in the bathroom. I cleared my throat and caUed:
'Florence!' Bare pipes and white walls gave back a hollow
sound. Absurd to imagine that Florence would hear me. And
ifshe heard, why should she come?
Dear mother, I thought,. look down on me, stretch forth
your hand!
Shivers began to run through me from head to toe . Behind
dosed eyes I saw my mother as she is when she appears to
me, in her drab old person's clothes, her face hidden.
'Come to me!' I whispered.
But she would not. Stretching out her arms as a coasting
hawk does, my mother began to ascend into the sky. Higher
and higher she rose above me. She reached the layer of the
douds, pierced it, soared on. With each mile she ascended
she became younger . Her hair grew dark again, her skin fresh.
The old clothes feU from her like dry leaves, revealing the
blue dress with the feather in the butl:onhoie that she wears
in my earliest memory ofher, from the time when the world
was young and aU things were possible.
On she soared, in the eternal perfection of youth, change-
less, smihng, rapt,. forgetful, to the rim of the heavenly sphere
itself. 'Mother, look down on mel' I whispered into the bare
bathroom.

. jO .
The rains began early this year. This is the fourth month of
rain. Where one touches the walls, streaks of damp form.
There are patches where the plaster is blistering and bursting.
My clothes have a bitter, mouldy smeU. How I long., just
once more, to put on crisp underwear smeUing of the sun'!
Let me be granted just one more summer-afternoon wallk:
down the A venue amid the nut-brown bodies of children on
their way home from school, laughing, giggling, smelling of
dean young sweat, the girls every year more beautiful, plus
belles. And if that is not to be, let there stiU be,. to the last,
gratitude, unbounded, heartfelt gratitude, for having been
granted a speU in this world of wonders.
I write these words sitting in bed,. my knees pressed
together against the August cold. Gratitude: I writ•e down the
word and read it. back. What does it mean? Before my ey·es
it grows dense, dark, mysterious. Then something happens.
Slowly, like a pomegranate, my heart bursts with gratitude;
like a fruit splitting open to reveal the seeds oflove. Gratitude,
pomegranate: sister words.

At five this morning I was woken by heavy rain. It came

down in sheets, streaming over the edges of the dogged
gutters, dripping through cracked rooftiles.. I went .down-
stairs, made myself tea, and, wrapped in a blanket, settled
down with the month's accounts.
The gate clicked and steps came up the driveway. A figure
crouched under a black plastic sack scurried past the
window.
I went out on to the veranda. 'Mr Vercueil!' I called
into the teeming rain. There was no answer. Hunching my
shoulders, clutching the dressing-gown about me, I stepped
out. At once my slippers with their siUy bmbswool collars
were soaked through. Through runnds of water I slopped
across the yard. In the dark entrance to the shed I coHided
• :5 I .
with someone: Vercueil, standing with his back to me. He
swore.
'Come inside!' I shouted above the rain. 'Come into the
house.! You can't sleep there!'
StiU ho]ding the bag Hke a hood over his head, he followed
me into the kitchen and into the light. 'Leave that wet thing
outside,' I said. Then with a shock I saw that someone had
foUowed him in . It was a woman, small,. no higher than my
shouMer, but old, or at ]east not young, with a leering,
bloated face and livid skin.
'Who is this?' I said.
V·ercueil stared back at me, yellow-eyed., defiant. Dog-
man! I thought.
'You can wait indoors tiH the rain stops, then [ want you
out,' I said coldly, and turned my back on the pair of
them.
I changed my clothes, locked mysdf in my bedroom, and
tried to reacl. But the words rustled past me like leaves. With
mild surprise I fdt my eyehds droop, heard the book slide
through my hands .
When I awoke the one thought in my mind was to get
them out of the house.
Of the woman there was no sign; but Vercueil was asleep
in the living-room, cuded up on the sofa, his hands between
his knees., the hat still somehow on his head . I shook him .
He stirred,. wet his Hps, made a reluctant, mumbling, sleepy
sound. It was the same sound- it came back to me at once-
that you used to make when I woke you for schooL 'Time
to get up!' I would call as I drew open the curtains; and,
turning away from the light, you would mumble just like
that. 'Come, my darling, it's time to get up!' I would whisper
in your ear, not urging you too hard yet, giving myself time
to sit beside you and stroke your hair, stroke after stroke, my
fingertips alive with love, while you dung to the last to the
body of sleep . Let it be like this forever! I would think, my
. 52 .
hand on your head, the current of love coursing through
it.
And now your sleepy, comfortable murmur reborn in the
throat of this man! Showd I sit beside him too, lift off his
hat, stroke his greasy hair? A shudder of distaste went through
me. How easy it is to love a child, how hard to love what a
child turns into! Once upon a time,. with his fists to his ears
and his eyes pinched shut in ecstasy, this creature too floated
in a woman's womb, drank of her blood,. belly to belly. He
too passed through the ~tes ofbone into the radiance outside,
was allowed to know mother..:Iove1 amor matris. Then in the
course of time was weaned away from it, made to stand
alone, and began to grow dry, stunted,. c_rooked. A life
apart, deprived, like an lives; but in this case,. surdy,~~e­
undernourished than most. A man in his middle years stiH
sucking on bottles, yearning for the original bliss, reaching
for it in his stupors.
While [ stood regarding him, his woman entered the room.
Ignoring me, she stumbled back into a nest of cushions on
the floor. She reeked of cologne water: mine. Behind her
came Florence., bristling.
'Don't ask me to explain, Florence.,' I said . 'Just [,eave them
a] one, they are sleeping something of('
Florence's glasses flashed, she had something to say., but I
cut her short. 'Please! They are not going to stay.'
Though I flushed the toillet several times, a smell lingered,
both sickly sweet and foul I tossed the floor-mat out in the
ram .
Later, when the children were in the kitchen with Florence
having breakfast, I came downstairs again . Without preamble
I addressed Bheki.
'[hear you and your friend have been sleeping in my car.
Why didn't you ask my permission?'
Silence feU. Bheki did not look up. Florence went on
cutting bread.
. 53 .
 'Why didn't you ask my permission? Answer me!'
The litde gi.d stopped chewing, stared at me .
Why was I behaving in this ridiculous fashion? Because I
was irritated. Because I was tired of being used, Becal!se it
was. my, car they were Sleeping in. My car, my' house(mine:·,
I wa!f·lfl(ot yet gone. ··~.
·Then, fortunatdy, Vercueil made his appearance and the
tension was broken. He passed through the kitchen, glancing
neither left nor right, and out on to the veranda. I followed .
The dog was leaping up at him, bounding, frisking,. full of
joy. It leapt at me too, streaking my skirt with its wet paws.
How sHly one looks fending off a dog!
'WiH you get your friend out of the house, please,' I said
to him.
Staring up into an overcast sky, he made no reply .
'Get her out at once or I will get her out!' I shouted in a
fury.
He ignored me.
'Help me,' I ordered Florence .
The woman by face down on her bed of cushions, a patch
of wetness at the corner of her mouth. Florence tugged her by
t:he arm. Groggily she stood up. Half guiding, half pushing,
Florence propelled her out ·Of the house. On the pathway
VercueH caught up with us. 'This is too much!' I snapped at
h:im.
The two boys were already out on the street with their
bicycle. Pretending not to notice our squabble, they set off
up Schoonder Street, Bheki hunched on the crossbar, his
friend pedaUing.
In a hoarse voice,, in a rambling stream of obscenity, the
woman began to curse Florence . Florence gave me a malicious
look . 'Rubbish person,.' she said, and stamped off.
'I don't ever want to see this woman again,' I said to
Vercue:iL
The bicycle with the two boys on it reappeared over the
. 54 .
crest ofSchoonder Street and raced towards us, Bheki's friend
pedalling ha.rd. On their heels foUowed the yeUow police van
from yesterday.
A light truck stood parked at the curbside, with pipes and
rods in the back, plumbing materials. There was room enough
for the bicycle to pass. But as the yellow van drew level with
the boys,. the near-side door swung open and slapped them
sideways . The bicycle wobbled and went out of control. I
had a glimpse of Bheki sliding down, his arms above his
head, of the other boy standing on the pedals, averting his
face, stretching out a hand in a warding gesture. Above the
sound of the traffic from Mill Street I heard quite dearly the
thud of a body stopped in mid-flight, a deep,. surprised 'Ah!'
of exhaled breath, the cr.ash of the bicycle colliding with the
plumber's truck. 'God!' I screamed in a shrill voice that,
hanging in the air, ] did not recognize as my own. Time. ':
seemed to stop and then r·esume, leaving a gap: in one instant
the boy put out a hand to save himsdf, :in the next he was
part of a tangle in the gutter . Then the echo of my scream
dwindled and the scene reassembled itself in aU its familiarity:
Schoonder Street on a quiet weekday morning, with a
canary-yellow vanjust turning the comer.
A dog, a retriever,. came trotting up to investigate. Ver-
cueil's dog sniffed the retriever,. while the retriever, ignoring
him, sniffed at the pav·ement, then began to lick it. I wanted
to move but could not. There was a coldness in me, my Hmbs
felt distant, the wordfa.inting occurred to me, though I have
never fainted in my life. This country!, I thought. And then:
Than:k God she is out!
A gate opened and a man in blue work-dothes appeared.
He kick·ed at the retriever,. which sprang a way in hurt surprise .
'Jesus!' said the man. He bent down and began to thread limbs
through the frame of the bicyde.
I approached,. shaking . 'florence!' I called . But there was
no sign of Florence.
. 55 .
 Straddling the bodies, the man lifted the bicycle aside.
Bheki lay under the other boy. There was a deep frown on
his face; he wet his lips with his tongue over and over; hils
eyes were dosed. Vercueil's dog tried to lick: him. 'Go away!'
I whispered, and gave it a push with my foot. h wagged its
tail.
A woman appeared at my dhow, drying her hands on a
towel. 'Are they newspaper boys?' she said. 'Are they news-
paper boys, do you know?' I shook my head.
With an uncertain air, the man in blue straddled the bodies
again. What he should have done was to hft the dead weight
of the other boy, who lay face down across Bheki. But he
did not want to,. nor did I want him to. There was something
wrong, something unnatural in the way the boy lay.
Til go and phone for an ambulance, ' said the woman.
I bent and raised the boy's limp arm. 'Wait!' said the man.
'Let's be car·efui.'
Coming erect,. I was overtaken with such dizziness that I
had to dose my eyes.
C]asping him under the shoulders, he dragged the boy off
Bheki and bid him out on the pavement . Bheki opened his
eyes.
'Bheki,' I said. Bheki gave me a calm, incurious look.
'Everything is all right,' I said. From entirely peaoeful eyes
he continued to regard me, accepting the lie, letting it pass.
'The ambulance is on its way,' I sa.id.
Then Horence was there, kneeling beside her son, speaking
to him urgently, stroking his head. He began to reply: slow,
mumbled words. Her hand paused as she listened. They
crashed into the back of this truck,' I explained. 'It's my
truck,' said the man in blue. 'The police pushed them,' I
said: 'it's appalling., quite appalling. It was those same two
policemen who were here yesterday, I am sure.'
Florence slid a hand under Bheki's head . Slowly he sat up.
One shoe was off; a trouser-leg was torn open and wet with
. 56 .
blood. Gingerly he held aside the tom material and peered at
the wound. His palms were raw, the skin hung in strips .
'The ambulance is on its way.,' I said. 'We do not need the
ambulance,' said Horence.
She was wrong. The other boy lay sprawled on his back
now. With his jacket the plumber was trying to staunch the
blood that streamed down his face. But the flow would not
stop. He lifted the wadded jacket and for an instant., before
it darkened with blood again,. I saw that the flesh across the
forehead hung open in a loose flap as if sliced with a butcher's
knife . Blood flowed in a sheet into the boy's eyes and made
his hair glisten;. it dripped on to the pavement; it was every-
where. I did not know blood cou]d be so dark, so thick, so
heavy. What a heart he must have,. I thought, to pump that
blood and go on pumping!
'Is the ambulance coming?' said the plumber. 'Because I
don't know how to stop this.' He was sweating; he ch.anged
position and his shoe, soggy with blood, SCJIUelched.
You were eleven, [ remember, when you sliced your thumb
in the bread machine . I rushed you to the emergency section
at Groote Schuur. We sat on a bench waiting our turn, you
with your thumb wrapped in lint, pressing it to stop the
bleeding . 'What's going to happen to me?' you whispered.
'They wiU give you an injection and put in stitches,' [ whis-
pered back. 'Just a few stitches,. just a £ew pricks.'
It was early on a Saturday evening, but already the casualties
were trickling in. A man in whit•e shoes and a rumpled black
suit spat blood steadily into a dish. A youth on a stretcher.,
naked to the waist, his belt open, held a wad of sodden doth
to his belly. mood on the floor, blood on the benches. What
did our timid thimbleful count for beside this torrent of black
blood? Child Snowdrop lost in the cavern of blood, and her
mother lost too. A country prodigal of blood. Florence's
husband in yellow oilskins and boots, wading through blood.
Oxen keeling over,, their throats slit, hurling last jets into the
. 57 .
 air like whales. The dry earth soaking up the blood of its
creatures.. A land that drinks rivers of blood and is never
sated.
'Let me,' [said to the plumber. He made way. KneeHng,
[ lifted aside th·e sodden blue jacket.. Blood ran down the
boy's face in a steady, even sheet. Between thumbs and
forefingers [ pinched together as much as [ cou]d of the open
flap. V·ercueil's dog came pushing in again. 'Get that dog
away,' I snapped. The plumber gave it a kick. It yelped and
sidled away. Where was Vercueil? Was it true,. was he truly
good for nothing? 'Go and phone again,' I ordered the
plumber.
As long as [ pinched tight I could hold in most of the flow.
But when [ relaxed blood poured again steadily. h was blood,
nothing more, blood Hke yours and mine . Yet never before
had [ seen anything so scarlet and so black. Perhaps it was an
effect of the skin, youthful, supple, velvet dark,. over which
it ran; but even on my hands it seemed both darker and more
glaring than blood ought to be. I stared at it, fasdnated,
afraid, drawn into a veritable stupor of staring . Yet it was
impossible,. in my deepest being impossible, to give myself
up to that stupor, to relax and do nothing to stop the flow.
Why, [ ask myself now? And I answer: Because blood is
precious, more precious than gold and diamonds. Because
blood is one: a pool of life dispersed among us in separate
existences, but belonging by nature together: lent, not given:
held in common, in trust, to be preserved: seeming to Hve in
us, but only seeming,. for in truth we live in it.
A sea of blood, come back together: is that how it will be
at the end of days? The blood of all: a Baikal Sea scarlet-black
under a wintry blue Siberian sky, ice-cliffs around iit, its
snow-white shores lapped by blood, viscous, sluggish. The
blood of mankind, restored to itself. A body of blood. Of all
, ~ mankind? No: in a place apart, in a mud-waUed dam in the
Karoo with barbed wire around it and the sun blazing down,
. 58 .
the blood of the Afrikaners and their tribute-bearers, still,
stagnant.
Blood, sacred,, abominated. And you, flesh of my flesh,
blood of my blood,. bleeding every month into foreign soil.
For twenty years I have not bled. The sickness that now
eats at me is dry, Moodiess, slow and cold, sent by Saturn.
There is something about it that does not bear thinking of.
To have faUen pregna~ with these growths, these cold,
obscene swellings;-tc(have carried and carried this brood
bey~~d any natural term,. unable to hear them, unableto- sate·
their hunger: children inside me eating more every day, not
growing but bloating, toothed, ~lawed, forever cold and
rav·enous. Dry, dry: to fed them tunung at night in my dry
body, not stretching and kicking as a human child does but
changing their angle, fmding a new place to gnaw. Like
insect-eggs laid in the body of a host, now grown to gmbs
and implacably eating their host away. My eggs, grown
within me. Me, mine: words I shudder to write, yet true. My
daughters death, sisters to you, my daughter life . How terrible
when motherhood reaches a point of parodying itself! A crone
crouched over a hoy, her hands sticky with his blood: a vile
image, as it comes up in me now. I hav·e lived too long . Death
~the only decent death left. To walk into the fire, to
blaze like tow, to feel these secret sharers cringe and cry out
too,. at the last instant, in thelrliarsliunused Iitde voices; to
burn and be gone, to be ri<f __g£_ tole aYe. ilie world de~n.
Monstrous growths.,. mfsbirths: a sign that one is beyond
one's term. This country too: time for fl!t2 time for an end,.l
time £or what grows out of ash to grow. J
-Whe.1 ~incec~ame.Cwas.so. stiff that I had to be .--..
lifted to my feet. In 9-~taching my sticky fingers from the
gash I _opened it again. 'He has lost a lot of blood.,' I said. 'It's
not serious,' said the ambulance-man curdy. He held the
boy's eyehd open. 'Concussed,' he said . 'How did it happen?'
*
. 59 .

~
Bheki sat on the bed,. hls trousers off, his hands in a basin of
water; Horence kndt before him bandaging his leg .
'Why did you leave me alone to look afber him? Why didn't
you stay and help?'
I sounded querulous, certainly,. but for once was I not in
the right?
'I do not want to be involved with the police,' said Florence.
'That is not th·e question. You leave me alone to take care
of your son's friend. Why must I be the one to take care of
him?' He is nothing to me . '
'Where is he?' said Bheki.
'They took him to Woodstock Hospital. He is concussed.'
'What does it mean, concussed?'
'He is unconscious. He hit his head. Do you know why
you crashed?'
'They pushed us,' he said.
'Yes, they pushed you. I saw it. You are lucky to be alive,
both of you. I am going to lay a complaint.'
A glance passed between Bheki and his mother. 'We do
not want to be involved with the police,.' Horence repeated.
'There is nothing you can do against the police. ' Again a
glance, as though checking she had her son's approval.
'If you don't complain they wiH go on behaving as they
like. Even if it gets you nowhere, you must stand up to them.
I am not talking about the police only. I am talking about
men in power. They must see yori are not afraid . This is a
serious matter. They could have kiUed you, Bheki. What
have they got against you anyway? What have you and that
friend of yours been up to?'
Florence knotted the bandage around his leg and murmured
something to him. He took his hands out of the basin. There
was a smeU of antis·eptic.
'Is it bad?' I said.
He held out his hands, palms upward. Blood continued to
ooze from the raw flesh. Honourable wounds? Would these
· 6o ·
count on the roll as honourable wounds, wounds of war?
Together we regarded the bleeding hands. I had the im-
pression he was holding back tears . A chlld,, no more than a
child,. playing on a bicycle .
'Your friend,' I said - 'Don't you think his parents should
know?'
'I can phone,' said Florence.
Florence telephoned. A long., loud conversation. 'Wood-
stock Hospital,' I heard .
Hours later there was a call from a pubhc tdephone, a
woman wanting Florence.
'He is not in the hospital,' Florence reported.
'Was that his mother?' I asked.
'His grannie. '
I telephoned Woodstock Hospital. 'You won't have his
name, he was unconscious when they took him,' I said.
'No record ofsuch a patient,' said the man.
'He had a terrible gash across the forehead.'
'No record.,' he repeated. I gave up.
'They work with the police.,' said Bheki. 'They are aU the
same, the ambulances, the doctors, the police.'
'That is nonsense,' I said.
'Nobody trusts the ambulance any more. They are always
talking to the pohce on their radios.'
'Nons·ense.'
He smiled a smil.e not without charm, relishing this chance
to lecture me, to teU me about real life . I, the old woman
who lived in a shoe, who had no children and didn't know
what to do. 'It is true,' he said- 'listen and you will hear.'
'Why are the police after you?'
'They are not after me . They are after everybody. I have
done nothing. But anybody they see they think should be in
school, they try to get them. We do nothing, we just say we
are not going to school. Now they are waging this terror
against us . They are terrorists.'
· 6I ·
 'Why won't you go to school?'
'What is school for? [t is to make us fit into the apartheid
system.'
Shaking my head, I tumed to Florence. There was a tight
litde smile on her lips which she did not bother to hide . Her
son was winning hands down. W eU, let him. 'I am too old
for this,.' I said to her. 'I can't !believe you want your son out
on the streets ki.Uing time till apartheid comes to an end.
Apartheid is not going to die tomorrow 01r the next day. He
is ruining his future. '
'What is more important, that apartheid must lbe destroyed
or that I must go to school?' asked Bheki,. challenging me,.
smelling victory.
'That is not the choice,' I answered wearily. But was I
right? If that was not the choice,. what was the choice? 'I wiH
take you to Woodstock,' I offered. 'But then we must leave
at once . '
When Florence saw Vercueil waiting, she bridled. But I
insisted. 'He must come along in case I have trouble with the
car,' I said.
So I drove them to Woodstock, Vercueil beside me smeUing
worse than ev.er, somehow smeUing miserable too,, Florence
and Bheki silent in the back. The car struggled up the gentle
slope to the hospital; for once I had the presence of mind to
park pointing downhilL
'I teU you, there is no such person here.,' said the man at
the desk. 'If you don't believe me, go and look in the wards.'
Tired though I was, I trailed through the male wards !behind
Florence and Bheki. It was the hour of the siesta; doves were
calling softly from the trees outside. We saw no !black boys
with bandaged heads, only old white men in pyjamas staring
emptily at the ceihng while the ra.dio played soothing music.
My secret brothers, I thought:: this is where I belong.
'If they didn't bring him here, where would they have
taken him?' I asked at the desk.
. 62 .
 'Try Groote Schuur.'
The parking lot at Gmote Schuur was full. For halfan hour
we sat at the gate with the engine idling, Florence and her
son talking softly together, Vercueil blank-eyed, I yawning.
Like a sl·eepy weekend in South Africa, I thought; like taking
the family for a drive . We could have played a word-game
to pass the time,, but what chance was there of enlisting those
three? Word-games., from a past that I alone could look
!back to with nostalgia,. when we of the midd]e classes, the
comfortable classes, passed our Sundays roaming the country-
side from beauty-spot to lbeauty-sp~t, bringing the afternoon
to a dose with tea and scones and strawberry jam and cream
in a tea-room with a nice view, preferably westward over the
sea.
A car came out, we went in. 'I'll stay here,' said Ve:rcueil.
'Where would someone with concussion be taken?' I asked
the clerk.
Down long, crowded corridors we passed looking for ward
C-5 . We crammed ourselves into a 1ift with four Moslem
women wearing v'eils, carrying dishes of food. Bheki, self-
conscious about his bandaged hands, held them !behind his
back. Through C-5, through C-6, and no sign of the boy.
Horence stopped a nurse. 'Try the new wing.,' she suggested.
Exhausted,. I shook my head. 'I can't walk any further,' I
said . 'You and Bheki go on; I will meet you at the car.'
It was true, I was tired, my hip ached, my heart was
thumping, there was an unpleasant taste in my mouth. But
there was more to it than that. 1 was s'eeing too many sick
old people., and too suddenly. They oppressed me., oppressed
and intimidated me . Black and white, men and women, they
shuffied about the corridors, watching each other covetously,
eyeing me as I approached.,. catching unerringly on me the
smell of death . 'Impostor!' they seemed to whisper, ready to
grasp my arm, draw me back: 'Do you think you can come
and go here as you please? Don't you know the :rule? This is
. 63 .
the house of shadow and suffering through which you must
pass on the way to death.. That is the sentence passed upon
all: a term in prison before the execution.' O]d hounds patrol-
ling the corridors, seeing that none of th~- oona.~~necr-H~e.
back to the air, the hght, the bounteous world above. f.i.ides ·
this place, and I a fugitive shade. I shuddered as I passed
through the doorway.
In silence we waited in the car, VercueH and l,.lilke a couple
married too long, talked out, grumpy . I am even getting used
to the smell, [ thought . Is this how I feel toward South Africa:
not loving it but habituated to its bad smell? Marriage is fate.
What we marry we become. We who marry South Africa
become South Africans: ugly, sullen, torpid, the only sign of
life in us a quick flash of fangs when we are crossed. South
Africa: abaci-tempered old hound snoozing in the doorway,
taking it~- time to die . ·And what· an uninspired name for a
country! Let us hope they change it when they make their
fr.esh start.
A group of nurses passed,..laughing, gay, their shift over.
h is their ministrations I have been evading, I thought. What
a relief it wou]d be to give myself up to them now! Clean
sheets, brisk hands on my body, a release from pain, a release
into helplessness - what is it that keeps me from yielding? [
felt a constriction in my throat, a welling up of tears, and
turned my face away. A passing shower, ] told myself-
English weather. But the truth is, I cry more and more easily,.
with less and less shame . I knew a woman once (do you mind
if your mother talks of these things?) to whom pleasure,
orgasm came very easily. Orgasms would pass through her,
she said, like little shudders, one after another, ripphng her
body like water. How would it be, I us·ed to wonder, to live
in a body like that? To be turned to water: is that what bliss
is? Now I have an answer of a kind in these flurries ofl:ears,
these deliquescences of mine . Tears not of sorrow but of
sadness. A light, fickle sadness: the blues, but not the dark
. 64 .
blues: the pale blues, rather, of far skies, dear winter days. A
private matter, a disturbance of the pool of the soul, which I
take less and less trouble to hide.
I dried my eyes,. blew my nose. 'You needn't be embar-
rassed,.' [ said to Vercueil 'I cry without reason . Thank you
for coming along . '
'I don't see what you need me for,' he sa:id.
'It is hard to be .alone all the time. That's aU. I didn't choose
you, but you are the one who is here,. and that wm have to
do. You arrived . It's like having a chii[d . You can't choose
the child . It just arrives.'
Looking away, he gave a slow, crafty smile.
'Besides,' I said, 'you push the car.. If[ couldn't use the car
I would be trapped at home.'
'AU you need its a new battery . '
'[ don't want a new batt·ery. You don't understand that,
do you? Do I have to explain? This car is old, it belongs to a
world that barely exists any more, but it works. What is left
of that world, what stiU works, [ am trying to hold on to.
Whether I love it or hate it does not matter. The fact is,. I
belong to it as I do not belong., thank God, to what it has
become. I:t is a wodd in which cars cannot be depended on
to start whenever you want them to . In my world you try
the self-starter. If that does not work you try the crank-handle.
If that does not work you get someone to push. And if the
car still does not start you get on your bilcyde or walk or stay
at home. That is how things are in the wodd where I belong.
I am comfortable there, it is a world I understand. I don't see
why I should change.'
Vercueil said nothing.
'And if you think I am a fossil from the past,' I added, 'it
is time you took a look at yourself. You have seen what the
children of today think of drinking and lying around and
leeglopery. Be warned. In the South Africa of the future
everyone will have to work,. including you. You may not
. 65 .
like the prospect, but you had better prepare yourself for it . '
Darkness was faHing over the parking lot. Where was
Florence? The pain in my back was wearing me down. It: was
past the time £or my piUs.
I thought of the empty house, the long night yawning
before me. Tears came again, ·easy tears.
I spoke: '1 told you about my daughter in America. My
daughter is everything to me. I have not told her the truth,
the whole truth about my condition. She knows I was sick,
she knows I had an operation; she thinks it was successful and
I am getting better. When I He in bed at night and stare into
the black hole into which I am falHng, all that keeps me sane
is the thought of her . I say to myself:. I have brought a chi]d
into the world, I have seen her to womanhood, I have seen
her safely to a new life: that I have done,. that can never be
taken from me. That thought is the pillar I ding to when the
storms hit me.
'There is a little ritual I go through sometimes, that helps
me to stay calm. I say to myself: It is two in the morning
here, on this side of the world, ther·efore it is six in the evening
there, on her side. Imagine it: six in the evening . Now imagine
the rest. Imagine ev·erything. She has just come in from work.
She hangs up her coat. She opens the refrigerator and takes
out a packet of frozen peas. She empties the peas into a bowl .
She takes two onions and begins to peel them. Imagine the
peas,. imagine the onions. Imagine the world in which she is
doing these things,. a world with its own smells and sounds.
Imagine a summer evening in North America, with gnats at
the screen door, children calling from down the street. Im-
agine my daughter in her house,. in her life, with an onion in
one hand,. in a land where she wiH Hve and die in peace. The
hours pass, in that land and this one and all the rest of the
world,, at the same pace. Imagine them passing. They pass:
here it grows light, there it grows dark. She goes to bed;
drowsily she lies beside the body of her husband in their bed
. 66 .
of marriage in their peaceful country. I think of her body,
still, so[:id, aHve, at peace, escaped. I ache to ·embraoe her. "I
am so thankful," I want to say, from a fuU heart . I also want
to say, but never do: "Save me!''
'Do you understand? Do you understand?'
The car door was open. Vercuei] leaned away from me, his
head against the doorpost, one foot on the ground. He sighed
a heavy sigh; I heard ilt. Wishing for Florence to return and
rescue him,. no doubt. How tedious these confessions, these
pleas, these demands!
'Because that is something one sl\ould never ask of a child,.'
I went on: 'to enfold one, comfort one, save one. The comfort,
the love should flow forward, not backward . That is a rule,
another of the iro•lt11rul~s. When an old person begins to plead
for love everything turns squalid. Like a parent trying to
creep into bed with a child: unnatural.
'Yet how hard it is to sever oneself from that living touch,
from an the touches that unite us with the living! Like a
steamer pulhng away from the quay,. the ribbons tightening,
snapping, falling away. Setting off on a last voyag•e. The dear
departed . his all so sad, so sad! When those nurses passed us
a little while ago I was on the point of getting out of the ca.r
and giving up, surrendering to the hospital again, letting
myselfbe undressed and put to bed and ministered to by their
hands. It is their hands above aU that] find myself craving.
The touch of hands. Why else do we hire them, these girls.,
these children, ifnot to touch, to stroke, in that brisk way of
theirs, flesh that has grown old and unlovable? Why do we
give them lamps and caU them angels? Because they come in
the dead of night to tell us it is time to go? Perhaps. But also
because they put out a hand to renew a touch that has be·en
broken . '
'Tell this to your daughter.,.' said Vercueii quietly. 'She will
come.'
'No.'
. 67 .
 'Tell her right now. Phone her in America. TeU her you
need her here.'
'No.''
'Then don't tell her aft.erwards, when it is too late. She
won't forgive you.'
The rebuke was like a slap in the face .
'There are things you don't understand,' I said. '[ have no
intention of summoning my daughter back. I may !of!g fm
her but I don't want her here . That is why it is caHedlonging~o
It has to go ·~)ong way. To the ends of the ·earth.' ' .
To his credit, he was not deflected by this nonsense. 'You
have to choose,' he said . 'TeU her or don't tell her.'
'I won't teU her, you can be sure,,' I said (what a liar I am!) .
Something was rising in my voice, a tone I cou]d not control..
'Let me remind you, this is not a norma[ country. People
can't just come and go as they wish.'
He did nothing to help me.
'My daughter will not come back tiU things have changed
here. She has made a vow. She will not come back to South
Africa as you and she and I know it. She will certain[y not
apply to- what can I call them?- those people for permission
to come. She will come hack when they are hanging by their
heels from the lamp-posts, she says. She wiH come back then
to throw stones at their bodies and dance in the streets . '
Vercueil showed his teeth in a broad grin. Y eHow horse-
teeth. An old horse.
'You don't believe me,.' I said, 'but perhaps one day you
- wiU meet her, and then you will see . She is Hke iron. I am
not going to ask her to go back on her vows.' -
'You are Hke iron too,' he s.aid, to me.
A silence fell between us . Inside me something broke.
'Something broke inside me when you said that,' I said,
the words just corning. I did not know how to go on. 'If I
were made of iron, surely I would not break so easily,' I said.
The four women we had met in the lift crossed the lot,
. 68 ,
escorted by a little man in a blue suit and white skuUcap. He
ushered them into a car and drove them off.
'Did your daughter do something,, that she had to leave?'
said V ercuei].
'No, she didn't do .anything. She had simply had enough.
She went away; she didn't come back. She made another life
for herself. She got married and started a family. It was the
best thing to do, the sensible thing.'
'But she hasn't forgotten . '
'No, she hasn't forgotten. Though who am I to say?
Perhaps one does forget, slowly. I can't imagine it, but
perhaps it does happen. She says, ·,,I was born in Africa, in
South Africa." I have heard her use that phrase in conver-
sation. It sounds to me like the first half of a sentence. There
ought to be a second half, but it never comes. So it hangs in
the air Hke a lost twin. "I was born in South Africa and win
never see it again.'' ''I was born in South Africa and will one
day return." Which is the lost twin?'
'So she is an exile?'
'No, she is not an exile. I am the exile.'
He was learning to talk to me. He was learning to lead me
on. I felt an urge to interrupt: '[tis such a pleasure!' I wanted
to say. After long silence it is such a. pleasure: tears come to
the eyes.
'I don't know whether you have chiMr·en. I don't even
know whether it is the same for a man. But when you bear
a child from your own body you give your life to that child.
Above aU to the first child, the firstborn. Your life is no
longer with you, it is no longer yours, it is with the chiM.
That is why we do not really die: we simply pass on our life,
the life that was for a while in us, and are left behind. I am
~ ___
just a sheH,. as you can see, the sheH my child.... has left behind.
It doesn t matter what happens to me . It doesn't matter what
····--

happens to old people. Still- I say the words, I cannot expect

you to understand, but nev~-~ xnind - it is frightening to be
~ 69~ J
on the edge ofleaving. Even if it is only the touch of fingertip
to fingertip: one does not want to let go.'
Florence and her son were crossing the car-park now,
walking swifdy towards us.
'You should have gone to stay with her.,' said Vercueil.
I smiled. 'I can't afford to die in America,.' I said. 'No one
can, except Americans.'
Florence got vehemendy into the back seat; the car rocked
as she setded down.
'Did you find him?' I asked.
'Yes,' she replied. Her face was like thunder . Bheki got in
beside her.
'And?'' I said.
'Yes, we found him,. he is in this hospital,' said Florence.
'And he is weH?'
'Yes,. he is weU.'
'Good,' I snapped. 'Thank you for teUilng me.'
We drove off in silence . . Only when we got home did
Florence have her say. 'They have put him with the old men
in the hospitaL It is too terrible. There is one who is mad,.
who is shouting and swearing all the time, the nurses are
afraid to go near him. They should not put a child in a room
like that. It is not a hospital where he is,, it is a waiting-room
for the funeral.'
A waiting-room for the funeral: I could not get the words
out of my mind. I tried to eat but had no appetite.
I found Vercueil in the woodshed doing something to a
shoe by candlelight. 'I am going back to the hospital,' I said:
'Will you come with me?'
The ward Florence had described was at the far end of the
old building, reached by going down to the basement, past
the kitchens, then up again.
It was true. A man with a shaven skull, thin as a rake, was
sitting up in bed, beating his palms on his thighs and chanting
in a loud voice. A broad black strap passed around his middle
. 70 .
and under the bed. What was he singing? The words bdonged
to no tongue I knew of. I stood in the doorway unable to
enter, fearing that at any moment he would fix me with his
gaze, stop singing,. raise one of those skeletal black arms and
point.
'DTs,.' said Vercueil. 'He's got the DTs.'
'No, it's worse than that,' I whispered.
Vercueil took my elbow. I let him lead me in.
There was a long tablf7 down the middle of the ward with
a jumble of trays on it! Someone was coughing soggily as
though his lungs were fuU of milk. 'In the corner,' said
Ven::ueil.
He did not know who we were, nor did I easily recognize
the boy whose blood had stuck my fmgers together. His head
was bandaged, his face puffy, his left arm strapped against
his chest. He wore pale blue hospital pyjamas.
'Don't talk,' I said. 'We have just come to make sure you
are an right. '
He opened the swollen hps and dosed them again.
'Do you remember me? I am the woman Bheki's mother
works for. I was watching this morning: I saw everything
that happened. You must get weU quickly . I have brought
you some fruit.' On the cabinet I placed the fruit: an apple, a
pear.
His expression did not change.
I did not like him. I do not like him. I look into my heart
and nowhere do I find any trace of feeling for him. As there
ar·e people to whom one spontaneously warms, so there are
people to whom one ils, from the first, coid . That is all. This
boy is not like Bheki . He has no charm. There is something
stupid about him, something deliberately stupid, obstructive,
intractable. He is one of those boys whose voices deepen too
early,. who by the age of twelve have left childhood behind
and turned brutal, knowing. A simphfied person, simplified
in every way: swifter, nimbler, inore tireless~ilianreal people,
. 7! .
without doubts or scruples, without humour, ruthless, inno-
cent. While he by in the street, while I thought he was dying,
I did what [ could for him. But, to be candid, I wou1d rather
I had spent myself on someone else.
I remember a cat I once nursed, an oM ginger tom whose
jaw was locked shut by an abscess. I took him in when he
was too weak to resist, fed him milk through a tube, dosed
him with antibiotics. When he got back his strength I set him
free, but continued to put out £ood for him. For a year, on
and off, I saw him in the neighbourhood; for a year the food
was taken. Then he vanished fo·r good. In all this time he
treated me without compromis·e as one of the enemy. Even
when he was at his weakest his body was hard, tense, resistant
under my hand. Around this boy I now felt the same wall of
resistance. Though his eyes were open, he did not see; what
I said he did not hear.
I turned to Vercueit 'Shall we go?" I said. And on an
impulse- no, more than that, with a conscious effort not to
block the stirring of the impulse- I touched the boy's fme
hand .
h was not a clasp, not a long touch; it was the merest brush,
the merest lingering of my fmgertips on the back of his hand.
But I £elt him stiffen, felt an angry electric recoiL
For your mother, who is not here, I said within myself.
Aloud I said: 'Be slow to judge.'
Be slow tojudge: what did I mean? [f[ did not know,. who
else could be expected to? Certainly not he. Yet in his case, I
was sure,. the incomprehension ran deeper. My words feU off
him Hke dead leaves the moment they were uttered.. The
words of a woman, therefore negligible; of an old woman,
therefore doubly negligible; but above an of a white.
I, a white. When I think of the whites, what do I see? I see
a herd of sheep (not a flock: a herd) mining around on a dusty
plain under the baking sun. I hear a drumming of hooves,. a
confusion of sound whkh resolv·es itself, when the ear grows
. 72 .
attuned, into the same bleating call in a thousand dif£erent
inflections: 'I!' 'I!' 'I!' And, cruising among them, bumping
them aside with their brisding fl.anks, lumbering.,. saw-
toothed,. red-eyed, the savage, unreconstructed old boars
grunting 'Death!' 'Death.!' Though it does me no good, I
flinch from the white touch as much as he does; would even
flinch from the old white woman who pats his hand if she
were not I.
I tried again.
'Befor·e I retired,.' I said, '[ was a teacher. I taught at the
university. ' .
Vercueil eyed me keenly from the other side of the bed.
But I was not ta.lking to him.
'If you had been in my Thucydides class,' I went on, 'you
might have learned something about ~~at can happen to our
humanity in time of war. Our humanity, that we are lJorn
with, .thal:-wearel)~;;inU,.,
There was something smoky about the boy's eyes: the
whites without lustre, the pupils flat, dark, like printer's ink.
Though he may have been sedated, he knew I was there,
knew who I was,. knew I was talking to him. He knew and
he did not listen, as he had never listened to any of his
teachers,. but had sat !ike a stone in the classroom, impervious
to words,. waiting for th~ b~ll to ring, biding his time:-·· ···
"Thucyrudes wrote of people who made rules and foUowed
them. Going by rule they killed entire classes of enemies
without exception. Most of those who died felt, I am sure,
that a terrible mistake was being made, that, whatever the
rule was, it could not be meant £or them. ''I!-'': that was
their last word as their throats were cut. A word of protest:
I, the exception.
'Were they exceptions? The truth is,_..g!v~n ti~e t~. spea.kt
we would aU claim to be exceptions. For ea.ch of us there is
~c~se iobe made~· we an deserve the l;eneftt of the doubt:.
'But there are times ~he~ there is no time for aU that dose
 listening, aU those exceptions, aU that mercy. There is no
time, so we fall hack on the rule. And that is a great pity, the
greatest pity. That is what you could have learned from
Thucydides. II: is a great pity when we find ourselves entering
upon times like those. We shouM enter upon them with a
sinking heart. They are by no means to be welcomed.'
Quite deliberately he put his good hand under the sheet, in
case I should touch it again.
'Good night,' I said.. '[ hope you sleep weH and feel better
in the morning . '
The old man had stopped chanting. His hands flapped
loosely on his thighs like dying fish. His eyes were rolled
back, there were streaks of spittle on his chin.
The car would not start, and V ercueil had to push.
'That boy is different from Bheki, quite different,' I said,
talking too much now, a litde out of control. 'I try not to
show it, but: he makes me nervous . I am sorry Bheki has
fallen under his influence. But there are hundreds of thousands
like him, I suppose . More than there are like Bheh The
rising generation.'
We got home. Uninvited,. he followed me in.
'I have to sleep, I am exhausted,' I said; and then, when he
made no move to leave: 'Do you want something to eat?'
I put food in front: of him, took my piUs, waited.
Holding the loaf of bread with his had hand.,. he cut a slice,
buttered it thickly, cut che.ese. His fingernails filthy . Who
knows what else he had been touching. And this is the one
to whom I speak my heart, whom I trust with last things.
~~ecl_p~!h_t_()_t()_U?
My mind like a pool,. which his finger enters and stirs .
Without that finger stillness, stagnation.
-A way of indirection. By indirection I find direction out.
A crab's-walk.
=-=~ His dirty fingernail entering me.
'You look grey,' he said.
·-""''''""'''"'7/-v~
 '1 am tired.'
He chewed, showing long teeth.
He watches but does not judge. Always a faint haze of
alcohol about him. Alcohol, that softens, pres·erves. MolHfi-
cans . That helps us to forgive . He drinks and makes allow-
ances. His life all aUowances. He., Mr V, to whom I speak.
Speak and then write. Speak in order to write . While to the
rising generation, who do not drink,. l cannot: speak, can only
lecture. Their hands clean, their fingernails dean. The new
L p_uritans, holding to th~ rule,, holding up the rule . Abhorring
: ~~9ho1, that s~ftens the rUle, dis.solves iron. Suspicious of
aU that is idle, yielding,. roundabout. Suspicious of devious ..,...-----
discourse, like this.
-, A;;dl amsick too,' I said . 'Sick and tired, tired and sick.
I have a ch!ld inside that I cannot give birth to . . Cannot because
it wi.ll not be born. Because it cannot live outside me. So it
is my prisoner or I am its prisoner. It beats on the gate but it
cannot leave. That is what is going on aH the time. The child
inside is beating at the gate. My daughter is my first child .
She is my life. This is the second one, the afterbirth, t:he
unwanted. Would you like to watch television?'
'I thought you wanted to sleep ..,
'No,. I would rather not be alone now. The one inside isn't
heating so hard,. anyway.. He has had his piU, he is getting
drowsy. The dose is always two pil]s, you notice, one for
me, one for him.'
We sat down side by side on the sofa. A ruddy-faced man
was being interviewed. He owned a game farm, it appeared,
and rented out lions and elephants to film campaniles.
'TeU us about some of the overseas personalities you have
met,' said the interviewer.
'Tm going to make some tea,' I said, getting up.
'Is there anything else in the house?' said Vercueil.
'Sherry.'
When I returned with the sherry bottle he was standing at
75 .

<6\--L
 the bookshelf. I switched off the television. 'What are you
looking at?' I asked.
He he]d up one of the heavy quartos.
'You wiH find that book interesting,' I said. 'The woman
who wrote it travelled through Palestine and Syria disguised
as a man. In the last century. One of those intrepid English-
women. But she didn't do the pictu:res. They were done by
a professional iUustrator . '
Together we paged through the book. By some trick of
perspective the illustrator had given to moonlit encampments,
desert crags, ruined temples an air oflooming mystery. No
\ one has done that for South Africa: made it into a land of
i mystery. Too late now . Fixed in the mind as a place of flat,
hard Hght,. without shadows, without depth.
'Read whatever you like,' I said . 'There are many more
books upstairs. Do you like reading?'
V ercueil put down the book. 'I'U go to bed now, ' he said .
Again a flicker of ·embarrassment passed across me. Why?
Because, to be candid, I do not like the way he smeUs. Because
V ercueil in his underwear I prefer not to think of. The feet
worst of all: the horny,. caked toenails.
'Can I ask you a question?' I said . 'Where did you live
before? Why did you start wandering?'
'I was at sea,' said Vercueil. 'I told you that.'
'But one doesn't live at sea. One isn't born at sea . You
haven't been at sea .aU your life.'
'I was on trawlers.'
'And?·'
He shook his head.
'I am just asking,' I said. 'We like to know a. little about
the people near to us. It's quite natural.'
He gave that crooked smile of his in which one canine
suddenly reveals itself, long and yeHow . You are hiding
something, I thought, but what? A tragic love? A prison
sentence? And I broke into a smile myself.
. 76.
 So we stood smiling,. the two of us, each with our private
cause to smile.
'If you prefer,.' I said, 'you can sleep on the sofa again.'
He looked dubious. The dog is used to sleeping with me . '
'You didn't have the dog with you last night.'
'He wiU carry on if I don't come.'
I heard no carrying on by the dog last night. As long as he
feeds it, does the dog really care where he sleeps? I suspect he
uses the fiction of the anxious dog as other men use the fiction
of the anxious wife. On the other hand, perhaps it is because
of the dog that I trust him. Dogs, that sniff out what is good,.
what evil: patrollers ofboundaries: sentries .
The dog has not warmed to me.. Too much cat-smeH.
Cat-woman: Circe. And he, after roaming the seas in trawlers,
making landfall here.
'As you p[ease,' I said,..and let him out,. pret·ending not to
notice he stiU had the sherry-botde .
A pity, I thought (my hst thought before the piUs took me
away): we could set up house, the two of us, after a fashion,
I upstairs, he downstairs,. for this last liiule while . So that
there will be someone at hand in the nights . For that is, after
.all,. what one wants in the end: someone to be there, to caH
to in the dark. Mother, or whoever is prepared to stand in
for mother.

Since I had declared to Florence [ would do so, I visited

Ca[edon Square and tried to lay a charge against the two
pohcemen. But laying a charge, it appears, is permitted only
to 'parties direcdy affected . '
'Give us the particulars and we will investigate,.' said the
desk officer. 'What are the names of the two boys?'
'I can't give you their names without their permission . '
He put down his pen . A young man, very neat and correct,
one of the new br,eed of policeman. Whose training is rounded
. 77.
off with a stint in Cape Town to strengthen their self-control
in the face ofliberal-humanist posturing .
'I don't know whether you take any pride in that uniform,'
I said, 'but your coUeagues on the street are disgracing it.
They are also disgracing me. I .am ashamed. Not for them:
for myself. You won't let me lay a charge because you say I
am not affected. But I am affected, very directly affected. Do
you understand what I am saying?'
He did not reply, but stood stiffly erect, wary, ready for
whatever might come next. The man behind him bent over
his papers,. pretending not to listen . But there was nothing to
fear. I had no more to say, or at least not the presence of mind
to think of more.
VercueH sat in the car in Buitenkant Street. 'I made such a
fool of myself,' I said, suddenly on the edge of tears again. '
"You make me feel ashamed," I toM them. They are probably
still laughing among themselves. Die ou kruppel dame met di.e
kaffertjies. Yet how else can one feel? Perhaps I should simply
accept that that is how one must live from now on: in a state -
of shame. Perhaps shame is nothing more than the name for
the way I feel all the time. The name for the way in which
people hve who would prefer to be dead.'
Shame. Mortification. Death in life.
There was a long sHence .
'Can I borrow ten rand?' said Vercueil. 'My disability
comes through on Thursday. I'll pay you back then.'

. 78 .
• III •·
 In the <mall homs of last
rright ther·e was a telephone caU. A woman, breathless,.
with the breathlessness of fat people. 'I want to speak to
Florence.'
'She is s]eeping. Everyone is sleeping . '
'Yes, you can caU her.'
h was raining.,. though not hard. I knocked at Florence's
door. At once it opened, as if she had been standing there
waiting £or the summons. From behind her came the sleepy
groan of a child. 'Tdephone,' I said.
Five minutes later she came up to my room. Without her
glasses., bareheaded, in a long white nightdress, she ;seemed
much younger.
'There is trouble,' she said.
'Is it Bheki?'
'Yes, I must go.'
'Where is he?'
'First I must go to Guguletu, then after that, I think, to
Site C..'
'I have no idea where Site C is.'
She gave me a puzzled look.
'I mean, if you can show me the way I wiU take you by
car,.' I said.
. 8! .
 'Yes.,' she said,. but still hesitated . 'But I cannot leave the
children alone.'
'Then they must come along.'
'Yes,' she said.. I could not remember ever seeing her so
indecisive.
'And Mr Vercueil,' I said: 'he must come to help with the
car.'
She shook her head.
'Yes,.' I insisted: 'he must come.'
The dog lay at Vercueii's side. lt tapped its tail on the floor
when I came in but did not get up.
'Mr Vercueil!' I said loudly. He opened his eyes; I held the
light away. He broke wind . 'I have to take Florence to
Guguletu. b is urgent, we have to leave at once. Will you
come along?'
He made no reply, but curled up on his side . The dog
rearranged itself.
'Mr Vercueil!' I said, pointing the light at him.
'Fuck off,' he mumbled.
'I can't wake him,.' I reported to Florence . 'I have to have
someone along to push the car.'
'I wiU push,' she said.
With the two children on the back seat warmly covered,
Florence pushed.. We set off. Peering through glass misted
over with our breathing, I crawled over De Waal Drive, got
lost for a while iin the streets of Claremont, then found
Lansdowne Road. The first buses of the day were abroad,
brightly lit and empty. It was not yet f1ve o'clock.
We passed the last houses, the last streetlights. Into a steady
rain from the north-west we drove, following the faint yellow
glow of our headlights.
'If people wave to you to stop, or if you see things in
the road,. you must not stop, you must drive on,' said
Florence .
'I wiH certainly not,' I said . 'You should have warned me
. 82 .
 eadier. Let me make myself dear, Florence: at the first sign
of trouble I am turning back.'
'I do not say it wiU happen, I am just telling you . '
Full of misgiving I drove on into the darkness. But no one
barred the way,. no one wavea:-there was nothing across
the road. Trouble, it seemed, was stiU in bed; trouble was
recuperating for the next engagement. The roadside, along
which, at this hour, thousands of men would ordinarily have
been plodding to work,. was empty. Swirls of mist floated
toward us, embraced the car, floated away. Wraiths, spirits.
~?mos .this place: ~~rdless .. I shiv~red, met Florence'sgaze .
'How much further?' I .asked.
'Not far.'
'What did they say on the telephone?'
'They were shooting again yesterday. They were giving
guns to the wUdoe.ke and the witdoe.ke were shooting.'
'Are they shooting in Guguletu ?'
'No,. they are shooting out in the bush.'
'At the first hint of trouble, Florence, I am turning back.
We are fetching Bheki, that is aU we are going to do, then
we are going home. You should never have let him leave.'
'Yes, but you must turn here, you must turn left.'
I turned. A hundred metres further there was a barrier
across the road with flashing lights, cars parked along the
verges, police with guns . I stopped; a policeman came up .
'What is your business here?' he asked.
'I am taking my domestic home,' I said, surprised at how
calmly I lied.
He peered at the children sleeping on the back seat. 'Where
does she live?'
'Fifty-seven,' said Florence.
'You can drop her her·e, she can walk, it is not far.'
'h is raining, she has smaH children, I am not letting her
walk alone,' I said firmly.
He hesitated, then with his flashlight waved me through .
. 83 .
On the roof of one of the cars stood a young man in battle-
dress, his gun at the ready, staring out into the darkness .
Now there was ~smell of bum~_g in the air, of wet ash,.
l:?urning rubber. S[owly we drove down a broad unpaved
street ~lined ·with matchbox-houses. A police van armoured
in wife me.sh cruised past us . 'Tum right here, said Florence.
I

'Turn right--again . Stop here.'

With the baby on her arm and the little girl, only half
awake, stumbling behind, she spbshed up the path to No.
219, knocked, was admitted. Hope and Beauty. h was like
living iin an allegory. Keeping the engine running, I waited.
The polioe van that had passed us drew up alongside. A
]ight shone in my face. I held up a hand to shidd my eyes.
The van puUed away..
Horence re-emerg·ed holding a plastic raincoat over herself
and the baby, and got into the back seat. Dashing through
th·e rain behind her came not Bh·ekii but a man in his thirties
or forties, slight, dapper, with a moustache . He got in beside
me. 'This is Mr Thabane my cousin,' said Florence. 'He wiU
show us the way. '
'Where is Hope?' I asked .
'I have left her with my sister.'
'And wher·e is Bheki?'
There was silence.
'I am not sure,' s.aid the man.. His voice was surprisingly
soft. 'He came in yesterday morning and put his things down
and went out. After that we did not see him at all. He did
not come home to sl·eep. But I know where his friends live.
We can start looking there . '
'Is this what you want, Florence?' I asked.
'We must look for him,' said Flor·ence: 'there is nothing
dse we can do . '
'[f you would prefer me to drive I can drive,' said the man.
'It is anyhow better, you know.'
I got out and sat beside Florence in the back. The rain was
. 84 .
 coming down more heavily now; the car splashed through
pools on the uneven road . Left and right we turned under the
sick orange of the streetlights, then stopped. 'Careful, don't
switch off,' I said to Mr Thabane the cousin.
He got out and knocked at a window. A long conversation
foUowed with someone I could not see. By the time he came
hack he was soaked and cold . With clumsy fingers he took
out a pack of cigarettes and tried to light one. 'Please, not in
the car,' [ said.. A look of exasperation passed between him
and Florence.
We sat in silence. 'What are we waiting for?' I asked.
'They are sending someone to show us the way.''
A litde boy wearing a babdava cap too large for him came
trotting out of the house . With entire sdf-assurance, greeting
us aU with a smile, he got into the car and began to give
directions. Ten years old at most. A child of the times, at
ho111e in this landscape of violence. When I think hack to my
own childhood I remember orilylong sun-struck afternoons,
the smeU of dust under avenues of eucalyptus, the quiet rustle
of water in roadside furrows, the lulling ofdoves. A_s@bood
of sleep., prelude to what was meant to be a life without
tr~l.llbif..and a smooth passage to Nirvana . WiU we at least be
allowed our Nirvana, we chil·9!-:~!lotthat IJygone age? I doubt
it. If justice reigns at all, ~-e~ili find ourselves bam:d at the ·
first threshold of the underworld. Whiit·e as grubs in our
swaddling bands,. we will be dis. patched to jointtiOse :infant
souls whose eternal whining_ Aene~)mistook for weeping.
White our colour, the colour of Hmbo: white sands, white
rocks, a white light pouring down. from aU sides. Like an
eternity of lying on the beach, an endless Sunday among
thousands of our own kind, sluggish, half asleep,~~i~ earshot
of the comfortable lap of the waves. In limine primo: on the (
~eshold of death,. the threshold of life. Creatures thrown up ,
'·by~the sea, ~tailed on the sands, und,edded, indecisive, neither
hot nor cold, neither fish nor fowl.
. 85 .
 We had passed the last of the houses and were driving :in
grey eady-morning light through a la!ldscape of scorched
·earth, blackened !re~s. A pickup truci<passeauswlili:li three
'nlenlin the back shdtering under a tarpaulin. At the next
road-block we caught up with them again . They gazed ex-
pressionlessly at us, eye to eye, as we waited to be inspected.
A policeman waved them through, waved us through too.
We turned north, away from the mountain, then off the
highway on to a dirt road that soon became sand. . Mr Thabane
stopped. 'W·e can't drive further, it is too dangerous,' he said.
'There is something wrong with your alternator,' he added,
pointing to the red light glowing on the dashboard.
'I am letting things mn down,' I said. I did not fed like
explaining.
He switched off the engine. for a while we sat Hstening to
the rain drumming on the roo( Then Florence got out, and
the boy. Tied on her back, the baby slept pea.cefully.
'It is best if you keep the doors locked,.' said Mr Thabane
to me.
'How long will you be?'
'I cannot say, but we wiH hurry.'
I shook my head. 'I am not staying here,' I said.
I had no hat, no umbreUa. . The rain beat against my face,
pasted my hair to my scalp,. ran down my neck. From this
sort of outing, I thought, one catches one's death of cold .
The boy, our guide, had already dashed ahead.
'Put this over your head,' said Mr Thabane, offering the
plastic raincoat..
'Nons·ense.,.' I said, 'I don't mind a little rain.''
'Still, hold it over you,' he insisted. I understood. 'Come,'
he said. I foUowed.
Around us was a_ wilderness of grey dune-sand and Port
Jackson willow,. and a stench of garbage and ash. Shreds of
plastic,. ojd iron, glass., animal bones httered both sides of the
path. I was already shivering with cold, but when I tried to
. 86 .
 walk faster my heart pounded unpleasantly. I was falling
behind . Would Florence pause? No: amor matris, a force that
stopped for nothing .
At a fork in the path Mr Thabane was waiting. 'Thank
you,.' I gasped., 'you are kind.. I am sorry to be holding you
up. I have a bad hip. '
'Take my arm,' he said.
Men passed us, dark, bearded, stern, armed with sticks,
walking swifdy in single fiJ.e. Mr Tll.aoane stepped off the
path. I held tighter to him.
The path widened, then came to an end in a wide, flat
pond. On the far side of the pond the shanties started, the
lowest-lying duster surrounded by water, flooded. Some
buHt sturdily of wood and iron, others no more than skins of
plastic sheeting over frames of branches, they straggled north
over the dunes as far as I could see.
At the brink of the pond I hesitated. 'Come,' said Mr
Thabane. Holding on to him I stepped in, and we waded
across, in water up to our ankles. One of my shoes was sucked
off.. 'Watch out for broken glass,.' he wamed. [ retri·eved the
shoe.
Save for an oid woman with a sagging mouth standing in
a doorway, there was no one in sight. But as we walk·ed
further the noise we had heard, which at first might have
, . : been taken fol?'wind and r:ain, began to break up into shouts,
-"'c-- 'cries, calls, over a ground-bass which [ can only caU a sigh:
a deep sigh, repeated over and over, as ifthe wide world itself
were sighing.
Then th•e litde boy, our guide, was with us again, tugging
Mr Thabane's sleeve, talking excitedly. The two of them
broke away; I struggled behind them up the dunesidle.
We were at the rear of a crowd hundr·eds strong looking
down upon a scene of devastation: shantiJ.es burnt and
smouldering, shanties still burning, pouring forth black
smoke. Jumbles of furniture, bedding,. household objects
. 87 .
stood in the pouring rain. Gangs of men were at work trying
to rescue the contents of the burning shacks,. going from one
to another, putting out the fires; or so I thought tiU with a
shock it came to me that these were no rescuers but incendi-
aries, that the batde I saw them waging was not with the
flames but with the rain .
It was from the people gathered on the rim of this amphi-
theatre in the dunes that the sighing came. Like mourners at
a funeral they stood in the downpour, men, women and
children, sodden, hardly bothering to protect themselves,
watching the destruction.
A man in a black overcoat swung an axe. With a crash a
window burst. He attacked the door, which caved in at the
third blow. As if released from a cage, a woman with a baby
in her arms flew out of the house, followed by three barefoot
children. He let them pass. Then he began to hack at the
door-frame. The whole structure creaked.
One ofhis feUows stepped inside carrying a jerry-can. The
woman dashed in after him, emerged with her arms full of
beddothes. But when she tried to make a second foray she
was hurled out bodily.
A new sigh rose from the crowd. Wisps of smoke began
to blow from inside the shack. The woman got to her feet,
dashed indoors, was again hurled out.
A stone came sailing out of the crowd and feU with a datter
on the roof of the burning shack. Another hit the wall,
another landed at the feet of the man with the axe. He gave
a menacing shout. He and half a dozen of his fellows stopped
what they were doing and, brandishing sticks and bars,
advanced on the crowd. Screaming, people turned to flee, I
among them. But in the clinging sand I could barely lift my
feet. My heart pounded, pains shot through my chest . I
stopped, bent over, gasping. Can this really be happening to
me? I thought. Hlhat am I doing here? I had a vision of the litde
green car w.aiting quietly at the roadside. There was nothing
. 88 .
 I longed for more than to get into my car, slam the door
behind me, dose out this looming world of rage and violence.
A girl, an enormously fat te·enager,, shouMered me out of
her way. 'Damn you!' I gasped as I fell. 'Damn yout' she
gasped back, glaring with naked animosity: 'Get out! Get
out!' And she toiled up the dunesitde, her huge backside
quaking.
One more such blow, I thought, face down in the sand,
and I am gone. These people can take many blows, but I, I
am fragile as a butterfly.
feet crunched past me. I caught a· glimpse of a brown boot,.
the tongue flapping, the sole tied on with string. The blow I
shrank from did not falL
I got up. There was a flght bf some kind going on to my
left; all the people who a minute ago had been fleeing into the
bush were just as suddenly pouring back. A woman screamed,
high and loud. How could I get away from this terrible place? J
Where was the pond I had waded across,. where was the path .
to the car? There were ponds everywhere, pools, lakes, sheets
of water; there were paths everywhe~e,. but where did they
lead?
_.~Distincdy I heard the pop of gunfire, one, two, three shots,
not nearby, but not far away .either.
'Come,' said a voice, and Mr Thahane strode past. 'Yes!' I
gasped, and gratefully struggled after him. But I could not
catch up . 'Slower,. please,' I called . He waited; together he
and [ recrossed the pool and reached the path.
A young man came up beside us,. his ·eyes bloodshot.
'Where are you going?' he demanded. A hard question, a hard
VOlCe.
'I am going away, I am getting away, I am out of place
here,' I answered.
'We are going to fetch the car,' said Mr Thabane.
'We want to use that car,' said the young man.
'I am not letting anyone have my car,' I said .
. 89 .
 'This is a friend of Bheki,' said Mr Thahane .
'I don't care, I am not letting him have my car.'
The young man - not a man at aU, in fact, but a boy dressed
like a man,. bea.ring himsdf hke a man - made a strange
gesture: holding one hand at head-height, he struck it with
the other,. palm against palm, a glancing blow. What did it
mean? Did it mean anything?
My back was in agony from the walking. I slowed down
and stopped. 'I must get home soon,' I said. h was an appeal;
I could hear the unsteadiness in my voice.
'You have seen enough?' said Mr Thabane, sounding more
distant than be£ore.
'Yes, I have seen enough. I didn't come here to see sights .
I came to fetch Bheki.'
'And you want to go home?'
'Yes,. I want to go home. I am in pain, I am 'exhausted.'
He turned and walked on. I hobbled behind. Then he
stopped again . 'You want to go home,.' he said. 'But what of
the people who live here? When they want to go home, this
is where they must go. What do you think of that?'
We stood in the rain, in the middle of the path,. face to face.
. Passers-by stopped too, regarding me curiously, my business
their business, everyone's business.
'[have no .answer,' I said. 'It is terrible.'
'his not}ust terrible,' he said, 'it is a crime. When you see
a crime being committed in front of your eyes, what do you
say?' Do you say, ''I have seen enough, I didn't come to see
sights,, I want to go home"?'
I shook my head in distress.
'No, you don't,' he said . 'Correct. Then what do you
say? What sort of crime is it that you see? What is its
. name.?'
He is a teacher,, I thought: that is why he speaks so weU.
What he is doing to me he has practised in the dasswom . It
is the trick one uses to make one's own answer seem to come
.r:-
(_- 90"1
. ~j
 from the child. Ventriloquism, the legacy of Socrates, as
oppressive in Africa as it was in Athens.
I glanced around the ring of spectators. Were they hostile?
There was no hostility I could detect. They were merely
waiting for me to say my part.
'There are many things I am sure I could say, Mr Thabane,,'
I said. 'But then they must truly come from me . When one
s~ks under du~~ss - you should know this - one rarely
speaks d:1eitrudi.'

' He was going to respond, but I stopped him.

'Wait. Give me a minute. I am not evading your question.
There are terrihl.e things going on here. But what I think of
them I must say in m_y_:QW!L'W:J!Y···
'The;:;:Tetilshear what you have to say! We are listening!
We are waiting!' He raised his hands for sit.ence. The crowd
murmured approval.
'These are terrible sights,.' [ repeated, faltering. 'They are
to be condemned. But [ cannot denounce them in other
people's words. I must find my own words,. fr~m myself.
Oth~rwise it is not the truth. That is all I can say now.'
'This woman tallks shii,' said a man in the crowd. He2"-
]ooked around. 'Shit,' he said. No one contradicted him.
Aiready some were drifting away.
'Yes,' I said, speaking directly to him- 'you are right, what
you say is true.'
He gave me a ]ook as ifl were mad.
'But what do you expect?' I went on. 'Tospeak ofthis'-
l waved a hand over the bush, the smoke, the~11.Ithlittering
the path - '.rou wou[d need the tongue of a god . '
'Shit,.' he"'sild.again, challenging me.
Mr Thabane turned and walked off. I trailed behind him.
The crowd parted. In a minute the boy passed me, hurrying .
Then the car came in sight.
'It is a HiHman, your car, isn't it,.' said Mr Thabane. 'There
can't be many Ieft on the roads:'
 I was surprised. After what had passed I thought there was
a line drawn between us. But he seemed to bear no grudge.
'From the time when British was Best,.' I replied. 'I am
sorry if I do not make sense.'
He ignored the apology, if that is what it was. 'Was British
ever best?' he asked.
'No, of course not. It was just a slogan for a while after
the War . You won't remember, you were too young.'
'I was born in I943,' he said. Tm forty-three. Don't you
believe me?' He turned, offering me his neat good looks.
Vain; but an appealing vanity.
I pulled the starter. The battery was dead. Mr Thabane and
the boy got out and pushed, struggling for a footing in the
sand . At last the engine caught. 'Go straight,' said the boy. [
obeyed.
'Are you a teacher?' I asked Mr Thahane.
'I was a teacher. But I have left the profession temporarily.
Till better times auive. At present I sell shoes.'
'And you?' I asked the boy.
He mumbled something I did not hear.
'He is an unemployed youth,' said Mr Thabane. 'Are you
not?'
The boy smiled selfconsciousiy. 'Turn here, just after the
shops.,' he said.
Alone in the wHderness stood a row of three little shops,
gutted, scorched. BHA WOODIEN CASH STORE, said the
one sign still legible.
'From .long ago,' said Mr Thabane. 'From last year.'
W·e had come out on a broad dirt road . To our left stood
a duster of houses, proper houses, with brick walls and
asbestos roofs and chimneys . Among them, around them.,
stretching into the distance across the flats, were squatter
shacks.
'That buHding,' said the boy, pointing ahead .
It was a long, low building, a haU or school perhaps.,
. 92 .
surrounded by a mesh fence. But gr•eat lengths of the fence
had been trampled down, .and of the building itself only the
smoke-blackened walls were stiU standing . In front of it a
crowd had gathered.. Faces turned to watch the HiUman's
approach.
'Shall I switch off?' I said.
'You can switch off, there is nothing to be afraid of,' said
MrThabane.
'I am not afraid,' I said. . Was it true? In a sense, yes; or at
least, after the episode in the bush, I cared less what happened
to me.
'Ther·e is no need to be afraid anyway,' he continued
smoothly: 'your boys are here to protect you.' And he
pointed .
I saw them then,. further down the road: three khaki-brown
troop-carriers almost merging into the trees, and, oudined
against the sky, helmeted heads.
'In case you were thinking,' he concluded, 'that this was
just a quarrel among blacks, a spot of faction-fighting. Look:
there is my sister . '
My :sister he caUed her,. not Florence. Perhaps I alone in .all
the worM caUed her Florence. Called her by an alias. Now I
was :?~ ground whe~:e_ people wer~e reyealed in their tru~
names.
'-5he stood with her back to the waU, sheltering from the
rain: a sober, respectable woman in a burgundy coat and
white knitted cap. We threaded our way toward her. Though
she gave no sign,. [was sure she saw me. 'Florence!' I called .
She looked up dully.. 'Hav,e you found him?'
She nodded toward the gutted interior, then turned away,
not gr,eeting me. Mr Thabane began to push past the throng
in the entranceway. Embarrassed, I waited. P·eople mined
past,. skirting me as though I were bad luck.
A girl in an apple-green school tunk advanced on me, her
hand raised as if to give me a slap. [ flinched, but it was only
. 9.3 .
in play. Or perhaps I should say: she forbore from actually
striking .
'I think you should look too,' said Mr Thabane, lt:'e-emerg-
ing,. breathing fast. He went over to Florence and took her
in his arms . Lifting her glasses aside,. she put her head on his
shoulder and bult:'st into tealt:'S.
The inside of the hall was a mess of rubble and charred
beams. Against the far waH,. shielded from the worst of the
rain, were five bodies neatly laid out. The body in the middle
was that .of Florence's Bheki. He still wore the grey flannd
trousers, white shilt:'t and maroon puUover of his school, but
his feet were hue. His eyes were open and staring, his mouth
open too. The rain ha.d been beating on him for hours,
on him and his comlt:'ades, not only here but wherever they
had been when they met theilt:' deaths; theilt:' clothes, their
very hair, had a flattened, dead look. In the comers of his
eyes there were grains of sand.. There was sand in his
mouth.
Someone was tugging my arm. Dazed,. I looked down
at a litt:le gid with wide, solemn eyes . 'Sistelt:',' she said,
'sister .... , ' but: then did not know how to go on.
'She is asking,. are you one of the sistelt:'S?' explained a
woman,. smibng benignly.
I did not want to be drawn away,. not now. I shook my
head.
'She means, are you one of the sisters from the Catholic
Church,' said the woman. 'No,' she went on, speaking to the
child in English, 'she is not one of the sistelt:'s.' Gently she
unlocked the child's fingers from my sleeve.
Flmence was surrounded by a press of people.
'Must they lie there in the rain?' I asked Mlt:' Thabane .
'Yes, they must l:ie there. So that everyone can see ..,
'But who did it?'
I was shaking: shivers ran up and down my body, my
hands trembled. I thought ofthe boy's open eyes . I thought:
. 94 .
What did he se·e as his last sight on ealt:'th? I thought: This is
the worst thing I have witnessed in my life. And I thought:
Now my eyes are open and I can nev·elt:' dose them again .
'Who did it?' said Mr Thabane . 'If you want to dig the
bullets out of th•eir bodies, you are wekome. But I wiU teU
you in advance what you wiU find . "Made in South Africa.
SABS Approved." That is what you will find.'
'Please listen to me,.' I said . 'I am not iqdifferent-to-this.. .....
this war. How can I be? No bars .arethick enough to keep
it~ouC I felt like crying; but here, beside Fimence, what
right had I? 'It lives inside me and I Hv·e inside it,' I
whispered. ·
Mr Thabane shrugg·ed impatiently. His look had grown
ugHer. No doubt I grow uglielt:' too by the day.. J'iletamor- -
phosis,. that thickens oult:' speech, dulls our feelings, turns us
i~to beasts. Whelt:'e on these shores does the herb grow that
wiU preselt:'ve us from it?
I tell you the story of this morning mindful that the stmy-
teller,. from her office, claims the plaoe of right. It is thlt:'Ough
my eyes that you see; the voice that speaks in your hea.d is
mine. Through me alone do you find yourself here on these
desolate flats, smell the smoke in the air, see the bodies of the
dead,. hear the weeping, shiv·elt:' in the nin. his my thoughts
that you think, my despair that you feel, and also the first
stirrings ofwekome for whatever will put an end to thought:
sleep., death . To me your sympathies flow; yom heart beats
with mine .
Now,. my child, flesh of my flesh, my best self, I ask you
to draw back. I tdl you this stmy not so that you will feel
for me but so that you wm learn how things alt:'e. lt would be
easier for you, I know, if the story came from someone dse,
if it welt:'e a stranger's voice sounding in your ealt:'. But the fact
is, there is no one else. I am the only one. I am the one
writing: I, I. So [ ask you: atter1d_to the wri!iltlg, n_gtJ;~
If lies and pleas and excuses weave among the ~words, listen
""~
. 95 "·;\
) f

13
 for them . Do not pass them over,. do not forgive them easily.
_;l{.ead aU, even this adjuration, with a cold eye..
Someonenactthrown a rock through. the Windscreen. Big
a.s a child's head, mute, it lay on the seat amid a scattering of
glass as ifit now owned the car. My first thought was: Where
wiU I get a windscreen for a Hillman? And then: How
fortunate that everything is coming to an ·end at: the same
time!
l tumbled the rock from the seat and began to pick out the
loose shards from the windscreen. Now that I had something
to do I felt calmer. But l was calmer too because I no longer
cared ifl lived. What might happen to me no longer mattered .
I thought: My life may as weU be waste. We shoot these
people as if they are waste, but in the end it is we whose lives
are not worth living .
I thought of the five bodies, of their massive,. solid presence
in the I.Jumed-down halt Their ghosts have not departed, I
thought, and wm not depart. Their ghosts are sitting tight,
in poss·ession.
If someone had dug a grave for me there and then in the
sand, and pointed, I would without a word have climbed in
and lain down and folded my hands on my breast. And when
the sand feU in my mouth and in the comers of my eyes I
would not have lifted a fmger to brush it away.
Do not read in sympathy with me. Let your heart not beat
with mine.
I hdd out a coin through the window. There was a rush
of takers. The children pushed,. the engine started.. Into
thrust-out hands I emptied my purse.
Drawn up among the bushes where the road dwindl.ed to
a track stood the military vehicles I had seen, not three, as I
had thought, !Jut five. Under the eye of a boy in an olive
rain-cape I got out of the car,. so cold in my wet clothes that
I might as weH have been naked.
I had hoped the words I need_ed :vould just come,. but. they
. 96.
did not. I held out my hands, palms upward . [ am bereft, my
hands said,. bereft of speech. I come to speak but have nothing
to say.
'Wag i.n die motor, ek sal die po.lisie ska.kel ,' he called down to
me. A boy with pimples playing this self-important, murder-
ous game. Wait in the car, I wiU call the police. I shook my
head, went on shaking my head. He was talking to someone
beside him,, someone I could not see . He was smiling . No
doubt: they had been watching from the beginning, had their
own opinion of me. A mad old do-gooder caught in the rain,
bedraggled as a hen. we-re they right? Am I a do-gooder?
No, I have done no good that I ca~ think of. Am I mad? Yes,
[ am mad. But they are mad too. AU of us running mad,
po~s~ssed by devils. When madness climbs the throne, who
i~~capes co11tagjon?
'Don't call the police, I can take care of myself,' I caUed.
But the murmuring., the sideways looks continued. Perhaps
they were already on the radio.
'What do you think you are doing?' 1 caUed up to the boy.
The smile stiffened on his lips. ':vvhat do you think you are
doing?' I shouted, my voice beginning to crack.. Shocked, he
stared down. Shocked to be screamed at by a white woman,
and one old enough to be his grandmother .
A man in battledress came over from the next vehicle in
the Hne. LeveUy he regarded me. 'Wat is die moeilikh:eid?' he
asked the boy in the troop-carrier. 'Nee,. niks moe.ilikheid nie.'
No problem. 'Net h.ierdie dame wat wit weet wat aangaan.'
'This is a dangerous place to be, lady,' he said, turning to
me. An officer, evidently. 'Anything can happen here . I am
going to send for an escort to take you back to the road.'
I shook my head. I was in command of myself, I was not
even tearful, though I did not put it past myself to I.Jreak
down at any moment.
What did I want? What did the old lady want? What she
wanted was to b_are something to them,. whatev,er ther·e was
. 97 .
 that might be bared at this time, in this place. What she
wanted, before they got rid of her, was to bring out a scar,,
a hurt, to force it upon them, to make them-see it with their
( own eyes: a scar, any scar, the scar of all this suffering, but
in the end my scar, since our own scars are the only scars we
can carry with us. I even brought a hand up to the buttons
of my dress. But my .fingers were blue, frozen.
'Have you seen inside that hall?' I asked in my crack·ed
voice . Now the tears were beginning to come.
The officer dropped his cigarette, ground it into the wet
sand.
'This unit hasn't fired a shot in twenty-four hours,' he said
softly. 'Let me suggest to you: don't get upset before you
know what you are talking about. Those people in there ar·e
not the only ones who have died . . The kiHings are going on
aH the time. Those are just the bodies they picked up from
yesterday. The fighting has subsided for the time being,. but
as soon as the rain stops it will flare up again. I don't know
how you got here- they should have closed the road- but
this is a bad place, you shouldn't be here. We'll radio the
pohce.,. they can 'escort you out. '
'Ek het reeds geska.kel,' said the boy in the troop-carrier.
'Why don't you just put down your guns and go home,. all
of you?' I said. 'Because surely nothing can be worse than
what you are doing here. Worse for your souls, I mean.'
'No,' he said. I had expected incomprehension,. but no, he
understood exactly what I meant. 'We will see it through
.,
now.
I was shivering from head to foot. My fingers, ended into
the palms of my hands, would not straighten. The wind
drove the sodden clothing against my skin .
'I knew one of those dead boys,,' I said. 'I have known him
since he was five. His mother works for me . You are all too
young for this. It sickens me. That is all.'
I drove back to the hall and, sitting in the car, waited . They
' 98 .
were bringing the bodies out now. From the gathering crowd
I felt a wave of something come out at me: resentment,
.animosity. Worse than that: hatred . Would it have been
different if I had not been seen speaking to the soldiers? No.
Mr Thabane came over to see what I wanted. 'I am sorry,
but I am not sure of the way back,' I said.
'Get on to the tar road,. turn right, foUow the signs,' he
said curtly.
'Yes, but which signs?'
'The signs to civilization.' And he turned on his heel.
I drove slowly, in part because· of the wind beating into
my face, in part because I was numb in body and soul. I
strayed into a suburb I had never heard of and spent twenty
minutes driving around indistinguishable streets looking for
a way out. At last I found myself in Voortrekker Road. Here,
fnr the first time,. people began to 'stare at the car ,;:ith the
shattered windscreen. Stares followed me all the way home.
The house felt cold and alien. I told myself: Have a hot
bath,. rest. But an icy lethargy possessed me. It took an effort
to drag myself upstairs,. peel off the wet clothes, wrap myself
in a robe,. get into bed. Sand,. the gr·ey sand of the Cape Flats,
had crusted between my toes. I will never be warm again,. I
thought. Vercueil has a dog to lie against. VercueiiJ knows
how to live in this climate. But as for me, and for that cold
boy soon to be put into the earth, no dog wm help us any
more. Sand akeady in his mouth, creeping in, claiming him.
Sixteen years since I shared a bed with man or boy. Sixteen
years alone. Does that surprise you?
I wrote. I write . I follow the pen, going where it takes me.
What else have I now?___ · ./

I woke up haggard. It was night again.. Where had the day

gone?
The light in the toilet was on. Sitting on the seat, his
. 99.
 trousers around his knees, his hat on his head,. fast asleep, was
V ercueitl. I stared in astonishment.
He did not wake; on the contrary, though his head lolled
and his jaw hung open, he slept as sweetly as a babe. His long
lean thilgh was quite hairless.
The kitchen door stood open and garbag•e from the over-
turned bucket was strewn over the fl.oo1r. Worrying at an old
wrapping-paper was the dog. When it saw me it hung its ears
guiltily and thumped its tail. 'Too much!.' I murmured: 'Too
much!' The dog slunk out.
I sat down at the table and gave myself up to tears . I cried
not for the confusion in my head, not for the mess in the
house, but for the boy, for Bheki. Wherever I turned he was
before me, his ·eyes open in the look of childish puzzlement
with which he had met his death. Head on arms I sobbed,
grieving for him, for what had been taken from him,. for
what had been taken from me. Such a good thing, life! Such
a wonderful idea for God to have had! The best idea there
had ever been . A gift, the most generous of all gifts, renewing
itself endlessly through the generations. And now Bheki,
robbed of it, gone,. torn away!
'I want to go home!' So I had whinged., to my shame, to
Mr Thabane the shoe saJesman. From an old person's throat
a chiild's voice. Home to my safe house, to my bed of
childhood slumber. Have I ever been fully awake? I might as
weH ask: Do the dead know they are dead? No: to the dead
it is not given to know anything. But in our dead sleep we
may at least be visited by intimations . I have intimations older
than any memory, unshakeable, that once upon a time I was
1r alive . Was alive and then was stolen from Hfe. From the cradle

I a theft took place: a child was~taken and a doll left in its place
___to be nursed and reared, and that doH is what I call L
A doll? A doll's life? Is that what I have lived?Ts it given
to a doll to conceive such a thought? Or does the thought
come and go as another inti~tion, a flash of lightning,, a
. 100 .
piercing of the fog by the lance of an angel's intemgence? Can
a doll recognize a doU? Can a doll know death? No: dolls
grow, they acquire speech and gait, they perambulate the
world; they age, they wither, they perish; they are wheeled
into the fire or buried in the ·earth; but they do not die. They
exist forever in that moment of petrified surprise prior to all
recoUection when a life was taken away, a life not theirs but
in whose place they ar·e left behind as a token . Their knowing
a knowledge without substance, without worldly weight,
like a doll's head itself, empty, airy. As they themselves are
not babies but the ideas of babies; more round, more pink,.
more blank and blue-eyed than a baby could ever be, living
not life but an idea of life, immortal, undying,. like .all ideas.
Hades, Hell::tlie- domain of ideas. Why has it ever been
necessary that hell be a place on its own in the ice of Antarctica
or down the pit of a vokano? Why can heU not be at the foot
of Africa, and why can the creatures of hell not walk among
the living?
'Father, can't you see I'm burning?' implored the child,
standing at his father's bedside. But his father, sleeping on,
dreaming, did not see.
That is the reason - I bring it forward now for you to see
-why I ding so tighdy to the memory of my mother. For if
she did not give me life, no one did. I cling not just to the
memory of her but to her herself, to her body,. to my birth
from her body into the world. In blood and milk I drank her
body and came to life . And then was stolen,. and have been
lost ever since.
There is a photograph of me you have seen but will probably
not remember. It was taken in 1918, when I was not yet two. I
am on my feet; I appear to be reachmg towards the ~camera; my
mother, kneeling behind me,. restrains me by some kind ofr,ein
that passes over my shoulders. Standing to one side, ignoring
me, is my brother Paul, his cap at a jaunty angle.
My brow is furrowed, my eyes are fixed intensely on the
· WI ·
 camera. Am I merely squinting into the sun or,. like the
savages of Borneo, do I have a shadowy sense that the camera
wiU rob me of my soul? Worse: does my mother hold me
hack from striking the camera to the ground because I, in my
doll's way, know that it win see what the eye cannot: that I
am not ther·e? And does my mother know this because she
too is not there?
Paul, dead.,. to whom the pen has led me. I held his hand
when he was going. I whispered to him, 'You wiU see Mama,
you wiU both be so happy.' He was pale, even his eyes had
the blanched hue of far-off sky. He gave me a tired,. empty
look as if to say: How litde you understand! Did Paul ever
really live? My sister life, he called me once in a letter, in
borrowed words. Did it ~orne to him at the end that he had
made a mistake? Did those translucent •eyes see through me?
We were photographed, that day, in a garden. There are
fllowers behind us that look like hollyhocks; to our left is a
bed of melons. I r•ecognize the place. It is Uniondale, the
house in Church Street bought by my grandfather when
ostrich-feathers were booming. Year after year fruit .and
fllowers and vegetables burgeoned in that garden,. pouring
forth their seed, dying, resurrecting themselves, blessing us
f with their profus·e pr·esence. But by whose love tended?_Who
clipped the hoUyhocks? Who laid the melon-seeds in their
warm, moist bed? Was it my gr.andfather who got up at four
in the icy morning to open the sluice and lead water into the
garden? If not he, then wl10se was the garden rightfuily? Who
are the ghosts and who the presences? Who, outside the
picture, leaning on their rakes, leaning on their spades, wait-
ing to get back to work,. lean also against the edge of the
rectangle, bending it, bursting it in?
, Dies ir:ae, dies illa when the absent shaU be present and the
present absent. No longer does the picture show who were
in the garden frame that day, but who were not there. Lying
all these years in places of safekeeping across the country, in
-10~\!
albums, in desk drawers,. this picture and thousands like it
have subdy matured, metamorphosed. The fixing did not
hold or the developing went further than one would ever
have dreamed- who can know how it happened?- but they
have become negatives again, a new kind of negative in whkh
we begin to see what used to lie outside the frame, occulted.
Is that why my brow is furrowed; is th.:if why I struggle
to reach the camera: do I obscurely know that the camera is
the enemy, that th•e camera wiU not lie about us but uncover
what we truly are: doll-folk? Am I struggHng against: the reins
in order to strike the camera out of the hands of whoever
holds it before it is too lat,e? And who hoMs the camera?
Whose formless shadow leans toward my mother and her
two offspring across the tilled bed?
Grief past weeping. I am hollow,. I am a shell. To ·each of
us fate sends the right disease . Mine a dis·ease that eats me out
from inside. Were I to be opened up they would find me
hoUow as a doll, a doH with a crab sitting inside licking its
lips,. daz·ed by the flood of light.
Was it the crab I saw so presciently when I was two,
peeping out ofthe black box?' Was I trying to save us all from
the crab? But they held me back, they pressed the button,
and the crab sprang out and entered me.
Gnawing at my bones now that there is no flesh left.
Gnawing the socket of my hip, gnawing my backbone,
beginning i:o gnaw at my knees . Th·e cats, :if the truth be told,
have never really loved me. Only this cr,eature is faithful to
the ,end. My pet,. my pain.
I went upstairs and opened the toilet door. Vercueil was
still there, slumped in his deep sleep. I shook him. 'Mr
V ercueil!' I said. One eye opened. 'Come and lie down . '
But he did not. First I heard him on the stairs,. taking one step
at a time like an old man. Then I heard the back door close.

. IOJ .
A beautiful day, one of thos·e still winter days when light
seems to stream evenly from aU quarters of the sky. V ercueil
drove me down Breda Street and into Orange Street. Across
from Government A venue I told him to park.
'I thought of driving the car aU the way down the Avenue,.'
I said. 'Once I am past the chain, I don't see how anyone can
stop me. But do you think there is room to get past?'
(You may remember, there are two cast-iron boUards at
the head of the avenue with a chain stretched between them.)
'Yes, you can get past at the side,' he said.
'After that it would just be a matter of keeping the car
str.aight.'
'Ar·e you really going to do this?' he asked . His chicken-eyes
glinted crueUy.
'If I can find the courage. '
'But why? What for?'
Hard to make grand responses iin the te·eth of that look. I
dosed my ·eyes and tried to hold on to my vision of the car,
moving fast enough for the flames to fan out backwards,
rolling down the paved avenue past the tourists and tramps
and lovers, past the museum, the art: gaUery, the botanical
gardens,. tiU it slowed down and came to rest before the house
of shame, burning and melting .
'We can go back now,' I said . 'I just wanted to make sure
it could be done.'
He came indoors and I gave him tea. The dog sat at his
feet, cocking its ears at us in turn as we spoke. A nice dog: a
bright presence, star-born, as some people are.
'To answer your question What for?' I said: 'it has to do
with my Hfe. To do with a life that isn't worth much any
mor·e. I am trying to work out what I can get for it.'
His hand moved restfully over the dog's fur, hack and
forth. The dog blinked, dosed its eyes. Love, I thought:
however unlikely, it is love I witness here.
I tried again. 'There is a famous novd in which a woman
. !04 .
 is convicted of.adultery- adultery was a crime in the old days
- and condemned to go in public with the letter A stitched
on her dress... She wears the A for so many years that people
forget what it. stands for. They forget that it stands for
anything. It simply becomes something she wears, like a ring
or a brooch. h may even be that she was the one to start the
fashion of wearing writing on one's dothing. But that isn't
in the book.
'These pubHc shows,. these manifestations- this is the point
of the story- how can one ever be sure what they stand for?
An old woman sets hersdf on fire, for instance. Why? Because
she has been driven mad? Because she is in despair? Because
she has cancer? I thought of painting a letter on the car to
explain. But what? A? B?' C? What is the right letter for my
case? And why explain anyway? Whose business is it but my
own?'
I might have said more., but at that moment the gate-latch
dicked and the dog began to growL Two women, one of
whom I recognized as Florence's sister, came up the path
carrying suitcases.
'Good afternoon,' said the sister. She held up a ~ey. 'We
have come to fetch my sister's things . Florence.'
'Yes,' I said .
They let themselves into Florence's room. After a while I
foUowed. 'Is Florence all right?' I asked.
The sister, who had been unpacking a drawer, stood up
straight, breathing heavily. Cleady she relished this foohsh
- question.
'No, I cannot say she is aU right,' she said. 'Not all right.
How can she be all right?'
The other woman, pretending not to hear, continued to
fold baby-clothes . There was far more in the room than they
could carry in two suitcases.
'I didn't mean that,,' I said; 'but never mind. Can I ask you
to ta~e something to Flor•ence from me?'
. 105 .
 'Yes, I can take it if it is not big.'
I wrote out a cheque.
'TeH Florence I am sorry. Tell her I am more sony than I
can say. I think of Bheki all the time.'
'You ar·e sorry . '
'Yes.'

Another day of dear skies. Vercueil in a strangdy excited

state. 'So today is the day?' he asked. 'Yes,' I replied, stiffening
against his indecent eagerness,. on the point of adding: 'But
what business is it of yours?'
Yes, I said: today is the day. Yet today has passed and I
have not gone through with what I promised. For as long as
the tr:.~il of words continues, you know with certainty that I
have not gone through with it: a rule, another rul·e. Death
may indeed be the last great foe of writing, but writing is
also the foe of death. Therefore, writing, , holding death at
arm's ],ength, let me teU you that I meant to go through with
it, began to go through with it, did not go through with it.
Let me tell you more . Let me tell you that I bathed. Let me
tell you that I dress·ed. Let me tell you that, as I prepared my
body, some faint glow of pride began to return to it. Between
waiting in bed for the breathing to stop and going out to
make one's own end, what a difference!
I meant to go through with it: is that the truth? Yes. No.
Yes-no. There is such a word, but it has never been allowed
into the dictionaries. Yes-no: ·every woman knows what it
means as it defeats every man . 'Are you going to do it?' asked
Vercueil, his man-eyes gleaming. 'Yes-no,' I should have
answered.
I wore white and blue: a light blue suit, a whit·e blouse with
a bow at the throat. I did my face carefully,, and my hair . All
the while I sat in front of the mirror I was trembling lightly.
I felt no pain at aU. The crab had stopped gnawing.
· ro6 ·
 Luminous with curiosity, Vercueil foUowed me into the
kitchen and prowled about while I was having breakfast. At
last, irritated, unsettled, I burst out: 'Would you please leave
me alone!' At which he turned away with a look of such
childish hurt that I gave his sleeve a tug . 'I didn't mean that,'
I said. 'But please sit down: you make me nervous when I
need calm. I veer hack and forth so much! At one moment I
think: Let me hurry w put an end to it, to this worthless life.
At the next I think: But why should I bear the blame? Why
should I be expected to rise above my times? Is it my doing
that my times have been so shameful? Why should it be ],eft
to me,. old .and sick and full of pain, to li:ft myself unaided
out of this pit of disgrace?
'I want to rage against the men who have created these
times. I want to accuse them of spoiling my life in the way
that a rat or a cockroach spoils food without even eating it,
simply by walking over it and sniffing it and performing its
bodily functions on it. It is childish, I know, to point fmgers
and blame others. But why should I accept that: my life would
have been worthless no matter who held power in this land?
Power is power, after all. h invades. That is its nature. It
invades one's life.
'You want to know what is going on with me and I am
trying to tell you . I want to sell myself,. redeem myself,. but
am £uU of confusion about how to do it. That,. if you like, is
the craziness that has got into me. You need not be surprised.
You know this country . There :is madness in the air here.'
Throughout this speech Vercueil had worn the same tight,
secretive litde look. Now he said a strange thing: 'Would you
like to go for a drive?'
'We can't go for a drive, Mr Vercueil. There are a thousand
reasons why we can't.'
'We can see some sights, be back by twelve o'clock.'
'We can't go sightseeing in a car with a hole in the winds-
cre·en.. It is ridiculous.'
. 107 .
 Tll take out th·e windscreen. It's just glass, you don't need
:it.,
Why did I give in? Perhaps what won me in the ·end was
the new attention he was paying me. He was Iike a boy in a
state of ·excitement,. sexual excitement, and I was h:is object. -
I was flattered; in a distant way, despite al.l, I was even amused.
,-. Obscurely I may have felt something unsavoury in it, as in
' the excitement of a dog digging for carrion not buried deep
enough. But I was in no condition to draw lines . What did I
want, after all? I wanted a suspension. To be suspended
without thought, without pain, without doubt,. without ap-
prehension, till noon came . T:iU the noonday gun boomed on
Signal HiU and, with a bottle of petrol on the seat beside me,
I either drove or did not drive past the chain and down the
Avenue. But to be thoughtless till then; to hear birds sing, to
feel the air on my skin, to see the sky. To live.
So I yielded.. Vercueil wrapped a towel around his hand
and broke out more of the glass till the hole was big enough
for a child to dimb through. I gave him the key. A push, and
we were away.
Like lovers revisiting the scenes of their first declarations,
we took the mountainside drive above Muizenberg. (Lovers!:
What had I ever declared to Vercuei]? That he should stop
drinking. What had he declared to me? Nothing: perhaps not
even his true name.) We parked at the same spot as before .
Now: feast a last time on these sights, I told mysdf, digging
my nails into my palms., staring out over False Bay,. bay of
false hope, and southward over the bleak winter-waters of
the most neglected of oceans.
'If we had a boat you could tak·e me out to sea,' I murmured.
Southward: Vercueil and I alone, sai:Hng tilU we reached
the latitudes where albatrosses fly. Where he could lash me
to a barrel or a plank, it did not matter which, and
leave me bobbing on the waves under the great white
wmgs.
· ro8 ·
 Vercueil revers·ed on to the road. Was I wrong, or did the
engine throb more sweedy in his hands than in mine?
'I am sorry ifl am not making sense.,' I said. 'I am trying
my best not to lose direction. I am trying to keep up a sense
of urgen:~y. A sens·e of urgency is what keeps deserting me.
Sitting her·e among aU this beauty, or even sitting at home
among my own th:ings,. it seems hardly possible to believe
there is a zol!e of killing and degradation all around me. It
seems like a bad dream.. Something pr·esses, nudges inside
me . I try to take no notice, but it insists. I yield an inch;. it
presses harder. With rdief I give in,. and life is suddenly
ordinary again. With reiieH give myself back to the ordinary.
[ wallow in it. I lose my sense of shame, become shameless
as a child. The shamefulness of that shamdessness: that is
what I cannot forget, that is what I cannot bear afterwards.
That is why I must take hold of myself,. point myselfdown
the path. Otherwise I am lost. Do you understand?'
Vercueil crouched over the whee] lik·e someone with poor
eyesight. He of the hawk's-eye. Did it matter if he did not
understand? -
'It is like trying to give up alcohol,' I persisted. 'Trying
and trying, always trying, but knowing in your bones from
the beginning that you are going to sHde back. There is a
shame to that private knowledg·e, a shame so warm,. so
intimate, so comforting that it brings more shame flooding
with it. There seems to be no limit to the shame a human
being can feel.
'But how hard it is to kili oneself! One dings so tight to
life! It seems to me that something other than the wiU must
come into play at the last instant,. something foreign, some-
thing thoughtless,. to sweep you over the brink. You have to
become someone other than yourself. But who? Who is it
that waits for me to st·ep into his shadow? Wher•e do I find
him?'
My watch said 10.20. 'We have to go back,' I said.
. 109 .
 VercueH slowed down. 'If that is what you want, I'H take
you back,' he said. 'Or, if you like, we can go on driving.
We can drive aU the way round the Peninsula. It's a nice
day.'
I should have answered: No, take me back at once . But I
hesitated, and in that moment of hesitation the words died
within me .
'Stop here,.' I said.
Vercueil drew off the road and parked.
'I have a favour to ask of you,' [ said. 'Please don't mak'e
fun of me.'
'Is that the favour?'
'Yes. Now or in the future.'
He shrugged.
On the far side of the road a man in tattered dothes sat
beside a pyramid of firewood for sale. He looked us ov,er,
looked away.
Time passed.
'I told you a story once about my mother,.' I said at last,
trying to speak more sofdy . 'About how when she was a
httle gid she lay in the dark not knowing what was :rolling
over her, the wagon-wheels or the stars .
'I have held on to that story all my life. If each of us has a
story we teH to ourself about who we are and where we come
from, then that is my story. That is the story I choose, or the
story that has chos·en me. It is there that [ come from, it is
there that I begin.
'You ask whether I want to go on driving. If it were
practicaHy possible, I would suggest that we drive to the
Eastern Cape,. to the Out,eniqua Mountains, to that stopping-
place at the top of Prince Alfred's Pass. I would even say,
Leave maps behind, drive north and east by the sun, I will
recognize it when we come to it: the stopping-place, the
starting-place, the place of the navel, the place where I join
the world. Drop me off there, at the top of the pass,, and
· IIO ·
drive away, leaving me to wait for the night and the stars and
the ghostly wagon to come romng over.
'But the truth is, with or without maps,. I can no longer
find the place. Why? Because a certain desire has gone from
me. A year ago or a month ago it would have been different.
A desire, perhaps the deepest desire I am capable of, would
hav,e flowed from me toward that one spot of earth, guiding
me. This is my mother, I would have said, kneeling there: this
is what gives life to me . Holy ground,. not as a grave but as a
place of resurrection is holy:: resurrection et·ernal out of the
earth.
-·Now that desire, which one may as weU caii love, is gone
from me . I do not love this land any more. It is as simple as
that. I am like a man who has be.en castrated. Castrated in
maturity. [try to imagine how Iife is for a man to whom that
has been done. [ imagine him seeing things he has loved
before, knowing from memory that he ought stiU to love
them, but able no longer to summon up the love itself. Love:
what was that? he would say to himself, groping in memory
for the old feeling . But about everything there would now
be a flatness, a stillness, a calmness. Something I once had has
been betrayed,. he would think, and concentrate, trying to
feel that betrayal in aU its keenness. But there would be no
keenness. Keenness would be what would be gone from
everything. Instead he would feel a tug, light but continual,
toward stupor, detachment. Detached, he would say to him-
self, pronouncing the sharp word, and he would reach out to
test its sharpness. But there too a blurring, a blunting would
have intervened. All is receding, he would think; in a week,
in a month I will have forgotten everything, I wiU be among
the lotus-eaters, separated., drifting. For a last time he would
to
try £eelthe pain of that separation, but ali that would come
to him would be a fleeting sadness .
'1 don't know whether I am being plain enough, Mr Ver-
cueil. I am talking about resolve, about trying to hold on to
· III ·
my resolve and failing. I confess,, I am drowning . . I am sitting
here next to you and drowning.'
Vercueil slouched against the door. The dog whined sofdy..
Standing with its paws on the front seat, it peered ahead,
eager to get moving again . A minute passed.
Then from his jacket pocket he drew a. box of matches and
held it out to me. 'Do it now, ' he said.
'Do what?'
'It.'
'Is that what you want?'
'Do it now. I'll get out ofthe car. . Do it, here, now.'
At the corner of his mouth a ball of spittle danced up and
down.. Let him be mad, I thought. Let it be possible to say
that about him: that he is cruel, mad,. a mad dog.
He shook the box of matches at me . 'Are you worried
about him?' He gestured at the man with the firewood. 'He
won't interfere. '
'Not here,' I said.
'W·e can go to Chapman's Peak. You can drive over the
edge if that's what you want.'·
It was like being trapped in a car with a man trying to
seduce you and getting cross when you did not give in. It
was like being transported back to the worst days of girlhood.
'Can we go home?' I said.
'I thought you wanted to do it.'
'You don't understand.'
'I thought you wanted a push down the path. I'm giving
you a push.'
Outside the hotel in Hout Bay he stopped the car again.
'Have you got some money for me?' he said.
I gave him a ten-rand note.
He went into the off-licence, returned with a bottle in a
brown paper pack·et. 'Hav·e a drink,.' he s.aid, and twisted off
the cap.
'No, thank you. I don't like brandy.'
.. 112 •
 'It's not brandy,. it's medicine . '
I took a sip., tried to sw.allow,. choked and coughed;, my
teeth came loos·e.
'Hold it in your mouth,' he said.
I took another sip and held it in my mouth. My gums and
palate burned, then gr·ew dead.. I swallowed and dosed my
eyes.. Something began to lift inside me: a curtain,. a doud.
Is this it, then, I thought? Is this aU? Is this how Vercueil
points the way?
He turned the car, drove back up the hill, and parked in a
picnic area high above the bay. He·drank and offered me the
botde . Cautiously I drank. The veil of gr·eyness that had
covered everything grew visibly Hghter . Dubious, marvel-
ling,, I thought: Is it reaily so simple- not a matter oflife and
death at all?
'Let me tell you finally,' I said: 'What set me off was
not my own condition, my sickness, but something quite
different.'
The dog complained softly. Vercueil reached out a languid
hand; it licked his fingers.
'Florence's boy was shot on Tuesday.'
He nodded .
'[saw the body,' I went on, taking .another sip, thinking:
Shall I now grow loquadous? Lord preserve mel And as I
grow loquacious will Vercueil grow loquacious too? He and
I,. under the influence, loquacious together in the little car?
'I was shaken,.' I said. 'I won't say gr:ieved because I have
no righc to the word, it bdongs to his own people. But I am
still - what? - disturbed. It has something to do with his
deadness, his dead weight. It is as though in death he became
very heavy,. like lead or like that thick, airless mud you get
at the bottoms of dams. As though in the act of dying he
gave a last sigh and all the lightness went out of him. Now
he is lying on top of me with .all that weight. Not pressing.,
just lying .
. IIJ .
 'It was the same when that friend of his was bleeding in
the street. There was the same heaviness . Heavy blood. I was
trying to stop it from flowing down the gutters. So much
blood.! Ifl had caught it all I would not have been able to lift
the bucket. Like trying to lift a bucket of lead.
'I have not: seen black people in their death before, Mr
Vercueil. They are dying aU the time,. I know, but always
somewhere else. The people I have seen die have been white
and have died in bed,. growing rather dry and light there,.
rather papery, rather airy. They burned well, [ am sure,
leaving a minimum of ash to sweep up afterwards . Do you
want to know why I set my mind on burning mysem Because
I thought I would burn well.
r' 'Whereas these people will not bum, Bheki and the other
dead. It would be Iike trying to burn figures of pig-iron or
lead.. They might lose their sharpness of contour,. but when
the flames subsided they would still be there, heavy as ever.
Leave them long enough and they may sink, miUimetre by
millimetre, till the earth closes over them. But then they
would sink no further. They would stay there, bobbing jusr
under the surface . If you so much as scuffied with your shoe
you would uncover them: the faces, the dead eyes, open, full
of sand.'
'Drink,' said Vercueil, holding out the botde. His face was
changing, the lips filhng out, gorged, wet,. the ·eyes growing
vague . Like the woman he had brought home. I took the
bottle and wiped it on my sleeve.
'You must understand, it is not just a personal thing, this
disturbance I am teUing you about,' I pursued. 'In fact it is
not personal at aU. I was fond of Bheki, certainly., when he
was stiU a child, but I was not happy with the way he turned
out. I had hoped for something else. He and hils comrades say
they have put childhood behind them. Well, they may hav·e
ceased being children, but what have they become? Dour
litde puritans, despising laughter, despising play.
. 114 .
 'So why should I grieve for him? The answer is, I saw his
face. When he died he was a child again. The mask must have
dropped in she·er childish surprise when it broke upon him in
that last instant that the stone-throwing and shooting was not
a game after aU; that the giant who came shambling towards
him with a paw fuU of sand to stop into his mouth would
not be turned away by chants or slogans; that at the end of
the long passageway where he choked and gagged and could
not breathe there was no light .
'Now that child is buried and we walk upon him. Let me
tell you, when I walk upon this land, this South Africa, I
have a gathering feehng of walking upon black faces. They
are dead but their spirit has nodeft them. They lie there~ heavy
and Obdurate; -waiting for my feet to pass, waiting for me to
go, waiting to be .,uised up again. Millions of figures of
_rig::_i~o~ floating uncle~ the skin ~of the earth. The ag~~ gf_i!_()!l-
waiting to teturn.
'You think I am upset but wili get over it. Cheap tears,.
you think, tears of sentiment, here today, gone tomorrow.
WeU,. it is true, I have been upset iin the past, I have imagined
there could he no worse, and then the worse has arrived, as
it does without fail, and I have got over it, or seemed to. But
that is the trouble! In order not to be paralyzed with shame I
have had to live a life of getting over the worse. What I cannot ~
get over any more is that getting over. Ifl get over it this time
I win never have another chance not to get over it. For the
sake ofmy own resurrection I cannot get over it this time.'
VercueH held out the bottle. A fuU four inches were -gone.
I pushed his hand away. 'I don't want to drink any more,' I
said.
'Go on,' he said.: 'get drunk for a change.'
'No!' I exclaimed. A tipsy anger flared up in me against his
crudity, his indifference. What was [ doing here? In the
exhaust·ed car the two of us must ha.ve looked like nothing
so much as belated refugees fro~he plat.teland of the Great
\
II) . .!
/
Depression. AU we lacked was a coir mattress and a chicken-
coop tied on the roof. I snatched the botde frQm:!lls-Jrand;
but while I was still rolling down the window to throw -it
out, he wrested it back.
'Get out ofmy car!' I snapped.
Taking the key from the ignition lock, he got out. The dog
bounded after him. In fuU sight of me he tossed the key into
the bushes, turned,. and, botde in hand,. stalked down the hill
towards Hout Bay.
Burning with rage I waited, but he did not turn.
Minutes passed. A car puUed off the road and dr·ew up
beside me. Music blared from it,. loud and metallic. In that
welter of noise a couple sat gazing over the sea . South Africa
at its recreations. I got out and tapped at their window. The
man turned a vacant look on me, chewing.. 'Can you turn
down the music?' I said. He fiddled or pretended to fiddle
with something, but the volume did not change. [ tapped
again. Through the glass he mouthed words at me, then in a
flurry of dust reversed the car and parked on the other side
of the area.
I s·earched in the bushes where Vercueil had thrown the
key, with no success.
As the other car drove off at last, the woman turned to glare
at me. Her face not unattractive yet ugly: dosed,. bunched, as
if afraid that light, air, Iife itself were going to gather and
strike her. Not a face but an expression, yet an expression
worn so long as to be hers,, her. A thickening of the membrane
between the world and the self Inside, a thickening become
thickness. Evolution,. but evolution backwards ., Fish from the
pnm1t!ve depths (I am sure you know this) grew pat·ches of
skin sensitive to the fingerings of light, patches that in time
became eyes. Now, in South Africa, I see •eyes clouding over
again, scales thickening on them, as the land-explorers,. the
colonists., prepare to :ret11rn to the deep. -
Should I have come ~lien you invited me? In my weaker
~c-r~6~~>)
/'
 moments I have often longed to cast myself on your mercy.
How lucky, for both our sakes, that I have held out! You do
not need an albatross from the old wodd around your neck;
and as for me, would I truly escape South Africa by running
to you? How do I know the scales are not already thickening
ov·er my own eyes? That woman in the car: perhaps, as they
drove off, she was saying to her companion: 'What a sour old
creature! What a dosed-off face!'
And then,. what honour is there in slipping off in these
times when the worm-riddled ship is so clearly sinking, in
the company of tennis players and crooked brokers and gen-
erals with pocketfuls of diamonds departing to set up r·etreats
in the quieter backwaters of the world? General G, Minister
M on their holdings in Paraguay,. grilling beefsteaks ov·er
coals under southern skies, drinking beer with their cronies,
singing songs of the oM country, looking to pass away in
their sleep at a great old age with grandchildren and peons
hat in hand at the foot of the bed: the Afrikaners of Paraguay
joining the Afrikaners of Patagonia in their sullen diaspora:
ruddy men with paunches and fat wiv·es and gun collections on
their living-room walls and safety-deposit boxes in Rosario,
exchanging Sunday-aft·ernoon visits with the sons and daugh-
ters of Barbie, Eichmann: bullies, thugs, torturers, kiUers-
what company!
Besides, I am too tired . Tired beyond cause., tired as an
armour against the times, yearning to dose my eyes, to sleep.
-'What is death, after all, but an ascent into the fmal reaches of
tiredness?'
I remember your last telephone call. 'How are you feeling?'
you asked. 'Tired but otherwise weil,' I repHed. 'I am taking
things slowly. Florence is a piHar of strength,. as ever, .and I
have a new man to hdp in the garden.' 'I'm so glad,' you said
in your brisk American voice - 'You must rest a lot and
concentrate on getting your strength back. '
Mother and daughter on the telephone. Midday there,
. II7 '
 evening here. Summer there,. winter here . Yet the line as dear
as if you were next door. Our words taken apart, huded
through the skies, put together agairi'whole, flawless. No
longer the o]d undersea cable linking you to me but an
efficient, ..abstract, skybome connection: the idea of you con-
nected to the idea of me; not words, not living breath passing
between us, but the ideas of words; the idea of breath, coded,
transmitted, decoded. At the end you said, 'Good night,
mother;', and I, 'Goodbye, my dear, thank you £or phoning,'
on the word dear allowing my voice to rest (what self-
indulgence!) with the full weight of my love,. praying that
the ghost of that love would survive the cold trails of space
and come home to you.
On the telephone, love but not truth. In this Jetter from
elsewherdso long a letter!)' truth and love together at la;t. In
every you that I p·en Iove flickers and trembles like St Elmo's
,, fire; you are with me not as you ar·e today in America,. not as
you wer·e when you left, but as you are in some deeper and
unchanging £orm: as j:he beloved, as that which does not die.
[t is the soul of you that I address,. as it is the soul of me thaf
will be left with you when this letter is over. Like a moth'~
from its case emerging, fanning its wing!';: that is what,
reading, I hope you will glimpse: my soul readying itself for
further flight. A white moth, a ghost emerging from the
mouth of the figure on the deathbed. This struggling with
sickness,. the gloom and self-loathing of these days, the vacil-
lation, the rambling too (there is htde mor·e to tell about the
Hout Bay episode - Vercueii returned drunk and bad-
tempered,. found the key, and drove me home, and that was
that;. perhaps, if the truth be known, his dog led him back) -
all part of the metamorphosis,, part of shaking mysdf loose
from the dying •envelope.
And after that, after the dying? Never fear, I will not haunt
you. There will be no need to dose tbe windows and seal the
chimney to k·eep the white moth frnm flapping in during the
· IIS ·
night and settling on your brow or on the brow of one of the
children . The moth is simply what will brush your cheek
ever so lightly as you put down the last pag·e of this letter,
before it flutters off on its nextjourney. It is not my soul that
will remain with you but the spirit of my soul, the breath,.
the s~irring of the air about these words, the faintest of
turbulence traced in the air by the ghostly passage of my pen
over the paper your fingers now hold.
L~tting go. of myself, letting go of you, letting go of a
house s'tilfafiv·e with memories: a hard task,. but I am learning.
The music too. But the music [ will take with me,. that at
least, for it is wound into my soui. The ariosos from the
Matthew Passion, wound in and knotted .a thousand times,.
so that no one, nothing can undo them.
If Vercueil does not send thes·e writings on, you wiU never
read them. You wiU never even know they existed. A certain.
~gc!_y oJ truth wiU never take on flesh: my truth: how [ lived
in these times, in this place.
What is the wager, then, that I am making with Vermeil,
on Vercueil?
h is a wager on trust. So htde to ask, to take a package to
the post office and pass it over the counter . So little that it is
almost nothing. Between taking the package and not taking
it the difference is as light as a feather. [f there is the slilghtest
breath of trust,. obligation, piety left behind when [am gone,
he will surely take it.
And if not?
If not, there is no trust and we deserve no better, all of us,
than to fall into a hole and vanish.
Because I cannot trust V ercueil I must trust him .
I am trying to keep a soul .alive in times not hospitable to
the soul. -
Easy to give alms to the orphaned, the destitute., the
hungry. Haiaer10g1ve alms to the bitter-hearted (I think of
Florence). But the alms I give Vercueil .are hardest of all.
. 119 .
What I give he does not forgiy·e me for giving. No charity in
him, n010"fgiveness. (C1iarity? says VercueiL Forgiveness?)
Without his forgiveness I give without charity, serve without
love. Rain falling on barren soil.
When I was younger I might have given m ysdf to him
bodily. That is the sort of thing one does., one did, however
mistakenly. Now I put my life in his hands instead. This is
my life, these words, these tracings of the movements of
crabbed digits ov·er the page . These words, as you read them,
if you read them, ent·er you and draw breath again. They are,
if you like,. my way ofliving on. Once upon a time you lived
in me as once upon a time I lived in my mother; as she still
lives in me,. as I grow towards her, may I live in you .
I give my life to Vercueil to carry over. I trust Vercueil
because I do not trust V ercueiL I love him because I do not
love him. Because he is the weak reed I lean upon him.
I may seem to understand what I say,. but,. believ·e me, I do
not. From the beginning,. when I found him behind the garage
in his cardboard house, sleeping., waiting,. I have understood
nothing. I am feeling my way along a. passage that grows
darker ail the time. I am feeling my way toward you; with
each word I fed my way.

Days ago I caught a cold, which has now settled on my chest

and turned into a dry, hammering cough that goes on for
minutes at a stretch and leaves me panting, exhausted.
As long as the burden is a burden of pain alone I bear it by
holding it at a distance. It is not I who am in pain, I say to
myself: the one in pain is someone else, some body else who
shares this bed with me . So, by a trick, I hold it off, keep it
elsewhere. And when the trick will not work, when the pain
insists on owning me,. I bear it anyhow.
(As the waves rise I have no doubt my tricks win be swept
away like the dikes of Zeeland.)
. 120 .
 But now, during these spasms of coughing., I cannot ke·ep
any distance from myself. There is no mind, there is no body,
there is just I, a creature thrashing about, struggling for air,
drowning . Terror, and the ignominy of terror! Another va]e
to be passed through on the way to death. How can this be
happening to me? I think at the height of the coughing: Is it
fair? The ignominy of naivete. Even a dog with a broken
back breathing its last at the roadside would not think, But is
this fair?
Living, said Marcus Aurelius,. calls for the art of the wres-
der, not the dancer . 5taying o_n your feet is ali; there is no
need for pretty steps, ~--
Yesterday,. with the pantry bare, I had to go shopping.
Trudging home with my bags, I had a bad speU. Three
passing schoolboys stopped to stare at the old woman leaning
against a lamp-post with her groceries spilled around her feet.
In between the coughing I tried to wav·e them away. What I
looked like I cannot imagine . A woman in a car slowed down.
'Are you all right?' she called. 'I have been shopping,., I panted.
'What?' she said, frowning, straining to hear. 'Nothing!:' I
gasped. She drove off.
How ugly we are growing,. from being unable to think
weU of ourselves! Even the beauty queens look irritable.
Ugliness: what is it but the soul showing through the
flesh?
Then last night the worst happened. Into the confusion of
my drugged, unsavoury slumber penetrated the sound of
barking. On and on it went, steady, relentless., mechanical.
Why did Vercueil not put a stop to it?
I did not trust myself on the stairs . In bathrobe and slippers
I went out on to the bakony. It was coM, a light rain was
falling. 'Mr VercueiH' I croaked- 'What is the dog barking
about? Mr Vercueil!'
The barking stopped, then started again. Vercueil did not
appear .
. 121 .
 I went back to bed and lay there unable to sleep, the barking
like hammering in my ears.
This is how old women fall and break their hips,. I warned
myself: this is how the trap is laid, and this is how they are
caught.
Holding to the banister with both hands I crept downstairs .
There was someone in the kitchen and it was not Vercueit
Whoever it was did not try to hide. My God, I thought:
Bheki! A chill ran through me.
In the eerie light cast by the open refrigerator he confronted
me, his forehead with the bullet wound covered by a white
bandage.
'What do you want?' I whispered. 'Do you want food?'
He spoke: 'Wher·e is Bheki?'
The voice was lower, thicker than Bheki's. Who could it
be then? Befuddled, I searched for a name.
He dosed the refrigerator door. Now we were in darkness.
'Mr Vercueil!' I croak·ed . The dog bark·ed without let-up.
'The neighbours will come,' I whispered.
As he passed me his shoulder brushed mine. Flinching, I
smelled him and knew who he was.
He reached the door. The barking grew frantic.
'Florence isn't here any more,.' [ said. I turned on the light.
He was not wearing his own dothes . Or perhaps it is a
fashion. The jacket seemed to belong to a fuJI-grown man
and the trousers were too long. One arm of the jacket was
empty.
'How is your arm?'' I asked . .
'I must not move the arm,' he said.
'Come away from the door,' [said.
I opened the door a crack. The dog leapt excitedly. I tapped
it on the nose. 'Stop it at once!' I commanded. It whined
softly . 'Where is your master?' It cocked its ears. I dosed the
door.
'What do you want here?' I asked the boy.
. 122 .
 'Where is Bheki?'
'Bheki is dead. He was killed last week while you were in
hospitaL He was shot. He died at once.. The day after that
affair with the bicyde.'
He Hcked his Hps. There was a cornered, uncertain look
about him.
'Do you want something to eat?'
He shook his head. 'Money. I have no money,' he said .
'For the bus.'
'I wiU give you money. But where do you intend to go?'
'I must go home.'
'Don't do that, I urge you. I know what I am talking about,
I have seen what is happening on the Flats. Stay away tHl
things have gone back to normai.'
'Things will never be normal-'
'Please! I know the argument,, I haven't the time or interest
to go through it again. Stay here till things are quieter. Stay
till you are bett:er. Why did you leave the hospital? Are you
discharged?'
'Yes . . I am discharged.'
'Whose dothes are you wearing?'
'They are mine . '
'They are not your dothes . Where did you get them?'
'They are mine. A friend brought them to me . '
He was lying. He li·ed no better than .any other fifteen-
year-old.
'Sit down. I will give you something to eat, then you can
get some sleep. Wait till morning befm·e you make up your
mind what to do next.'
I made tea.. He sat down, paying me no attention at .alL h
did not embarrass him that I did not believe his story. What
I believed was of no account. What did he think of me? Did
he give me any thought? Was he a thinking person? No:
compared with Bheki he was unthinking, inarticulate, unim-
aginative. But he was alive and Bheki was dead. The lively
. 123 .
ones are picked off, the stolid ones survive. Bbeki too quick
for his own good. I was never afraid of Bheki; as for this one,
I am not so sure.
I put a sandwich and a cup of tea in front of him. 'Eat,
drink,' I said. He did not stir. With his head on his arm,. his
eyes roUed back, he was fast asleep. I patted his cheek. 'Wake
up!' I said . He gave a start, sat straight, took a bite, and
chewed rapidly. Then the chewing slowed. His mouth full,
he sat in a stupor of exhaustion. I took the sandwich out: of
his hand, thinking: When they are in trouble they come to a
woman . To Florence he comes, except that there is no Flor-
enoe. Has he no mother of his own?
In Florence's room he recovered briefly.. 'The bicyde,' he
mumbled. .
'It is safe, I have kept it. It must be fixed, that is aU. I will
ask Mr Vercuei] to look at iit. '
So this house that was once my home and yours becomes
a house of refuge, a house of transit.
My dearest child, I am in a fog of error . The hour is late
and I do not know how to save mysdf. As far as I can confess,
to you I confess. What is my error, you ask? If I cou]d ptit it
in a bottle,. like a spider, and send it to you to examine, I
would do so . . But it is Hke a fog, everywhere and nowhere.
I cannot touch it, trap it,. put a name to it. Slowly, reluctandy,
however, let me say the first word. I do not love this child,
the child sleeping in Florence's bed . I love you but I do not
love him. There is no ache in me towards him, not the
slightest.
Yes,. you reply, he is not lovable.. But did you not have a
part in making him unlovable?
I do not deny that. But at: the same time I do not believe
it. My heart does not accept him as mine: it is as simple as
that. In my heart I want him to go away and leave me alone .
That is my first word, my first confession. I do not want
to die in the state I am in, in a stat·e of ugliness . I want to be
. 124 .
 saved. How shall I be saved? By doing what I do not: want
- -toat6.That is the first step: that I know. I must love, first of
aU, the unlovable. I must love, for instance, this child. Not
bright fittl~ Bheki, but this one. He is here for a reason. He
is part of my salvation. I must love him. But I do not love
him. Nor do I want to love him enough to love him despite
myself.
It is because I do not with a full enough heart want to be
otherwise that I am still wandering in a fog.
[ cannot find it in my-'he.art toe luve;-lo want to love, to
want to want to love.
I am dying because in my heart I do not want to live. I am
dying because I want to die .
Therefore let me utter my second, dubious word. Not
wanting to love him, how true can [say my love is for you?
For love is not like hunger. Love is never s.ated, stilled. When
one loves, one loves more. The more I love you, the more I
ought to love him. The less I love him, the less, perhaps, I
love you.
(;r_uciform logic, that takes me where I do not want to go!
But would I Tet myself be nailed upon it if I truly were not
wiUing? ··
I thought, when I began this long lett,er, that its pull would
be as_ strollllg as tll_e _tige's, that: beneath the waves beating this
way and that on its surface there would be a tug as constant
as the moon'sJ!r~wip.g you to me and me to you: the blood-
tug of daughter to mother, woman to woman. But with
'eVe"ry day I add to it the letter seems to grow more abstract,
more abstracted,. the kind ofletter on·e writes from the stars,
from the farther void, disembodied, crystalline,. bloodless. Is
that to be the fate of my love?
I remember, when the boy was hurt, how abundantly he
bled, how rudely. How thin, by comparison, my bleeding
on to the paper here . 'Ihe issue of a shrunken_heart. _
I have written about blood before, l know. I hav,e -written
. 125 .
 about everything, I am written out, bled dry, and stiU [ go
', on. This letter has become a maze, and I a dog in the maze,
scurrying up and down the branches and tunnels,. scratching
and whining at the same oM places,. tiring, tired. Why do I
not call for help, call to God? Because God cannot help me.
God is looking for me but he cannot reach me . God is another
dog in another maze. I smeU God and God smells me . I am
the bitch in her time, God the male. God smells me,. he can
think of nothing else but finding me and taking me. Up and
down the branches he bounds, scratching at the mesh. But
he is lost as I am lost.
[ dream, but I doubt that it is God I dream of. When I fall
asleep there commences a resdess movement of shapes behind
my eyelids, shapes without body or form, cov·ered in a haze,
grey or brown,. sulphurous. Borodino is the word that comes
to me in my sleep: a hot summer afternoon on the Russian
plain, smoke everywher•e, the grass dry and burning, two
hosts that have lost an cohesion plodding about, parched,. in
terror of their lives. Hundreds of thousands of men, faceless,
voiceless, dry as bones., trapped on a field of slaughter,
repeating night after night their ba.ck-and-forth march across
that scorched plain in the stench of sulphur and blood: .a heH
into which I plummet when I close my eyes.
I am more than half convinced it is the red pills., Diconal,
that can up these armies inside me. But without the red piUs
I can no longer sleep.
Borodino,. Diconal: I stare at the words. Are they anagrams?
They look like anagrams. But for what, and in what language?
When I wake out of the Borodino sleep I am calling or
crying or coughing with sounds that come from deep in my
c'chest. Then I quieten down and lie staring about me. My
room, my house, my hfe.: too dose a rendering to be an
jmitation: the real thing: I am back: again and again I am
back, from the ~dly of the whale disgorged. A miracle each
time, unacknowledged, unce1ebrated, unwelcome . Morning
. !26 .
after morning I am disgorged, cast up on the shore, given
another chance. And what do I do with it? Lie without motion
on the sands waiting for the night tide to return, to encircle
me,. to bear me back into the beHy of darkness. Not properly
born: a liminal creature,. unabl.e to breathe in water, that lacks
the courage to leave the sea behind and become a dweller on
land .
At the airport, the day you left, you gripped me and stared
into my eyes. 'Do not can me back, Mother,' you said,
'because I wiU not come . ' Then you shook the dust of tbis
country from your feet . You wer~ right. Neverthdess, there
is part of me that is always on the alert, always turned to the
north-west, longing to welcome you, embrace you, should
you relent and., in whatever form, come visiting. There is
something as terrible as it is admirable in that wiH of yours,
in the letters you write in wbich - ]et me be candid - there is
not enough love, or at least not enough ·of the loving-yielding
that brings love to life. Affectionate., kin.d, confiding even,
fuU of concern for me., they are nonetheless the letters of
someone grown strange, estranged.
Is this an accusation? No, but it is a reproach, a heartfelt
reproach. And this long l·ett:er - I say it now - is a cail into-
the night, into the north-west,. for you to come back to me.
Come and bury your head in my bp as a child doe;s, as you
used to., your nose burrowing like a mole's for the place you
came from. Come, says this letter: do not cut yourself off--
from me. My third word.
lfyou would say you came from me, I would not have to
say [ came from the belly of the wha.le.
I cannot live without a child. I cannot die without a child. '
What I bear, in your absence, is pain. I produce pain. You
are my pain.
Is this an accusation? Yes.}'accuse. I accuse you of abandon-
ing me. I fling this accusation at you, into the north-west,
into the te·eth ofl:he wind. I fling my pain at you .
. 127 .
 Borodino: an anagram £or Come back in some language or
other. Diconal: I cal.!.
Words vomited up from the belly of the whale, misshapen,
mysterious. Daughter .
,:..____

In the middle of the night I telephoned Lifeline. 'Home

deliveries?' said the woman- 'I don't know of anyone who
does home deliveries any more except Stuttafords. Would
you like to try Meals on Wheels?'
'It is not a question of cooking,' I said . 'I can do my own
cooking. I just want the groceries delivered . I am h.aving
difficulty carrying things.'
'Give me your number and I'll get a social worker to phone
you in the morning,' she said.
I put down the receiver.
The end comes gaUoping. I had not reckoned that as one
goes downhiH one goes faster and faster. I thought the whole
road could be taken at an amble. Wrong, quite wrong.
There is something degrading about the way it all ends -
degrading not only to us but to the idea we hav·e of ourselves,
of humankind . People lying in dark bedrooms, in their own
mess,. helpless.. People lying in hedges in the rain . You wiH
not understand this,. yet. VercueH will .
Vercuei] has disappeared again, leaving the dog behind. A
pity about VercueiL No Odysseus, no Hermes, perhaps not
even a messenger. A circler-around. A ditherer, despite the
weatherworn front.
And I? IfVercueil has failed his t·est, what was mine? Was
my test whether I had the courage to incinerate myself in
front of the House of Lies? I have gone over that moment a
thousand times in my mind, the moment of striking the
match when my ears are softly buffeted and I sit astonished
and even pleased in the midst of the flames, untouched, my
dothes burning without singeing, the fl..ames a cool blue. How
. 128 .
easy to give .meaning to one's life,. I think with surprise, thinking
very fast in the bst instant before the eyelashes catch, and
the eyebrows, and one no longer sees. Then aCter that no
thought any more, only pain (for nothing comes without
its price).
Would the pain be worse than toothache? Than childbirth?
Than this hip? Than childbirth multiplied by two? How many
Diconal to mute it? W oulcl it be playing the game to swallow
all the Diconal before turning the car down Government
Avenue, edging past the chain? Must one die in fuU knowl-
edge, fully oneself? Must one give birth to one's death without
anaesthetic? ·
The truth is, there was always something false about that
impulse,. deeply false, no matter to what rage or despair it
answered. If dying in bed over weeks and months, in a
purgatory of pain and shame, will not save my soul, why
should I be saved by dying in two minutes in a pillar of
flames? Will the lies stop because a sick olcl woman kills
herself? Whose life will be ·changed, and how? l go back to
Florence, as so often. lfFlorence were passing by, with Hope
at her side and Beauty on her back, would she be impressed
by the spectacle? Would she even spare it a glance? A juggler,
a down, an entertainer, Florence would think: not a serious
person. And stride on.
What wou]d count in Florence's ey·es as a serious death?
What would win her approval? Answer: a death that crowns
a life of honourable labour; or else that comes of itself,
irresistible, unannounced, like a clap of thunder, like a buliet
between the eyes .
Florence is the judge. Behind the glasses her eyes are stiU,
measuring all. A stillness she has already passed on to her
daughters. The court belongs to florence; it is I who pass
under review. If the hfe [live is an examined life, it is because
for ten years I hav·e heen under examination in the court of
Flo·r·ence .
. 129 .
 'Have you got Dettol?'
His voice startled me as I sat in the kitchen writing . His,
the boy's. .
'Go upstairs . Look in the bathroom, the door on the right.
Look in the cupboard under the basin.'
There wer·e splashing noises,. then he came down again.
The bandage was off;, with surprise I noticed that the stitches
were still in.
'Didn't they take out the stitches?'
He shook his head .
'But when did you leave the hospital?'
'Yesterday. The day before yesterday.'
Why the need to lie?
'Why didn't you stay and let them take care of you?'
No response.
'You must keep that cut covered, otherwise it win get
infected and leave you with a scar.' With a mark like a
whiplash across his forehead for the rest of his life. A
memento.
Who is he to me that I should nag him?' Yet [ held dosed
his open flesh, staunched the flow ofhis blood. How persistent
the impulse to mother! As a hen that loses its chicks wm take
in a duckling, oblivious of the yellow fur, the flat beak, and
teach it to take sand-baths, peck at worms.
I shook out the red tablecloth and began to cut it. '] don't
have any bandage in the house,' I said, 'but this is quite dean,
if you don't mind red.' Around his head [ wound a strip twice
and knotted it behind. 'You must go to a doctor soon,. or a
clink, to have the stitches taken out. You can't leave them
. '
ln.
His neck stiff as a poker. A smell coming from him,. the
smeU that must have set the dog off: nervousness, fear.
'My head is not sore,' he said, clearing his throat, 'but my
arm' - he moved his shoulder gingerly - 'I must rest my
arm. '
· IJO ·
 'TeU me, are you running away from someone?'
He was silent.
'I want to speak to you seriously.,' I said. 'You are too
young for this kind of thing. I told Bheki so and I teH you
again. You must listen to me. I am an oM person, I know
what I am talking about. You are stm children. You are
throwing away your lives before you know what life can be.
What are you- fifteen years old? fifteen is too young to dite.
Eighteen is too young. Twenty-one is too young.'
He got up,. brushing the red band with his fingertips. A
favour. In the age of chivalry men hacked other men to death
with women's favours fluttering on their helmets. A waste
of breath to preach prudence to this boy. The instinct for
battle too strong in him, driving him on. Battle: nature's way -r
of liquidating the weak and providing mates for the strong. ~;
Return cov·ered in glory and you shall have your desire. Gore
and glory., death and sex. And I, an oM woman, crone of
death, tying a favour around his head!
'Where is Bheki?' be said.
I searched h:is face. Had he not understood what I toM him?'
Had he forgotten? 'Sit down,' I said.
He sat.
I leaned across the table.. 'Bheki is in the ground,.' I said.
'He is in a box in a hole with earth heaped on top of him.
He is never going to leave that hole . Never, never,. never.
Understand: this is not a game like football, where after you
fall down you get up and go on playing. The men you are
playing against don't say to each other, "That one is just a
child, let us shoot .a chiid's bullet at him, a play bullet . " They
don't think of you as a child at aU. They think of you as the
enemy and they hate you quite as much as you hate them.
They wiU have no qualms about shooting you: on the con-
trary, they will smde with pleasure when you fall and make
another notch on their gunstocks.'
He stared hack at me as if I were striking him in the face,
. IJI .
blow after Mow. But, jaw set, lips clenched, he refused to
wince. Over his eyes that smoky film.
'You think their discipline is poor,' I said. 'You are wrong.
Their discipline is very good. What ho]ds them back from
exterminating every male child, every last one of you,. is not
compassion or fellow-feeling. It is discipline, nothing else:
orders from above, that can change any day. Compassion
is flown out of the window . This is war . Listen to what
I am saying! I know what I am talking about. You think
I am trying to lure you out of the struggle.. Well,. that is
true. That is what I /am doing. I say: Wait, you are too
young.'
He shifted restlessly. Talk, talk:! Talk had weighed down
the generation of his grandparents and the generation of his
parents. Lies, promises,. blandishments, threats: they had
walked stooped under the weight of aU the talk. Not he . He ,
threw off talk. Death to talk!
'You say it is time to fight,' I said.. 'You say it is time to
win or lose. Let me tell you something about that win or .lose.
Let me teU you something about that or. Listen to me.
'You know I am sick. Do you know what is wrong with
me? I have cancer. I have cancer from the accumulation of
shame I have endured in my life. That is how cancer comes
about: from self-loathing the body turns malignant and begins
to eat away at itself.
'You say,. "What is the point of consuming yourself in
shame and loathing? I don't want to listen to the story of
how you feel, it is just another story., why don't you do
something?" And when you say that, I say,. ''Yes.'' I say,
... yes." I say, "Yes."
'Ther•e is nothing I can reply but "Yes" when you put that
question to me. But let me teU you what it is like to utter
that "Y·es." It is like being on trial for your life and being
aHowed only two words, Yes and No. Whenever you take a
breath to speak out, you are warned by the judges: ''Yes or
. IJ2 ,
No: no speeches." "Yes.," you say. Yet all the time you feel
o~:cwmds stirring inside you likelife in the womb. Not
like a child kicking, not yet, but like the very beginnings,
Iike the deep-down stirring of knowledge a woman has when
she is pregnant.
'There is not only death inside me. There is life too. The
death is strong, the Hfe is weak. But my duty is to the life. I
must keep it alive. I must.
'You do not believe in words. You think only blows are
real,. blows and buUets. But listen to me: can't you hear that
the words I speak are real? Listen! They may only be air but
they come from my heart, from my womb. They are not
Yes, they are not No. What is living inside me is something
else, another word. And I am fighting for it,. in my manner,
r
fighting for it not to be stifled. I am like one of those Chines~ \f

mothers who know that their child wm be taken away from

them, if it is a daughter, and done away with, because the
need, the family's ne·ed,. the village's need, is for sons with
strong arms . They know that after the birth someone wiU
come into the room, someone whose face will be hidden,
who will take the child from the midwife's arms and, if the
sex is wrong, turn his back on them,. out of delicacy, and
sl:ifl.·e it just like that, pinching the htde nose to, holding the
jaw shut. A minute and aU is done .
'Grieve if you like, the mother is told afterwards: grief is
only natural. But do not ask: What is this thing caUed a son?
What is this thing called a daughter, that it must die?
'Do not misunderstand me. You are a son,. somebody's
son. I am not against sons . But have you ever seen a newborn
baby? Let me tell you, you would find it hard to teli the
difference between boy and girl. Every baby has the same
puffy-looking fold between the legs. The spout,. the tendril
that is said to mark out the boy is no great thing, really. Very
litde to make the differenoe between life and death. Yet
everything else, everything indefinite, everything that gives
' IJJ '
when you press it, is condemned unheard. I am arguing for
that unheard. ....
-.You ·are tired of listening to old people, I can see. You are
itching to be a man and do a man's things. You are tired of
getting ready for hfe. It is time for life itself, you think. What
an error you are making! Life is not following a~~ck, a_p.:Qle,
a flagstaff, a gun, and seeing where it will take you. Life is
not around the corner . You ar·e already in the midst oflife.'
The telephone rang. ·
'lt:'s aU right, I am not going to answer it,' I said.
In silence we waiJt,ed for the ringing to stop .
'I don't know your name,' I said.
'John.'
John: a nom de guerre if ever I heard one.
'What are your plans?'
He look,ed uncomprehending.
'What do you plan to do? Do you want to stay here?'
'I must go home.'
'Where is home?'
He stared back at me doggedly, too tired to think up
another lie.. 'Poor chi]d,' I whispered.

I did not mean to spy. Eut I was wearing sHppers, the door
to Florence's room was open, his back was to me . He was
sitting on the bed, intent on some object he had in his hand .
When he heard me he gave a start and thrust it beneath the
bedclothes.
'What is it you have there?' I asked,
'his nothing,.' he said, giving me one ofhis forced stares.
I would not have pressed him had I not noticed that a length
of skirting-board had been prised from the wall and lay on
the floor, reveahng unplastered brickwork.
'What are you up to?' I said. 'Why are you puUing the room
to pieces?'
. I34 .
 He was silent .
'Show me what you are hiding . . '
He shook his head.
I peered at the wall.. There was a gap in the brickwork
where a ventilator had been let in; through the gap one could
reach under the floorboards.
'Are you putting things under the floor?'
'I am not doing anything. '
I dialled the number florence had left. A child answered.
'Can I speak to Mrs Mkubukeli,' I said. Silence. 'Mrs Mkubu-
keli. Florence. . '
Murmurs, then a woman's voice: 'Who do you want to
speak to?'
'Mrs Mkubuke1i. Borence.'
'She is not here . '
'This is Mrs Curren,' I said, 'Mrs Mkubukeli used to work
for me. I am phoning about her son's friend, the boy who
caUs himselfJohn, I don't know his real name . It is important.
IfBorence is not there, can I speak to Mr Thabane?"
Again a [oug silence. Then a man's voice: 'Yes, this is
Thabane.'
'This is Mrs Curren. You remem her, we met. I am phoning
about Bheki's friend, from his schooL Perhaps you don't
know, but he has been in hospitaL'
'I know.'
'Now he has left the hospital, or :run away, and come here.
[ have reason to believe he has a weapon of some kind, I don't
know what exactly, which he and Eheki must have hidden
in florence's room. I think that is why he has come back.'
'Yes,' he said flatly.
'Mr Thabane, I am not asking you to assert authority over
the boy. Eut he is not welL He was quite badly injured. And
I think he is in an emotion.ally disturbed state. I don't know
how to get in touch with his family, I don't even know
whether he has family in Cape Town . He won't tell me . AU
. 135
I am asking is that someone should come and talk to him,
someone he trusts,. and take him away befor·e something
happens to him.'
'He is in an emotionaUy distmbed state. What do you
mean?'
'I mean he needs help. I mean he may not be responsible
for his actions. I mean he has had a blow to the head . I mean
I cannot take care of him,. it is beyond me.. Someone must
come.'
'I will see.'
'No, that is not good enough. I want an undertaking.'
'I will ask someone to fetch him. But 1 cannot teH you
when . '
'Today?'
'I cannot say today. Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow. I
wm see.'
'Mr Thabane, let me make one thing dear to you. I am not
trying to prescribe to this boy or to anyone else what he
should do with his Hfe. He is old enough and self-wiHed
enough to do what he wiU do. But as for t.his killing, this
bloodletting in the name of.comradeship, I detest it with all my
heart and souL I think it is barbarous. That is what l want to
say.'
'This is not a good hne, Mrs Curren. Your voice is very
tiny, very tiny and very far away. I hope you can hear me . '
'I can hear you.'
'Good. Then let me say, Mrs Curren, I don't think you
understand very much about comradeship.'
'I understand enough, thank you . '
'No, you don't,' he said, quite certain of himself. 'When
you are body and soul in the struggle as these young people
are, when you are prepared to lay down your lives for each
~ther without question,. then a bond grows up that is stronger
than any bond you will know again. That is comradeship. I
see it every day with my own ey·es. My generation has
· 136 .
 nothing that can compare. That is why we must stand back
for them,. for the youth. We st.and back but we stand behind
them . That is what you cannot understand, because you are
too far away. '
'I am far away, certainly,' I said,. 'far away and tiny .
Nevertheless, I fear I know comradeship all too welL The
Germans had comradeship, and the Japanese, and the Spar-
tans. Shaka's impis too, I am sure. Comradeship is nothing
but a mystique ofdeath, ofkiUing and dying., masquerading
as what yo~u call a bond (a bond of what? Love? I doubt it.)..
I have no sympathy with this comradeship . You are wrong,
you .and Florence and everyone else, to be taken in by it and,
worse, to encourage it iln children. II: is just another of those
icy, exclusive, death-driven male constructions. That is my
·--..:.-:,...__._.
~-,
opm10n.
More passed between us, but I won't repeat it. We ex-
changed opinions. We agreed to differ.
The .afternoon dragged on . No one came to fetch the boy.
I lay in bed, groggy with drugs., a cushion under my back,
trying with one sman adjustment after another to ease the
pain, longing for sleep,. dreading the dream of Borodilno.
The air thickened, it began to rain. From the blocked gutter
came a steady drip. The smell of cat urine wafted in from the
carpet on the landing . A tomb, I thought: a late bourgeois
tomb. My head turned this way and that. Grey hair on the
pillow, unwashed, lank. And in Florence's room, in the
growing dark, the boy, lying on his back with the bomb or
whatever it is in his hand, his eyes wide open, not veiled
now but dear: thinking, more than thinking, envisioning.
Envisioning the moment of glory when he will arise, fuUy
himself at last, erect, powerful, transfigured~ When the fiery
flower will unfold, when the pillar oCsmoke win rise. The
bomb on his chest like a talisman: as Christopher Columbus
lay in the dark ofhis cabin,. holding the compass to his chest,
the mystic instrument that would guide him to the Indies,
. 137 .
the Isles of the Blest. Troops of maidens with bared breasts
singing to him, opening their arms, as he wades to them
through the shallows holding before him the needle that never
wavers., that points forever in one direction, to the future .
Poor chitld! Poor child! From somewhere tears sprang and
blurred my sight. Poor John, who in the old days would have
been destined to be a garden boy and eat bread and jam for
lunch at the back door and drink out of a tin, battling now
for aU the insulted and injured,, the trampled, the ridiculed,
for aU the garden boys of South Africa!

In the cold early morning I heard the gate to the courtyard

being tried. Vercueil, I thought: Vercueil is back. Then the
doorbeH rang, once, twice, long rings, peremptory, im-
patient, and I knew it was not v,ercueit
It takes me minutes nowadays to get downstairs, particu-
bdy ifl am befuddled by the pitl]s. While I crept down in the
half-dark they went on ringing the beU, rapping at the door.
'I am coming!' I called as loudly as 1 could. But I was too
slow. I hea.rd the courtyard gate swing open . There was a
burst of knocking at the kitchen door, and voices speaking
Afrikaans. Then, as flat and unremarkable as one stone strik-
ing anoth,er, came the sound of a shot.
A silence £en in which I deady heard the tinkle of breaking
glass . 'Wait!' I caUed, and ran, truly ran -I did not know I
had it in me- to the kitchen door . 'Wait'!' I called, slapping
at the pane,. fumbling with the bolts and chains - 'Don't do
anything!'
There was someone in a Mue overcoat standing on the
veranda with h:is back to me. Though he must have heard
me, he did not turn .
I drew the last bolt,, flung the door open, appear,ed among
them. I had forgotten my gown, my feet were bare, I stood
there in my white nightdress like, for ail I know, a body risen
. 138 .
from the dead. 'Wait!' I said. 'Don't do anything yet, he is
just a child!'
There were three of them. Two were in uniform. The
third, wearing a pullover with reindeer running in a band
across his chest, held a pistol pointing downward. 'Give me
a chance to talk to him,.' I said.,. splashing through the night's
puddles. They stared in astonishment but did not try to stop
me.
The window offlorence's room was shau:ered. The room
itsdf was in darkness; but, peering through the hole, I could
make out a figure crouched. besid~ the bed at the far end.
'Open the door, my boy,'' I said. 'I won't ]et them hurt
you, I promise.'
It was a lie. He was lost, I had. no power to save him. Yet
something went out from me to him. I ached to embrace
h:im, to protect him.
One of the policemen appeared beside me,. pressed against
the walL 'TeU him to come out,' he said. I turned on him in
a fury. 'Go away!' I screamed, and fell into a fit of coughing .
The sun was coming up, rosy, in a sky full of drifting
cloud.
'John!' I called through the coug.hing . 'Come out! I wiU
not let them do anything to you.'
Now the man in the puUover was at my side. 'TeH him to
pass out his weapons,' he said in a low voice.
'What weapons?'
'He has a pistol, I don't know what dse. Ten him to pass
everything out. '
'First promise you will not hurt him.. '
His fingers dosed on my arm. I resist,ed, but he was too
strong. 'You are going to catch pneumonia out here,., he said.
Something descended on me from behind: a coat, an overcoat,
one of the policemen's overcoats. 'Neem haar binne,' he mur-
mured. They guided me back to the kitchen and dosed the
door on me .
. 139 .
 I sat down, stood up again. The coat stank of cigarette
smoke. [ dropped it on the floor and opened the door. My
feet were blue with cold. 'John!' I called. The three men were
huddled over a radio. The one who had given me his coat
turned with an exasperated .air. 'Lady,. it is dangerous out
here,' he said. He bundled me indoors again, then could not
find the key 1:0 lock the door .
'He is just a child, ' I said.
'Let us do our work, lady,' he rephed.
'I am watching you,' I said: 'I am watching everything you
do. I tell you, he is just: a childl!'
He drew a breath as though about to respond,. then let it
out in a sigh and waited for me to talk mysdf out. A young
man, solid, raw-boned. Son to someone, cousin to many.
Many cousins, many aunts and uncles, great-aunts and great-
uncles, standing about him,. behind him, above him hke a
chorus, guiding, admonishing.
What could I say? What did: we have in common to make
intercourse possible, except that he was here to de£end me,
to defend my interests, in the wider sense?
'E.k staan nie aan jo.u kant nie,' I said. 'Ek staan aan die
teenkant.' I stand on the other side. But on the other bank too,
the other bank of the river. On the far bank, looking back.
He turned,. inspecting the stove, the sink, the racks, occupy-
ing die ou dame while his friends did their business outside.
AU in a day's work.
'That's all,' I said. Tm finished. I wasn't talking to you
anyway.'
To whom then? To you: always to you . How I Hve, how
I lived: my story.
The doorbell :rang. More men, men in boots and caps and
camouflage uniforms, tramping through the house. They
clustered at the kitchen window. 'Hy sit daar in die buitekamer,'
explained the policeman,, pointing to Florence's :room . 'Daar's
net die een deur en d.ie een venster. '
. 140 .
 'Nee, dan het ons hom,' said one of the newcomers.
'I warn you, I'm watching everything you do,' I said.
He turned to me. 'Do you know this boy?' he said.
'Yes, I know him.'
'Did you know he had arms?'
I shrugged. 'God save the unarmed in these days.'
Someone dse came in, a young woman in uniform with a
crisp., dean air about her. 'Is dit die dame die?' she said;, and
then, to me.: 'We are going to dear the house for a little while,.
tiU this business is over. Is there anywhere you would like to
go, friends or relatives?'
']am not leaving. This is my house.'
Her friendliness, her concern did not waver. 'I know,' she
said, 'but it's too dangerous to stay.. Forjust a Htde while we
must ask you to [eave.'
The men at the window had stopped talking now: they
were impatient for me to be gone. 'Bel die ambulans,' said one
of them. 'Ag, sy .kan sommer by die stasie wag,' said the woman.
She turned to me. 'Come now,. Mrs .... 'She waited for me
to supply the name. I did not.. 'A nice warm cup of tea,' she
offered.
'I am not going.'
They paid my words no more attention than they would a
child's. 'Gaan haal 'n kombers,' said the man- 'sy's .amper blou
van die koue . ' .
The woman went upstairs and came back with the quilt
from my bed. She wrapped it around me,. gave me a hug,
then helped me into my slippers. No sign of disgust at my
legs, my feet. A good girl, rea:r·ed to make someone a good
wife.
'Are there are any pills or medicines or anything dse you
want to take along?' she asked.
'I'm not leaving,' I :repeated, gripping my chair.
Murmured words pass,ed between her and the men. With-
out warning I was lifted from behind, under the arms . The
. 141 .
woman took my legs. Like a carpet they carried me to the
front door. Pain racked my back. 'Put me down!' I cried.
'In a minute,' said the woman soothingly .
'I have cancer!" I screamed- 'Put me down!'
Cancer!. What a pleasure to fling th~word at them! ]t stopped
them in their tracks like a knife.. 'Sit h'aar neer,. dalk kom haar
ie.ts oor,' said the man holding me- 'E.k het mos gese jy moet .die
ambulans bel.' Gingedy they laid me down on the sofa.
'Where is the pain?' asked the woman, frowning .
'In my heart,' I said . She looked puzzled. 'I have canoer of
the heart . ' Then she understood;. she shook her head as if
shaking off flies.
'Does it pain you to be carried?'
'h: pains me all the time,' I said.
She caught the eye of the man behind me; something passed
between them so amusing that she could not keep hack a
smHe.
'I caught it by drinking from the_ cup of bitterness,' I
plunged on . What did it mal:ter if they thought me dotty?
'You will probably catch it too one day . It is hard to escape.'
There was a crash of breaking glass. Both of them rushed
from the room; I got up and Iimped behind.
Nothing had changed except that a second windowpane
was gone.. The courtyard itself was empty; the policemen,
half a dozen of them now, were crouching on the veranda,
guns at the ready.
'Weg!' shouted one of them furiously . 'Kry h.aar weg!'
The woman bundled me indoors. As she dosed the door
there was a curt explosion, a fus.illade of shots, then a long
stunned silence, then low talk and, from somewhere, the
sound ofVercueH's dog yapping.
I tried to pull open the door, but the woman held me tight.
'If you have hurt him I will nev·er forgive you,' I said.
'It's aU right, we'U phone again for the ambulance,' she
said, trying to soothe me.
. 142 .
 But the ambulance was already there, drawn up on the
sidewalk.. Scores of people were gathering excitedly from all
directions, neighbours, passers-by, young and old, black and
whit·e; from the balconies of the flats people stared down. By
the time the policewoman and I emerged from the front door
they were wheeling the body, covered in a blanket, down the
driveway, and loading it aboard.
I made to dimb into the ambulance after it; one of the
attendants even took my arm to help me in; but a policeman
intervened. 'Wait, we'll send another ambulance for her,,' he
said.
'I don't want another ambulance,.' I said. He put on a
kindly., nonplussed look. 'I want to go with him,' I said, and
made another attempt to climb in . The quilt :CeH to my feet.
He shook his head. 'No,' he said. He gestured and the
attendant closed the doors.
'God forgive us!' I br·eathed. With the quilt clasped around
me I began to walk down Schoonder Street,. away from the
crowd. I had .almost reached the corner when the police-
woman came trotting after me. 'You must come home now:!'
she ordered . 'It's not my home any more,·· I replied in a fury,.
and k·ept walking. She took my arm; I shook myself free .
'Sy's van ham: kop aj,' she remark·ed to no one in particular,
and gave up.
In Buitenkant Street, under the flyover, I sat down to rest.
A steady stream of cars flowed past heading for the city . No
one spared me a glance. With my wild hair and pink quilt I
might be a spectacle on Schoonder Street; here, amid the
rubble and filth, I was just p~t:to(the~urban shadow land.
A man and woman passed on foot on the other side of the
street. Did I recognise the woman? Was it the one Vercuei]
had brought to the house, or did all the women who hung
around the A valon Hotel and SoUy Kramer's Liquor Store
have those wasted,. spidery legs? The man, carrying a knotted
plastic bag over his shoulder, was not V ercueil.
. !43 .
 I wrapped myself tighter in the quilt and lay down.
Through my bones [ could fed the rumble of traffic on the
fl.yover. The piUs were in the house, the house in other hands.
Could I survive without the piUs? No. But did [ want to
survive? I was beginning to feel the indifferent peace of an
old animal that, sensing its time is near, creeps, coM and
sluggish, into the hole in the ground where everything wiU
contract to the slow thudding of a heart. Behind a concrete
piUar,. in a place wher·e the sun had not shone for thirty years,
I curled up on my good side, listening to the beat of the pain
that might as well have been the beat of my puls·e.
I must have siept. Time must have passed. When I opened
my eyes there was a child kneeling beside me,. feeling inside
the folds of the quilt. His hand crept over my body. 'There
is nothing for you,' I tried to say, but my teeth were loose.
Ten years old at most, with a shaven skull and bare feet and
a hard look. Behind him two companions, even younger.. I
slipped out the teeth. 'Leave me alone,' I said: 'I am skk, you
wiU get sick from me.'
Slowly they withdrew and, like crows,. stood waiting.
I had to empty my bladder. Yielding., I urinated where I
lay. Thank God for the cold, I thought, thank God for the.
numbness: all things work together toward an easy birth.
The boys came closer again. I awaited the prying of their
hands, not caring. The roar of wheels lulled me; like a grub
in a hive, I was absorbed into the hum of the spinning world.
The air dense with noise. Thousands of wings passing and
repassing without touching. How was there space for them
am How is there spa·ce in the skies for the souls of all the
departed? Because, says Marcus Aurelius,. they fuse one with
another: they burn and fus·e and so are returned to the gr•eat
cyde.
Death after death. Bee-ash.
The flap of the quilt was drawn back. I felt light on my
eyelids., coldness too on· my cheeks where the tears had run.
. 144 .
Something pressed between my lips, was forced between my
gums. I gagged and puUed away. Ail three children were
clustered over me now in the gloom; there may have been
others too, behind them. What were they doing? I tried to
push the hand away but it pressed all the harder. An ugly
nois·e came from my throat, a, dry rasp like wood sphtti:ng.
The hand withdrew. 'Don't-' I said; but my palate was sore,
it was hard to form words.
What did I want w say? Don't do that!? Don't you see I have
nothing?? Don't you have any mercy?? What nons·ense. Why
should there be mercy in the world? I thought of beetles,
those big black beedes with the humped backs, dying, waving
th,eir [egs feebly, and ants pouring over them, gnawing at the
soft places,. the joints, the eyes,. tearing away the beede-fl.esh.
It was a stick, nothing more, a stick a few inches long that
he had forced into my mouth. I couM taste the grains of dirt
it left behind .
With the tip of the stick he lifted my upper Hp. I pulled
back and tried to spit. Impassively he stood up. With a bare
foot he kicked, and a little rain of dust and pebbles struck my
face .
A car passed, oudining the children in its hea.dlights . They
began to move off down Buitenkant Street.. Darkness re-
turned.
Did these things reaHy happen? Yes, these things happened.
Ther·e is no more to be said about it. They happened a stone's
throw from Breda Street and Schoonder Street and V rede
Street,. where a century ago the patricians of Cape Town gave
orders that there be erected spacious homes for themselves
and their desoendants in perpetuity, foreseeing nothing of the
day when, in their sha.dows, the chickens would come home
to roost.
There was a fog in my head, a grey confusion. I shivered;
paroxysms of yawning passed over me. For a while I was
nowhere .
. 145 .
 Then something was sniffing at my face: a dog . I tried to
ward it off but h found a way past my fingers . . So I yielded,
thinking, there are worse things than a dog's wet nose, its
eager breath. I let it lick my fa.ce, lick my lips., lick up the salt
of my tears. Kisses, if one wanted to look at them that way.
Someone was with the dog. Did I recognize the smeU? Was
it Vermeil, or did all str·eet-wanderers smeH of mouldering
leaves,. of underwear rotting in the ~-h_~p? 'Mr Vercueil?'
I croaked, and the dog whined with excitement, giving a
great sneeze straight into my face .
A match flared. Y·es, it was Vercueil, hat and .all. 'Who put
you here?' he asked . 'Myself,' I said, past the raw place on
my palate. The match died. Tears came again, which the dog
eagerly consumed.
With his high shoulderbbdes and his chest narrow as a
gull's, I wouM not have guessed that Vercueil could be so
strong. But he lifted me, wet patch and aU,. and carried me.
I thought: forty years sinc'e I was last carried by a man. The
misfortune of a tall woman . WiU this be how the story ends:
with being cauied in strong arms across the sands, through
the shallows,. past the br,eakers, into the darker depths?
We were away from the flyover, in blessed stillness. How
much more bearabl.e everything was suddenly becoming!
Where was the pain? Was the pain in a better humour too?
'Don't go back to Schoonder Street,' I ordered.
We passed under a streedight. I saw the strain in the muscles
of his neck,. heard his breath coming fast. 'Put me down for
a minute,' I said. He put me down and rested. When would
the time come when the jacket fell away and great wings
sprouted from his shoulders?
Up Buitenkant Street he bore me, across Vrede Street,
street of peace, and, treading more slowly, groping before
each step, into a dark wooded space. Through branches I
glimpsed the stars.
He set me down.
. 146 '
 'I am so happy to see you,.' I said, the words coming
from my heart, heartfelt. And then: 'I was attacked by some
children before you came. Attacked or violated or explored,
I don't know which. That is why I talk so strangely . They
pushed a stick into my mouth, I stili don't understand why.
What pleasure could it have given them?'
'They wanted your gold t,eeth.,' he said.. 'They get money
for gold from the pawnshops.'
'Gold teeth? How strange. I haven't any gold teeth. I took
my teeth out anyway. Here they are.'
from somewh·ere in the dark he fetched cardboard, a carton
box folded flat. He spread it and helped me to lie down. Then
without haste., without ceremony, he lay down too with his
hack to me . The dog settled between our legs .
'Do you want some of the quilt?' I said.
'I'm OK.'
Time passed.
'I'm sorry, hut I'm terribly thirsty,.' I whispered. 'Is there
no water here?'
He got up and came back with a botde . I smeUed it: sweet
wine, the bottle half full. 'It's all I've got,' he said. I drank it
down. It did nothing for my thirst, but in the sky the stars
began to swim. Everything grew remote: the smell of d.amp
earth, the cold, the man beside me, my own body. Like a
crab after a long day, tired,. folding its claws, even the pain
went"fo sleep. I swooped back into darkness.
When I awok·e he had turned and flung an arm across my
neck. I could have freed myself, but preferred not to disturb
him. So while by slow degre·es the new day broke, I lay face to
face with him, not stirring. His eyes opened once, alert, like an
animal's. 'I am not gone,' l murmured. The eyes dosed.
The thought came: Whom, of aU beings on earth, do I
know best at this hour? Him. Every hair of his beard, every
crease of his forehead known to me. Him, not you. Because
he is here,. beside me, now.
. 147.
 Forgiv·e me . Time is short, I must trust my heart and teU
the truth. Sightless, ignorant,. [ foUow where the truth takes
me.
'Are you awake?' I murmured .
'Yes.'
'Both those boys are dead now,' I said. 'They have killed
them both. Did you know?'
'I know.'
'You know what happened at the house?''
'Yes.'
'Do you mind if I talk?'
'Talk.'
'Let me tell you; I met Florence's brother the day Bheki
died- brother or cousin or whatever. An educated man. I
told him how I wished Bheki had never got inv·olved in -
what shaH I caU it?- the struggle. "He is just a child," I said:
"He isn't ready. But for that friend of his, he would never
have been drawn in."
'Later I spoke to him again on the telephone. I told him
frankly what I thought of the comradeship for which both
those children have now died. A mysdque of death,. I called
it. I blamed people like Florence and him for doing nothing
to discourage it.
'He heard me out civilly. I was entitled to my opinions, he
said. I did not change his mind.
'But now I ask myself: What right have I to opinions about
comradeship or anything else? What right have I to wish
·[· Bheki and his friend had kept out of trou.ble? T.o have opinio.ns
· in a vacuum, opinions that touch no one, is, it seems to
._me, nothing . Opinions ~~~!!>e_heard ~)'_Qth~!S, heard and
l weighed, not merel!y Hstened to out of politeness. And to be
~ weighed they must have weight. Mr Thahane does not weigh
what I say . It has no weight to him. Flm·ence does not even
hear me. To Florence what goes on in my head is a matter of
complete indifference, I know that.'
. !48 .
 Vercueil got up, went behind a tree, urinated. Then, to my
surprise, he came and lay down again . The dog snuggled
against him, its nose in his crotch. With my tongue I probed
the sore place in my mouth, tasting the blood.
'I have not changed my mind,' I said. 'I stiU detest these
calls for sacrifice that end with young men bleeding to death
in the mud. War is never what it pretends to be. Scratch the
surface and ym:dind, invariably, old men sending young men
to their death in the name of some abstraction or other.
Despite what Mr Thaba~e says-(Ido- noi bbme him, the,
future~c;gmes .disg..t;ti_~~~. ifit came naked we would be petrified
by what we saw), it remains a war of the old upon the young.
Freedom or death! shout Bheki and his friends. Whose words?
Not their own. Freedom or death!, I have no doubt, those two
litde girls are rehearsing in their sleep. No! I want to say; Save
yourselves!
'Whose is the true voice of wisdom, Mr Vermeil? Mine, I
believe. Yet who am I, who am I to have a voice at all? How
can l honourably urge them to turn their back on that call?
What am I entitled to do but sit in a comer with my mouth
shut? I have no voice; I lost it long ago; perhaps I have never
had one. I have no voice, and that is that. The rest should be
silence. But with this - whatever it is - this voice that is no
voice, I go on. On and on.'
Was V ercueil smiling? His face was hidden . . In a tootW.ess
whisper sticky with sibilants I went on.
'A crime was committed long ago. How long ago?' I do
not know. But longer ago than 1916, certainly. So long ago
that I was born into it. lt is part of my inheritance . It is part
of me, I am part of it.
'Like every crime it ha.d its price. That price, I used to
think, would have to be paid in shame: in a liife of shame and
a shameful death, unlamented, in an obscure corner. f accepted
that. I did not try to set myself apart. Though it was not a
crime I asked to be committed, it was committed in my name.
. 149 .
I raged at times against the men who did the dirty work -
you have seen h, a shameful raging as st.upi,d as what it raged
against - but I accepted too that, in a sense., they lived inside
me. So that when in my rages I wished them dead,. I wished
death on myself too. In the name ofhonour. Ofan honourable
notion of honour . Hon:esta mors.
'I ha.ve no idea what freedom is, Mr Vercueit I am sur·e
Bheki and his friend had no idea either. Perhaps fr·eedom is
always ~and only 'YYhat is unimaginable. Nev,ertheless, we
know tinfreed;in:
"-· ~
when we see it- don't we? Bheki was not
free, and knew it. You are not free, at least not on this earth,.
nor am L I was born a slave and I will most certainly die a
slave. A liife in fetters, a death in fetters: that is part of the
price, nottooequibbled at, not to he whined about.
'What I did not know, what I did n:o,t kn:ow - listen to me
now! -was that the price was even higher. I had miscalculated .
Where did the mistake come in? It had something to do with
honour, with the notion I dung to through thick and thin,.
from my education, from my reading,. t:hat in his soul the
honourable man can suffer no harm. 1 strove always for
honour, for a private honour, using shame as my guide . As
long as I was ashamed I knew I had not wandered into
dishonour. That was the use of shame: as a touchstone,
something that would always be there, somethi~gyou co~dd­
CODie"'back to like ablind person, to touch, to tell you where
you were. For the rest I kept a decent distance from my
shame. I did not waUow in it. Shame never became a shameful
pleasure; it never ceased to gnaw me. I was not proud of it,
I was ashamed of it. My shame~ ~y own. Ashes in my mouth
day after day after day, wh:ich never ceased to tast'e hke ashes.
'It is a confession I am making here, this morning, Mr
Vercueil,'- I said, 'as fuU a confession as I know how . I
withhold no secrets . I have been a good person, I freely
confess to it. I am a good person stilt What times these are
when to be a good p·erson is not enough!
. 150 .
 'What I had not calculated on was that more might be called
for than to be good. For there are plenty of good people in
this country.. We are two a penny, we good and nearly-good.
What the times caU £or is quite different from goodness. The
t1ffies-cafCfor heroism . A word that, as I speak it, sounds
foreign to my lips. I doubt that I have ever used it before,
ev,en in a lecture. Why not? Perhaps out of respect. Perhaps
out of shame. As one drops one's gaze before a naked man.
I would have used the words heroic status instead, I think,. in
a lecture . The hero with his heroic status . The hero, that
antique naked figure . '
A deep groan came from Vercueil's throat. I craned over,
but ail I could see was the stubble on his cheek and a hairy
ear. 'Mr Vercueil!' I whispered. He did not stir. Asleep?
Pretending to sleep?' How much had passed him by unheard?'
Had he heard about goodness and heroism? About honour
and shame? Is a true confession still true if it is not heard? Do
you hear me, or have I put you to sleep too?
I went behind a bush ..Birds were singing aU around. Who
· would have thought there was such ]J_irdlife in the suburbs!
It was like Arcady. No wonder Vercueil and his friends lived
out of doors: -Wh-at is a roof good for but to keep off the rain?
Vercueil and his comrades.
I lay down beside him again,. my feet cold and muddy.
It was quite Hght now. On our flattened-out box in the
vacant lot we must have been visib[,e to every passer-by.. That
is how we must be in the eyes of the angels: people hving
in houses of glass, our ·every act nak·ed. Our hearts naked
too, beating -in. chests of glass.. Birdsong poured down like
rain.
'I fed so much better this morning,' I said. 'But perhaps
we should go back now. Feeling better is usually a warning
that I am going to feel worse.'
V,ercueH sat up, took off his hat, scratched his scalp with
long, dirty nails. The dog came trotting up fr·om somewhere
· I)I '
and fussed around us. Vercueil folded the cardboard and hid
it :in the bushes .
'Do you know I have had a breast removed?' I said out of
the blue.
He fidgeted., looked uncomfortable.
'I regret it now, of course. Regret that I am marked. It
becomes like trying to seH a piece of furniture with a scratch
or a burn mark. It's stiU a perfectly good chair, you say, but
people aren't int·erested. People don't like marked objects. I
am talking about my hfe . It may not be perfectly good, but
it is still a life, not a half.:.life. I thought I would seU it or spend
it to save my honour. But who will accept it in its present
state? It is like trying to spend a drachma . A perfectly good
coin somewhere else, but not here. Suspiciously marked .
'But I haven't quite given up y'et. I am still casting around
for something to do with it. Do you have any suggestions?'
V ercueil put on his hat, tugging it down .firmly fore and
aft.
'I would love to buy you a. new hat,' I said.
He smiled. I took his arm; slowly we set off along Vrede
Street.
'Let me teH you the dream I had,.' I said!. 'The man in my
dream didn't have a hat, but] think it was you. He had long
oily hair brushed straight back from his forehead.' Long and
oily; dirty too, hanging down at the back in ugly rat's-tails;
but I did not mention that.
'We were at the seaside. He was teaching me to swim. He
held me by the hands and drew me out while I lay flat and
kicked. I was wearing a knitted costume, the kind we had in
the old days, navy blue. I was a child. But then in dreams we
are always children.
'He was drawing me out, backing into the sea, fixing me
with his eyes. He had eyes lik·e yours. There were no waves,,
just a ripple of water coming :in, glinting with light. In fact
the water was oily too . Wher·e hils body broke the surface the
· I52 .
oil dung to him with the heavy sheen oil has. I thought to
myself: sardine oil: I am the little sardine: he is taking me out
into the oiL I wanted to say Tum back, but dared not open
my mouth for fear the oil would flood in and fill my lungs.
Drowning in oil: I had not the courage for that.'
I paused to let him speak, but he was silent. We turned the
corner into Schoonder Street.
'Of course I am not teUing you this dream :innocently,' I
said. 'RetaHing a dream is always meant to achieve something.
The question·iS~-what?
'The day I first saw you behind the garage was the day I
had the bad news about myself, about my case. It was too
much of a coincidence. I wondered whether you were not, if
you will excuse the word, an angel come to show me the
way. Of course you were not, are not, cannot b.e- I see that.
But that is on[y ha[f the story, isn't it? We ha[f perceive but!
we also half create.
'So I have continued to tell myself stories in which you
lead,. I follow. And if you say not a word, that is, I tell myself,
because the angel is wordless . The angel goes before, the
woman follows. His eyes are open, he s·ees; hers are shut, she
is stiH sunk in the deep of worldhness. That is why I keep
turning to you for guidance,. for help.'
The front door was locked but the gate to the courtyard
swung open. The broken glass had not been swept up, the
door to Florence's room hung ask,ew. I cast my gaze down,
treading carefuHy, not ready yet to look into the room, not
strong enough.
The kitchen door was unlocked. They had not found the
key .
'Come in,' I said to Vercueil.
The house was and was not as it had been. Things in the
kitchen were out of place. My umbrella hung where it had
never hung before. The sofa had been shifted, 'exposing an
old stain on the carpet. And ov,er all a strange smeU: not
. I)J .
 only cigarette smoke and sweat but something sharp and
penetrating that I could not place. They hav·e left their mark
on everything, l thought: thorough workers . Then I remem-
bered the file on my desk, the letter,. an the pa.ges thus
far. That too! I thought: they wiU have been through that
too! SoHed fingers turning the pages, eyes without love
"going over the naked words. 'Help me upstairs.,' I said to
Vercueit
The file, left open when I last wrote, was dosed. The lock
of the filing-cabinet was broken. There were gaps in the
bookshelves.
The two unused rooms had had their locks forced.
They had been through the cupboard, the chest of drawers.
Nothing left untouched. Like the last visit the burglars paid.
The search a mere pretext. The true purpose the touching, the
fingering. The spirit malevolent. Like rape: a way of filthying
a woman.
I turned to Vercueil, wordless,. sick to the stomach.
'There's someone downstairs,' he said .
From the landing we could hear someone talking on the
telephone.
The voice stopped. A young man in uniform emerged into
the hallway and nodded to us.
'What are you doing in my house?' I called down.
'Just checking.,' he replied quite cheerfully. 'We didn't want
strangers coming in.' He gathered up a cap,. a coat, a rifle.
Was it the rifle I had smelled? 'The detectives will be here at
eight,' he said. TU wait outside.' He smiled; he seemed to
think he had done me a service; he s·eemed to be expecting
thanks.
'I must have a bath, ' I said to VercueiL
But I did not have a bath. I dosed the bedroom door,. took
two of the red pilUs and lay down trembHng aU over. The
trembling got worse till I was shaking like a leaf in a storm.
I was cold hut the trembling was not from the cold .
. 154 .
 A minute at a time,. I told myself: do not fall to pieces now:
think only of the next minute .
The t:r·embling began to subside.
Man, I thought: the only creature with a part ofhis existence
in the unknown, in the future, like a shadow cast before him.
Trying continually to catch up with that moving shadow, to
inhabit the image of his hope. But l, I cannot afford to
be man . Must be something smaller, blinder, closer to the
groum!.,
- There was a knock .and Vercueil came in, followed by the
policeman who yesterday had worn the reindeer jersey and
now wor·e a jacket and tie. The trembling began again. He
motioned for Vercueil to leave the room. I sat up. 'Don't go,
Mr Vercueil,' I said; and to him: 'What right have you to
come into my house?'
'We have been worried about you.' He did not se·em
worried at aH. 'Where were you last night?' And then, when
I did not :reply: 'Are you sure you are all right by yourself,
Mrs Curren?'
Though I clenched my fists, the trembling grew wors·e till
it convulsed me . '] am not by myself!' I screamed at him:
'You are the one who is by himself!'
He was not taken aback. On the contrary, he seemed to be
encouraging me to go on .
Hold yourself together., I thought! They will commit you,
they wiU call you mad and take you away!
'What do you want here?' I asked mo:r·e qui·edy.
'I just want to ask a few questions. How did you come
across this boy Johannes?'
Johannes: was that his true name? Surely not.
'He was a friend of my domestk's son. A school-friend . '
Out of his pocket he brought a little cassette recorder and
set it on the bed beside me.
'And where is your domestic's son?'
'He is dead and buried . Surely you know these things.'
. 155 .
 'What happened to him?'
'He was shot out on the Flats.'
'And are there any more of them that you know of?'
'More of whom?'
'More friends.··
Thousands . Minions . More than you can count.'
'I mean,. more from that celL Are there any others who
have used yom premises?'
·'No.'
'And do you know how these .arms came into their
hands?'
'What arms?''
'A pistoL Three detonators.'
'I know nothing about detonators. I don't know what a
detonator is. The pistol was mine.'
'Did they take it from you?'
'I lent it to them. Not to them. To the boy, John.'
'You lent him the pistol? Was the pistol yours?'
'Y,es.'
'Why did you l·end him the pistol?'
'To defend himself.'
'To defend himself against who, Mrs Curren?'
'To defend himself against attack.'
'And what kind of pistol was it, Mrs Curren?' Can you
show me the licence for it?'
'I know nothing about kinds of pistoL [have had it for a
long time., from before an this fuss about licences. '
'Are you sure you gave it to him? You know this is a
chargeable offence we are talking about . '
The piUs were beginning to take effect . The pain in my
back grew more distant, my Hmbs relaxed, the horizon began
to expand again.
'Do you reaUy want to go on with this nonsense?' I said . I
lay back on the piliow .and dosed my eyes. My head was
spinning. 'These are dead people we are talking about. There
· I)6 ·
is nothing more you can do to them. They are safe. You have
ha.d the execution. Why bother with a trial?-Why not just
dose the case?'
He picked up the recorder, fiddled with it, put it back on
the piUow . 'Just checking,' he said.
With a languorous arm I brushed the recorder away. He
caught it before it hit the floor.
'You have been through my private papers,' I said. 'You
have taken books that belong to me. I want them back. l
want everything back. AU my things. They are no business
of yours.'
'We are not going to eat your -books, Mrs Curren. You
will get everything back1lii the end.,-
'I don't want: things back in the end. I want them back
now. They are mine. They are private.'
He shook his head. 'This is not private,. Mrs Curren. You
know that. Nothing is private any more . '
The languor was getting to my tongue now. 'Leave me,' I
said thickly.
'just a few more questions. Where were you last night?'
'With Mr Vercueil.'
'Is this Mr V ercueil?'
It took too much of an effort to open my eyes. 'Yes,' I
murmured.
'Who is Mr Vercueil?' And then, in quite a different tone:
'Wie isjy?'
'Mr Vercueil takes care ofme . Mr V ercueill is my right-hand
man. Come here, Mr VercueiL'
I reached out and found Vercueill's trouser-leg, then his
hand, the bad hand with the curled fingers. With the numb,.
dawlike grip of the old I dung to it .
'In Godsnaam,' said the detective somewhere far .away.. In
God's name: mere fulmination, or a curs·e on the pair of us?
My grip broke, I began to slide away.
A word appeared before me: Thabanchu, Thaba Nchu. l
' I)7 .
tried to concentrate. Nine letters, anagram for what? With a
great effort I placed the b first. Then I was gone.
I awoke thirsty, groggy, full of pain. The dockface stared
at me but I could make no sense of the hands. The house was
silent with the silence of deserted houses.
Thabanchu: banch.? bath? With stupid hands I unwrapped
the sheet from around me. Must I have a bath?
But my feet did not take me to the bathroom . Holding to
the rail, bent over, groaning, I went downstairs and dialled
the Guguletu number. On and on the phone rang. Then at
last someone answered, a child, a girL 'Is Mr Thabane there?'
I asked. 'No.' 'Then can I speak to Mrs Mkubuleki- no, not
Mrs Mkubuleki, Mrs Mkubukdi?' 'Mrs Mkubukeli does not
li.ve here . ' 'But do you know Mrs Mkubukeli?' 'Yes, I know
him.' 'Mrs Mkubukeli?' 'Yes . . ' 'Who are you?' 'I am Lily.'
Lee-lee . 'Are you the only one at home?' 'There is my sister
too.' 'How o]d is your sister?' 'She is six.' 'And you -
how old are you?' 'Ten . ' 'Can you take a messag·e to Mrs
Mkubukeli, Lily?' 'Yes.' 'It is about her brother Mr Thab:me.
She must teU Mr Thabane to be careful. Say it is very
important. Mr Thabane must be carefuL My name is Mrs
Curren . Can you write that down? And this is my number.'
I read out the number, speUed my name. Mrs Curren: nine
letters, anagram for what?

Vercueil knocked and came in. 'Do you want something to

eat?' he said.
'I am not hungry. But help yourself to anything you can
find.'
I wanted to be left alone. But he hng·ered, eyeing me
curiously. I was sitting up in bed, gloves on my hands, the
writing-pad on my knees . For half an hour I had sat with the
page blank before me.
'I amjust waiting for my hands to warm up.,' I said.
· I)8 ·
 But it was not cold fingers that kept me from writing. It
was the piUs,, which I take more of now, and more often.
They are like smoke-flares. I swaUow them and they release
a fog inside me, a fog of extinction. I cannot take the pills
and go on with the writing. So without pain no writing: a - ,
new and terrible mle. Except that, when I have taken the
pms, nothing is terrible .any more, everything is indifferent,
everything is the same.
Nevertheless I do write . . In the dea.d of night, with Vercueil
asleep downstairs, I take up this letter to tell you one more
thing about that 'John,' that suilen boy I never took to. I want
to tell you that, despite my dislike :ofhim, he is with me more
dearly, more piercingly than Bheki has ev•er been. He is with
me or I am with him: him or the trace of him. It is the middle
of the night but it is the grey :of his Iast'inorning too. [ am
here in my bed but I am ther•e in Fiorence's room too,. with
its one window and one door and no other way out. Outside
the door men are waiting, crouched like hunters, to present
the boy with his death . In his lap he holds the pistol that, for
this interval, k·eeps the hunters at bay, that was his and Bheki's
great secret, that was going to make men of them; and beside
him I stand or hover. The bane] of the pistol is between his
knees; he strokes it up and down. He is listening to the
murmur of voices outside, and I listen with him. He is
readying himself for the smoke that will choke his lungs, the
kick that will burst the door open, the torrent of fire that wiH
sweep him away . He is readying himself to raise the pistol in
that instant and fire th·e one shot he wm have time to fire into
the heart of the Iight.
His eyes ar·e unblinking, fixed on the door through which
he is going to leave the world . His mouth is dry but he is not
afraid . His heart beats steadily like a .fist in his chest denching
and unclenching.
His eyes are open and mine, though I write, are shut. My
eyes are shut in order to see.. ~ ~~
. 159 .
 Within this interval there is no time, though his heart beats
time. [am here in my room in the night but I am also with
him, aU the time, as I am with you across the seas, hovering.
A hovering time, but not eternity. A time being, a suspen-
sion, before- the return of the time in which the door bursts
open and we face, first he, then I, the great white glare.

. r6o .
. IV
,
•
 I have had a(dream of Flor-
ence, a dream or vision. In the dream I s·ee her striding again
down Government A venue holding Hope by the hand and
carrying Beauty on her back.. All three of them wear masks.
I am there too, with a crowd of people of all kinds and
conditions gathered around me . The air is festive. I am to
provide a show:.
_l}1.1t Fforence does not stop to watch. Ga.ze fQCed ahead, she
passes as if through a congregation of wraiths.
The eyes of her mask are like eyes in pictures from the
ancient Medit,erranean: larg·e, oval, with the pupil in the
centre: the almond eyes of a goddess.
I stand in the middle of the avenue opposite the Parliament
buildings, circled by peopJ,e, doing my t!"ifks with fire. Over
me tower great oaks. But my mind is not on my tricks. lam
intent on Florence. Her dark coat, her dull dress have fallen
away . In a white slip ruffled by the wind, her feet hare, her
head bare, her right breast ba.re, she strides past, the one
child, masked, naked, trotting quickly beside her, the other
stretching an arm out over her shoulder,.pointing.
Who is this goddess who comes in a vision with uncover·ed
br·east cutting the air? lt is Aphrodite,' but not smile-loving
Aphrodite, patroness ofpleasures: an o~der figure, a f1gure of
· 163 ·
urgency, of cries in the dark, short and sharp, of blood and
earth, emerging for an instant, showing herself, passing.
From the goddess comes no caU,. no signal. Her eye is open
and is blank. She sees and does not see.
'---.-~-·--

Burning, doing my show, I stand transfixed. The flames

flowing from me ar·e blue as ice. I fee] no pain.
It is a vision from last night's dream-time but also from
outside time. Forev·er the goddess is passing, forever, caught
in a posture of surprise and regret, I do not follow. Though
I peer and peer into the vortex from which visions come, the
w.ake of the goddess and her god-children remains empty,
the woman who should foUow behind not there, the woman
with serpents of flame in her hair who beats her arms and
cries and dances.
I related the dream to V·ercueil.
'Is it real?' he ask.ed.
'R;al? Of course not . It isn't even authentic. Florence has
nothing to do with Greece. Figures in dreams have another
kind of import. They are signs, signs of other things.'
'Were they real? Was she real?',.he repeated, bringing me
up short,. refusing-to be deflected . . 'What else did you see?'
'What else? Is there more? Do you know?' I said more
sofdy, feeling my way aft·er him now.
He shook his head, baffled.
'All the days you have known me.,' I said, 'I have been
standing on the river-bank awaiting my tum. I am waiting
for someone to ~o~ me the way across,. Every minute of
every day I am here, waiting. That is what else I see. Do you
see it too?'
He said nothing.
'The reason I fight against going back to hospital is that in
hospital they will put me to sl·eep. That is the expression they
use for animals, as a kindn·ess, but they may as wen use it for
people. They will put me intoa sleep without drea~. They
will feed me mandragora till I grow drowsy and (aU into the
. 104 .
river and am drowned and washed away. That way I will
never cross. I cannot allow it to happen. I have come too far.
!'cannot have my eyes dosed.'
'What do you want to see?' said Vercueil..
'I want to see you as you really are.'
Diffidendy he shrugged . ,r-who-am I?'
'Just a man. A man who came without being invited. More
I can't say yet. Can you?'
He shook his head. 'No.'

'If you want to do something for me,' I said, 'you can fix the
aerial for the radio.'
'Don't you want me to bring the television up instead?'
'[haven't the stomach to watch te[evision. It will mak·e me
sick.'
'Television can't make you sick. It's just pictures.'
'There is no such thing as just pictures. There are men
behind the pictures. They send out their pictures to make
peopl·e sick. you know what r am talking about.'
'Pictures can't mak·e you sick . '
Sometimes he does this: contradicts me, provokes me,
chips away at me, watching for signs of irritation. It is his
way of teasing,. so dumsy, so unappealing that my heart quite
goes out to him.
'Fix the aerial, please, that's aU I ask.'
He went downstairs. Minutes later he came stamping up
with the television set in his arms. He plugged it in facing the
bed, switched it on,. fiddled with the aerial, stood aside.. lt
was mid-afternoon. Against blue sky a flag waved. A brass
band play·ed the anthem of the Republilc.
'Switch it off,' I said.
He turned the sound loud·er.
'Switch it off!' l screamed.
He wheeled, took in my angry glare . Then, to my surprise,
. 16) .
he began to do a litde shuffle. Swaying his hips, holding his
hands out, dicking his fingers,. he danced, unmistakably
danced, to music I never thought could be danced to. He was
mouthing words too. What were they?' Not, certainly, the
words I knew.
'Off!' I screamed again.
An old woman, toothless,. in a rage: I must have looked a
sight. He turned the sound down.
'Oif!'
He switched it ofT. 'Don't get so upset,' he murmured.
'Then don't be siUy, Vercueil. And don't make fun of me.
Don't trivialize me.'
'StiU,, why get in a state?'
'Becaus·e I am afraid of going to heU and having to listen
to Die :stem for aU et.ernity.'
He shook his head. 'Don't worry,' he said: 'it's all going
I:Q$;:r!d, Have patienoe.'
'I haven't got time for pati·ence. You may have time but I
haven't got time.'
Ag.ain he shook his head. 'Maybe you've also got time,' he
whisper·ed, and gave me his toothed leer.
For an instant it was as if the heavens opened and light
blaz.ed down. Hungry for good news after a lifetime of bad
news, un.able to help myself, I smiled hack. 'Really?' I said.
He nodded . Like two fools we grinned each at th.e other. He
clicked his fingers suggestively; awkward as a gannet, aU
feathers and bone,. he repeated a step of his dance. Then he
went out, dim bed the ladder andjoined the broken wire, and
[ had the radio again. .
But what was there to listen to? The airwaves so bulge
nowadays with the nations peddling their wares that music
is aU but squeezed out. I feU asJ,eep to An American in Paris
and awoke to a st•eady patter of morse. Where did it come
from? From a ship at sea? From some old-fashioned steamship
plying the waves between Walvis Bay .and Ascension Island?
· 166 ·
The dots and dashes foUowed on without hast·e, without
falter, in a stream that promised to flow till the cows came
home. Wh~t _was their message? Did it matter? Their patter,
like rain, a rain of meaning, comforted me, made the night
bearable as I by waiting for the hour to roll round for the
next pill.

I say I do not want to be put to sleep. The truth is, without

sleep I cannot endure. Whatever dse it brings, the Diconal at
least brings sleep or a simulacrum of sleep . As the pain
recedes, as time quickens. as the hmizon lifts, my attention,,
concentrated hke a burning-glass on the pain, can slacken
for a while; I can draw br·eath, unclench my balled hands,
straighten my legs. Give thanks for this mercy, I say to
myself: for the sick body stunned, for the soul drowsy, half
out of its casing, beginning to float.
But the respite is never long. Clouds come over,. thoughts
begin to bunch, to take on the dense, angry life of a swarm
of flies. I shake my head, trying to dear them away. This is
my h.and, I say, opening my eyes wide,. staring at the veins
on the back of my hand; this is the bedspread. Then as quick
as lightning something strikes. In an instant I am gone and
in another instant I am back,. still staring at my hand. Between
these instants an hour may have passed or the blink of an eye,
during which I have been absent, gone,. struggling with
something thick and rubbery that invades the mouth and
grips the tougue at its root, something that comes from the
depths of the sea. . I surface, shaking my head like a swimmer.
In my throat is a taste of bile, of sulphur. Madness! I say to
myself: this is what it tastes like to be mad! '-1
1

Once I came to mysdf facing the walL In my hand was a

pencil,. its point broken. All over the waH were sprawling,
shding characters, meaningless, coming from me or someone
inside me.
. !67 .
 I tdephoned Dr Syfret. 'My reaction to the Diconal seems
to be getting worse,' I said, and tried to describe it. 'I wonder,
is there no alternative you can prescribe?'
'I was not aware that you still regarded yourself as under
my care,' replied Dr Syfret. 'You should be in hospital getting
proper attention . I can''t conduct a surgery over the telephone . '
'I am asking for very little,' I said. 'The Dicona] is giving
me hallucinations. Is there nothing else I can take?'
'And I say, I can't treat you without seeing you. That is
not how I work, that is not how any of my colleagues
work.'
I was sillent so long he must have thought he had lost me.
The truth was, I was wavering. Don't you understand? I
wanted to say: I am dred, tired unto death. In ma.nus tuas: take
me into your hands, care fm me, or, if you cannot, do
whatever is next best.
'Let me ask one last question,' I said.. 'The reactions I am
having - do other people have them too?'
'Patients react in many difFer·ent ways. Yes, it is possible
your reactions are due to the Diconal . '
'Then if by some chance you have a change of heart,' I
said, 'could you telephone a new prescription through to the
Avalon Pharmacy in MHI Street? I have no iUusions about
my condition, doctor . It is not care I need, just help with the
. '
pam.
'And if you change your mind and want to see me at any
dme,, Mrs Curren, day or night, you have only to pick up
the telephone. '
An hour later the doorbell rang. It was the delivery man
from the pharmacy bringing a new prescription in a fourteen-
day supply.
I tdephoned the pharmacist. 'Tylox,' I asked: 'is that the
strongest?'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean, is it the last one prescribed?'
. 168 .
 'That is not the way it works, Mrs Curren. There is no
first and no last.'
I took two of the new piUs . Again the miraculous draining
away of pain,. the euphoria,, the feeling of being restmed to
life. I had a bath, got back into bed, tried to read, feU into a
confused sleep.. In an hour I was awake again. The pain was
creeping back, bringing with it nausea and the first edge of
the familiar shadow of depression.
The drug over the pain:. a shaft of light but then darkness
redoubled.
Vercueil came in.
'I have taken the new piUs,' I said·. 'They ar,e no improve-
ment. Slightly stronger, perhaps; that's al1.'
'Take more,' said Vercueil. 'You don't have to wait four
hours.'
A drunkard's advice.
'I'm sure I will, •· I said. 'But if I am free to take them
whenever I like, why not take them aU together?'
There was silence between us.
'Why did you choose me?' I said.
'I didn't choose you.'
'Why did you come here, to this house?'
'You didn't have a dog.'
'Why else?'
'I thought you wouldn't make trouble.'
'And have I made trouble?'
He came toward me. His face was puffy, I could smell
liquor on his breath. 'If you want me to help you I'U help
you,' he said. He leaned over and took me by the throat, his
thumbs resting Hghdy on my larynx,. the three bad fingers
bunched under my ear. 'Don't,' l whisP'ered,. and pushed his
hands away. My eyes swam with tears . I took his hands in
mine and beat them on my chest in a gesture of lamentation
quite fore~gn to me.
After a. while I was still. He continued to lean over me,
169 .
 allowing me to use him. The dog put its nose over the edge
of the bed, sniffing at us.
'Wm you let the dog sleep with me?' I said.
'Why?'
'For the warmth.'
'He won't stay. He sleeps where I sleep.'
'Then sleep here too.'
There was a long wait whlle he went downstairs. I had
another pill Then the light on the landing went off. I heard
hlm take off his shoes. 'Take off the hat too,. for a change,' I
said.
He lay down at my back, on top ·of the beddothes . The
smeU ofhls dirty feet reached me. He whistled softly; the dog
leapt up, did its cirde dance, setded between his legs and
mine. Like Tristan's sword, keeping us honest.
The pm worked its wonders. For half an hour, whiJ,e he
and the dog slept,, I by stiU,. free of pain, my soul alert,
darting. A vision passed before my eyes of the child Beauty
riding towards me on her mother's back, bobbing, staring
imperiously ahead. Then the vision faded and douds of dust,
the dust of Borodino, came roiling over my sight like the
yvheels of the carriage of death.
I switched on the lamp. It was midnight.
I wiH draw a veil soon. This was never meant to 0:.<:: .!he-
story of a body, but of the soul it hous,es. I wm not show to
""you what you wiU not be able to bear: a woman in a burning
house running from window to window, ca]ling through the
bars for help.
Vercueil and his dog, sleeping so calmly beside these tor-
rents of grief. Fulfilling their charge, waiting for the soul to
emerge. The soul, neophyte, wet, blind, ignorant .

I have the story now of how he lost the use of his fingers. It
was in an accident at sea. They had to abandon ship. In the
. !70 .
scramble his hand was caught in a pulley and crushed. AU
night he :floated on a raft with seven other men and a boy, in
agony. The next day they were picked up by a Russian trawler
.and his hand was given attention. But by then it was too late.
'Did you learn any Russian?' I asked.
All he remembered, he said, was xor:osho.
'No one mentioned Borodino?'
'I don't remember Borodino.'
'You didn't think of staying with the Russians?'
He looked at me strangdy.
He has never been to s·ea since then .
'Don't you miss the sea?' I asked. ,
'I'll never s•et foot in a boat again,' he replied decidedly.
'Why?'
'Because next time I won't be so lucky.'
'How do you know? If you had faith in yourself you could
walk on water. Don't you believe in the doings of faith?'
He was silent.
'Or a whirlwind would arrive and pluck you out of the
water and set you down on dry land . And there are always
dolphins. Dolphins r'escue drowning sailors, don't they? Why
did you become a sailor anyway?'
'You don't always think ahead. You don't always know.'
I pinched his ring finger lightly . 'Can't you feel anything?'
'No. The nerves are dead . . '
1
I always knew he had a story to tell, and now he begins to ,
tdl it, starting with the~frrigers of one hand. A mariner's
story.. Do [ believe it? Verily,. I do not care . There is no lie
that does not have at its cor·e some truth... One must only
know how to listen.
' He has worked at the docks too,. lifting things., loading
thlngs . . One day,. he said, unloading a crate, they smeUed
something bad and opened it and found the body of a man,.
a stowaway who had starved to death in his hiding-place.
'Where did he come from?' I asked .
· 171 ·
 'China. A long way away.'
He has also worked for the SPCA, at theilr kennels.
'Was that where you got to like dogs?'
'I always got on with dogs.'
'Did you have a dog as a child?'
'Mm,' he said,. meaning nothing. Early on he decided he
could get away with choosing which of my questions to hear,
which not to hear.
Nevertheless, pi·eoe by piece} put together the story of a
life as obscure as any on earth. What is in store for him next,
I wonder, when the ·episode of the old woman in the big
house is over with? One hand crippled, unable to do aU its
offices . His saHor's skill with knots lost. Not dextrous any
more, nor fuUy decent. In the middle years ofhis course, and
at his side no wife. Alone: s.toksielalleen: a stick in an empty
field., a soul alone, sole. Who will watch over him?
'What will you do with yourself when [ am gone?'
'I wiU go on.'
'I am sure you will; but who will there be in your life?'
Cautiously he smiled. 'Do I need somebody in my life?'
Not a riposte. A real quesdon. He does not know. He is
asking me, this rudimentary man.
'Yes. [ would say you need a wife, if the idea does not
strike you as eccentric. Even that woman you brought here.,
as long as there is feeling for her in your heart.'
He shook his head.
'Nev·er mind. It is not marriage I am talking about but
something else. I would promise to watch over you,, except
that I have no firm idea of what is possible after death. Perhaps
there win be no watching over allowed, or v·ery litde. All
these places have their rules, _and, whatever one may wish, it
may not be possible to get around them. There may not even
be secrets allowed, secret watching. There may be no way of
keeping a space in the heart private for you or anyone else.
All may be erased. AIL It is a terrible thought. Enough to
. 172 .
make one rebel, to make one say: If that is how things are to
be, I withdraw: here is my ticket,. I am handing it back. But
I do~bt-~~~y~much that the handing back of tickets will be
allowed, for whatev·er reason.
'That is why you should not be so alone. Because I may
have to go away entirely.'
He sat on the bed with his back to me,. bent over, gripping
the dog's head between his knees, stroking it.
'Do you understand me?'
'Mm.' The mm that could mean yes but in fact means
nothing.
'No, you don't. You don't understand at an. his not the
prospect of your solitude that appals me. It is the prospect of
my own.'
Every day he goes off to do the shopping. In the evenings
he cooks, then hovers over me, watching to see that I eat. I
am never hungry but haven't the heart to teU him. 'I find it
hard to eat while you watch,' I say as gently as I can, then
hide the food and feed it to the dog.
His favourite concoction is white br,ead fded in egg with
tuna on the bread and tomato sauce on the tuna . I wish I had
had the foresight to give him cooking lessons.
Though he has the whole house to spread himself in, he
lives, in effect, with me in my room. He drops empty packets,
old wrapping papers on the floor. When there is a dra.ught
tbc;:y scud around like ghosts. 'Take the rubbish away,' I
plead. 'I will,' he promis·es, and sometimes does, but then
leaves more.
We share a bed, folded one upon the other like a page
folded in two,. Iike two wings folded: old mates., bunkmates,
conjoined, conjugaL Lectus genialis, lectus adversus. His toe-
nails, when he takes offhis shoes, are yeUow, almost brown,
like horn. Feet that he keeps out of water for fear of falling:
falling into depths where he cannot breathe. A dry creature,
a creature of air, like those locust-fairies in Shakespeare with
. 173 .
 their whipstock of cricket's bone, lash of spider-film. Huge
swarms of them borne out to sea on the wind, out of sight
-oniitid;tiri;;g, settling one upon another upon another,
resolving to drown the Adantic by their numbers.
Swallowed, aJl of them, to the last. Britde wings on the
sea-floor .sighing like a forest of leaves; dead eyes by the
mill:ion; and the crabs moving among them, clutching, grind-
ing.
He snores.
From t:he side of her shadow husband your mother writes .
Forgive me if the picture offends you. One must love what
is nearest. One must love what is to hand, as a dog loves.
MrsV.

September .23,. the equinox. Steady rain faUing from a. sky

that has clos.ed in tight against the mountain, so low that one
could reach up with a broomstick and touch it. A soothing,.
muffiing sound, like a great hand,. a hand of wat·er, folding
over the house;. the patter on the roofriies, the ripple in the
gutters ceasing to be noise, become a thickening, a hquefac-
tion of the air.
'What is this?' asked Vercueil.
He had a litde hinged rosewood case. Held open at a certain
angl·e to the light, it reveals a young man with long hair
in an old-fashioned suit. Change the angle, and the image
decomposes into silver streaks behind a glass surfa.ce.
'It is a photograph from the olden days. From before
photographs.'
'Who is it?'
'I am not sure. It may be one of my grandfather's. brothers.'
'Your house is like a museum . . '
(He has been poking around in the rooms the police broke
into.)
'In a museum things have labels. This is a museum where
. 174 .
the labels have fallen off. A museum in decay. A museum
that ought to be in a museum.'
'You should sell these old things if you don't want them . '
'Sell them if you like. Sell me too.'
'For what?'
'For bones. For hair. SeH my teeth too. Unless you think
I am worth nothing. It's a pity we don't have one of those
carts that children us·ed to wheel the Guy around in. You
could wheel me down the Avenue with a letter pinned to my
front. Then you could set fire to me. Or you could take me
to some more obscure place, the rubbish dump for instance,
and dispose of me there.' ~ ·· ·
He used to go out on to the balcony when he wanted to
smoke. Now he smokes on the landing and the smoke drifts
back into my room. I cannot stand it . But it is time to begin
getting us·ed to what I cannot stand.
He came upon me washing my underwear in the basin... I
was in pain from the bending: no doubt I [ook·ed terrible. 'I
will do that for you,' he offered. I refused. But then I could
not reach the hne, so he had to hang it for me: an oM woman's
underwear,. grey, lisdess.
When the pain bites deepest and I shudder and go pale and
a cold sweat breaks out on me, he sometimes ho]ds my hand.
I twist in his grip like a hooked fishi I am aware ofan ugly
look on my face, the look people h.a~e when they are rapt in
lovemaking: brutal,. predatory. He does not like that look; he
turns his ey·es away. As for me, [think: let him see, let him
learn what it is like!
He carries a knife in his pocket. Not a clasp knife but a
menacing blade with a sharp point embedded in a cork. When
he gets into bed he puts it: on the floor beside him,. with his
money.
So I am weU guarded. Death would think twice before
trying to pass this dog, this man.
What is Latin? he asked.
. 175 .
 A d'ea:d language, I replied, a Ianguag,e spoken by the dead.
'ReaUy?' he said. The idea se·emed to tickle him.
'Yes, really,' I said. 'You only hear it at funerals nowadays.
Funerals and the odd wedding.'
'Can you speak it?'
I recited some Virgil,. Virgil on the unquiet dead:

;ne.c rtpa:s . hOtTendas et ~auc,a ft,uenta

. ,datur Jl·:
1
tr:ansport.are P'rius quam sedibus ossa quierunt. S{-tco•
centum emmt annos vcUtantque haec litera circum;
tum demum admissi stagna exoptata revisunt.

'What does it mean?' he said.

'h means that if you don't mail the letter to my daughter I
will have a hundr·ed years of misery.'
'It doesn't.'
'Yes, it does. Ossa: that is the word for a diary. Something
on which the days of your li£e are inscribed.'
Later he came back. 'Say the Latin again,.' he asked. I spoke
the Hoes and watched his lips move as he listened. He is
memorizing, I thought. But it was not so. It was the dactyl
beating in him, with its power to move the pulse, the throat.
'Was that what you taught? Was that your job?'
'Yes, it was my job. I made a living from it. Giving voice
to the dead.'
'And who paid you?'
'The taxpayers. The people of South Africa, both great and
smaU.'
'Could you teach me?"
'I could have taught you. I could have taught you most
things Roman. [ am not so sure about the Gr·eek. I could still
teach you, but there would not be time for everything.'
He was flattered, I could see.
'You would fmd Latin easy,' I said. 'There would be much
you remembered.'
. 176 .
 Another challenge issued, another intimation that I .know .
I am like a woman with a husband who ke,eps a mistress on
the sly,. scolding him, coaxing him to come dean. But my
hints pass him by. He is not hiding anything. His ignorance
is reat His ignorance, his innocence.
'There is something that won't come, isn't there?' I said.
'Why don't youjust speak and see where the words take you?'
But he was at a threshold he could not cross. He stood
baulked, Wl)rdless., hiding behind the cigarette smoke, nar-
rowing his eyes so that I should not see in.
The dog circled him, came to me, drift·ed off again, restless.
Is it possible that the dog is the one sent,. and not he?
You will never get to see him, I suppose. I wouM have
liked to send you .a picture, but: my camera was taken in the
last burglary. In any case, he is not the kind of person who
photographs well. I have seen the picture on his identity card.
He looks .like a prisoner torn from the darkness of a cell,
thrust into a room fuU of blinding lights, shoved against a
wall, shouted at to stand still. His image raped from him,
taken by foroe. He is lik·e one of those half-m ythica] creatures
that come out in photographs only as blurs,. vague forms
disappearing into the undergrowth that could he man or beast
or merdy a bad spot on the emulsion: unproved,. unattested.
Or disappearing over the edge of the picture, leaving behind
in the shutter-trap an arm or a leg or the back of a head .
'Would you like to go to America?' I asked him.
'Why?'
'To take my letter. Instead of mailing it, you could take it
in person: fly to America and fly back. It would be .an
adventure. Better than s.ailing. My daughter would meet you
and take care of you. I would buy the ticket in advance.
Wou]d you go?'
He smiled bravely. But some of my jokes touch a sore
spot, I know.
'I am serious,' I said.
. 177 .
 But the truth is, it is not a serious suggestion. Vercueil with
a ha.ircut,. in shop dothes, mooning about in your guest
bedroom, desperate for a drink,. too shy to ask;. and you in
the next room, the children asleep., your husband asl.eep,
poring over this letter, this confession, this madness- it does
not bear thinking of. I do not need this, you say to yourself
through gritted teeth: this is what I came here to get awayfrom,.
why does it have tojoUow me?
With time on my hands, I have been shuffling through the
pictures you have sent from America over the years, looking
at the backgrounds,. at all the things that feU willy-nilly within
the frame at the instant you pressed the button. In the picture
you sent of the two boys in their canoe, for instance, my eye
wanders from their faces to the ripples on the lake and the
deep green of the fir-trees and then back to the orange
lifejackets they wear, like waterwings of old. The duU,. bland
sheen of their surfaces quite hypnotizes me . Rubber or plastic
or something in between: some substance coarse to the touch,.
tough. Why is it that this material, foreign to me, foreign
perhaps to humankind, shaped, s·ealed, inflated, tied to the
bodies of your children,, signifies so intensely for me th•e
wodd you now live in, and why does it make my spirit sink?
Ihave no id·ea. But since this writing has time and again taken
me from where I have no idea t!J where I begin to have an
_@~, let me say, in all tentativeness, that perhaps it dispirits
me that your children will never drown. All those lakes, all
that water: a land ofhkes and rivers: yet ifby some mischance
they ever tip out of their canoe, they will bob safely in
the water, supported by their bright orang•e wings, tiU a
motor-boat comes to pkk them up and bear them off and ail
is wdl again.
A recreation area., you call it on the back of the photograph.
The lake tamed, the forest tamed, renamed.
You say you wiU have no more childr·en. The line runs
out, then, in these two boys,. seed planted in the American
. 178 .
snows, who will never drown, whose life-expectancy is
seventy-five and rising . Even I, who hve on shores where the
waters swallow grown men, wher·e life-expectancy dedines
every year, am having a death without illumination. What
can these two poor underprivileged boys paddling about in
their recreation area hope for? They wiH die at seventy-five
or eighty-five as stupid as when they were born.
Do I wish death upon my grandchildren? Are you, at this
very instant, flinging the page away from you in disgust? Mad
old woman! are you crying out?
They are not my grandchildren. They are too distant to lbe
children of mine of whatever sort. I· do not I.eave behind a
numerous family. A daughter . . A consort and his dog.
By no means do I wish death upon them. The two boys
whose lives have brushed mine are in any event already dead .
No, I wish your children life. But the wings you have tied
on them wiH not guarantee them life.. Life is dust lbetwe·en
the toes. Life is dust between the teeth. Life is biting the dust~
·br:I1fe .is drowning. Falling through wat·er, to the floor.,.

The time is nearly upon me when I will have to depend on

help fnr the most intimate things . High time,. then,. to put an
end to this sorry story. Not that I doubt Vercuei1 would help.
When it comes to last things, I no longer doubt him in any
way. There has always been in him a certain hovering if
undependable solicitude for me, a solicitude he knows no
way of expressing. I have fallen and he has caught me. It is
not he who fell under my care when he arrived,. I now
understand, nor I who fell under his: we feU under each otber,
and have tumbled and risen since then in the flights and
swoops of that mutual election.
Yet he is as far from being a nurse, a .nourrice, a nourisher
as I can imagine. He is dry. His drink is not water but fire .
P·erhaps that is why I cannot imagine children ofhis: because
. 179 .
his seme~ would be dry, dry and brown,. like poilen or hke
the diu;-of th:is country. -
I need his presence, his comfort, his help,. but he needs help
too. He needs the help only a woman can give a man. Not a
seduction but an induction . He does not know how to love.
I speak not ·of the motions of the soul but of something
simpler. He does not know how to love as a boy does not
know how to love.. Does not know what zips and buttons
and clasps to expect. Does not know what goes where. Does
not know how to do what he has to do .
The nearer the end comes, the more faithful he is. Yet still
I have to guide h:is hand.
[remember the day when we sat in the car, when he held
out the matches to me and told me to Do it . [ was outraged.
But was I fair to him? It seems to me now that he has no
more conception of death than a virgin has of sex.. But the
same curiosity. The curiosity of a dog that sniffs at one's
crotch, wagging its tad, its tongue hanging out red and stupid
as a penis.
Yest·erday, as he was helping me into the bath, my robe
slipped open and I caught him staring. Like those children on
MiU Street: no decency in him. Decency: the inexplicable: the
ground of aH ethics. Things we do not do. We do not stare
when the soul leaves the body, but veil our eyes with tears
or cov·er them with our hands. We do not stare at scars, which
are places where the soul has struggled to leave and been
forced back, dosed up,. sewn in.
I asked him whether he was still feeding the cats . 'Yes,' he
said, lying. For the cats are gone, chased out. Do I care? No,
not any more. After I have car·ed for you, for him,. there is
little space left in my heart. The rest must, as they say,. go to
pot.
Last night, growing terribly cold, I tried to call you up to
say goodbye. But you would not come.. [ whispered your
~~~e. 'My daughter, my child,' I whispered into the darkness;
. 180 .
but all that appeared to me was a photograph: a picture of
yq<g,,_J!:Q:t you. Sever·ed,. I thought: that line severed too. Now
there is nothing to hold me.
But I fell asleep, and woke up, and was stiH here, and this
morning feel quite strong. So perhaps it is not only I who do
the calling. Perhaps when I grow cold it is becaus·e I am being
called out of my body across the seas,. and do not know it.
As you see, I still beii·eve in your ]ove.
I am going to reiease you soon from this _rope of words._,
There is no need to be sorry for me. But spare a thought for
this man left behind who cannot swim, does not yet know
how to fly.

I s1ept and woke up co1d: my beHy, my heart,. my very bones

cold. The door to the balcony was open,. the curtains were
waving in the wind.
Vercueil stood on the bakony staring out over a sea of
rusding leaves. I touched his arm, his high, peaked shoulders,.
the bony ridge of his spine. Through chattering teeth I spoke:
'What are you looking at?'
He did not answer. [ stood closer. A sea of shadows beneath
us, .and the screen ofleaves shifting,. rustling., like scales over
the darkness.
'Is it time?' [ said.
I got back into bed, into the tunnd between the cold sheets.
The curtains parted; he came in beside me. For the first time
I smeHed nothing. He took me in his arms and held me with
mighty force, so that the breath went out of me in a rush.
from that embrace there was no warmth to be had.

1986-89