Explaining an SA crime story to a Kiwi child

“So I got this cool plot nearly worked out for my new blockbuster novel,” I grinned at Dylan, Marion’s Kiwi grandson.

“Blockbuster?” the eleven-year-old said. “You mean like it’s selling lots?”

“Well, I haven’t got there yet,” I said with a mock bruised ego, while he was busy painting his Warhammer toy ogres. I grimaced at the slogan that seems everywhere on the Warhammer kit and guide books that accompanied his toy soldiers and war machines. “There is no time for peace. No respite. No forgiveness. There is only WAR.” I continued with the story of my novel: “What happens is this boy Tom, when he’s about sixteen is supposed to be killed, murdered, you know, by this mysterious man, Richard. But Tom doesn’t die. Richard thought he did.”

“You mean he comes back to life?” says Dylan, now intrigued, putting down the ork he was painting green and red.

“No no no, he was left for dead. Richard thought Tom was dead. Tom recovers in ICU, gets on with his life, marries, other plot-line stuff I won’t go into now. Anyway, the novel changes to about thirty years later. Now Tom, divorced, is hiking in the Cederberg Mountains near Cape Town and holes up in a mountain hut he rented for two weeks. While there he goes for a walk and hears someone moaning in the bushes or a ravine. He rescues this man who apparently walked away from a car accident and collapsed in the bushes. And by the way I have written the story you as the reader know that the car accident survivor is … ta daahh … killer Richard. From thirty years ago. Tom hauls Richard up to his hut, not knowing who he is. Tom has a first-aid kit. Richard’s injuries aren’t that bad and he recovers quickly. The next evening Richard, resting on a couch, takes out a mouth organ and starts playing tunes which remind Tom of his dead father who was actually close friends with Richard (the reader already knows this from earlier on in the novel). Tom takes out his harmonica and they swap memories and stories about each other. Of course, you as the reader are fascinated about when these two characters are going to find out who the other person really is and what will then happen.”

“Another plot line is developing. There is a black man, I think I might make him a guy from Mozambique, who is a refugee or illegal immigrant in SA. I knew a couple of them when I was growing up in a farming area in Boksburg. He is a mountain reserve warden of sorts or caretaker in this part of the Cederberg. He’s herded cattle, seen a lot of grief in the old SA. I won’t go into all that now. I have called him Benoni because when I was a kid there was a great old guy from Mozambique who could fix anything and his name was Benoni and he disappeared like a sprite whenever the cops did a raid on the farm for illegals.”

“Why is he black; is he a criminal?” asked Dylan. That stopped me dead in my storytelling tracks. I mean, who did Dylan think Richard was? “Why should he be a criminal?” I replied, appalled. “Just because he’s black? That’s bloody racist.” “Well, he comes from SA,” said Dylan, who was born there but left with his parents when he was five. What are they teaching our kids? Who are “they”?

I patiently point out to Dylan the obvious: that the majority of people in SA are black. If the vast majority are black it is common sense that crime stats are going to reflect that most crimes are done by blacks.

“Anyway. Back to my novel. Benoni is busy collecting wood for the evening fire the evening after Richard and Tom meet each other. He sees the crashed car in a gully. He opens the car to see if anyone is still inside and under some tumbled hiking gear and a blanket on the floor in front of the back seat he finds a woman who he is sure is dead. Maybe from the car accident. He doesn’t want to tell the cops; he is very suspicious of them. He’s had enough trouble with them. His fingerprints are now all over the car. The narrative echoes Benoni’s thoughts: ‘The police, even though they were now mostly black, also could not be trusted like their white predecessors, and that included the inspectors. He had met one inspector and although they could speak the same languages, Xhosa, English and Afrikaans, it was just the sounds that were the same, not the heartbeat behind the sounds.’ Benoni notices the footprints from the car trail up in the direction of Tom’s hut which he can see up the hill. He decides to go there and tell Tom about the car accident, see if he knows anything about it. He decides to forget he saw the ‘dead’ woman. He just saw the car. He has learned the hard way not have any more involvement.”

“So now I am pleasantly stuck with these three men sitting around a rickety coffee table in Tom’s rented hut, enjoying the end of a day with whiskey. Richard’s leg has been treated and bandaged by Tom. Tom has also brought out his harmonica and they are swapping tunes, remembering the old times, their different African childhoods. Richard is eyeing Benoni and wondering if he knows anything about the woman he left in the car. Benoni is eyeing Richard. So … what happens next? I have a few ideas, but that’s what exploring themes through writing is about: exploring.” “What’s closure?” asked Dylan. I explain this. “One idea I have is for Benoni to stay over the night because the three of them get drunk on whiskey, all taking turns on the harmonica and I will probably have them reminiscing about their very different childhoods. Tom’s old mouth organ belonged to his father. The reader knows surely Richard is eventually going to recognise the old mouth organ which his old friend, Tom’s dad, used to play in pubs and ask where did Tom get it from. Pretty sure I will stick with that idea. Benoni is, according to post-Christian, Eurocentric thinking a bit disturbed. Not according to his half-forgotten traditions. For example, he hears his ancestors and his dead children (the latter victims of apartheid) and talks with them. When he hears in the middle of the night a harmonica playing and can see it is not Tom or Richard, he looks out the window and sees a woman disappearing through the trees. He recognises her as the woman in the crashed car. Of course the reader questions the validity of his experience. Which of course in turns questions what is real and what is not and if there ever can be such categories.”

“What are categories? Why does Benoni have to be black?” asked Dylan, his Warhammer orks drying in the sun. I gave up trying to explain. He was only eleven. Dylan turned back to his Warhammer hobby: toys, computer games and thematic “There is no time for peace. No respite. No forgiveness. There is only WAR” slogan. I was uncomfortable with Dylan’s second question because of Dylan’s previous remark about blacks. It’s good to feel that kind of discomfort; it means you are being pushed out of “carbon copy thinking”. I just knew that it suited my character Benoni to be an ex-pat and an alien in his adopted country, South Africa. Nationhood and a sense of rooted ancestry is identity for many. So Benoni’s childhood displacement is an emblem for a broader angst felt by other main characters: Tom’s unresolved rage for the man who attempted to kill him as a youngster (associated with his abusive father “killing” his sense of growing manhood, selfhood, creativity as a young artist). Tom and Richard are both fictions to each other, aliens, not in touch with their inner selves. There’s Tom’s need to forgive and Richard’s need to feel remorse, find forgiveness. They both may come to realise they are searching for something that used to be called grace.

Dylan’s “eleven-year-old” question about my character being black then made me realise I could not think about South Africa in the bitter-sweet, sensitive way I believe I do if I had not left my home country six years ago. Developing objectivity is only part of it. The rest I can’t explain. And that is what I am trying to understand through some of my writing. Writers can only draw from their own experiences, write their own inner autobiographies, just only in symbolic or metonymic form, or autrebiographies.In the last six years words and images have taken on fresh meanings for me. This is especially so when I am chatting with other ex-pats, buddies from years ago, re-discovered through Facebook, now also in other countries. Those words and phrases are sometimes like innocent but collectible pebbles that are suddenly strange, haunting, found on a childhood beach that I had thought was as familiar as the palm of my hand. For example, one such friend, now in Australia, casually remarked via email to another friend in South Africa in answer to a question, “what are you doing, is it dark there now in Oz?” on an email thread. He casually answered, “Busy cooking curry, and yes, it’s dark outside.” I would never have noticed those plain, innocuous words before. I would have walked over those pebbles. But their possible meanings, coloured with the context of being an ex-pat far from home, just would not stop resonating in me. I experimented with the sentence and came up with the following poem, repeating and re-fashioning Garth’s simple reply.

Busy Cooking Curry

– For Garth and Radmila

My wife’s not home yet. Wine glows in me, a moonlit tide,

Like history after the rain has smoothed its sadness away.

Busy cooking curry for dinner, and yes, it’s dark outside.

Spice, onion, garlic: odours have nothing to hide

Like history, after the rain has smoothed its sadness away.

My hands are clean, open as the smile of my bride –

They’re cooking curry for our dinner, and it’s dark outside.

What hands can do, words like “blood” and “loss” cannot say,

But my fingers murmur over plates, calling her to my side.

I grew up beneath a gleam of clouds which slowly glide