All except the father she couldn’t talk to.
It felt as though she was cursed to live with women for ever. And men she couldn’t talk to. And lovers who flapped their wings and flew away. And babies who only existed in her womb. And stories that only existed in her mind.
She tore herself out of her brother’s arms and fled to the kitchen to get her emotions under control. She switched the microwave oven on because she didn’t know what else to do; waited while the platter of snacks warmed up. She’d wrapped the oysters in bacon herself that morning, just as her mother always used to do for parties. And she’d actually enjoyed doing it.
It gradually came to her attention that she could hear a cricket chirping. It couldn’t be, she thought incredulously. From cockroaches to crickets. Then she began to shake with silent laughter.
‘And what’s this standing in front of the oven laughing?’
Jans was in the kitchen door. He had his office clothes on, as usual, but he’d taken his jacket off and his tie hung over one shoulder. His eyes looked tired behind his spectacles. He was chewing an apple.
‘I nearly forgot about you!’ She battled to get her laughter under control.
‘Better late than never,’ he said apologetically. ‘Like the so-called New South Africa.’
‘No, I mean I nearly forgot that you’re one of the few men who …’ The microwave oven pinged behind her and she turned to open the door. ‘You’ve stood by me.’
‘That smells heavenly.’
He sounded embarrassed, she realised as she turned back to him with the platter in her hands.
‘They come from heaven. My mother calls them angels on horseback.’
‘Tastes like heaven,’ said Jans, popping one of the oyster-angels into his mouth. ‘Did you make them?’
‘Don’t look so surprised.’ Griet gave him the platter. ‘Have another one.’
‘Have a bite,’ he said, giving her his half-eaten apple.
She looked at the apple. Golden Delicious. Sun gold on the outside, winter white inside.
‘Do you know how much trouble the apple has already caused?’
‘Well, there was the Apple of Eternal Youth in Scandinavian mythology,’ said Jans, putting a second oyster into his mouth. ‘The gods ate it to stay young. And there were various apples in Greek mythology. The Golden Apples of the Hesperides guarded by an eternally wakeful dragon with a hundred heads; the apples of Hippomenes …’
Griet laughed delightedly and took a bite of the apple. It was sweeter than she’d expected. Jans’s eyes didn’t look so tired any more.
‘Now I remember,’ she said. ‘There was a good apple in the Arabian Nights too, one that could cure all ailments …’
‘And of course there was the apple that unlocked the mysteries of gravity.’
‘Newton’s apple?’ Griet’s toes were tingling. That was always the first sign. ‘I clean forgot about that. Maybe because I don’t always believe in gravity.’
He’d always stood by her. Through thick and thin. Through divorce and death.
‘Why have you never left me in the lurch, Jans?’ The tingling was creeping up her legs and her stomach felt hollow. The second sign. ‘Is there something wrong with you?’
‘You make me laugh.’
Clever Griet makes the prince laugh! Her head was lighter than air. The third sign. She rose up, regally, grabbing at Jans below her. She rubbed his chin, the stubble like sandpaper under her fingers, her feet just clearing the floor. Then something happened that was so strange it could only have happened in a fairy tale. She saw his feet lift off the ground.
‘Do you believe in happy endings?’
‘No.’ He looked confused by the unexpected attention. She could swear she felt the warmth of a blush on the cheek under her hand. He kissed her on the forehead. ‘But you can always hope.’
He looked around nervously, as though he couldn’t believe he was flying. Then his lips slid down to her ear.
‘Am I imagining things,’ he asked cautiously, ‘or do I hear a cricket chirping?’
Acknowledgements
The motto on page vi is from Milan Kundera: The Art of the Novel, copyright © 1988 Grove Press. Used with permission of Grove/Atlantic Monthly Press.
The mottoes on pages 1 and 143 are from the Encyclopaedia of Magic and Superstition, Macdonald & Co., London, 1988. The quotations on pages 137 and 140 are from the same work.
The quotations on pages 4 and 7 are from John Milton: Paradise Lost.
The quotation on page 8 is from William Congreve: The Mourning Bride.
The quotations on pages 38 and 109 are extracts from the Authorised Version of the Bible (The King James Bible), the rights to which are vested in the Crown, and are reproduced by permission of the Crown’s Patentee, Cambridge University Press.
The quotations on pages 54 and 59 are from William Shakespeare: Sonnet 129.
The motto on page 69 is from Peter L. Berger: A Rumour of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, copyright © 1969 Peter L. Berger. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
The quotation from Hesiod on page 87, the definition on pages 112 and the quotation on page 141 are from E. Cobham Brewer: The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell plc. This is the dictionary referred to on page 112 – that Griet always keeps at her bedside.
The quotation on page 90 is from the New English Bible © Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press 1961, 1970.
The quotations on pages 105 and 106 are from the Living Bible, published in Britain by Kingsway Publishers, and in the USA by Tyndale House Publishers.
The other two dictionary entries on page 112 are from The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1975. Used by permission.
The end
Following the trauma of miscarriage, the death of her baby and the collapse of her marriage, Griet contemplates suicide, but a strategically placed cockroach brings her attempt to an abrupt end. Holding on to her sense of humour and supported by her family, her friends and her therapist, Griet starts to rebuild her life. At her therapist’s suggestion she starts writing about her experiences and begins to create from her own life more of the fairy tales she loves so much. As she processes her feelings through her writings, she is still battling uncertainty about her future, but finds unexpected liberation in Adam, an unapologetically erotic and free-spirited surfer who literally arrives on her doorstep. And although her life is no fairy tale, Griet still holds out hope of finding her prince, or at least a happy ending.
Marita van der Vyver was born in Cape Town on May 6, 1958. While in matric at Nelspruit High School in 1975 (which was also the Centenary Year for the Afrikaans language), she won a countrywide poetry competition and awarded a study bursary of four years. In 1978 she completed a BA Degree with languages and drama, and in 1979 an honours degree in journalism, both at the University of Stellenbosch. She completed a Master’s degree in journalism several years later. She initially worked as a journalist at the newspaper Die Burger and the magazine Sarie, until she decided in 1987 to become a freelance journalist.
Her debut was in 1982 with a children’s book, Van jou jas. But it was her first adult novel in 1992, the highly controversial Griet skryf ’n sprokie, which quickly became a bestseller and was reprinted several times. Griet skryf ’n sprokie was awarded the M-Net, ATKV and Eugène Marais Prizes. For her children’s and youth books she has been awarded, among others, the Tienie Holloway Medal, the MER Prize and the Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature. Her novel Wegkomkans was mostly written during her sabbatical year (1996/97) in the south of France. Since 1999, Marita has been living in the French countryside with her French husband, Alain, and four children.
All the characters in this novel are entirely fictional, as is proper in a fairy tale.
Tafelberg,
an imprint of NB Publishers,
a division of Media24 Boeke (Pty) Ltd,
40 Heerengracht, Cape Town, 8001
PO Box 879, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa
www.tafelberg.com
Copyright © M. Van der Vywer 1992, 1994
English translation copyright © Catherine Knox
First published in Afrikaans in 1992 by Tafelberg
First published in Great Brittain in 1994 by Michael Joseph
Published in 1995 by Penguin Books
Published in 2008 by Tafelberg
All rights reserved.
No part of this electronic book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying and recirding, or by any othre information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
Cover painting by Alzette Prins
Cover design by Laura Foley
E-book design by Trace Digital Services
Available in print:
First edition, first impression 2008
ISBN: 978-0-624-04708-7
Epub edition:
First edition 2012
ISBN: 978-0-624-06394-0 (epub)
Mobi edition:
First edition 2013
ISBN: 978-0-624-06222-6 (mobi)
Entertaining Angels Page 20
