My Father, His Son

by Reidar Jonsson

  Banty Bay, Camp’s Bay, Bakoven, Llandudno, Mount Bay. The road goes on and on. Always a new promontory. The point is hiding. The moment hesitates while I wonder if we will reach the Cape of Good Hope alive.

  I let out my breath when we arrive at the wildlife park. Now the road is straight as an arrow. Everything seems deserted; falcons are floating above us except when they sit down for a rest on the only telephone wire that goes out toward the cape.

  The wildlife sanctuary is divided into two parts, one for blacks and one for whites.

  Black, uniformed guards stand gawking at the gate to the point. They carry long, thick, knobbed sticks to fight off the mountain monkeys. Even at this woebegone end of the continent, the country remains divided into two worlds. Only the monkeys leap freely and without mixed emotions between the signs. As a mat of fur and chatter, they suddenly cover our car completely. A guard saunters leisurely over and hits indiscriminately with his knobby stick, roars a few unintelligible words, and drives the monkeys from the car. The German grins.

  “Probably speak the same language,” he says and swings out of the car, several bottles of beer in his hands.

  I don’t know what to say.

  We are almost the only ones there. A few other cars. A path juts out toward the precipice, a white dress glimmers between the dry bushes, the monkeys scratch themselves and skip and bound around. Alone or with one companion, they are shy and hop away. As soon as there are more of them, they sit bravely and gawk at us while we walk to the end of the path and look at the lighthouse far down there.

  The ocean itself is separated. The Atlantic and the Indian oceans are on either side of the Cape of Good Hope, which is a boring cape, a monkey cape. The ocean is blue as ice. It looks as it always does, without boundaries or names.

  I turn around to go back and discover that the German has disappeared. Perhaps I stayed too long. The woman in the white dress is gone, too. In the dwarfed trees, the monkeys swing on the branches. Something disturbs them. It’s the German. He is throwing rocks at them. The monkeys jump down and come at me at full speed. I stand rooted to the spot, frozen. Below the precipice, the ocean remains coldly blue and my retreat is cut off. Then the guards appear. They wave their knobby sticks at the monkeys.

  “It was just a joke,” says the German.

  But it wasn’t funny.

  We drive back at twilight. I am quiet and still wonder what it is he wants.

  Cape Town glimmers in the night when we return. The German invites me to a restaurant. The best in the city. The exchange rate of our money and the cheap labor force in the country make us as rich as all other whites. We move straight up, floor after floor of the hotel, and are presented with all the lights in the bay as a spectacle when we look out through the rows of windows in the restaurant.

  Turtle soup. An Indian stands alertly behind the chair all the time, ready to be of service. The soft wall-to-wall carpet muffles all sounds. The German explains to me that anything can be bought, provided you have money. He demonstrates that one may even eat the flowers on the table if one wants and dares to do so. He laughs and urges me to drink more wine. Drunkenness is a membrane all around me. I sink into the chair, eat steak, and point to the tables that seem to be constantly moving. Finally I float out on the wall-to-wall carpet with the German’s brotherly supporting arm around my shoulder. He supports me all the way down and pours me into the car. Absentmindedly I note the lights playing hide-and-seek on his face as he drives through the city. I am not afraid any longer but wonder how he is able to drive with all that alcohol in his body.

  When we stop outside a house, I finally find out what I am good for.

  “Whatever you see and whoever approaches, just honk twice. Understand?”

  I nod. The German did invite me for dinner and paid for the meal. What he is going to do has nothing to do with me. Besides, it sounds thrilling, like a spy movie. And I am included in it, just a little.

  The few streetlights reveal a rather seedy area. A dog barks in the distance. The German leaves. I keep looking eagerly for the slightest shadow on the deserted narrow street, but nothing happens. A herd of elephants decide to sit down on my eyelids. I hadn’t dared refuse when the German kept offering me more wine. For a seventeen-year-old who doesn’t drink alcohol, I have imbibed abnormally much. Both the car and the street start swirling around and around. I tip over backwards and fall asleep.

  I awaken when an old woman knocks at the car window with a beer bottle. She is heavily made-up, smiles, and wants me to open the car door. Should I honk now?

  No. She has come to get me.

  The night has gray edges. Through a creaking door we enter a backyard. Clotheslines with waving washing are above our heads. In the kitchen, the faucet has a chronic drip. The woman opens a beer and nods for me to sit down. The walls are impregnated with yellow dirt. Giggles and mumbled voices reach us through an open window. I walk over to it. A black woman walks into the backyard. She is nude but quickly wraps a piece of cloth around herself.

  At first, I believe it’s the place where we entered but then realize that I’m looking down into the backyard on the other side of the building. The woman disappears, swallowed by the gray darkness. The German comes out. He is also stark naked. He throws away an empty beer bottle and pisses on the cracked concrete while he looks up in my direction.

  I understand why he wanted me along.

  But by then it’s too late. Hard boots clamp up the staircase. A cone of light hits the German, somebody whacks him from behind. He falls. It looks strangely unreal when he does. His legs jerk spas-tically when a bluish black figure aims a kick toward his midriff. I see a stripe glimmer in the light, but that’s all I have time to see. A weird sound buzzes in my head. Amazingly enough, I have time to feel surprise that it doesn’t hurt any more than it does before I drop into merciful blackness.

  Not until I come to is the hurt there, a harsh pain radiating from a spot in the back of my head. The stone floor is filthy and feels rough against my cheek. An intense light blinds me when I try to look around. Laughter and bloodcurdling screams echo in the big, bare room. Within a fraction of a second, I manage to see everything that is happening and wish I could force myself back into the black oblivion. The screams won’t stop. The toe of a boot prods me and I turn over. The German is tied down, lying on his stomach, on a narrow, rough-hewn table. He is nude. Legs and arms are stretched out, spread-eagle fashion. Behind him stands one policeman in shirt and pulled-down pants. He moves back and forth absentmindedly while picking his nose. Another is holding up the German’s face with a leather whip, while a third one spits, barks, and threatens the German with his penis, which he has brought out and holds in his hand. The German screams again. The cop in front of him turns away, suddenly. We look straight into each other’s eyes, the German and I. We fall into each other, and I understand that he will kill me if we survive this. I know already how the humiliation will work inside him, like a revving engine.

  By this time the barking cop has already turned his attention to me. His pink face and downy upper lip partake in an expression of sinister delight. His penis is a white monster against the dark blue uniform pants. In the large, bare room, sounds echo and multiply, and they keep hitting my thudding head. The man standing behind the German is through. He spits on him. I don’t understand what they are saying, but it seems obvious that I’m their next plaything. They come to stand in front of me, elbowing and pushing each other. A giggle bursts from me, I jump up and try to bite a police leg, right through the rough uniform cloth. I hang on and get a hard kick in the stomach. Everything turns black again. Perhaps it only lasts a brief moment. Because I see the legs move apart when the door is thrown open. A slightly built man with his hair combed straight back bends over me. He is a bit of a dandy and seems concerned as he licks his thin lips.

  “My boys do the strangest things. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I nod.

  “Do you understand wha
t you have done?”

  “No,” I answer and hot shame burns my innards as I try to put intensity in my look toward the German.

  The man in front of me glances toward the German.

  “What are we going to do with him?”

  My stomach quivers on the edge of nausea. To amuse them I suggest that they let us go. The cops grin superior, self-confident grins. They wait. So long as the slightly built man is there, they are powerless. He seems to consider my suggestion, nods, and gives a few brief commands in Afrikaans to the men.

  “That’s exactly what we’re going to do. As soon as you’ve learned that nobody laughs at us. Do you understand?”

  Understood. There wasn’t that much to understand. One of the cops was already soaking the leather whip in a pail of water. He brought it up and held it out toward me.

  I understood that I was chosen to flog the German.

  The cops threw me out first, and I floundered about in Cape Town, ended up in a men’s room, and finally found myself on a bench outside the Botanical Garden on Queen Street, my body stiff and trembling but law-abiding since it was proclaimed that the bench was only to be sat upon by whites. The German appeared in a taxi. He had been driving all over town because of me. He yanked me into the car and took my hand. At first I thought he meant to console me, beg my forgiveness for having lured me into the strange affair with the black prostitutes. But instead he took a good hold of the thumb on my right hand, stared into my eyes, and swore that he would kill me if I uttered one syllable. Then he pulled. A violent jerk. The pain was excruciating.

  I did not utter a word when he explained to the hopping-mad first mate that he had run around like a crazed rat trying to find me, all night and all morning. Our departure had been both delayed and prevented. The captain had planned to leave Cape Town without us. In South Africa, however, everybody plays the same note. Even if the harbor authorities could not tell that, for the moment, we were being tortured by policemen, they knew very well that they were not allowed to let the ship take off without us aboard. Time is money. Those hours were costly. I had to pay them back with interest.

  ALGERIA

  1976

  That was not how my dream went. It was disconnected, got caught in retakes, disappeared, and froze into one single picture that stayed stubbornly right there until I, still deep into my dream, managed to force myself awake. In the dream, my main feeling was curiosity. I don’t know how I could know that, since it was a dream. But in all my dreams there exists an interested and involved second person. Like an avid movie fan he sits there, unable to close his eyes.

  I reorganized my dream. It was easy. The ending was a simple case of double exposure — two events melted together into one. The event with the German who is flogged stems from Cape Town. In the dream, I’m the one forced to carry out the task. As if there were some guilt, in spite of everything. But the humiliating rape is a totally different story from the time I was in Algiers, at the age of sixteen. Perhaps it has worked its way up to the surface since I am back in Algiers? In either case, I just want to forget what really happened.

  I keep thinking about the German. That asshole. I nearly missed a whole continent because of him.

  But why keep delving into such things? My future life may be healthier if the past stays buried.

  Louise was still playing Wagner. The music boomed through the house, and I ambled into the weird living room. The stone floor and the bare walls surrounding the enormous model train setup emitted desolation and coldness, as if Monsieur Verdurin had grown up by mistake and had no idea what to do to create a home.

  Louise was not alone. She was lecturing poor Omar. Her way of throwing back her hair, her lively gestures, and the fiery concentration she evidenced had totally hypnotized him. He might be illiterate, but he knew how to dream of European women. Monsieur Verdurin had probably shown off his bedroom walls to him. But watch out, Omar! All the Playboy bunnies with their bare asses and silicone tits may do for one-man orgies, but in reality those taped-up angels of Monsieur Verdurin’s are just a fabricated product by men and for men. That kind of woman does not exist. They are only dreams that make it possible for us to get through the everyday humdrum. Perhaps we will talk about this one day, when my poor Volvo is repaired.

  I nodded sadly toward Omar. He looked perfectly at home, kept twirling his wineglass, and listened attentively to Louise’s renditions, like a true gentleman. I felt sorry for him. Soon she would get to the graphic description of how she and the artist squirmed and wriggled around in oil paints. That story lived its own life nowadays. It developed in step with new friends, new conversations, and new expectations. Not even Louise knew anymore what was true and what was not. It belonged among her myths, her youth, lost but constantly recaptured in her Paris memories.

  Actually, I didn’t lag far behind her. When I told of my years at sea, I didn’t know what was true. Everything gets worn down, sandpapered by time, so that one can catch the essential feeling of inner turmoil. The events become a representation of reality, in which the inflexibility of my youth is the heart and core. I search for the original truth. Every reality is therefore deadly serious but, unfortunately, not always scrupulously truthful. Like Louise, I have a tendency to lie a little about myself whenever necessary. Perhaps there weren’t quite that many sharks in Adelaide. But it sure felt like it.

  She if anyone ought to understand a slight exaggeration. All of us have the need to spin a few myths around our lost origins. We look for truth in our wounds, put spider webs and healing balsam around them.

  I sat down, muttered something unintelligible, and tried to look as if I understood French well enough to follow the conversation — or lecture, rather — since Louise remained on her soapbox the whole time. She was not at all in Paris playing snake with an artist. She was in the middle of her favorite subject: The Male.

  Perhaps I failed to understand the finer points, but she had obviously found a metaphor for what she wanted to express about the one-dimensional creation that is man. She called him The Concrete Man and thought of the male psyche as an enormous armor of concrete that contained an inner, stormy ocean of pain and confusion, especially when confronted with female attacks on the patriarchal society. The question at hand was how the two sexes would go about disassembling these mighty male armors in such a way that the potential strengths and powers did not seep out and disappear. Because the dangerous, insensitive man enclosed in the concrete armor owned also potentially positive power and strength.

  Total and utter nonsense, in other words.

  Whose armor is she out to get if not mine? She wants to dismember me into small parts from which she can rebuild her own wishful dream of a man with total control over diaper changes, thought-provoking essays, and rich emotions. But how on earth would we have been able to survive and get the necessities of life had I been running around like a portable reservoir of pain and confusion, trying to find myself?

  The confused one is Louise. She has almost three degrees in every subject that cannot be combined into a sensible profession. If anyone is leaking, she is the one. She could use a few armor plates for her existence, even though right now she, in contrast to me, may look utterly stable and professional. I have to confess that it was my armor that had cracked back home in Sweden.

  Wisely I kept my mouth shut while Louise delivered her long-winded theory of The Concrete Man. I did not want to spoil a possible conciliatory celebration in bed. Whatever opinions I harbor regarding Louise, our reconciliations have been festive gala numbers. I also kept quiet because Louise only fucks men who share her opinions. A change in that area was not to be hoped for. The one who is not on her side is excluded from the sanctuary. She began with the existentialist artist and continued with me as a genuine worker and socialist. If she only dared, she would by now fuck only her sisters at the university. It is from that direction that I, these last few years, have been given a distinct feeling that it’s no longer quite all right to be a man. Perhap
s that’s the reason I have not been feeling well and have grown rather quiet. Only a tiny part of my earlier life would probably suffice to put me on the rack.

  Such concepts would not be understood by Omar.

  Blinking his eyes, he nodded silently, like a real natural man.

  I think he said something about women being the power — as long as one kept them at home. With several wives in the house, the man was stronger than ever. Omar could well imagine himself buying several, if only he could get together enough camels.

  I nearly choked on my newborn joy.

  Finally a fundamentalist of the purest order!

  Louise would of course force Omar to admit that he was a true Concrete Man. She would attack Omar as a simple oppressor of the female sex and refuse to see his reality.

  Silently I wished her good luck, fell off the chair, and crawled on all fours out of the room, laughing uproariously. My God! She probably still believed that it was a question of hours before Omar would be a convert, change his sex, or buy a couple of how-to books on the art of finding oneself as a house husband — and at the same time become immersed in the struggle to liberate the Western woman. There are times when I believe that Louise is a cartoon figure. If she doesn’t already exist as such, she ought to be one.

  “Go ahead and laugh,” Louise sneered after me. “But walk on two legs like a normal human being. Otherwise Omar may put you back in prison again. He knows what you tried to do in Sweden. Erik told me how you went about it.”

  Louise has this remarkable ability to transmit several surprising pieces of information simultaneously. In other words, Omar was a regular secret policeman. And who was Erik? A man with so much power that he could get people thrown in jail in other countries?

  I kept on crawling.