Be good, little child, be restful, be lovely; be you.
With love,
Your tentmaker.
PS: Your “thingy” should be lying on your windowsill for all to see! Have you found it?
PPS: I’m sending Tristia “under separate cover”.
PPPS: Love.
Potchefstroom
Wednesday, 26 June 1963
Lovely little sunrise child,
It’s neither morning nor night, so I can neither say “good morning” nor “good evening”. But I do want to say “good day”: to your soft hair in the sun, your pert little nose, and your coy ears with their ticklish lobes; your fragrant, laughing mouth, and your delicious eyes; your speckled, soft shoulders, lovely little arms, and gorgeous hands with the ring; those soft, firm, naughty little breasts with their stand-to-attention nipples; the light and shadow on your tummy, and your deep belly-button; the poor little chick that must sleep all alone now, and next to it the furrows made by your thighs, just to the side of it; your little hips and your round white buttocks; your lovely legs and your feet. In fact: good day to you! Good daayyy Fish! Daaag visselijn mijn!
Thank you also for today’s two dear letters – you must please never again upset me so with such a long silence.
Just after I got your letters, I phoned Bartho. He’s now expecting Rook en Oker – at last! – by the end of the week. And he apparently spotted a printing error (“werwarm”) in “Herfsoggend” and changed it (but not the error “herrinner”). The red page numbers have been set a little deeper into the page, I believe; and the colophon now appears in the right place; that’s about it, I think. Meanwhile the bookshop here has, on my recommendation, promptly doubled their original order (a dozen or so), and they’re thinking of making a special window display.
Further: I’ve come to hear about a Dutch anthology, Vandaag, that appears annually and wants to include Afrikaans work, but doesn’t quite know where to find it. I’ll send you their address.
How did things go on Monday with the reading for the ACVV-SAVE Cultural Association?! I don’t envy you this task. (Or perhaps I envy you your wonderful “perversity”!)
Angel child, your letters have made me quite light; I want to fly off with every little breeze to the sea, to you. When will we ever be together again as we were during “our” week? New memories keep coming back to me all the time; and the known memories change, acquiring new nuances and meaning, and achieving fresh dimensions.
So it must be. Because these days I have little else to feed on, or do. My article on Rome is finally done. The translations lie in wait, accusingly. Otherwise, my sinus problems have become so unbearable (only in the Cape do I escape this condition!) that I have begun – with some scepticism – to go for electrical treatment that doesn’t actually help at all. And Anton is fretful; last night’s getting up for him has landed me with a lovely cold. Now I’m as rickety as an old bedstead. Grim and bad-tempered. Except for the small while when I can shake everything off and be with you.
I posted Tristia off to you on Monday. Wrote a letter to go with it and then misplaced the thing – but afterwards it struck me the letter might have ended up inside the book. Let me know!
My dear mother came upon your volume yesterday and read the inscription with great interest – but made no comment, and seemed unsurprised. I’m beginning to suspect she knows, after all – but how? And I’m beginning to wonder how much the whole thing had to do with my father’s thrombosis attack. If only it would just come out. This kind of uncertain silence makes everything harder; and I dare not break the ice myself.
Further: Christie is still trying to “diagnose” me; I just laugh him off – and now he says I would drive any psychologist mad. But in the course of this process he did get one thing right: that his “help” doesn’t “help”! He went on to say I’m a “tragic case”; and I said he’s not tragic, but I feel sorry for him. And that’s that! Oh the comfort of “explaining” everything, of cataloguing things into traumas and neuroses and fixations and complexes – the eternal need to name things? With one big difference between them and us: with a name they want to say everything, and with a code they want to sum everything up, explain it; us? – the names we use are simply to say we cannot say; that we dare not ever have the presumption to say and to think that it’s all said and done. (“I can’t sum up; not a life, a conversation, / a period or a century”!) And after my sobering confrontation with this kind of cataloguing attitude (which might, negatively, still have some value!), I find I have no choice but to return to you:
agteruit roei waar dit stroom
en straal en droom nog is,
dwars teen die breek-van-damme in:
’n goue klein goud-vis.
Back to the grotesque: Maish (Mouse/Rat) Levin tracked me down last night, apparently using your directions. For once I don’t mind him making a “splash” with his bit of news. But I forgot to give him all the relevant information last night: which explains today’s telegram. (I hope it’s clear? I just want him to emphasise that even if the book is banned here, it will get recognition overseas.) If he doesn’t return the photo of me, I’ll send you another. Just say the word.
And when will you send me the slides?! (I’m hoping our most recent film – Hout Bay – will arrive next week.) And the MS? I need it. I want to know what you think – be honest, even if you have to show no mercy.
Lovely precious darling: I miss you. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll make another tape (ironic: on Christie’s recording machine!). Meanwhile, I’m with you always – on the mountain, on your little mound, and on the “holy mountain” (where only those with pure hearts and clean hands are allowed).
With a love that is growing ever-larger and more wonderful,
André.
PS: A kiss for our little girl. And a nice sleepie-sleepie for my little chick.
Castella
22 Wessels Street
Green Point
Thursday, 27 June 1963
Darling my André,
They were here – Jan and Marjorie – left about ten minutes ago – “just to show we’re not cross with you”. But to all their dear nosey questions I had only one answer: a happy laugh. Marjorie said she asked Ina [Ena de Klerk] at the party whether she does it on purpose: to which she answered: “Naturally. It’s scandalous” – or something just as scandalous. After which I simply had to say to Jan it reminds of only one thing:
En die kwajongens het dit bestook
Val, val, ballon,
In Seepsopstraat
Hulle het hom bestook
Met klippers
Skeldwoorde
Val, val ballon
In Seepsopstraat
Maar hy het nie in Seepsopstraat geval nie
Hy het ver, baie ver, geval,
In die oop skone waters van die silwer see …
Or something like that.
Can’t remember the poem precisely, but you know it, don’t you, darling, about the beautiful tender child who made a balloon and let it go and everyone warned him that flying a balloon was against municipal regulations … It’s forbidden … and then the naughty boys … who hated anything beautiful “because beauty is truth …” Fall, fall, balloon, in Soapsoup Street …
Darling, very tired. Working myself to death, but first I must speak to you, apart from saying thank you for Tristia – beautiful book – and for the lovely letter: always be so full of trust, as I know you are. Thank you for everything, my love. 10:15 says the radio. Did you get my tape? I was so excited about this new adventure.
My little treasure, firstly, I love you so much.
Secondly – Levin (how do you spell his first name: Meisch?) was here to fetch your photo – for the Sunday Times. Then told me everything you told him over the phone. These simple, beautiful, ecstatic little contacts!
I spent last evening with Jack – he came for a meal – and later left in the rain, cross, despondent and so terribly hurt. Oh my André, everythin
g is so complicated! WHAT MUST WE DO?? May I perhaps catch a plane to Grahamstown in two weeks’ time?? Wonderful, lovely, life! Wonderful, hellish separation! I will eat you up when I am with you again – be warned!
Love love love,
Your Ingrid.
{Goodnight, dearest. ’Night, my André. ’Night, my lovely declared treasure. 11:30. I.}
Potchefstroom
Friday night, 28 June 1963
Darling,
It’s cold here; and here in my little circle of light in the bedroom – all the others are sitting around the fireplace – it’s lonely, too. This, however, is no pure, austere kind of cold that clarifies things, down to the bone: it’s miserable and muddy; and my heart feels much the same. Nothing can crystallise here – at the most, things petrify. Is it any wonder then that my hankering after you is becoming ever more desperate? Because you are the real thing: light and warmth, autumn leaves, fresh air, blue sea, youth, and woman.
And tonight I sit, moreover, with the frustration and longing caused by your tape! I spent the entire morning trying to decipher your mysterious, back-to-front talking. How did you get it right?! All I can think is that the left-hand spool wasn’t properly pushed into its pin, but was sitting too high, so that track three recorded onto track one and vice versa. I’ll try again tomorrow to see if I can work something out. And on Monday or so I’ll send you another tape – along with a blank one so you can make a new recording. Meanwhile, please write me what you said!
By the way: I shall in all likelihood be here until 7 July. You can thus post me letters until Wednesday the 3rd. After that? I don’t yet know. Perhaps Johannesburg if there’s enough space at Naas Steenkamp’s place, and if Anton’s over his cold by then. Thereafter, I may travel down to the Cape; but it doesn’t look likely – though I’m going to try, because God knows, child, I miss you. I’m so depressed tonight.
This afternoon I was with Dekker, but he’s a hard nut to crack. He did, however, indicate he’s not unsympathetic to Lobola. Meanwhile, other people’s reactions are typical of Potchefstroom: the head of the Afrikaans department (Prof. [Hertzog] Venter) said straight out he had read the book up to page 42 and then thrown it away. Immoral. Confused. And (isn’t this strange!) uncalvinistic. These are the people who guide our students. One of the theology professors got as far as page 16 and then burnt the book in his fireplace. (I must send him “Sinte Brandaan”!) All of it of course ironically interesting; and amusing. It’s just that one feels so oppressed by the thought that if the light has turned to darkness, how big might the darkness actually be?
More pleasant: I found an interesting, though often naive The Psychology of Sex (Oswald Schwarz) – thus not the one you showed me at [Desmond] Windell’s place. He offers the following insights, among others, that seem more philosophical than psychological (and are therefore perhaps true?): “Sex love means insatiable participation in the existence of the beloved. Love is not a state which can be reached and in which our longing comes to rest: love is perpetual striving, unending uncertainty and insecurity, an everlasting act of creation.” I’m actually quoting this because of the beautiful Indian myth he cites to illustrate his argument: at first the God of Love – Anangarange – tried to interfere in an argument between Siva and his wife, whereupon Siva burnt him to death. He was allowed to live again, but without a material body. From that day on he could gain form only via, and during, the embrace of two lovers. (Thus his name, Anangarange, which apparently means: “Form of the formless”.) Another case of: “the third who lay in our embrace”! Lovely, isn’t it, my little woman-girl-child?
He has a rather interesting belief about morality: the complete fulfilment of “sleeping together” cannot occur unless there is full surrender on both sides, and therefore full sincerity (it’s pretty obvious!); therefore: “sexual enjoyment means ultimate truthfulness; thus the body becomes the guardian of the essential morality of sex” – an angle people (or I) don’t normally consider. In the end it confirms what we’ve known for a long time: how delightfully important, how indispensable, the body is. For me, one of the most grotesque things about Christianity has always been the way it misjudges the central role of the “flesh”.
I bought myself an anthology of Beat Poetry, but I’m not overly impressed. I return time and time again to the Brown Bible. And your little volume.
Little girl-person, Godly-good thing, tonight my longing is insuppressible. I want to be with you. To be quiet, just be with you. But eventually also in you, not just a small bit, but a big bit; and deep, in the absolute happiness of this being-one together. And I want to see you, your coy, fearless little body, one-and-all affirmation, saying yes, with your happy eyes, the challenge of your breasts, and the invitation of your provocative little mound.
Enumeration doesn’t do it. Neither do words – on paper, or spoken, or thought. I am now going to do the only thing I can: “sleep” with you; now. And I’ll send a little drop on the page along with this letter.
With love,
Your André.
Saturday evening, 29 June 1963
Dear Treasure-child who writes so beautifully and who was so catty about the MS,
I am already on page 127 where you write about Sylvia’s obscenely naked white arms and just then I loved you so much that I first had to come and chat a few more lines. You’ll get your MS back next week, I can’t help it if I’ve been so horribly busy; I’ve specially pushed aside my home[work] proofs to read a bit of Die Ambassadeur and if I don’t then post you a letter tomorrow I’ll never hear the end of my desertion. As if I am not always thinking of you my lamb. The ambassador himself is not quite human for me yet, perhaps because I am looking for you in him and I can’t find you; Nicolette is lovely now in the second part. Just don’t be self-pitying about her getting cold. Sharper. She’s good.
I’m sorry I was so horrible over the phone in not asking how it’s going with your sinus and other ailments. I don’t like the idea of electrical treatment, sounds too much like Christie to me! What do they do, exactly?
I also don’t like “psychological treatment” – Fall, fall, balloon, in Soapsoup Street …! Let me know whether you know that beautiful poem, if not, I’ll try to get you a copy; Uys is so angry with me that I don’t really want to phone him for it, and on top of it all I might get Jack’s voice on the other end too. The only honourable thing I can do now is to stay far out of Jack’s way.
His letter yesterday was so terrible and gloomy. “Oh I’ve made so many mistakes,” he says, and that I mustn’t answer him, that he will always love me, “and I love Simone too”. Thank God and you for your letter, which arrived at the same time, and the naughty telegram that made me cross and within five minutes made me laugh non-stop for ten minutes right in front of Simonetta’s surprised eyes. Tried to telegraph you this morning but the bladdy old post office officials are so dense, they didn’t even know where Potchefstroom is and honestly expected me to tell them. So, after much struggling I got hold of your number and prayed that your parents would just think it was the newspaper again.
Still want to tell you that Babel [Abel] Coetzee sent my money – thank you. And also thank you for the “permission” for the “little sleep” in yesterday’s delightful letter. I haven’t made use of it yet – was too shocked last night – you know the association with Jack lasted so long – six years, as friends and otherwise. Life is a brackish moat … Hence my date-address: because the old Castella is suddenly so quiet and strange without
you
Without Chris
Without Jack.
But tonight I’m completely cheerful, and am enjoying Die Ambassadeur so much; although I wish you’d given me a clearer copy. Get yourself new carbon paper.
Liefsteling, you must see our little flat. It’s even got carpets now – and a [?], so middle-class-comfort and eight plates and a shiny little table for inside.
Simone is naughty – healthy now – and has developed a new thing that makes me react im
mediately, a thing I can’t stand in anyone: the sulk. I have no weapon against it and it drives me mad. And tomorrow we’re going to fetch the Sunday Slimes to see your lovely portrait in it – I have been photo-less for two days now – except for the colour one, and the Pot-Pourri in my diary and the “know-it-all” one. And we’re going to look at your beautiful name that’ll be there so unreal, and read all your lies.
By the way, saw Mrs [Juliana] Bouws and Freda [Linde], HAUM “has no objection against” us recording together, so, that’ll happen. I must go and record again soon, and this time I’m including “Towenaar” [“Magician”], and I’ll say: For André.
You must find out what your mom knows, it’s horrible to think that this may have contributed to your dad’s illness, try to find out somehow. But I don’t think so, André. In the meantime, the “stasis” of your other life is – a little – sometimes – frustrating. So badly want to come to you. There is still such a long-distance loneliness ahead. But at least you look after me so well with your absolute encircling abundant love. My darling, my strong man who can do, and who is, so astonishingly many things. ’Night to you. I’m going to sleep now – guess with what? – Optimists in Africa – which I’m still editing, too terrible, a disgusting book though just one of my many musts.
I love you, my André. Look after yourself well, you are a very precious person.
Love darling,
Your Ingrid.
PS: Come in July. I miss you. IJ.
PPS: Still haven’t seen Rook en Oker. Thank you for your missionary work in this direction. IJJ?
First two parts finished (Sunday five o’clock). Captivated. Go further. To hell with other work. Bravo!
Flame in the Snow Page 11
