Flame in the Snow

by Francis Galloway

  This weekend I read Greene’s A Sense of Reality: his newest book, consisting of four stories. The first and last are magnificent: they use a childhood world to create their own mythology. In the final story a group of children (all of them semi-stunted because of inbreeding in their village) go on a search for blackberries or something like that and discover a ruined castle. The young girl has tied her skirt in a knot to gather up the blackberries and she’s walking around with the bottom half of her body exposed. They discover a skeleton. At the end she goes and sits on the skeleton’s thigh bones and starts rocking to and fro: “He’s so beautiful; so beautiful. Why can’t we be beautiful too?” With something akin to a primitive tristesse and anxiety running through it all, along with humankind’s insatiable hunger for a “lost paradise”. It’s a library book but I’ve ordered a copy: if it arrives in time, I’ll bring it along.

  And, by the way, do you have Stroomgebied, the Dutch anthology? Large beautiful book with just about all the “moderns” in it.

  I’m still working, translating, translating, translating. By Friday, Deo volente, I should finish off the Egypt book’s successor (Mesopotamia); John Malherbe always pays very promptly. Then I hope to be able to send you something. It’s so little, my darling; I feel almost bad sending little dribs and drabs. But I try to siphon off whatever I can.

  Poor little Simone, who is so ill. I hope things take a turn for the better soon. I’ve become very fond of this child of light. If you make another tape, ask her to sing her little song as well! My heart yearns for a daughter of my own; but it doesn’t look as if it’s going to happen within the current marriage “bond”. I’ve kept hoping, the whole month, that you’d suddenly phone and say: “Guess what …?” Crazy. Surely it’s unrealistic? But the heart doesn’t allow itself to be prescribed to.

  … dit hart, zoo zwak,

  Dat al zóó moe is, altijd luider slaat,

  Altijd maar luider, en niet rusten wil.

  I sent the slides away ten days ago for printing (only the best ones), but the process apparently takes three weeks. You’ll therefore have to be more patient. If we get a chance to spend some time together – I can already see it’s going to be almost impossible! – then we must take a few more, but this time with more attention and concentration!

  I take it the little chick’s not getting so cold any more. It’s not from forgetfulness that I didn’t strip her bare last time; I first wanted to say hello like the first time before putting her through the motions again. That very first moment remains completely unique in its intensity and wonder and anticipation and its yearning-in-the-face-of the-unknown. Remember?: When we lay together quietly in the little bed, and you took my hand and lay it down right there.

  I can’t even think about it without losing all self-control!

  With love, and love, and love,

  André.

  Castella

  Wednesday, 4 September 1963

  My darling André,

  As your so very sympathetic letter of Saturday said – there’s a hidden despondency – in our telephone conversation last night too, for which you lacerated yourself … don’t! I think it has something to do with the wrecked weekend, not as such, though, but because we had to actually feel, “physically”, the consequences of our “responsible” decision. And then there are the different realities, practical real physical life versus this separation – a separation that will, eventually, make us unreal to each other. And so on. God! The abysses of the heart. I’m sending you a poem “Jou Naam Het ’n Kinderkarretjie” [“Your Name Has a Dinky Car”], which perhaps also contains this despair, though a wonderfully (I hope) poetic, liberating, harmonised laughter too.

  And I bless you with love and tenderness.

  Cocoon.

  A beautiful Lucebert – “Nazomer”

  Love darling come again soon.

  ik heb in het gras mijn wapens gelegd

  en mijn wapens gaan geuren als gras

  ik heb in het gras mijn lichaam gelegd

  mijn liggaan is geurig als hout bitter en zoet

  dit liggen dit nietige luchtige liggen

  als een gele foto liggend in het water

  glimmend gekruld op de golven

  of bij het bos stoffig van lichaam en schaduw

  oh grote adem laat de stenen nog niet opstaan

  maak nog niet zwaar hun wangen hun ogen

  kleiner gebrilden en grijzer

  laat ook de minnaars nog liggen en stilte

  zwart tussen hun zilveren oren en ach

  laat de meisjes hun veertjes nog schikken en glimlachen

  Castella

  September 1963

  My darling darling André,

  Thank you for your lovely letter of today – the little Mrs in the office came in and said, “I’m just quickly bringing you the Cape Times.” And I’m sending Miss Padayachee’s wonderful letter back. And this lovely note: PS: “So sorry, I couldn’t type this letter!” And – “I wonder if I could keep in touch with you? Perhaps by correspondence??” You mustn’t be too critical of her essays – and I hope you get a fat MS out of it! Greetings, my gentleman!

  Silly thing. But I feel a little silly myself today. Was just as absent-minded at work today, so that Anne (who still can’t manage to call me by my name) was eventually forced to ask: “But are you completely fucked in your head today?” And little innuendos about the “Cape Times” I received this morning. Dear child! Yesterday evening Chris was here for a while, and he read my little verse “Jou Naam Het ’n Kinderkarretjie” and almost laughed himself to death. He says it’s “Dutch”. Thank you, by the way, for your permission to go overseas – posted my letter to Coert Starck at the Embassy this morning, with favourable excerpts from Cloete’s review. And one to Bartho to ask him to send a copy of the collection to Starck. Do you remember, he said: “I like you and your poems.” And I sent you the beautiful Lucebert, which was again last night a revelation of the tenderness of those 50s writers – rare today!

  You speak in your letter about your arguments this weekend and that you blame yourself – you should have seen how furious I was on Monday night – in the first place dead tired, it was over at Jack’s, when I went to “fetch” Simone after work – because when I saw her I could immediately see that it wasn’t flu, but scarlet fever or – measles. The doctor, who I had to wait for in the goddamn cold Cape wind (Anne says one shouldn’t use “goddamn” in connection with the weather), arrived and confirmed measles, and serious – “severe” – said he. Dr Katz. And off he went with his Marx moustache and I stayed behind – quickly trying to calculate what I should do about work, etc. etc. The poor little thing just lies in a dark room and hardly wees because she doesn’t want to eat or drink; and Jack and his family have a maid – and so he said she could stay there till Tuesday afternoon. I got up and looked out at the sea through the closed windows and heard him speak: “You’ll only have to be away from work for a few days, Pie.” Maybe he really didn’t think further, but does he honestly still not know that I will lose money and maybe even my job? And then I said I’d come and fetch her early the next morning, and he could see I was angry. The next morning, when I arrived with the Press’s car, he wasn’t there. Since then no news whatsoever. Luckily I found someone who came in yesterday and today and can come tomorrow. After that, I’ll have to see what happens. Simone is a little better, but the cough goes right through me; I’ve never been able to bear a cough; “eentonig die hoes van die kind aan my sy”. One is so powerless against it, and I hate being powerless! She doesn’t even want to play the harmonica, she says, “No, Mammie, because then my cough comes.” And last night she sat up straight in her dark little bed “looking at” the book that I (dimwit) had brought her – she’s not allowed to be anywhere near a light – and says: “This is a lovely book, Mammie.” Monday night – when I caught the bus and left Simone behind, I couldn’t help stating the obvious to Jack: “I’m sorry, I’ll have to depend on you tonight.” So you se
e, as Ouma would say, perhaps people are pigs in their innermost beings, and I don’t want you to blame yourself too much about the apparent heartlessness, and a writer’s foremost duty is to protect himself from RUBBISH and rubbish is everything that stands in one’s way.

  Try and decipher that “line of thought” if you can. I have honestly forgotten myself what I began with. In any case, you mustn’t take the arguments too much to heart. After all our (terrible) arguments Jack said to me the other evening: “Of all the people I’ve ever known, you are probably the one I admire most.” Wonderful him, or wonderful me???

  So you see, you can do what you want, as long as you “strive purely”.

  Why don’t you write a drama for us – my ouma and me, and then we swop roles – do you see? – she plays the child and I play her – because we are so taken up with each other?

  Thank you, my darling, my André, my own, for the beautiful greeting: and since I am so fond of ritual, I will repeat it tonight in my white nightdress.

  And thank you for the poem of mine that your Ward friend translated (I’d really love to see the fuss he’s made of it), I hope it is accepted. Send them our ugly portrait – no one there knows us, after all.

  And I am so excited about your novella. Here, where strict order prevailed in the castle and at work – your spirited letter caused a chaos that you will have to come and quell. My darling, darling, humane human, “with all your flaws, all your shortcomings” … and that’s Éluard. And now I’m going to “veertjes schikken en glimlachen” because I am delighted and happy and completely satisfied.

  Love to you,

  Cocoon.

  Grahamstown

  Sunday night, 8 September 1963

  Cocoon, my dearest, most elegant girl,

  Thank you for yesterday’s short, pure, and distraught little letter with its very lovely poem. I have read little of yours that expresses as much hurt and beauty as the stanza: “Want jy word verkoop …” [“For you are being sold …”], especially after the light, playful beginning and the ominous transition: “Wat sal die afslaer sê van jou naam?” [“What will the auctioneer use for your name?”]. If it were me I would work a little on the lines: “Jou naam wat ek roep deur die duisternis / Wees gewaarsku” [“Your name that I call out in the darkness / Be warned”], and perhaps also “my maagdelike woord” [“my virginal word”]. Otherwise it’s so very fine, darling.

  Actually, yesterday was a blessed day. Your letter-and-poem (and the lovely Lucebert) came my way, along with Desmond [Windell]’s photos, including the one of you. You didn’t like it very much – and yet he captured so much of your intensity and tenderness. It’s lying here next to me, with its gentle yet headstrong little twist of the mouth. Oh love, my love, the way I long for you!

  Otherwise, a letter arrived from Chris Barnard to say that – apart from a few points of criticism – Die Ambassadeur is “a gift from heaven for our prose”; also, a letter from a friend – actually a friend’s sister – who is a lecturer in Van Wyk Louw’s department, just to say that he said to her, after my visit: “I am entirely under the impression that he is a cultured and intelligent person.” And another letter, saying Die Koffer will be produced in Pretoria (Normal College).

  It’s almost a pity that all this had to arrive on the same day and wasn’t more spread out over the long, grey weeks!

  Your photo had such an instantaneous effect on me that I began to write a few verses again. I’m sending you two of them. Still working on a few others. They’re not very “dense”, but they wanted to come out; just had to. Rather call them prose pieces in lines of verse. They’re in any case for you, of course.

  Standpunte has arrived. Or at least Rob’s copy has; mine always comes late. Three of my poems are in it (“Meisie” [“Girl”], “Vlug” [“Escape”] and “Selfs Heiliges” [“Even Saints”]). I’ll try to get hold of a copy for you. But – that bladdy Grové! I sent him six poems, entitled “Six Poems / For Ingrid”. In the end he took only three – and he left out the dedication. Not that anyone will have any doubt of course. But I wanted to see it there. And so the daily idiotic bourgeoisie-at-auction comes and takes away one’s few remaining bits and pieces.

  I’m working on the novella, Orgie. Still in “preparation”. It will take a long time, yet. But it’s beginning to find form.

  Amid all the hubbub this morning I unpacked my drawers looking for some paper to scribble on and I came upon a bunch of rejection letters for short stories from my school and university days. One reader’s report deals with a bloodthirsty novel (The Lost City of Atlantis) that I wrote when I was thirteen/fourteen. The reader said, inter alia: “The work is meant for the more mature stage of youth, but for these purposes the love relationships are far too erotic and the embraces too intimate. Parents will object …” Fransie Malherbe will be happy to hear that even then I was thus inclined!

  How are things with my measles girl? Please look after her nicely, lovely little thing. I would so badly like to be there to look after both of you together – because I know very well how tired and dispirited it makes you to deal with this on your own.

  Child, child, my beautiful child – when I think of you, I want to say “biesie-biesie-bame”, because with you it’s easy to hold hands, “handjies same”, and say “ame”; with you all kinds of wonders happen quite naturally.

  I want, once again, to participate in the wonders of your absolutely girly life. Even a leucodendron and a navel, in your case, are little poems!

  The papie, in its longing, is all too rebellious. How can I restrain it? “Als is enkeld als verlang / na heelal en na samehang”.

  Last night I lay awake again. Thoughts about your love, my love for you, and my longing. Oh you are “necessary, humble, precious and chaste”. Mine, mine. God. You should know that, in the last few days, my yearning has not been sterile, just disheartening – there is a stillness, almost a happiness, in me, because despite the distance the knowledge of you is a mercy.

  I want to phone Koos tomorrow and ask how the printing’s going. I dare not set my expectations according to any specific date. But I’m hoping, hoping.

  I love you very much; and I need you – not to bind you or make you unhappy and full of resistance, but to know you freely like wind and dunes and recklessly beautiful like your red bikini.

  With love and every other thing,

  André.

  Castella

  Monday evening, 9 September 1963

  Hello my you,

  I miss you. Was a bit sickish again this weekend; feverish – but it’s probably the pace at which I live – as a Capetonian, I don’t like busyness – Simone is still in bed but is getting better – she’s really been very good! What did you do this weekend that you’re so quiet? Got your post-letter on Friday.Walked to the post office to send you a telegram; re-read it there on the groaning chairs, and didn’t know what to telegraph, so just folded the letter again and went off to work. MAD! What can one actually say? When Anne sees the letters that come and go between us, she says, slightly cattily, “Probably the same old pudding with a different syrup.” Maybe our variations on love really are just a little trick?

  My dearest man! Are you really coming on the 20th? How are things going with the proofs? Today, after the long, dead weekend, heard two small sounds from you; your three poems in Standpunte, which really look good and which were an excellent choice, my favourite is still “Selfs Heiliges” – (why is my name not with it as “promised” – you see, I even read Huck [The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn], and bravo! The language is delicious!) and – a short letter from Desmond telling me that you had one of his photos made for Die Vaderland and, together with that, the enlargement of I.J., and one (considerate) of us. Did you enjoy “Your Name”, or were you a little indignant at first, liefsteling?

  No more news from Piet. A letter from Bartho to say my book is appearing today (!). We’re going to be together in his new anthology for young people, he says. In reality we aren’t
really that separated, my angel my André.

  What’s happening to the poor papie? It’s going to shrink! Or will I have to smack those long elegant hands of yours when you get here? God, I’m becoming completely maternal (!) and then you get cross.

  Uys talks the hind legs off a donkey (on the phone) and is pleased with his translation of Twelfth Night. He actually told me about Standpunte (why didn’t you?) and said he finds that you are (naturally) very receptive, but that you haven’t quite taken up surrealism in poetic form. “There are flashes: ‘Small futile forgettable signs.’”

  Otherwise static. The bladdy weather has also got stuck in winter, though the sun had to shine today of course when I had to work.

  This morning when I walked into the cage, Anne had just arrived back from PE. If she or I had known they’d be going, I’d have gone with them and surprised you early on Saturday morning and invited you over for the Test. She said it was a mess at Boet Erasmus – the referee was terribly unfair towards the Australians and every time the Springboks were given a penalty kick the coloured spectators screamed MISS MISS MISS MISS MISS MISS and I killed myself laughing at all the things she described so indignantly. It’s probably only in this country where people shoot at one another at a sporting event. It’s as funny as it is scandalous! I wish we’d been there to join in the “chaos”. Of course, the people are far more interesting to me than the rugby.

  Van Wyk Louw is becoming lovely in his old age. Did you see what he wrote in Standpunte about censorship and Lobola – or did you only read your darling to-me-poems? Among other things – “God, that a people’s spiritual life should depend on this! Not on its intelligence, but on such objects!” I read Standpunte right through to the Rembrandt advert and in general the whole thing is, as Anne says, just “the same sauce …”

  And now I’m going to have a bath and then sleep, a W.E.G. Louw “geil slaap” or is only he capable of that, because he always stuffs himself with food? You’ll probably say this is a jumbled letter.