Flame in the Snow

by Francis Galloway

  I am starving on a spiritual-sexual level. And there are lots of “feathers” to “arrange” and there’s much to smile about.

  Phone me, maybe? You may as well again ask Bartho when, you’re so close by. His letter was friendly and he’s sending you a copy on fine Finnish paper. He asked me to do a translation of Farewell to Arms at R3 per 1 000 words. It’s not much, but he is very accommodating and will pay me bit by bit. But it has to be finished before the end of the month; we can’t all be André Brinks. Do you have a traditional remedy for me – when does one get time to dream? Because, as you say in your last letter, a person has to dream. It is part of one’s organisational strategy against chaos.

  Sleep sweetly, my dearest man. You must rest a lot, my ouma said: “You must not write so much, but rest in God.” And maybe that is the dream.

  And remain that, pure and strong, yearn beautifully, with your “shining sadness”. And “Good night, sweet prince”.

  For the time being, love, love,

  Your Cocoon.

  PS: How is the thesis progressing, hm?

  PPS: How is Orgie progressing? Send me a section.

  IJonker.

  Grahamstown,

  Monday night, 9 September 1963

  Ingrid-Cocoon, my darling,

  Thank you for today’s delightful letter. It’s so precious when you – as Anne says – are “befok in your kop”. I hope the dear little sick child is much better now? I’d love to be able to sit with her and watch over her while you’re at work.

  Today the Volksie got her long-needed service and now she’s driving more smoothly than ever before – and she’s itching to hit the open road for Cape Town. I phoned Koos today, but, disappointingly, he was unable to say anything specific. Apparently Gothic Press is doing the printing – of course I was hoping your lot would do it. I impressed upon him once again that my holiday is from 20 to 30 September and that I must have the proofs then. Now he says he’ll send me a telegram the moment the printers give a date. Meanwhile, I know I will be coming down, even if the proofs aren’t ready by then, so maybe I should request leave for early October. Just knowing I’ll definitely be coming, even though the exact date’s uncertain, is a mercy all on its own.

  I started working on one of Bartho’s translations today, a Simenon (Maigret) that translates so smoothly I might be able to finish it by next week.

  I took our photos today to have them mounted; after that I’ll have yours framed so I can put it up in my office. But please also send me one of the Jansje Wissema pictures. Let me know how much they cost. And if Jack still hasn’t paid the account, I will.

  Your idea of a play in which you and your grandmother feature, is actually full of possibilities. But I must first finish Orgie! Your grandmother’s in there, too. I’m considering making the novella a double-decker: two novellas in one binding (subtitle, Diptych), both with the same title, both dealing with the same “content” – but the one straightforward and the other “experimental” (disputed term!) – each of course with different nuances according to the possibilities of the style. I’m impatient to begin, but it’s so dangerous to start in an overhasty manner; it must wait out its own little nine-month period. Perhaps the biggest art of all is knowing when to start – neither too green nor too ripe, but just so.

  I’m sending you a photo of Anton. There’s some blurring in the picture – he never sits still! If he hadn’t been here, I’d have gone crazy a long time ago.

  I’m also sending a few poems, just for the hell of it, because I love you, and because you made today – like so many other days – radiate with light.

  Your idea of “pure striving” is right. But I don’t agree that “a writer’s foremost duty is to protect himself from RUBBISH and rubbish is everything that stands in one’s way”. Being a writer also means being a person; it’s an integral part of being a person. And it never gives one the “right” (in so far as people have “rights” to anything, or “wrongs”!) to behave unworthily as a person ... and this is why, in the past while, I’ve so often been appalled at my own behaviour.

  Your letter and your love have created such a quiet sense of happiness in me that tonight, for the first time in months, I felt like playing the creative chef again; I made a “poulet basquaise” that would have stimulated even your tiny appetite.

  My apologies. Me and food again! Do you know, I’ve never felt quite as forlorn and guilty as the – many – times when you were sad or upset and I simply had to eat. I would also be feeling very upset, and bladdy hungry, too, so I’d eat, but don’t think I didn’t feel bad as well …! It’s all terribly funny, now. Actually, there’s been a great deal of generous laughter in everything we’ve done together; that’s possibly the most precious thing about it all, because it came with full human happiness.

  The “Brinkman” affair at the boarding house.

  Jan Cilliers [Jan F.E. Celliers] and “Martjie” – and A.D. Keet!

  The man at the Hout Bay hotel who said: “You’d better write Mr and Mrs in the register, else people might ask you who that woman is that lives with you …”

  And the night I made a little tent and swooped down on you like the Holy Ghost.

  And everything else, too: your hair in my mouth, the sudden tickling of your elbow, or your fingers in my ribs. (When you asked so indignantly: “What’s so funny, hey?”)

  And then “doing everything over again in italics …”

  Girlie, lovely you, I love, love you. One of these days I’ll make you another tape; Rob’s got my recorder at the moment. (Borrowed for his theatre production, for which he composed the music himself – or have I told you this already?)

  Meanwhile, I want to say goodbye to you with all my love, which wants to keep you lovely, for a long time, alive.

  And with a poem by Hans Warren:

  Bij wijze van gebed

  Wees, als het dan niet anders kan,

  wees, als de lente dan zijn slanke

  lichtblauwe hand met gouden nagels

  om mijn gezwollen keel gaat sluiten,

  iets als een god, iets als een lappenboom,

  dat ik je in verzen bidden kan, dat ik

  de flarden van mijn wanhoop aan je hang.

  Honderden spiegels van honderden dagen

  hebben vergeefs getracht je te vervormen.

  Ik heb je lief, ik heb geen anderen goden

  meer voor mijn aangezicht …

  …

  ik ga de liefde in zoals het water in

  blind, handpalmen vooruit, mijn ingehouden

  snikken zwellen jouw hart in mij en

  steeds zwaarder wordt het er, steeds eeuwiger.

  And a little one by Nel Noordzij:

  Je ligt zo neergelegd te slapen

  met twee ellebogen als wapen

  en een kroontje haren aan je haar

  al kijk ik er maar even naar

  ik sla tot in mijn schoot alarm

  en rijm een zoontje in je arm

  I am always with you and always love you,

  André.

  Grahamstown

  Thursday, 12 September 1963

  My little angel,

  Thank you for this morning’s lively little letter, your commentary on the Springboks and similar matters, and your confession about being “hungry” in a spiritual-sexual way. Don’t I know it! And feel it! But the papie hasn’t yet shrunk. It won’t, either. Because – as they used to say in the olden days – desire doesn’t only tug at my heartstrings!

  Today’s a holiday: Rhodes has its own holidays, and they don’t always coincide with those of country and “volk”. Today is “Founders’ Day”. All members of staff are kindly requested to attend the ceremony. I wish you could’ve been there – it was like Victor Hugo’s “sublime et grotesque”: first the long, formal procession of academics in their gowns and hoods, and, wherever possible, wearing medals (“each one walks all set up in his own separateness”); then a ritual of honouring the departed and a plea to Almighty G
od during which the assembly answers “amen” at regular intervals – often irregularly. After a sermon about the evils of our time (Christine Keeler, the old cow, was dug up for this purpose), there was solemn prayer (for the umpteenth time), a hum of Ourfatherwhoartinheaven … and a general drift towards the War Memorial. There we formed a sacred circle around the memorial, a stately ring-a-ring-o’roses, with more prayers, a recitation of the honour roll of the departed, syllable for syllable separately articulated (here and there wrongly pronounced), a laying of wreaths, at least a dozen of them, each with a bow and a salute; and then deadly silence while the “Last Post” drawled from a trumpet somewhere – and during this stirring highlight, under the blue of our heavens and far from the depths of our seas, two dogs made an appearance in the sacred circle, lifted their legs and pissed over all four corners of the monument, and all over the recently laid wreaths. Sic transit gloria.

  In between, or meanwhile, I’m translatingtranslatingtranslating – forunately Simenon is gripping and quick – and I’m working on the novella, too. I started writing only yesterday (so far I’ve just been making notes, puzzling things out, etc.) and I’ve got as far as page seven. I decided to let go of the double-decker idea. The subtitle remains “Diptych”, because each page has two columns: on the left side he talks; on the right, she has her say. Occasionally there are blank passages; sometimes left and right are versions of the same situation ... and as I said previously, a good number of my “poems” have been worked into it. I’ll retype the first few pages in a minute, so I can send them along. I’ve suddenly begun wondering whether I mightn’t be able to get it done in time for Bartho’s prize [the APB Prize for 1963], but that could cause overhastiness and detract from both Die Ambassadeur and Orgie. Moreover: you’re already there to represent us this year! Girlie, oh man, I so badly want you to get that prize. Thus far, I think your chances are really good. I don’t yet know how good Jan’s and Adam Small’s stuff is, but I doubt it’ll have Rook en Oker’s “exquisiteness”. I’m holding thumbs – and all my other dangling parts – for you.

  You said on the phone you’re “hungry”. Little person, my cocoon, this time we’re going to go mad together. It’s not long now. Even if the trip is shifted to the beginning of October – please, I hope not! – it’s still not long, we’re already halfway through September.

  Next Tuesday and Wednesday night I’ll be out (the movies; and Guy Butler’s Everyman); but on Thursday I’ll phone again.

  Greetings to you, with love and grace, my exquisite, beautiful, virginal Ingrid: “a great deal of us is together, and we can but abide by it, and steer our courses to meet soon. John Thomas says good night to lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a hopeful heart.”

  Yours, yours, darling mine, always,

  André.

  And a kiss for Simone.

  Castella

  Thursday, 12 September 1963

  My dearest André,

  Thank you lots for your two lovely lusty letters and the telephone call on Tuesday night. And for Simone’s books, which she wants to talk to you about herself, and for the little photo of Anton, with his beautiful naked little thing, who looks just like you. It seems his mouth, which is half-hidden by his fist, looks like yours. Send me LOTS more, proof. The other evening when I was playing your tape again, I heard a child crying and later went and looked accusingly out of my door at the neighbours, when I suddenly realised it was Anton! I’d forgotten about his accompaniment on the tape. Simone, or Simnoe, as she spells it, has become very thin. I wonder whether I will ever get her fattened up again, but she’s up and about all day now and will go back to school on Monday. I wish one could have them immunised against these unnecessary illnesses, and this all still lies ahead for our fat baby friend! I wish you could bring him with you when you come so that we could have our children here – and he wouldn’t talk!

  Darling, darling, it’s about a week and a half before you’ll definitely be here but I still want to say, it’s not going to “help” anything if you go and stay with Koos and them after the weekend – because then you’ll just get to bed late, and they’ll know – what’s more, they’ll then get involved; ag, you must just come and stay here, or keep a room somewhere. I do so love new places. Shall I book a place for you at the Edgehill? Everyone will in any case, know. And when you go back everyone there will also know. You would never fool me!

  Oh, child! The weather has turned to winter again and I long so for the sun. I want to see the sky wide open when you are here, and I want to go to [Lanzerac] with you. François [Krige] has an exhibition there, and on opening night all the guests had a meal there – but I didn’t want to go because you’re going to introduce me to the place, aren’t you? “Straight into the jaws of death.” (Uys said we should never have gone to Stellenbosch together that night.)

  There’s so much news in your last two letters – the little note from Van Wyk Louw is especially wonderful. Especially after you actually demonstrated what it is that Nicolette does! I am very proud of you.

  And why do the photos have to be mounted? Send them on, I so badly want to see them again and that colour one of you laughing I want for ever (not the turkey)! that nice one taken on our honeymoon days at Franschhoek. And success with Orgie! Where is my MS of the revised Ambassadeur? You’re right about the poem “Jou Naam” – I’ll see if I can do something with the lines “Your name which I call” and the unavoidable “word”. I’m becoming over-confident. Congratulations on Die Koffer – I forgot (with Simone’s sickness) to listen to your “tender-beloved voice” and was so sorry about it. And do you know what they did at APB? They took your photo away and put mine in its place with my books around it – now the book really looks smart.

  The paper is beautifully white – you’ve probably received yours already. I’m going to accept Bartho’s offer of A Farewell to Arms – will keep me busy between October and December when I (maybe?) come and visit you in Grahamstown for a long weekend. If you save, because I’m not going to get out of this financial mess quickly – am also going to apply to Molteno Trust for a bursary and am going to buy, among other things, nice clothes with it, because now I want nice clothes. Apparently one easily gets £500 to live on. Or should it be saved for going overseas? Though it’s far and lonely there!

  You wanted to know about the BBC. They asked me about “The Child” (naturally) as if that’s all I’d ever written – I read the poem and just chatted. Nothing very impressive. Will tell you when we see (unbelievable) each other. And until then you will just have to control your rebellious papie. And it’s very clear – in “Kriptiek” I only got a fright about the “fuck” and the “Elegietjie” idea is a good one, but he should tremble more, and one should get a fright when he falls (falls apart?). But I’ll write it myself! You’ll have to be careful with your ideas anywhere around me, my darling colleague! But they are after all our poems!

  This is such a sloppy (and actually sleepy) letter. Was up late on Monday night (with what?) and Tuesday evening with the BBC, and last night Jack and I went and had a drink at the Café Royal to toast Rook en Oker. (One celebrates the thing so often, do you still remember?) Afterwards he had a meal here – and do you know what, my treasure? – on Saturday I’m getting a stove and a table – and so we chatted; he is so timorous, it actually makes me sad, and he is so proud.

  I didn’t mean one should act in an undignified way when I said WHATEVER I said. The danger of there being RUBBISH in the writer’s path is usually in his own mind; the rubbish he must necessarily confront every day – and there’s all the news. It’s actually a newsy letter, and what are you going to tell your class now? But know that I miss you, lots. Make that tape for me, then I’ll do one back. And write well and lecture well and sleep well. I’ll phone Koos to ask him when the proofs will be ready, or the Gothic. Sorry I’m not reading it! There’s a kind of drabness here at work, and the other reader is reading your French translation.

  Thank you for your be
autiful glowing letter, and thank you for you. And now I’m going to sleep with you. I’m already in bed, dressed in white, my distant groom! My André Brink. Send me a picture of yourself. I’m already familiar with the ones I have and forget how you look when you laugh. Love dearest liefsteling ALWAYS,

  Cocoon Cocoon.

  Simone dictates:

  André, thank you André to send me the books. When the postman bring the books I play with putty, I make a little girlie, I make my doll a little bra and a little bikini pants. Then I saw the postman standing at the door. He gave the books to Maggie. Then I looked at the books. Then I had half of the story. Maggie’s boyfriend read it. The one is about a fox and one about a cat in a hat. It’s a nice story. Both of them are nice stories. I’m playing with putty. A man was very kind to me because he gave me the putty. My mummy read me the stories. I’m making a stick girl with the putty. She is floppy. I’m better. There is a three chimney house by our flat. A nice dolly I got in my flat. My mummy read me a story by Mickey Mouse. I can stand up every time when Mummy goes to work. Mummy gave me a tickey. We got a nice cupboard and we got a big big stick. I got a little dolly with no arms and no legs but nice long hair. André, how are you? Are you sick? Or are you well? I got a big stick and a sun hat. We’ve got a little bird sitting on the tree now. My mummy is smoking. The birdies is shouting to one another: quieek! quieek! There not going home yet, the birdies. What is André eating for supper? Thats enough. And thank you. Send love. I kiss you.

  S I M N O E

  Grahamstown

  Monday morning, 16 September 1963

  Darling girl of mine,

  Tonight or tomorrow morning early I’ll try to write a longer letter, but this is just a short one so I can make the post in time – and really just an accompaniment to the parcels that I hope a) will arrive on time, and b) get there undamaged. With love and love and more love.