Flame in the Snow

by Francis Galloway

  I call out to you, listen to your voice – the voice of your body; and your breath; and your heart; the voice of your virginal spirit,

  Your André.

  Citadel

  ±18 February 1964

  Thank you, dearest my André,

  For your beautiful golden lucky cross: it’s not hanging between the doves. American Swiss still has to lengthen it. And for the delicate little blue-and-silver pendant. Thank you very much for the enchanting everything and for your letter.

  This is a telegram:

  Depart from Castella this coming Saturday, probably to Mt Curtis Hotel, Main Road, Sea Point.

  Leave Citadel 26th Feb, in a week’s time.

  Simone is flying with me to Jhb. Piet refuses to let her go overseas. God, I feel so terrible about this away-time. You’ll know.

  Jack and I tried again, but it’s not working any more.

  Therefore, overseas, naked, alone, stripped – already in that terrible train and see everything through wet windows.

  Trying to distance myself.

  Don’t work so hard, please. You’ll get sick.

  Rather go and play tennis, otherwise you’ll get FAT.

  SLEEP enough. I am worried about you.

  I hear you cancelled Spain.

  I’m including a poem – also have it in Afr. It’s my own translation. Beat. Bitter beat. [“I Am With Those”]

  Letter from Simone. God, once I was also like that …!

  Maybe the heart will remain for us …

  And maybe a sense of humour.

  André! André! I am overwhelmed – people, arrangements, changes. “Simply by living one does not perish.”

  My love,

  Little Cocoon.

  PS: I’ve always told you! (Chris Barnard.) IJ.

  PPS: Did the MS arrive on time? Chris Lombard promised to send it immediately. He had it. Couldn’t get hold of him immediately. – Con.

  [incomplete letter]

  Grahamstown

  Thursday, 20 February 1964

  My thinking on the novella is moving at a pace that sometimes astonishes me. I’m beginning to consider giving it a different title: Elders Bewolk en Koel [Elsewhere Cloudy and Cool] (referring to the “elsewhere”, the lost paradise of shelter from the Sun, for which one never ceases to yearn).

  It’s now developing into something with blood and violence: the group of people in the closed-off flat begin to become primitive, tearing off their clothes and conducting devilish sabbaths; rape and murder occur at night … an old woman is embalmed alive and venerated … and through it all, memories of paradise, seeing the serene girl across the way, unreachable; until this small civilisation wipes itself out and humanity returns to blood and seed. I want to use it to shout out all my powerless resistance against my entrapped life; it has to be an indictment of sterility; a destruction; longing for the dream, the one Woman, you.

  “Now, my love, it’s time to say goodbye” – “in thy orisons / Be all my sins remember’d”.

  Forever loving you,

  Your André.

  Grahamstown

  Saturday, 22 February 1964

  God, my Cocoon,

  You who become smaller and smaller and smaller as you smoke and as you drink all that lovely wine! Thank you for the agenda-like letter, and Simone’s dearest chatter, and the painful, iron-hard, powerful poem. I want to see it in Afrikaans, too. I would take out “with those coloured africans depressed” – it’s too obvious, not as shockingly genuine as the rest; “atom-bomb of the days” is perhaps a bit too strong given the context; the rest – oh God, it hurt, and it’s major. Have we both changed so much in a month that I am now going to write a novella about terror and violence, and you, this? God, posterity will probably say it was all very good for our art – but I’m not the next damned generation. I am what I am – someone who loves you, sitting here, captive, experiencing ever more “the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to”.

  Yesterday’s little shock: Opperman got the CNA.

  And what did I do? … went to my room and slept, the whole day and right through the night (“I am with those who get drunk …”). Even felt, with a kind of diabolical pleasure, that I was repeatedly being stabbed in the heart. Which today persists.

  Well, if I must perish, then so be it. Rather that than the “petty pace from day to day till the last syllable of recorded time”.

  I feel I’m living in transit, waiting for something to happen, no longer bothering with anything, because what is there left to bother about, anyway? What do I have to show (your ouma would have said: “Must I go with empty hands, must I meet my Maker like this?”) – all I can show is that I made you bitter and broke you down. Good – then I’ll break myself down, too. And fuck the rest. To hell with the rest.

  Remember life.

  My child, my little child, my soft, small thing, my life: in this manner I do not want to write to you. I’m the one who came looking, and made a decision, and now I’m getting my just deserts. But you, but you; you!

  You are still here, in the midst of my pointless days, and all I know is that if I hadn’t known about you, then there would simply have been nothing. But in you I can believe, and know – my Namaqualand daisy, little saint, little flame.

  Now, today, Castella is also just a memory. Gaudy curtains; knobbly bed with its little buttons; ash-filled orange saucers; ant-covered kitchen; white sheets; lunch in the nude at the tiny table; the always-locked wardrobe; sandals lying around; Dutch hat on the window sill; tube of ointment on the bathroom shelf; a plate of asparagus butter-sauce on the bathroom shelf; your fleet-footed movements: a naked little girl with pale buttocks and pert nipples; long, wet nights; laughing together, crying together, being together; kissing, touching, making love; passion; serenity; day and night; cool light and caressing darkness.

  There’s still another letter I sent to Castella; please go and fetch it. (I posted it yesterday, or the day before?) From now on I’ll write to you c/o Bartho in Johannesburg.

  I’m thinking of you, through all the current pressures and loosening of bonds; I am with you.

  Will you be staying in Jhb very long? And will you be working at Citadel again, until 17 April?

  I’ll write again once I’ve emerged from this terrible depression. Just this little bit of contact with you has already helped. Because you are luminous, always have been and always will be.

  With love from my ailing heart,

  Your André, always.

  Grahamstown

  Tuesday night, 25 February 1964

  My own darling,

  I’m so happy we had a chance to talk yesterday, so unexpectedly, despite the upsetting news about your father’s unforgiving spirit. As you say, corrrespondence is of little help. And yet, as long as that – and the heart – remain, it is at least something, and I must, I want to make use of it to communicate with the only person who is precious to me and who possesses human value.

  And – strange, inexplicable, how subtly everything clicks in – it was precisely this little talk that lent a slightly more positive shade to the terrible misery of the past while. Now I know, again, that the heart is indestructible. And, in spite of your understandable resentment about going to Jhb for the prize and everything, it’s a wonderful thing that’s happening to you; Saturday is a big day. It shows that people believe in you – in the beauty you create – and the necessity, the meaning of your being in the world.

  If only I could help with the destructive fights-fights-fights on your side. But are they really more destructive than a blend of neutrality and distaste? In the form of a void, a futurelessness? And maybe – says my jealous, longing heart – maybe through it all, you do in fact still sleep with Jack every now and again to get a taste of human contact? (On this side, the thought of “sleep with” doesn’t even appear on the horizon of my sterile bed.)

  The past week was just too frustrating for any kind of work (thus creating the extra frustration of know
ing one’s work is piling up!); tomorrow, and the day after, I have to do admin work, of all things: help with student registrations. On Friday, lectures begin all over again. Such a mountain still lies ahead of me. If only I didn’t have Bartho’s damned Colette translation to do as well. (After all this time – and I won’t be rid of it for a while; worse than Ela Spence!)

  If only I had time to write something. But so much work still needs to be done on Bevryding before its own liberation sees the light of day.

  But – in connection with your Éluard quotation – people do not perish merely by living.

  I spent the whole day in court today – my gardener’s case. I feel dirty from the contact with justice. There is so little dignity in legal procedure. (In between all of this, during a break in proceedings, a jovial sergeant who’d read about Lobola tried to get “pally-pally” with me by stating that I must surely teach the “arts of pussy” at Rhodes. God, the bourgeoisie. This is how one is dismantled. This is what remains.) And you probably saw: it [Lobola] is likely to be dragged before the [Publications Control] BOARD after all?

  The only recourse is to live small, within oneself, the “I” barricaded, armed – writing letters to you, slotting an envelope into a postbox – while I want to enter you, to be, to become, and to know about being and becoming, alone and together: a small journey in the void, but so very certain, so happy, so irreplaceable, so beautiful.

  Cocoon, despite everything, in spite of it all, let us love each other, let us be. And let us make a small advance against oblivion and lies, with enough purity and beauty and compassion and dignity never to perish, always to remain precious.

  This is how I’ll be going out to meet this big weekend of yours, and the future, and everything.

  I love you, and you are lovely,

  Your André.

  Grahamstown

  Thursday night, 27 February 1964

  Cocoon of light, beloved,

  Ik wilde ik kon u iets geven

  tot troost diep in uw leven,

  maar ik heb woorden alleen,

  namen, en dingen geen.

  Dearest beloved, I’m sending this via a carrier … just a letter, just more words, more words of love, more love, more.

  You’re very busy this weekend! You’ve travelled by air and felt just how precious your own little share of humanity can be, and you’re happy, excited, tired, a little confused, and lost. You’re wearing your yellow dress, the beautiful one, along with the tiny blue-and-silver pendant. You’ve just taken a bath in the bathroom of a lovely hotel.

  Me, on the other hand – trying to read Giuseppe di Lampedusa and just sitting here with the book shut; it’s simply too painful, too full of piety, because I started reading it during that first weekend in Gordon’s Bay, in that sea-room, sun-room, bedroom, our room.

  I carry with me an imaginary garland of roses with ninety-four rosary beads. With that, and with everything that continues to live on in my heart, and that’s become part of my blood, my dreams, I am with you this weekend, very much with you – a big little bit. Terribly proud of you. Madly in love with you.

  I don’t want to use up any more words to say this. Because you know, after all. Just [Herman] Gorter’s words:

  Gij staat zoo heel, heel stil

  met uwe handen, ik wil

  u zeggen een zoo lief wat,

  maar ’k weet niet wat.

  Uw schoudertjes zijn zoo mooi,

  om u is lichtgedooi,

  warm, warm, warm – stil omhangen

  van warmte, ik doe verlangen.

  Uw oogen zijn zoo blauw

  als klaar water – ik wou

  dat ik eens even u kon zijn,

  maar ’t kan niet, ik blijf van mijn.

  En ik weet niet wat ’t is wat

  ik u zeggen wil – ’t was toch wat.

  And, like the conclusion of a [Ingmar] Bergman movie, I feel myself becoming smaller and smaller and smaller, until I completely disappear in you, dissolve in your light, glow in your light.

  For now, and for always: love, pride, gratitude and humble tenderness. Sister Water, you are so very needed, so modest, precious and chaste.

  Smoke of dreams, ochre of the earth – that’s you. And that you must remain, always.

  Because I love you.

  André.

  Saturday, 7 March 1964

  AFTER CONSIDERATION I CANNOT CHIN UP DARLING LETTER TO FOLLOW FLYING TO CAPE TOWN = COCOON

  Grahamstown,

  Saturday night, 7 March 1964

  Cocoon, love,

  Tonight I’d like to write to Salvatore Quasimodo, and say to him: Dearest, naive old Salvatore, you were wrong, too optimistic, because the heart does not remain for us, after all.

  Your telegram today –

  So, it was too good to be true, after all. Everything was ready: we’d have had the whole afternoon, from two to six, to ourselves here at home; my bed in the study made with clean white sheets; my red pyjamas freshly laundered; and the hotel room booked. I’d have a “meeting” that night, and the world would have been ours from seven-thirty to eleven-thirty. You’d have strolled with me along my bush-path; my classes on Wednesday postponed so I could be with you from eight in the morning until your plane took off. God, to suddenly begin counting off days and hours in anticipation of something, a trace of happiness, a bit of meaning. I lived so completely for this visit.

  “The heart has its own reasons –.” And you’ll have your own reasons for the direct flight back. “Good sense”? “Wisdom”? “Consideration”? There are so many names one can give to things that are in fact too subtle for words.

  There is so much toxic, sterile, arid cynicism in me tonight.

  Among other things, I looked at the calendar and discovered that your ship – “memory”? – sets sail during our term time; even for that I won’t be able to come down. All the banal little realities that so often shipwreck one’s dreams.

  Too disturbed to write. Too wounded to live.

  And yet there remains a thin little candle flame, the belief that I trust you in everything, to the fullest extent; I love you, still, still, fatally so.

  – Me.

  Sunday night, 8 March 1964

  Sappho: “Pain penetrates / Me drop / by drop.”

  Mt Pleasant

  Victoria Road

  Clifton

  Tuesday, 10 March 1964

  God, my André, I thought I was doing the right thing – on that desolate flight to Cape Town without Simone and without anyone even to meet me – I tried to write to you – Sunday, Monday, wrote to you, but things became completely unsayable.

  Johannesburg and the big prize are now behind me, and now I must look ahead – I depart on 27 March. Were you very disappointed with my telegram on Saturday – ag, André, everyone would know, they always know, and how would it go with you then, and with us? I’m going away, but you’d have to stay behind with the big new changes there. On the other hand, things have already been destroyed at your home – what’s to become of you? Are you still going to come to Spain? (I would so much like you to come. And I missed you so much in Johannesburg.) Nothing is accomplished here. It was all just stories. And god knows it’s as hot as hell.

  Here before me, the sea is making a noise. And it’ll carry on making a lot of noise for me – it’s a two-week boat trip. How did you go? Did Estelle go over with you? What I mean is, did you go over together? Mad! Because that’s a prospect I do not relish. The going alone, the breaking off and distancing myself from everything here, and how now, with this wounded heart? Did you see your own precious poem in Die Vaderland with that lukewarm review? And where did you get that photo? Will we meet one another again here or there? What will the answer be, yes or no? I’m not really being silly today, I am distressed, and angry, and feel ungrateful that every damn curse that has ever landed on me is thanks to my “talent” which often makes me so over-sensitive and makes me think so small. But I want to be light-hearted like God:

>   Incubus. Anaesthetist with glory in a bag,

  Foreman with a sweatbox and a whip. Asphyxiator

  Of the ecstatic. Sergeant with a grudge

  Against the lost lovers in the park of creation,

  Fiend behind the fiend behind the fiend behind the

  Friend. Mastodon with mastery, monster with the ache

  At the tooth of the ego, the dead drunk judge:

  Wheresoever Thou art our agony will find Thee

  Enthroned on the darkest altar of our heartbreak

  Perfect. Beast, brute, bastard. O dog my God.

  Maybe ironic, also [George] Barker. Darling, I still have to talk to you about Orgie. I can’t write, even worse on the smooth paper with the smooth pen that slips and falls. And now I must go, to fetch my passport photos, and to get the thing signed. My travel expenses there and back were R393.30. My room here is warm and solitary and on the walls of my boredom I write your name. When I come close to you, I come close to God. Then I think of your smile and your precious hands and your big heart and all your writing and experience and thinking and your tears and your little laugh and the 89 times, and by then I have hanged myself with a rope of tears and consolation.

  News: I’m sending you the Transvaler cutting.

  And love,

  Your Cocoon.

  Grahamstown

  Thursday, 12 March 1964

  My delicate, absent, present darling,

  I read your anguished, desolate letter, and the nice newspaper report you rummaged through barefooted, while playing with your stray little curl; wearing the tight slacks that drive me so mad, and the smile that makes your voice deep and full, like a pomegranate – oh, Christ Almighty I don’t know what to think any more. I sat in my office and stared at your picture until I no longer minded that tears made seeing impossible. The day before yesterday, especially, was terrible, when the empty plane arrived and the bed in my study waited in vain for the weight of our bodies; when the bush-path remained untouched by the gentle steps of your feet, with the leucodendron.