Flame in the Snow

by Francis Galloway

  And now you’ll be leaving on 27 March. In which ship will you be sailing off into the future? Two weeks from today. Everything in the future tense. Will you, when you get back, give me a baby daughter? Or when I’m in Spain with you – because I’m negotiating urgently with Koos about December. There’s nothing left for me here, except daily emptiness and brokenness. But darling, darling, during these two weeks I don’t want to feel wounded and desolate and then not be there for you because my own heart is lost. These two weeks, always, I want to be with you in stillness and strength, so you can know I support you, carry you; I touch your breasts softly with my lips, I cast a quiet incantation over you. Because I am you, you are me, we are a true grapevine with shoots and we must bear lustrous grapes that grow from deep below the earth, up towards the sun. Your going away is not a going away, just a journey of discovery, an adventure. Little child, walking through an autumnal forest, stirring soft, fragrant leaves with your feet, your eyes full of wonder, and quiet, and everything gleaming, happy, and melancholic; strange and known; great and full of wonder.

  You must please give me a cool, clear account of everything: is your first stop London, where I can write c/o South Africa House? Just three months in Amsterdam? (Getting to know Elisabeth Eybers –)

  How long will you be drifting around? When? Where?

  Did you get the other bursaries and awards?

  Let me know if you need money while you’re there. I want to know everything, even the most banal things. And the most beautiful, of course.

  Where can I phone you in the evening? Don’t be confused, Cocoon.

  And write to me, despite your being so busy and on the go.

  I love you. Over and above all else, this remains firm.

  About you, Plato said: “For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing” and that is you, just as exquisite, just as pure; for that, I live, and that is why there’s meaning in life.

  For always and always,

  Love,

  Your André.

  Mount Pleasant

  Victoria Road

  Clifton

  Friday, 13 March 1964

  My dearest André,

  Your letter of the day before yesterday. I only read it once – but remember it always in my sad memory …

  In two weeks’ time my boat leaves. I’ve bought a few nice things, and begun to feel excited. Lay in the sun this morning, read Tristia – this afternoon, finally, Swart Pelgrim [F.A. Venter]. Phoney, with a nice turn of phrase sometimes. Already travelling, reading, untying … will I one day be able to pick up the strands again? I’m lying naked under the cool sheets now and I’m burning from the sun, your bitter letter is chafing somewhere … God,

  Wou [Moet] ek gee

  My

  Goed

  Wou [Moet] ek gee

  My

  Reg.

  I conducted myself correctly. I know one doesn’t feel hugely justified and puffed up about that. Do you think it was easy? Do you think I didn’t want to come? And on top of it all I remembered your hesitation … And: “the moment has actually passed …” Hesitation because it would have been difficult for you afterwards. Unfortunately we don’t only live in the present. “Want al ons dade, al ons dénke selfs, lê so ons lewensgang aan bande.” You have to learn to leave me a little room as a WOMAN. I have to protect myself, and in turn protect my “precious ones”, as Uys would say. You are precious to me. I don’t want to scrutinise and speculate, but remember the Grahamstown idea was mine, right from our letter-writing time: during our last call you said: “Send a telegram about what you decide, I’ll understand.” And I think you do indeed understand, now. My André, I want to be reasonable towards you, not just for one night, but a reasonableness that endures, I want to give you a thoughtful, selfless, edifying love. You musn’t feel “cynical”: look, I am not cynical! I understand you, really I do. Do you know what? After the breaking off of our engagement I had three attacks in one day (I am ashamed of anything like that, where your breathing becomes so disturbed that you faint, struggling to breathe until you faint – and Dr Katz with his syringe). It’s nothing. I come out of it and next day I walk in the sun again, in love. It doesn’t disturb the inner growing and bleeding, and that’s all that matters. And God knows I don’t hold it against you. God threw the dice and it fell wrong for us, that’s all. My little treasure, I would love to comfort you in some way or another, but how? You know I accept you as you are, and will take you into my heart as a free person and hold you there, in this situation everything looks difficult, but not unresolvable. (Love will find a way, so why worry!)

  Here next to me on the bed close by, you are lying and sleeping, sunburnt, redhead, in the lovely knowledge of a Martini and a long soft night that lasts and lasts … My pure, humane human, stay faithful, in the true and broad sense, and believe in me. Don’t be cross with me. Don’t be against me, because then you are against yourself.

  All which I took from thee I did but take,

  Not for thy harms,

  But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.

  I’m going to sleep now. Absent. In the wonderful womb of sleep and the childlike unconscious. Still with love and tenderness.

  Cocoon Cocoon.

  Grahamstown

  Wednesday, 18 March 1964

  Darling darling,

  I’ve just returned – yet again – from the postbox. And once again, nothing from you. This silence, silence, is driving me crazy. I know you’re terribly busy, but in ten days’ time you’ll be gone, and then letters will become very scarce; I still don’t even know which boat you’re sailing on, and whether you’re first disembarking in London and will be able to pick up post there.

  Even if you just write a short note. Just to say “I miss you” or “I feel afraid”. God, even if you have to say: “I’ve just slept with Jack” … Anything. But this sterile silence, no.

  Did my little parcel ever arrive? It went off on Monday by airmail. It’s not a gift – it’s too small for that, and I’m terribly broke! – just a small something for your darling feet.

  And, ironically: from Good Friday onwards (you’re leaving on Easter day, like Nicolette!) I’ll be alone here with Anton for the whole long weekend. Estelle’s going to visit her mother in Pretoria. Thankfully I’ll be able to phone you on Thursday night – at which number?

  Oh my dear little thing, this is such an entrancing time to be in Europe: now, late winter, and then the first rush of spring, everything new, so delicate, and good.

  I’m reading – Zen! And I feel inspired. Discovering with a sense of near-astonishment how much of it I’ve already come up with on my own, as a matter of conviction. And how much of it you and I have already experienced in sex: the full metaphysical enquiry, stripping away all that is incidental, life in the essential wonderful irrational moment – eternity. So aware of each other and of meaning.

  Busy, buzzing little bee, retain your serenity during the superficial pressures of making preparations. Keep your passion. Live. And remain human, my little thing, my woman, for seconds, for nine months, a year, always.

  Let us live

  Among the white clouds and scarlet woodlands

  Singing together

  Songs of the Great Peace

  (This is what Zen sounds like!)

  Please excuse the desperate rebelliousness that my letter began with. I’m feeling calm again, because I’ve been talking to you, because you’re so close by, and so familiar to me, so strange, holy and beautiful.

  I bless you with outspread hands in the name of the lover, the loved one and the unborn child.

  Love,

  Yours.

  Wednesday, 18 March 1964

  EAST TELEPHONE STOP REACH YOU OUT OF BREATH SOMETIMES BETWEEN SUITCASES AND SANDALS YOU HEART OF THE DAWN LOVE = COCOON

  Grahamstown

  Wednesday/Thursday, 18–19 March 1964

  Cocoon, my own darling,

  It’s seven-thirty, and I’ve
worked myself into a state of exhaustion; I sit here and exist in my little spot of light, which is no more than a starting point for the eternal journey towards you, you in your unknown, warm little room somewhere that I’ll probably never see, like all the rooms of your most distant past. But still, I do know it all, because it’s full of you, full of your fragrance: you’re freshly bathed, lustrously soft and sleepy, and sublimely untidy, like the chaos that reigns before the spirit comes and hovers above the water. With cigarettes, a bottle of wine, a pair of leather shoes, a bra strung across a chair, and you in bed, smoking or reading in your white nightie, the one that gently brushes against your breasts; your curls are tousled, with the one on your forehead ready to be twisty-twirled.

  Thank you for the lovely telegram that brought me back to life with such a sense of gratitude, back from the outermost darkness; and forgive, forgive me my reproachful letter of this morning; it was nothing more than desperation pouring forth from a yearning heart.

  Now things are quiet. Quiet? Also not. Because everything is alive.

  “Mijn bleeke denken dwaalt tot u door diepe nachten …”

  Little child of light and warmth, with dewdrops on your fingers and poetry in your laughter, and the soft butterfly in your cocoon – even if I must fall back on inadequate words: I love you.

  Go far into the big, wide world, but come back, come and give me a child. I’m still urgently negotiating with Koos about Spain. I can already see us lying on a pale-gold beach among fishing nets; at night we’ll sit under plane trees, drinking dark-red wine and listening to the glimmering of an invisible guitar. Then we’ll return to our small white room with its big golden bed and live many hours in the full, unbearable bliss, the honesty of our bodies; then we’ll sleep, languid, drowsy, spent, fulfilled and sweet, your arm across me so you can hold my papie, mine folded around you, resting on the satisfied lips of your divine little sesame-cellar.

  Believe, hope, continue to love. I carry you and live through and for you. The sun is still there. And the heart. And the body that will remain chaste; true to you. Live on the boat in the sun, and pick up an even deeper tan in your white bathing costume. Make poems, and work every day on a long letter that you’ll post in London.

  I’m going to sleep now, knowing that you’re with me. I hail you, and say goodnight:

  ’Night to the curls of sun and smoke.

  ’Night to the ears that listen to the stars.

  To the mouth that touches the wind.

  To the speckled shoulders so lovely and smooth.

  To the back that carries the weight of love.

  Good night to the cool breasts that are always full.

  To the soft tummy that touches me as it breathes.

  To the derrière that sits so nicely, so deliciously.

  To the tanned legs that are so playful, and lazy.

  To the little feet that step over a world so lightly.

  ’Night to the inimitable leucodendron.

  And ’night, ’night, ’night, little cocoon with your one pouting lip, voracious kontjie, generous kontjie, precious konnetjie.

  With love and mercy and passion, and with generosity and gladness and tears, everything,

  André.

  Mount Pleasant is not, I hope, the same as Mount Venus?

  Grahamstown

  Thursday, 19 March 1964

  My own Kontjie,

  Your letter for today has already been posted. But after the call and your beautiful letter, which says: “Stay faithful, in the true and broad sense” – I want to sit quietly for a moment and talk to you, as honestly as you talked to me. My distress about your “news” has passed. And I just want to “explain”, in rather woolly words, so that you can understand: I’m not jealous in the narrow, rational sense of the word. And I understand; fully understand your need, your fleeing from darkness, grabbing hold of the possibilities that present themselves to you.

  What I do feel, however, is conditioned by the way I regard sex: not as a means to an end, not as escapism, not “unimportant”. But: ultimate sincerity, ultimate truthfulness, ultimate reality. I cannot use sex to achieve this “ultimate” experience – and therefore I cannot, and I have never wanted to, sleep with Estelle after you.

  This is all that I fear, all I’m uncertain about. Two things: first, that you do this with Jack out of need and not “ultimate sincerity” – and in doing so you damage your own purity. Second: if you’re sleeping with him out of “ultimate sincerity” … then I fear this indicates that our own sex was not quite as essential for you; otherwise how could it take place so soon again?

  And with that, we’re back to the conversation of Saturday 18 January, and the shadow that looms behind you.

  That’s all. It’s not jealousy. If I didn’t feel this way, I wouldn’t love you.

  But going overseas breaks the evil cycle; out of this distance something will “gather itself into crystal”. And my trust and love and faith remain pure. That’s the only justification that still remains for my existence – an existence that, without you, has become extremely limited and meaningless.

  “Stay faithful, in a true and broad sense.”

  Come to me Tuesday, please, if you can.

  I love you very much,

  André.

  Grahamstown

  Monday, 23 March 1964

  Love, my love,

  I’ve already thought so much about the letter I wanted to write you for the ship, full of faith in the future, full of sea and sun. But it’s me, after all, who said to you I shouldn’t create pretty images of the future. God’s dice doesn’t fall quite like that. And now, god knows, the irony: I’m unable to send you a selection of platitudes – especially not you. I’m simply feeling too desperate to write today. But if I don’t write, then my letter might not arrive in time for the boat, since it’s almost Easter. Now I need your help: please believe me when I say I’m fighting my way through the bush.

  It is better that you never know

  how burdensome talk is for boys.

  Virgo, virgin. Those born under the sign of Virgo are apparently practical, down-to-earth. And in that practical, sober manner you decided about the right and wrong of your coming here.

  There was a time when we didn’t have conversations about “right” and “wrong”, when we simply loved each other.

  The conflict between right and wrong

  Is the sickness of the mind.

  If you want to get the plain truth

  Be not concerned with right and wrong.

  (Seng-Ts’an)

  Please: I’m just talking, feeling, not blaming, because I’m only human, and sinful.

  I just want to know: if it was wrong for you to come to me, how can you ask that I come to you? What would make that “right”?

  And was the very first night also “wrong”, then, and afterwards? Love will not allow itself to be denied so easily.

  And – it’s cruel, but it has to be said: Why is it forbidden for me to come back to you unless I can offer you a future; but for Jack it’s not forbidden to use your little body and your heart, knowing full well that he offers you no future at all?

  For the sake of purity between us?

  Darling, darling: we must not err on one extreme by mutually building up an ideal of purity just because we need a sense of the pure. We’re just human, and impure, too; full of deceit. The little honour we discover, must arise out of our being together, must be distilled out of our turmoil.

  Nothing is simple. You are virginal; you’re also a little bitch. You’re thoughtful; but you’re also cruel. Spontaneous; but also calculating. Unemployed; and yet self-sufficient. It’s because of the endlessness of what you are that I love you – and why I feel despair; why I know ecstasy, and agony.

  This is exactly what I’ve been trying to achieve – I don’t believe one ever gets it right completely, and I can only try: the fact that everything is not merely simple and straightforward. That you can write to me about my co
ming back, in complete sincerity – while you’re sleeping with Jack, and enjoying it. The one doesn’t exclude the other. And, for a while, I was wrong to see it that way.

  But I’m still young in matters of love and have much to learn. I am inestimably thankful for the precious part of your life that you did in fact open up to me.

  It was just, up until now, the torture of living chastely for the sake of someone who can’t herself live for me in the same way. And that was my blindness – that I didn’t realise you were in fact staying true to me, despite what was also happening in parts of your life that didn’t belong to me. Nevertheless, in my limited, human way, I remembered how you’d told me you’d lived chastely for months for the sake of Jack, when he was away; for me, not even a month.

  Once again, let me repeat: this is the way I saw things. But now I get it. I won’t again make comparisons. I won’t again think only on one level. I shall learn to live in irony. (I mean this seriously; I’m not being cynical!) That’s why you should’ve been here, so that our words wouldn’t fall flat, on their own, but derive meaning from voice and gesture and eyes, a whole body with a hunger, hunger, hunger, a body that’s lonely, full of longing and darkness and uncertainty, flung to the dark winds.

  You’re going away, on a sea of light and sun.

  For a while, at least, I will say, with Baudelaire: “I am embarking on a sea of darkness.”

  Oh Lord God, darling, now I’m sounding self-pitying again; like I don’t believe in the honesty of your decision; as if I’ve forgotten that it all began when I left you in the lurch.

  But oh you should’ve come, you should’ve come and talked to me, ambled with me through the bush. Since you phoned, I’ve wandered around there like a lost man, haven’t even eaten, got soaked in the rain, lost among the tribes, lost to heaven.

  But you said, and so urgently: Nothing has changed …

  Everything changes, always.

  But I believe, I must believe, I know your decision was made for the sake of love alone.