CHAPTER TWO

Jonathan is expecting him.   A child has been tumbled from its bed and is sleeping head-to-foot with his sister. In the morning they’ll ask him where Keisha is, and he will have to tell them she is with her mother; that she still has a mother. He deposits his pack and returns to the studio with its giant images, its bones of silver bromide. He likes the aquarium darkness, the hum of computer fans, the blinking red lights and occasional beep; the way it blends seamlessly into the domestic recesses of the old warehouse.

Each year the photographer looks more like an old Venetian master, his face wiser, his eyes more cunning. His pictures of skeletons and archaeological digs are becoming gallery art; a new form of rock art where through photography the dead are reified on the rock face become gallery wall, and the public, wineglasses in hand, engage in the ritual of pretending to look at the images.

Jonathan appears immune to all this, talking only of the technology. He is a mountain climber, at home in the night, forever searching for a higher resolution, a new Everest. He has been processing the photographs of the Waterkant skeletons for the faculty, transferring them onto a database in case the decision is made to reinter them. The idea is to get as much information down as possible. Every groove and mark. ‘The imaging technology has improved since I photographed the Storkwoman for you. I’m now up to 7000 microdots.’ He seems glad for the company. ‘I’ve been isolating myself since Diane died,’ he says, drawing a circle in the air.

There are more photographs of Diane on the walls than he remembers. For the kids, he supposes, to feel that Mother is still around – if not alive, then somewhere watching over them at least. Photographed on high-definition film, her poster-sized portraits, like those of the bones, exude a surreal vitality.

‘I told them Mommy fell asleep in the sea and didn’t wake up,’ Jonathan says, lowering his voice. ‘I didn’t tell them about the barbiturates of course. They cried at night for the first couple of weeks, and since then they’ve been fine. They’ve been drawing pictures of Diane surrounded by mermaids and dolphins, her hair streaming in the water. They think she’s in heaven with other poets looking down on them and knows everything they’re doing.’ He holds his hand out:  ‘Let’s see your gallery of ghosts.' Swivels a desk lamp over the assembly, leans into the light, cigarette in one hand, dictates a forensic report.

‘The pics of Mum and Dad on the top row are passport photographs; full-face, flat lighting. The fixed facial expressions are typical of this kind of image, even today. It reflects the detachment of the camera operator and the anonymous bureaucracy behind him. That’s your sepulchral look. Photographs always mirror the photographer and no one with any vitality in them could survive that particular job.’ He lifts his head and exhales a stream of smoke into the air, carving thin columns into the dark space above them.

‘The pictures below are another story. They were taken with fixed-focus cameras and processed with poor chemicals, hence the bleached-out look. The shutter speed was slow those days because of the insensitive film, so everyone had to keep deathly still or it would be blurred. The candid smiling pose hadn’t been invented yet. The real ghost here is an outdated technology, not the people. Sorry to spoil you soul-loss theory, Daniel. The one that stands out in all these is the pic of the young woman. It was taken in a studio by a professional using a good lens - probably a Leica 3c - on slow-speed monochrome film. Technically this standard hasn’t been superseded, though the gear to do it with has of course. Stylistically, it is also contemporary. The photographer has used a mix of diffuse and reflected light for modelling, and to give a sculptural look to the face. This is the forties look currently in vogue again, hence - my guess - the uncanny feeling you experienced - as if she was in the room.' 

He is woken by the phone. A message reminding him of the meeting at St Andrews Church. At the foot of the bed, two pairs of eyes are staring at him. ‘Where’s Keisha?’ the boy asks. ‘Mommy’s in heaven,’ the small child says and waving her arms, spins around the room as if she were an aeroplane or a bird.

Jonathan accompanies him to the Jeep. In the early light the photographer looks pale, vulnerable. ‘It’s so fucking tragic,’ he says. ‘The years we spent in Constantia she put us through hell with her fear of intruders. Electronic gates, burglar bars, alarms, sensor lighting - nothing helped. Finally we come here, nice secure building in the middle of Obs, only one fucking door into it, you’d need a tank to get through, and she goes and kills herself.’ The rims of his eyes have turned red. As if he wants to weep but can’t ‘Maybe she realised that the intruders weren’t physical so she went off to deal with them on their own ground. Maybe she did it for the kids. For their protection. In her mind at least it might have been necessary and in their best interests. If she’d been one of your rock painters, a sorcerer would have done the job for her. You know - your picture of the shaman expelling poison onto those dreadful spirits. Nowadays we call it delusion and it’s either drugs or an institution.’


The church is packed. He takes a chair on the platform next to Miles. From here he has a good view of the painting covering the back wall. A cobblestone  street lined with artisans’ houses, as it was before the evictions and the bulldozing. In the background, the minaret of a mosque. He spots Jasmine with her inevitable clipboard. Wonders how many others here are also doing post-docs on coloured identity. The National Monuments moderator speaks first. ‘This is an historic moment for those of us gathered here as citizens of a democratic country in this church that has stood as a symbol for the resistance of the people against the inhuman laws they were subject to, and as evidence of the indestructibility of the human spirit.’ He turns to a dark-suited man holding a bible - ‘Reverend, don’t you think we should open with a short prayer?’

Good. Short and sweet.

There is the clatter of a chair and a large man with dreadlocks rises to his feet. ‘I object on behalf of the bones of my ancestors! They don’t want prayers from the slavers’ religion.’

‘With respect sir, St Andrew's Church has been in the forefront of…’

‘That’s what my ancestors are telling me.’

 ‘Dr Karon…’ The moderator turns to him with a pleading expression. ‘Can you help us here?’

Fortunately Miles is there.

‘I suggest you invite the gentleman to make a short prayer according to his tradition.’

‘Goringoqua don’t do it like that,’ the dreadlocked man says. ‘We need big fire. Ox.’

A tall grey-haired person stands up. Miles leans across. ‘Aha, a judge. He managed a constitution so this should be child’s play.’

The judge waits, staring fixedly ahead until there is silence. ‘It is very simple. If there is a need for prayers, let them be, as with oath-taking in our courts, according to the religions, beliefs or customs of those on whose behalf we plead. Messages from the dead however, are plainly inadmissible.’

‘Thank you, your honour, for articulating the problem,’ the moderator says. ‘Those who wish, may make their own prayers silently or in an undertone - I’m sure our Goringoqua friend will not object to that. Does that satisfy you?’ he asks him.

‘Alutta continua!’ the man says, holding up a clenched fist.

‘I didn’t know the Goringoqua spoke Latin,’ Miles mutters under his breath.

‘Then let us then proceed. As you know, during the course of excavation for an underground parking area in the Waterkant, a number of skeletons were exposed, suggesting the presence of an historic burial ground. Initial examination of dental formations indicated that both slaves and free residents of the settlement were buried there. Tonight we will hear the view of academics who believe that information could be obtained from the skeletons that is vital to an understanding of our country’s history and on the other side, the view of community members who quite understandably want their ancestors' bones reburied as quickly as possible and with appropriate ceremony. Let us first hear what the archaeologists have to say. Dr Karon….?’

He stands up. ‘Perhaps we should ask the dead what they want us to do with their bones?’ The statement comes out of his mouth as if on its own accord.

He hears giggling.

‘What I mean is that we should attempt to speak in these terms.’

The moderator clears his throat nervously.

‘The alternative is to do what we want which may be different to what the dead want.’ He pauses to let this sink in. ‘For instance, our foundation myths tell us that the dead live in eternal time, so if we do it for the sake of history, can we claim that it is for them?’ He means it as a joke, but no one laughs. He is sinking deeper into the mud with each word. He tries another angle. ‘It is generally agreed that what the dead want is to be honoured.’ There is a murmur of approval. ‘We have heard one gentleman complain about prayers that are offensive to his ancestors. What if the bones of a slave from Angola who I’m honouring turn out to be those of a merchant from Malacca? Since it is widely held that our wellbeing depends on the tranquillity of the dead, my colleagues feel it would be to everyone’s benefit to know who the bones belong to so that they can be appropriately addressed. However my own view is…’

There is a shuffling of chairs, coughs. A man in the audience stands up. He knows him well. Jamal, the curator of the Museum of the Oppressed. Sharp as a razor behind the casual air. Someone to be careful of. Jamal waits until things settle down. ‘Dr Karon,’ he says, with a trace of a smile, ‘May I assume you are a man of the faith?’

‘I’m not a member of any religious orthodoxy if that’s what you mean.’ He is choosing his words carefully.

Jamal looks around at his constituency. The smile is still there. ‘Nevertheless, Dr Karon, is it not true that in certain religions - that of the Jews for instance - exhumation is prohibited.

He has expected this. ‘Certainly there are such taboos, but people, as you know Dr Jamal, have many world views outside of their traditional religion. You find atheist Jews, communist Jews, Catholic Jews, and so on, just as you find atheist curators, Communist curators, Catholic...’

There is a titter of laughter. He has regained some ground.

Jamal is no longer smiling. ‘Yes, yes, Dr Karon, I get the picture, but let us imagine that you have discovered the gravesite of an ancestor or relative about whom you know very little. Would you agree to the exhumation and examination of the bones of your relative by the scientists of the country in which, let us say, your great grandmother was enslaved and killed. In order to know, Dr Karon, where she came from, what she ate, what kind of life she lived?’

He can see Jasmine squirming.

The curator continues: ‘Of course you wouldn’t. People who are buried should remain buried. Would you like your grandmother dug up and tested for her dietary habits? Of course not.’ There is sustained applause.

He plays his last card. ‘That may be so, but because people are religious, it doesn’t mean they know any better than you or I what the needs of the dead are. The only place where the dead can be found is in our thoughts, so only we, in whose thoughts they appear, can know what their needs are.’ The audience is silent. He has overstepped the line. They are with Jamal, not with him.

How do you feel?’ Jasmine says afterwards. ‘You mean, caught between academia and the popular front?’ he says. She puts her hand against the small of his back. Holds it there.

Becky wants to go to a new restaurant in the Quarter. She has squeezed herself into black tights with a gold-studded belt.

‘Is it safe to drive at night?’

‘They don’t like Jeeps,’ he says. ‘Too slow and too obvious.’

‘And if we break down on the road?’

‘I have my cellphone.’ He looks sideways at her. ‘We can always give them your belt.’

 ‘Fat lot of use that will be,’ she says.

‘It’s a tithe. One buys one’s life with it…hopefully.’ He gets a perverse pleasure out of alarming Becky.

The door is opened by a man wearing a red fez. It’s an opportunity Becky can’t resist. She stands next to the man, places her hand on his shoulder. Her brother will take the photograph, she says. The doorman is happy to oblige, to be in the picture - there is after all the matter of a small gratuity - but as for him being photographer; why should he pander to his sister’s colonial fantasies?

 ‘Everything you make into a problem,’ she says when they are seated. ‘No wonder your women leave you - fortunately for you in the last instance. Or is there someone since Jasmine? Well, if you will insist on these neurotic types.’ She unfolds a pair of reading glasses and examines the menu. ‘Now what would you like? ‘ she says. ‘He’ll have grilled king prawns,’ she tells the waiter without waiting for his answer. ‘ I can afford to pay for you,’ she confides. ‘I got my ticket on my friend Penelope’s flight-saver points. They mean nothing to her. She flies everywhere first class.’ She takes off her glasses and looks around. ‘Isn’t this wonderful? I’ve always loved the Quarter. It had such character when the Malays were here. They liked us because we also don’t eat pork. There was a little shop around the corner where they sold spices. It smelled of curry. Now these places are all gussied up, full of gays, and every second shop is selling African curios. I bought a mask from one of them. A very nice woman. Now she’s someone you should speak to.’

He drops Becky off at her waterfront hotel. Comments on the expanse of marble in the foyer. ‘Lily is paying,’ she says. She adjusts her hair in the mirror. ‘It’s only fair. It doesn’t cost you anything to visit her so why should I have to pay?’

The woman is hanging a mask when he enters the shop. In her sixties, he guesses. A seasoned traveller judging by the trim body. ‘Yoruba?’ he says, pleased to display his knowledge of West African art. ‘No,’ she says, coming down off her ladder. ‘It’s an Awa mask from the Dogon. It’s worn by dancers on stilts imitating water-birds. They make a bridge to the spirit world.  And this helps the deceased to move into the world of ancestors and brings about peace in the village. The dancer puts on the mask, the spirit of the ancestors enters into him or her, and then pheeuw…’

Her name is Sophia. She tells him she came to African art after she discovered Kapuscinski. She was of course familiar with Josef Conrad. She had experienced the heart of darkness in a way he could never have imagined, but the journalist had introduced her to a different Africa, full of life and possibility, and her gift for languages had given her access to its cultures. The same ability had saved her in the camp where she’d translated letters for a Yugoslav girl on the bunk above her. When Sophia was selected, she’d stepped to the left to show the number tattooed on her arm to the clerk whose job it was to write it down. The clerk had looked up for a fraction of a second, and it was her, the girl. The next day, when they called out the numbers, hers was not among them. ‘But enough about me,’ she says with a wry smile. ‘Let me see your letter.’ She reads it quickly. Looks at him. ‘Why did you come to me?’ He starts to tell her again. ‘No,’ she says, ‘come to my place this evening.'


Her apartment is next to the  public gardens at the top of the city. From her balcony he can see the museum in which are some of the artefacts he has found since his return. It pleases him that they are in a building that once belonged to the Dutch East India Company, now returned to the people. A candle is burning on her sideboard. For the reading he supposes. Sensitive touch. She notices his glance. ‘My sister,’ she says. From a stereo, a woman’s soprano voice gradually increasing in volume. Sophia translates. ‘No Mother, do not weep…’

When they have cleared the table, she sits down, smiles, bends over the letter. ‘She say she is in a small village with the man who saved her life.' 
'A Pole,' he asks.  
'A Jew.' 
'Are you sure?'
'Here it is,  Zyd y W - a Jew from W'
But now look at this girl’s character. She wants to say she alone is alive, so she writes Zostalo –  all that is left - but in Polish you can't start a sentence with such a word so she puts the line through it, starts again. Imagine, her life depends on this letter, but she stops to correct her grammar.’ Sophia has the same proud-teacher look as when she corrected him in the shop.  ‘My father was a professor in language, but he taught Esperanto, a decision for which his family, my sister..…’ her eyes flit to the candle then return to the letter. ‘Everything is lost, but this girl cannot write a grammatically incorrect sentence. Why not? Because in language something still lives, and this thread of life leads to the one to  whom she asks, a reply be addressed.’ She places her finger on the name.

Zydowicz.

It is after midnight when he crosses the bridge into Stanton. The square is deserted, the streets silent, the windows of the houses dark, their doors shut. The only sounds are the gurgle of water in the slots and the occasional barking of dogs. And when I was on the run? Who here would have given me refuge? My neighbour?

In his studio, he turns on the computer, logs onto a map. He finds a dot marked W, a thin black line running east south-east which connects to a thick red line. Can it be that in hell there are roads, highways? It makes sense on the screen, but in his mind it is along the road he has just driven that she is fleeing, away from the screams and the flames. She is the woman on the bridge, red sky behind her. Then over the bridge and into the silent village       

He types “Zydowicz” and a match comes up. A Professor Zoltan Zydowicz is presenting a paper on Gaucher’s Disease at a medical conference in Krakow. It’s a coincidence, but one has to start somewhere. Why not with an expert on his own family pathology? He sends an email to the conference address and regrets it almost immediately. The eminent physician is no doubt a member of an aristocratic dynasty that weathered the communist period, a count even, drinking vodka by the fire while his white-faced daughter plays Chopin, and then the butler brings him a letter asking about a fugitive who happens to have the same name as him, last heard of half a century ago hiding in a cellar in the northern boondocks. Does the Professor happen to know anything about it?

He visualises a ring-laden hand crumpling his letter and tossing it into the fire. He must surely explain himself, even if only in the imagination.

Esteemed Professor,

Of course I did not really expect you to know this man. Were this the case it would constitute a coincidence of cosmic proportions. It simply occurred to me, when your name turned up on the internet that, as a senior academic you might have an understanding of the origins of your name. You see, I am an archaeologist to whom the etymology of a name can reveal a great deal and since I am in effect looking for a needle in a haystack, I cannot ignore even the slightest possibility that one clue may lead to another.

Sophia phones as he is approaching the University. She has come across the name. It’s in a book by a French historian of the Holocaust. Zydowicz was killed in 1941…in a village called ‘W’. ‘But the man we are after was alive when the letter was written and that was 1944,’ he says. ‘Ask him anyway,’ she says. ‘Maybe he knows something.’

Miles is reading the paper. ‘Prof Pritchard. In his garden. That makes three this week. Janine Gouws, Gerard du Plessis and now Pritchard.

What’s the decision?’

‘The remains will be reinterred. No further examination. They’ll go unsorted into an ossuary.’

‘Together with Gouws, du Plessis and Pritchard?’

‘Don’t be fucking macabre, Daniel. The sangomas wanted the bones to be buried in Langa - under the township square for want of a cattle kraal - but the Anglicans weren’t enthusiastic because it would have meant testing to determine racial origin and in any case the Muslims would not have a bar of any further exhumation. A compromise was reached. The graves themselves will cut from the ground and moved into an ossuary which will be constructed below ground level and earth mixed with cattle dung placed in a receptacle inside. The Minister called on us to remember those who have shaped the history of the city. Then we had champagne and samoosas. I was asked a few times about your remarks. It seems no one had the slightest idea what you were getting at. You were generally understood to be recommending that we hold channelling sessions. The sangomas however thought it was quite good.’

Keisha is in her room getting her sleepover things together. ‘Would you like a drink?’ Jasmine asks. She has heard that he is investigating his European roots. ‘Would you be interested in discussing this at our symposium? It’s on the reconstruction of identity among descendants of historically marginalised communities. We’re trying to broaden our definition.’

Why the sudden warmth? And why the interest?

‘I don’t fit,’ he says. ‘I’m not reconstructing my identity like you are - at least I don’t think so. If anything, I’d like to shed some of it.’

‘But you are engaged in research.’

‘I’m attending to a relative who died.’

‘Fifty years later?’

‘Lenin’s been dead for eighty years and your comrades are still queuing up to genuflect over his embalmed body.’

She ignores the provocation. ‘If it’s not an identity issue and it’s not a religious issue, why are you doing it?’

‘I heard a call. Like Blake. Milton asked him to change a line in Paradise Lost, but he refused - for good reason. I don’t have a reason.’

‘Jesus, Daniel, don’t come crying to me ….’ “When they kick you out,” she leaves unsaid. ‘Your little talk was testing the boundaries, that I can tell you.’ She shakes her head. ‘I want to discuss something with you. Keisha will be fine for five minutes.’ She leads the way into the bedroom and closes the door.

‘Why are you so angry?’

‘I’m not angry.’

‘When I fetched Keisha last Friday you were in a rage.’

‘You storm in and drag her out as if you’ve just discovered her in an opium den. What the fuck do you expect?’ Her face flares. ‘You deliberately do things to provoke me. I really hate you when you do that.’

The words come by themselves. ‘Let’s make love.’

At least there is this between them.

The traditional wine cup is missing from Lily’s table. So are the silver candlesticks. Each disappearance coincides with a visit from Becky. The  tea service has already gone, though in this case, he assumes, more for its monetary value than as a relic. Slowly the unit is being stripped of things of value. To protect them from him? As if he has no entitlement. Is not a member of this family?

The door to Lily’s memory flies open, triggered, he presumes, by the ritual being performed. Nothing like a couple of candles and some arcane words to turn a person’s thoughts to the departed. ‘The letter had no stamp. Just the signature of a postal clerk. Your father and grandfather cried when they read it. She was pretty. That’s why he hid her.’

‘Who?’

‘The Pole.’

He spends the rest of the evening working on an idea he’s had for a new academic paper. In the morning, Keisha is gone. Picked up by her mother, Sanna says. Also she has a message. She flicks her dishcloth. ‘That Boesman friend of yours,’ she says. Kabys has taken to reporting his florid night experiences with the izinyanya. Pity he missed it. I need the support of the ancestral world even if it is located in my imagination. Though he will not admit it, Jasmine’s warnings have galvanised him into action. Let them kick him out if that’s the price for him taking his work seriously, for his blasphemy against positivism.   

His phone rings. It’s Amber. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I got your number from the secretary. I’m going to be delivering some more honey today. I thought it might be nice to say hello.’

‘Well, congratulations,’ he says. ‘Our secretary is notoriously protective of me. You must have used some special magic. Do you like boating?’

Later that night in front of the fire: ‘You let me into you and you hardly know me.’ he says.

‘And you?’ she teases. ‘Would you let someone you’ve just met put their thoughts into your mind?’ 

‘I’m careful about the movies I watch.’

‘And the women…?’

‘There’s only one.’

‘And you’re in love with her?’

‘I have to rescue her. ’

‘From what?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘I like you,’ she says. ‘For two reasons: You say funny things...’

‘And?’

‘You’re the saddest person I’ve ever met.’

Suddenly, inexplicably, for the first time in years, he is overcome by grief.

The fire has died to embers. She traces the scar that runs across his cheek. ‘You’re a Mongol warrior,’ she says. ‘And you’re a gypsy girl he won through battle,’ he says.

‘What was his name, this gallant knight?’

‘He was a boy really, but he could be anything he wanted. His family called him Dreamer.’

‘Can I meet him,’ she says.

‘Oh no,’ he says, ‘he left a long time ago.’

‘How old was he, then?’

‘Twelve,’ he says.

‘And you, when he left?’ she asks.

‘Twelve,’ he says.

‘The same age as him?’

‘Exactly the same.’

She has returned from an exploration of his house.

‘I found a movie,’ she says.
‘Let me guess. My Dinner with Andres,’ he says.
‘How did you know?’

‘It’s the only one I have,’ he says.

‘So you are careful.’

‘With movies, yes.’

The fire has burned to embers. From outside, there are occasional rustles, water in the sloot, frogs croaking.

The film is for his students. To show them that the rituals depicted in the rock paintings continue today in other forms. The more adventurous students share his enthusiasm. Not so his colleagues, and that includes Miles. What is Karon trying to prove? That the painters are the Kandinsky’s of the preshistoric world? ‘They just don’t see it,’ he tells her. ‘An American theatre director goes to Poland to work in the theatre of trance, and on his return he makes a movie about his experiences. It is no different to the man who goes through the rockface into the spirit world and paints his experiences on the rockface when he returns. They’re both Orphic journeys - but my colleagues don’t think there is any reality to these experiences. They appreciate the work, whether it’s the religious music of Bach or paintings on the cathedral walls of a cave but it’s all based on what  they consider to be a delusion.’ He looks at Amber. She’s fast asleep, her black hair framing her body - a naked Aphrodite on a cobalt blue sheet.

He wakes as the first rays of daylight are streaming in. Leaves the warmth of her body and goes onto the veranda. Breathes in the lavender-scented air. His neighbour is busy with her shears, pruning and trimming.  From the clippings, she’s been at it for some time. Her boys are making weapons from some of the longer branches. They play with guns all day. Take pot shots at him from behind the hedge. ‘Bang bang. Bang bang’ Or they enter from the unfenced side of his house and prowl around the garden following Keisha. ‘Bang bang. Bang bang.’ He has told them to leave their guns at the boundary. ‘But they’re not real,’ they say. They think it’s all right to shoot Keisha because they’ve been taught that the imagination is not real and because Keisha has a different folk soul to them. On his side the hedge rambles and the garden is wild. Next door they like to see the fence and they have guns. But the river is a tree with many branches and it accommodates them all. In another month, when the days have begun to shorten, the storks will take to the air, building their strength for their long flight home, following the sun to Ezra’s heaven and a place of fields.