A Fork in the Road Read online

  Another response that left me speechless with gratitude came from a young black South African woman who had spent most of her life in exile during the apartheid years: after reading The Wall of the Plague, she told me, she decided to follow Andrea’s example and return to South Africa to face her own challenges.

  And then there was Herr Böhlke. This happened late in 2000. The handwriting was a spidery scrawl that suggested old age, or severe pressure. The letter came from Hanover in Germany and bore rather unexpected news. He, Rainer Böhlke, had reached an age where he had to start thinking about death and its aftermath. He was lonely, had no children or living relatives, and having taken a liking to my work he was wondering whether I would consent to being his sole heir.

  I must confess that my thoughts immediately turned, most unworthily, to a fortune in the not too distant future. I visualised a schloss on the Rhine. And I wrote back to express my empathy and appreciation, indicating that, yes certainly, if that was his wish, I would consent to his generous request.

  It took a while before I heard from him again, and from then on there were repeated interruptions caused by the vagaries of the postal services. But the correspondence did continue. Then came a request: in view of his great appreciation of my work, and given our most satisfactory agreement, would I possibly consider sending him the original manuscript of one of my books?

  I thought about it very carefully. But, in the final analysis, what was a manuscript compared to a schloss on the Rhine?

  So I obligingly chose a manuscript of On the Contrary and airmailed it to Hanover.

  Then: silence.

  It must have been about six months later when my agent telephoned from Zurich, to tell me about a most unexpected conversation she’d just overheard between her colleague and a visiting American crime writer, Henry Slezar. This writer had just published a new book, the dedication of which intrigued the agent. And in reply to her query he told a fascinating story about an elderly German reader who had contacted him some time before to enquire whether he would consent to being the old man’s sole heir. Et cetera. In this case the correspondent obsequiously asked for a dedication rather than a manuscript.

  The agent called Henry Slezar to the phone and we had a rather heated conversation in which he swore that he would expose the whole affair on the Internet. For all we knew, there might be scores, hundreds, of writers all over the world nominated as heirs to Rainer Böhlke. And imagine them all, it occurred to me, turning up at the graveside and clamouring to take possession of their schloss. A theme worthy of Dame Agatha Christie.

  However, Slezar had barely touched base in the States again when he died very suddenly. But I was still seething, and started dispatching numerous letters, all of them by registered mail, to Hanover. Needless to say, there never was the shadow of a response.

  But when all else fails, writers do have one recourse: the last word. And in the book I was then writing, The Other Side of Silence, I renamed the most despicable character I have ever created, and called him Böhlke.

  BACK TO FRANCE

  THROUGHOUT THE SIXTIES the dream of returning to Paris kept haunting me. It was only in 1968 that the possibility of a permanent return became possible, but halfway through 1966 there was a shorter, if still momentous, visit. After five years at Rhodes it was time for my sabbatical. It had been planned as a celebratory return to the city where I had been born a second time. But things turned out rather differently. To begin with, after the breakdown of my second marriage, I was feeling miserable. But I refused to change my bookings for Paris. I needed to go back. The result could have been disastrous, but as it happened, it became one of the richest summers of my life. If I close my eyes now, it’s faces I see first. The faces of artists of all kinds. Most vividly Jan Rabie and Marjorie Wallace, who were staying with Breyten, so that for the first fortnight of my visit I found a small room squeezed in tightly under the roof of the little Hôtel du Senlis a few doors away from theirs. Some years later I also spent some time there, and this was the only occasion when we nearly fell foul of the patronne of the Senlis. A captivating young Dutch artist-cum-political-activist, Connie, came to visit Breyten, and in the small hours of the night I walked her back to the apartment of a mutual friend, Marion – to whom I shall return in due course – in the rue du Dragon. But halfway there I persuaded her that the Senlis might be worthwhile investigating, and we turned back. After a few glasses of vin chaud in the Mahieu, on the corner of the boulevard Saint-Michel and the rue Soufflot, we proceeded to the Senlis. Paris hotels can be very snotty about guests in one’s room, so I smuggled Connie in surreptitiously and climbed the four storeys to my garret room. It would be overstating the case to describe it as ‘small’. It was minuscule, not much bigger than a medium-sized suitcase; and my single bed more or less filled it wall-to-wall. The only way to cope, was to drag the little bed out to the landing and settle on the floor. More than the Kama Sutra was required to execute our manoeuvres on that tiny rectangular space. But we managed; and we didn’t care much for sleeping anyway.

  At sparrow’s fart the next morning Connie was on her way. I heard her descending the four flights of stairs. And then, as she came past the concierge’s cubicle, there was an explosion like Krakatoa erupting.

  I stumbled out to the landing, grabbed the forlorn bed, dragged it back to the room, heaped our bundle of bedding on top of it, wriggled myself into my clothes and hurried downstairs to prevent the murder of a pretty foreigner. But barely two storeys down, the cacophony on the ground floor died away. Either Connie had been killed, or she’d managed to escape from the clutches of the concierge. Hoping for the best, I hastened back to my room, stripped off my clothes again and dived into bed. Not a moment too soon: seconds later there was a thundering sound on the stairs and without bothering to knock the patronne burst into my room, gasping for breath as if she’d just run an uphill marathon.

  I raised my dishevelled head as if I’d just woken up and asked in a daze, ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est, Madame?’

  She looked this way and that, went down on her knees to peer under the bed, then got up again, shaking her head in bewilderment.

  ‘Did you – was there – have you seen a young woman coming past here?’ she stammered in apoplectic, impotent rage.

  ‘Past here?’ I asked. ‘From the roof or to the roof?’

  She withdrew to the landing, looked up at the vasistas to the roof, once again shook her head, uttered an explosive ‘Merde!’ and stomped downstairs again without another word.

  But to resume. While Jan and Marjorie were occupying the spare room in Breyten’s apartment, I stayed in the Senlis. Which meant that I wasn’t present to witness the amazing spectacle of their departure which rounded off their visit. But I was kept abreast of it during the full ten days it lasted.

  They were to leave from the Gare du Nord. Jan, meticulously organised person that he always was, probably the last vestige of his dour Calvinist upbringing, wanted to make sure that absolutely nothing would go wrong. Very early one morning, ten days before D-Day, Breyten was woken up by what sounded like an earthquake on the stairs. By the time he arrived at the front door, Jan and Marjorie had left with five large suitcases: their visit to Paris followed a voyage of many months through the US and Europe, and they had accumulated a mountain of luggage. Halfway through the morning, they returned from the Gare du Nord. It transpired that, considering their train – ten days later – was due to leave at eight, they had risen at five to catch the first of their buses to the Gare du Nord, where they arrived an hour and ten minutes early.

  The next morning, there was a repeat performance, thundering down the six storeys from Breyten’s apartment to the ground floor, and from there to the bus stop – only this time they left at a quarter-past six. On the third morning they left at five-thirty. From there on they fine-tuned the performance, adding or subtracting a few minutes every day, until on the morning before the day of their departure they had perfected the exercise. On the las
t morning we were all on the pavement of the rue Malebranche to wish them bon voyage. Everything was set for a model departure.

  But just after ten o’clock they were back: there was a railway strike and their train could not leave.

  Three days later the trains were back on schedule and Jan and Marjorie finally managed to leave.

  The rest of that summer of 1966 turned into something of a merry-go-round, ranging from a wild affair with a young English woman who unnervingly reminded me of Ingrid, to a singular episode with a sylphide from Sweden, Mia, whose name was really Gunilla, and who shared my bed for a fortnight on the explicit condition that there would be no sex: I fell head over heels in love, but as a man of some honour I abided strictly with the rules. A mad time, as she had become mixed up with a crowd of hippies on the banks of the Seine, and some louche characters on the fringe, including a one-eyed Moroccan who kept the younger generation supplied with drink and pot. Most of my nights during those two weeks were spent looking for Gunilla and extracting her from potentially life-threatening situations, to which she was serenely oblivious. After our fortnight of burning chastity she proceeded on her way, to Italy, to Czechoslovakia, to God knows where. There came a footnote to the episode when I visited Gothenburg for a literary festival in 1988 and in the queue of a few hundred people wanting their books signed, a beautiful middle-aged woman turned up, placing her book in front of me without a word. Only as she turned away, she spoke the words ‘Maybe never’, the title of the novel I’d based on that episode. And as I looked up, I recognised the Gunilla of twenty years before. I called out her name. She glanced back, briefly smiled, and walked on. The next person in the queue was already waiting. Impossible to go after her. What had remained so painfully unfulfilled in that long-lost summer, was destined to remain so forever.

  There was more unfinished business during the same summer of 1966: I had seen a striking young actress, Elyane Giovagnoli, act in a Ionesco play in Montparnasse, and promptly fell for her – but as I was due to leave for London two days later, there was little chance of doing anything about it. The next day I visited a florist near the theatre and launched my private War of the Roses: arranging for a red rose to be delivered to the stage door every day for the next month. When I came back a month later, I immediately went to the theatre again. This time I left a bouquet of roses, with a note to set up a date for the next evening after the show.

  I was there well in time, not knowing whether Elyane would turn up at all. But she did. And she was even more beautiful than I’d remembered. There was a slightly halting beginning to our conversation. But then we ordered something to drink, and soon we were launched into what promised to be an evening redolent with possibility. She was sparkling, witty, smiling, laughing, her almost-black eyes lit up in a festival of light.

  Just when the time came to propose a follow-up meeting, a newspaper vendor came past on the broad pavement. Even from a distance I could see the large black headline:

  Verwoerd Assassiné

  I beckoned to the vendor and bought a paper. Unbelievable as it seemed, the news was true.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me, Elyane,’ I stammered, almost incoherent with excitement. And started running.

  It was at least a kilometre to the rue Malebranche where I had my room with Breyten and Yolande, but I ran all the way. And burst into the apartment. Breyten was sitting in the narrow lounge with an old friend, the Rhodesian sculptor Keith MacKenzie. Yolande had already retired.

  Within minutes she was awakened, the newspaper was read and reread. I called for a celebratory drink. As soon as the glasses were filled, Keith asked in a tone of dark suspicion: ‘What are we drinking to?’

  Only then did it hit us: Keith had quite strong leanings to the right, and he was an admirer of Verwoerd. Some days later he even attended the funeral service the South African Embassy had arranged. Not having any suitable outfit of his own, he borrowed Breyten’s rather tight-fitting black suit from his wedding, six years before, and donned a hat with an ostrich feather stuck into it. He had no shoes. On the evening of the announcement the atmosphere was highly charged. Keith was glowering at us, clearly just waiting for a sign of celebration. And he was about twice the size of Breyten and myself combined.

  It was Breyten who came to the rescue, with a show of diplomacy that has always stood him in good stead. ‘Let us drink to South Africa,’ he proposed. Which we all, solemnly, did.

  During the rest of that mad visit there were frequent meals, impromptu or arranged, al fresco in someone’s garden in a suburb in the summer or under the falling plane leaves in autumn, with a haphazard assortment of painters and sculptors and film or theatre directors and actors and writers and poets, published or unpublished, with hangers-on from a fringe of fire-eaters or sword-swallowers or chain-breakers, and miniaturists and maximalists, and weavers and lithographers and musicians, singers and sinuous sparsely clad dancers, long-fingered mimes, all eating pasta and swilling wine and talking non-stop, bickering or smooching or occasionally making love soundlessly or noisily in the background.

  Once we were in a garden with grey and blue walls and shutters, outside the villa of the benevolently smiling, luminous eyes of the COBRA painter Corneille. Often in the rambling apartment which Pierre Skira, lean and pale and angular, shared with his dark-eyed Chilean companion Cholie, off my favourite Paris street, the rue Mouffetard. My ideal summer lunch: wandering down the full length of the Mouffetard, zigzagging drunkenly yet purposefully from one tried-and-trusted stall or shop to the next of a Sunday, engaging in serious conversation with each seller, collecting the ingredients for the meal: a terrine de campagne and obviously pâté de foie gras, a few cheeses, including a Soleil covered in raisins, a chicken roasted on the spit, or some slices of rôti d’agneau, a special red wine with a handwritten poem on the label, fresh tomatoes, a baguette or a pain de mie, fruit, a slice of millefeuille; and then a leisurely stroll to the Luxembourg gardens to regale oneself on a chair beside the Fontaine Médicis, caressed by the sound of water and enthralled by the sculpture of the two smooth and sensual lovers, Galathea and Acis, under the dark, louring Polyphemus, preparing to crush them under his terrifying black rock.

  Some of the artists were hovering shadows on the edge of our familiar world, but left an indelible impression. An angular figure moving furtively from shadow to shadow, then lurking in a dark entrance while his equally ascetic woman scouted for a café not infested with familiars: Samuel Beckett. Two small, rotund figures, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, distressingly bourgeois, emerging from a theatre and exchanging some observations, humorous or banal, before disappearing into the night: Eugène Ionesco and his wife. Sartre, ugly little man on a stage during the student riots, ensconced in an alpaca jacket, scowling at his audience through thick glasses that exaggerated his aquarium eyes. I thought of Sartre years later when my friend George Weideman told me about his encounter with a vagrant in a Cape Town street: ‘Excuse me, sir, but I just want to say you must have very strong eyes to look through those thick glasses.’

  Other faces and memories are much more defined. One of them is Gerard Sekoto, the grand old man of African painting. But what a melancholy experience to meet him – the archetypal man with a great future behind him. He didn’t seem to have done any work for years, ever since a plane transporting a number of his paintings crashed on its way to an exhibition. Since then, he believed that any future exhibition of his work would be sabotaged by unnamed forces. Of course this safeguarded him against the possibility of real failure. As far as I could make out, he used to be one of the great debauchers of Paris, a brilliant jazz musician who’d drunk himself to the brink of death in Montmartre, but like some of his predecessors in New Orleans, he had a reputation for giving his best performances when he was drunk. During his period of dissipation he was picked up by a woman who took him home to her apartment one night and then kept him firmly under her wing. Yet not one of his friends had ever seen her: if there was a knock on the door s
he would whisper through the keyhole, ‘Qui est là?’ and then withdraw to call Gerard. And when he opened, all the other doors would be firmly closed. One could hear her shuffling about on slippers, but nobody ever saw her. I could not help imagining a story of a woman who didn’t exist, yet completely dominated her husband’s life with her invisible presence.

  For years he’d stopped drinking, either on his doctor’s or the woman’s orders. But the week before I met him, he took to the bottle again, because the possibility of a new exhibition had finally materialised. In the course of our evening together he was mostly incoherent. It would have made a fascinating, if perplexing play: no matter what was being discussed, or what anybody might ask him, he would doggedly pursue his own line of thought, staring straight ahead into the distance with his tearful round eyes, his beard already turning white, his hands – which could wield a paintbrush with such colour and mastery and fantasy – occasionally clenched in fists, and letting go again. Possessed by his esoteric dreams, or nightmares, he seems to wander through the streets around the place de la Contrescarpe, mumbling, enfolded in his loneliness as in an African blanket. One of the zombies apartheid has let loose upon the world, wandering ghost, sad and terrifying dreamer.

  Another of these lost souls – but still redeemable, with the embers of an old African fire smouldering behind his often bloodshot eyes, was Mazisi Kunene, responsible for most of the banned ANC’s organisation in London and Europe. Much later, at the time when Mandela was released from prison and our transition towards freedom began, he returned from decades of exile and we became very close friends; I dedicated Imaginings of Sand to him. The most moving moment of our friendship was when, just before the elections of 1994, he invited me to accompany him to the home in Natal, high on a green hill, where he had spent his childhood and where his parents had been buried during his years in exile. It was his first visit since he returned, and there was something almost sacred about the moment he went on his knees to greet the dead. What had kept him alive all those years was his poetry. He was the most dedicated, almost obsessive, poet I have ever known. No matter how busy his schedule was (and during the years as ANC representative abroad, and later, lionised as a poet at many festivals in many countries, his days were crammed with commitments) he would get up before dawn every morning and fill notebook after notebook, in his elegant handwriting, with his Zulu poems. And if the writing had to be interrupted for breakfast or a visitor, Mazisi would – with something of a wistful smile – close his book and put away his pen, sometimes at the end of a line and sometimes in the middle, and continue from there, without a moment’s hesitation, the following morning.