A Fork in the Road Page 32

  After his return to South Africa, he was a much more forceful presence, as a person and in my life, than in the sixties in Paris. But from the very first time he entered the little garret apartment in the rue Malebranche where I stayed with Breyten and Yolande there was something unforgettable about him. A unique kind of dignity. Perhaps, I often thought at the time, a peculiarly Zulu dignity. Which showed even when he was sad and despondent: then he would come to visit, and put a kwela record from the townships on the tinny little turntable in the lounge, and close his eyes, and start dancing, in one spot, round and round, very slowly, while the tears came running down his furrowed cheeks. Even in those early days, long before his hair became as white as the snows of the Bokkeveld, his cheeks were much-furrowed. Suffering shows. Exile shows. After a while like this, he could smile again, his indomitable little smile, and draw back his broad shoulders – there always was a massive quality about his body, even in sorrow – and face the world with his dignity restored.

  And when one of us was depressed, it would be Mazisi who would put an arm around our shoulders and say, ‘Don’t worry, man. Tomorrow we go home.’ Always that parting line, ‘Tomorrow we go home.’

  Even the first time he set foot in Paris his peculiarly Zulu pride and dignity was in evidence. All he had to guide him, was a piece of paper on which he’d written the only address for a friend he’d been given. Meticulously following his instructions from the Gare du Nord, he’d taken a Métro to the station nearest to his contact address. But that was in the quarter of Denfert-Rochereau and he found himself in a bewildering labyrinth of streets. Looking round, he saw a policeman in the distance and approached, crumpled paper in hand. This Mazisi thrust into the hand of the gendarme, who turned out to be very helpful. He pointed the long arm of the law up a narrow street and said, ‘Là-bas.’

  Mazisi didn’t know a single word of French, but immediately took this to mean ‘lapa’, which is the Zulu word for ‘that way’.

  Afterwards he explained: it didn’t come as a surprise to him that the gendarme had addressed him in Zulu: that, in his view, was only natural. But what had surprised, and pleased, him was that the Frenchman had immediately recognised his interlocutor as Zulu. From that day, Mazisi had a soft spot for the French.

  Something of Mazisi’s melancholy was also noticeable in Lewis Nkosi, but we never became particularly close. Unlike Mazisi, the bottle never had a soothing, humanising influence on Lewis: he became steadily more aggressive and obnoxious. But I have the impression that the mellowing effect of ageing has rounded the edges of the abrasiveness with which he used to protect his vulnerability; and in recent years I have become more able to appreciate the broadness of his humour and the sharpness of his wit.

  We spent some evenings of heated discussion, in which I was impressed by his critical faculties: he was undoubtedly the most acute South African critic in those years. But our real mutual mistrust began, I now believe, with the publication of Looking on Darkness in 1974. In London, Lewis came to one of the discussions that followed the launch, but he left before we could talk. I heard subsequently that he hated the novel. It surprised me when he later published his own Mating Birds, which revealed strange parallels with my book.

  In Paris, when all of that was still in the future, I was aware of nothing as much as a sense of distance; we could never embrace, as Mazisi and I could. The sadness in him had, at the time, too much arrogance to let anyone come very close. Which makes it all the more gratifying that the last few years seem to have eased the relationship, highlighting more what we have in common than what separates us.

  There was at least one other South African artist who marked my life with the sadness of his exile. This was the painter Nico Hagen, whom I had first met just after I’d moved my belongings to Ingrid’s flat after meeting her in April 1963. On that day, Nico, with whom Ingrid had just had an affair, turned up out of the blue to introduce his bride to her. Not so long after this he left for Paris. At some stage he got divorced and married a young woman with whom he had a baby. Even during my visit in 1966 I’d heard rumours about the couple in their new surroundings: how they would pack their baby in a groceries basket on Saturday nights and set out for a night of partying, moving from one spot to the next until, when it was time to go home in the early hours, they would realise that the baby had been left behind somewhere. Then they would have to retrace their steps, sometimes for hours, until the lost basket was found again. Everything was going downhill. A couple of times Nico fell ill just before the opening of an exhibition so that he couldn’t finish his canvases in time. Although many people recognised his talent, he just couldn’t break out of the spiral of bad luck and looked for solace in the bottle. The wife left him with their baby. I often heard about Nico’s misfortunes. But it was only towards the end of 1968, a month or so before my return to South Africa, that I saw him again. Many years after that, after he too had returned to South Africa, we met again. And immediately clicked. That was when I really came to value his work. But that year in Paris was a low point in his life; and it didn’t take more than a glance to realise this.

  I hadn’t had much sleep the night before, having just broken up with H, and when I was awakened by a violent knocking on my door I was in no mood for guests. But the moment I diffidently opened the door, Nico came tumbling across the threshold, stumbled over the small flokati on my floor and ended up on all fours against the opposite wall, large and angular but in a bad shape, like a dishevelled Viking.

  ‘What the fuck?’ he exclaimed, scrambling clumsily to his feet and steadying himself against my table as he stood there swaying and trying to focus his wild eyes. In his hand he had a half-full bottle of red wine.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ I mumbled, still confused as I struggled against a bad headache.

  ‘It’s not a good afternoon,’ he said. ‘It’s a fucking awful afternoon.’

  ‘Well, a fucking awful afternoon to you too then,’ I said.

  ‘Why are you so formal?’ he asked aggressively.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘for a moment I confused you with somebody else.’ A colleague of mine in the Afrikaans Department at Rhodes seemed, in those circumstances, the spitting image of Nico.

  ‘He’s a cunt,’ said Nico.

  ‘He’s actually a very nice bloke,’ I said.

  ‘I tell you he’s a cunt.’ He snorted, half turned towards the table he was using to steady himself, and in a wide gesture swept all the papers to the floor. ‘What’s all this shit?’

  ‘I’m working on a translation,’ I said, making an effort to remain patient.

  ‘A translation of what?’

  ‘A novel for teenagers.’

  ‘Fuck teenagers,’ he said. ‘Is there nothing better you can do?’

  ‘I need the money.’

  ‘Fuck money,’ he snarled. ‘Selling your soul, that’s what you’re doing.’ He came a step or two closer, swaying precariously on his feet. ‘Look here,’ he said, struggling to find the right words. ‘Look here, my man. You’re a bloody genius, hear what I’m saying?’

  ‘That’s balls,’ I said.

  ‘I tell you, you’re a fucking genius. You’re a great writer. I’ve never read anything you wrote, but I know you’re a great writer. So how come you’re translating this kind of shit?’ He spilled wine on the scattered pages at his feet.

  I stumbled forward to salvage what I could, but he eluded me, spilled some more wine, this time on the white flokati, lost his balance and landed sprawling on the bed.

  For a minute or so he was silent while I kneeled to gather the remains of the manuscript.

  ‘Is that a turntable on the shelf?’ he suddenly asked. ‘Why don’t you play us some music?’

  I obliged with a Haydn cello concerto.

  ‘Mmmm,’ he said approvingly. ‘Mozart. The double violin concerto.’

  I made a fatal mistake. ‘I don’t think Mozart wrote a double violin concerto, Nico,’ I dared to counter him. ‘Actually, this i
s a Haydn cello concerto.’ I reached for the sleeve and handed it to him. ‘See?’

  ‘See yourself.’ He flung it away, pushed me back and started conducting, spilling wine on the little carpet. Then stopped in the middle of a phrase to demand, accusingly, ‘Why the fuck are you listening to Mozart?’

  ‘I’m listening to Haydn because I think it’s divine.’

  ‘Divine my arse. You shouldn’t be listening to music at all, you’re supposed to be writing deathless prose.’ Before I could answer, he offered me his bottle. ‘Here, take this. Present for you. It’ll help you through the dry patches.’

  I made a grab for it before he could spill some more.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to pour some?’ he asked. ‘Or are you too fucking high and mighty?’

  I sidestepped his grasp and picked up a glass from the wash-stand in the corner, dutifully poured myself a tot, raised the glass to him and took a sip.

  ‘God!’ he said. ‘Aren’t you going to offer me some? It’s my wine, you know. You bloody shit. You despise me, do you?’

  I quickly poured some for him and tried to keep the bottle out of his reach. He stood up to raise the glass, but lost his balance and ended up kneeling on the floor, most of the wine soaking into the once-pristine long hairs of the flokati.

  ‘So why aren’t you writing?’ he returned to the attack.

  ‘I’ve just finished a book on Provence.’

  ‘What the fuck has Provence got to do with it?’

  ‘I’ve just been there to do a travelogue.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I thought—’

  ‘Ag fuck it, man,’ he exploded. ‘Don’t lie to me.’

  ‘Why would I lie to you?’

  He leaned in my direction. ‘Let me tell you something, my mate. I’m in the High Command. You got that? I’m in the High Command and you and your kind will be the first ones we wipe out.’

  ‘Then wipe us out,’ I said. ‘I’ll just go on writing.’

  ‘Oh dear God,’ he groaned, pressing his hands to his head and kicking over his half-empty glass. ‘You. You. You! You know what you are? You know what you can do? So why are you wasting time listening to Mozart and writing naught but simple shit?’ He broke off and started singing. ‘And then you write about Czechoslovakia.’ He checked himself. ‘Or Provence. Or whatever. Why?!!!’

  ‘I told you. I’ve just been there.’

  ‘I know you’ve just been there. Don’t keep on repeating the same shit. Why don’t you start doing something with your life?’

  It was weird beyond any telling of it. Hilarious at times, maddening in between – especially as he kept on spilling wine. But with something unbearably disturbing about it too. As if, despite his incoherence, his non sequiturs, his wild threats and accusations, he was taking my life apart, breaking me down, exposing all the uncertainties and doubts and vulnerabilities deep down.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked in desperation when I couldn’t take it any longer.

  ‘Go and get yourself a gun and go home. The war of liberation has begun.’

  I tried to placate him. ‘If that’s what you want,’ I said, ‘I shall do it.’

  ‘Good,’ he applauded, then poured the last few drops of wine into his

  glass and promptly upended it on the floor. He offered me his left hand. ‘Congratulations. And welcome to the struggle. You’re a good sort and a true friend and a bloody shit. Don’t fuck with me, my friend.’

  There seemed to be no end to it. But suddenly I heard Breyten’s steps on the staircase outside and hurried out to look for help. Risking our lives jointly and severally we escorted him down the six flights of stairs. It was almost impossible to dissuade him from looking for sustenance in a bistro; but at last, under the pretext of wanting to see his paintings, we coaxed him into Breyten’s small red 2CV to take him home. But we had no idea of where he lived, and had to rely on his directions. It took an hour before he ordered us to an abrupt stop in a wholly unfamiliar part of the city. From there we had to support him under both arms as he showed the way. A mere block from where we’d left the car an unsteady old clochard joined us with a merry ‘Salut, les copains!’ It must have been at least half an hour before he finally peeled away from us, convinced at last that the journey was not going to end up in a bistro. It was a descent into hell. Every few yards Nico would start haranguing every stranger who crossed our unsteady way:

  ‘Brothers, friends! Listen to me. I tell you, if I were a man I would have addressed you in the tongues of angels.’

  Every time, with increasing effort and shortening tempers, we managed to pull him away. At the most unexpected moments he would break free and try to run in front of passing cars. A pandemonium of hooting and curses marked our progress from street to street.

  ‘Why are you so full of shit?’ he would stop to ask. ‘You’re not fucking human beings. Don’t you have the guts to shout? Tell the world to fuck off!’ Whereupon he would do just that to the very next man, woman or child who came past.

  I lost all track of time. It must have been another hour before we finally forced an address out of him and he dragged us to the avenue de Breteuil. After breaking away one last time in an attempt to barge into a parfumerie to buy wine, and threatening to break down the place when he couldn’t find any, he dumped us in front of his apartment building where he finally managed to wiggle a key into the door and escort us inside. An unexpectedly upmarket building, all marble and mirrors, where fur-bedecked old women sat among potted aspidistras watching television behind glass panels; but Nico staggered past all this, across a courtyard, to a wretched grey passage at the back of the building, and two storeys up a dirty concrete staircase to his room, a miserable dive with a narrow stretcher as the only piece of furniture, piled high with filthy blankets. In one corner was a washbasin filled with paintbrushes. All along the walls stood empty frames and paintings and drawings, finished and unfinished, some with clothes draped over them.

  I straightened his bed. As I tried to pick up an abandoned painting from the floor, he took a flying leap to tackle me, misjudged the angle and dived with his forehead into the wall. With blood and tears streaming from his head and nose, he remained propped up against the stretcher, refusing all our offers to help.

  We stayed for a while, trying to plead with him, but now he remained stubbornly silent. All around us were examples of his work, mostly unfinished. Among them one large painting, a haunting canvas, some anatomical monster like a half-formed bloody foetus that had been shaken from a spoon into an empty plate. A title had been splashed across the canvas in uneven letters: Viens dogdog. With a subtitle, in brackets: It could have been so different.

  ‘You know what?’ Quite unexpectedly. He looked up at us: ‘You know what’s wrong with you two? You’re too fucking human. That is why you’re writing such shit.’

  By now he seemed to have calmed down.

  Breyten went over to wipe the blood from his face. But Nico shook his head angrily.

  ‘This isn’t blood,’ he said. ‘It’s red tears.’

  He moved out of the way so that we could get past.

  As we reached the door, he suddenly called out, ‘Listen!’

  We stopped to look at him.

  ‘Let me tell you about Afrikaners,’ he said.

  We waited.

  He moved as if to get up, but then decided against it. ‘Listen carefully.’ He began to articulate with exaggerated clarity: ‘I shit – you heard that? – I shit – on the fucking – that’s exactly what I mean – on the fucking cunts – you understand what I mean? It’s exactly that – the cunts.’ He nodded, and sighed. ‘You may go now.’

  On a recent long tour through South Africa with my favourite friends Gerrit and Marina, we found, in Burgersdorp, a charming restaurant in a well-restored building bearing the name of Nico’s House and learned that it used to belong to Nico Hagen. And that he’d died.

  It could have been so different.

&nb
sp; Another friend from the world of art was a writer from the Cameroon, Mbella Sonne Dipoko. I loved his novel A Few Days and Nights which, in spite of its lightness of tone, has unexpected layers below the surface. What I found in many ways refreshing about him – something rather extraordinary, at the time, for an African writer in Paris – was his lack of interest in politics. ‘Love is so much more important, don’t you think?’ he said more than once. ‘I mean, one needs a lifetime to get to grips with love – there just isn’t enough time left for politics.’

  Mbella died some years ago, much too early. He was young and strong, with the build and the broad shoulders of a boxer, but he had a charming, gentle disposition and the heart and eyes of a child. He’d come to Paris to study law, but soon abandoned his studies and devoted himself full-time to the café life, a university in its own right, and to women. Not as a Casanova, and certainly not as a scientist; but as a true amateur, in the best French sense of the word.

  He was having a hard time finding a room. The old story: he would telephone a number gleaned from a newspaper or a noticeboard at the university, the landlady would express interest, even enthusiasm, and they would arrange for him to come round – but when Madame discovered that he was from Africa, she would suddenly remember that the room had just been taken. After a few months of frustration even Mbella’s good humour started wearing thin. For a while a good friend in a students’ residence in the Cité Universitaire provided a way out by offering Mbella the space under his bed to sleep – sometimes alone, sometimes with a girl.