A Fork in the Road Read online

  There were other stations on our road. In Ouagadougou there was the daunting experience of being transported in open buses, escorted by phalanxes of outriders that recklessly sent all other traffic scattering in all directions: daunting not just because of the death-defying ride itself, but because of the thousands of people along the road, who ululated and danced and shouted to welcome us as the ‘liberators of Africa’. Few ironies could be as shattering and humbling as this. And the feeling was compounded by a monstrous and magnificent reception at the palace of President Sankara. Surrounded by deafening music, mostly freedom songs in which Mandela’s name seemed to be repeated in every line, we were fed and feted for what seemed like hours. After which His Excellency took charge of the festivities. He harangued us for a very long time, interrupting his own boisterous flow of words with wild shouts of rage or joy; and then he ordered us to dance for him. It was not an invitation but a command. Even a staunch Calvinist like Beyers Naudé was imperiously instructed to obey. Was it, I wondered, the only time in his life that Oom Bey was forced to dance? I must admit that I could not find it in me to comply. I don’t think I have danced on more than five or six occasions in my entire life, persuaded more by inebriation or infatuation than by conviction or ability. It is something I simply cannot do. On this occasion there was the additional inhibition of an innate refusal to obey instructions – most especially if these were issued by what appeared to be a raging madman. And so, defying the presidential command, I simply faded away among the abundant trees with their massive, wide-spreading foliage. Although several people have assured me that I have completely misread the intentions and the character of President Sankara, I must confess that it neither surprised nor deeply saddened me when he was murdered most foully only a few months after our visit.

  There were at least two unforgettable events during our visit.

  First, we were transported in our open buses to a ceremony in which we were all invited to plant trees in what seemed like a fertile spot surrounded by drought-wasted plains. We were invited to partake of a heady brew in massive pots, which had to be decanted into calabashes after breaking, not very effectively, the thick layer of dead flies covering the surface. I have often wondered what happened to those rows upon rows of trees after the death of Sankara. Perhaps the wilderness has indeed burst into flower. But I’m not so sure.

  The second occasion was the laying of a foundation stone for a future Monument for Freedom. I have no idea whether it was ever erected. And perhaps Sankara was not exactly the person to sponsor such a momentous enterprise. But the concept was moving, and with Thabo and Oom Bey working together at fixing the somewhat nondescript stone with scoops of mortar, one could not help but feel moved. This sentiment was marred afterwards when a handful of our group members called a meeting to object against the symbolism of the freedom monument, and most especially against the songs and chants that accompanied the ceremony. They were particularly mortified by the jubilantly repeated chant of Botha au poteau – Botha to the gallows. I must confess that I felt rather buoyed by it.

  Accra was a less outrageous experience, and a long discussion in the faded glory of Nkrumah’s House of Assembly, huddled behind pillars and monuments that reminded one of nothing so much as Hitler’s architecture in Nuremberg, had moments of heady dialogue. But the problem with the visit to Accra was that most of the visitors were by then disastrously afflicted by a virulent stomach bug. The scum of flies on the beer immediately came to mind. As a group we were a sorry sight. I somehow escaped the plague, but only just. On our way home, in Paris, it caught up with me and I arrived at Jan Smuts airport in a very shaky state to face Botha’s spectacular wrath.

  The flight with Air Afrique, from Dakar to Paris, was something of a nightmare – there was a delay of several hours at the airport, while someone fetched a manual for the mechanic who squatted on a wing trying to decipher the instructions; it was a shade worrying that he held the booklet upside down. But at least the flight itself was relatively uneventful, unlike the trip between Dakar and Ouagadougou, and then from there to Accra, where no places had been reserved and hundreds of would-be passengers simply stormed the plane to secure seats on a first-come-first-served basis. In addition to suitcases and holdalls, several small iron baths and basins and large wooden boxes had to be accommodated – as well as any number of live fowls tied together in bundles by their yellow feet, and even an unruly, farting goat.

  This was not the end of the Dakar experience. Its ripple effects continued for a long time and occurred in often unexpected forms. Less than two months after our return I left for Moscow. The trip was organised by the ANC, with Barbara Masekela the driving force behind it. While we were still in Senegal she’d suggested that I might enjoy going to the Moscow Book Fair in September. As far as the SB was concerned, I was travelling to London to see my publishers. There, my dear friend Tony Pocock, who loved anything remotely connected with cloaks and daggers, whisked me off to Aeroflot in Piccadilly where the pulling of some strings helped us to avoid the legendary queues at the Soviet Consulate in Bayswater. We were welcomed by a Comrade Pruntov who greeted us with surprising friendliness, presented me with an application form and took my passport, with which he disappeared through the red curtains behind which a massive black iron grille could be glimpsed when someone entered or left. In less than half an hour he was back. The visa had been approved.

  I had been prepared to wait for a few days. This came as an unexpected windfall. It gave me an opportunity of attending a particularly good production of Fathers and Sons, a not unfitting preparation for what lay ahead. And the next day I had time to lunch with Essop Pahad and his family. Dakar had brought us quite close together, but the context was always public. Here, in his home, with his wife Meg and his two attractive children, Amina and Govan, everything was relaxed and congenial. Mandla Langa also came round, and it was the beginning of another friendship, pursued in many other cities, and in due course at home.

  Our hectic conversation, like popcorn on a hot plate, began jumping in all directions. Essop’s bonhomie is infectious; but the undertone of melancholy is unmistakable. And over all the talk looms a striking lithograph with a quote from Neruda:

  And you will ask: why doesn’t his poetry

  speak of dreams and leaves

  and the great volcanoes of his native land?

  Come and see the blood in the streets.

  Come and see

  the blood in the streets.

  Come and see the blood

  in the streets!

  Inevitably, much of our talk also centred on ‘home’: going back, resuming the lives interrupted so many years ago. There was a running argument between Essop and Meg about where they would settle: he preferred Johannesburg, but she didn’t approve. She’d had enough of concrete jungles. Before coming to London they had spent ten years in Prague: her choice was Cape Town. But they might, literally, meet each other halfway and opt for Knysna, where he’d spent many holidays as a child, or Plettenberg Bay.

  As I took my leave much later in the afternoon, I was offered a packet of ANC coffee from Kenya.

  ‘We’ll drink it together over there,’ said Essop.

  ‘It may have lost its flavour by then,’ I cautioned.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he exclaimed in mock indignation. ‘It’s going to be one of these days, man, I tell you. One of these days. The coffee will still be fresh.’

  Mandla accompanied me to the Tube. After the somewhat boisterous afternoon the steady drone of the traffic sounded monotonous and grey. We drew back into ourselves. I walked huddled over the small packet I was carrying like precious loot under my arm. Mandla walked inclined towards me as if he, too, wanted to claim possession. Perhaps we were both imagining the flavour of that coffee: the smell of tomorrow. One of these days.

  The next afternoon I arrived at Sheremetyevo airport where there was just enough light to make out the birch woods marking the end of the tarmac. I was released into the ca
re of my personal guide, Irina Filatova of the History Department at the Moscow State University, accompanied by the deputy director of the Book Festival, a large, ponderous, blond man beaming goodwill but unable to utter a single word in English. Irina was articulate and friendly and extremely knowledgeable, an invaluable guide, if rather severe and serious. In the course of the week I spent in her company I never saw her smile, and she seemed to frown at any hint of levity. I remember an evening when we returned to my hotel from a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Tsarevitch, when I noticed the numerous Soviet soldiers all around us, taking their evening stroll in rows of three or four, or ten or twelve. There must have been well over a hundred in all. ‘It looks as if the whole Red Army is out on the square tonight,’ I remarked. Irina gave me a shrivelling look.

  ‘The Red Army,’ she said indignantly, ‘is much, much bigger.’

  After a depressing meal of cabbage in one of the hotel restaurants, Irina took her leave. I made my way to my drab little room on the tenth floor – but with a spectacular view of the illuminated St Vassily on the Red Square – past the omnipresent matryona keeping watch like a flabby Cerberus. She had massive hairy legs, brown slippers, grey mesh stockings up to the knees, headscarf, and an utterly unsmiling face like a clump of bread dough. I was tired, but too excited to think of going to bed. So I did some half-hearted unpacking into the rickety cupboard and ventured out again. Past Madame Cerberus, down to the ground floor, along the side wall of the Kremlin, and to the square. By this time St Vassily was dark, and there were few people about: one small cluster across the empty expanse of the square, near the preposterously ornate GUM store; another in front of Lenin’s mausoleum with its motionless guards.

  On the way back, now more than ready to succumb to weariness, I was accosted by two very friendly young girls – they couldn’t possibly have been older than sixteen or seventeen – who presented themselves as Anna and Svita. Both wore heavy make-up, with exaggerated but rather beautiful big black eyes. They could speak a smattering of Italian, no English. I was invited to join them in a taxi to wherever it was they lived. Intrigued, but suspicious – surely they were too young to be prostitutes? but what on earth would two such young girls be doing on Red Square past midnight? And why two? – I explained that there were people waiting for me. Then what about tomorrow night? Give me your phone number, I said. And I’ll call you at six tomorrow evening. The number was readily – too readily – proffered, and bemused, but relieved, I returned to the Hotel Rossiya.

  The next days were a jumble of impressions. The Book Fair. The State University. Various institutes and departments, all involved in one way or another with Africa. Several of my interlocutors could speak a studied, but correct Afrikaans. (Apart from Holland, this must be the only country where my books are translated, not from English, but from Afrikaans.) The Writers’ Association, housed in a splendid old mansion which Tolstoy was said to have used as the setting for the Rostov family’s house in War and Peace. The New Arts Theatre where The Seagull had its premiere. The splendour of the Underground. The Kremlin.

  And then, also, the Lumumba University where for twenty-seven years South African students, sponsored mainly by the ANC, had come to study.

  I had been looking forward very eagerly to meeting them, and as it turned out, it was one of the most poignant encounters of my visit. But first I had to be welcomed – if that is the word – by the rector, Comrade Vladimir Stanis. I had been warned by a very distraught Irina that the man was an egomaniac and an insufferable tyrant who in any ‘dialogue’ insisted on being the only speaker. With a rector like that, it occurred to me, who needs a Stalin?

  But in the flesh – that too, too solid flesh – he was much worse than anything I could have imagined. In all my travels I have met only one other man as repulsive as Vladimir Stanis, and that was the cultural representative of France in Sarajevo, Francis Bueb. My first thought, as he came bursting through a tall padded door into the vestibule with its orange chairs, aggressive pot plants and a long row of unaligned electric switches on the wall, was that he would fit perfectly into a photograph of any South African Nationalist cabinet.

  Flanked by his deputy and a fumbling, sweating registrar who desperately tried to keep up with an attempted translation, the rector thundered on histrionically as if he were addressing a crowd of at least fifty. His pinkish, porcine eyes remained fixed on me as he spoke, pausing only to ask whether I was sure I had enough paper to write down everything he said.

  His peroration consisted mainly of a panegyric on his institution, its student numbers and its faculties. A major component of the courses in all faculties, he boomed, was the shaping of patriotism, and its interaction with internationalism. After about ninety minutes I interrupted by asking Irina to inform him of what we had already told him at the outset: that we had arranged a meeting with our students at four o’ clock. We were already ten minutes late.

  ‘They can wait!’ he thundered.

  At that point we rose and proceeded to the nearest door. He gawked at us, his small, bulging pink eyes gazing uncomprehendingly.

  A small group of South African students was waiting in a classroom. One of them was a young man with an unbelievably beautiful baby on his lap. They were all young. Some had arrived only a few months before. Several had been in Moscow for six years or more. I made a few introductory remarks about the present state of our country; and then we plunged into exuberant, even boisterous discussion. I shall never forget the wave of warmth and passion that came from them as they spoke about our land, our past, our future, our dreams. All they really wanted to know was when I thought they could go back, when we would all meet again.

  When they had first arrived in Moscow, I learned, they had been welcomed as guerrillas. For Russians, Irina assured me afterwards, that is the highest form of life. They were treated as heroes. But in all the adulation nobody seemed to consider that they were, basically, human beings. People far from their homes, devastated by loneliness and nostalgia, eager for human contact.

  I used up more of my notebook pages to write down their urgent requests: photocopies of specific Acts of parliament: the Group Areas Act, the Black Authorities Act, the Citizenship Act, the Aliens Act, the Bantustan Citizenship Act. They also needed copies of the constitution of any bantustan, books like The Interpretation of Statutes. Publications on Aids. Or novels, short stories, any writings by any South Africans. ‘And, ag man, sommer anything in Afrikaans, man.’ Anything that sounded and smelled and tasted like home.

  It was almost unbearably sad. But at the same time there was this deep hope – a hope against hope – that all this misery would not be in vain. That some day, some day, it would be over and they would go home. The young man with the baby on his lap pressed the child against my chest, which it promptly and happily peed on, repeated over and over with tears on his cheeks, ‘We’re going home. I tell you. We’re going home.’ All these tough guerrillas, these tough supermen, these heroes from the Struggle: oh yes, oh yes for sure, they would be going home one day. And the regime that had done this to them, would have a lot to answer for. Again, as so often in the past, I felt, while we huddled in a scrum, pressed tightly together to share the warmth of our bodies, that it was not the murders, the atrocities, the maiming and the torture which might, in the final reckoning, be ranked as the worst evil perpetrated by apartheid, but this: this violence done to human spirits, these emotions stripped naked, this mindless suffering of individuals and generations, of these anonymous young people in this classroom with me – people whose names had suddenly been scorched into my memory, this Thabo, this Mikluho, this James … each with a history, a biography, a living archive and a litany of experience.

  There were two follow-up meetings of the encounter at Dakar: in July 1988 a group of Afrikaans academics and writers from inside South Africa met their counterparts from the ANC at the Victoria Falls. And in late November 1989 there was a large meeting at Marly-le-Roi outside Paris. The first happened
in one of the darkest moments from the last convulsions of apartheid, the second only months before de Klerk’s historic announcement on 2 February, 1990 on the moratorium on executions, the unbanning of liberation movements, and the release of prisoners, including Nelson Mandela – although at the time of our meeting we had as yet no inkling about the imminence of that event.

  The Victoria Falls meeting took place in an almost festive atmosphere. For most of the travellers from South Africa it was the first opportunity to make personal contact with the erstwhile ‘enemy’ and the discovery of shared professional, literary and moral interests made it a deeply moving experience. We encountered some smaller annoyances. On ‘our’ side there was the presence of an academic widely suspected of being an agent of the SB. There were also, as invariably happens in literary circles, animosities and longstanding feuds among some of the participants. It was amusing to see some of the ‘internal’ visitors flaunting their credentials by trying to prove that they were better Marxists than anybody in the ANC, while several ANC members went out of their way to demonstrate their deep understanding of the Afrikaner psyche and their admiration of Afrikaans literature. The difficulty in hammering out a joint resolution to everybody’s satisfaction was an indication of persisting difference; but taken as a whole the conference was something of a triumph for sanity, creativity, inventiveness and goodwill. Once again it seemed that the likelihood of a shared future was becoming more than just a possibility; and the final goodbyes were said amid copious tears.