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The House Gun

Page 27

by Nadine Gordimer


  The moment when you put your hand out to do it—the man in the madhouse was right, I don’t remember that moment but I reconstruct it, I’ve had to; I’ve found out that you think it’s a discovery, it’s something that’s come to you that has never been known before. But it’s always been there, it’s been discovered again and again, forever. Again and again, what Odysseus did, and what Homer, whoever he was, knew. Violence is a repetition we don’t seem able to break; oh look at them, my brothers—Bra, they have the right to claim me, we crowd of feasters on our own carrion in this place made secure for us alone—I look at them when we’re in the yard for our exercise, and they tramp and they lope round and round, round and round. I haven’t come to the end of the book, I don’t know how Odysseus reconstructed what he did, what way he found for himself. Put out your eyes. Turn the gun on your own head.

  Or throw away the gun in the garden. That was a choice made. Can you break the repetition just by not perpetrating violence on yourself. I have this life, in here. I didn’t give it for his. I’ll even get out of here with it, some year or other. The murderer has not been murdered. My luck, this was abolished in my time. But I have to find a way. Carl’s death and Natalie’s child, I think of one, then the other, then the one, then the other. They become one, for me. It does not matter whether or not anyone else will understand: Carl, Natalie/Nastasya and me, the three of us. I’ve had to find a way to bring death and life together.

  ALSO BY NADINE GORDIMER

  NOVELS

  The Lying Days

  A World of Strangers

  Occasion for Loving

  The Late Bourgeois World

  A Guest of Honor

  The Conservationist

  Burger’s Daughter

  July’s People

  A Sport of Nature

  My Son’s Story

  None to Accompany Me

  The Pickup

  STORIES

  The Soft Voice of the Serpent

  Six Feet of the Country

  Friday’s Footprint

  Not for Publication

  Livingstone’s Companions

  A Soldier’s Embrace

  Selected Stories

  Something Out There

  Jump and Other Stories

  ESSAYS

  The Black Interpreters

  The Essential Gesture—Writing, Politics and Places

  (edited by Stephen Clingman)

  Writing and Being

  OTHER WORKS

  On the Mines (with David Goldblatt)

  Lifetimes Under Apartheid (with David Goldblatt)

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  THE HOUSE GUN

  Nadine Gordimer is the author of thirteen novels, most recently Loot and Other Stories (2004), nine volumes of stories, and three nonfiction collections. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.

  Praise for The House Gun

  “One of the great living writers. Her authority, stamped on every paragraph, makes most contemporary novels seem the pale, diluted products of insufficient insight and imagination as she shifts effortlessly from microcosmic intimacy to a vision of an entire country undergoing transformation.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Gordimer is a major literary figure, working at the peak of her craft … . The House Gun is an awe-inspiring work.”

  —Cincinnati News and Observer

  “The House Gun is like a well-cut diamond. Its many angles and planes catch the light and illuminate understanding, laying bare the emotions of a people caught in the transition from one world to another.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “An intellectual thriller with a soap opera engine … . Nothing short of epic.”

  —The Baltimore Sun

  “As complex, compelling and memorable an account of race and class as any of her earlier works … . A brilliant, beautifully crafted novel of betrayal.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Exquisitely drawn … passionately intelligent, it’s more complicated than any detective story. Complicated not so much by plot, it’s about the mystery of the human heart.”

  —USA Today

  “[Gordimer] has an eye for detail, a feeling for subtle nuance, the ability to convey volumes of information with a few deft strokes that place her firmly in the company of the great novelists.”

  —The Houston Chronicle

  “A tense postapartheid family drama as vital as anything she has ever written.”

  —Time

  “Fascinating … . Gordimer never loses her focus on the dramatic nuances of human character, and her narrative, though related in cool prose, resonates with compassion … . The message of this powerful novel rings true.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[Gordimer] seamlessly, beautifully combines the domestic, the moral and the political … a potent mix.”

  —The Washington Times

  “An empathetic and provocative tale offering much to think about.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Intelligent, compassionate and compelling, and it has a lot to say. It touches on politics, prejudice, history, social ills, mental illness. But, at its center is the mystery of the human heart, and for this, it will be read and re-read.”

  —Memphis Commercial Appeal

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © Felix Licensing, B.V., 1998

  All rights reserved

  The excerpt from Constance Garnett’s translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and the excerpt from H. T. Lowe-Porter’s translation of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain are used with permission of Random House, London. The quotation from Richard Howard’s translation of André Pieyre de Mandiarque’s The Margin is used with permission of Calder Publications, London. The excerpt from Willa and Edwin Muir’s translation of Hermann Broch’s The Sleepwalkers is used with permission of Pantheon Books, New York. The passage from Robert Fagles’s translation of Homer’s The Odyssey is used with permission of Viking Penguin, New York.

  eISBN 9780374707507

  First eBook Edition : February 2011

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGUED THE HARDCOVER AS FOLLOWS:

  Gordimer, Nadine.

  The house gun / Nadine Gordimer.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-374-17307-9 (hc.)

  ISBN 0 14 02.7820 6 (pbk.)

  I. Title.

  PR9369.3.G6H69 1998

  823—dc21 97–28787

 

 

 


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