To the Volcano

by Elleke Boehmer

  My memoir remains unfinished. I don’t know that it will ever be written. I keep working at the opening scenes, the lavender fields of Arles, how in love we were. I write that Klaus wrote all day and devoured me at night. I write how I watched him from the bed, how I let my love burn in my eyes, how he smiled at me over his shoulder. I write that he could create only in so far as I looked upon him, heating the stone of his prose with my fire. I add that I thrived only in so far as he gazed back at me, my fire from his flint. What third party could survive within the blaze of our love?

  I am pleased with this writing. It is charged and faintly titillating. Eventually, I will submit the piece to a journal somewhere as a piece of creative non-fiction, perhaps in America. Klaus is barely read in America. I want the world to know what it is to be a lifelong muse, to set fire to a genius. I want to say that it means lying within the embrace of the dead. It is a long, cold life.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks so much to: Michelle Cahill, Carrol Clarkson, John Coetzee, Kwame Dawes, Gail Jones, Steven Matthews, Carol May, Tamson Pietsch, Bernard O’Donoghue, Cristóbal Perez Barra, Louis Rogers, Graham Riach, Meg Samuelson, Karina Szczurek, Terri-ann White, and everyone at Myriad Editions and the New Internationalist, especially Chris Brazier and Candida Lacey.

  About the author

  Elleke Boehmer was born in Durban and lives in Oxford. She is the author of five novels including Screens Against the Sky (shortlisted for the David Higham Prize), Bloodlines (shortlisted for the Sanlam Prize), Nile Baby, and The Shouting in the Dark (longlisted for the Barry Ronge Sunday Times prize).

  She is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford. Her edition of Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys was a bestseller, and her acclaimed biography of Nelson Mandela has been widely translated. Her other books include Stories of Women, the anthology Empire Writing, Postcolonial Poetics, and Indian Arrivals 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire which won the biennial ESSE 2015-16 Prize. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

  To the Volcano, and other stories is her second collection of short stories, following Sharmilla, and other portraits.

  Copyright

  First published in 2019 by

  Myriad Editions

  www.myriadeditions.com

  Myriad Editions

  An imprint of New Internationalist Publications

  The Old Music Hall, 106–108 Cowley Rd, Oxford OX4 1JE

  Copyright © Elleke Boehmer 2019

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ‘Evelina’ was first published in Mascara Literary Review 23 (March 2019)

  Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions for use of copyright material quoted. If there have been any omissions, we apologise and shall be pleased to make appropriate acknowledgement in any future edition.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN (pbk) 978–1–912408–24–5

  ISBN (ebk) 978–1–912408–25–2

  Designed and typeset in Palatino by New Internationalist, Oxford