I have written already to tell you how much I long for Simone, too. I even began devising a way to get her to visit here for a week. She would enjoy Anton and I’d look after her nicely. But this is probably just another silly dream. Piet, I assume, would have a stroke. God, the complications of “other people”. And we are more likely than not the “spirits that roam”.
en wie, wat die droom in ons oë
gelees het,
sal rus of ooit wéér wees
soos hy gewees het?
[and who, after reading the dream
in our eyes,
will ever rest or become again
what he once was?]
Darling, PLEASE, you must send the manuscript back now. I have to make the changes that are on it, otherwise I won’t have any record of them. The moment I’ve done that and Chris Barnard’s finished reading it, I will in any case send it back to you to keep. Please, my naughty little girl.
I’ll be sending the photos off for printing today. I promise!
You want to go to Joburg, you say … which is “closer” to Grahamstown? It’s 150 miles further. My great geographer. I must make you the gift of an atlas. Or a globe, perhaps.
Must I send some money to help pay for the tape recorder? I can help a little here and there, thanks to the new translations.
(Beware of [?]!)
It’s autumn-spring here. So beautiful. God, God, one dream I’ve had for us is to drive out to a deserted, empty beach, and swim together, stark naked, and then, on that lovely warm sand under a wide open sky, lie with and in each other, on the beach; “’t zal nimmermeer ghebeuren …”
I’ll make you another tape one of these days.
Write. Darling, my cocoon: I’m beginning to hope that the one-day duration of your last period means there’s a little moesie-girl growing inside you –?
I love you very much.
André.
Should I dedicate Die Ambassadeur to “Ingrid” or to “Cocoon”? And should I add, next to it: “Donna m’apparve” (“A woman appeared to me”) as Dante said of Beatrice? Or just unadorned, without any added text?
Should I still write to Bartho about Simone? Or wait until P[iet] moves one of his pawns again?
I will count my moesies, as you asked! Except I can’t see them all!
Grahamstown
Friday, 23 August 1963
Oh darling,
It’s terrible. They should rather not allow people to hope than to arouse ecstasy and then destroy it. I had everything sorted out. Estelle couldn’t get leave and I would thus have come on my own; I bought wine for us, quite a lot; and toothpaste, and even a new pair of red-checked underpants ... and then the call came through from Koos to say everything was already arranged by the time my telegram arrived yesterday. Now I have to spend the whole weekend thinking that I could have been with you.
But, darling, the moment the proofs are ready – and I’m going to chase Koos to have it done during the September vacation – I want to make sure I come down for that. I must get something done –!
I’ve thoroughly considered your PE plan, but it’s simply not possible, Cocoon, because what reason would I have suddenly to go to PE? And I wouldn’t be able to go on my own – Estelle has been saying for a while now we should go there to do some shopping.
Zoo moeten wij door bittre jaren zwerven;
Het is altijd een strijd en een verlangen.
Thank you for your precious, beautiful voice last night. I will phone again, next week: hopefully Wednesday night. Why was last weekend so “dismal”? I want to know everything.
And thank you, again, for yesterday’s wonderful, adorable letter full of love and longing. It was funny, too. That comment by Anne’s boyfriend (“Are you made from my rib” – etc.) – classic. I want to put it in a book somewhere.
I also want to know everything about Piet’s most recent idiocy. And I want to help, promptly, if I can.
Sorry this is such a mixed-up letter. I can’t think properly. I just wanted to write as soon as I could after Koos’s call to tell you in greater detail what’s going on. Suddenly everything’s so changed. Yesterday was so dazzling: first your letter, and then a review of Sempre by Louise Behrens that says: “It’s a rich, lovely book … The kind from which one wants to continue quoting and retelling stories … Something of the richness of the young writer’s spirit (sic!) gets passed down when we read the account of his travels.” Lovely, isn’t it?
Nice, hey? God. I’ve heard us say these words so much this weekend. In roman, italics, everything. Each on his own, then?
Everyone on two legs: lonely. So you’re actually quite ordinary.
The path just is, and it’s solitary …
Cocoon, most beloved mine, where do those exquisite words come from in your letter:
“Together we will go and meet a new memory”?
If it’s your own, then it’s one of your most beautiful. Finish it …
We must just be positive. Reading for a sermon: Faith, hope, love …
We have very little, little, little. But we also have a lot, as long as we have hope. I will be with you again. I will sleep with you again.
With love, always,
Your André.
MANUSCRIPT S’IL TE PLAÎT
Saturday, 24 August 1963
FIRST WORST DISAPPOINTMENT OVER ENJOY KOOS ALL LOVE ALL TRUST = COCOON
Grahamstown
Sunday morning, 25 August 1963
My Cocoon, my darling,
For three months I believed in heaven; now I also believe in hell, with fire and all, because in the last few days it’s as if things have reached a point of frenzy. I feel I should do a variation of Descartes’s saying: “I hurt, therefore I am.” And amid the great emptiness and confusion, your call came through – in circumstances that nearly drove me mad because I wanted so badly to express myself, and console you, be with you – but instead I had to sound “non-commital”, businesslike, while everything in me shouted out at you:
Laat mij nog éénmaal, in gedachten, kussen
Die warme lippen, door mijn kus ontbloeid;
Laat mij nog éénmaal aan dien boezem sussen
Mijn arme hoofd, waarin de koorts-pijn gloeit.
Laat mij nog eens, klein kindje, rusten tusschen
Die armen, waar mijn hart aan was geboeid …
The whole time yesterday, from about midday, I kept calculating: by this time I’d have been as far as Humansdorp … Plettenberg Bay … George … Mossel Bay … Swellendam … Riviersonderend … Caledon – just an hour to go.
And then last night Anton had one of his crazy nights, while I wanted to sleep, be gone; know nothing of the world. When he started crying at two and I went to him, I thought: now we’d have been sit-lying together on the little knobbly bed, naked, with cigarettes, fatigued but happy, knowing that the day was still a few hours away. And at four – by now we’d be lying exhausted against each other, divinely, deeply happy, without desiring anything other than just this being together, this utter fulfilment. At six – by now I’d have half woken up and begun to wake you up, softly and slowly – because maybe you’d have felt a little sore.
And now, at eleven –? The sun, outside (or windy and rainy and miserable, as it is here?), the bright yellow curtains, and us, again, us.
Oh, Lord God, no.
Friday night, when you received the letter and telegram, I went and curled up foetally on a corner of the divan in the front room and shut myself off from everything, in unbearable loneliness. I heard Estelle eating – heard the food crunching between her teeth, listened to her swallowing her tea and paging through her Sarie or Woman’s Own; all she did was talk, on and on, about the trifles of her working day – not even once realising I was lying there and crying. Later I got up and walked out into the dark. Just longing, as you once described your mother saying in a letter.
My darling, I just don’t know any more. And it has to go on like this, and on, and on – “To-morr
ow, and to-morrow and to-morrow.”
God, I simply can’t. Shouldn’t one rather just end it all? How can one continue living in such absolute emptiness? I don’t really want to die. Does one have no right at all to even a small piece of lasting happiness? Must everything groan to an end, as in Eliot’s “Hollow Men”, with a “whimper”? It’s not just heartless and unfair – it’s unworthy. It denies the very meaning of being. Because there is meaning. It’s degrading “that everything that is godly” must “look backwards” in this way.
We must just hope the proofs will be ready soon; I’ll ask Koos to see if he can have them done by the September holiday (20 to 30 Sept.) so that I can come down for a few days. It’s better not to hope too much, but without hope I don’t know what I’d do.
Darling, darling, this is the heaviest time of all for us. It’s demanding more of us than anything else. We’ll have to find something or we’ll both fall to pieces from negative yearning and loneliness. We must take something positive from all of this. We have a physical need for each other, but in the meantime we’ll have to learn to give, and be precious to each other, in other areas. I’m struggling to bear the burden of guilt because of what I’ve broken down in you, and therefore I want, must, try to give also – even though it’s so often just “grief and darkness”.
I want to start working on our novella. I want you to know how much I love you. And that I trust you completely, absolutely. Please, please don’t let my love become a poison that paralyses you. Let us be, let us be human, let us become. Let us distil something out of this – even out of this; and not become murky.
Maybe we’ll make another moesie-girl, my Ingrid. But we mustn’t pin our hopes to anything specific. Let us rather take what there is from each moment of love and clarity. There is so much we can share. You are the loveliest, purest and most precious thing that has ever happened to me. And the heartfelt nature of your giving, both your virginal and your mature love – without that I cannot continue.
I will write again soon, my very dear, very honest, luminous little woman. You are that, because [D.H.] Lawrence wrote in an essay:
Two rivers of blood, are man and wife, two distinct eternal streams that have the power of touching and communing and so renewing, making new one another, without any breaking of the subtle confines, any confusing or commingling … We know that the one-ness of the bloodstream of man and woman completes the universe, as far as humanity is concerned completes the streaming of the sun and the flowing of the stars.
That is how I love you, and that is how I am yours, always. “And so I shall dwell in your house for ever” (my own Psalm 23).
Your André.
Monday, 26 August 1963
My darling André,
Wrote to you yesterday morning and yesterday evening but simply couldn’t get into my stride; was too upset and too mutinous. Also sorry about the untimely phone call, and then I was forced to realise that I can’t speak to you personally for even six minutes … was I horrible to you and did that upset you even more? Child, it’s going to be impossible to go “underground” because how on earth does one live above ground? And surely Estelle realises from your attitude – also the physical “conciliation” – that everything’s not “all right” any more? I realise you must now be in an extremely difficult position.
First I’ll tell you everything I’ve done since your devastating telegram arrived. Read your letter. The facts in it were also so naked, although it was actually a nice letter, just a bit more businesslike than usual. Then had to go and have a drink with Mrs Oxley for her birthday: came back, had another drink, bawled, went to sleep. Saturday morning bought Simone a red raincoat, and a red bikini for myself; sent your telegram; met Lena, with her I can complain and it’s safe, helped with the reception for her beloved and his spouse, phoned you and went to sleep early again. “Talked things out” with Uys on Sunday morning – he, and many others, apparently, think that I left you, and went back to Jack. Do you remember the lines I wrote to you the very first time: “Before the serried batallions of lies / and the organizations of hate / Entirely encompass us, / Lie one night in my arms and give me peace.”
Well, now. I just wanted to say that I am not leaving you, and that I am not in a sexual relationship, and as for the rest there’s nothing more to say. That afternoon (because Jack invited me for a meal) Uys was very friendly towards me, and went over your report on him again: apparently you still have to mention the verses that come closer to colloquial language, and the “Ballade van die Groot Begeer” [“Ballad of Great Desire”] contains SOCIAL CRITICISM, and say something about “The Sniper” too. Even though I’m still fond of Uys and the rest of them, this quickness to criticise and the gossiping and meddling has shocked me. “Niemand mag mos óóp loop …”
You ask why last weekend was so awful. Jack and I ate out on Saturday evening and went back to Sea Girt together. It was okay. I slept at Lena’s. But on the Sunday afternoon he made me so angry again. God, André, I don’t know where I get this quick temper, and I can’t learn to control it; two minutes later I am always sorry about it. I hope I never get that angry with you. It’s so totally unnecessary and destructive; why react like that towards your friends? In general company I am always described as “cheerful”. A friend of mine, Marcelle, says, “People should be happy, then one can’t see their faults.”
You also asked about Piet. He says: “The details of your newest romance are, of course, widely known.” (!) Otherwise just a whole lot of rubbish about his “model” house, his “responsible” and “mature” wife and that Simone will be smartly dressed. I ignored the letter.
Glad to hear about the “richness of your spirit”, my love! Please feel free to send me some of the reviews. I can’t keep up with everything. Also, you’re so full-time. I’ve still got to get to Caesar!
And thank you for the compliment, but the “sensitive language” and the “new memory” comes from Éluard. I know the collection inside-out.
Woe, I lost my temper (!) God, again! With the BBC. The man is so vulgar. “One of my son’s mothers had a black bottom …” he said. Then they acted as if they don’t have any inborn race hatred – I decided there and then that he will not get a word out of me!
Sorry this is such a “newsletter”.
Tuesday, 27 August 1963
THANK YOU LETTER AND TELEGRAM ALL CLEAR ALL LOVE DARLING = COCOON
Wednesday evening, 28 August 1963
If you loved him you would leave him …!
That’s what some people apparently believe, my André. I am so astonished at the things people throw at me … as though they are living in another time, that’s another thing, by the way, that I don’t entirely comprehend, Calvinism – you know yourself how much training I’ve had in “philosophy” (!) … But Annie Retief, my ouma (that’s her maiden name of course, Retief!) was broad-minded and well-bred and refined, that inner refinement that no Apostolic Church could rob her of, that refinement that allows one to say: It’s “wonderfully quiet” – when she doesn’t receive a letter! And then, look at the Sermon on the Mount … Christ himself said that divorce was permissible if there’d been adultery … Thus it is written, but I say unto you … Did you ever read the fascinating but naïve little story The Man Nobody Knows …? Oh, yes, Annie Retief … I can really get sidetracked when I start writing about her, and regretful, I wish she was alive today … she’d have understood in spite of all her training, because she had little to do with dogma and so much more to do with humans. She had eight children, six of whom died before she did. And her sympathetic attitude towards Abel (Pa). I wish you could’ve met her … “Poor old Van As doesn’t look well, I think she has too many friends …” Indeed (!), perhaps one should say that of me now!
To get back to the first sentence: If you loved him you would leave him. Maybe something like this:
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
…
But
must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my
water-
trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.
Oh my dearest child, I no longer know. I am so confused and, I simply have to admit it, afraid. Security police, subpoenas, threatening letters from Piet, and that work. God! I can’t even be properly pleased about T.T. Cloete’s review!
But listen carefully: I don’t want you to be so unhappy, and also not so rebellious. I know you sometimes also feel rebellious towards Estelle, and it’s not her fault, and I am really not noble. I’m thinking of you.
I am terribly tired and confused … or is “confused” not the right word for when you can’t sit dead-still for two hours? I want to hide somewhere like an injured bird, not even an injured person! And as soon as the book arrives I’m going to apply for a bursary, a few bursaries: Molteno Trust and at the Dutch Consulate. “I’m going wandering, I’m going away …”! Because I know I’ll be able to get one.
And now, my André, be good and sleep sweetly and don’t get so cross – while you can and must write me everything, your letter did sadden me …! “Maybe it is better to make an end of everything”, and you’re MAD to say that, at least for you. Do you know what I was thinking about when I was sitting so quietly? The way in which you took the pen out of my hand, wrote CONSOMMÈ (???) in my diary …! Funny, the “feeling of a simple memory”! Unquote Jonker.
Flame in the Snow Page 17