Flame in the Snow

by Francis Galloway

  SLEEP SLEEP. You didn’t promise you’d phone, but I’ll leave the light on so that Peter [Oxley] can still call me. This was just saying hello, dearest mine; and here [Peter] has just said you’ll now be phoning at nine o’clock. Thanks, darling! See you later.

  Love Dearest,

  Cocoon.

  Thank you lovely phone call.

  Thursday, 29 August 1963

  Lovely chat last night about your ice-cream and my red bikini – hello! Child. And then did you go off and have an erudite conversation with the other man in the sitting room? What do you think of my “application”, which has not yet taken shape – though I have been enquiring all over – to get a bursary to go overseas? Today I no longer feel like going. But some time or other I will have to. I have never had a single opportunity, even took Afrikaans Lower for matric because back then my father was a SAP: just work, work, work my whole god-given life away, for little pay and even less thanks. It’s so abominably unnatural, and even if it carried on like this for another hundred years, I would never be able to adapt to it. Am I really made to read that rubbish, to waste my precious eyes on it until I am blind, I am so visually attuned! I can’t TAKE it any more. I only want a few months or a year to go, and to do or think or see something worthwhile, to feed this impoverishment with good art, a more natural life.

  And if there is NOTHING that I MUST have and can’t get, I see no point in going on. I reckon I’ve tried long enough now, André, without love, without an education, without any form of emotional security, even if this was just the kind of financial security that enables one to buy certain things, a measure of serenity. I’m not self-pitying, also not bitter, just TIRED. They are ongoing, these things, threatening to take away the little light (talent!) that was granted to me. Because it can indeed be taken away.

  Every grey day is deadening. And after this tirade I want to show you how your love carries me through these things. Do you know how I show it?

  Perhaps just the fact I’m still alive.

  Love, beautiful moesie-naked-man.

  Cocoon.

  Thursday, 29 August 1963

  Darling-Cocoon,

  Thank you very much for your letter, for last night’s conversation, and for your soft little laugh that made me want to devour you alive. Thank you for being happy again. And yet: a certain despair seemed to lurk in the conversation, not to mention your letter. You say Jack thinks my love is destructive because if I come back to you I won’t be taking your distress into consideration; and you write: “Even if you come for a few hours that are ‘stolen’ or ‘underground’, there will be consequences. And we’ll have to decide one way or the other quite clearly.”

  I must try to reach a point of clarity – it’s a process that’s taken place almost mercilessly in all our recent letters. I don’t want to rationalise things, I want to try to be level-headed – with the thought that Mrs Bouws’s “don’t force anything” is actually the truest attitude of all. I want to explain that there is not a contradiction in my last two letters.

  For me, there are two important aspects: first, that we decided, in full responsibility, that we cannot now, in our circumstances, continue with a relationship that is aimed at marriage.

  The second is that we must now decide whether we should continue keeping in touch with each other, or not at all. I have already written to you about my own conviction: it strikes me as pointless, and it would cause unnecessary suffering, to break everything down while we still have the opportunity to mean so much to each other, and give so much, within the limited little circle that remains for us. However: if futility dominates everything, if our frustrated love becomes mutually poisonous to each other (“You were so much poison in me / as I was poison in you”) – as Jack thinks things stand – then we may not carry on as we are.

  And out of this situation a conviction has arisen in me: from the little that we have, we can cultivate much that is very precious and that can become indispensable. But then we must concentrate on positives.

  The question is: how does the possible September visit fit in? It’s not a “return” in the sense of a resumption of everything – that would be destructive; it’s thus no “cancelling” of our decision (in the way that Jack came back within a week after his “irrevocable” decision!). For me it’s simply the use of a wonderful and fortuitous opportunity to see each other again, to be, in the way we need each other – without tying it to the future.

  Or is that an illusion? Are the “consequences” that you talk about, for you especially, so threatening that it would be unwise and even wrong for me to come? This is something only you can decide. On my side, I see my way clear to dealing with the consequences in my own life. But it would be unforgivably selfish of me if I allowed my love for you to make your position even more tricky.

  Darling, darling, I know you will say, as you did before, that it all sounds so terribly calculating. But we have to work with basic givens. The real question is actually very simple: do you see your way clear to us carrying on, is it sufficiently precious and necessary, even though we have no assurance about a future together? My own answer is yes; for me, it’s a critical necessity. It’s the only precious thing that has remained in my life – everything outside of it has broken down.

  But all this will mean nothing to me if I know it brings you little more than confusion and darkness. How could I possibly be happy if it made your position even more untenable?

  I want so much to come down for the proofs. But then I need to know it’s not just going to lead to a new break with Jack and Uys and everyone else. For that reason, Jack will have to know what the actual nature of our separation is, that it was never meant to be us “giving up” on each other, but rather that what we mean to each other is precisely remaining in contact, and wanting to enjoy such precious moments together as might be granted us.

  Write to me about developments with the damn security police detective, should he ever return.

  I’m sending you a little money; let me know if you need more.

  With all my love,

  André.

  Castella

  Saturday, 31 August 1963

  {Found out Aug. has 31 days.}

  1 September Spring Day

  My darling André,

  Thank you for your letter that was tucked so dearly into my door when I arrived home laden with parcels, it’s very sunny in the street, perfect for a day in the veld or on the dunes. If the white Volksie was here we could drive out to Stellenbosch or Paarl, or Hout Bay?

  Did you get Thursday’s despondent letter? Your letter this morning is very clear and I fully understand how you feel, my dearest little treasure. And yet … Abraham [H.] de Vries, for example, was here last night, phoned me at the office to meet him for a drink; I waited for him until 5:30 and then I left because I was expecting Marjorie and Jan at home. But he kept waiting for me (in the wrong place!), until seven o’clock. And came here afterwards. He was supposed to go to Bill de Klerk, but cancelled his appointment; naturally we spoke about you too; he says he hears about us everywhere and interrogated me: “I hear you’ve parted ways?” But your photos are hanging here large as life and I couldn’t help talking about you a little bit! And this is consequence.

  I told you on the phone and in my letter about Jack’s visit, and what I’d said to him, that he wants to come and see me, and his reaction. Since then I haven’t seen him again and when I placed a friendly call to him yesterday, he asked me: “How are the matrimonial plans going?” That, too, is consequence. And the consequences are growing, and the consequences in us, so that perhaps later you won’t be able to save anything over there in Grahamstown. If it was only an adventure for both of us (because it is also an adventure) everything would of course be less complicated. But I will stay with you. Because I must and because I will and because it can’t be otherwise and because you are my precious discovered treasure and because you love me. “The moment you are influenced you are corrupted.” That’s
what [Leo] Tolstoy says, and for that reason, I guard you and me like a lioness guards her cubs. And perhaps for that reason Jan was making fun of me last night, “Good heavens, Ingrid, when I mention André’s name, your expression changes!”

  Dear treasure, we really must laugh more, about this chaos too that we’ve started in literary circles, because it’s actually funny in certain respects. Why did Abraham have to see me, wait for me for two hours, cancel his appointment with Bill, and come here?? Of course, I invited him to stay over here (what would people have made of that?) as my house is open to any “brother or sister in suffering”, the homeless and the displaced, the artists. But he went and stayed over at Ivor Pols, “because I don’t want André to be cross with me”. As if André can’t trust me … but, that was a joke.

  Come in September. Maybe your suggestion is in fact just a way of living, an art, then we’ll go away, without anyone knowing, and come back with secret secrets. And perhaps it’s a challenge. My whole nature (and yours too) flies in the face of secret-keeping, because we must share and because we are wilful – but maybe we can if we must.

  I want to see you. I dreamt about you all night long, and about L. We were somewhere on a wonderful beach together, and wanted to try and get to one another, but we were almost hostile towards one another. It was terrible! And in reality I haven’t once felt: You were so much poison in me, etc. For me you have only ever been light and love, in spite of everything. I don’t want you to misunderstand me in this respect. You actually “gave me back to life” (do you remember that first weekend?). Do you remember that brandy afternoon in Clifton? Ag, do you remember everything? I love you so much. And I need you so terribly, too much. Now I’m going to make myself pretty and get tanned for September.

  Darling.

  Many thanks for cheque for castle and for telegram this afternoon.

  Cocoon.

  PS: Again today, my André, the slender possibility of our moesie-child is out of the question –

  Temporarily.

  IJonker.

  Grahamstown

  Tuesday, 3 September 1963

  Little darling, little you,

  Many thanks for the letter you wrote last Wednesday night; it made its appearance here this morning only. Oh little darling woman, your desperation makes me terribly unhappy. I wish I could do something for you; give you the protection and security I had intended to; I wish things hadn’t jammed and stalled in this way. You have my love, all of it – but from a distance such as this, as I well know, that’s little more than consolation and not the assurance, the reality you actually need. Your plan to go overseas –? It’s so far away! And we made such plans to go together! It’ll be painful; but still I want you to do it. God only knows, you deserve at least this relative freedom. It’s a ridiculous irony that you, who in your heart are so free, should be so trapped by mere “circumstance”. And that annihilating job – the thought that you, of all people, should do that kind of work: you with your wide open spaces and stillness and wildness, like the freedom of a little antelope; you with your absolute demand that one should live. If I could even just give you the external security of having enough money to keep banal worries at bay.

  And here? The weekend once again witnessed several crises. On Saturday night we had a raging fight in which Estelle said: “Why don’t you just say straight out that you hate me. You can’t stand my guts!” And Sunday, again: she wants to spend Christmas alone with her mother.

  The worst is that I can’t blame her for any of it. I was dismayed to discover that I’m hard, cold-blooded and cruel; this is an awakening that makes me feel dirty and small. I’ve also begun to doubt myself: do I simply have a deficit in the capacity to feel anything at all? Why can’t I be more charitable, even if I don’t love her, even if there’s no longer a single point of connection between the two of us? Must one, as a human being, be so bitter, so mean?

  And still, my Cocoon, the weekend also had a positive side. I’m working hard on the preparation for “our” novella. The title (I think): Orgie [Orgy]. I want to allow everything to dissolve in this work: your ouma and your childhood in a world of sand and sea, your swallow’s nest – and, of course, the two of us, all of it pulled together in one night of New Year’s celebration, a fertility feast. Sadness, too, is the bass note throughout, including the ending – how could it not be so – but it should be a glittering kind of sadness rather than pessimistic.

  I want to start with a short “afterword”. Something like:

  So

  let me say, was she found:

  with some blood on her well-known thighs

  and her mouth

  still

  among the first spring shrubs, the pointed deer horns untouched above her beautiful, now-always-shut eyes.

  And then the “story” itself begins, with bits of Genesis and bits from the Gilgamesh epoch. Yesterday I took eight books out from the library and this morning another five: mostly mythological works and books on magic, etc.; now I’m reading and making notes, working terribly hard – and loving it. So it must continue, because as long as I’m busy, I can feel unconscious, free thoughts ferment and brew in me (like a spirit over the waters); disparate images and pieces of meaning; sensory – especially visual – impressions; rhythms … What I actually have at the moment, apart from the vaguest amoeba of an “idea”, is just a form: an inexplicable idea of pages with white surfaces, italics and roman, prose and “verse” (I’m going to work my “poems” into the text and not make a collection out of them: they’re too thin for that).

  Throughout all of this I have to translate, translate: another five books. After that, no more, because next year I’m going to be dutiful and academic and write my thesis so I can become a “doctor”. It’s actually all a bit silly and banal, but it’s about the work itself and not – God forbid! – any sense of “status”! My father tactfully let me know that “he would so like to see that day …”

  I received another letter from Frank Ward. You know, the man who illustrated Pot-Pourri and Sempre and is now fucking in Stockholm and painting (in that order). He’s illustrated your “The Child” and sent a translation of it to a Swedish paper to see if they might want to print it. If so, he’ll send me a clipping to pass on to you. This Frank! He writes: “My latest sexual coup is an experience reserved for the privileged few” – two girls at the same time. I grant him that. He’s not yet encountered a Cocoon. God, my love, I cannot imagine any other girl who has as much to give as you, or can. Actually: give and take; it takes a very big and precious person to receive without selfishness.

  My thorny little rose in her castle: I want to remove the thornbushes that surround you and then I want to enter your world (“enter” in the Biblical sense) so we can inhabit our “island of repose” together.

  I love you.

  geen onoorbrugbaarheid skei twee

  wat sterker konsentrate bind:

  die sout van trane, sweet en nog

  die allerlaaste liefdesvog.

  I dream of a little moesie-girl … Today your period would have started again, unless the last short one was a phantom and there might yet be something …? Let me know.

  My love to your beloved brown eyes;

  and to your hair with its flick of a curl;

  and your ears that listen so nicely;

  your pert, pointed nose;

  your soft girl-lips that like saying “Hell!”;

  your curved, speckled shoulders;

  your lovely smooth back;

  your white breasts with their pert nipples;

  your little tummy with its tiny hole;

  your bum that sits so softly;

  your smooth thighs and calves that stretch so beautifully;

  your feet that walk the world;

  and the leucodendron;

  and your arm that slumbers on me;

  your hands, the dear hands with their messy red nails;

  and your little hill and hair and the deep, steeply de
licious, lovely cocoon.

  You will know:

  Ik heb je nodig

  ik draag je handen

  en je voeten

  en je ogen

  in mij.

  With love, with everything,

  And may I now – quiet, satisfied and full of yearning – sleep with you?

  Your André.

  Grahamstown

  Wednesday, 4 September 1963

  Ingrid-mine,

  Thank you for your voice last night and this morning’s bright letter. Thank you for your understanding and your hope. Thank you for you.

  Last night I found myself thinking, dejectedly: must I henceforth be no more than a “visitor” at Castella if I don’t come and live there and be with you? But then I thought: well, we always manage to get away … and in your letter you also talk in this way. I’ll ensure that my trip for the proofs includes at least a weekend, so we can drive to Hout Bay on the Friday evening – or to Gordon’s Bay or any other bay, far away and white and full of summer – and then stay there until Monday. On the other days, when I’ll most likely be staying with Koos, we can still eat together in the afternoons, and drive to Clifton in the evenings and come back for supper-and-bath-and-bed.

  This Abraham! A spy for Bill (they’re old friends), and maybe also for Piet? (He stayed for some time in Johannesburg at Chris B.’s house – and he’s about to start working at APB.) Did he also get married, in that period? What kind of impression does he make? He looks a bit “smug” in that recent photo.

  I lay awake dreaming about you so much in the small hours of last night (at first it was all sadness and separation, then gradually less constricted, dearer memories – I have never before had such an acute memory!) that I woke up with a start at eight this morning and had to miss my first lecture. Too bad.

  Dreams? I’m only now reading [Graham] Greene’s Our Man in Havana. There, the worldly-wise old doctor says: “You should dream more, Mr Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.”