My dearest André,
Thank you for your long letter of yesterday: I have replied so often but then I put it aside again or tear it up: God, it really looks as though we are retreating along the same path as E. Eiers [Elisabeth Eybers]. Or like W.E.G.’s “Terugtog” [“Retreat”]:
Die digter worstel met sy engel
Weinig wol, baie wind:
Terugtog heet sy jongste bundel –
Juistemint
Oh, my little treasure! I’ve been sick-sick-sick. This long year, the ecstasy of it, and now – this rupture – as I rather romantically put it in a previous letter – I feel like a plucked flower. It is a bright sunny day outside: for the mountain and sea, quiet and open. And thank god, this morning I was down at the sea, an isolated little beach, so at least I can now sit here calmly and write to you.
It must have been terrible travelling with Estelle who was sick and Anton – greetings from the Gardens to our beautiful little boy – and, as you say: “how can I work with this agitated heart …?” Courage, André. I have not changed, though the circumstances certainly have. The invisible “battalions of lies and the organizations of hate” have finally won, it seems. I will not simply throw in the towel, because maybe you will come to me one day as a free man, and I can meet you on an equal and better footing. We’re still young …
I don’t know what all I said to you that last night on the telephone, which I wanted to smash into smithereens, in fact. But I know I was quite het up and so absolutely hopelessly trapped. But I am sorry about it. And what more I can say right now, I do not know –
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
…
Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
…
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death …
My André, will you no longer turn around for me after you have locked the cupboard, with a smile in your hands?
Cocoon.
Thursday, 30 January 1964
REPEAT POEM US FOR ANDRÉ STOP SORRY DARLING = COCOON
Grahamstown
Saturday, 1 February 1964
Dearest – Cocoon,
Thank you for yesterday’s telegram about the failure to make a moesie-girl. Given the Dutch precaution we followed, it wasn’t entirely unforeseen, and yet – “hope springs eternal”! I read “Us” again, solemnly, and with a heavy heart (as if reading was actually necessary: I know it so well). My dear, intense, sensitive thing.
I’m sending Orgie back to you – not the second-hand copy that you had, but the original, as I’d promised. It’s messier, of course. But “straight from the heart”. Rob read it in his capacity as an assessor, and he wrote a wonderful report that concludes like this: “The publication of Orgie might well become an event in Afrikaans literature.” That’s what I want so badly – not for the sake of the work itself but because it’s our witnessing, and I wouldn’t be able to endure it if something that emerged directly from us was anything but good.
Rob also read “Us”. I’m sending you his letter, where he says it’s set to become one of the loveliest poems in the new edition. And where he suggests that you retain “Gesien uit die Wond” [“Seen from the Wound”] and rework it a little to make it a “great poem”. I’ll be telegraphing Bartho today to say he should use both poems, and that you’ll write to him as soon as possible about a revised text of the poem about the cross.
Rob leaves for the Cape this morning. He’ll be there for a week, staying somewhere in Green Point. You’ll be able to get in touch with him via Lena, Jan, Uys or Koos; maybe go through the poem with him line by line? I suspect he might also try to look you up.
I’m isolating myself and working terribly hard on timeless modern prose for one of my honours courses. I’m living ascetically, in devotion to you, feeling sad and guilty, but no longer confused. Because what has emerged from the distillation of my longing during this period is that I now clearly understand how my confusion did not arise from any incompleteness between us, but exclusively from the guilt of responsibility for Anton, something from which I could never distance myself. In my heart, you remain unalloyed, a need, a love, a great longing. And I’m not just saying this to make nice-sounding words, magic woman. It’s because “my maelstrom has passed and I can now see clearly again”.
With driving lack, continual gratitude, yet knowing that I dare not ask you to forgive me for what I broke down inside of you, with love,
André.
Tuesday, 4 February 1964
WAIT FOR MY ORGIE EDIT THANK YOU BEAUTIFUL MANUSCRIPT ANSWER HEAR LOVE = COCOON
Castella
22 Wessels Street
Green Point
Wednesday, 12 February 1964
My darling André,
Thank you for your letter of the other day – the one with the lots of news – and the new (?) slanted handwriting that looks much like mine. It doesn’t sound as if it’s going too badly with your soul – or are you just being “considerate” …? Because I’d really like to know whether you are well, and everything, and everything. Are there still fights or are you now more or less back into the “normal” routine? Or am I not allowed to ask so many questions? You say you’re busy on a new work – Bevryding [Liberation] – what’s it about and where does it come from? I’d like to read your new “Paris by Night”.
I wrote to you late last night, but now I’m busy rewriting. I will in any case send you the Éluard tape this afternoon, you’ve wanted it so long – and which I made on Sunday evening (night). You might have to adjust the volume now and again because I was sleepy and couldn’t sleep. “Nou na jou sterwe kom jy my eens nader, en soms is jy so helder en heel hier by my” [“Now after your death you come closer to me, and sometimes you are so clear and whole”]. I miss all your letters and tapes and everything – but I no longer have faith – it’s as though nothing will be built between us – or are you just punch-drunk? So many questions. Frustration about the phone call – I’m standing on the other side of the glass door again – entry prohibited – it’s clear that you “went back” but really, and different to last time. This is not a reproach, you hear. It’s just so bloody sad.
I have discovered a new capacity for this sort of sadness – hail to it! It looks like an endless capacity for sorrow. And you? I wrote a little poem for you “Waterval van Mos en Son” [“Waterfall of Moss and Sun”] – that little sex metaphor I told you about – do you remember? Let me know what you think of it. And I’m busy with Orgie and am scrupulously making notes of the suggested amendments – and will send them next time. But I do not want me and you – our gleaming love – to die like this – with a now-and-then friendly-loving letter.
I heard from Bartho – and I’m in the mood to fly over to Grahamstown for the hell of it and to get off there, just like in our old plan, but you say nothing in your letter! I want to take you overseas with me. I have the form for the passport – probably leaving on the Cape Town Castle on 17 April. Simone is a problem. Everything will go very fast and quickly now and bare – quick stripping off and leaving, completely and utterly alone and screaming lonely. My darling treasure, precious creator, I can’t bear that something so virile and positive and powerful should silt up. You. Us. And yet …?
>
Mrs Oxley is being pig-headed about Castella. I don’t care. She has 101 silly little reasons – she, too – but I am leaving regardless. Your big portrait is here in front of me. Your ring I wear on my finger – my ornamental lamp – but it doesn’t talk to me about Spain and Paris. It just sits there, like a sick little bird whose bloodied heart beats feebly.
I hope you don’t think it’s a miserable letter – as I say, the endless bottomless capacity exists. I just miss you so much. I would so much like to sit opposite you and have some ice-cream and chocolate sauce and know … tonight … now. There’s too much to say and to tell. The blue in the letter. Where are you, do you hear me, do you see me? Good night, sweet Prince. My Prince, André Prince Brink. With the unsayable and love.
COCOON.
Grahamstown,
Thursday, 13 February 1964
My darling: little child, generous being,
May I please, just for fifteen minutes or so, come and and rest against your bosom now, as I experience this desperation of the heart?
I wish there was a counter somewhere where I could go and complain: “This life you people advertise is not what it’s made out to be. Can I please have my money back?”
I’ve been feeling things so acutely in the last while: the “I”, this spirit, this body that has experienced what it is to give and receive generously, freely – must now remain closed down until further notice, for a whole lifetime, waste itself in sterility, making a mockery of longing and yearning? It’s so undignified.
And through it all, one must suffer the trifles that disrupt one’s existence (maybe the rude awakening lies in the fact that irrelevancies can upset one so!). Like this morning’s mean, piggish letter from Chris Barnard. So very “friendly”. Then incidentally, in a five-page missive, this kind of thing: “Don’t you guys maybe also have a post for me there with Rob? Seems it helps one a lot in getting good reviews.” Or (about Orgie): “Have you noticed everyone’s always writing about your work. The idea is old, but the form? Well, for me new ideas are a lot more important than playing little games with external form.”
God, why is one so defenceless against “friends”? Against life? Everything, actually? And above all, oneself.
Always, always it is you who resides in me so light-filled, and so heavily: you embody Baudelaire’s words, my “green paradise of childlike loves”. A paradise from which I expelled myself and allowed myself to be expelled, now guarded over by angels with glinting swords. Most bitter of all is that I know: for the sake of my child’s future it dares not be otherwise. But my own future? God, Cocoon, if only it wasn’t so empty.
I am confused, terribly confused. I gave you a dream and then destroyed it. How might I have any further claim to happiness? I’m so snarled up in it all. I don’t see light anywhere.
And how dare I come to you with all this bitterness after already wounding you? I just want you to know, however, that everything that’s happened, that happens, and that never stops occurring, breaks my own heart, in my tiny core of humanity. One must apparently “be strong and endure”. But how does one endure that which is unendurable?
I love you. I can’t do without you. But now I must. And there’s the rub. For me, too, it’s a matter of “to be, or not to be”, of longing for, and the struggle with “the bare bodkin” that must put an end to the futile everything.
You will be in Johannesburg on the 28th [to receive the APB Prize], lovely, lovely thing, woman of light. I should also have been there. We should have been able to enter the wonder-world together.
I shall have to turn the ending of Lobola around, and let it talk to you: “Candle, I am burnt out. But you – you still remain.”
Still. Still. Still. Remain so, darling. Stay there, my woman. You live. Live without restraint, free, elevated, worthy; and meaningful.
I love you and kiss you gently on your mouth and breasts.
I kiss your fair-headed child and mourn the moesie-girl who never arrived.
I hail you with unembarrassed tears,
André.
Castella
Thursday, 13 February 1964
Thank you André for the doll you gave me, she’s got such lovely hair. Thats why I got it, I wanted it. And thank you for the crayons that other time you gave me its such a lovely doll this. André, her name is Cindarella. You know what, there was a big fire and three houses was in danger – there was two policemans and they didnt do nothing they just watched, and you know another policeman he hided his revolver and he took off his shirt and he went to fight the others what made the fire down.
What are you doing? Are you well? And is it nice there. Isnt it raining? Cindarella sleeps with me and I wash her, I wash her hair. Are you well? Sometimes I let it hang, her hair, and sometimes I put a ribbon over it and I make a phoney-tail and sometimes I do it up. Im back from Johannesburg and Ive got new things. And my mummy is so happy. The house is very tidy and its got flowers in; Jack and Granny gave her flowers for the prize and gave my mummy a vase. Me and my mummy are well and we go to sleep so nicely.
Cindarella can do cartwheels and handstands. Wait, Im going to the toilet …
(Absolutely wanted to write to you: funny, she constantly asks how you are … I’m listening to a radio programme meanwhile – here she is again.) I musnt say I want to do no. 2. I must say my tummy wants to work (!). You see, I play very nicely and my mummy goes to work; sometimes she has to stay with me and she can’t go to work. My mummy is in bed and I’m telling her what to write. I got lots of dolls and dresses, they cant even fit in a case. I have a beautiful tiny little case. My mummy is going overseas. Im going to school – to [?] Convent; I love it; sorry, Im just going to give Mummy an ash tray. And thank you for the doll. When are you coming again, and you know my mummy drink lovely wine and smokes and she gets smaller and smaller and smaller, shes so young (!) Cindarella’s surname is Brink. Love,
Grahamstown,
Saturday, 15 February 1964
Oh my beloved Cocoon,
Thank you for this morning’s dear, sore, sore tristesse-on-blue-paper; for the tape with its gorgeous famous poems – and the hypnotic conclusion with its sense of the inexorable. Time, the alarm I know so well. Sleepy child, slumbering girl, night child, wise and heartsore little swift – thank you also for the long narrow waterfall poem with its beautiful ending and lovely repetitions. (To be soberly critical: take all the capital letters out except the very first one and the “You”; maybe “heart/thief/thief” is not entirely essential: I’d like to see a stronger whirlpool, in just one word, penetrating the heart of that unforgettable little pool in which I have so often, in fact always, found myself – a pool with a frisky frog, glimmer-eyed, wet-snouted, living, trembling, tender.)
I love you.
Today in two weeks’ time it’ll be the Big Day. Darling, I’m still searching – in this vacant Grahamstown! – for something to send you that you can wear on the big night to go with your ravishing yellow dress. And I want to send you a small gold cross so you can wear it round your neck when you’re overseas, cherished next to your breasts.
17 April. To think that the heart, too, can be summarised so prosaically in a mere date. But what right do I have to be selfish? (And yet –!)
News, you ask: “everything”. But all that matters, in the world of events, is inside of me. My days go like this: I work from eight in the morning to midnight, taking off ten minutes or a quarter of an hour for lunch; in the evenings I go for a little walk on my own; or bump into Rob or someone when I check for post, and then spend a few minutes chatting. Play with Anton. Sleep alone. No, no fights – just neutrality. My body’s healthy. (Except: my “seed spilt on the ground”. I sleep with you a lot. Plenty. Escape.)
I’m not really “busy” with Bevryding yet – just thinking about it, sorting out my thoughts, because I don’t know if I’ll have any time for writing this year. It’s a very old thought that’s only now making sense to me – through us, through you. Even so,
it’s still quite vague: a stranger, an individual, “I”, returns from a foreign, idyllic landscape to an anonymous Big City to deliver a message or something at an apartment somewhere high up on the thirtieth or fortieth floor, close to the moon. While he’s there, it appears that a plague of sorts has broken out in the building and the whole place gets sealed off; all the doors walled up from the outside. So, there he sits, trapped with a bunch of strangers (a kind of bourgeois South African microcosm) who start committing suicide one by one till he’s the only one left. All narrated very prosaically, in a no-nonsense way, with italicised passages – his longing for his home country, for someone there, for sense, for something beautiful – scattered here and there. Across the street, visible through a separate window, is a girl, a symbol of the past, of an unattainable beauty: you. They are unable to talk to each other; all they have is a wordless yearning via gestures. Until she puts on her wedding dress and they both leap out simultaneously, towards each other, into oblivion. All that is found on the hard city asphalt underneath my character is a tiny pool of blood and some seed (and perhaps a small shoot of grass emerging from a crack in the road?).
But, as you can see for yourself: it’s still just a rough idea that has yet to find form – both poetry and substance.
And you, you?
How are you getting by? Where will you go and stay now? When are you leaving Castella – irrecoverable little dream castle with its colourful curtains, heavy with our whispered nights: we would always speak so serenely, in carefully hushed tones, afterwards …
Further, the question I have no right to ask, and yet must: Jack …?
I lie awake a lot at night with you very close to me, seeing you, feeling you – with my empty hands, and my hot, desolate loins.
Write to me, darling. I won’t abandon you to silence again.
Because I want to say to you, simply, crudely, youthfully, even beseechingly: I love you, I carry you in my dreams and in my blood, you live in my eyes and my hair and my chest, my gut, my hands and my papie; in the deep, hidden seed from which the future is born every moment.
Flame in the Snow Page 34