Send Him My Love
Page 9
the corner. I decided not to go back to my parent’s home to sleep in my old room, which was a place crowded with memories, and so I drove directly back to Cape Town.
Is that the end of your story Mr Richard Cunningham?
No Ms Virginia Penrose, there is still the closing off of the narrative. It has to find it natural terminus in which everything remains unresolved. In this story there cannot be any closure or resolution.
Oh but that is so sad Mr Richard Cunningham.
Three years later after my stint at UCT and I returned to Johannesburg. I got job as a lecturer in philosophy at Wits. The first thing I did after settling down in Joburg was to join the Johannesburg Film Society. It was on a Sunday night after a Film Society movie at the Metro in High Point in Hillbrow that a familiar face caught my attention. It was Cheryl. She was playfully cavorting with her boyfriend, who was an extremely good looking fellow, someone who was cut in the same mould as Sheldon. In fact he was some kind of replica of Sheldon. It was very late and it was a Sunday night, it was close to eleven o clock, the streets of Hillbrow were empty, and I at that moment was the only other person in High Point, and it was this that made our encounter so surreal and so unexpected. We spontaneously greeted each other without stopping to speak, it was the kind of greeting that passing strangers might make in the dead of night. Like a passing stranger I disappeared into the dead of night never to see her again in the flesh. The irony of the night was that the movie was Roman Polanski’s Chinatown. After several years had passed since I had last seen her so fleetingly in Hillbrow I received a message in passing from a friend who seen Cheryl working nightshift at casualties in the new Johannesburg General Hospital in Parktown. She asked after me and she sent me a message via our mutual acquaintance, she said: ‘Please give Richard my love, send him my love’. That was the last connection I ever had with her. It is funny that after all these years I still often think of her. She had been a very special person in my life and had played a pivotal role in the growth and development of my own self-understanding and also she made me conscious of my moral limitations as a person. I am a better and richer person because of her even though I suspect she was a bit mad. That night when I saw her in Highpoint in Hillbrow the thought that she was indeed mad did occur to me.
Now that we have internet and all the various kinds of social networks, every now and then I do an electronic search for Cheryl Nightingale but without any success. She is not on the radar; she has gone completely off the radar. There is no signal. There is not sign of her existence. She has left no electronic footprint and I have not been able to track her down. She had lived an interesting life and she has now vanished without leaving any trace or record of the life that she had once lived or of who she was. Her life now exists only in the memories of living people who once knew her and still find time to think about her and enjoy the memories of her. If she is still alive, she would be an old woman now. But sadly, eventually all memory, knowledge and information about her will vanish, and there will be no one who will think of her or remember her, or feel deeply touched by memories of her.
That is the end of my story Ms Virginia Penrose.
Mr Richard Cunningham I must admit that this was some story. But please forgive me if I still think that it was a true story and you are wilfully hiding this fact.
Ms Virginia Penrose all good fiction has be true in some sense in order for it to be good literature as well.
Mr Richard Cunningham are you still good for that dinner date in Paris, do you have a business card or cell number so that we can keep in touch.
Is it Mr Richard Cunningham or Mr Robert Mackenzie who you wish to invite for dinner?
Well I don’t want to choose. I am just like Cheryl in every way.
Wake me up when we land in Paris.
I will Mr Robert Mackenzie.
Goodnight Virginia.
Goodnight Robert. Sweet dreams.