Childish Things by Marita van der Vyver

Author:Marita van der Vyver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Afrikaans writer, novel, 1970’s, South Africa, political upheaval, realities of life, politics, death, rebellion, questioning perspective, war, border, discover, life-changing year
ISBN: 9780624064015
Publisher: Tafelberg
Published: 2011-08-06T16:00:00+00:00

London

21 March 1993

My dear Child

According to my mother, who still reads ‘The Stars Foretell’ in the newspaper each morning, every human being is inextricably bound to one of the elements. Some, like me, drift through life like aquatic animals because they always want to be somewhere else. (According to my mother and the stars, that is.)

Sometimes you swim against the current, my mother wrote in a recent letter, simply to be otherwise. Your father thinks that’s why you left the country, to conquer a brave new world. But I think you simply chose the line of least resistance, drifting with the current as usual. (I know, Ma, I’ve always maintained that I’m a coward.) That’s why I believe you’ll always be able to keep your head above water, Mart. That’s what makes you a survivor.

A survivor? Like my mother? And the Voortrekker women who bashed barefoot across the Drakensberg? Sometimes it’s easier to carry on with something – a difficult choice, a difficult route, even a difficult life – than to turn back halfway and acknowledge that you were wrong.

And Simon always lived with his head in the clouds, according to Ma. Even if later those clouds were no more than marijuana smoke. (According to me, that is.) But was it the stars that determined he would contain such a large, empty space that he would become as weightless as a cloud?

Or that Dalena would burn her fingers in her own fire?

Which brings me to Pierre again. Who still bars my path like a rock whenever I want to make the easy choice, every time I want to drift with the current.

Then I come up against his inflexibility, then he forces me to ask the questions he would’ve asked.

I’ll always remain grateful to you for that, Pierre. You hid in that room where it was always night, our own Orpheus in his underworld, and used your tongue like a lyre to seduce us. You taught us to question.

But you probably know what happened to Orpheus. He was torn to pieces – and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again. It’s my son’s favourite nursery rhyme. Presumably because it ends with total destruction.

We went to the play park in Kensington Gardens today. It was supposed to be a beautiful spring day, but as usual the London weather had refused to listen to the previous evening’s TV forecast. I wanted to get away from the merciless sun of Black River but after another wet, cold, dark winter in a strange land, I feel like a mermaid imprisoned in an underwater cave. Now I yearn for a sun which will make the heavens burst into flames, a fire to cleanse my conscience.

No, I haven’t forgotten the date. When the police shot sixty-nine people in Sharpeville that day, I was even younger than my son. Just as innocent, just as guilty.

Love

M.

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