Flashback Hotel by Ivan Vladislavic

Author:Ivan Vladislavic
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2019-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

Appendix

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The very next morning I saw Steve Biko coming out of the Juicy Lucy at the Norwood Hypermarket. I followed him to the hardware department, where he gave me the slip.

The WHITES ONLY Bench

Yesterday our visitors’ book, which Portia has covered in zebra-skin wrapping-paper and shiny plastic, recorded the name of another important person: Coretta King. When Mrs King had finished her tour, with Strickland herself playing the guide, she was treated to tea and cakes in the cafeteria. The photographers, who had been trailing around after her trying to sniff out interesting angles and ironic juxtapositions against the exhibits, tucked in as well, I’m told, and made pigs of themselves.

After the snacks Mrs King popped into the gift shop for a few mementoes, and bought generously – soapstone hippopotami with sly expressions, coffee-table catalogues, little wire bicycles and riot-control vehicles, garish place-mats and beaded fly-whisks, among other things. Her aide had to chip in to make up the cost of a set of mugs in the popular “Leaders Past and Present” range.

The honoured guests were heading back to the bus when Mrs King spotted the bench in the courtyard and suggested that she pose there for a few shots. I happened to be watching from the workshop window, and I had a feeling the photographs would be exceptional. A spring shower had just fallen, out of the blue, and the courtyard was a well of clear light. Tendrils of fragrant steam coiled up from a windfall of blossoms on the flagstones. The scene had been set by chance. Perhaps the photographers had something to prove, too, having failed to notice a photo opportunity so steeped in ironic significance.

The Star carried one of the pictures on its front page this morning. Charmaine picked up a copy on her way to work and she couldn’t wait to show it to me.

The interest of the composition derives – if I may make the obvious analysis – from a lively dispute of horizontals and verticals. The bench is a syllogism of horizontal lines, flatly contradicted by the vertical bars of the legs at either end (these legs are shaped like h’s, actually, but from the front they look like l’s). Three other verticals assert their position: on the left – our left, that is – the concrete stalk of the Black Sash drinking-fountain; in the middle, thrusting up behind the bench, the trunk of the controversial kaffirboom; and on the right, perched on the very end of her seat, our subject: Mrs King.

Mrs King has her left thigh crossed over her right, her left foot crooked around her right ankle, her left arm coiled to clutch one of our glossy brochures to her breast. The wooden slats are slickly varnished with sunlight, and she sits upon them gingerly, as if the last coat’s not quite dry. Yet her right arm reposes along the backrest with the careless grace of a stem. There’s an odd ambiguity in her body, and it’s reflected

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