~The Cricket Bat and the Porcupine~
A Story in Three Parts
...which began life as a short blog on my book tour to South Africa in Spring 2012 and became a kind of blogelogue of a homecoming...
Part Three: Franschhoek Literary Festival
The morning after the launch of Rhumba at The Book Lounge, J and I pack our bags and head out to the Franschhoek literary festival. As we approach the spectacular mountains that mark the wine country, I think about boyfriends.
I have been happily married for 22 years and have every intention of dying in my husband's arms, but when you've lived life in a wild place (rather than a promiscuous one, please note) there will be people who you know there and spoor you leave on the sand. My first boyfriend, with whom I went to my very first matric dance, turns up at my Jo'burg launch. He has a family and a lovely wife and is a marathon runner. Generous of him to come. Looking at him, I see across the thirty five year map of who he and I were as virtual children.
Second boyfriend, also from the high school era, is now a writer too. He is, rather amazingly, also at the festival. His delightful wife is a journalist of note. More spoor. Different map.
Third boyfriend, from an altogether later and more volatile encounter, turns up at one of my sessions just as it is about to begin. Spoor rampage across my skin and bones. Cricket bat.
Fourth boyfriend (or so he claims) looks at me and I swear to God I have never laid eyes on the man with the bright red hair in spite of the fact that he clutches a photograph of my eighteen-year-old-self under his arm. I wonder, momentarily whether I have entirely lost my mind. He apologizes for 'walking out on me' I then I wonder if it is he and his marbles who have parted company. No spoor there. Let's hope his fantasies remain benign.
Then there are the old friends, almost family now, with whom I have a greater continuity. People who hosted our wedding, people who worked with me in plays, people who made films with me. Spoor, crisscrossing the sand like so many scurrying animals and all so clearly visible now that I am here.
The way this brilliant festival works is that you kind of get thrown onto panels and you end up talking about the most unexpected things with the most unexpected people.
My first panel posed the question, "Are The Eighties History Yet?" I am seated between an older, brave, journalist and a young Muslim South African who works for Al Jazeera and has published a couple of very funny and very brilliant books. All of us have dramatically different perspectives on the dying days of Apartheid and what it means for us going forward. I'm terrified to speak at first but before I know it I'm having fun, incredibly good fun. I'm home, in a grown up sort of way, though there are questions I wish I could answer all over again, like the one posed by the graying gentleman in the middle of the hall, 'Is there such a thing as a white African?' I wish I'd told him that I knew what he meant, but that the language and thinking around the question did not belong to me. I wish I'd been able to refine my answer and say that my connection with the continent and country, although not simple, is a given. It is the stew of other things that define me that give me longer pause; my deeply Afrikaans extended family, my English father and English education, my Ouma who came from the Southern United States and was my earliest teacher, my American husband, my polyglot children who also consider South Africa their primary identity in spite of not living here all the time. I wish I'd said all that...
Along with just about everyone else over the next three days, I become a drunk (although my modest level of consumption becomes the subject of some derision by my fellow writers and I never have to be carried home by a fireman). We are in the wine country after all. Porcupine Ridge wines sponsor the festival and there it is wherever you turn. The sauvignon blanc goes particularly well with the cricket bat and before long I embrace all who come my way, those who love my book and those who look stricken when it is mentioned.
I sit on two more panels, one is solely concerned with RHUMBA and its evolution from film script to book. A wonderful, really experienced journalist handles this session. We talk about the difference between film scripts and novels and I am aware in a new way of how grateful I am to have found my way to books. I'm reminded of the email I sent to my wonderful editor at Quercus Books when I first held the book of RHUMBA in my hands, 'I'm aware of the cliche' of the first book moment as I write this. But it is just true that holding one's first book in one's hand is a moment of radical transformation. It's thrilling, raucous, unbelievable. I'm so grateful.'
I am so grateful, now to be talking with her about it in this context.
The third panel I have been invited to sit on is concerned with the Congo diaspora. I share it with Jamala Safari, a Congolese writer and poet who has written a wonderful, soon-to-be-published book on the Congo called 'The Great Agony and Pure Laughter of the Gods'. A crucial book. We are led by a sharply intelligent, wonderfully able writer and teacher of creative writing. I fear that this will be the audience least willing to accept my decision to write about the "other" as our chair so clearly articulates it. Not so.
For three heavenly days - admittedly with its fair share of skinless terror - I have the privilege of learning to talk in this context. It is amazing. What is more amazing still, is the listening.
I listen and listen and listen. There is no literary festival like it. It's really only half about literature. The rest of it is about the state of the nation and the very best people speak to that. They are the most densely packed sessions and there is worry in the air. How much shit are we in people? A whole lot apparently - education, services, jobs, housing, transport, corruption. And most relevant to this audience The Secrecy of Information Act, a measure that will silence reporting of any wrong-doing by government officials.
The most brilliant commentator there says, 'There are the good guys and the bad guys and right now the bad guys are winning'. Salutary.
Thank God he can still say that. We talk a lot, and we laugh. And for every corrupt politician (for now anyway) there still seems to be a potential whistle blower. And for every conundrum of the human spirit there seems to be someone prepared to unknot it in a book. And best of all, session after session we are reminded that ALL governments are corrupt and that the streets are waiting for our pounding feet to keep our leaders accountable. There will never be a time when we can stop pounding. When, in the words of perhaps the most experienced political observer there, our leaders confuse promiscuity with polygamy, corruption with due process, self-interest with the needs of the nation, we must pay attention. Just as Miller did for Willie Loman. Attention must be paid. By us and our cricket bats.
Elaine Proctor
Spring 2012