MONTHS PASSED AND the summer advanced. One humid weekday afternoon I was on the Spui, soaking up the sunshine, having stopped off at one pavement café after another. I sat under the elms, their branches sagging now under heavy trusses of dark green leaves, trying out different brands of lager. Belgian wit bier had arrived in the city in the spring and its light, almost citrus flavour seemed to complement the weather. Later, criss-crossing through the alleys behind the Dam, I found myself in the Kalverstraat, the long pedestrianised shopping street that bisected the inner city. The summer sales were on already and the street was full of people. I noticed that an electronics shop had halved the price of its television sets. Oliver and I did not have a TV. Mildly curious, I strolled into a blue hue of flickering images. Even marked down the TVs were still too expensive to engage my beer-dulled interest. I wandered to the back of the shop where the latest large-screen colour TVs, imports from Japan, were stacked. They were all tuned in to the same news station so that one could compare the quality of the images and sound against a single image. I stood and watched.
A longstanding fugitive of the Red Army Faction had been arrested in Stuttgart, bringing to a close years of investigation. The anchorman turned to his notes. “And now news from further abroad,” he said.
I stood riveted as suddenly, unexpectedly, images of Cape Town unfolded. In the city striking workers, in alliance with student and community organisations, had launched a successful boycott of a popular brand of sweets after employers had refused negotiations with representatives over wages and working conditions. Now the employers were buckling as the boycott took its toll. There were the set-piece images of workers marching in the city streets, chanting and singing freedom songs, flanked by the ubiquitous blue-uniformed police. There was a proliferation of banners, one of which was being held aloft by white students from the University of Cape Town. The bulk of Table Mountain rose into a stark grey winter sky behind them. The story cut away from the footage to an interview with one of the unionists. I recognised him as Luke – a union activist we had befriended in our Cape Town student days. He said that resistance to apartheid was reviving after the crushing of the Soweto student revolt back in ’76. The consumer boycott, a new and effective tactic representing an alliance of community organisations, students and unions, was proving successful, he said. There was hope of a new wave of the anti-apartheid struggle.
It was as if I had been punched in the stomach. I struggled for breath. Outside the shop, I leant against a wall, dry retching. Passers-by regarded me balefully. No doubt they thought I was a junkie. A feeling of longing so intense that I could barely stand upright washed over me. And just like that, I was back in its grip. When I had recovered somewhat I crossed over the Dam into the back streets behind the Krasnapolsky Hotel. Although dusk was falling, I could not go home. If there was one area of contention between Oliver and me, it was South Africa.
Oliver had settled in Holland, never to return, and although we didn’t talk about it much, when we did he was intolerant of my “sentimentality” about the country. He would remind me of the repression, the austerity of my left-wing friends there and the unlikelihood of change. I should move on, he said, study further when my papers came through, with a subsidy from the Dutch state (“no chance of that back home,” he would say sarcastically) and become the academic I had once wanted to be – “in politics, if you must,” he would add. It was clear that discussions about South Africa bored him.
Up ahead I saw De Groene Anjer, one of the drag bars Oliver and I frequented occasionally. I had not been there for some time. I went inside and ordered a double whisky for its strength. I sat in the half-dark of the back bar, in a banquette, lit by Victorian table lamps with ruby brocaded shades. From the speakers it was all High Energy. I suspected (as Oliver had told me) that it was better enjoyed under the influence of whatever designer drug had currently infiltrated the gay “scene”, but I had followed none of this. God, I had come halfway across the world to this city, the gay capital of Europe, and I had become a home body. I sipped morosely at my whisky.
On the wall opposite were the standard posters and prints: buff, semi-clad beach beings; naked cowboys with their erections shielded by Stetson hats; shirtless college graduates. How was such physical perfection possible, I mused. I had still not got used to this subculture, its open celebration of the male body, a homosexual matter-of-factness. The libertarian impulses of this city still astonished me.
A couple took up the banquette opposite me. They were in their forties perhaps, both moustachioed, both sporting severe crewcuts, and dressed in leather waistcoats. The assertive masculinity about them was belied by the simpering bitchiness of their interaction. They were arguing about where to spend their summer holiday. “Je wil altijd naar zo een homo-eiland om jongens to bekijken; ik wil eens gewoon naar een wereldstad zoals Londen of Parijs, verdomme!” said one, and he banged his glass on the table, spilling his Amstel, the venom in his action almost tangible. They seemed tired, worn out with each other. They repelled me. Would Oliver and I turn out like that? Please God not. I returned to the melancholic contemplation of my whisky. With grim self-recognition, loosened by the alcohol, I realised that I was surviving exile by making Oliver a harbour. The afternoon had the makings of a new restlessness.