I do not think this a task that I could, or even should, take on. The responsibility is simply too heavy to shoulder; besides, the obligation is of a dubious nature. Thus I try to keep my head averted from these powdery phantoms that stir and falter in the dark. But they remain, pleading wordlessly—or so it seems.
What kind of makeshift shelter is this? Wind rattles the reeds that pass for rafters, and the corroded sheets of corrugated iron lift creakily and fall, lift and fall, so that shafts of light snap at the spectral figures flailing, writhing in their am-dram poses. I resist the use of a torch, but cannot stop myself from peering when the light allows. Which is taken for encouragement—they are not as comatose as they appear to be—so that their rustling sounds rise above the wind sigh. I cannot tell how many there are, but there is no mistaking that these feverish forms are fixed on coming into being, on finding language, on making their demands on me.
It is not so unusual, neither novel nor extraordinary, not so much to ask; it has been done before, one of them whispers. I listen in silence to their strange and various accents, to the voices growing louder, cacophonous in their clamour to be heard. The slight, bent form in the corner rocks to and fro, declaims in a dazed, rasping voice so that I catch only fragments: poppy, or charms…one short sleep past…the round earth’s corners…over and over, growing fainter until it fades.
After all, says the larger, older woman, the boldest, the most insistent of the lot, we do not have to be invented, no need to think of yourself as a god, a creator. Good Christian souls, all of us, prematurely cut off but, of course, blessed with eternal life all the same, so only a small matter of giving us another chance, of allowing us our fair share of years. Leaning on her elbow, she sits up, strains forward, and if her form is wobbly, a strong, vegetal whiff of desire rises from it, a greed for life, for recovering time—those bitter years of duress, salted bondage and subjugation gone for good, finished and done with. Her palms scrape, slap against each other as she reaches for the possibilities of the new, a new century, a world shaken up in so many ways, so much more forgiving than the unjust, punitive world of yore. This is exactly what she had dreamt of, what she craves—a fresh start, believing it to be her just deserts. She will not be held back.
Looks like some kind of punishment, this eternal life bestowed by your God, I venture, but there is no uptake. They are not interested in argument; their focus is on filling out, on coming into being, and they are not above pleading. The woman speaks as if I had not spoken. Oh, we have our different desires, as you must know, she says, but we are bound together all the same. The bond of love. Love! I roll my eyes, squirm. The men seem more circumspect; they too shrink visibly at the word, which keeps them quiet for a while. I ignore the young man whose hand is up like a schoolboy’s waiting for permission to speak. Bonded indeed. As if I’ve not heard that kind of talk before, the justifying cant of politicians and ordinary folk alike, even as they pursue their selfish interests. What do I know beyond what the history books say? Does the woman think me omniscient? Her words leave me impotent, tongue-tied. Frankly, I have no idea what to do; I do not know how to proceed. I who have freely admitted failure, who have given up on the business of writing, who have comforted myself with the promise of carefree, indolent days, albeit under dark northern skies. Who would not rather watch clouds tumbling through the heavens and, slouching in a deck chair with a woollen rug—from my childhood, the dun tartan of overnight train journeys—over her knees, cherish the slivers of stingy sunlight? For fighting slow time there is a garden in which to hoe, to shake free earth from the roots of weeds, and watch indolent worms writhe into the humus. I would rather drum my fingers and wait for tulip spears to unfold their slow promise of red, wait for forget-me-nots to spread into a blue haze, and battle with indomitable slugs. Why should I return to the fray and struggle with the stories of these creatures? Why invite judgment of my abilities? Whilst these figures imagine a new era of millennial harmony, it is I who will have to rise to unexpected challenges and fend off the slurs.
I note that the young man, having given up, has dropped his supplicating arm, but no such luck with the woman. Come, come, she breathes, prodding a finger at her breastbone, Mary here, Mary Prince. As if I don’t know her name. Her voice grows stronger as she remonstrates: Get over yourself. It’s not about you at all. So very little we ask of you, nothing more than allowing us to be, setting us free. She shakes her head as I grimace at the word. You don’t like my language? the way I speak? Well, that’s nothing new to me, I’m used to my island’s tropical tongue being mocked. But look, you’re free to improvise, to correct, and use your own fancy words. Here we are, emaciated, and…and while she falters, the young man slips in, in the words of another, dusted to mildew.
Oh shush, Mary says impatiently, and rudely points at me. It is you, oh yes, there is no question, it is you who have sought us out, peered at us through the cracks. Look, there is room for you to dress us up or down, but we want out, we’ve had enough of being trapped in this derelict pondok of history. She stretches her arms up, slowly, testing as it were their materiality, their flexibility, then stumbles to her knees. Nothing can hold us back now, she declares. Think of us as ready-mades, and that is an advantage not to be sniffed at, so there you are: a shoulder to the writing wheel, a pen filled with black ink, and bob’s your uncle.
Unbelievable. Where does the woman, barely risen from dust and mildew, get her confidence from? One to be watched, one not past elbowing the others out of the way and taking over. If only she knew that I could house them in little more than another pondok, of another order, yes, but the rusted tin roof within my means may be no less leaky.
The older man—the pale, slight poet rocking to and fro—should know better, should know that having a ready-made subject does not guarantee a work. If they are my responsibility, I have no idea how to proceed. If I stamp my feet in frustration, insist that I will not be bullied by phantoms, it is also the case that my idyll of battling with garden slugs and nursing tulips slain by vernal gusts, grows dimmer by the second. Foolish, foolish me. I should have crept away, not have peeped, listened in, or spoken. Before I can say humpty-dumpty I find myself tied to this desk, a procrustean bed, with no more than a bag of sweets for comfort. Beside me a mound of wrappers grows. No question of kidding myself that an epiphany will rise out of the crackle of cellophane and foil; rather, an unsightly crop of spots has appeared across my forehead. Sweet Jesus, am I to be propelled backwards, awkward and pimply, into adolescence? Whilst these my ‘subjects’ bully and bluster their way out of history?
Let me start with the muttering poet in the corner, he of the eternally boyish looks and slight frame, a pair of crutches tucked neatly under his arm as he rises to his knees. Pure trouble, even as he averts his eyes in modesty, so that I push back my chair and grope for the stash of fortifying chocolate-covered sweets in the drawer.
I favour the dark variety of at least seventy per cent cocoa solids, ones filled with keen, candied ginger, sharp enough to kick-start things. I don’t care about the brand. It is also, if not mainly, for the lovely silver and gold foil wrappings—the luxurious treasures of a child of the bundus—that I buy them at all. Perhaps there would be virtue in dropping the actual sweet straight into the bin, given that I eat only out of the habit of husbanding resources, of waste-not-want-not frugality. But as far as achievements go, that would not be so staggering, so why deprive myself? It is the wrapper that brings lasting joy and makes the mouth water. The extra, outer cover of cellophane is for holding up to the light, for seeing the world momentarily through pink, blue or green, before scrunching it up and delaying gratification. Then the quarry: silver or gold foil, metallic paper I hold down with the left thumb, then firmly smooth with the right index finger until the rectangle is returned to an original, pristine state. Tirrah! Voila! Ecco! There! Thereafter the perfectly smooth foil can be folded meticulously into a solid strip, a band to be wrapped around my finger like a wedding ring. When I tire of touching of smoothing of tightening of stroking, the band drops on to my desk where it leisurely lets go, uncoils somewhat, but holds on to the memory of having once been a perfect circle. There there! The rings settle into the intimacy of a growing pile on my left, may even hook into each other. Call it procrastination, but it does no harm, in my book this counts as an achievement, could be the precursor to who knows what.
I ignore the hm-hm of Mary clearing her throat, her scornful hiss of sugar! Ignore the impatient shuffles and mutters of the others. Being a dab hand at foil rings is of no interest to them. Better than sitting on my hands, I reckon, for it is a start of sorts. Look, I am at my desk, once more like the child learning to form her letters, filling her page with wobbly ABCs. And here is material proof of my presence: strips of curved foil each bearing the trace of a band, a ring, something accomplished with my hands. Perhaps I should start by filling a page with his name, the poet’s, which would be to name the project. Then wait for the letters to stir, in the manner of the mound on my desk, coils of silver foil easing their shoulders, unfurling their sugary history.
The woman stirs. Mine is of harvesting salt, she hisses, as for sugar plantations…I try to wave her away with new, gingered strength, but now she is on one knee, her elbow resting comfortably, confidently on the other. Just start at the beginning, she says, no need for anything fancy. I’ll fill in the gaps.
A history then of our man the poet who binds together these phantom creatures, and in whose interest they have gathered here. ‘His story’ as we feminists of the 1970s called it, scorning etymology, dismissing the history of the word, and not caring about being thought ignorant of Latin. Years before that, when the nineteenth century was new, our young poet, the punctilious scholar busily copying documents in Edinburgh’s Old General Register House, would have bristled with irritation at such sloppy ways, but och see, if he can’t mellow over the centuries what would be the point of living on and on and on? Even if it is only in what he fondly thinks of as the colony, whereas in his beloved Scotland he has long since been forgotten; in truth, he never made much of a mark even when he lived there. His story it may be, but all will be thrown up in the air as others throw in their tuppenny’s worth, as events arrive in who knows which way, out of order, not unlike my shiny sweet wrappers, hooking up higgledy-piggledy with others, and how should I presume the wherewithal to straighten things out?
Strange, thinking of him as my subject. (How a queen must clutch her throat and shudder at the thought of subjects, even as she goes on to tilt her head, and wave, and pat her pearls and smile graciously, regally, at those very entities.) Be gracious, I upbraid myself sans pearls. So I salute my subject, the poet with weak lungs, tilt my head at the keyboard, and now to lunge into his story, the story of a dead white man. Of which there are so very many, quite enough really, and there’s the rub, but Mary, ever the meddler, interrupts in a voice grown stronger that that can be dealt with later; indeed, that the man would agree to deal with the problem himself. He wants out as much as I do, she says confidently. Then louder: He has always been, still is, the Father of South African poetry.
I note the twitch as he raises his head, holds it as if listening for an air to creep upon the waters of time. And I have to lean in to hear as he rasps, But not…known…in Scotland. Oh yes, unmistakably the voice of one who has never wanted for ambition, who has become even more fired up once he came to believe in a brave new world free of slavery. No need to fret, Mary soothes, addressing the man, helping him up. We’re here for you. Over her shoulder she says, Together we’ll turn the story into a devil-may-care whistling of women, and she winks at me. Which I find only mildly encouraging.
His story: anachronistic it may be, and now mellowed, but all the same he senses a way out in the insertion of that superfluous s in hisstory. He is not ungrateful. Mary and the indebted young man have kindly, heroically taken on the project of restoring him to the wider world by which he means Great Britain, but where after all would they have been without him? They are his, have in a sense been made by him, and it is his story, one of which he has every reason to be proud, so there must be a way of wading boldly through the centuries to arrive at it, shape it.
A memorable start it was too. No schoolboy could forget the auspicious year of his birth. Even there on the Scottish Borders, along the Tweed, all the way across the Cheviots, the tenor of his life was set by the whiff of liberty, equality, fraternity that drifted over from Europe, settling like a fine mist around his cradle. 1789, the year of revolution, a year in which to foresee the end of slavery and tune the limited enlightenment of his land, usher it into the bright light of liberty for all. History, his story, made, unmade, and to be remade, and he sees that in this woman’s reluctant hands it will become inseparable from theirs, the stories of the other ghostly figures in whose making he had had a hand and thus, with these allies by his side, a story to be packaged anew, cast in yet another light.
Inseparable for sure, Mary interjects in a voice grown firm. She hauls the young man from the shadows into which he has retreated, and presents him as if for inspection whilst she speechifies as if I’m not there. We, in our love and gratitude, have founded this project and assigned to this available writer the task of restoring a great poet and humanitarian to the wider world. Holding her collaborator firmly by the hand she asks if 1789 is not also the year of Sara Baartman’s birth. Should there not be room in their project for that unfortunate African woman? Like Mr P her remains have been taken home to the Eastern Cape, and she no doubt would want to account for herself, but the young man shakes his head firmly. Mr P would certainly have rescued poor Saartjie, clothed her, yes, but she came later, once he was dead. Besides, she has no need of us. Back home she has been remade in many forms, fought over, clothed and unclothed. What that unfortunate woman needs more than anything is to rest in her new, warm Eastern Cape grave. Although he imagines that she’d rather be wrapped in Parisian couture than her new shroud of native kudu skin, but he holds up a cautionary hand, No further dust-ups; we have quite enough on our plate.