Potchefstroom

Sunday afternoon, 30 June 1963

Dearest child,

In the background I can hear scintillating Beethoven – but the rest of the family’s gathered there and I have therefore withdrawn to the bedroom; I had to dig out a space for myself among the nappies and books and baby bottles and all the other essential mess that accumulates around one. Also had to switch the light on, even though it’s just four o’clock – it’s cold and miserable outside. The kind of day I’d like to spend lying with you on “our” bumpy little bed with the buttons that keep digging into my back; with a volume of poetry in hand and a bottle of red wine next to the bed; also: a pack of cigarettes (ash on the chair and floor); tangled clothes on the bed opposite; a bit of sun peeping through the gaudy curtain – and every now and again my big cold foot on your tummy.

One simply has to escape sometimes – more so in these sterile circumstances, aggravated by a flu-like cold. And Anton’s just ill. Last night I went and slept in a different room with him, the poor little thing. “Sleep” turned out to be more of a wish than a reality. (To sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream ...!)

Thank you, darling, for your unexpected phone call yesterday. It’s a mercy I wasn’t home at twelve-thirty, otherwise the call would have been within earshot of everyone and you wouldn’t have understood why I was being so businesslike! But as it turned out, it was a ray of sunlight. Most precious you, I would so love to be with you to help you fight off the tristesse. What I don’t understand is why Jack had to write – or is he temporarily away from the Cape?

There is so little I can do, from a distance, to help and comfort you effectively. But maybe it’ll lift your spirits to hear I’ve decided definitely to come to the Cape – in about two weeks’ time. Probably for no more than five days; and it looks like the rest of the family will be coming, too – but they’ll be staying with friends. Let’s rather not upset ourselves at this stage about problems. What matters is that I’m coming; that I’m going to be with you in your homely little castle – and that it’s all just around the corner. I think we’ll be leaving for Johannesburg this coming Saturday to spend the weekend there; then, by about Tuesday (the 9th) we’ll be back in Grahamstown. And hopefully Friday (the 12th) I’ll be knocking on your door, and coming in, and in.

That bladdy old Mouse/Rat [Maish Levin] went and dragged out a whole bottom-drawer of lies for all the world to see – the nonsense that APB declined Lobola, and that I supposedly said: “They want to make an example of me.” I’ve now finally decided: from now on I say nothing but “No comment” to this bugger. And I sent a strong letter of protest to the [Sunday] Times itself. I’m really sick and tired of this kind of lying. And he’s incapable of using your name without tacking on the tail of your father. The only small bit of satisfaction in the whole business was that we got to be quite close to each other in print! (Next time, let’s hope, both our photos will be there, below a big black headline about who’s going to be whose future son-in-law!)

I spend a lot of time looking at the Hout Bay pictures. I’ll be sending them soon – if you promise to send me the others! A few beautiful ones. Otherwise, always, Rook en Oker –

Thus, from page to page,

I find you many times in many terms.

Hopefully I’ll be in Johannesburg on Tuesday and Wednesday as well – mainly to visit Bartho and company, and to discuss Die Ambassadeur with Van Wyk Louw (did I tell you? – he said he wanted to “work through” the whole MS with me). Maybe I’ll pick up some inspiration there; the last few days have been full of that old doubt and near-despair, all over again: will I ever get anything written that can stand wonderfully free out in the sun and be good without any reservations? Am I able to write something that’s worth the effort? Everything I commit to paper looks so worthless, so ephemeral. And I’m so tired, my girl, so sick and tired of the idea of “scandal success” that’s begun to cleave to everything I do. That damn Chris [Barnard] went and soiled even Sempre with the smell of a pit-latrine.

Everything keeps coming back to the same yearning: to get away, somewhere (but away from what?) – everything’s so vague! – just a place where I can be with you in complete honesty and purity and vulnerability. But each time some vile “drel” gets dragged along, as one of the Tristia poems puts it. Everywhere, disillusionment, limitation, the Sartrean hell (“other people”) that stands in one’s way and taints one.

Child, darling, now you can see everything I seek from you! Luckily I have the certainty (with “proof”!) that such light and grace does in fact reside in you.

Don’t concern yourself too much with my reams of self-accusation. One sometimes needs this kind of “dark time” and much of the time – as now – the cause is merely physical: a thick head and a sore throat!

I follow you (during these idle days) continuously on your neat little daily round: go to work, eat, work, fetch Simone, go home. I try looking over your shoulder as you proofread, and if no one’s looking, I kiss you softly on one of your ear lobes, or lightly touch one of your lovely little breasts. At night I help you feed Simone and put her to bed; I eat asparagus (and boiled eggs) with you; finally I put you to bed. And when you sleep … oh, the moment you fall asleep, then …! You wouldn’t know, my sweet-faced cherub.

Wait for me; lovely, smooth little animal, with eyes like a long journey from silence and wild regions:

My girl I appoint you with an appointment …

And I charge you that you be patient and

perfect till I come

Till then I salute you with a significant look

that you do not forget me.

With love, and love, and love,

André.

Monday morning.

My angel-devil girl,

This is just to say thank you for the letter I’ve just received, before going off to post yours. I’m so happy to hear about Jan and company’s “decent” attitude; especially now that Chris is away, you’ll need them. That bladdywell Bill and Ena [W.A. de Klerk and his wife Ena] (“we” are allowed a little gossip). I must write to the man now in any case about the Judas-gift he gave me that memorable evening (his pretentious little drama). I wish I could get hold of the book for review – one could “go to town” on it: it’s been a long time since I’ve read such a putrid piece of work. In fact: naively childlike. Anyway, concerning the matter he wants to hear more about, I won’t say a single word. Not even to berate him. He can do his own guessing from now on.

Dearest, please go to Koos and have a look at our photos. And let me know how they came out. I must still send you Windell’s book. In fact, I must post everyone’s books: the parcels have already been made up, but I keep forgetting to buy string so I can secure them.

Take care of yourself, little child, my lazy leopard. Keep yourself tightly shut – until I say “Open, Sesame!” again.

Yesterday’s dark mood has gone; the sun’s shining weakly; and later I’ll be making you a tape.

With all my love,

Once more (and always) yours.

Castella

Tuesday, 2 July 1963

Dearest little treasure,

Opperman probably knew what he was talking about all those years ago when he said, “Met die jare word die kamer / Daagliks onherbergsamer”. Heavens, how one’s associations jump around, it’s absurd, writing this down I’m thinking of Aunt Gertie’s “volume of poetry” – why? “Buite agter ’n miershoop lê / die maer lyk van Eugène Marais” and I remember that I left this green monster behind somewhere – took it out of the Press this afternoon, determined to get it to Maskew Miller – then bumped into a friend and had a bite with him – so it’s probably still lying around in a café somewhere. If her immortal work were lost …!

But I started off with the room that’s becoming so inhospitable. I’ll go through hell until something happens. In the past five days I haven’t actually spoken to a single person – acquaintances and such perhaps, hurried, somewhere or other, for, at most, half an hour or so. Because even when I called you on Saturday, friends had just arrived – I was using their open house, when they came in I went to the bathroom and lay down to chat, and then left them a bit of money after the usual unavoidable this, that and the other. And with a friend today also just skated on the surface – he asked me straight out whether he could come and sleep with me tonight – not that he’s ever managed this – but I enjoyed leading him up the garden path by telling him I’ve been promised to the divine De Lima – wonderful poet “who is currently in SA” …!!!

Darling, thank you for your despondent letter – with the secrets! – God, child, what are we going to do? I am in the same mood this evening – I just don’t feel up to this abandonment … naturally, and most importantly, not abandoned by you, but this longing for direct human contact – and I don’t mean sexual again, do you hear! And the long weekend lies ahead – one idea, one word.

Posted off your MS – (so far) made a few notes, which I will send along with the rest – have already said, utterly gripped, in parts a sluggish pace through Paris – WATCH AND PRAY. As a whole, impressive in the true sense of the word. Nicolette – lovely now – I’ve completely absorbed into myself, and eagerly look forward to the revelation of herself, which must be the big revelation, so far, from the outside, she is beautifully and meaningfully perceived. I find I’m in a hurry now to get to her. And in a way also to the ambassador, but there’s still a fair bit about him in the pages ahead. My criticism will not of course be literary, but rather human. What I am looking for is development (nice in Die Ambassadeur), unfolding, and, finally, revelation. With Erika I don’t fully chime (see your marriage); feel she must write in a far more motivated way from Italy, like this – maybe knows about Nicolette, female intuition perhaps more than knowledge; Nicolette also her ideal or something like that … connection. So far, she is right and is necessarily at her core an isolated lonely figure but must eventually join the whole: to write is to lie, in poetry more so than in prose. Your lie of God I don’t understand. Man has, after all, inherited mortality. But I am so bladdy proud of you. In the APB window they’ve made a bit of a change – you’re now right in the middle, with your ugly photo, and a whole lot of books around you. See they cut us horribly in the Sunday Times. I said a lot more, about your translations too, of course, about which I phoned three times. Probably keeping it for next Sunday. Darling, darling, I can’t write to you tonight: just want to say hello to you because you said Wednesday is the last day I should post anything. Hope you got the tape sorted out, glad you’re leaving Potch … phone to let me know where you are, and André, come TO CAPE TOWN. I need you.

Love and love,

Ingrid.

PS: Last night finally made use of the “permission” and longed even more. I.

PPS: Also cried. IJJ.

Cape Cultural Circle: Please answer this immediately, should have asked ages ago – they want to know whether you will be here on Monday 23 September and whether you would kindly address them in English. Topic: Novel and Taboo or any topic you prefer. Pretty please, darling – let me have dates for your visit in September in any case, for other programmes too. As usual, I forgot to ask you three weeks ago. The secretary of the group is here now – they really are very nice.

Love – be good – keep well: permission – that’s for Friday night.

Your Ingrid.

Potchefstroom

Thursday, 4 July 1963

Oh my lovely little girl,

Just to isolate myself for a few minutes with you is a mercy in itself; it’s become all but impossible to have any time alone. Anton is so ill he spends most of the time niggling, and there’re a hundred and one little trifles that keep one busy. I’ve also got a good old flu-cold myself that’s made my voice disappear almost completely. Etcetera, ad nauseam.

But despite all this I don’t feel depressed this morning. How could I? For two days now I’ve been looking forward to the chance to write again. Not that I have all that much to say – it’s just the fact of conversing on paper.

Meanwhile – and this, naturally, is why I didn’t write yesterday or the day before – I’ve been to Johannesburg, twice. Had wonderful conversations with my old friend Naas (Steenkamp), who will strike you as a fascinating person and has in fact given me the sharpest commentary yet on Die Ambassadeur. (And guess what, by the way? You win, I think: the title’s going to be Die Ongedurige Kind!) I gave Naas just the slightest sense of what’s going on between me and you. He sighed – because he knows from his own parents how hellish this kind of thing can be – and said nothing. He would never offer an opinion “out of turn”. It’s precisely for this reason that one can talk openly wih him. I hope to get a chance to do that this weekend.

Otherwise I spent quite a bit of time chatting to Chris Barnard and Bartho. Bill of course wrote to Bartho immediately after the party to pass on his gossip – bladdy old shrew! But: to my surprise I find these people a lot more discreet, more kindly disposed than the Cape Clique. Their point of departure is: “that’s your business”. Chris especially spoke with an open heart – because, I think (among other reasons), things between him and Annette aren’t going all that well (or am I gossiping, now, too?!); and this time we really “found” each other. For the first time, Bartho and I also managed to reach out to one other (we were helped, maybe, by a few brandies!) – and that was an experience to be thankful for. He’s a lovely person.

By the way: Rook en Oker was delayed yet again when the works manager at the printers died of a sudden heart attack. But they’re swearing high and low they’ll have the book ready by the end of the week; with delivery hopefully before the end of next week, my poor lovely little girl. (I have already ordered five copies to give to friends!)

Yesterday I finally met Van Wyk Louw: a soft, lovable, shortish person with sharp, teasing eyes. We spent an hour and a half talking about Die Ambassadeur. I think I know quite well now what I want to change in the MS. The big issue, however, is whether I can get it all done in time for publication this year. I don’t want to work in an overhasty manner – I’ve done enough of that in the past! – but I do still want to have it out this year. (I’m naturally also awaiting your opinion!)

And that’s about all the “news” I have; life here remains frustratingly monotonous. The path that you know so well, and so bitterly: more and more arguments between me and Estelle; and, even worse: more and more silences, concentrating increasingly on the unavoidable bits of dialogue only, and sleeping separately – even separate bedrooms most of the time (the “reason” being so we can take turns with Anton at night) …

I went and chatted to an advocate friend about the whole process of divorce (told him I needed the information for a novella! – and then suddenly realised that I might indeed, at a later stage, take something from this information. Or is it terrible and heartless that one can be so objective about one’s own life and suffering that one always remains aware of “literary possibilities”? Perhaps. And yet it’s also a kind of mercy, because it helps you orientate yourself continuously in relation to what’s going on, so that you’re always trying to look and live more deeply than merely on the surface. If you were to allow yourself simply to get lost in the daily chaos, you would lose your greatest claim to being human. Even if you experienced everything under the surface as meaningless, that experience too would necessarily be meaningful. Paradox! But unavoidable).

To return to the matter at hand: he explained that there doesn’t have to be any physical “leaving” of one another for a divorce to be granted. Also, that everything can be completed within three months after the first summons; and that it costs about R110 to R120, which is not too bad.

My darling, my indispensable thing, thank you for your beautiful letter yesterday. You must try and be patient with our little girl’s “sulking”! I know, it drives me mad, too. But apprently it’s best simply to ignore them. And she’s a lovable child, after all. (It’s not just Jack who loves her!)

And –! Monday I finally succeeded in getting your tape to play. What happened was that you recorded it on tracks three and four instead of one and two, and all the machines we managed to find here play only on one and two. But then we tracked down a good one – and I sat listening to your voice with great delight. (It was not a radio voice.) Actually it gave me much clarity and new insight: especially what you said about finding the balance between that which is transient (about which I’m so sensitive) and that which is lasting (which is an irrational thing); and in the midst of everything here looking so gloomy, it was “just right”; so true (“singular and old”) that everything in the mosaic began to take shape again.

I’ll try to make a tape for you tomorrow. And send you some money for another one – and for the phone call last Saturday. I don’t want you to have to spend your precious pennies on these things, too.

The wind is blowing outside – such a tedious, nagging, August wind, blowing the dry leaves up and down; the air is grey; the dead tips of the palm-tree fronds are shivering disconsolately, and an old newspaper is fluttering on the lawn. But around the corner, somewhere, a bird continues to sing (whence would he have lost his way in this cold weather?). So, sing your serenity into me – that will make everything worth the effort. A few poems are rumbling inside me. It could still take quite a while – this kind of thing is so unpredictable. But I know they’re on their way, at least. Also, is “Towenaar” finished yet, since you say you’re going to include it for HAUM? I want to see it – and hear it on tape. In the course of a letter, in the midst of other things, I’m not able to say thank you or even tell you how I feel about it. It has to be said with more than words – when I come to you. I can no longer wait. This will now probably be a little later than I’d last thought: from about the 17th until, probably, the Monday after that. (It will at least make the shift after September a little shorter!)

Until then: I miss you. Ezra Pound will have to help me say what I feel:

For my surrounding air has a new lightness;

Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly

And left me cloaked as with a gauze of ether,

As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness.

Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness

To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.

And now our ritual to keep the “little pentecostal flame” going, a radiant greeting to all your parts – the abundant, honest desire of your small body; the quiet in your eyes, breasts and legs; the kiss of your hands and hair; and the smile of your mouth and your “fugitive little footpath”. I want to conjure everything into a new whole, as all the colours of the spectrum together become radiant and white with transparent light.

With love,

Your André.

Potchefstroom

Saturday, 6 July 1963

My one and only,

Today is not a writing day. Not for want of desire, because then I’d never do anything but write to you. But today is one of those days when everything is simultaneously so very subtle and so unutterably confused, that words fail to achieve any form. Still, here I am, writing, from a kind of heart’s necessity; this is because I hope, at least, that the the mere process of conversing with you – as in the past, on similar occasions – will make things peaceable again.

Don’t read anything ominous into this! All I’m trying to say is that my longing, and my need to see you, are now so acute that I’m no longer satisfied with anything else.

I received your lovely, depressed letter this morning. Perhaps it’s precisely the awareness of your desperate loneliness that’s making me so restless. That, and the frustration of my two-hour attempt this morning to make you a tape. But the machine – an enormous stereo apparatus in the psychology laboratory – simply refused to produce anything decent; my voice sounds so soft and faint on the tape that I have no choice but to wait until next week Wednesday, when I get back home. (Meanwhile, please write to me there – in Grahamstown – okay?)

About your – our – agony, or “distress” in recent times, one should perhaps seek consolation in [Søren] Kierkegaard: “Despair is one of the maladies of which it can be said that it is the greatest misfortune not to have known it ... because the awareness of the spirit can never be achieved but through despair.” And this experience is impossible on a purely theoretical plane. Schwarz (he of The Psychology of Sex) says at the start of his book: “One must suffer the laws of things, not only observe them.”

This is so precious and enriching in its own right that one doesn’t want – or dare – to be without it. To quote Schwarz one last time: “Essential problems of life permit of no solution.” I think this is humanity’s great blind spot, its error: why do people want ready-made solutions? They’re not necessary; they deny the irrational core of life. Indeed, life is not a calculation that one devises in order to arrive at an answer, where you can write Q.E.D.! (Even Francois in Lobola very nearly did this – in the book’s first impression, anyway!) Life is simply there to be lived (and felt). Once one accepts this certainty, then one has made good progress en route to the vague place called “happiness”. (Moreover, people seek “happiness” too abstractly, too distantly, and also too far in the future. It actually lies here: here in the yearning and the never-never fulfilment of love; it lies in your tired, happy smile when you, filled with secrets, fall asleep next to me; it lies even in this great longing of ours now that our little flame burns alone between us without its being physically renewed every day – like the eternal flame under the Arc de Triomphe. It’s in any case bright enough to keep burning between us in our away-from-each-other state.)

Thank you for your provisional comments on the MS. I think your objections to Erika will fall away when you see her “in action” in relation to the ambassador. And Nicolette? I’m going to rewrite quite a lot – and I look forward to discussing this with you in ten days’ time (do you realise, just ten days!).

By the way, I could hardly conceal my laughter (and embarrassment) on Wednesday at Van Wyk Louw’s when he said: “Tell me, what is the sign that Nicolette sometimes makes? I didn’t quite get it.”

“The fica sign – against the Evil Eye, or just a challenge to the Unknown.”

“But what does it look like?”

And so I had no choice but to make the sign in his direction. (You know: when you stick your thumb through your middle and index finger!) I don’t think anyone else has ever made this gesture in the face of the illustrious Louw!

Man … and, by the way: can you feel how the tristesse of this letter’s beginning has just vanished? I feel radiantly happy, so much that I almost can’t write fast enough … yesterday I bumped into Prof. T.T. Cloete, who has just returned from overseas. He lectures Afrikaans and Dutch literature here and is one of our finest critics. Only Rob is more or less his equal. (You might have read some of his work in Standpunte?) Anyway, in the course of our conversation, Die Blomblaar Is Requiem [The Petal Is a Requiem by Pieter Venter] came up – and naturally he also thinks it’s rubbish (although his judgement of certain writers is not as harsh as mine). I told him, just by the way, that he [Pieter Venter] used to be married to you.

“Goodness,” he said, “now one can more easily understand why they got divorced! Ingrid Jonker’s work is so lucid and polished.” Nice, isn’t it? And he said this purely on the basis of Ontvlugting. I then informed him about Rook en Oker – and I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t prescribe the book here, at a later stage. In any case, he ordered a copy immediately.

Child, girl, little woman: I feel so proud when people say such lovely things about you. I’m so hell-bent in love with you. And be warned: when I get there, you’re going to say “Hell!” whether you like it or not.

On the beautiful tape you made, you said: “Why are people so afraid of passion? Why do they treat us like children?”

It’s true. I believe that the masses fear passion because it exposes them to the freedom and honesty of love. The masses feel safe only on well-trodden terrain, and love is terra incognita – “Ultima Thule”. And: children? Perhaps this is actually a compliment. Doesn’t the Bible say one must have the heart of a child to pass through the eye of a needle?

Against my will and best intentions, I must start saying goodbye, because the house is beginning to wake up from its afternoon nap and my short period of merciful solitude with you is over. But now I feel satisfied and happy and fulfilled, because all this time I’ve been – and am – so clearly aware of you. I hope the long weekend won’t be too dismal, my little angel. Make a few tapes (I’ll send a small cheque). And I’ll phone you soon. We might leave Jhb on Monday – but “everything is uncertain”: I’ll first have to see whether I can find a discreetly positioned telephone.

The Cape Cultural Circle: Okay, for your sake, then. I think I’ll be with you from 21–30 Sept. Alas too late for your birthday, but we can postpone the celebration just a little (you will in any case have your second birthday on the 23rd!).

I’m going to see if I can’t siphon off some of the money from the Huisgenoot articles to pay for your things at the Bantry Bay hotel. I find it just too awful that you should have to live without your stuff.

Out of curiosity: who’s the presumptuous (and mysterious!) “friend” who wanted to sleep with you and who had to make way for De Lima?! (“I appoint you with an appointment …”!)

Darling, dearest, smallest, loveliest: be sweet and light; I’m coming, and I miss you. I “sleep” with you far more than you might imagine!

With all my love,

André.

Are the little chick’s tail-feathers starting to grow again?

Castella

Monday, 8 July 1963

Darling of the letter and the phone call and Hout Bay and darling of Franschhoek, Castella and at Koos’s and lots more at Bill’s,

Thank you for your letter, which arrived out of the blue on that godforsaken family day, and the phone call that was such a struggle – we’ve had beautiful days here (as far as nature is concerned), and I’ve had to get out with Simone. Just after the phone call, went to Marjorie and them for a meal – she can be pretty venomous – sometimes. Jack says they’re jealous of me – now I think maybe they are! He told me about the house he would build me – my god! André! I almost cried.

Meanwhile, this quadrangle still provides a lot of entertainment. One remark by a well-meaning artist friend is as follows: “You cannot break up André and Estelle’s home and then go back to Jack, who is carrying on with a nineteen-year-old but maybe only for a screw.” Child, if this remark wasn’t good enough for the theatre one might lock oneself up in one’s flat and never dare come out again. My sense of humour wasn’t immediately accessible, and I was annoyed. But almost as funny was one of Ouma’s letters to an auntie (years ago): “A wool farmer, angered, called on my daughter …”

And then there’s Bill’s outrageous letter and of course one wants to laugh at it before rage and the sense of the dramatic gain the upper hand … If you need any further information about the Cilliers-Jonker family, you can go and find out about my mother at Valkenberg any time. “Mad from loneliness” and driven by the “small murderous world” …! But now I’m probably just bitter and every person probably just gets what they deserve, or so the Old Testament teaches us. The “item” concerning the letter to Bartho I’ve mentioned to M., so that Cape Town can get it properly wrought and welded and embellished tomorrow, after that I spake not a word, and went off to read a mysterious book. Darling André, do I sound bitter? But you will probably understand. Until you arrive, I’m going to stay here in my flat and be good. You say that my last letter was “despondent” but I’m sure there’s at least one you didn’t receive … probably only arrived after you left. I’m still reading Sempre.

All that bothers me of course is us. But I find Pot better. Admit that I’ve already been spoilt by the lovely Pot-Pourri! Wrote you something about Die Ongedurige Kind (bravo!) in the letter you didn’t get. As for Rook en Oker, well that heart attack was of course amusing to me at the time. A thing like that would of course happen to my book. Glad you found comfort in the little tape. Sometimes I chat to you on our “home tape” because “between stone and stone, and between human and human / how terrible, God, the silence and the reticence”.

Do you know, darling (my handwriting really does look just like yours now!), sometimes (today) I think like Van Wyk that “die dood is mooi”. As in the past, one beauty, familiarity – know, forgive, accept. But that’s when I get SCARED, let’s get a drink and talk, people, have courage, evil will change into good … (!!!) And for me those (people) are so lekker-Afrikaans. Also don’t want to think any more. When you hear from me again, it will be my own body.

Ingrid.

PS: Which suddenly makes me think of these rather good lines from [Pieter] Venter (and inspired by the paranoia that every good artist must have and which you and I, darling person, can now develop beautifully!):

My lords, drink of me, no spoon is necessary.

The trial will continue

and end

like a scorpion tail

There will be further evidence later.

And so to bed. As you say in your letter, one always thinks (it’s such a covert, guilty thought, always, in every experience, almost immediately, in “literary” terms). I know this, of course. The corpse isn’t even cold yet, then … It would be disgusting, should we write a poem: Poetry, the Vulture …? The desolate, lonely walking away of a person, the genuine grief about it, and at the same time THE THING. How I laughed, my André, when you quote Van Wyk Louw: “die drel trek oral saam …” Went and read the poem … But it’s probably not something to feel guilty about, just part of an inevitable self-awareness.

Till Wednesday, then.

God bless, God bless.

I.

Tuesday: Better this morning! This dew-ripe innocent grey dawn!

IJ.

PPS: Tomorrow back in the deafening machinery.

{Simone has neatly sealed all my airmail envelopes. Perhaps just as effective, without anything inside.}

Grahamstown

Tuesday, 23 July 1963

My little darling,

Just two days – and already I’m caught up in the unavoidable daily business of living, the river that like the proverbial “show” simply must go on (To where? Until when? And why? Ours is not to reason why). When our little paragraph gets written one day, our three months might well look like no more than a sentence in parenthesis – but it’ll be one of the most meaningful sentences of all, bringing with it a new dimension and changing the course and meaning of that paragraph forever.

Ironic: the ambassador also only had three months! Or is it actually true that three is a kind of holy number? And holiness, say the exegetes, means something like “seclusion”. Or, perhaps: exception. In which case our three months were precisely that: a small piece that splits off from predictable time (“Render us immortal for a single hour”!).

As to what lies ahead, I know nothing and I dare not hope or predict anything. One has to become quite humble in one’s predictions! Still, I don’t want to think about the future as empty – that would be too defeatist, in advance. Rather, then, welcome the kind of tristesse upon which Françoise Sagan based her novel. By the way, do you know the Éluard poem from which the title Bonjour Tristesse is taken? It reads – translated very poorly – like this:

Vaarwel tristesse

Gegroet tristesse

Jy is geskryf in die lyne van die uitspansel

Jy is geskryf in die oë wat ek liefhet

Jy is nie geheel-en-al misère nie

Want die armste lippe verraai jou

Met ’n glimlag

Gegroet tristesse

Liefde van die geliefde liggame

Mag van die liefde

Wie se beminlikheid orentkom

Soos ’n monster sonder liggaam

Ontnugterde hoof

Tristesse skone aangesig.

[Farewell tristesse

Hello tristesse

You are written in the lines of the heavens

You are written in the eyes I love

You are not poverty absolutely

The poorest lips betray you

With a smile

Greetings tristesse

Love of beloved bodies

Power of love

Whose lovableness arises

Like a bodiless monster

Disillusioned head

Sadness beautiful face.]

At the moment everything remains static; anything is possible – but nothing is an accomplished fact, and nothing, above all, is certain. There is a mass of work to be done (sometimes it’s a mercy to be busy), increasing financial worries, and the daily to-do with this, that and the other. But in between, actually a quiet background to all of this, are the things that mean so incalculably much: your voice, your eyes and hands, your restfulness in the white nightdress – ready for anything, timid, certain, undiscovered earth, suspected little paradise, unconditionally full of love; there is, also, Simone’s imperturbably false voice singing in the background; early daylight through a crack in the bright yellow curtains; the abstracted gaze in your eyes when you look out over the sea from a hotel room; even the manner in which you say “God” –! The tears, and the stirring of your body against mine, your breath, the swish of your hair against my face.

Little child, my own little child, it’s true: “two who once have lain together / are forever almost one”. I wander forth and carry you with me in my blood. And I worry about your loneliness in that empty little castle at night, not to mention your grey working day. I know well, very well, that everything I have inflicted upon you in this process, and in everything, will always remain with me as an immediate sense of distress and an inescapable destiny.

But you, you: that’s not something one can say thank you for, little Cocoon; it’s something for which one must be thankful: a lasting condition. But not passively – positive, creative, even though it’s never without a little nostalgia. (Like [Édith] Piaf’s “Milord” song in El Picador –! Such a neverending “good morning fiiiiish” to light and life, which in future I will “recognise at first sight”.) A sort of sustained birth-rebirth because we loved each other and were together – and, because we were: are.

Therefore: in the uncertainty of the future, in light as well as dark, in the daily trifles and the few joys, in doubt and in the moments of recognition in between – in everything you are mine, and always, and in everything, I love you. The epigraph I wrote at the front of Sempre must now become true: “Allow me to experience love even though I may not possess it.”

Unlike your ouma, I cannot pray for you. But I can try to live so that life itself is a kind of prayer, a reflection, a kind of thankfulness, love.

Protect yourself, precious, remain pure, stay radiant, keep on being yourself – girl, child, and woman, shamelessly one and the same.

Let me know immediately if we’re going to have a baby.

Look after your little chick.

Give Simone a kiss from me.

Love me. And try to forgive me for what I’ve had to inflict upon you without ever wanting to do anything but make you happy. I love you.

Still,

Your André.

Friday, 26 July 1963

WRITERS PRAYER LORD MAKE US BREAD FROM THE STONES LOVE = COCOON

{Answer. 27/7: Writer’s prayer or poet’s? Remember the invisible umbilical cord that can never be severed. Love. André.}

Castella

Sunday night, 28 July 1963

André darling,

A week of a thousand different emotions – or different facets of the same emotion, a week of “herinnering, o pragtige skip …” A morning at 7:30 in the Gardens, still misty, darling child, fresh, lovely, a pool of naked water before the Gallery, and a rebellious belief that “everything will be all right” whatever happens, and a stubborn belief in goodness and in the “benevolence” of your body. Really only began on Wednesday morning to heave a sigh after the knockout blow – Uys once said: “Oh well, now anything can happen, M. gave me the death blow.” Simple memories, the handling of a book, or your woollen jersey (the hairy one) by my head when I go to sleep and wake up, like that second day. And all those crazy small things will probably be nothing more than an accent on a letter in our little sentence, won’t they?

Thank you for Friday’s beautiful letter – simultaneously hurts and heals, actually. Thank you for your telegram, and thank you for your pills and your sponge. This time you forgot fewer things, but you left far more behind. As long as there is hope there is love, and while it’s there I unlearn nothing, love is, as you know, too precious.

Thank you for Bonjour Tristesse. You mustn’t worry about me. Like you, I say that (see Bonjour Tristesse) to myself, and I live like that. But I didn’t, for instance, take dreams into account:

Ik heb vannacht met u gewandeld

in de dove lanen van de slaap

en nu het morgen is geworden

is er niets veranderd

dan dat die twee, die in de nacht tesaam

volkomen bij elkander waren

mij weer alleen gelaten hebben in de morgen

en samen verder zijn gegaan.

Last night, e.g., Jack and I went to see some people in Llandudno: I couldn’t get far enough away from the city and the daily doing and talking. We slept in the same room – the usual test of my refusal – but this was accepted. When, half-asleep, I heard something moving and asked, “Darling, what is it, my André?” the door slammed shut; but when he came back in the early hours, he was calm and friendly, we walked ten miles in the foul weather, next to sand dunes and mountain paths, swam twice in the ice-cold water and had a lovely peaceful supper, without anything being mentioned again regarding my enquiry. Now I am liberatingly physically tired, and want to fall into bed, and I am not unhappy. And before I carry on writing, because it is already twelve o’clock – I want to make some tea and take a bath. With your lovely sponge. So you see, God is a God of grace. Love keeps waiting, darling.

12.30 am. Beautiful blue pyjamas with the memory of your secrets and the colour of absence. And outside it’s raining a grey hell. I suppose I should also tell you some news – such as it is. Chris sends many regards and thank yous for the book. He and Jannie [Gildenhuys] apparently “enjoyed” us “terribly” that intimate Saturday afternoon. He brought me a milk tart and listened to your lovely recording of “Groet in Bruin” [“Salute in Brown”] and oh, the restless child. Uys beginning to talk again, though somewhat businesslike: apparently has been meaning to talk to me. Wrote you a note the other day – lying here in my desk with all the evidence – that sombre Thursday: “Lord, you have hedged me behind and before.” The whole thing sounds far too light-hearted now: will show it to you one day. My telegram: surely it can be poet or writer (prose)!

I’ve started to write poems – about the “stones”. The form isn’t good enough yet.

And I’m looking after my little chick.

And I gave Simone a little kiss from you.

And I love you. Very much.

And “hierdie las van reën wil ek nie sien nie

Op die water van jou voorkop

Op die water sonder bodem van ons eenheid.”

And I’ll let you know, on the eighth.

Be happy, and patient, tender love, good man.

Your Ingrid and Cocoon.

PS: Why do you write to me ordinary mail?

Funny!

Love, my little treasure,

I Jonker.

Grahamstown

Thursday, 1 August 1963

God, thank you, most precious little cocoon,

For yesterday’s letter. The last few days, especially since the weekend, I’ve not known which way to turn. I try to work just to keep everything under control – mind over matter – but I feel overwhelmed all the time by the finality of everything (and the impossibility of finality). The night before last I wanted to phone you (Estelle now works three nights a week in the library, and the awareness of an empty house becomes too much for me; then I’m also physically aware of my loneliness). But in the end I didn’t, mainly because I feared the futility of this inadequate way of communicating. And then, yesterday, your letter arrived. I was already on my way to class and could read only a phrase or two here and there. I can’t remember at all what I said to my students after that!

Because, darling: I love you.

What you wrote about the Llandudno episode first touched me, then made me rudely, horribly jealous; and finally so amused me that I had to go sit in my study and laugh out aloud. I can just see it happening. Actually it’s strange that the same thing hasn’t yet happened here, because I wake up with you almost every night, and try to touch you, or talk to you – and then lie awake for hours afterwards just longing.

All in all, our three months are actually a poem. As Robert Frost (who has suddenly “opened up” for me) says in an essay on poetry: “Poetry is a momentary stay against confusion” – and that’s so exactly what our little island of togetherness is. (He also says: “It begins with delight and ends with wisdom –”)

Yesterday I received a lovely little Penguin book, Modern Poetry from Africa. And in it I found this piece – “Love Apart” – which was an immediate “fit” (even though it’s probably a little sentimental):

The moon has ascended between us,

Between two pines

That bow to each other;

Love with the moon has ascended

Has fed on our solitary stems;

And we are now shadows

That cling to each other

But kiss the air only.

Thank you for the clipping about your “The Child”. That’s the kind of naive, sincere commentary that has far more value in the long run – it’s more human – than a long literary analysis. And you are a very precious person.

Talking about “The Child”: may I send it to a friend in Sweden so he can try to have it published there – in Swedish?

I finally found some time to start revising Die Ambassadeur. I’ve been reworking it quite radically – and enjoying every moment; in fact, working myself half to death. But now I must get those last few pages back U R G E N T L Y !!!!!, you hear? Try to finish reading it this weekend, please, bigbladdyplease.

“News”?

In a certain sense everything’s quite neutral here. There’s no active resistance from my side, or from hers. It’s a kind of “working arrangement”; a surface equability – which can actually be far more exhausting, more sterile than conflict. But it has to be like this. I don’t always know just how to pull it all off. So often I feel like throwing in the towel and letting everything just “go to hell” so I can come to you. But one must learn to live with blinkers on, to adapt, prune, and prune even more. Being human does not mean being great or good.

There have been no moves toward physical conciliation yet, not even a single attempt. I don’t see my way clear to doing it. You are too full, and fully-fledged, inside of me.

And I’ve had so many secrets that I wanted to give you, again –!

Maybe the previous ones did in fact reach some “destination”? As I worked things out, there’s a possibility that Friday’s and Saturday’s could’ve made a little baby. We’ll know between the 6th and the 8th!

I want to know immediately if you find other – more human – work. I want to know everything, even if it hurts me. That also means: everything about Jack.

Silly, silly letter. It’s a result of all this deprivation: one is crammed so full with everything that it all becomes incoherent on paper, even fatuous, because one’s in a hurry to get everything said.

I am certain of one thing only: after all the straying, and the restlessness, I now feel happy, sitting here and conversing with you. Clarity has returned. Because there is always “hope, faith and love”. And the greatest always comes last. Has the little chick grown new feathers yet?

Is Simone well behaved?

Are you?

Are you happy?

Write everything, everything, child, girl, woman. My cocoon.

Your André.

PS: I want to make another tape for you, but I’ve been looking in vain for the one I gave up on in Potch; and I’m too broke to buy another. (But maybe I can get by for a few days without chocolate and buy a tape after all!) Meanwhile I’ll have to project onto my miserable old yellow sponge and at least take a bath with you!

PPS: I include a copy of what I wrote about Uys for the Penguin thing. Give it to him: maybe it’ll protect your precious little head from his wrath.

PPPS: I love you.

PPPPS: André.

PPPPPS: Have you realised that your signature, under your letter’s PS (IJonker) actually looks like this: Tjanker!? [Cry-baby] (If that’s the case: don’t, be happy, be light, be free, be you.)

PPPPPPS: I have handed out all five Rook en Okers already. They were all received with great delight.

A.

Grahamstown

Sunday night, 4 August 1963

My little angel, my loveliest,

A sense of satisfaction tonight, because I have completed a big, intensive shift of revision on Die Ongedurige Kind; in the process, I did some drastic rewriting, too.

Since your letter arrived last week, my “emotional curve” has slowly begun to head upwards – mainly as a result of your letter. (The preceding days had been hellishly uncertain.) And now there is, even in our separateness, a certain something that cannot be taken away; I have taken everything up inside me, and it’s so much a part of me now that I could never lose it. And I’m taking care, even while revising the book, to add little pictures of you: your speckled shoulders, the little freckle high up on your left thigh, the lovable habit you have of twirling a curl around your finger whenever you’re sad or upset –

Girlie, I’m so angry and sorry about Rook en Oker! Bartho has written to say – as he no doubt told you too – that the second run was also pulped because the print was smudged and the upper lines uneven. And now it will apparently take at least another month … But I went and wrote to him immediately (a little presumptuous of me?) and said he should try, now that there’s been even more negligence, to make a slight change to the order of poems; for the sake of costs, it will have to be limited to a minimum – and so I proposed only the following: “Liedjie van die Troebadoer” [“Song of the Troubadour”] and “Ramkiekieliedjie” [“Ramkiekie Tune”] should be shifted to part 5 (the “Coloured Songs”); “Die Kind” should be placed in part 3 (together with a group of poems with greater reach and intention); and “L’Art Poétique” must go in part 1, where it should fit well. Do you agree?

And then I unexpectedly received a cheque from the insurance people for the stuff that got stolen during the holiday – see, the police do sometimes help! – and I was able to go and buy planks and bricks to extend my bookshelf along another wall; in the last while my study has begun to look rather miserable with piles of books all over the floor; now one can walk freely again.

God, my love, I shouldn’t even write such things, because then I realise anew how much I want to share it all with you. Do you know the poem – “Lonely” – by the SA “African” [William] Bloke Modisane?:

it gets awfully lonely,

lonely;

like screaming,

screaming lonely;

screaming down dream alley,

screaming of blues, like none can hear;

but you hear me clear and loud:

echoing loud,

like it’s for you I scream.

Especially these days, now that it’s getting warmer, the days longer, and the twilight evenings so abundant and full of far-off sounds, I want to go walking hand in hand with you for miles and miles along my pine-tree path; get tired with you; and then lie down on the soft carpet of pine needles, under the trees, to become one with you and the trees and the heavens.

That early morning before Jan and them arrived: I think that was still one of our richest “sharing of secrets”. But it’s almost impossible to single any one out. The Sunday morning when you started crying when I was still inside you – remember? – was also very intense and irreplaceable; and the afternoon at Chris’s – so many moods, so many notes on such a wide range. When I look back I always find myself wondering: is it possible that one can live so much, and so deeply, in just three months?

I wish – to the point of bursting, actually – that I could once again come up with a poem. But “my words are too few”, I am not a poet, delightful, free, deep, radiant person. You are.

I love you so much, so very much. In my thoughts I want to touch you softly again and say goodbye to all of you – salut d’amour!

To your little tummy.

And your soft thighs.

And your tiptopnippletitties.

And your eyes.

And your ears.

And your little chick.

My regards to all that is mine. (Thus also to the poor old leucodendron!)

And, even though we don’t belong to each other, let us be each other’s. More: let us be each other. Now. And therefore – always.

I am now – you must please forgive me – going to sleep with you.

With love,

André.

Tuesday, 6 August 1963

My dearest Treasure,

Wrote to you last night but once again it was one of those letters for the desk; and now here in this grey pit I hurriedly try to establish communication [“kommunikatie tref”]. Enclosed the small poem – our moesie-child isn’t there, as you will see in the little poem. Sorry. Had begun writing to you to save money for me to slip over the border to Swaziland had things gone differently. Another reason why Swaziland looks so alluring is because I am now truly cornered – should have considered a long time ago that Piet Venter has been lying low and lurking in Johannesburg. He has just sent me an ultimatum: hand Simone over to me, sign the documents … or else! So I went to the lawyer immediately yesterday to let him know that I will defend any case he attempts to bring against me. It’ll be horrible if it comes to that, but what does one pay for one’s child? Also, thank [Bill] de Klerk for spreading “news” in Johannesburg! But back to our “island”.

Thank you, liefsteling, for your letter of Saturday. And so, why were you so jealous? I made my refusal quite clear! I am still Cocoon! In your letter my eyes dwelt on this yet: “There have been no moves toward physical conciliation yet”. “What a miserable thing man is.” For another half an hour this word kept flashing before me, I looked at it as, years ago in our beautiful Hout Bay room, you had looked at “eventide” in Aunt Gertie’s poems, and repeated this repulsive word again, once, softly: “eventide”. And so on Saturday in the godly golden sun on my way to a swim I said yet yet yet!

You want to know everything about Jack. It would take a book to explain everything, but let us trust each other in some essentials. Jack is dear and friendly and I see him often: unfortunately there are times (like Sunday night from nine to one o’clock) when we have words, he says he doesn’t understand and apparently thinks that we have an “arrangement” and “you’re marking time”.

I don’t know what to say to him. And now there are still the things in the poem. Our moesie-child! But please tear up my letter rather than your clothes!

I wish clarity would come again – everything of the last three days is so muddled. I wanted to make a little tape for you too and didn’t have any money. I wanted to read “Us” to you – it sounds nice on the tape and Mrs Bouws says it’s beautiful, but sad. Probably. My book (ridiculous!) has been postponed for another month or two. Bartho said they didn’t use “nice Finnish paper” and hadn’t cleaned the lead type. Now it has to be reprinted. My six and your six were sent down before he had seen the book.

So! Your Ambassadeur is on its way. This last part is brilliant: did you also want to work on that? Why?

Bladdy Barend Toerien was here on Friday night, he has a new volume at the press, said to Jack: “You’re too good for her.” And that’s all the news. Chris [Lombard] got your letter and told me about it, he doesn’t really know how to answer! He said I am slightly “disturbed”. Almost went MAD the night he was there.

You mustn’t be cross with me about this disappointing piece of writing: one can hardly think in this grey little cage. Make me a tape and tell all – you’re alone three nights a week now, aren’t you, and it’s so awful!

And how are things with the papie? And are you generally happy, resigned, or are you rebellious? No, you in fact wrote that there’s no resistance there … Stay well and write to me.

Love darling,

Cocoon.

Castella

Wednesday, 7 August 1963

My darling André,

Thank you for your greeting this morning just when I was feeling so grey – like my last letter to you with the poem. You have to use it for Sestiger, okay? (The poem.) But is the dedication too personal? If it’s still in time for the unlucky Rook en Oker you may – since you are now acting as my “business manager”! – send it on to Bartho. But maybe the title should be changed to “So” and the dedication omitted. There are others I can dedicate to you more openly. Yes, liefsteling, I agree with your rearrangement of the verses, although of course in the one case I think that “L’Art Poétique” should be the last poem – but it doesn’t make much difference to me. A friend of mine, Marcelle du Toit, whose judgement I rate highly, thinks some of the love poems are “too sensitive”. Writing is just such a delicate affair. Bartho’s letter about the reprint actually amused me at this stage. He should just have sent each of the critics a proof copy so that they’d have something by publication date. Wonder whether he thought of that. Hell but it’s nice to be able to chat to you for a change! It’s not unlikely that you’re sitting inside there on the couch reading Tristia and getting hungry! And perhaps you’ll phone later – it is Wednesday, after all – but you’ll be disappointed about the moesie-child. I’d love to hear your voice again – although I play the little recording of Van Wyk’s poems so often that I can imitate you perfectly!

Why do you say in your letter you’re going to do this and then – “forgive me” – just do it! A little red spot of wine has fallen onto my letter, I’m sheltering from the thunder with the heavy red glass and the little castle is clean and tidy, and you’re right. Simone’s “imperturbably false voice” is singing in the background.

Oh, child! I miss you. Last night I had another one of those relentless evenings with Jack, it was my fault – I was upset about the “court case” – don’t let anyone know about it, I don’t want Piet to hear that I’m upset, according to Jack that’s precisely what he’s trying to do. “Terrorise.”

André, one can look back and relive, and do you know what I think the biggest secret was? That dark early Sunday morning, when you took me like that and left, do you know that in your letter you spoke about the secrets of Saturday, and forgot about Sunday! Does Nicolette also say secrets? I know “Lonely”, he’s good. And [M.] Vasalis, or something like that, forgive my Dutch.

Soms als gij zwijgt en door de venster schouwt

grijpt mij uw schoonheid als een wanhoop aan

een wanhoop door geen troost te blussen

niet door te spreken, niet door te kussen

even groot als mijn bestaan en even oud.

And later: “Dat gij daar zit, zo buiten mij geboren …” When you talk about “belonging to each other”, as if that’s different from being one another’s, I don’t know from a logical point of view what you mean, even less do I now understand your inscription in Sempre. Loving is actually the only way of owning. Do you know this Walt Whitman? (Beautiful old Walt Whitman, with your beard full of butterflies …)

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,

How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over upon me,

And parted the shirt from my bosom-bare,

and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,

And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.

Liefsteling, there is so much that I would like to do with you without looking back, but one also has to live with reality. Still, it is nice to dream about the [?] mountains and the sluggish old Limpopo at night and we would lie there so lost in that beautiful old world.

It’s going well with the leucodendron. It doesn’t get much attention. Little chick is lonely. It’s going well with me, I greet you with love with tenderness with longing,

Cocoon.

You don’t phone. Mrs Oxley is out. Lay for two hours thinking of you and missing you and wondering …

The loss of the moesie-child happened after exactly one day: Strange! Perhaps disappeared temporarily because of the upset. Man, I miss you so terribly much; hope you aren’t horribly frustrated over there because of the phone call: I am! Night, beautiful man, night, and just sleep with me tonight.

Your Ingrid.

I’ve got Walt Whitman’s Complete Works. (Or as Breytie [Breyten Breytenbach] would say, I have a golden moon!)

{What’s happened to those black-and-white photos? And when are the copies coming? THE WORD LAST!}

Grahamstown

Friday morning, 9 August 1963

Darling, you, cocoon,

It’s still early, with watery sun and an agitated wind that blows and comes after one, shredding your insides like an old newspaper that’s blown against a bush.

I made a tape for you yesterday afternoon but it was just too late for the post; this means you’ll receive this letter and the tape at the same time (the latter at “Castella” when you get home). It’s not meant to be excessive. God, what I do give you or can give is already so little. I just want to talk with you a little so I can compose myself. Yesterday was another of those upsetting days. First there was the fact that I had to look after Anton the whole afternoon, from two to six, while I already had more work on my plate than I could deal with. (And if I resist then I’m apparently “not prepared to do my fair share”.) I’m always happy to look after him; he and I love each other so much. But when it gets forced on me and I have to work, it leaves me feeling disheartened.

And then yesterday evening it was “story night” at the drama club – which (despite my sarcastic conjuring of spectres on the tape) actually went very well. I went alone. Estelle didn’t really “care” to go, whether or not I was one of the people reading. In itself this was of course a mere trifle, but it just made me think again: God, we have almost nothing to bind us, never did, although this was easier to camouflage in the past. Not any more. She shows no interest in anything I do; I, in my turn, show no interest at all when she comes home and tells me what the librarian said or what Mrs X said in reply. When I – ecstatically tired – told her the novel was finally done (now, after nine months), she said: “Oh. Nice.” I want no “fuss”. That would be even more loathsome than neutrality. It’s just that there’s a total, complete inability to share anything! And this must now go on and on. Ingrid, Ingrid, I don’t know what to think any more. I can hardly think at all, in fact. I’m so tired of everything. I just want to rest somewhere, find some quiet, where I can love, and work. How does one just “carry on” – “from day to day / till the last syllable of recorded time”?

Oh God, child, I love you so much. I came back to Grahamstown and thought it might not be too presumptuous to expect happiness; the love has burnt itself out – but maybe we could at least continue with a kind of “agreement”, especially since I can take refuge in my work. But now even my work has to cave in under the pressure of something as banal as child-minding? It’s ridiculous. Humanity is not exactly something God can be proud of.

Is it really so wrong to ask for just a little pure love, some heart and understanding, a little sharing of things with someone, the trust of eyes and hands, the assurance of a hungry young body?

I shouldn’t actually post this letter. I shouldn’t upset you too. You already have so much to bear. What right on God’s earth do I have first to bring you some happiness and then to break it down – and then to come complaining to you about how unhappy I am? Forgive me, darling. It’s just that – in this morning’s mad wind – I arrived at a place where I no longer know what to do.

Thank you for your beautiful poem. Did it just arise spontaneously – or did you start working on it, almost as a premonition, some time ago? It’s so well-finished; with its contrast between “late / April” (which tells us more than it does the “reader”, who’s looking in from the outside; because it was late in April, that time) with its autumn, its dying leaves – and the blossoms of “tomorrow”; the double meaning of that beautiful, sorrowful “blood”; the phrase “your seed spilt on the ground” that becomes “our un / refined seed”. Very lovely. And ter-ri-bly sad. But above all, beautiful.

In these few weeks I myself have been thinking a lot about our child, our little girl, Heloïse or Deirdre.

By the way, on the tape I expressed some doubt about your title “Us”; but I’ve increasingly come to realise how perfectly it does in fact work. Precisely because the “you” dominates at first and the “I” is detectable only through her voice, until the third stanza says it outright: “us” – and it breaks up immediately afterwards into “you” and “I”.

Child, my whistle, my song, my own: with everything that’s going on, and everything being so unpredictable, we still remain, now, us, and I love you, and it’s only the knowledge of your being there that still makes everything possible. “We are fellow actors in this comedy” – but we are not exactly blindfolded. And love remains full of light, caressing light.

Write soon, my dearest cocoon. I would love to be able to crawl inside you and hide away there, and enable you to take shelter inside of me at the same time (“fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget”).

soos ’n seeblom uit die water t’rugvou

en sy eie moer word en sy eie

donkerte, en louer, die kou buitewater

weerstand bied, en twee-twee (binne toe)

ritssluitend ín-paar.

With all my love,

Your André.

Grahamstown

Monday afternoon, 12 August 1963

Little cocoon, little delicous, little you,

Thank you for your dearest, higgledy-piggledy letter of this morning, written from all four corners of the earth, so to speak (last Wednesday night before I phoned). I want to say thank you, just for the hell of it.

I feel so guilty about my mad, bad-tempered, downhearted letter; I should never have posted it. It’s not right for me to make you unhappy, or make you even more unhappy. In the meantime my carousel has at least turned a little. I’m feeling more restful and quiet again, and glad about the things we do at least have. Something like Han Suyin says in The Mountain is Young (Do you know her? At times nicely poetic, but also often sentimental; a bit of a crescent moon) –

I had the feeling from the first day I met you, that we were setting out on a journey together. I didn’t ask whether it would be long or short, and certainly I did not know how far together we would go. But dreary it would never be, and no one else did I want for a companion. And that it would last till death is far too much to ask. It was enough that I had found you, to walk with, a little moment or a long time. And all my life I would love you for this being together a while.

This, every word, is what I want to say, myself.

I have been going around all weekend humming bits of that feeble little tune Simone loved singing so much, the one the two of you sang together that time. Oh, God, it’s the little things that claw at one most deeply!

You ask so many questions in your letter! – what I mean by “belong to each other” and “be each other’s”. Difficult to paraphrase but there is a difference. “Belong” is possessive, smotheringly proprietary, material – like a book that belongs to me (the physical book); the book’s content can be mine. “A state of being” – as against “a state of having”. “Be each other’s” is more pure, fuller, more complete, and lasting. See?

And you say loving is indeed having. No! Loving is: wanting to have: want to have, the always-reaching, always-exploring of the land that is yours but which can never lie before you, mapped and complete. It’s a quest, a journey of discovery. That’s what I meant in Sempre when I said I want to love you; have you, or possess, I can’t. You’re free, ungraspable – and invaluable. But now it easily becomes a play with words (“the stench of burnt offering”!).

The other things in your letter:

I’m sending your beautiful poem to Bartho for 60 (he is in charge of No 2 as well); I will keep the title as “Us” (it’s better than “So”). I shall leave the dedication out, as per your request: we know, after all. (Who doesn’t know?!)

The photo-prints – I have been too broke to have them done. But I’ll send them away promptly.

The virginal white photos – I have added nothing further to the film and therefore can’t yet do the prints.

Nicolette’s “secrets”. Naturally. (When will I get her back?!!!!!)

What your friend says, about your love poems that are too sensitive: not so. They are delicate, like gossamer, a few of them far more tender than anything in Eybers. But never overly so. That’s precisely what makes them so meaningful for me: that the words remain so finely balanced.

Unfortunately Bartho has written to say it’s too late to change the order of poems, as the reprint has already been done. (They moved very fast, it seems to me.) I will immediately ask him about copies for critics. Rob has received a copy (he’s one of the prize judges).

Thank you for the nostalgic drop of red wine. For me, red wine will always, always be you. From the very first night, remember? (I still remember how I spent almost half the night leaning against the wall with a heavy head, down-in-the-mouth and full of longing, hearing you go to the bathroom every so often –)

I’m glad to hear our leucodendron’s doing well. And the poor lonely little chick! But the papie is also lonely and longs “for cosmos and coherence”, and I so badly want to make a moesie-girl who won’t again be naughty and choose the drain over your tiny inner chamber.

One of these days I want to start a novella, which begins with the arts ball where you were the deer and came home wearing only your little horns. And then connect that with the old Sumerian ritual at their fertility feast: beautiful young people play the roles of gods and then take poison afterwards – because anyone who has once been incarnated a god, may not continue to live as a human. And then connect that to the Eastern myth about the god of love who assumes material form only when two lovers embrace. It must be a vortex of movement, the whole story – start off almost incomprehensibly like the chaos of Genesis, and then become more luminous and clear, and it must all be us, eventually becoming very chaste and still, in a holy way. It’s still just an idea, a rhythmically sensory idea; perhaps it will take a long while before it becomes word or flesh. But it will come. I feel it rumbling.

Please make me a tape in which you only read poems. Éluard, [N.P. Van Wyk] Louw, your own, Van Schagen, Whitman, anything. Will you? I’ll send you some money.

(I received royalties for Sempre! – sold almost 700 in the first two weeks.)

Lovely, gorgeous child – I say goodbye with the glowing respect that runs in me like an attuned current, with everything I have in love (“we haven’t got anything in asparagus” refers!) “all I have done is yours, all I have to do is yours, being part in all I have, devoted yours”.

Your André. {so at-one are you & I that I tried to write “André” with a J!}

Tuesday, 13 August 1963

Darling my André,

Thank you for your wild letter of yesterday and your urgent little tape – I wrote to you last night and again this morning on the way to work, soaked through in the rain, it rained into my bag and onto my letter too, and now I am writing again, here in a café close to the Press, having coffee, smoking a cigarette, and trying to be reflective and considered – today’s reading is Lord, search my heart. Because while I love you, André, and would accept you with joy if you managed to come back to me, it would be a fiasco if I came to Grahamstown, it would mean the end of your marriage, because then Estelle would definitely not stay with you, and what about your father? Also, it would encourage Piet to go ahead with his plan, which might then also have the same consequences if it becomes public. The bald facts, which we both know so well, but which we try to skirt around; why not first go and speak to your mother – maybe she already knows?

Oh, child, I so badly want to comfort you, and I wish I had an answer, but what? And I believe that you love me, and that does make me happy. You say (naturally) that you don’t actually want to hope that “everything between me and Jack” will “come right”. Whatever that might mean – I don’t know. Of course, I am still attached to Jack, but in a destructive way – on Saturday night I had such a fight with him again that I had to take some pills and fell asleep with a burning cigarette in my hand – irresponsible! As you say, it’s caving in. So I doubt far more than before whether it will ever “come right”. Now that, on top of everything, in the midst of our “work and play”, I am able to run away and sit on a rock for hours and imagine that you are there, and imagine, like last night after I heard your tape, a house in which we share a “natural life”. It’s all so difficult and complicated, and one must of course do the right thing and choose correctly in order to live in peace with oneself and others? Not that it looks to me as if there is much of a choice, and then, then it just gets more difficult. “Irascible”: plaything of your own vacillating emotions. I would that we could just have a CHANCE, just six months or a year, to live together, even if it’s just to get to know one another better, but on the other hand no one could know you better than I know you.

My lovely good André, there is so much I want to pack into this letter, but there’s always a rush: in half an hour I have to go to the Press again. It’s so difficult even just to begin to say something, never mind having the courage to write down just one true thing; there are so many facets. And I miss you so much, I am so grateful for you; and even though I forgot the cheque (thank you very much!) today, I’ll bring it tomorrow and buy a tape, it is after all better than a letter. And thank you for your phone call, I just don’t want you to be unhappy, or restless, although the tension has made even me so touchy this past week that I am constantly fighting with or wanting to fight with someone.

You mustn’t blame old Bill de Klerk alone for “stories” – maybe it wasn’t actually his fault.

And congratulations on Die Ambassadeur; I’ll be sending your MS tomorrow; I’d very much like more of Nicolette; congratulations creative, generous, tender man with your amazing enormous understanding and knowledge and insight and energy and organisational ability. I am reading (one comfort) your translation at the moment. Meticulously and systematically I am reading it, every word that you typed. Anne says it’s a pleasure having a copy like this. (Ten minutes, heavens, then I must leave for work.)

Was delighted to hear your naughty little baby’s voice: I miss you both! Thank you, impractical, beloved as earth which always wishes to grow and gives strength for growth, for your suggestion to testify in court that we plan to marry. Won’t they perhaps think it a little irresponsible? “You must lie low.” We’ll see what happens. I don’t think it’ll reach that point. You can mention it to Bartho, I’ll also write to him because he requested “Die Bok” [“The Buck”] for an anthology. And now I must have my coffee and stop: but I carry you with me to the Press and wherever I go; and let me know immediately please exactly how many moesies you have! This uncertainty is terrible, when I try to count until I fall asleep; slept with the teddy last night. Send me the revised MS. I promise to return it soon.

And do not forget me.

I am glad you like “Us”. Chris says it’s “loaded”. It came fairly spontaneously; from an instinctive feeling, a day or two before the “little death”.

My generous-hearted love, somewhere within myself I do believe and hope and wait for you, it’s probably something one cannot, praise God, argue away.

As always,

Cocoon.

Grahamstown

Friday night, 16 August 1963

My serene little thing,

Thank you – thank you – for yesterday’s dear, austere letter in reply to my emotional outburst of the other day! All the more because it must be just as hard for you in these times to think so soberly, and so neatly. Your letter was therefore actually the seal on a gradual coming-to-rest that had been occurring in me since my earlier letter. Strange how one lives through everything in a rhythmic, cyclical manner. I know very well that disquiet and resistance will take over again one of these days. But I’m grateful for the few days of quiet in which our “little pentecostal flame” can burn without too much flickering or smoke. Everything’s glowing, like autumn leaves that burn from the inside out. And it’s a strange time, this restless month: blossoms appearing everywhere like little girls in communion clothes; the empty wind rattling loose panes, and branches scratching the rooftops; dust blowing in one’s eyes. (And here, not even an ocean!)

I posted a copy of Caesar to you today. More for the gesture than the content – although I think the content is quite neat.

Got an abhorrent review of Sempre in yesterday’s Vaderland. By one Mrs R. [Roswitha] Schutte who was first R. Geggus (she wrote Die Wit in die Poësie [The White Space in Poetry]). Commissioned by A.P. Grové. It was so bad that Chris Barnard drove to Pretoria to confront Grové about it. But Grové replied that the review was “wholly substantiated” and therefore it had to be published as is. The kind of review that takes shots at me about my use of language because I use a word like “swabbish” – and in the same paragraph she uses the word “digressies” [Anglicised solecism for “digression”]!!! But you see, the Schuttes [Roswitha and H.J. Schutte] are angry because Lobola is uncalvinistic … Oh God, the little cliques and circles and gears – and nuts. I sat down and wrote a nasty letter to Grové; but then tore it up and threw it away, deciding, quite serenely: if one writes, this is the risk one takes upon oneself, after all. Why start a campaign now? Let this text be our morning vigil today: lift up your eyes to the hills. So why worry?

Thank you for the MS, which I will probably receive soon. I wish I were there so that I could position you neatly across my lap and slap that lovely bikini-white backside of yours into a fiery red. But then, while doing so, I would, like the man in the joke, have no choice but to say: “Fuck the rugby –” and turn my attention to more delicious things.

Over here, nothing happens. Except for my own impulsivity which, a few days ago, made me feel incredibly low. In a moment of rebellion and raging resistance – it was still during my “black period” – I asked Rob: “Has anyone been appointed as secretary for next year yet?”

“No,” he said. “Do you have someone in mind?”

I should have pretended innocence. But I said – as soberly as possible: “Apparently Ingrid Jonker’s interested.”

God, girlie. I knew immediately that he knew – with a painful kind of knowing; that he feels disappointed and hurt, and totally at a loss. He just let his head drop, remained quiet for a while, and then said, with his dear, vulnerable, embarrassed little smile: “Well …” And then again: “Well …” And eventually: “No, we haven’t appointed anyone yet.”

And after this he seems to have mentioned the matter to Johan Smuts (senior lecturer; language studies) – because now he refuses to greet me, walking away whenever I approach. It’s so unpleasant when one has to work together this closely. Rob would never reproach anyone. Or say anything. It’s just that I was stupid enough to ask the unnecessary thing. But, my darling, I was becoming so desperate; I no longer know what to do or which way to turn.

And so one learns quietly to seal oneself, tighten the bolts wherever the wind’s coming in, make oneself impenetrable, like Moses in his basket of rushes, or Noah in his ark … and when will the dove fly off again and return with a leaf, when will a spirit hover over the waters once more, when will everything be new again, virginal, pure? Will we ever find serenity, little child …?

Just for a year? Six months? Darling, my Cocoon, my Ingrid: only a day, a night. Only an hour. Only now.

No, little flame: burn meekly, burn quietly; we deserve, God knows, but little – we human beings – and yet we’ve had a lot, and still have much. “No, candle, don’t cry, candle … Candle, you’ve burnt down. But I – I still am.”

Something that allows me to end on a lighter note (how acrobatic the human spirit is!): somebody phoned me yesterday to ask where a certain quotation comes from (“I call out to you like the crested guinea-fowl in the long grass calls his mate …” or something like that). It sounded familiar to me, but I unfortunately I couldn’t help, and said goodbye. Today she comes and tells me – with quite a big smile on her face – that she tracked it down.

“So?” I asked. “Where?”

“Lobola vir die Lewe,” she said.

Write again, love-lovelier-loveliest. Make a tape. Send me Simone’s little voice, too. (Do you have any idea how much I miss her? And our little castle. And you. Ach du … du … God, NO! No: I am very well behaved. Quiet and tranquil. Believe me. Maybe then I’ll believe it myself, along with you.)

Crazy. And yet also happy. And so in love with you, so taken up with you, so spent inside you. I hope you learn something from this letter. Five pages to say: I-love-you.

A kiss for the little chick (you’ll first have to give your hand the kiss and convey it further from there). And one for the leucodendron,

Your André.

Castella

Monday, 19 August 1963

My dearest moesie-man,

Congratulations on Caesar! And now of course I’ll have to read it again to know what my moesie-man wrote and be half in wonderment at his words! Thanks, darling, it looks beautiful – significant that they are publishing you this winter in the colours of mourning, these diabolical publishers! To tell you the truth, I completely forgot about Caesar, and when I got the letter this morning, I thought you were referring to the play that I would receive now (why?). And of course by that I don’t mean I still haven’t forgiven you the “sins of your youth” – but I just found it strange! Thank you, darling, who writes so many strange things, it fascinates me greatly – my eyes must have looked enormous to Anne when this new book arrived this afternoon; it lay there on my “desk”, to be handled, it lay in a workman’s hands and everyone joined in the conversation and looked inquisitively at the print and the binding, and probably also peeped at the inscription. As long as they don’t utter the word “Cocoon”, I am at peace with it, as my ouma would say.

Glad you are so relieved (!) that I am not coming to Grahamstown or at least have no plans in the meantime to take that post with Rob that is still vacant. Very decent of him to say that they don’t have anyone yet. He is civilised. And probably often wants to die in stifling South Africa. This image of him and his commentary stayed with me all day: why do you think he was disappointed? Or was he just sad because he doesn’t want you to be unhappy and alone (which means without me) …?

You said my letter was sober. Rebellion? My mom once wrote to me when she was very ill (I was about seven): “Mommy is no longer human, just one great longing.” I really think there is more longing in me than anything else: but what does our Elizabeth Eiers [Elisabeth Eybers] say: “verlange word aanvaarding, langsaamaan.” But no, God! I suppose I’ve learnt this to some degree, but not completely yet; hopefully I won’t ever, it’s fatal. In this case. Darling André.

Tonight a man, a Peter Deval-Smith [Duval Smith] of the BBC, is coming to meet me and to do a recording. Pity you aren’t here; you’d probably mean more to him than I do! The programme’s name is “Living under Pressure” and he got his insights from David Lytton’s programme “Portrait of an Afrikaner”. So now I am already mutinous and don’t actually know what to say to him. I am a workman, I eat my bread and drink my wine and keep my heart clean of sin.

And yes, the work. Because a workman is what I am, and fortunately that doesn’t yet include the masses; but still, I do this workman’s work, and the longer I do it the more it contributes to a feeling of waste and sterility, the more I become conscious of my “calling” as a woman and a poet, the more it becomes “like a lamb to the slaughter …” But perhaps, in this whole futile circular process, I’ll become a human. Which is to say then I will be able to write.

But now bath and dress and entertain the BBC. Wouldn’t it be lovely to lie here drunk when they arrive? To frighten a notary with a cut lily. Lovely man, thank you for your being near and your letter and book and messages. The ones you send wordlessly. {And I don’t mean that it is “wonderfully quiet”.}

And tell that student who asked you about the line in Lobola to leave you alone! This sad heart still has the ability to flicker up in a passion of jealousy and/or protection. And still, that you are mine, I do not comprehend …!

Do you know what Anne’s fiancé said to a “pushy” girl: “Are you made from my rib? No? Then fuck off now!” I do so love the religious values of “our coloureds”. (My ouma also always draws the comparison in her letters. What I wanted to say is, I am of you.)

Till later,

Cocoon Cocoon Cocoon Cocoon.

I just thought that I am not in hell going to take a bath, or get dressed, or get ready for the BBC: and to think I worried this afternoon that I don’t have any brandy for them! In any case, I have to give Peter Oxley’s pen back to him; he gave it to me and I’m sure he’ll soon want to do homework.

Goodnight, my beautiful man: man, it’s nice! I miss you. I have an uncontrollable urge to come and sleep with you, my purified person: by the way, how does one do without it? It’s soo loong! I mean this BREAK. What on earth is going on? Or are you really being good? I believe you. But what’s happening?

Treasure, my treasure! How far is Johannesburg from Grahamstown? Or is it in fact just as far as you are from me? I have a desire to go and live there, because here – I hardly see my old friends, and Uys is cross with me – your (lovely) piece about him gave him occasion to rail at Jack – but later said he was wrong. Apparently.

You’ve got a cheek though to always tell me that I am speckled:

toe kies my broer

die spikkelkoei vir hom

…

O waar sal ek skuil

teen die stippels wat pik?

“Ballade [Sprokie] van die Spikkelkoei”. [“Ballad of the Speckled Cow”]. Opperman. Look it up. And why haven’t you told me how many moesies you have?

Darling person. I love you so much. Dearest my André my P. Brink.

And on Sunday I told Jack I never never want to go to Sea Girt again because I no longer want to be a half-guest in a half-house … and now?

Went and lay in the Gardens today and smoked a long cigarette under the surprised eyes of my brothers-in-suffering. Went for a meal at the Charcoal Inn on Saturday evening. Dreamt of you. Very lovely child, together we will go and meet a new memory / Together we will speak a tender language.

Darling old André. Write soon, and come to me,

Cocoon.

PS: And now: I almost forgot the most important thing. I want to come to PE for a weekend. It won’t be so terribly expensive. I will tell no one except the trusted person with whom I will leave Simone. And then you must send me travel money. You’ve got lots now from Sempre, haven’t you!

Love,

Ingrid.

Sometimes I feel so scared that I’ll forget, like in Hans Anderson’s [?] poem, I have to see you complete and whole again, and when you’re with me, darling my André, I don’t want to look at you, do you still remember?

For a weekend like that I could simply stay away on the Monday. There’s a long weekend in Sept.; but WORKERS don’t have that day free; I’ll take it. Do you think we can RISK it? I actually think we can. Tell me if it’s not “serene” enough. And tell me quickly. Neat and tidy. Oh, woe.

The BBC is now literally on my doorstep.

BYE. Goodbye my mine.

I.J.

My André, people gone now, it’s twelve o’clock. Also gave them your address; but so far no interview – am still a little suspicious of their motives – they also want to try and see Opperman and Van Wyk – all the “ondergetekendes”. Spoke to Uys on the phone. His “rant” came down to this: 1. He likes the piece you wrote about him very much.
2. Must say more about the translation, the quality. 3. He was the first one in Afrikaans who used free verse. 4. Talk about his English work.

He actually sounds sweet again.

My little treasure, still wanted to say sorry about [Johan] Smuts. Don’t take too much notice of it. Probably just jealous or worse. You’ll just have to ignore him. And stay, stay loving me.

Your Cocoon.

Grahamstown

Wednesday, 21 August 1963

My dearest little playmate,

Thank you for this morning’s tape after the long silence that had filled me with such doubt and uncertainty. For me, the weekend especially, Sunday in particular, was full of premonition and suspicion. An almost uncanny feeling of commitment coming under threat. Was I right?

Meanwhile, you ask me for advice from within your own uncertainty:

What could I give to you,

I who am so poor?

Must I give of my sorrow

And of my darkness?

What you say about the tape that never got sent: the sense of doubt about whether there’s any point in continuing with “acts of communication” [“communicatie te treffen”]. I don’t know. There are so many possible angles from which to view the matter. My own considered feeling, and my only point of clarity, is this: we made our decision – it was bitter, but responsible. At this stage, it doesn’t look as if there can be any more for us, together, than yearning and hope. Bodily, we will perhaps be able to love each other, on occasion, if I can steal an hour or a day and come to you, two or three times a year – if we’re lucky. We therefore can’t count on fulfilment – or, at least: continuous fulfilment – in that area, no matter how much we need it. (And I for one have a terrible need for such physical fulfilment, for expression and discharge, especially now.) But: is there not very much that we can still give each other, in the face of, and despite, these meagre little facts – in our love, fully, as people? Must one, because living together is impossible, also withhold all possibility of rich and precious contact? I don’t believe so. It might be the case that, in the long run, it won’t be as strong a need as it is now. But we decide on this every day, and with each letter: now, for now. And right now I need you very much. All of you; but while I cannot or may not have everything, I at least want that which is in fact possible.

I must be reasonable and acknowledge that, in maintaining this attitude, I am being selfish: that such contact is likely, more than anything, to harm you? (And yet I don’t believe it – or don’t want to, or can’t.) Therefore: speaking for myself, if I had to decide, believe, then the contact – along with the necessary hurt in every letter about what “could have been” or “should be” – is a fulfilment and a mercy, time and time again, and something to be thankful for. I would therefore like to continue, because it does not, in the final instance, seem futile. But you also have to decide. And I would have to abide by whatever you decide, because I love you in a way no person has ever before loved.

I cannot visit in September, because I dare not come alone again – and Estelle is working. I was on the point of coming down next weekend! Koos Human phoned to say they’re now enthusiastic about the revised Ambassadeur. However, he apparently deems it necessary to have an interview about certain things, and the question arose whether he should fly up here to see me, or I to see him in the Cape, urgently. I tried to figure out a way, but if I do come I’d only be able to be there on Sunday and Monday morning, and I’d have to sleep over at friends, too, with their entire family around my ears. We’d therefore have just Sunday from about ten to about five in the afternoon. It’s not impossible that I might still suddenly decide to come, after all, but it’s not looking very practicable. If only you knew how I yearn for you these days!

You ask so insistently how things are going here at home. It’s very hard to diagnose. In my last letter I said things had become more tranquil. Things are fairly neutral on the surface, with exceptions like yesterday, which was one of those mad days. Even friendly and polite. There is no prospect of any deeper contact. Estelle is being quite obliging at the moment; seeking conciliation. But not so long ago – as I told you at the time – she said: “It gives me the creeps when you touch me.” And that’s what I now feel.

If I were to calculate the prospects, I would say this: we will continue, like Jan and Marjorie, to live without any sex-life. Some days I can accept this. Frequently, I feel dejected and have no idea what might yet happen. Why must one be prudish? I have a very deep – and enormous! – need for sex. I work and write at such a prodigious pace that it completely exhausts me spiritually and then creates a physical need that can only be allayed by a complete sexual experience. Must – and can – one “unlearn” this, too? I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more. I simply long for you, with everything, and for everything.

By the way, you shouldn’t get the idea from my last tape that I feel resentful towards Anton! If it weren’t for him, I’d have done away with myself a long time ago. I am devoted to my son. The only thing that sometimes gets me fuming is the fact that he is forced upon me for half the day when I have to work. At least now the servant stays on in the afternoons and I have to babysit only three nights a week. (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, from 7:30 to 10:00, if you ever want to phone! Number 905. But I’ll be calling you tonight in any event …)

I have written already to tell you how much I long for Simone, too. I even began devising a way to get her to visit here for a week. She would enjoy Anton and I’d look after her nicely. But this is probably just another silly dream. Piet, I assume, would have a stroke. God, the complications of “other people”. And we are more likely than not the “spirits that roam”.

en wie, wat die droom in ons oë

gelees het,

sal rus of ooit wéér wees

soos hy gewees het?

[and who, after reading the dream

in our eyes,

will ever rest or become again

what he once was?]

Darling, PLEASE, you must send the manuscript back now. I have to make the changes that are on it, otherwise I won’t have any record of them. The moment I’ve done that and Chris Barnard’s finished reading it, I will in any case send it back to you to keep. Please, my naughty little girl.

I’ll be sending the photos off for printing today. I promise!

You want to go to Joburg, you say … which is “closer” to Grahamstown? It’s 150 miles further. My great geographer. I must make you the gift of an atlas. Or a globe, perhaps.

Must I send some money to help pay for the tape recorder? I can help a little here and there, thanks to the new translations.

(Beware of [?]!)

It’s autumn-spring here. So beautiful. God, God, one dream I’ve had for us is to drive out to a deserted, empty beach, and swim together, stark naked, and then, on that lovely warm sand under a wide open sky, lie with and in each other, on the beach; “’t zal nimmermeer ghebeuren …”

I’ll make you another tape one of these days.

Write. Darling, my cocoon: I’m beginning to hope that the one-day duration of your last period means there’s a little moesie-girl growing inside you –?

I love you very much.

André.

1. Should I dedicate Die Ambassadeur to “Ingrid” or to “Cocoon”? And should I add, next to it: “Donna m’apparve” (“A woman appeared to me”) as Dante said of Beatrice? Or just unadorned, without any added text?
2. Should I still write to Bartho about Simone? Or wait until P[iet] moves one of his pawns again?

I will count my moesies, as you asked! Except I can’t see them all!

Grahamstown

Friday, 23 August 1963

Oh darling,

It’s terrible. They should rather not allow people to hope than to arouse ecstasy and then destroy it. I had everything sorted out. Estelle couldn’t get leave and I would thus have come on my own; I bought wine for us, quite a lot; and toothpaste, and even a new pair of red-checked underpants ... and then the call came through from Koos to say everything was already arranged by the time my telegram arrived yesterday. Now I have to spend the whole weekend thinking that I could have been with you.

But, darling, the moment the proofs are ready – and I’m going to chase Koos to have it done during the September vacation – I want to make sure I come down for that. I must get something done –!

I’ve thoroughly considered your PE plan, but it’s simply not possible, Cocoon, because what reason would I have suddenly to go to PE? And I wouldn’t be able to go on my own – Estelle has been saying for a while now we should go there to do some shopping.

Zoo moeten wij door bittre jaren zwerven;

Het is altijd een strijd en een verlangen.

Thank you for your precious, beautiful voice last night. I will phone again, next week: hopefully Wednesday night. Why was last weekend so “dismal”? I want to know everything.

And thank you, again, for yesterday’s wonderful, adorable letter full of love and longing. It was funny, too. That comment by Anne’s boyfriend (“Are you made from my rib” – etc.) – classic. I want to put it in a book somewhere.

I also want to know everything about Piet’s most recent idiocy. And I want to help, promptly, if I can.

Sorry this is such a mixed-up letter. I can’t think properly. I just wanted to write as soon as I could after Koos’s call to tell you in greater detail what’s going on. Suddenly everything’s so changed. Yesterday was so dazzling: first your letter, and then a review of Sempre by Louise Behrens that says: “It’s a rich, lovely book … The kind from which one wants to continue quoting and retelling stories … Something of the richness of the young writer’s spirit (sic!) gets passed down when we read the account of his travels.” Lovely, isn’t it?

Nice, hey? God. I’ve heard us say these words so much this weekend. In roman, italics, everything. Each on his own, then?

Everyone on two legs: lonely. So you’re actually quite ordinary.

The path just is, and it’s solitary …

Cocoon, most beloved mine, where do those exquisite words come from in your letter:

“Together we will go and meet a new memory”?

If it’s your own, then it’s one of your most beautiful. Finish it …

We must just be positive. Reading for a sermon: Faith, hope, love …

We have very little, little, little. But we also have a lot, as long as we have hope. I will be with you again. I will sleep with you again.

With love, always,

Your André.

MANUSCRIPT S’IL TE PLAÎT

Saturday, 24 August 1963

FIRST WORST DISAPPOINTMENT OVER ENJOY KOOS ALL LOVE ALL TRUST = COCOON

Grahamstown

Sunday morning, 25 August 1963

My Cocoon, my darling,

For three months I believed in heaven; now I also believe in hell, with fire and all, because in the last few days it’s as if things have reached a point of frenzy. I feel I should do a variation of Descartes’s saying: “I hurt, therefore I am.” And amid the great emptiness and confusion, your call came through – in circumstances that nearly drove me mad because I wanted so badly to express myself, and console you, be with you – but instead I had to sound “non-commital”, businesslike, while everything in me shouted out at you:

Laat mij nog éénmaal, in gedachten, kussen

Die warme lippen, door mijn kus ontbloeid;

Laat mij nog éénmaal aan dien boezem sussen

Mijn arme hoofd, waarin de koorts-pijn gloeit.

Laat mij nog eens, klein kindje, rusten tusschen

Die armen, waar mijn hart aan was geboeid …

The whole time yesterday, from about midday, I kept calculating: by this time I’d have been as far as Humansdorp … Plettenberg Bay … George … Mossel Bay … Swellendam … Riviersonderend … Caledon – just an hour to go.

And then last night Anton had one of his crazy nights, while I wanted to sleep, be gone; know nothing of the world. When he started crying at two and I went to him, I thought: now we’d have been sit-lying together on the little knobbly bed, naked, with cigarettes, fatigued but happy, knowing that the day was still a few hours away. And at four – by now we’d be lying exhausted against each other, divinely, deeply happy, without desiring anything other than just this being together, this utter fulfilment. At six – by now I’d have half woken up and begun to wake you up, softly and slowly – because maybe you’d have felt a little sore.

And now, at eleven –? The sun, outside (or windy and rainy and miserable, as it is here?), the bright yellow curtains, and us, again, us.

Oh, Lord God, no.

Friday night, when you received the letter and telegram, I went and curled up foetally on a corner of the divan in the front room and shut myself off from everything, in unbearable loneliness. I heard Estelle eating – heard the food crunching between her teeth, listened to her swallowing her tea and paging through her Sarie or Woman’s Own; all she did was talk, on and on, about the trifles of her working day – not even once realising I was lying there and crying. Later I got up and walked out into the dark. Just longing, as you once described your mother saying in a letter.

My darling, I just don’t know any more. And it has to go on like this, and on, and on – “To-morrow, and to-morrow and to-morrow.”

God, I simply can’t. Shouldn’t one rather just end it all? How can one continue living in such absolute emptiness? I don’t really want to die. Does one have no right at all to even a small piece of lasting happiness? Must everything groan to an end, as in Eliot’s “Hollow Men”, with a “whimper”? It’s not just heartless and unfair – it’s unworthy. It denies the very meaning of being. Because there is meaning. It’s degrading “that everything that is godly” must “look backwards” in this way.

We must just hope the proofs will be ready soon; I’ll ask Koos to see if he can have them done by the September holiday (20 to 30 Sept.) so that I can come down for a few days. It’s better not to hope too much, but without hope I don’t know what I’d do.

Darling, darling, this is the heaviest time of all for us. It’s demanding more of us than anything else. We’ll have to find something or we’ll both fall to pieces from negative yearning and loneliness. We must take something positive from all of this. We have a physical need for each other, but in the meantime we’ll have to learn to give, and be precious to each other, in other areas. I’m struggling to bear the burden of guilt because of what I’ve broken down in you, and therefore I want, must, try to give also – even though it’s so often just “grief and darkness”.

I want to start working on our novella. I want you to know how much I love you. And that I trust you completely, absolutely. Please, please don’t let my love become a poison that paralyses you. Let us be, let us be human, let us become. Let us distil something out of this – even out of this; and not become murky.

Maybe we’ll make another moesie-girl, my Ingrid. But we mustn’t pin our hopes to anything specific. Let us rather take what there is from each moment of love and clarity. There is so much we can share. You are the loveliest, purest and most precious thing that has ever happened to me. And the heartfelt nature of your giving, both your virginal and your mature love – without that I cannot continue.

I will write again soon, my very dear, very honest, luminous little woman. You are that, because [D.H.] Lawrence wrote in an essay:

Two rivers of blood, are man and wife, two distinct eternal streams that have the power of touching and communing and so renewing, making new one another, without any breaking of the subtle confines, any confusing or commingling … We know that the one-ness of the bloodstream of man and woman completes the universe, as far as humanity is concerned completes the streaming of the sun and the flowing of the stars.

That is how I love you, and that is how I am yours, always. “And so I shall dwell in your house for ever” (my own Psalm 23).

Your André.

Monday, 26 August 1963

My darling André,

Wrote to you yesterday morning and yesterday evening but simply couldn’t get into my stride; was too upset and too mutinous. Also sorry about the untimely phone call, and then I was forced to realise that I can’t speak to you personally for even six minutes … was I horrible to you and did that upset you even more? Child, it’s going to be impossible to go “underground” because how on earth does one live above ground? And surely Estelle realises from your attitude – also the physical “conciliation” – that everything’s not “all right” any more? I realise you must now be in an extremely difficult position.

First I’ll tell you everything I’ve done since your devastating telegram arrived. Read your letter. The facts in it were also so naked, although it was actually a nice letter, just a bit more businesslike than usual. Then had to go and have a drink with Mrs Oxley for her birthday: came back, had another drink, bawled, went to sleep. Saturday morning bought Simone a red raincoat, and a red bikini for myself; sent your telegram; met Lena, with her I can complain and it’s safe, helped with the reception for her beloved and his spouse, phoned you and went to sleep early again. “Talked things out” with Uys on Sunday morning – he, and many others, apparently, think that I left you, and went back to Jack. Do you remember the lines I wrote to you the very first time: “Before the serried batallions of lies / and the organizations of hate / Entirely encompass us, / Lie one night in my arms and give me peace.”

Well, now. I just wanted to say that I am not leaving you, and that I am not in a sexual relationship, and as for the rest there’s nothing more to say. That afternoon (because Jack invited me for a meal) Uys was very friendly towards me, and went over your report on him again: apparently you still have to mention the verses that come closer to colloquial language, and the “Ballade van die Groot Begeer” [“Ballad of Great Desire”] contains SOCIAL CRITICISM, and say something about “The Sniper” too. Even though I’m still fond of Uys and the rest of them, this quickness to criticise and the gossiping and meddling has shocked me. “Niemand mag mos óóp loop …”

You ask why last weekend was so awful. Jack and I ate out on Saturday evening and went back to Sea Girt together. It was okay. I slept at Lena’s. But on the Sunday afternoon he made me so angry again. God, André, I don’t know where I get this quick temper, and I can’t learn to control it; two minutes later I am always sorry about it. I hope I never get that angry with you. It’s so totally unnecessary and destructive; why react like that towards your friends? In general company I am always described as “cheerful”. A friend of mine, Marcelle, says, “People should be happy, then one can’t see their faults.”

You also asked about Piet. He says: “The details of your newest romance are, of course, widely known.” (!) Otherwise just a whole lot of rubbish about his “model” house, his “responsible” and “mature” wife and that Simone will be smartly dressed. I ignored the letter.

Glad to hear about the “richness of your spirit”, my love! Please feel free to send me some of the reviews. I can’t keep up with everything. Also, you’re so full-time. I’ve still got to get to Caesar!

And thank you for the compliment, but the “sensitive language” and the “new memory” comes from Éluard. I know the collection inside-out.

Woe, I lost my temper (!) God, again! With the BBC. The man is so vulgar. “One of my son’s mothers had a black bottom …” he said. Then they acted as if they don’t have any inborn race hatred – I decided there and then that he will not get a word out of me!

Sorry this is such a “newsletter”.

Tuesday, 27 August 1963

THANK YOU LETTER AND TELEGRAM ALL CLEAR ALL LOVE DARLING = COCOON

Wednesday evening, 28 August 1963

If you loved him you would leave him …!

That’s what some people apparently believe, my André. I am so astonished at the things people throw at me … as though they are living in another time, that’s another thing, by the way, that I don’t entirely comprehend, Calvinism – you know yourself how much training I’ve had in “philosophy” (!) … But Annie Retief, my ouma (that’s her maiden name of course, Retief!) was broad-minded and well-bred and refined, that inner refinement that no Apostolic Church could rob her of, that refinement that allows one to say: It’s “wonderfully quiet” – when she doesn’t receive a letter! And then, look at the Sermon on the Mount … Christ himself said that divorce was permissible if there’d been adultery … Thus it is written, but I say unto you … Did you ever read the fascinating but naïve little story The Man Nobody Knows …? Oh, yes, Annie Retief … I can really get sidetracked when I start writing about her, and regretful, I wish she was alive today … she’d have understood in spite of all her training, because she had little to do with dogma and so much more to do with humans. She had eight children, six of whom died before she did. And her sympathetic attitude towards Abel (Pa). I wish you could’ve met her … “Poor old Van As doesn’t look well, I think she has too many friends …” Indeed (!), perhaps one should say that of me now!

To get back to the first sentence: If you loved him you would leave him. Maybe something like this:

The voice of my education said to me

He must be killed,

…

But must I confess how I liked him,

How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my

water-

trough

And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,

Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?

Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?

Was it humility, to feel so honoured?

I felt so honoured.

Oh my dearest child, I no longer know. I am so confused and, I simply have to admit it, afraid. Security police, subpoenas, threatening letters from Piet, and that work. God! I can’t even be properly pleased about T.T. Cloete’s review!

But listen carefully: I don’t want you to be so unhappy, and also not so rebellious. I know you sometimes also feel rebellious towards Estelle, and it’s not her fault, and I am really not noble. I’m thinking of you.

I am terribly tired and confused … or is “confused” not the right word for when you can’t sit dead-still for two hours? I want to hide somewhere like an injured bird, not even an injured person! And as soon as the book arrives I’m going to apply for a bursary, a few bursaries: Molteno Trust and at the Dutch Consulate. “I’m going wandering, I’m going away …”! Because I know I’ll be able to get one.

And now, my André, be good and sleep sweetly and don’t get so cross – while you can and must write me everything, your letter did sadden me …! “Maybe it is better to make an end of everything”, and you’re MAD to say that, at least for you. Do you know what I was thinking about when I was sitting so quietly? The way in which you took the pen out of my hand, wrote CONSOMMÈ (???) in my diary …! Funny, the “feeling of a simple memory”! Unquote Jonker.

SLEEP SLEEP. You didn’t promise you’d phone, but I’ll leave the light on so that Peter [Oxley] can still call me. This was just saying hello, dearest mine; and here [Peter] has just said you’ll now be phoning at nine o’clock. Thanks, darling! See you later.

Love Dearest,

Cocoon.

Thank you lovely phone call.

Thursday, 29 August 1963

Lovely chat last night about your ice-cream and my red bikini – hello! Child. And then did you go off and have an erudite conversation with the other man in the sitting room? What do you think of my “application”, which has not yet taken shape – though I have been enquiring all over – to get a bursary to go overseas? Today I no longer feel like going. But some time or other I will have to. I have never had a single opportunity, even took Afrikaans Lower for matric because back then my father was a SAP: just work, work, work my whole god-given life away, for little pay and even less thanks. It’s so abominably unnatural, and even if it carried on like this for another hundred years, I would never be able to adapt to it. Am I really made to read that rubbish, to waste my precious eyes on it until I am blind, I am so visually attuned! I can’t TAKE it any more. I only want a few months or a year to go, and to do or think or see something worthwhile, to feed this impoverishment with good art, a more natural life.

And if there is NOTHING that I MUST have and can’t get, I see no point in going on. I reckon I’ve tried long enough now, André, without love, without an education, without any form of emotional security, even if this was just the kind of financial security that enables one to buy certain things, a measure of serenity. I’m not self-pitying, also not bitter, just TIRED. They are ongoing, these things, threatening to take away the little light (talent!) that was granted to me. Because it can indeed be taken away.

Every grey day is deadening. And after this tirade I want to show you how your love carries me through these things. Do you know how I show it?

Perhaps just the fact I’m still alive.

Love, beautiful moesie-naked-man.

Cocoon.

Thursday, 29 August 1963

Darling-Cocoon,

Thank you very much for your letter, for last night’s conversation, and for your soft little laugh that made me want to devour you alive. Thank you for being happy again. And yet: a certain despair seemed to lurk in the conversation, not to mention your letter. You say Jack thinks my love is destructive because if I come back to you I won’t be taking your distress into consideration; and you write: “Even if you come for a few hours that are ‘stolen’ or ‘underground’, there will be consequences. And we’ll have to decide one way or the other quite clearly.”

I must try to reach a point of clarity – it’s a process that’s taken place almost mercilessly in all our recent letters. I don’t want to rationalise things, I want to try to be level-headed – with the thought that Mrs Bouws’s “don’t force anything” is actually the truest attitude of all. I want to explain that there is not a contradiction in my last two letters.

For me, there are two important aspects: first, that we decided, in full responsibility, that we cannot now, in our circumstances, continue with a relationship that is aimed at marriage.

The second is that we must now decide whether we should continue keeping in touch with each other, or not at all. I have already written to you about my own conviction: it strikes me as pointless, and it would cause unnecessary suffering, to break everything down while we still have the opportunity to mean so much to each other, and give so much, within the limited little circle that remains for us. However: if futility dominates everything, if our frustrated love becomes mutually poisonous to each other (“You were so much poison in me / as I was poison in you”) – as Jack thinks things stand – then we may not carry on as we are.

And out of this situation a conviction has arisen in me: from the little that we have, we can cultivate much that is very precious and that can become indispensable. But then we must concentrate on positives.

The question is: how does the possible September visit fit in? It’s not a “return” in the sense of a resumption of everything – that would be destructive; it’s thus no “cancelling” of our decision (in the way that Jack came back within a week after his “irrevocable” decision!). For me it’s simply the use of a wonderful and fortuitous opportunity to see each other again, to be, in the way we need each other – without tying it to the future.

Or is that an illusion? Are the “consequences” that you talk about, for you especially, so threatening that it would be unwise and even wrong for me to come? This is something only you can decide. On my side, I see my way clear to dealing with the consequences in my own life. But it would be unforgivably selfish of me if I allowed my love for you to make your position even more tricky.

Darling, darling, I know you will say, as you did before, that it all sounds so terribly calculating. But we have to work with basic givens. The real question is actually very simple: do you see your way clear to us carrying on, is it sufficiently precious and necessary, even though we have no assurance about a future together? My own answer is yes; for me, it’s a critical necessity. It’s the only precious thing that has remained in my life – everything outside of it has broken down.

But all this will mean nothing to me if I know it brings you little more than confusion and darkness. How could I possibly be happy if it made your position even more untenable?

I want so much to come down for the proofs. But then I need to know it’s not just going to lead to a new break with Jack and Uys and everyone else. For that reason, Jack will have to know what the actual nature of our separation is, that it was never meant to be us “giving up” on each other, but rather that what we mean to each other is precisely remaining in contact, and wanting to enjoy such precious moments together as might be granted us.

Write to me about developments with the damn security police detective, should he ever return.

I’m sending you a little money; let me know if you need more.

With all my love,

André.

Castella

Saturday, 31 August 1963

{Found out Aug. has 31 days.}

1 September Spring Day

My darling André,

Thank you for your letter that was tucked so dearly into my door when I arrived home laden with parcels, it’s very sunny in the street, perfect for a day in the veld or on the dunes. If the white Volksie was here we could drive out to Stellenbosch or Paarl, or Hout Bay?

Did you get Thursday’s despondent letter? Your letter this morning is very clear and I fully understand how you feel, my dearest little treasure. And yet … Abraham [H.] de Vries, for example, was here last night, phoned me at the office to meet him for a drink; I waited for him until 5:30 and then I left because I was expecting Marjorie and Jan at home. But he kept waiting for me (in the wrong place!), until seven o’clock. And came here afterwards. He was supposed to go to Bill de Klerk, but cancelled his appointment; naturally we spoke about you too; he says he hears about us everywhere and interrogated me: “I hear you’ve parted ways?” But your photos are hanging here large as life and I couldn’t help talking about you a little bit! And this is consequence.

I told you on the phone and in my letter about Jack’s visit, and what I’d said to him, that he wants to come and see me, and his reaction. Since then I haven’t seen him again and when I placed a friendly call to him yesterday, he asked me: “How are the matrimonial plans going?” That, too, is consequence. And the consequences are growing, and the consequences in us, so that perhaps later you won’t be able to save anything over there in Grahamstown. If it was only an adventure for both of us (because it is also an adventure) everything would of course be less complicated. But I will stay with you. Because I must and because I will and because it can’t be otherwise and because you are my precious discovered treasure and because you love me. “The moment you are influenced you are corrupted.” That’s what [Leo] Tolstoy says, and for that reason, I guard you and me like a lioness guards her cubs. And perhaps for that reason Jan was making fun of me last night, “Good heavens, Ingrid, when I mention André’s name, your expression changes!”

Dear treasure, we really must laugh more, about this chaos too that we’ve started in literary circles, because it’s actually funny in certain respects. Why did Abraham have to see me, wait for me for two hours, cancel his appointment with Bill, and come here?? Of course, I invited him to stay over here (what would people have made of that?) as my house is open to any “brother or sister in suffering”, the homeless and the displaced, the artists. But he went and stayed over at Ivor Pols, “because I don’t want André to be cross with me”. As if André can’t trust me … but, that was a joke.

Come in September. Maybe your suggestion is in fact just a way of living, an art, then we’ll go away, without anyone knowing, and come back with secret secrets. And perhaps it’s a challenge. My whole nature (and yours too) flies in the face of secret-keeping, because we must share and because we are wilful – but maybe we can if we must.

I want to see you. I dreamt about you all night long, and about L. We were somewhere on a wonderful beach together, and wanted to try and get to one another, but we were almost hostile towards one another. It was terrible! And in reality I haven’t once felt: You were so much poison in me, etc. For me you have only ever been light and love, in spite of everything. I don’t want you to misunderstand me in this respect. You actually “gave me back to life” (do you remember that first weekend?). Do you remember that brandy afternoon in Clifton? Ag, do you remember everything? I love you so much. And I need you so terribly, too much. Now I’m going to make myself pretty and get tanned for September.

Darling.

Many thanks for cheque for castle and for telegram this afternoon.

Cocoon.

PS: Again today, my André, the slender possibility of our moesie-child is out of the question –

Temporarily.

IJonker.

Grahamstown

Tuesday, 3 September 1963

Little darling, little you,

Many thanks for the letter you wrote last Wednesday night; it made its appearance here this morning only. Oh little darling woman, your desperation makes me terribly unhappy. I wish I could do something for you; give you the protection and security I had intended to; I wish things hadn’t jammed and stalled in this way. You have my love, all of it – but from a distance such as this, as I well know, that’s little more than consolation and not the assurance, the reality you actually need. Your plan to go overseas –? It’s so far away! And we made such plans to go together! It’ll be painful; but still I want you to do it. God only knows, you deserve at least this relative freedom. It’s a ridiculous irony that you, who in your heart are so free, should be so trapped by mere “circumstance”. And that annihilating job – the thought that you, of all people, should do that kind of work: you with your wide open spaces and stillness and wildness, like the freedom of a little antelope; you with your absolute demand that one should live. If I could even just give you the external security of having enough money to keep banal worries at bay.

And here? The weekend once again witnessed several crises. On Saturday night we had a raging fight in which Estelle said: “Why don’t you just say straight out that you hate me. You can’t stand my guts!” And Sunday, again: she wants to spend Christmas alone with her mother.

The worst is that I can’t blame her for any of it. I was dismayed to discover that I’m hard, cold-blooded and cruel; this is an awakening that makes me feel dirty and small. I’ve also begun to doubt myself: do I simply have a deficit in the capacity to feel anything at all? Why can’t I be more charitable, even if I don’t love her, even if there’s no longer a single point of connection between the two of us? Must one, as a human being, be so bitter, so mean?

And still, my Cocoon, the weekend also had a positive side. I’m working hard on the preparation for “our” novella. The title (I think): Orgie [Orgy]. I want to allow everything to dissolve in this work: your ouma and your childhood in a world of sand and sea, your swallow’s nest – and, of course, the two of us, all of it pulled together in one night of New Year’s celebration, a fertility feast. Sadness, too, is the bass note throughout, including the ending – how could it not be so – but it should be a glittering kind of sadness rather than pessimistic.

I want to start with a short “afterword”. Something like:

So

let me say, was she found:

with some blood on her well-known thighs

and her mouth

still

among the first spring shrubs, the pointed deer horns untouched above her beautiful, now-always-shut eyes.

And then the “story” itself begins, with bits of Genesis and bits from the Gilgamesh epoch. Yesterday I took eight books out from the library and this morning another five: mostly mythological works and books on magic, etc.; now I’m reading and making notes, working terribly hard – and loving it. So it must continue, because as long as I’m busy, I can feel unconscious, free thoughts ferment and brew in me (like a spirit over the waters); disparate images and pieces of meaning; sensory – especially visual – impressions; rhythms … What I actually have at the moment, apart from the vaguest amoeba of an “idea”, is just a form: an inexplicable idea of pages with white surfaces, italics and roman, prose and “verse” (I’m going to work my “poems” into the text and not make a collection out of them: they’re too thin for that).

Throughout all of this I have to translate, translate: another five books. After that, no more, because next year I’m going to be dutiful and academic and write my thesis so I can become a “doctor”. It’s actually all a bit silly and banal, but it’s about the work itself and not – God forbid! – any sense of “status”! My father tactfully let me know that “he would so like to see that day …”

I received another letter from Frank Ward. You know, the man who illustrated Pot-Pourri and Sempre and is now fucking in Stockholm and painting (in that order). He’s illustrated your “The Child” and sent a translation of it to a Swedish paper to see if they might want to print it. If so, he’ll send me a clipping to pass on to you. This Frank! He writes: “My latest sexual coup is an experience reserved for the privileged few” – two girls at the same time. I grant him that. He’s not yet encountered a Cocoon. God, my love, I cannot imagine any other girl who has as much to give as you, or can. Actually: give and take; it takes a very big and precious person to receive without selfishness.

My thorny little rose in her castle: I want to remove the thornbushes that surround you and then I want to enter your world (“enter” in the Biblical sense) so we can inhabit our “island of repose” together.

I love you.

geen onoorbrugbaarheid skei twee

wat sterker konsentrate bind:

die sout van trane, sweet en nog

die allerlaaste liefdesvog.

I dream of a little moesie-girl … Today your period would have started again, unless the last short one was a phantom and there might yet be something …? Let me know.

My love to your beloved brown eyes;

and to your hair with its flick of a curl;

and your ears that listen so nicely;

your pert, pointed nose;

your soft girl-lips that like saying “Hell!”;

your curved, speckled shoulders;

your lovely smooth back;

your white breasts with their pert nipples;

your little tummy with its tiny hole;

your bum that sits so softly;

your smooth thighs and calves that stretch so beautifully;

your feet that walk the world;

and the leucodendron;

and your arm that slumbers on me;

your hands, the dear hands with their messy red nails;

and your little hill and hair and the deep, steeply delicious, lovely cocoon.

You will know:

Ik heb je nodig

ik draag je handen

en je voeten

en je ogen

in mij.

With love, with everything,

And may I now – quiet, satisfied and full of yearning – sleep with you?

Your André.

Grahamstown

Wednesday, 4 September 1963

Ingrid-mine,

Thank you for your voice last night and this morning’s bright letter. Thank you for your understanding and your hope. Thank you for you.

Last night I found myself thinking, dejectedly: must I henceforth be no more than a “visitor” at Castella if I don’t come and live there and be with you? But then I thought: well, we always manage to get away … and in your letter you also talk in this way. I’ll ensure that my trip for the proofs includes at least a weekend, so we can drive to Hout Bay on the Friday evening – or to Gordon’s Bay or any other bay, far away and white and full of summer – and then stay there until Monday. On the other days, when I’ll most likely be staying with Koos, we can still eat together in the afternoons, and drive to Clifton in the evenings and come back for supper-and-bath-and-bed.

This Abraham! A spy for Bill (they’re old friends), and maybe also for Piet? (He stayed for some time in Johannesburg at Chris B.’s house – and he’s about to start working at APB.) Did he also get married, in that period? What kind of impression does he make? He looks a bit “smug” in that recent photo.

I lay awake dreaming about you so much in the small hours of last night (at first it was all sadness and separation, then gradually less constricted, dearer memories – I have never before had such an acute memory!) that I woke up with a start at eight this morning and had to miss my first lecture. Too bad.

Dreams? I’m only now reading [Graham] Greene’s Our Man in Havana. There, the worldly-wise old doctor says: “You should dream more, Mr Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.”

This weekend I read Greene’s A Sense of Reality: his newest book, consisting of four stories. The first and last are magnificent: they use a childhood world to create their own mythology. In the final story a group of children (all of them semi-stunted because of inbreeding in their village) go on a search for blackberries or something like that and discover a ruined castle. The young girl has tied her skirt in a knot to gather up the blackberries and she’s walking around with the bottom half of her body exposed. They discover a skeleton. At the end she goes and sits on the skeleton’s thigh bones and starts rocking to and fro: “He’s so beautiful; so beautiful. Why can’t we be beautiful too?” With something akin to a primitive tristesse and anxiety running through it all, along with humankind’s insatiable hunger for a “lost paradise”. It’s a library book but I’ve ordered a copy: if it arrives in time, I’ll bring it along.

And, by the way, do you have Stroomgebied, the Dutch anthology? Large beautiful book with just about all the “moderns” in it.

I’m still working, translating, translating, translating. By Friday, Deo volente, I should finish off the Egypt book’s successor (Mesopotamia); John Malherbe always pays very promptly. Then I hope to be able to send you something. It’s so little, my darling; I feel almost bad sending little dribs and drabs. But I try to siphon off whatever I can.

Poor little Simone, who is so ill. I hope things take a turn for the better soon. I’ve become very fond of this child of light. If you make another tape, ask her to sing her little song as well! My heart yearns for a daughter of my own; but it doesn’t look as if it’s going to happen within the current marriage “bond”. I’ve kept hoping, the whole month, that you’d suddenly phone and say: “Guess what …?” Crazy. Surely it’s unrealistic? But the heart doesn’t allow itself to be prescribed to.

… dit hart, zoo zwak,

Dat al zóó moe is, altijd luider slaat,

Altijd maar luider, en niet rusten wil.

I sent the slides away ten days ago for printing (only the best ones), but the process apparently takes three weeks. You’ll therefore have to be more patient. If we get a chance to spend some time together – I can already see it’s going to be almost impossible! – then we must take a few more, but this time with more attention and concentration!

I take it the little chick’s not getting so cold any more. It’s not from forgetfulness that I didn’t strip her bare last time; I first wanted to say hello like the first time before putting her through the motions again. That very first moment remains completely unique in its intensity and wonder and anticipation and its yearning-in-the-face-of the-unknown. Remember?: When we lay together quietly in the little bed, and you took my hand and lay it down right there.

I can’t even think about it without losing all self-control!

With love, and love, and love,

André.

Castella

Wednesday, 4 September 1963

My darling André,

As your so very sympathetic letter of Saturday said – there’s a hidden despondency – in our telephone conversation last night too, for which you lacerated yourself … don’t! I think it has something to do with the wrecked weekend, not as such, though, but because we had to actually feel, “physically”, the consequences of our “responsible” decision. And then there are the different realities, practical real physical life versus this separation – a separation that will, eventually, make us unreal to each other. And so on. God! The abysses of the heart. I’m sending you a poem “Jou Naam Het ’n Kinderkarretjie” [“Your Name Has a Dinky Car”], which perhaps also contains this despair, though a wonderfully (I hope) poetic, liberating, harmonised laughter too.

And I bless you with love and tenderness.

Cocoon.

A beautiful Lucebert – “Nazomer”

Love darling come again soon.

ik heb in het gras mijn wapens gelegd

en mijn wapens gaan geuren als gras

ik heb in het gras mijn lichaam gelegd

mijn liggaan is geurig als hout bitter en zoet

dit liggen dit nietige luchtige liggen

als een gele foto liggend in het water

glimmend gekruld op de golven

of bij het bos stoffig van lichaam en schaduw

oh grote adem laat de stenen nog niet opstaan

maak nog niet zwaar hun wangen hun ogen

kleiner gebrilden en grijzer

laat ook de minnaars nog liggen en stilte

zwart tussen hun zilveren oren en ach

laat de meisjes hun veertjes nog schikken en glimlachen

Castella

September 1963

My darling darling André,

Thank you for your lovely letter of today – the little Mrs in the office came in and said, “I’m just quickly bringing you the Cape Times.” And I’m sending Miss Padayachee’s wonderful letter back. And this lovely note: PS: “So sorry, I couldn’t type this letter!” And – “I wonder if I could keep in touch with you? Perhaps by correspondence??” You mustn’t be too critical of her essays – and I hope you get a fat MS out of it! Greetings, my gentleman!

Silly thing. But I feel a little silly myself today. Was just as absent-minded at work today, so that Anne (who still can’t manage to call me by my name) was eventually forced to ask: “But are you completely fucked in your head today?” And little innuendos about the “Cape Times” I received this morning. Dear child! Yesterday evening Chris was here for a while, and he read my little verse “Jou Naam Het ’n Kinderkarretjie” and almost laughed himself to death. He says it’s “Dutch”. Thank you, by the way, for your permission to go overseas – posted my letter to Coert Starck at the Embassy this morning, with favourable excerpts from Cloete’s review. And one to Bartho to ask him to send a copy of the collection to Starck. Do you remember, he said: “I like you and your poems.” And I sent you the beautiful Lucebert, which was again last night a revelation of the tenderness of those 50s writers – rare today!

You speak in your letter about your arguments this weekend and that you blame yourself – you should have seen how furious I was on Monday night – in the first place dead tired, it was over at Jack’s, when I went to “fetch” Simone after work – because when I saw her I could immediately see that it wasn’t flu, but scarlet fever or – measles. The doctor, who I had to wait for in the goddamn cold Cape wind (Anne says one shouldn’t use “goddamn” in connection with the weather), arrived and confirmed measles, and serious – “severe” – said he. Dr Katz. And off he went with his Marx moustache and I stayed behind – quickly trying to calculate what I should do about work, etc. etc. The poor little thing just lies in a dark room and hardly wees because she doesn’t want to eat or drink; and Jack and his family have a maid – and so he said she could stay there till Tuesday afternoon. I got up and looked out at the sea through the closed windows and heard him speak: “You’ll only have to be away from work for a few days, Pie.” Maybe he really didn’t think further, but does he honestly still not know that I will lose money and maybe even my job? And then I said I’d come and fetch her early the next morning, and he could see I was angry. The next morning, when I arrived with the Press’s car, he wasn’t there. Since then no news whatsoever. Luckily I found someone who came in yesterday and today and can come tomorrow. After that, I’ll have to see what happens. Simone is a little better, but the cough goes right through me; I’ve never been able to bear a cough; “eentonig die hoes van die kind aan my sy”. One is so powerless against it, and I hate being powerless! She doesn’t even want to play the harmonica, she says, “No, Mammie, because then my cough comes.” And last night she sat up straight in her dark little bed “looking at” the book that I (dimwit) had brought her – she’s not allowed to be anywhere near a light – and says: “This is a lovely book, Mammie.” Monday night – when I caught the bus and left Simone behind, I couldn’t help stating the obvious to Jack: “I’m sorry, I’ll have to depend on you tonight.” So you see, as Ouma would say, perhaps people are pigs in their innermost beings, and I don’t want you to blame yourself too much about the apparent heartlessness, and a writer’s foremost duty is to protect himself from RUBBISH and rubbish is everything that stands in one’s way.

Try and decipher that “line of thought” if you can. I have honestly forgotten myself what I began with. In any case, you mustn’t take the arguments too much to heart. After all our (terrible) arguments Jack said to me the other evening: “Of all the people I’ve ever known, you are probably the one I admire most.” Wonderful him, or wonderful me???

So you see, you can do what you want, as long as you “strive purely”.

Why don’t you write a drama for us – my ouma and me, and then we swop roles – do you see? – she plays the child and I play her – because we are so taken up with each other?

Thank you, my darling, my André, my own, for the beautiful greeting: and since I am so fond of ritual, I will repeat it tonight in my white nightdress.

And thank you for the poem of mine that your Ward friend translated (I’d really love to see the fuss he’s made of it), I hope it is accepted. Send them our ugly portrait – no one there knows us, after all.

And I am so excited about your novella. Here, where strict order prevailed in the castle and at work – your spirited letter caused a chaos that you will have to come and quell. My darling, darling, humane human, “with all your flaws, all your shortcomings” … and that’s Éluard. And now I’m going to “veertjes schikken en glimlachen” because I am delighted and happy and completely satisfied.

Love to you,

Cocoon.

Grahamstown

Sunday night, 8 September 1963

Cocoon, my dearest, most elegant girl,

Thank you for yesterday’s short, pure, and distraught little letter with its very lovely poem. I have read little of yours that expresses as much hurt and beauty as the stanza: “Want jy word verkoop …” [“For you are being sold …”], especially after the light, playful beginning and the ominous transition: “Wat sal die afslaer sê van jou naam?” [“What will the auctioneer use for your name?”]. If it were me I would work a little on the lines: “Jou naam wat ek roep deur die duisternis / Wees gewaarsku” [“Your name that I call out in the darkness / Be warned”], and perhaps also “my maagdelike woord” [“my virginal word”]. Otherwise it’s so very fine, darling.

Actually, yesterday was a blessed day. Your letter-and-poem (and the lovely Lucebert) came my way, along with Desmond [Windell]’s photos, including the one of you. You didn’t like it very much – and yet he captured so much of your intensity and tenderness. It’s lying here next to me, with its gentle yet headstrong little twist of the mouth. Oh love, my love, the way I long for you!

Otherwise, a letter arrived from Chris Barnard to say that – apart from a few points of criticism – Die Ambassadeur is “a gift from heaven for our prose”; also, a letter from a friend – actually a friend’s sister – who is a lecturer in Van Wyk Louw’s department, just to say that he said to her, after my visit: “I am entirely under the impression that he is a cultured and intelligent person.” And another letter, saying Die Koffer will be produced in Pretoria (Normal College).

It’s almost a pity that all this had to arrive on the same day and wasn’t more spread out over the long, grey weeks!

Your photo had such an instantaneous effect on me that I began to write a few verses again. I’m sending you two of them. Still working on a few others. They’re not very “dense”, but they wanted to come out; just had to. Rather call them prose pieces in lines of verse. They’re in any case for you, of course.

Standpunte has arrived. Or at least Rob’s copy has; mine always comes late. Three of my poems are in it (“Meisie” [“Girl”], “Vlug” [“Escape”] and “Selfs Heiliges” [“Even Saints”]). I’ll try to get hold of a copy for you. But – that bladdy Grové! I sent him six poems, entitled “Six Poems / For Ingrid”. In the end he took only three – and he left out the dedication. Not that anyone will have any doubt of course. But I wanted to see it there. And so the daily idiotic bourgeoisie-at-auction comes and takes away one’s few remaining bits and pieces.

I’m working on the novella, Orgie. Still in “preparation”. It will take a long time, yet. But it’s beginning to find form.

Amid all the hubbub this morning I unpacked my drawers looking for some paper to scribble on and I came upon a bunch of rejection letters for short stories from my school and university days. One reader’s report deals with a bloodthirsty novel (The Lost City of Atlantis) that I wrote when I was thirteen/fourteen. The reader said, inter alia: “The work is meant for the more mature stage of youth, but for these purposes the love relationships are far too erotic and the embraces too intimate. Parents will object …” Fransie Malherbe will be happy to hear that even then I was thus inclined!

How are things with my measles girl? Please look after her nicely, lovely little thing. I would so badly like to be there to look after both of you together – because I know very well how tired and dispirited it makes you to deal with this on your own.

Child, child, my beautiful child – when I think of you, I want to say “biesie-biesie-bame”, because with you it’s easy to hold hands, “handjies same”, and say “ame”; with you all kinds of wonders happen quite naturally.

I want, once again, to participate in the wonders of your absolutely girly life. Even a leucodendron and a navel, in your case, are little poems!

The papie, in its longing, is all too rebellious. How can I restrain it? “Als is enkeld als verlang / na heelal en na samehang”.

Last night I lay awake again. Thoughts about your love, my love for you, and my longing. Oh you are “necessary, humble, precious and chaste”. Mine, mine. God. You should know that, in the last few days, my yearning has not been sterile, just disheartening – there is a stillness, almost a happiness, in me, because despite the distance the knowledge of you is a mercy.

I want to phone Koos tomorrow and ask how the printing’s going. I dare not set my expectations according to any specific date. But I’m hoping, hoping.

I love you very much; and I need you – not to bind you or make you unhappy and full of resistance, but to know you freely like wind and dunes and recklessly beautiful like your red bikini.

With love and every other thing,

André.

Castella

Monday evening, 9 September 1963

Hello my you,

I miss you. Was a bit sickish again this weekend; feverish – but it’s probably the pace at which I live – as a Capetonian, I don’t like busyness – Simone is still in bed but is getting better – she’s really been very good! What did you do this weekend that you’re so quiet? Got your post-letter on Friday.Walked to the post office to send you a telegram; re-read it there on the groaning chairs, and didn’t know what to telegraph, so just folded the letter again and went off to work. MAD! What can one actually say? When Anne sees the letters that come and go between us, she says, slightly cattily, “Probably the same old pudding with a different syrup.” Maybe our variations on love really are just a little trick?

My dearest man! Are you really coming on the 20th? How are things going with the proofs? Today, after the long, dead weekend, heard two small sounds from you; your three poems in Standpunte, which really look good and which were an excellent choice, my favourite is still “Selfs Heiliges” – (why is my name not with it as “promised” – you see, I even read Huck [The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn], and bravo! The language is delicious!) and – a short letter from Desmond telling me that you had one of his photos made for Die Vaderland and, together with that, the enlargement of I.J., and one (considerate) of us. Did you enjoy “Your Name”, or were you a little indignant at first, liefsteling?

No more news from Piet. A letter from Bartho to say my book is appearing today (!). We’re going to be together in his new anthology for young people, he says. In reality we aren’t really that separated, my angel my André.

What’s happening to the poor papie? It’s going to shrink! Or will I have to smack those long elegant hands of yours when you get here? God, I’m becoming completely maternal (!) and then you get cross.

Uys talks the hind legs off a donkey (on the phone) and is pleased with his translation of Twelfth Night. He actually told me about Standpunte (why didn’t you?) and said he finds that you are (naturally) very receptive, but that you haven’t quite taken up surrealism in poetic form. “There are flashes: ‘Small futile forgettable signs.’”

Otherwise static. The bladdy weather has also got stuck in winter, though the sun had to shine today of course when I had to work.

This morning when I walked into the cage, Anne had just arrived back from PE. If she or I had known they’d be going, I’d have gone with them and surprised you early on Saturday morning and invited you over for the Test. She said it was a mess at Boet Erasmus – the referee was terribly unfair towards the Australians and every time the Springboks were given a penalty kick the coloured spectators screamed MISS MISS MISS MISS MISS MISS and I killed myself laughing at all the things she described so indignantly. It’s probably only in this country where people shoot at one another at a sporting event. It’s as funny as it is scandalous! I wish we’d been there to join in the “chaos”. Of course, the people are far more interesting to me than the rugby.

Van Wyk Louw is becoming lovely in his old age. Did you see what he wrote in Standpunte about censorship and Lobola – or did you only read your darling to-me-poems? Among other things – “God, that a people’s spiritual life should depend on this! Not on its intelligence, but on such objects!” I read Standpunte right through to the Rembrandt advert and in general the whole thing is, as Anne says, just “the same sauce …”

And now I’m going to have a bath and then sleep, a W.E.G. Louw “geil slaap” or is only he capable of that, because he always stuffs himself with food? You’ll probably say this is a jumbled letter.

I am starving on a spiritual-sexual level. And there are lots of “feathers” to “arrange” and there’s much to smile about.

Phone me, maybe? You may as well again ask Bartho when, you’re so close by. His letter was friendly and he’s sending you a copy on fine Finnish paper. He asked me to do a translation of Farewell to Arms at R3 per 1 000 words. It’s not much, but he is very accommodating and will pay me bit by bit. But it has to be finished before the end of the month; we can’t all be André Brinks. Do you have a traditional remedy for me – when does one get time to dream? Because, as you say in your last letter, a person has to dream. It is part of one’s organisational strategy against chaos.

Sleep sweetly, my dearest man. You must rest a lot, my ouma said: “You must not write so much, but rest in God.” And maybe that is the dream.

And remain that, pure and strong, yearn beautifully, with your “shining sadness”. And “Good night, sweet prince”.

For the time being, love, love,

Your Cocoon.

PS: How is the thesis progressing, hm?

PPS: How is Orgie progressing? Send me a section.

IJonker.

Grahamstown,

Monday night, 9 September 1963

Ingrid-Cocoon, my darling,

Thank you for today’s delightful letter. It’s so precious when you – as Anne says – are “befok in your kop”. I hope the dear little sick child is much better now? I’d love to be able to sit with her and watch over her while you’re at work.

Today the Volksie got her long-needed service and now she’s driving more smoothly than ever before – and she’s itching to hit the open road for Cape Town. I phoned Koos today, but, disappointingly, he was unable to say anything specific. Apparently Gothic Press is doing the printing – of course I was hoping your lot would do it. I impressed upon him once again that my holiday is from 20 to 30 September and that I must have the proofs then. Now he says he’ll send me a telegram the moment the printers give a date. Meanwhile, I know I will be coming down, even if the proofs aren’t ready by then, so maybe I should request leave for early October. Just knowing I’ll definitely be coming, even though the exact date’s uncertain, is a mercy all on its own.

I started working on one of Bartho’s translations today, a Simenon (Maigret) that translates so smoothly I might be able to finish it by next week.

I took our photos today to have them mounted; after that I’ll have yours framed so I can put it up in my office. But please also send me one of the Jansje Wissema pictures. Let me know how much they cost. And if Jack still hasn’t paid the account, I will.

Your idea of a play in which you and your grandmother feature, is actually full of possibilities. But I must first finish Orgie! Your grandmother’s in there, too. I’m considering making the novella a double-decker: two novellas in one binding (subtitle, Diptych), both with the same title, both dealing with the same “content” – but the one straightforward and the other “experimental” (disputed term!) – each of course with different nuances according to the possibilities of the style. I’m impatient to begin, but it’s so dangerous to start in an overhasty manner; it must wait out its own little nine-month period. Perhaps the biggest art of all is knowing when to start – neither too green nor too ripe, but just so.

I’m sending you a photo of Anton. There’s some blurring in the picture – he never sits still! If he hadn’t been here, I’d have gone crazy a long time ago.

I’m also sending a few poems, just for the hell of it, because I love you, and because you made today – like so many other days – radiate with light.

Your idea of “pure striving” is right. But I don’t agree that “a writer’s foremost duty is to protect himself from RUBBISH and rubbish is everything that stands in one’s way”. Being a writer also means being a person; it’s an integral part of being a person. And it never gives one the “right” (in so far as people have “rights” to anything, or “wrongs”!) to behave unworthily as a person ... and this is why, in the past while, I’ve so often been appalled at my own behaviour.

Your letter and your love have created such a quiet sense of happiness in me that tonight, for the first time in months, I felt like playing the creative chef again; I made a “poulet basquaise” that would have stimulated even your tiny appetite.

My apologies. Me and food again! Do you know, I’ve never felt quite as forlorn and guilty as the – many – times when you were sad or upset and I simply had to eat. I would also be feeling very upset, and bladdy hungry, too, so I’d eat, but don’t think I didn’t feel bad as well …! It’s all terribly funny, now. Actually, there’s been a great deal of generous laughter in everything we’ve done together; that’s possibly the most precious thing about it all, because it came with full human happiness.

The “Brinkman” affair at the boarding house.

Jan Cilliers [Jan F.E. Celliers] and “Martjie” – and A.D. Keet!

The man at the Hout Bay hotel who said: “You’d better write Mr and Mrs in the register, else people might ask you who that woman is that lives with you …”

And the night I made a little tent and swooped down on you like the Holy Ghost.

And everything else, too: your hair in my mouth, the sudden tickling of your elbow, or your fingers in my ribs. (When you asked so indignantly: “What’s so funny, hey?”)

And then “doing everything over again in italics …”

Girlie, lovely you, I love, love you. One of these days I’ll make you another tape; Rob’s got my recorder at the moment. (Borrowed for his theatre production, for which he composed the music himself – or have I told you this already?)

Meanwhile, I want to say goodbye to you with all my love, which wants to keep you lovely, for a long time, alive.

And with a poem by Hans Warren:

Bij wijze van gebed

Wees, als het dan niet anders kan,

wees, als de lente dan zijn slanke

lichtblauwe hand met gouden nagels

om mijn gezwollen keel gaat sluiten,

iets als een god, iets als een lappenboom,

dat ik je in verzen bidden kan, dat ik

de flarden van mijn wanhoop aan je hang.

Honderden spiegels van honderden dagen

hebben vergeefs getracht je te vervormen.

Ik heb je lief, ik heb geen anderen goden

meer voor mijn aangezicht …

…

ik ga de liefde in zoals het water in

blind, handpalmen vooruit, mijn ingehouden

snikken zwellen jouw hart in mij en

steeds zwaarder wordt het er, steeds eeuwiger.

And a little one by Nel Noordzij:

Je ligt zo neergelegd te slapen

met twee ellebogen als wapen

en een kroontje haren aan je haar

al kijk ik er maar even naar

ik sla tot in mijn schoot alarm

en rijm een zoontje in je arm

I am always with you and always love you,

André.

Grahamstown

Thursday, 12 September 1963

My little angel,

Thank you for this morning’s lively little letter, your commentary on the Springboks and similar matters, and your confession about being “hungry” in a spiritual-sexual way. Don’t I know it! And feel it! But the papie hasn’t yet shrunk. It won’t, either. Because – as they used to say in the olden days – desire doesn’t only tug at my heartstrings!

Today’s a holiday: Rhodes has its own holidays, and they don’t always coincide with those of country and “volk”. Today is “Founders’ Day”. All members of staff are kindly requested to attend the ceremony. I wish you could’ve been there – it was like Victor Hugo’s “sublime et grotesque”: first the long, formal procession of academics in their gowns and hoods, and, wherever possible, wearing medals (“each one walks all set up in his own separateness”); then a ritual of honouring the departed and a plea to Almighty God during which the assembly answers “amen” at regular intervals – often irregularly. After a sermon about the evils of our time (Christine Keeler, the old cow, was dug up for this purpose), there was solemn prayer (for the umpteenth time), a hum of Ourfatherwhoartinheaven … and a general drift towards the War Memorial. There we formed a sacred circle around the memorial, a stately ring-a-ring-o’roses, with more prayers, a recitation of the honour roll of the departed, syllable for syllable separately articulated (here and there wrongly pronounced), a laying of wreaths, at least a dozen of them, each with a bow and a salute; and then deadly silence while the “Last Post” drawled from a trumpet somewhere – and during this stirring highlight, under the blue of our heavens and far from the depths of our seas, two dogs made an appearance in the sacred circle, lifted their legs and pissed over all four corners of the monument, and all over the recently laid wreaths. Sic transit gloria.

In between, or meanwhile, I’m translatingtranslatingtranslating – forunately Simenon is gripping and quick – and I’m working on the novella, too. I started writing only yesterday (so far I’ve just been making notes, puzzling things out, etc.) and I’ve got as far as page seven. I decided to let go of the double-decker idea. The subtitle remains “Diptych”, because each page has two columns: on the left side he talks; on the right, she has her say. Occasionally there are blank passages; sometimes left and right are versions of the same situation ... and as I said previously, a good number of my “poems” have been worked into it. I’ll retype the first few pages in a minute, so I can send them along. I’ve suddenly begun wondering whether I mightn’t be able to get it done in time for Bartho’s prize [the APB Prize for 1963], but that could cause overhastiness and detract from both Die Ambassadeur and Orgie. Moreover: you’re already there to represent us this year! Girlie, oh man, I so badly want you to get that prize. Thus far, I think your chances are really good. I don’t yet know how good Jan’s and Adam Small’s stuff is, but I doubt it’ll have Rook en Oker’s “exquisiteness”. I’m holding thumbs – and all my other dangling parts – for you.

You said on the phone you’re “hungry”. Little person, my cocoon, this time we’re going to go mad together. It’s not long now. Even if the trip is shifted to the beginning of October – please, I hope not! – it’s still not long, we’re already halfway through September.

Next Tuesday and Wednesday night I’ll be out (the movies; and Guy Butler’s Everyman); but on Thursday I’ll phone again.

Greetings to you, with love and grace, my exquisite, beautiful, virginal Ingrid: “a great deal of us is together, and we can but abide by it, and steer our courses to meet soon. John Thomas says good night to lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a hopeful heart.”

Yours, yours, darling mine, always,

André.

And a kiss for Simone.