Castella
Thursday, 12 September 1963
My dearest André,
Thank you lots for your two lovely lusty letters and the telephone call on Tuesday night. And for Simone’s books, which she wants to talk to you about herself, and for the little photo of Anton, with his beautiful naked little thing, who looks just like you. It seems his mouth, which is half-hidden by his fist, looks like yours. Send me LOTS more, proof. The other evening when I was playing your tape again, I heard a child crying and later went and looked accusingly out of my door at the neighbours, when I suddenly realised it was Anton! I’d forgotten about his accompaniment on the tape. Simone, or Simnoe, as she spells it, has become very thin. I wonder whether I will ever get her fattened up again, but she’s up and about all day now and will go back to school on Monday. I wish one could have them immunised against these unnecessary illnesses, and this all still lies ahead for our fat baby friend! I wish you could bring him with you when you come so that we could have our children here – and he wouldn’t talk!
Darling, darling, it’s about a week and a half before you’ll definitely be here but I still want to say, it’s not going to “help” anything if you go and stay with Koos and them after the weekend – because then you’ll just get to bed late, and they’ll know – what’s more, they’ll then get involved; ag, you must just come and stay here, or keep a room somewhere. I do so love new places. Shall I book a place for you at the Edgehill? Everyone will in any case, know. And when you go back everyone there will also know. You would never fool me!
Oh, child! The weather has turned to winter again and I long so for the sun. I want to see the sky wide open when you are here, and I want to go to [Lanzerac] with you. François [Krige] has an exhibition there, and on opening night all the guests had a meal there – but I didn’t want to go because you’re going to introduce me to the place, aren’t you? “Straight into the jaws of death.” (Uys said we should never have gone to Stellenbosch together that night.)
There’s so much news in your last two letters – the little note from Van Wyk Louw is especially wonderful. Especially after you actually demonstrated what it is that Nicolette does! I am very proud of you.
And why do the photos have to be mounted? Send them on, I so badly want to see them again and that colour one of you laughing I want for ever (not the turkey)! that nice one taken on our honeymoon days at Franschhoek. And success with Orgie! Where is my MS of the revised Ambassadeur? You’re right about the poem “Jou Naam” – I’ll see if I can do something with the lines “Your name which I call” and the unavoidable “word”. I’m becoming over-confident. Congratulations on Die Koffer – I forgot (with Simone’s sickness) to listen to your “tender-beloved voice” and was so sorry about it. And do you know what they did at APB? They took your photo away and put mine in its place with my books around it – now the book really looks smart.
The paper is beautifully white – you’ve probably received yours already. I’m going to accept Bartho’s offer of A Farewell to Arms – will keep me busy between October and December when I (maybe?) come and visit you in Grahamstown for a long weekend. If you save, because I’m not going to get out of this financial mess quickly – am also going to apply to Molteno Trust for a bursary and am going to buy, among other things, nice clothes with it, because now I want nice clothes. Apparently one easily gets £500 to live on. Or should it be saved for going overseas? Though it’s far and lonely there!
You wanted to know about the BBC. They asked me about “The Child” (naturally) as if that’s all I’d ever written – I read the poem and just chatted. Nothing very impressive. Will tell you when we see (unbelievable) each other. And until then you will just have to control your rebellious papie. And it’s very clear – in “Kriptiek” I only got a fright about the “fuck” and the “Elegietjie” idea is a good one, but he should tremble more, and one should get a fright when he falls (falls apart?). But I’ll write it myself! You’ll have to be careful with your ideas anywhere around me, my darling colleague! But they are after all our poems!
This is such a sloppy (and actually sleepy) letter. Was up late on Monday night (with what?) and Tuesday evening with the BBC, and last night Jack and I went and had a drink at the Café Royal to toast Rook en Oker. (One celebrates the thing so often, do you still remember?) Afterwards he had a meal here – and do you know what, my treasure? – on Saturday I’m getting a stove and a table – and so we chatted; he is so timorous, it actually makes me sad, and he is so proud.
I didn’t mean one should act in an undignified way when I said WHATEVER I said. The danger of there being RUBBISH in the writer’s path is usually in his own mind; the rubbish he must necessarily confront every day – and there’s all the news. It’s actually a newsy letter, and what are you going to tell your class now? But know that I miss you, lots. Make that tape for me, then I’ll do one back. And write well and lecture well and sleep well. I’ll phone Koos to ask him when the proofs will be ready, or the Gothic. Sorry I’m not reading it! There’s a kind of drabness here at work, and the other reader is reading your French translation.
Thank you for your beautiful glowing letter, and thank you for you. And now I’m going to sleep with you. I’m already in bed, dressed in white, my distant groom! My André Brink. Send me a picture of yourself. I’m already familiar with the ones I have and forget how you look when you laugh. Love dearest liefsteling ALWAYS,
Cocoon Cocoon.
Simone dictates:
André, thank you André to send me the books. When the postman bring the books I play with putty, I make a little girlie, I make my doll a little bra and a little bikini pants. Then I saw the postman standing at the door. He gave the books to Maggie. Then I looked at the books. Then I had half of the story. Maggie’s boyfriend read it. The one is about a fox and one about a cat in a hat. It’s a nice story. Both of them are nice stories. I’m playing with putty. A man was very kind to me because he gave me the putty. My mummy read me the stories. I’m making a stick girl with the putty. She is floppy. I’m better. There is a three chimney house by our flat. A nice dolly I got in my flat. My mummy read me a story by Mickey Mouse. I can stand up every time when Mummy goes to work. Mummy gave me a tickey. We got a nice cupboard and we got a big big stick. I got a little dolly with no arms and no legs but nice long hair. André, how are you? Are you sick? Or are you well? I got a big stick and a sun hat. We’ve got a little bird sitting on the tree now. My mummy is smoking. The birdies is shouting to one another: quieek! quieek! There not going home yet, the birdies. What is André eating for supper? Thats enough. And thank you. Send love. I kiss you.
S I M N O E
Grahamstown
Monday morning, 16 September 1963
Darling girl of mine,
Tonight or tomorrow morning early I’ll try to write a longer letter, but this is just a short one so I can make the post in time – and really just an accompaniment to the parcels that I hope a) will arrive on time, and b) get there undamaged. With love and love and more love.
Last night was another of those neverending nights of longing: lots of dreams that all, sooner or later, ended up in the little room in the castle with its beloved, knobbly bed; and many hours of lying awake, hands under my head, like that first night when I met you and you said “no” as if from a dizzy height (“André! We don’t even know each other!”); you even offered to bring me some milk to calm me down. Precious little devil!
I’ll be able to give you a call on Wednesday night after all; and I’ll see if I can phone on Thursday evening, too. Maybe you’ll be eating out somewhere, then? Here on this side, I’ll just have to go by the “law of simultaneity”, eat the bread and pour the wine and let you become flesh and blood from that.
Luckily the weekend was not quite the desert it so often is. I worked on Saturday – work-work-worked until late on Saturday night; Sunday morning a few friends dropped in; and in the afternoon I played chef for my evening guests. Two invitees: Frieda [le Grange], about whom you already know, and a young artist, head of the art school here – slightly effeminate but very sincere in his thinking. At least it gave me an opportunity to have some conversation, something I need very badly. (For chlorophyll one has to search both earth and air, says Eybers!)
To be with you, drink wine devoutly and with love, converse, genuinely communicating, to take a bath, kiss your leucodendron, fuck until we’re out of breath, and then finally just lie together quietly, deeply happy, chatting lazily, just being together, finding complete identification even in our sleep, van alleenzijn langzaam te genesen. Ach, du … du!
One of these days it will be like that again. Soon I’ll be with you. We’ll go stay somewhere, far from the madding crowd, just me and you, just the two of us. Drink Martinis. And laugh a lot. And be very much in love. The moment I hear from Koos I’ll let you know immediately.
I almost found myself having to review Rook en Oker for 60. In fact, it’s still a possibility. Bartho phoned to say I must send reviews of Man in die Middel [Man in the Middle] (Chris B.), Skepsels [Creatures] (Dolf v. N. [van Niekerk]) and Rook en Oker (Ingrid Jonker) “on the double”. Naturally, I was especilly excited about yours. But then I thought: your work deserves a discussion that no one dares think won’t be objective; you and I will know, and Bartho too, that I would never write anything about Rook en Oker that isn’t honest. But precisely because I attach so much value to it, all those “readers” who know about us will immediately think: this isn’t a review, it’s just a “write-up”. So I asked him if there wasn’t an alternative option. If not, I’ll do it anyway – and to hell with suspicious readers.
The “new” edition’s paper does indeed look quite beautiful; it’s now almost two times thicker than before! My own copy, though, was poorly bound, with an ugly fold across the cloth – but hopefully that’s an exception. And then, unbelievably, I found another two printing errors: the white space between the title and the first line on page three and page seven is quite a bit smaller than elsewhere. But it’s unlikely Bartho will yet again have it re-set! “Ordinary” readers are unlikely to notice it, either. I just hope, my love, that it sells many copies, quickly. And I hope the Dutch embassy is deeply impressed with it. (You must start making moves to get an identity card with a view to a passport!)
I’m making slow progress on Orgie. I’ve got as far as page twelve. In a day or two I’ll retype the part you haven’t seen yet and post it off. Gradually more and more possibilities, complexities and subtleties are beginning to emerge. Precisely because it’s our work, it has to be good. For that reason I’m in no hurry, and even when it’s done, I’m going to let it be for a good few months before sending it to Bartho. They asked for a fragment, at this stage, to publish in 60, but I want to keep it for just us until it comes out. The technique’s in any case such that one should rather not publish it piecemeal.
I’m also sending your “Ou Perd” [“Old Horse”] to Bartho! And a few of my own new poems that I sent you last week.
This letter has become rather lengthy after all! I must go now so I can catch the post. Today there should be one from you. There must be. Naughty, precious little cocoon who doesn’t ever write!
And for the 19th (and the 23rd!): my precious darling, I want this day and this year to be one of universal light, universal purity, a departure from drabness and tristesse.
Goodbye for now, my virginal woman, my free person who “pours drink like Bacchus / freely splashing the acanthus”: greetings with love, tenderness and many wishes; and with much longing. Arrange your beloved feathers, and also the little chick’s. And on the night of the 19th we will sleep, apart, together.
Your André.
Castella
Tuesday, 17 September 1963
My poor dearest neglected man!
It feels like an eternity since I last wrote to you – and every damned time I have a chance something happens or people arrive – it’s twelve o’clock already and I am terribly tired – thank you for your letter and the first part of Orgie – which I don’t completely understand but which I find exciting anyway – is that long dedication personal or is it going to be part of the story? Sunday morning walked to Chris and told him about it – on Saturday evening he had a performance and did the piece out of Pot-Pourri – you probably want to know about it – I half-expected him to come and fetch me but he must have decided against it and on Sunday morning he was very sorry, because apparently it had gone well; he says you really are a big man!
Darling André! I was so MAD when I couldn’t reach you tonight; and now I have to write in a hurry again because I’m going to scream from exhaustion – you see, my sister and I decided that Simone will now go to her instead of crèche; then I pay her, and then I go and see them every evening after work, or otherwise every second night and fetch her for weekends, because she is still exhausted from measles, and needs a lot of rest. Tonight I wanted to leave early so that I could come and write; my brother-in-law walked with me, and was on the point of leaving when Jan and Marjorie arrived; and then he began chatting! And now – now it is so late again and “I want to go to sleep”. But when we talk again (after the call on Thursday) we’ll be talking to one another, and seeing.
Friday evening I told Uys about us ever so vaguely – because everything upsets him so much (seems to me he is mostly afraid that I will “take” Jack “away” from him – although he says that’s rubbish!). But I had to scold him because I’d heard that he’d had an infantile conversation with Bill de Klerk about us – God! And during this conversation (between me and Uys) Jack went to sleep, with the Bible, and looked so bladdy defenceless; and I said to Uys, I feel sad about him, which he then conveyed to Jack and translated as “pity”, about which there was a little quarrel on Sunday – André, André! All I want is to be pure and clean and turned inwards, to live without explanations and just bring this tiny bit of softness and closeness to the people I love, that’s all that is left! And then to be left in peace!
Saturday afternoon on the bus to Clifton with the beautiful sunny sea on the side – terrible me so guilty and unpoetic, a despondent “we are all long since past grief” – “laat alles in sy donneg val” or “let God’s water run over God’s acre”. And think “love of the beloved brown eyes” and say: God, no! no! “Above all else, guard your heart.” Today’s reading. In other words, I must keep and save you and myself with you. Treasures, grace, purity. Because I feel despondent and tired. Because I love Jack and I love you, and I can see the end of everything; and I’m going overseas (but it seems that might also be derailed, because Piet would never give permission now to take Simone out of the country, and if I leave her with him it might be a mess when I get back). Sorry, this letter probably sounds desperate to you again, but actually it’s not – just too tired to think; to create order out of the chaos, and so, death of the poet.
But I know everything will become clear and pure again – let me count your moesies just one more time, my distant, dear stranger. Because dear you are, precious and fine and bountiful; I miss you but cannot imagine at all that you will be here within a week. And maybe Friday. In three days. No, I simply can’t believe it. John Malherbe once asked with a worried scrunched-up face: “How do you feel?” and now I ask you, far away in your house with your garden, with your “significant love” and your amazing diligence. Dearest André! We’re alive! At the moment in angst, but thank God in the midst of or at the centre of this pitiless life, so delicate and intricate, but so real. And by the time you get my letter, you’ll almost be here, physical and true, and buttressed with love, with misfortune, with fear, with tenderness, with indulgence, with burdens, with joy, with purity, with dividedness. And then I’m going to count your moesies as a challenge to nothingness.
Thank you for you. Your dearest Cocoon. My dearest man,
Cocoon, cocoon, con.
PS: The “police spy” was arrested this morning for sabotage. God god god! Suspicion. And again suspicion – perhaps – forgive us – a ploy on the part of the police?
You, my little treasure, must sleep well, and as you once said, stay with me tonight. I call you by name; you are mine. We who always seek meaning (our sentence?) must perhaps try not to for a while, just remain soft. “Als een gele foto liggend in het water.” Glad to be alive; reality is beautiful.
Dearest man! Good night, and tomorrow, good morning, beautiful and attentive, desperately enchanted!
Your (very small),
Cocoon.
Grahamstown
Tuesday, 17 September 1963
Dearest,
Today I’m really writing no more than a rushed little note, because you should at least get a letter on your 29th birthday. All this scrambling and rushing all over the place just to get through the daily routine. You, in fact, experience this far more than I do. It still astounds me that you’ve been able to hold out so long, epecially at Citadel.
I had a really awful afternoon yesterday. I can remember only one other day that was quite this bad – when I rode over a frog in front of the garage, and was depressed about it for a week. Yesterday I had a hell of a fight with the gardener because he told me a bunch of lies – and then he offered me his “notice”. I’m fond of him and he’s fond of me and the garden needs him, so what now, dammit?
Watched Guy Butler’s Everyman last night – a very baroque, sensational version of Middle Age simplicity. I had to write a damn review for a PE newspaper, knowing that they’re going on tour and that a bad review could put at risk the R1 000 they’ve incurred in expenses. So I ended up fine-tuning the piece until one in the morning, trying to be honest without being mean.
This afternoon at five the Englishman with the double-barrelled surname’s coming around for a chat [Duval Smith] – the one who visited you. I’m looking forward to meeting him, just because – silly, I know – it’s a link to you. Otherwise I’d rather be working on the novella. We should in fact be writing it together: you scripting your parts, and me mine! It’s as far as page 15 now and I’m busy with your palm-reading at the Clifton Hotel and the prelude to that first night, “so safe and still …”
There was just one highlight yesterday: a gorgeous picture of Brigitte Bardot in Paris Match. Along with the discovery that she strikes me as beautiful because she has something of your lovely smile. In the photo at least.
I’m still waiting for the colour prints. The nightie photos came out badly – one of them almost okay, but nothing much to speak of. I’ll bring them with me, one of these fine days.
And now, child of mine, I wish you a happy birthday full of joy; be assured of the serenity of my love, the whole day long and always: while you’re doing your grey work; during lunch with Mrs Bouws (?); then, in the jam-packed bus; and finally in the little castle whose every little detail I can see before my eyes. When you go to sleep, with me, lie still and close your eyes and listen, and feel, knowing that – and how – I hail every part of you, with love, earnestness and play; and how, when I’m done with my greetings, I open you up softly and penetrate you very deeply, and stay there, and come, and leave you with secrets and tenderness and wonder, and a generous laugh of joy. Then I kiss your lovely eyes and you fall asleep, and the two of us are mystifyingly happy.
With love,
Your André.
I’ve enclosed a little cheque, as promised.
Grahamstown
Friday, 20 September 1963
Dearest lovely Cocoon,
I greet you from the splendid lazy warmth of this day, my sweet-faced cherub!
Thank you for your beautiful midnight letter.
Thank you for the joy of last night’s conversation, which was a discovery – after the frustration of Wednesday night’s call.
So, you were very tired, lazy and sleepy this morning? Did you go to bed very late last night?
And, this weekend, you’re going to do some pleasant child-minding with your two lovely little girls?
I’m sending you a few pages of Orgie – many of them are in an elementary state and still need a lot of work: it’s just to keep you more-or-less up to date with the novella’s progress. I’m also sending a “guide” to the references, and a short summary of the whole “story”, because you wouldn’t otherwise find much unity in it, especially reading it piecemeal over a long period. After this morning’s letter I’m especially eager to get back to it, but I must first complete Bartho’s Simenon before getting back to you; there are also a whole lot of other little tasks to be done.
And then Friday week I’ll be there! As I said last night, I should arrive by six. The two of us can either go somewhere, or stay over for the night and disappear on Saturday. Let’s see how the “spirit takes us”.
Meanwhile I’m sending you the colour pictures, which finally arrived this morning. I had only the best six printed, because they cost almost R1 a piece and the others aren’t worth the price. Maybe we can take a few nice black-and-white “proofs” this time!
That damn Uys! It’s a great pity, and it’s upsetting that he – of all people – should behave in this manner. What did he actually tell Bill (and therefore: the whole world plus all of Johannesburg)? And what did you say to him about us?
Does your shirt fit? The underpants are surely much too big for your little bum. Now you’ve got a fly, too – not an “inessential” one like that first night in your lovely, spotless little white pyjamas.
This has been a mad week, what with going out to see Everyman, Alec Guinness’s Last Holiday and also The Bridge on the River Kwai, plus the huge amount of time that the BBC came and wasted here. My heaps of marking have rudely stacked up, and I’ll have to work like a slave during my few days of holiday. But then I’ll be coming down to rest with you over the weekend before digging into the proofs (the worst work in the world … as if you don’t know!).
This afternoon I’d have loved to make a leisurely tape for you, but now I’ve got an honours seminar from three to five, and after that I won’t be alone any more, because then the servant will be gone and I’ll have to take over with Anton.
I won’t be able to phone next week, because it’s holidays and Estelle won’t be working at night. But our arrangements are all settled and of course I’ll still write. You too, please! Beloved, neglectful little thing who is always forgiven for everything so easily, and so readily.
Last night I slept with you. Longing, longing and more longing. But we can start counting the days now. Strange that I’ve chosen my time in this way (if one can talk about “choosing”, that is): if you follow the pattern of the past five months, then your cycle begins again on the 25th. Don’t get sick this time! I love you, my own, my Ingrid, my you,
Your André.
Castella
Monday, 23 September 1963
Darling my André,
To congratulate you on your success in the Netherlands, bravo! And on top of this, I am going to brag about you over there. To say thank you for your letter and the beautiful colour photos and the second part of the lovely, reckless, fateful Orgie – “I” just want some more dignity! Did I really express all that fury during our palm-reading?
And thank you for the two telegrams, my generous darling! My 2nd birthday quiet, with a mad Simone-visit and children’s stories, with my brother-in-law saying, “You know why your ol’ man won’t come here? Because if he had to come he would come in here bleeding and on his knees …” Oh, God! And thank you, darling, darling, for your review of Rook en Oker; of course I do feel that you are prejudiced; you can take out that bit about “Anglicisms” because they’re there as an indicator of the times, and are no more “inferior” than a quote from the French or whatever; in this respect we Afrikaners really have to stop feeling inferior to the English! Uys thinks it’s a kind review (we’re great pals now!); but he thinks you should rather take one or two poems and give a sober analysis of them instead of trying to give an overview within the space available to you. Maybe … maybe.
Rainy night last night; party Saturday evening; sleep Friday evening. Thursday (the first birthday) was a delight! And child, the photos, especially the one of you; transported me back to you – your darling smile and dimples. I just want to say good night. “To the sadness at the source of your valiant joy”, to the moesies and the hands and the come come, hell! Goodnight, “who has said night …”
Till Friday, with pure tenderness and love,
Cocoon.
Monday night, 23 September 1963
Dearest, lovable, beloved Cocoon,
So, did you have your second birthday today? This must have been such a wonderful thing in your childhood. Childhood? Isn’t one always a child?! My own, my own guapa (before you get suspicious, that’s Spanish for “cute thing”).
If I could just talk like you – and I really want to – then tonight I’d have to say: I am absolutely the happiest.
Because:
Now, in just four nights’ time, I won’t be sleeping alone. In just four nights I’ll be with the most divine, precious person I know.
And in four nights we’ll also celebrate the Lobola-thing. I was naturally expecting this development because Koos predicted something of the kind, but then talk was just that Bezige Bij would take over a few hundred copies and also bind them. But now they’re going to make it one of their Literaire Reuzenpockets, with a print run of 2 000. Financially it doesn’t mean all that much, as the Pockets sell for just 20c. Commission gets deducted, and Koos and company then share the proceeds 50-50 with me. But more important things are in play here. Bezige Bij is one of the Netherlands’ leading prestige publishers, and their Pockets are offered to the entire European market for translation; in addition, the assessor was Bert Schierbeek, a leading “modern” figure in experimental work in Holland.
I have some other news too. This time it’s very, very funny. Moves are afoot to have me elected as an assessor-member of the Akademie!!! Keep this to yourself – it’s a state secret. In fact it makes me rather angry, because one day I’d like to receive a Hertzog Prize just so that I can turn it down; if they make me a member now and I don’t accept the nomination, I might never get a chance to refuse a Hertzog Prize. If, on the other hand, I become a member, I wouldn’t be able to refuse the prize. Ridiculously complicated.
If only all our problems were of this nature.
Meanwhile I’m working. Yesterday I finished Bartho’s first translation (I’ve done 20 000 words over the last two days), marked bladdy essays, read a manuscript for Bartho … there’s just no time for Orgie, but I’m not over-hasty. And lectures end on 20 October; then I can write until the end of February.
I saw a little something I want to bring with me on Friday. A completely ordinary, but cute little object. This of course does not exclude our shopping expedition, my darling. Why can’t you always be with me so I can just give and give and then be in a position to f… away all our money?!
Are you happy? Are you waiting, sweet and beautiful, full of light, fire and stillness?
Divine beloved, light your little lamp, your groom is coming.
Oh we’re going to celebrate, we’re going to be human beings amid all the delightful, unthinkable, wonderful things that reside in being human.
I love you. Reservedly, quietly, with abandon and in wildness.
Until Friday, until I see you, with love, Ingrid, Cocoon,
Your André.
Castella
Wednesday, 2 October 1963
Darling my André,
Ten-thirty and home in Castella to a radiant Simonetta – with our living bed just like that untouched and the cups and the mess in the kitchen, in the bedroom and the bathroom – and by this time you’ve probably arrived in Grahamstown dead tired – and I just want to say hello and goodnight and be thankful for you and go and lie down as if in a massive sickbed, split apart and whole.
… Het verleden is onzeker
de toekomst is blind
wat men in het oog houdt als heden: levende beelden
die van minuut tot minuut verstenen
rivieren onder onweer liefde
die uitstroomt in het laagland in de zee
wouden ben ik verdwaald in geluk of waanzin
ik slaap in en het ontwaken is bitter als stilte
steden waarin men zichzelf herhaalt en aanvult
afvalt schaduwt verliest en weervindt
…
ik geef gaan raad ik wijs geen weg
duizend sporen kruisen elkander
het lijf vergaat ons eerder dan het lachen
na de woestijn is water bovenaards.
Stay happy darling tender moesie-man; I’m going to read your Huisgenoot now and amuse myself with our new memory and kiss all your little laughs.
I miss you and I love you – André!
Cocoon.
PS: Later – Your article isn’t in Huisgenoot – just a bunch of revolting muscular Springboks! Still, divine five days – though Rook en Oker is jumping before my eyes – it’s completely irresponsible! I am a GLUTTON for talking to you – last night at the 191 was, I think, the most precious, or was it the bed, many times (thirteen), or on our walk when we were angry? Work today was actually “most kak” – but tomorrow I’ll be eating with Mrs Bouws and meeting Lena at five.
Good night! Night, dearest, love my darling – Con. (nie?)
Saturday, 5 October 1963
Darling mine,
I’ve been walking around for three days now feeling guilty about not writing, but it’s simply a case of yielding to the final, hectic acceleration of the academic year. However, right now everything will just have to wait until I’ve conversed a little with you. Last week this time we were in the little castle. Or on our way there after the morning’s shopping, you with your white bathing suit (have you broken it in yet on your gorgeous little body?) and me with my red pyjamas. And now? Now I’m sitting here with a few strategically located scabs and a heart full of love and quiet longing.
Here, everything has become so very ordinary, after that night’s inexplicable little drama, in fact upsettingly ordinary. And who can live “ordinarily” after drinking from your fountain? “Who can live on as a person after he’s played the role of God –?”
My love, my love, with a stillness and compassion and breadth, a kind of untouchable happiness. I’ve not yet had any time to sit and think about our nearly six days together, sort it all out, form a precipitate. Yet it’s been there all the time, behind all my daily doings – a process of assimilation, of absorbing, of discovery. While there with you I was all too aware, throughout, that our sexual togetherness couldn’t be as fully a surrender-filled orgy as I wanted it to be, all because of something as banal as an abrasion! But nonetheless we did, once again – and it remains a wonder, every time – liberate another angel from stone, gave form to a new word (and allowed a new word to become flesh); and we discovered our own island in the sea.
Your letter has still not arrived (I don’t mean the long one of a while ago, or the short one you talked about on the phone); I wonder what’s going on with the post. Everything’s wonderfully quiet.
What will you do on Monday night at the Cultural Society or whatever? Did Jack convince you in the end? And when I phoned the other night, was there fighting and tension and frustration again?
Darling Cocoon, you who took shelter so deep in my arms, hid away underneath me, and took me so deeply into yourself – you are not allowed to be unhappy.
Without a certain degree of agony, we cannot exist. May not, perhaps, because one must always know life is precious, wonderful, and therefore dangerous; without this acute awareness (anxiety, even), we wouldn’t be able to feel or experience things so deeply. However, mere unhappiness, which is really just frustration, and being trapped in a sterile and destructive way – that is not something you should have to endure. I’d like to protect you against it; to make a fire around you with my love to counter it, “ward off the pestilence that walks in darkness”.
I’ll write again, a longer and more rounded letter. This note was just to make contact so that you won’t be abandoned to silence, and so you know – as if you dare doubt it! – that I love you, how much I love you, and how I carry you with me, as if I were a mother and you my little child: with confidence, tenderness, faith, hope and love; and with great thankfulness for everything you continue to be for me, and for what you have been for me once again in the past few days. You have become a “home” for me, and with you, always, everything is beautiful.
With much love,
Your André.
Castella
Saturday night, 5 October 1963
My darling André,
It is absolutely unbelievable to think that last Saturday night we were at the Cederwood – I think we’d just started having our drinks – it’s so dusky and warm – tomorrow I’m going for a swim in your beautiful white bathing suit – eventually, because tomorrow has to be nice weather – I have Simone here (this sad little solace has just knocked over her glass of milk): this morning we went to take measurements and have a fitting for her flower-girl dress – and do you know what? I tidied the desk and put all your hundreds of letters neatly together in their envelopes – and your documents in files and my documents in files and our newspaper clippings in files … “sorting”. Even Rosa Nepgen’s nasty review of Sempre. “He should cleanse it of the offensive little things which make one keep it from young children”! God! (In any case, a person who gorges to the extent that she is as fat as a pig is offensive to society.) Darling! I miss you. Miss you so much that I took everything away from you for myself, and last night after Jan and Marjorie – wrote you a poem, like this:
My embrace redoubled me
my breasts call to each other
the two prancing friends
and my hands enclose my secrets
in a room far away
behind the spilled autumn
your eyes gaze astounded
at the mirror of your body
Nice? Of course, they were very inquisitive last night when I went to visit them – it’s so hard for me to lie about you – “a lie in the soul” – if I deny you, I deny myself. Marjorie says: “I suppose he finds it difficult to choose between you.” And then I honestly have to keep quiet! And the night you called, Jack was quite chilly, and says he doesn’t care about me any more. And what news from your side?
Do you want to send my little poem to 60 or do you have objections to it? How are things going with Orgie and please send your darling tape soon, my hello my André?
I found the poem “Prayer before Birth” (the old [Louis] MacNeice (lovely old woof) died of drink the other day).
God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body’s peace
God or whatever means the Good.
But I am not in the mood tonight to quote “Prayer” for you – it’ll come! Heard old Louis himself read it but unfortunately he was a bit drunk, and struggled …
It’s silly to say I miss you. I even miss your irritating scratching, and such a long wet sleep! Do you think that there’s a moesie-chance that we will have a child?
Now I’m going to sleep in “our” bed with Simone, and on Monday I will try to find the lost letter – imagine if someone reads it? – and tomorrow I’m going for a lovely swim – and, as Abraham de Vries said that night (vulgar!) “perhaps you’ll get another collection from this”. I am in the mood to write again. ’Night beautiful, beloved, tender precious mine. And write soon-soon, or I’ll send you a writing pad. And thank you for the phone call. Tell everything, everything. Love, my darling, and kiss the papie inside me!
Your Cocoon.
Sunday, 11.30 pm
Dearest André, had a swim, in the lovely white swimming costume; dropped Simone off and had a meal with Chris till pm, lay around at his flat and laughed and chatted about everything and more, and loved you, always. Come back soon.
Cocoon my André,
Cocoon.
{Your letters are now almost as numerous as our other total: 69.}
Grahamstown
Monday morning, 7 October 1963
My most lovely, precious Connie,
It’s as if my reactions this time are slower than usual – perhaps because I fell back into work so swiftly. It’s only now, and especially over the past weekend, that I’ve been fully able to understand, “in soul and body”, just how precious was our handful of days together, how indispensable you are to me, and what a continual, inarticulable wonder you are. This long, barren and frustrating separation from each other, along with all the yearning that it caused, has also – over time – almost accustomed us to the fact that we’re not together (even though this has been a rebellious acceptance). But our six days of togetherness, with their quiet time, conversations, going to bed, sleeping, eating, and being, have created a deep new realisation of the unutterable value of sharing things so directly. It’s as if we’ve been driven into a bigger space, like a bubble blown from a little pipe. I need you more than I ever did before, you are more precious, and everything is more tender; and: it’s all more secure, less likely than ever to be taken away. I live and breathe in the assurance of our love, and the days are beautiful; I long to return. You are the world outside my room – a clear summer’s day that I’m always aware of, and to which my window is always open. Sometimes I climb out the window, go into the world, and become sun-drunk, happy, complete.
Yesterday especially was a day for sharing with you: an outing to a coastal farm (Naas Steenkamp’s parents). It was a real little paradise. This is how we should be able to live one day: in an old-fashioned, sturdy little house with thick walls. It’s all white, with a cellar and broad wooden floorboards, and it nestles on a mountain slope, facing a valley and a river that cuts through brushwood and palms, with open pasturage among poplars, and winding paths trodden by oxen. Anton should really tell you about it – this son of mine who yesterday, for the first time, actually did smell “like a billy-goat and flowers”. This was after trampling through the cowshed with its milk buckets, playing with a large Alsatian, and rolling around in cool, green sunny grass before trailing after Muscovy ducks. “The good earth” is more than just a romantic fiction!
This morning it was back to the lesser reality of marking essays – and reading Rosa Nepgen’s review of Sempre in Die Burger. Did you see it?! (“Is André Brink still seeking a doubtful martyr’s crown by getting one of his books banned?” For shame!)
Thank you for your sunny, lovely letter that arrived this morning, with its beautiful poem and its tender certainty, “split apart and whole”.
Now you must please look nicely after your little split, pamper it, let it rest quietly so it will be ready for the next time, for another day … my scabs have come off and I am once again “whole” – and ready, always full of love.
Have you had any more trouble with creditors? Please write to me if you need help. And you may not, must not try to “pay back” any of the rent, as you threatened, because after all I also stayed in the little castle!
I’m going to make you a tape this week. And I’ll phone you on Wednesday night.
I’m saying “good morning” to you in the early morning, hailing everything, with joy and light and playfulness, and with the laughter of love,
Yours, always.
Castella
Tuesday, 8 October 1963
My darling André,
This grey weekend time – six o’clock – after the newspaper is done with – luckily I still have some of your lovely gin and carnations – and asparagus. Thank you for your letter. And the telegram. How on earth do you manage to write on a Saturday (twelve o’clock) and make sure that I get the hand-delivered letter on Monday morning? If you send it to my postbox it arrives even earlier. [PO Box] 707. (I think.) And I’ll send you a telegraphic address as soon as I find out what it is.
Dearest mine! Last Tuesday – when I was so horrible – that time – before the 191 and the long long sleep. It feels as though you are years away. Here the usual storms and floods – with a lovely Sunday in between – so I wore the white bathing suit – it’s beautiful – I could run and climb and swim swim swim in it – the bikini always falls off – it is beautiful! And then, with Chris to the El P. [El Picador] in Sea Point, and a bottle and a half of white wine, we sat at our table, the one in the corner, and had the braised duck – I missed you so much!
Yesterday evening after the Cape Culture Group [Cultural Circle] – Jan (and Marjorie), who had already infuriated me at the dinner table – said they were going to Bill tomorrow evening – and carried on like this as though I’ve got something against him – till I said sulky bastard or something like that – and then Jan was angry – and I was angry – and then in front of everyone he said I probably don’t know Afrikaans, because Jan S. Cilliers [Jan F.E. Celliers] (the darling) definitely did not mean bastard breed when he said bastard breed (I like a man who can stand his ground) but in fact meant the “Royal Dutch”. Well, I had to accept this, but after the meeting he again referred to it twice (such a dear) and then I was angry again and fell asleep angered. And then I didn’t want to show him your document that he has to sign; I think you must, in any case, write to him yourself, I’ll sign my name; and write to Adam [Small] – I’ll speak to Uys tomorrow. (Unless he went to Onrus, as he’d planned.)
One little part of your letter vaguely disturbed me – you mentioned it on Wednesday morning before you left (around 8:15 to be precise): “While there with you I was all too aware, throughout, that our sexual togetherness couldn’t be as fully a surrender-filled orgy as I wanted it to be, all because of something as banal as an abrasion!” André, I think I’ve told you this before, and maybe often made you feel – that you are, each wonderful new time, a sexual-spiritual surprise to me – though I’ve been chafed and sore I’ve never made such an issue of it! But your image of the angel from the stone is beautiful. Angel? I don’t know either why it is so “wonderfully quiet” on your side, but you should at least have received a letter from me on Saturday and again today. I’ll post your letters myself now – because the express one is lying around somewhere in Cape Town it seems. And why, while I’m scolding now, the “inexplicable little drama” of Wednesday night? Dear darling CHILD, do you know they’re even writing about me in the newspapers now … “Ingrid Jonker (‘The Child’)” – do you know that it is LOBOLO and not Lobola? See Hiemstra.
Darling my André, against whom I drowned so wonderfully just last Tuesday, I am not unhappy. Just rather saddled with energy. I want to go up the mountain. And all the while I am busy “skryven en skryven en skryven almaar die heilige Name van God”.
And I also want a tape, dearest one of all. This Sunday Jack again said he loves me, but when I showed him the poem “My Embrace Redoubled Me”, he said, “It’s for André. Hurry up, will be late, you little bitch.” Strange …?
Today (lunch time) I walked in the Gardens with the new blossoms. The sun was delicious. Tonight, early to bed with Teddy. I would so love to dream about you, my prince.
Blessings and love, my sensitive darling,
Cocoon.
PS: Felt really nauseous yesterday. A strange, impossible premonition …
Con.
Grahamstown
Wednesday, 10 October 1963
My own little Cocoon,
The fact that today was a holiday delayed the sending of the tape, so you’ll only be receiving it on Monday. I’ll send a telegram on Saturday, otherwise you might feel neglected!
This is not really a letter, just “directions for use”: the first side of the tape was recorded at ¼, the second side on ⅔ – here’s hoping you’re not too distracted. And I’m sending a little cheque so you can also make one for me. (I’m posting the tape itself to Castella.)
No news. Just roaming around in the absurd joy that our moesie-girl is maybe growing into a person after all. (Even if [Guillaume] Apollinaire does say: “The children of lovers are born in sorrow.”) It’s a kind of turning into the self, curling up like a hedgehog – around oneself and around the little thing, or the possibility of one, with love and care and quiet ecstasy.
I was upset about Simone’s near-nasty experience. She’s such a pure little thing, such a wild little animal. Protect her against the evil that walks in darkness. Give her a little kiss on her tummy.
And so, are you getting afternoon tea these days because your throat’s so dry and you were so bad-tempered?
Are you, along with the separation and daily drabness, still happy, still whole? Look after yourself; close yourself up like a little cocoon. Write verse. Swim in your all-white bathing costume that you have to worm and wiggle yourself into so delightfully. (Probably more so now, because your soft, round, lovely breasts are getting larger and fuller.)
We have a memory as multifaceted as the eye of an insect. “So we’ll live, / And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh / At gilded butterflies …”
Work sweetly and daringly, and when you get home from the anonymity of buses and crowds, pour yourself a drink and sit back, and then I’ll talk to you on the tape that’s waiting at the little castle.
Love
love
love
love,
Your André.
Grahamstown
Sunday night, 13 October 1963
Dearest, darling little Cocoon,
Thank you for yesterday’s delightfully varied, vivid letter – about the “culture” meeting, the tiff with Jan, the white-costume swim, the “strange, impossible premonition”, and lobola that should be lobolo. (I too made this discovery after the book appeared; but it’s okay – I don’t think the “a” is used by enough people to go through as generally accepted Afrikaans!)
And, darling: Make sure you’re in fine feather. Because: although there are still some “ifs”, it’s nonetheless beginning to look like I’ll be there with you by 6 November. I phoned Koos, and he’s almost certain the book will be ready by then – if it’s a day or so earlier, he’ll be able to hold its appearance back until I get there. If I can get everything arranged satisfactorily on this side – the exam scripts and the trip itself – then I’m coming. I’d started talking about this quite a while ago, and raised it again, so it doesn’t look like there’ll be any obstacles.
Girlie, my little girl. Reading: The Lord is merciful and gracious.
Even the date – 6 November – should suit you better than the past few times!
I shall preserve the papie, and let it get properly well again (the last time I slept with you – Heroes Day! – the little abrasion opened up again). And I’ll store lots of secrets and come to you with a full load.
How we live, we of the past-and-present! (Alice had to listen as one of the Wonderlanders – the Duchess? or the Queen of Hearts? – said: “Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow but never jam today!”) We are always in transit. But child, with the prospect of such a destination (even though the train doesn’t stop for long!), what an adventure the journey promises to be! One sits with one’s nose pressed against the window without even noticing the soot in one’s hair.
Did you swim again today, and get a nice tan? Here it was such a divinely sunny day (I did no work before this evening, and then just one chapter of the Simenon translation). Frieda and a friend were here. From eleven this morning we lay in the sun, reading newspapers, lazing around and eating; we made plans to drive to the beach this afternoon, but we drank and ate so much, and got so lazy, that nothing came of it. And all day I lay with my head in the sweet, warm, ticklish grass, or looked up into the sky through the lemon leaves, and I was with you.
What shall we do when I come down this time? It’ll most likely be ± Wednesday to Monday.
One night we’ll celebrate together.
Another night we’ll celebrate with Chris.
And the weekend –?
“Everything is new, everything lies in the future.”
This quotation turns my thoughts to Uys; and to a funny little thing in a third-year class yesterday (tell him about it). We were discussing Die Goue Kring [The Golden Circle], and one of the girls said: “It’s very nice and all, but you get tired of all the oranges. Ever since reading the thing, I’ve never eaten another orange!”
Willem Jordaan, says Koos, is apparently wildly enthusiastic about Die Ambassadeur and very eager to start with his design. Hopefully he’ll send it via airmail in the course of this week for my attention. I’ve never before – not even with Lobola – looked forward to a book’s appearance quite this much. Because this one’s ours. So much of it is thanks to you.
Tomorrow, I think, I can finally resume work on Orgie, as the worst of the marking is behind me. I’ll probably spend a few days just sitting around, “getting into the spirit” of the thing, brooding and becoming foul-tempered. But I’ve been itching to start working on it again. It’s so frustrating, all the other, unavoidable things one has to do.
Meanwhile, I’ve set up a kind of “Manifesto for Sixty” for the next 60 – actually just to characterise and give a closer indication of our “nieuwe lente en een nieuw geluid”. I’ll send it to you once it’s been typed up. Meanwhile I’m sending you the Schutte parody.
Remember to find out your post office box number and telegraphic address.
Write a lot, and – even though you’re no longer a “young man” – “cleanse your way”. Because I love you, and miss you; I fill my days with you. On Wednesday night I’ll phone you, too.
Love, mine,
André.
Castella
Tuesday, 15 October 1963
My dearest lamb,
Thank you for your lovely, lovely tape which I was finally able to play yesterday evening after a pilgrimage – to the home of my old friends in Clifton, with a beautiful view over the sea: my recorder has stopped working, and Erik [Laubscher] wasn’t home. It was a lovely tape – I wish I could play it again. On Friday my recorder will be fixed; so I’ll “answer” you over the weekend although I chatted and laughed along heartily last night. And thank you for the cheque, I’ve already bought a tape and this funny thin pen, which I am not getting along with.
I miss you, and your Anton. You must try and come in November; the Cape Town circle isn’t asking as many questions any more – it seems to me, I may be wrong – they have accepted things more or less. Oh yes, I wanted to tell you about yesterday evening. After the tape-playing, I went to Lena, and then Chris arrived and brought me home. Then we drank a huge amount of red wine – Lena and I, and I only went home after eleven, so that I couldn’t then, as I’d wanted to, begin writing to you, because this morning it was court – all okay: I am so glad this horrible business is now over, hope I won’t be harassed like this any more – they withdrew the “contempt of court” … Lovely man! I behaved quietly and demurely, and when I saw his honour look at me, I realised the curl was tightly twirled – I was actually shit-scared! It’s lovely to chat to you. I haven’t written to you for a while – but you write so regularly and then you say: this isn’t actually a letter … then it goes all quiet inside me, “what a miserable thing man is”. You who gives me so much, gives everything so generously, who allows me to take part in you, every day.
The weekend was actually nice. Saturday morning went and had tea with Chris in town, then wandered around and here and there, bought something, drank half a bottle of wine together at the Manchester while he wrote six postcards to one friend; went to eat at El P. – “braized duck with orange” – to the beach, the white swimsuit that fits so tightly and constantly makes me want to run, drink with Jack (who gave me a lecture about my dangerous relationship with you, but friendly); Sunday with Simone to the beach; lunch at Marjorie and Jan, met lovely people who brought me home at seven, and so to dream. The rest of the previous week, nothing. Static, alone.
It’s now ten to nine and I’ve just got back from Simone, missed her terribly on Sunday; the pig who molested little girls has, praise God, been arrested, from what I hear. I suppose they’ll give him psychological treatment. Still – I would have given him a thorough thrashing if I’d seen him. Sunday night was actually terrible – “angst” – the terrible separation – from you, Simone, and also Jack. This feeling that something somewhere is wrong. But now everything is “right” again. It’s always like that. Then I diligently read through Lobola. (Oh yes, that’s right too.) Lobola is beautiful – sometimes I feel “never a mistake, the words don’t lie” (I can’t manage this pen at all). Seems I’m not getting tea after all; they had a council meeting about it but didn’t say what the conclusion was. So now I buy tomato juice at 1 pm and have it cooled and fetch it in our kitchen at 3:30. In the end it’s better for one than tea! We’re reading Murder, Mystery and the How. Helluva interesting – I have always been so morbidly interested in the law. Anne just thinks the drinking is terrible – always in “The Bar”.
Darling, moesie, always-laughing moesie-man – are you wearing your red pyjamas and are you lying heavily across the bed like that night at the Cederwood, do you remember, when you came and lay athwart me in a kind of absolute surrender, satisfied, exhausted, to be caressed? I cannot put into words the sense of softening and “destiny” which in this way you released in me.
And how is it going with Orgie (rest if you must) – and oh yes, the student (Éluard) probably meant “poem” instead of “institution” [“‘gedig’ in plaas van ‘gestig’”] …? It is a very mature poem, maybe it’s impossible for a student to understand. Lovely, lovely tape with all the laughter, which immediately brought me so close to you, and at the same time so immediately to my own heart. This, surely, is “being together”.
The little castle is clean, full of flowers, nasturtiums to stick into all my wounds, if you were here, you’d stick your nasturtiums into them – and in a way, you already do. André, we really do need one another. Need, need, need. And Sunday night I fell asleep with this otherworldly dream of us; the house looks like this:
And somewhere beyond, an old-fashioned yard.
Thank you, for your really lovely little letter, which sorts and arranges – it’s actually a fantastic experience, all of it. The liberating humour, the seriousness of the game, the absolute freedom from any feeling of “bitterness”, the incontrovertible, lasting tenderness. My wonder man, I love you. Biblelove, Corinthianslove. I carry you cocoon-tight, and then one has to be a cocoon to be a poet. Maybe being a poet is a playland, never really “deep seriousness”, but for me, one as safe as Jesus. I completely agree with your criticism of “My Embrace Redoubled Me”. That’s just a provisional comment. The worst is still to come! I’m going to sleep with you now. Perhaps just sleep from knowing – we’ll see how the hand leads us. But in any case, peacefully, happy, as you must also be. “Not for one moment, beautiful André Brink, will I forget thee.” Love and love, liefsteling.
As always your Cocoon
COCOON.
Ach, du … du!
{Thank you for the telegram on Saturday, generous child. IJ.}
Grahamstown
Thursday morning, 17 October 1963
My darling,
How did things go last night after our phone call: the “cold, distant” conversation between you and Jack? What can I possibly do to make sure your precious life is free of unnecessary muddying? And now you’ve begun to feel suspicious even of me, as you said – despite your saying it lightly. And, true to our tradition, it woke me up in the small hours last night, leaving me sleepless, disturbed and sad; and, of course, you weren’t there, so I couldn’t wake you up to seek assurance and some kind of solution in you and with you. Darling, no, don’t, nothing weakens the ground beneath one’s feet as much as a lack of trust. I am yours, everything I do and think is directed towards you; even in my least important daily activities, you are the steady five lines on which I score the notes of my life.
Especially now, with the certainty of 8 November so luminously close, everything seems to have found a direction, a kind of “resignation”, and a transparent happiness. I was able to start working on Orgie again, though it was quite a struggle at first, as I expected, but after three days of working in fits and starts, I found my feet again last night, in fact before the phone call, writing seven pages quite quickly (I’m busy with the conversation in which “you” talk about your life in such a rebellious and passionate way, so full of resistance, that afternoon in Clifton). The telephone call’s little dose of edginess and unfinished business troubled the writing somewhat, but today – because I can now sit in restful seclusion and talk to you, my dearest beloved – I’m going to write quite a bit. “Each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate.” You do of course know [T.S.] Eliot’s Four Quartets? To my shame I must admit that I have only read them properly now – in the past, I’d read them rather spottily, here and there. (And don’t you think the tone of voice of Tristia is rather strongly derived from the Four Quartets?) I’ve bought Eliot’s new Collected Poems, which runs up until 1962. Among the new ones there’s little that is exceptional. One nice one, though, which I’ll inscribe in your copy of Die Ambassadeur.
I’ve asked Koos to ensure that the very first copy is hand-delivered to you at the Citadel, immediately after the book appears. (This will be any day from about 30 Oct.) That means you’ll get to see it even before I do.
I am expecting Jordaan’s cover design tomorrow – actually with fear and trepidation, because if it’s disappointing, people lose all interest in the book.
I phoned Bartho yesterday to ascertain whether Orgie might yet see publication this year, that’s if I’m able to deliver it in two weeks’ time, but he’s apparently away from Jhb this week. Maybe it’s just as well, as I shouldn’t be working overhastily.
I probed Rob again about the APB books and, to my distress, he said not one of those he’s read so far deserves the prize – he wants to suggest that the judges be allowed to decline awarding a prize if they feel this way. Please keep this between me and you only. I’m actually very upset. Naturally I’ll seek an opportunity to raise the issue of Rook en Oker specifically with him – maybe when my review appears in 60.
Jan’s review is not just “nice” – it’s thorough. A little generalising (“always lyrical even when she is sensuous” – since when can’t sensuousness be lyrical, without the “even” tagged on? But I must first go and read the piece myself – I’m quoting according to what I can remember from last night’s conversation). To return to what I started saying: a little generalising, although this is actually a good characteristic. (Playfully: it’s quite an achievement that all your lovers are reviewing your book! Jack will surely do another one for that New Zealand journal, Windfall or Landslide or Avalanche? And mine in 60.)
(“I am one of your lovers, there are many” – suddenly I’m in a foul, jealous mood again!)
You neglect me with your one little letter a week, two if I’m lucky. I too am hungry and miss you and live in a state of continuous yearning. Love, my love, please don’t be distant. Be with me, let us take shelter together under cool leaves from the vengeful gods who roam in the night winds. Let us do this in the togetherness that has become my most valuable possession. So that I can feel you in my arms, your breath against my face, your sweet, still breath; feel the taste of your soft, lovely mouth; the faraway tenderness of your eyes, half-shut behind your eyelashes; the little curl on your forehead – the one that gets twirled so much nowadays; your soft neck; the childlike touch of your nipples against my chest; the tension of your arms around my back, where your lovely sensitive fingers make their little marks; let me feel the rumbling of your tummy; the arch of your little mound; your soft, most exquisite thighs; the touch of your calves and feet – and even the pinch of the leucodendron – and then, the concentration of all that is me deep inside you, and you so soft there and so deep and with such a firm, firm clinging. And the left lip pouting, a tiny bit longer than the other …!
Just three more weeks. My own girl, mine. I miss you and I love you, in daily certainty and trust,
André.
Castella
Thursday, 17 October 1963
My dearest André,
Hello! – In answer to your lovely long letter and the “prickly” phone call of last night. By that time I was probably so despondent, my treasure, about the cold emotional hell Jack and I frequently find ourselves in. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to whine. I told Jack I think it’s better if we don’t see each other for a while, and tomorrow evening after work I “depart” with Simone to … Bellville … that cultural town, to stay with friends for the weekend. Which means that I won’t get your promised letter on Saturday; but at least I’ll have it to go to sleep with on Sunday evening when I get back. It’s only now that I’ve really had time to think back to the phone call that I’ve felt really sorry. In reality, I didn’t “suspect” you; and – apart from that – if you had to for some reason or another – I would understand. Love is not love that changes with the tide – no, heavens –
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
My darling André, if there’s anything I still believe in, then it is your purity and singularity. And that’s actually fully sufficient. About Estelle’s not-knowing – I still think the same – I would certainly know … because I really don’t believe you’re a good actor. Every writer has a little touch of it – but in general they’re pretty clumsy in practice. Still – maybe – you’re right. Another person’s ways are a mystery to me …
Walked home quickly to come and write to you – I now walk there and back over the beautiful hill behind here – in the morning, especially, it’s lovely. (Oh yes, ray of light yesterday afternoon – apart from your letter – did you see the portrait of Brigitte on the front page of Huisgenoot?) Evenings, mostly: reading Stroomgebied – about every third poem has something, an image or thought, or atmosphere, or everything. And I want to talk to you about everything. Have you for instance read this lovely little thing by Hetty van Waalwijk: “Poesje”:
Geef mij terug
alles wat ik had
mijn tien talenten
mijn geluk en mijn onschuld en mijn witte poesje
en mijn revolwer en mijn groene wereld
en vooral mijn pop
die pop met het domme poppengezicht – en geef me dan ook mijn duikelaartje
en mijn witte poesje
en mijn schommel tussen die perebomen
perebomen waar appels aan kwamen en kersen
en aardbeien
bomen vol aardbeien
en al mijn boeken en mijn kleren
en al die mensen waar ik van hield
en mijn grootmoeders die liedjies met me zangen
liedjies over kleine witte poesjes
met witte pootjes
en witte nageltjes
maar die kan je nooit zien … en mijn hockeystick en mijn raket
en mijn witte poesje
heel klein en heel wit
het mag bij me in bed slapen
en ik zal het elke dag borselen
en verszorgen en eten en drinken geven
het mag drinken aan mijn eijen borst
het kleine witte poesje dat ik nooit gehab heb
This Dutch tenderness, or maybe fifties-generation tenderness?
My dearest André, I would so much love to read and experience everything with you; and I have so much to learn from you. Why can’t you just come and live here always, in the little house I drew – I am so often there with you! And that gives me a brilliant idea. Tomorrow I’ll place an advert in the newspaper – then we’ll go and stay in a place like that for the time that you are here. Somewhere in the Malay Quarter … or I’ll ask Chris to take me there, and find out whether there isn’t a pretty, clean little place like that which is currently vacant …? It would be wonderful! If we have to find a place like the Cederwood again, I’m not staying. Although, the Sunday evening there – and especially the walk – stays with me as something absolutely unique. Especially a “belonging” to you – which has nothing to do with our husbanded and wifed – why? This here, my darling, is going to be our best being here.
I know you now. And I know you as: loving, lavish, friendly, tender, impatient, passionate, teasing, precious, refined. All I want in addition to that is a pretty pretty dress, and I’ll wait till you are here so that we can choose one together. This time it’s going to be summer, summer, summer, and you must remember to bring your new bathing suit and especially the red pyjamas, and also the striped pyjamas – and then of course there’ll be Die Ambassadeur with the most beautiful dedication – and your photos – shall I lend my big one to Nasionale Boekhandel? – in the windows. By then I’ll be suntanned and my hair will be nicely cut. On condition that you won’t have had yours cut or cut it yourself for two weeks. I know it’s a helluva sacrifice, but I want it to be long. And then the other “visitor” won’t be here in my house of love. Because I love you and if you carry on talking, because I can hear your beloved voice and your little laugh, I’m going to phone you right away.
Your darling, darling,
Cocoon.
PS: It’s too early to phone (seven o’clock). From when till when may I do so? Probably not before eight. Wanted to include a nice poem, but my eye’s been caught by a Lucebert, which for my sensibilities is a little obscene: “In de diepte en onder zwijgzaamheid / trekken toekomstige handen naar / het werk aan waters en aan de wortel.”
Better, darling: “Hoor dan uw handen, haast dan uw hartslag / Ik ben een donkere droom in de zon.”
Ingrid Jonker.
Andrew: L. Andreas, Fr. André, It. Andrea, Sp. Andres, Ger. D. Andreas, Rus. Andrei, Gr. Ανδρέας, from ανδρεπής “manly”. The name of the first disciple called by Jesus, the brother of Simon Peter, and patron saint of Scotland and Russia.
Nicola, Nicolette: – from Nicolas – “the people”, St Nicholas, Bishop of Myra c. 300, is regarded as the patron saint of children, sailors and wolves, and was much venerated in both Eastern and Western Churches.
Deirdre (f), the name of the heroine of The Sons of Usnach, one of the Three Sorrowful Tales of Erin, the subject of many plays and poems by modern Fr. poets.
Ingrid (f), an O Norse name of which the first element is from the hero-name Ingri and the second rida “ride”(!). Ingirith is found in England in the 13th c. “blonde, clean”.
{PS: And then I forgot to tell you how much I enjoyed your satirical piece! Bravo! And for that arrangement with the Swedish newspaper and your Ward – thank you.}
Grahamstown
Friday, 18 October 1963
My delicious, always-new Cocoon,
Ever since receiving your tender, enchanting letter this morning, I’ve been wanting to write, but I first had to make notes about “the novel in the twentieth century”, and then go through this afternoon’s lecture on Tristia. After that, Anton came running into my study, chasing a blowfly, and we started playing together. He has a smell all of his own: a mixture of earth, warm grass, strawberries, Marmite and pee.
Thank you for the superb letter. If the result is a letter of this quality, it’s almost worth the long wait. Divine little fire of my loins, whose glow reaches the furthest corners. “Ik heb u lief als droomen in de nacht.” And I want to weave myself permanently into your dream cocoon. Thank you also for the dream house, with its three small beds in a row, the table and desks arranged so prettily next to each other, and the seclusion of our huge bed. You’ve forgotten just two practical things: the big bath, and the toilet. Especially you, who runs barefoot into the rain every 2½ minutes to empty your minuscule little bladder!
Last night’s chat was lovely, you with your beloved, sleepy voice that woke up ever so slowly; then I could hop back with you to your castle – sleeping beauty – and get into the rumpled bed with you, languid and warm and full of the fragrance of your mystical girl-ness. And sleep in you, and then sleep with you, with your warm little bum against my tummy, and everything pleasantly moist.
Child, child I am happy about you, happy to be at your side, happy to be with you. I’m working so wonderfully on our Orgie. In yesterday’s piece I wrote a litany for the lost child. It goes like this:
li
ta
nie
kyrie eleison
lam
tie
tie
dam
tie
tie
doe
doe
my
lief
ste
tjie
It’s wonderful to go mad (but responsibly mad!) with typography. All the more reason why I shouldn’t be overhasty … even though it could mean R2 000! But you’re right, my darling, of course, it must get finished now and then go and incubate in a dark drawer; and ripen; and then be revised mercilessly – but with love. I’m now on page 33. Today I’m resting a little (thus: resting from this project, doing other things instead) so that I can get everything set for the next episode (the first evening and the first night).
I’ve been steeping myself in Eliot and reading Cees Nooteboom (young Romantic poet from Holland). And perhaps after that, finally, I’ll read Anna Karenina.
Is your tape recorder working again?
I’m happy the court case is over. But I want to hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the “contempt” business. Surely you know by now how inquisitive I am?
This afternoon you’re all going to Bellville together. I hope you enjoy the weekend, my child of light. Give Simone a kiss from me. I’m glad that perverted bastard has been caught. Has she shaken the whole business off? I was so upset, so angry and disturbed.
It seems Jan’s book [Mens-alleen] appeared yesterday; I’m likely to get my copy from Bartho on Monday. I’m looking foward to it.
Koos sent a telegram to say he’ll be sending the dust cover on Tuesday’s flight. Hold thumbs!
My own mine, just in case you want to punish me once more with silence: this one is a letter!
Never mind, I’m not angry. I have seen your frantic life at close quarters and I understand if you’re too tired or busy. Meanwhile, I love you continuously –
Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you
and the leaves to rustle for you, do my
words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.
With love, my Kontjie, my always-mine,
Your André.
PS: 1.Send my regards to Maggie, and tell her the white sheets will soon be laid down on the honeymoon bed (three weeks today the white Volksie will be whizzing along the open road –!).
2.Thank you for the picture of Anne and her “shock” about the“Bar”. With everything else, your grey job has at least some splashes of sun!
3.Love.
4.Love.
5.LOVE.
Grahamstown
Sunday night, 20 October 1963
Beloved as the earth,
This evening, actually after midnight six months ago, you became mine for the first time; we explored, discovered and came to know each other’s bodies in your little room, in the half-light falling through the window, from twelve-thirty to two and from four to five-thirty. Then, momentarily, there was no past, no history, no future – “the still point of the turning world”.
… Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
And now? Now the little centre in the dam has become a circle that includes everything, getting larger, more lovely, more precious, inescapable.
Child, mine, my gorgeous, my lovely. This weekend has been one of singularly acute longing, love, yearning and awareness. It was almost like walking into a magic circle where all wonders are possible, where the ground has been consecrated, where a Bush burns and burns and burns.
I dealt with the yearning by working on Orgie; I’m on page 44 now, just finished the “first night”. It’s occupying all my senses and intuition. (Do you realise that “sintuie” and “intuïsie” are made up of precisely the same letters? I’ve just disovered this now, for the first time. Material for a poem with subtle development from the outside in … right into the heart of the cocoon!)
Had supper with Frieda last night. There were some other very dear people there as well – and stimulating, satisfying conversation. However, throughout the evening I was also – in the midst of all the talk – in a world of my own that was sweet rather than unpleasant: a “smile in my calm heaven still”, as if I wanted to say, all the while: I know something that you don’t; I am in love with someone, a woman, a child whose feet make gentle contact with the earth, “and where you are, there must always be joy”. It was a kind of thumbing the nose at “ordinary” life, as if I were sitting in an ordinary room though looking out of a window onto a landscape of dazzling light and water. The host, a woman, a young artist (married, so don’t worry!) was wearing the same fragrance as you. (There, however, the similarity ended – it was just a little stimulus for my imagination and memory. That unique scent of yours, of smoke and sun and sea, of melancholy and happiness – that remains unrepeatable.)
Cocoon: I have never loved you as much as I do now. And it’s multiplying the way germs do! I have to count the days – 19 – the way I did when I was small: three weeks before my birthday, I’d put 21 stones in my wardrobe, tossing one out every day. (Some days, out of pure eagerness, I chucked two away – but this didn’t change anything!) I think I also had Nicolette play this game. Can’t quite remember.
I’m sending you another little cheque, since I got R9 from Bartho for a manuscript assessment. It’s just to help keep you alive! I have to get a move on with translating the second Simenon, so we can have some money to fuck around with when I come on the 8th!
Did your weekend turn out to be pleasant? Are you perhaps also sitting and writing to me right now? Or are you too tired and lazy – or maybe still with Simone?
I’m feeling a little anxious about a report that Dagbreek was supposed to run today about the interviews with Duval Smith. They got wind of it and phoned me yesterday, so I gave them the entire statement, just as I’d given it to him. They must just not go and give it a sensational twist as if I, and we, meant it in a traitorous manner. I still believe in “loyal resistance” (although, God knows, there’s almost nothing one dares be loyal to in this country!).
My tender, open, anemone darling: stay lovely, good and beautiful, and wait with patience and impatience, because I’m coming. Verse for today: Behold, the bridegroom cometh.
With all my love,
André.
Castella
Monday, 21 October 1963
Darling my André,
About two hours after the telephone call which couldn’t really go smoothly because old Muis [Levin] was in and out of the office, and the Dagbreek-slant. But thank you for your darling voice and laugh and for Anton’s in the background. At first I thought the phone call would also come to grief because it rang and rang and Muis doesn’t know how to manage the switchboard. These newspapermen – big human rats.
I so badly want to hear your tape (BBC) again, and I wonder what they’ll make of my conversation. And I wonder who went and informed about the programme – surely one has the right to speak intelligently about censorship …? But what the hell! I am so sick of the incessant intimidation, the whole situation in the country; and the newspapers, which are no platform for anyone because they always twist everything to fit in with their party politics; the recruitment to get someone into whatever kraal – sick, sick and tired and gatvol now … what does Jan say again, liefsteling?
I’ve loaned Lobolo out. I miss it. It is so you; but then, thank God, I still have Die Ambassadeur and all the others, but especially Die Ambassadeur of course. Our Ambassadeur, which will be ready at the end of the month – I really live to see it. (Afterword: Jack, oh God, is dedicating his latest book – as far as I last heard – to me.) I also find that touching – Saturday on the beach (my friend and Simone and I went to 3rd beach) and I, despite my intentions, walked over to 2nd – curious too – but Jack’s godchild, who is or was in love with him, was there – no, my André, I don’t think this friendship can erode any more – I will of course miss him terribly – in my loneliness he was, in his way, and in spite of everything, a pillar of strength – it’ll be uphill and a challenge, but here or there, the bright light of you and your love waits – and then always the reunion – that wonder in which everything is rediscovered. And I am not far away.
We will remain lovely and free, this time even more than usual, because now the slight feeling of guilt towards Jack and the fear, I am no longer “responsible” for him – he’s allowed me to cut myself off from him. Oh, it probably sounds terribly complicated, but you’ll understand. Words on paper. Telephone. Really rather inadequate, moesie-man?
And thank you for your lovely letter from Saturday and today’s which is a letter. But I know know know how despondent or helpless one can feel before such a white (paper).
My friend is here; asks whether I’ve not finished writing yet – there’s still so much to say, the court case – I’ll tell you when you get here, it’s such a long story; haven’t seen Jan’s book yet; the tape recorder not fixed yet – magtig! it’s one of my main “contacts”.
Oh, so Rob doesn’t think that Rook en Oker deserves the prize? He is of course quite correct; but what does he think of Mens-alleen? Or of Small’s? And I hope your cover design is okay. (Dust cover Willie Jordaan.) Chris and I will be eating out on Wednesday evening; but if you’re going to phone then we’ll go afterwards. He’s terribly busy with exam papers, that hell lies ahead for you now too.
My friend told me an inexplicable story about an African preacher on the Parade; he spits so much on everyone when he preaches that they stand around him in a wide circle and he shouts: “‘He who sitteth, shall be damned!’ says the Lord. Oh yes! ‘You can LIE, you can STAND, but if you SIT, you will go to hell,’ says GOD!” (What on earth …?) A lame old African then went and sat in the middle of the circle, took his shoes off, spat on his feet; the preacher says to him, dead normal: “Listen, man, you mustn’t sit here, this is a preaching place this,” and then, “He who sitteth, shall be DAMNED!” God, child, we must go and listen on Saturday the 9th. Maybe our love-madness sounds like this to the Bill de Klerks …
I miss you and I am completely dependent on you. And you are the most won-der-ful thing that has ever happened to me. I will make you feel good … joke. Be good, always mine. The reading for today: Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.
MINE. André Brink, love love,
Your Con.
PS: This is a letter, this. C. –
Don’t forget the photo album.
Grahamstown,
Wednesday, 23 October 1963
Darling, little white poesje,
Strange – or actually not strange at all, but obvious! – that you wrote out the lovely Van Waalwijk poem for me, because I remember once wanting to send it to you but then I forgot all about it. (Whatever the case, you’re not getting your little white “poesje” back – or does it have a brown coat again, shining in the light? – it’s mine, and you’re just keeping it in “safe custody” for me.)
I’ve been thinking so much in the past few days about our little moesie-girl. Has she joined her brothers and sisters down the drain? Or is she coming?
Darling, dammit, I feel such frustration today! First the call that didn’t go through last night, probably because Mrs Oxley was out. (And the frustration doubled because I knew you’d be out, too!) And then today’s frustration because I can’t phone tonight. You see, Estelle was going to swop her shift tonight with someone else – that’s why I wanted to phone yesterday; but then the whole thing fell through and so I let it be known I’d phone tonight rather, but guess what: the two of them agreed to swop after all, so once again I had to send a telegram! I hope you were able to keep up with all the conflicting reports. (The swop, by the way, is only for this week.)
I wanted to talk with you – especially about the moesie-girl, and about the Dagbreek matter. I’ve been through a few highly upsetting days because the wrong twist they gave this “sensation” has buggered everything up. I heard from Chris [Barnard] in Jhb that a good number of subscribers to 60 have withdrawn their subscriptions because they don’t want a journal in which a “national traitor” is one of the associates, and Bartho might have to resign from the editorial team as a result of pressure from APB. Etc. etc. etc. Oh this lunatic country of ours!
But I’ve just sent Dagbreek an urgent statement – to set the distortion right, and to motivate my position that I’m attacking a law and a situation, not South Africa itself (“loyal resistance”); that the truth remains the truth, “singular and old”, whether it’s inside or outside the country. Now, as far as I’m concerned, the whole row is a thing of the past. Over to the readers.
I will say NOTHING to the Sunday Times. When they quoted me incorrectly, I didn’t rush off to Dagbreek. The ST has got nothing, fuck-all, to do with this matter. It simply adds sensation to the whole thing, and that messes everything up. We’ve had more than enough sensation. You too. You must also say nothing to Muis [Levin], my little thing. The ST doesn’t exist to present points of view. They want circulation, via sensation. Finis.
Our lectures came to an end today. Finally. All this reaction has tired me out, though. And the Simenon translation still awaits me – from Monday I’ll be working at a rate of 10 000 words a day; I want to finish so that I can work unhindered on Orgie. Perhaps it’ll be completed by the time I come to you.
The cover still hasn’t arrived, but I phoned Koos today and it’s apparently arriving on Friday’s flight. I hope it’s good. Going by what Koos says, my fear is it’ll be too “realistic”.
Koos is apparently driving through Grahamstown on his way to Natal on 3 or 4 Nov. and is likely to drop in. I’ll have to play my cards carefully – because I’d been thinking I would say I’ll be staying with Koos! I’ll think of something. Thin ice. But I’m coming, hell or high water.
I love you. I need you. The past few days, and all this work, have exhausted me. I want to be there and rest with you, and feel happy, without tension and longing, just you and me, my shining person of light with your soft hands and little curl, having a Martini. Will we be enjoying some drinks again? And we’ll buy you a beautiful dress. Swim, play and live recklessly, fully; and then we’ll come to rest, exhausted, but oh so delicious in the marriage bed that Maggie prepared with such “awe” and scorn?
My Ingrid – my “clean”, “blonde”, beautiful, lovely bride, in quiet enchantment all my muddiness dissolves in you – “a last spot of quiet among the reeds”.
I hail you with love and longing and impatience and yearning and grace,
André.
Wednesday, 23 October 1963
TELEPHONE BROKEN YESTERDAY NO LITTLE ONE MUCH LOVE = YOUR COCOON
Castella
Wednesday night, 23 October 1963, 9:30
My lovely little sparring partner of the disarming letter and the lovely cheque with which I bought something that is going to be such a surprise to you – against my nature, I’m not going to tell you what it is; you’ll just have to come and see on the 8th.
The dead telephone calls – Lord! Waited in a sort of sickness for it last night; and had to find out that the Oxleys’ phone is not working – received two telegrams at once; one sent at three o’clock and one at four o’clock – with the same message – are you mad? Thought the tidings were at the very least disastrous. So I postponed the visit to Simone – till tonight – from there to Chris at seven – cancelled our dinner; and had a drink; he brought me back here at 8:30 where this telegram was waiting: “Impossible after all …” Ag, I know it’s not your fault. You mustn’t be sad about it; I understand and I love you. Did you then not receive my telegram? I sent it myself from the main post office at 1:30 and said, among other things: There is no little one … Yesterday already, but I felt it coming about two days earlier and was expecting it. Wonder what became of the telegram; you should have received it by at least three o’clock.
Chris and I just had tea together and, laughing, read the terrible “poem” by Susann Kotzé: there’s a blatant dedication: To Ralph Palmer (poor thing).
Beminde man, ek vra, o laat my nou reeds gaan
voor hierdie hunkering in my siel steeds hoër gloei
en voor my bloed ontstuimig deur my are vloei
en ek ontblote van my weerstand voor jou staan.
Want môrenag, as jou liefde deur my diepte roer
sal ek miskien jou lippe op my voel verstyf
en ek, aan jou gebind deur bande van die lyf
sal blindelings uitdryf in die nag, deur pyn ontroer.
This book will accompany me to Gordon’s Bay, because I’ve decided that’s the place for us; sea and mountain, and (apparently) lovely accommodation.
I’m no longer far away; today I was very near to you; sometimes even closer than when we are together; “your supreme reality.” But I am sleepy and tired; this is not a letter; it’s a goodnight, much more than a letter: ’Night to your moesies and your beautiful teeth, and your papie, upon which my hand may rest.
Your Cocoon.
Grahamstown
Saturday morning, 26 October 1963
My Kontjie, darling,
I’m sitting here, waiting for eleven-thirty, because one of those affairs that are the cross of academic life will then begin – the inauguration of a new chancellor, where we all have to make our august appearance in togas and stuff. Hideous. I’ll be bunking this afternoon’s “garden party”; one has to draw the line somewhere.
The worst of the upheaval around the cover is finally over; I’ve only just dropped it at the station and phoned Koos to let him know. It doesn’t look like there’ll be enough time to change much. It doesn’t really matter, either. I’m sick to death of covers.
Thank you for last night’s wonderful, peaceable conversation. Today in two weeks’ time we’ll be lying on the beach or walking somewhere on a mountain; the air and sea and the stillness will be ours.
I wanted to send you another tape, but the last few days have just been too hectic. Monday I’ll have the whole afternoon to myself, and I’ll do it then.
I’m feeling a little frustrated because, with all the bustling about this week, I’ve not been able to get back to Orgie. It’s such an insult when one is unable to do one’s work. It’s only when I’m with you, and when I write, that I live fully; the rest is just marking time, “spying out the options”. I want to be done with it by the time I come to you. Maybe I can start again this afternoon, or tomorrow – it’s a slightly difficult section, because “his” life must now emerge, especially his married life … and I’m not neutral in this regard, I can’t just separate myself from it; it’s an oppression. But maybe it’ll come out right. After this section the “search for the deceased god” begins – and that should go well.
Oh you, you: I love you. And I need you, urgently. I am terribly tired; after this year’s work, the rush with the recent translation, and this week’s disruptions around Dagbreek and the cover, I feel rather trapped; not free; far away from the sun. And for that reason I want to be with you, come to rest, be touched by life again, be moved towards the light; you do all of this, and for that reason you are so good, so precious.
I dreamt that I earned R2 000 somehow in prize money, and the two of us went away, far, untraceably far away, to small Greek islands with those old white pillars from the time of Homer; and a blue sea, a world full of myths, a sky full of gods, a forest full of satyrs, a little village with old brown fishermen, nets, superstition, piety and the scent of sea and seaweed. We roamed through it all, happy, hand in hand, swimming, playing, lying under the trees talking, and sleeping together in rapture. One must always take into account that “beautiful dreams never return to life”. But our dream is coming. In just two weeks we’ll be in it, and it’s going to be our loveliest and fullest and most happy time of all. Fill your little lamp with oil. Make sure you’re in fine feather. I’m coming – with love that “conquers all things” (verse for today). Now I’m going to have to sprint to be on time.
With love and love and love and softness and passion,
Your André.
Length shirt – armpit: 16”
Length arm (armpit – wrist): 24”!
It’s going to be lovely, my beautiful!
Castella
Monday night, 28 October 1963
My darling,
I wanted to come and say goodnight to you calmly tonight, without shadows, but now the night still stretches far ahead, with Dagbreek here next to me. I was astonished to read Chris Barnard’s attack on you; he is after all a friend of yours and apparently that involves “loyalty” – or is that just towards the press? Abraham de Vries, well. Did they read your statements to the BBC … did you send it to Dagbreek – if so, why don’t they quote from that – for or against …? No, my André, I get the impression that there’s a lot more jealousy at play than anything else. Don’t take any notice of it – envy has a nobler twin – admiration.
My first reaction was that you should resign from the editorship of 60, is this now an ultimatum … you or Bartho? God! Why must Bartho and his precious APB-bladdy-work always be protected? Of that, I’ve now also had enough. I like Bartho. Everyone likes Bartho. And we know it’s better that he rather than anyone else is head of APB … but Bartho came and asked me, against his principles and convictions, to leave “Die Kind” out of Rook en Oker – Bartho’s play, Die Verminktes [The Maimed] – which is a sharp attack on the South African situation, has been performed in England – do they call him a “traitor”, and my God – if Chris Barnard can publish his miserable Houtbeeld [Wooden Carving] or whatever abroad – would he refuse … (Just one ray of light: Preller’s stupid letter!) (That’s just by the way.) And now: your explanation to Dagbreek … why does poor old Uys get dragged in by his balding head and is then left aside? “Creative resistance must always be loyal.” To whom? Yourself – the truth – fine, then. But I think more consideration needs to be given – (Lord!) to the meaning of loyalty. I can only be loyal towards something I believe in, admire, something I can identify with. “My people.” I do not believe in the Nazi’s policies; I couldn’t be loyal to them, even if I were a hundred times a German. I cannot defend them. Therefore loyalty is out of the question.
Anti-South African (the Sunday Times). God! What is South African and what’s anti it? Anti-government, ah! So, my precious, “to the country I remain wholeheartedly loyal”. But South Africa or “the country” is not the Nats, thank God! At some point or other we’ll all have to start thinking, a search, relentless, along the lines of “Liberal Nationalism”, but much, much further than this. What a task! “Loyalty alone to the highest I know, more than to a friend or brother …” and maybe Chris Barnard found it …! His ambiguous, rather “clever” declaration to Dagbreek concerning 60 makes me weep out loud. Unless you remain editor, I’ll withdraw my subscription and my hitherto meagre contributions, expose this skulduggery in Contrast etc. etc. etc. (But I am busy with a song of lamentation, my first long poem – which I naturally wanted to give to 60 and for which I’ve already been approached by Contrast.)
Dear child! I love you. The Sunday Times. You’ve probably also seen that mess. I was sitting reading it perfectly calmly on the train to Bellville when my eye caught that tasteless photograph of me … I can assure you I’d given Muis as little of a statement or whatever for publication as you’d done – and so did Jack – I phoned him (Muis) today and when he said that Jack had given one, I said: “That’s a lie!” God, André, I can’t bear it when someone uses or abuses me. I don’t want cheap publicity in this slimy (probably like all Sunday newspapers) – why not rather a ban on their filthy sensationalism than on a Sunday swim? No, I gave this Muis a good telling off. I once gave him his miserable job back after he’d almost lost it because of his unfounded reports about me – because he’s got a whole bunch of kids. But today I told him that in future I’ll simply be greeting him – “and that goes for André too …” And that’s probably all there is about this dirty business. And then one confronts the shocking fact – there is no longer a platform for the serious person – everything just gets used – in whatever way. The Sunday Times and similar newspapers “play into the hands of the enemy”. And the enemy is stupidity and callousness and bondage and fear, and dishonesty and recklessness, all of which probably is stupidity and the celebration of stupidity, the greatest POWER on earth.
My André, my heart, defend yourself against the “battalions of lies and organizations of hate”. Because I’m going to “entirely encompass” you again (in just eleven days). Thank you for your letter; and your telephone call on Friday – and you are right, this time is going to be the most wonderful, in the Van Riebeeck Hotel – thank you for your measurements – I’ll see to it – and stay CALM till then – with the longing and passion and love that you know so well by now. As always for always,
COCOON.
Today’s reading:
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!
Tuesday night, 29 October 1963, 9:15
Dearest my mine,
I have just missed your phone call – when I opened the gate, I heard Mrs Oxley put the telephone down – I was with Simone and came back early precisely because I thought you might phone – sorry, my heart – the stupid bus drove past and then I had to walk across the sports grounds – all the way home. And now you’re probably wondering where I’m roaming around? And I still wanted to ask you whether I should dye my hair white – it’s been cut short. Last night, when I wrote to you, I was too angry about the BBC affair to even tell you properly about the weekend. Went to the beach on Saturday – I ended up not being in the mood for a whole weekend in Bellville – and had a lovely swim with Simone, and Saturday evening had a peaceful braai on the beach with Jack and Simone – Uys and his teacher-girlfriend joined us at the house. Only went to my friends in Bellville on Sunday – home at twelve o’clock. Yesterday nothing – today supper with Mrs Bouws – and that’s all the news! (And this is, in any case, far more than your usual “news”, my emotional darling!) And, oh yes, did I really forget to tell you – I’m now getting tea. They decided against tea in the board meeting and so I went to see the Brigadier.
After these meagre offerings it probably seems that I’m not very busy, but my heart, I hardly have time to read the beautiful Stroomgebied and by this stage I am ravenously hungry for poems – intellectually-sexually-poetry-hungry. Now you’ll probably read something into that. The jersey is coming along – thank you for your measurements – maybe it’s a bit big – because your measurements were late, but that’s just how it will have to be. I’m looking forward enormously to Die Ambassadeur. Koos says the first copy won’t be ready before the 6th. What plan have you now devised with regard to your “accommodation”?
You’d have a heart attack if you had to walk into the castle now – newspaper clippings and cut-out newspapers EVERYWHERE – but Maggie is coming tomorrow. I’m going to have a bath and sleep immediately now so that I don’t have to look at the mess. With you – because I actually haven’t for a long time – you are very close these days – are you calm and happy? I would so much like to speak to you – now. Now I will just have to rely on “the silence (that) becomes the dancing”. I’m looking forward to the tape and I’m so sorry I haven’t been able to make one for you yet – yours will probably have to be played at my good friends in Clifton again.
Love my precious my André my own. There are ten little pebbles left then the Volksie is red and you dead tired and bathed and happy beside me.
Love also for little Anton from little Simone,
Cocoon.
Grahamstown
Wednesday morning, 30 October 1963
Sunchild, moonchild, starchild,
I miss you!
I hoped there might be a letter from you this morning, but no such luck, and last night I wanted to go to the movies (Brigitte …!) but stayed home precisely to phone you, except “Miss Jonker is not in this evening”. Never mind, I know, it’s my fault; I was the one who said I’d phone tonight.
But I wanted to talk to you so badly, because I finished Orgie yesterday at six o’clock. 88 pages – not quite double-spacing, which means it’ll run to just over 100 pages in print. I’m very pleased with it. I think it’s gained an increasingly musical form, in which the emotional, irrational, “non-significatory” impression of the words become more important than the text’s logical import; and in which symbols, words, and bits of sentences all recur, like musical themes. I am not, as in ordinary prose, dealing with one line or one row of notes at a time, but trying to work in chords. One of the pages is entirely black! (The walk into night – which is not merely a real night.) And as I’ve already said: I’m going to base the cover on an enchanting, dynamic red rooster by [Marc] Chagall. (I’ve suddenly developed an obsessive adoration for Chagall. When I’m in the Cape – just ten days, darling! – I want to buy some beautiful art books, and shut my eyes to the cost.) I’m so broke. But I’m going to start working on John Malherbe’s new book today – not too long, the same as the Pharoahs’ one – and see if I can’t finish it before I come down. Not sure, because piles of exam scripts will be arriving on Friday – awful work.
Dagbreek went and made a vulgar little sensation out of my statement. Abraham de Vries’s commentary strikes me as especially acrimonious and unnecessary. I’m going to have a falling out with him, soon. The trouble is he’s going to take over Chris B.’s post if Chris goes overseas – and then he’ll be in a position of power sufficient to squeeze the rest of us to death. Making the most of their talents!
I phoned Koos again yesterday about the cover – they’ve apparently not changed it very much at all – and he said Uys may be coming with him on Sunday on the trip to Natal and then they’ll be sleeping over here with us. In that case he’ll no doubt have a lot to say to you when he gets back. But I’m still looking forward to having him here.
The charge against Lobola has been withdrawn. I’m sorry it didn’t go ahead. I so badly wanted to remove the taint from the book – and have a lovely little fight. (Not for the sake of pleasing Rosa Nepgen!)
Ag, all this news. What does it matter, in the end? I love you, most lovely one, I want to be with you again, be enraptured with you, unquestioning, happy, serene and stormy. We’ll enjoy the sun and the sea, be boisterous and reckless. The sun’s shining brightly here again after a few miserable, sad little days of drizzle that made my sinus condition unbearable.
To be with you – “to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream”! My delightful, still one, my busy little bee, my constant, inconstant little whirlwind. Come blow through me again, blow away the dust, blow it all clean and bright.
Love, my love: clothe yourself in light and wait for me, sweet and exuberant and happy. We’ll be celebrating Mass with the bread and wine of our bodies and our blood; we’re going to live beautifully and perilously, like poetry, and we will be unstoppably happy.
With a heart full of love, shamelessly romantic,
André.
Grahamstown
Thursday, 31 October 1963
My ravishing, absolute woman,
Thank you for this morning’s heartfelt letter about the Dagbreek matter – De Vries and Barnard. Bright, bright child, you are so wonderfully pure in your loyalty. I still think Chris’s intention was good (or am I very naive?) but Abraham’s motives grieve me – the self-satisfied fool. I made my statement for Dagbreek because I believed that they – like the BBC? like the Sunday Times? like any print media, mass-media – “used” me; and I wanted to make sure people understood what my loyalty actually meant. As I said in the statement, “honesty about the truth that doesn’t change its character depending on whether one is inside or outside the country”. Naturally, I also wanted to get across that I’m not just a convenient, hysterical slanderer, an “enemy”. (An enemy of that which is half-hearted and false and wrong, but not of the idea of SA – that’s bigger than people or governments.) It would be just as impure to see blindly. The problem, I now know, is that one must never try to make subtle distinctions for the masses. They function only in black and white. And, as my mother wrote yesterday in a dear letter: “Never try to explain, because your friends understand you in any case, while your enemies never will.”
But darling, I am upset by what you say about the Sunday Times: my edition has nothing in it of that nature, and I know Chris Barnard’s also didn’t – I phoned him to ask. This means that only certain editions carried this news (about the BBC matter). Keep yours, please. I’m angry with them. (The Dagbreek statement, which appeared the week before last, also didn’t appear in every edition – they all had the front-page story, but not my statement on page 6.)
Ag, it’s a load of crap, all of it.
Pure: let us remain pure. (“Even beauty endures in the dirt”.) And live high and handsome and humanely: I don’t mean we should be “chilly” and “elevated”, but live at full throttle: high, and biotic, warm, earthy. We are a mixture of “a little water, clay, and prophetic breath”, remember!
Thank you for our lovely conversation last night. And for the deliciousness afterwards – a little forestaste of what’s coming in a week’s time, lovely, lovely; hell, man!
I’m working like a madman on Malherbe’s Peoples of Africa – started yesterday afternoon and I’m already halfway; I’ll be done by Sunday. Then I’ll see if I can re-type Orgie for you. I feel good in my heart about this novella. I think it carries both light and darkness, the abyss and the coming of clarity; it has the subdued sadness that I wanted. It was born of the two of us, except that the roles have been reversed: you the father and I the mother! (Like the silly joke about the innocent girl who didn’t want her boyfriend to lie on top of her – after he’d taken off her clothes – because her mother said she should not allow it: if she did, she said, “my mother would end up dealing with the matter”; but she was quite willing to come and lie on top of him – because then his mother would end up having to deal with it!)
I’m reading [Arthur] Rimbaud – Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) – and am very taken with the work. And Gerhart Hauptmann’s Heretic of Soana, which is less striking, perhaps because it’s a translation.
It’s as hot as hell here. During the day I chase a naked Anton all over the lawn with a hosepipe. I should try to get a bit of a tan before I come down, otherwise I’ll look far too much like a country bumpkin when we get to Gordon’s Bay. Not so, my brown girlie? And I must say farewell again, though now in hues of brown. Bring your red bikini along, too. I want to see you with your nice short hair (but not dyed!) and your lovely slovenly red nails, and your leucodendron, your laugh and your shy, naughty eyes, your provocative full breasts, and your little high mound into which I can disappear so deeply, so completely. Oh delicious, lovely one, always mine, pure and happy and lovely; clothe your loneliness in my love and wait in delight.
Love love,
André.
Castella
Thursday night, 31 October 1963
My dearest man,
A clean castle – Maggie mercifully came in – and the groceries – two dresses I altered at my sister’s for the wonderful summer that is close at hand – because it is indeed close at hand – where I always feel everything first; and a summer that I will carry in my hands – precious warm-time after the long winter; another two pretty dresses back from the dry cleaners; the shiny (pretty satiny) yellow one you haven’t seen me in yet – so you see for yourself how the Lord guides! Thank you for your telephone conversation last night; these conversations are terribly funny; we immediately tell all the news that we’ve already written or are about (even worse) to write; at a feverish pace so that the – I almost said the announcer – because there is something so public about these conversations – the Oxleys – although they understand little Afrikaans – are hanging around – and I am sure that the exchange is also listening in, bored stiff; and everything one says sounds so “boring” (Preller) and not at all like you feel – God! – then we get cut off and feel vaguely alarmed – still – I need our telephone and wonder of wonders, am again laughing because I can hear the pomegranates laughing!
Liefsteling, only a week, because today is done – then I can break open the pomegranates in my hands – take, eat, this is my flesh and blood! Haven’t received confirmation from the Van Riebeeck [Hotel] yet (that vile filth piles up everywhere, (V.R.)); probably tomorrow. The manager there sounds highly civilised. Don’t think there’ll be the same mess there was at Cederwood. Jan and Marjorie invited me for a meal there tonight; they’re having an evening about [Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of] Virginia Woolf – apparently Chris [?] sent the script – but I preferred to go see a little child-face. I’m afraid of Virginia Woolf … Jan’s book hasn’t appeared here yet; did you receive a copy? But at my sister’s all the little faces were disobedient and she was upset; thank God I can rest now for a while here with you! Did I tell you that after our week I’ll be taking Simone back; my little anchor is “worried” about me and I am also not whole without her.
Wonder what you’re doing now; probably writing to me too; because you “neglected” me on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of course – that wasn’t serious; or no, you’re busy with exam papers, my poor lecturer-doctor-man! What’s your thesis about? I am really jealous of Koos and Uys who are moving to your little town – excuse me immediately, horrible suspicious: He will influence you against me – only protection really: shock about the attitude of all those months and now he will see you with your house and everything … “Oh! We have to trust each other again in some essentials!”
I am looking forward so much to our few days, so:
overhandig mij brekend
je peilloze bloem, je kus
als een dar dolzinnig dijf ik
op het aquarel van de dorst
…
hoor dan met uw handen haast dan uw hartslag
ik ben een donkere droom in de zon
(Lucebert)
And dearest mine, you’ll just have to wear the jersey, hot or cold … and you’ll be surprised at how the wind can blow in Gordon’s Bay – I’ll go and show you my old school – the place has many walks – I lay so low this week that “no one will miss me at the dance or the dish”.
I’m burning to see Orgie. You must immediately send whatever’s finished; it’s lying in pieces here in a special file; and I even began a scrapbook for you – mad! – but my own lamentation isn’t really progressing; maybe just that terrible five o’clock in the afternoon when you leave …
Why did you ask so half-anxiously how things are going at work? Or was that part of the rush of the phone conversation – it’s all terribly dead normal; news there: I’m getting holiday money in February – your money dream and the island – I dreamt I was in England; landscape and climate enchanting; you weren’t there, just old English gentlemen with walking sticks and umbrellas; but the dream had such atmosphere of reality … You must in any case not worry about my work; I fit in well and “everyone likes me very much”, as Jannie Gildenhuys would say – Chris says he’ll also be here during our time – then we’ll go and have a meal together; this work actually takes up little time because I don’t have to work on Saturdays, and after five working days I don’t have to think of it again! And it’s lovely to see the clean little castle with all the food and soap and to know: I worked and paid for it …! Small, essential vanities …!
Dearest my André. This is really not a letter; it’s the last week and I am waiting for you, my precious groom: “The only thing that matters is being together.” Bring me some nice books to read, because I’ll die if I have to steal all the hotel’s Feminas and things again. And there’s only one joy bigger (MUCH bigger) than lying in bed with you reading.
’Night, my angel.
Love and love,
Only yours,
Cocoon.
{PS: My hair really and truly is still the same colour! Okay!}
Grahamstown
Saturday, 2 November 1963
Precious poetry-hungry, poesy-hungry child,
Nine in the morning: are you still asleep there in your enchantingly untidy little castle, my Sleeping Beauty, or are you up already and fiddling around; or maybe lying on the beach, with your tan and white bathing costume, freckled shoulders and short hair? Next week this time we’ll be lying together – in bed or on the beach? Delicous, delicous. “I miss you and I love you: therefore I am.”
There is some bad news, too: Koos sent a telegram to say Die Ambassadeur will be delivered a week later than expected – the 14th at the latest. But I decided I can’t change my plans yet again, so I’ll be coming down as arranged on the 8th. And if necessary I’ll stay a day or two longer – until Thursday or, at the latest, until Friday. Happy?
Thank you for yesterday’s lovely letter. You are forbidden ever again to walk alone across the sportsfields in the dark. That’s an order.
Your consternation on the phone about the fact that Uys might come and stay here amused me (he’s no longer coming). Darling, strange child: why would you think anything Uys or whoever might say could influence me, hmm? You’ll start me thinking that your “quiet braai on the beach with Jack” was more than just enjoyable! I’m just teasing, so don’t worry. My dearest love, I believe all your lies …
We’re going to play delectably this time. Play seriously, play playfully. And the sun’s going to be ours. You are eternally mine.
The marking has begun. So far it’s not all that bad. In one essay yesterday I found this gem: “The poet stands head and toes above his contemporaries.” (Some toes they must be! Worse than Ampie’s!) Otherwise I’m translating myself into the ground. I’ll be finishing John Malherbe’s book today, and I’ll ask him to post the cheque to your address so we can have money to f… around with. I translated the book in three days! Now I just have to type out an article for 60, continue typing up Orgie for you, mark scripts … and come, come, come (hell!).
Cocoony-kontjie o’ mine: this is not a note. It’s a little letter. And it comes to you with exuberant love and laughter and longing, with a kiss upon your earlobe, and a soft touch on your little, big round breasts that announce your arrival to the world so fully and provocatively.
Love; and a command (verse for today): Be of good cheer with me,
Your André.
Grahamstown
Sunday night, 3 November 1963
Child, most beloved, most delightful,
It’s the kind of night – cool and still, after last night’s passionately wild thunderstorm – I’d like to be with you, swollen and satisfied, inside your little cocoon, physically and spiritually taken up in the poetry of being together, aware of the mercy of it all –
… om van Hom
die skaduwee net van Sy genade
oor ons te laat passeer, om te verkry dat
(het Hy nie gesê ons moet bid, geloof,
soos in ’n mosterdsaad nie?) dat Hy
wat as allenige die Beskouing kan gee,
daardie opperste mededeelsaamheid
van Hom ook aan ons enkelde siele
in Sy genade gaan bewaarheid.
It was a quiet day today. All day I wanted to write, but I was lazy this morning, reading newspapers; and this afternoon I slept. Tonight Frieda was here. Estelle kept bringing the conversation round to curtains and clothes and the library – work stuff – while I wanted to be liberated precisely from the fuss of the everyday; so I stretched myself out on the divan, shut myself off despite the conversation, and pleasantly took residence in you. It was the same all last night, when I dreamt about you and our coming week – unserious, satisfied dreams about small things, restfulness and fulfilment. Cocoon, my own, you are near to me and I live in nearness to you. On some days I worry that I – that we – are looking forward too much to the 8th and the days after that; I’m afraid something might come up on the cusp of the visit and prevent it from happening. But surely no such thing is possible? Also, Koos did not arrive here today, and so there was no discussion (something I was worried about!) where it might’ve emerged that he knows about my accommodation in the Cape. (By the way, I am now – officially – going to be staying with John [J.C.] Kannemeyer! Inter alia because he doesn’t have a telephone.)
I finished off John’s translation yesterday; today I typed out the article for 60 – I’m sending you a copy – and tomorrow I’ll begin typing up Orgie for you.
To my surprise, Grové – in a chilly little letter! – accepted my parody of R. Schutte for Standpunte. You will be glad, too, now that you have also suffered her inefficiency and up-her-own-arse attitude.
Darling love, have you seen in the most recent Sarie Marais how wonderfully enthusiastic Audrey Blignault is about Sempre? (With that old photo of me from my matric year next to her piece.) I’ve suddenly shed my suspicions about her. Maybe Die Ambassadeur does have a small chance of getting the prize after all …!
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
And then Friday!
(Uys would say: “Oh Ingrid, oh name, oh longing.”)
What might today’s Times and Dagbreek have to say, this time around …? I don’t give a damn. It’s water under the bridge now. I love you – what else matters?
My sweet little cherub, my pretty flea – tonight I want to sit and come up with crazily lovely names for you, and be happy with you. I’m feeling a little mad. And very happy.
I’m living chastely and saving up my secrets.
I love you,
André.
Castella
Tuesday evening, 5 November 1963
My dearest André darling,
You really kept your word – to write to me before you come down – opened my path into the wilderness! Thank you for your letters; I’m now alone for the first time since Friday, except of course for sleep! – and still had to go to Simone last evening. This week I must see her as often as possible otherwise she’s going to feel terribly neglected this coming weekend. She grumbles about wanting to come home – I am so glad I’ll be able to discuss her with you when you’re here – next year of course it’s school, and I don’t know if I should put her into a boarding school – poor little thing – etc. etc. By the way, I haven’t heard another word from Piet. Dear man, I phoned Human & Rousseau myself and asked after Die Ambassadeur – and they told me there’s a delay with the dust cover and that they’ll make sure in any case that you can leave here with a couple of copies.
Evidence? So how did it go on Sunday, and did the thin ice crack? One can make out nothing from your beautiful letters. All I know is that the Van Riebeeck Hotel and Gordon’s Bay are going to be lovely, they wrote me a letter, I was so proud of it; they look forward to our arrival; they don’t know us yet! It’s summer in Cape Town; Friday night’s helluva storm is over; was dead scared all night long; we’re not used to such lightning and thunder. I have noted that I must not give my (uncompleted) lamentation to Contrast, but on the other hand I’m not much in the mood for that cowardly 60 – God, I was angry! You can help me with two reviews for The New African – Modern Poetry from Africa – and Poems from Black Africa.
Glad, of course, that you’re staying till Friday! Booked for us at Van Riebeeck Hotel from Saturday till Monday and warned Anne that I’ll be sick on Monday; the rest of the time we can just stay in the castle. I have again forgotten how you look and how you laugh, my unfamiliar darling. In two days I will know everything again, because Friday isn’t a day; and then I’ll in any case be busy arranging my little feathers! For a week we can again forget everything, oh happy, huge fire of my loins … am I neglecting you with these shortish letters? … but your lovely letters I cannot mimic! Yet you are already a part of me, I call you by the name André Brink with love and tenderness and trust, till Friday.
Your Cocoon.
{PS: Thank you so much for your cheque, my treasure, which rescued Simonina for a week! Where do you get the money from? IJonker.}
Grahamstown
Monday, 18 November 1963
My darling, my Cocoon,
I should’ve written already, I wanted to, and yet everything was still so unsayable, too tender to touch with words. Especially because the return here was such a tumbling back into banal realities like marking exam scripts, making my way through piled-up work, and – so difficult – learning to adapt to a life without communication.
Darling, all that remains of our last, almost surreal night is a strange, unbelievable and vaguely terrifying vortex. Were we involved in that? Did we say all that? From where – and why – did everything come down on us like that?
And yet if I look at the week as a whole, then it remains one of revelation; we succeeded in seeing each other more deeply than ever before, despite – and through – all the surging passions. And I now feel more attached to you and more wholeheartedly in love with you than ever seemed possible before. “What a piece of work is a man …”
I remember Gordon’s Bay especially, our crystal ball of wonder and happiness and fulfilment. It was in fact what we believed it would be before the time: unalloyed togetherness such as we’ve never known before.
And the other things, darling, about which I can hardly speak, perhaps they were also necessary, in an irrational, cruel way, because it made us face up to each other in all our forlornness and importunity. About the unforgivable hurt that I inflicted upon you, I can say nothing and ask nothing that would be adequate. Only that it will remain a matter of acute conscience for me, always. Because I love you, and I’m devoted to you in my need, and cannot bear the thought of you being hurt.
The trip back was a nightmare of guilt and longing and yearning. And I was tired – still am, now. As if this wasn’t enough, I was involved in a collision outside Knysna. Absurd, actually, and thank God only a slight mishap: I’d just begun accelerating from 35 m.p.h. when a scooter on the far left of the road swerved in front of me to turn right. I swung the car round and the one mudguard knocked him over. I thought the man was stone dead. But when I stopped to get out, the old bugger was standing upright next to his (almost undamaged) scooter. He was through-and-through Afrikaans, but in his shock he spoke English. Just wanted to know, in broken English: “Joer not gouing toe meik trabbel fôr mie hei?” And when it appeared that he and his scooter were unscathed, and that only my car had suffered a dent, I got back inside to drive away. At that point he let out a shout and came running up to me, his hands stretched pathetically out before him, uttering the classic complaint: “Maai paaip ies brouken, mên.”
About that I laughed for the next 50 miles.
I arrived home at eleven, completely exhausted. Had exams on Saturday and went to Port Alfred to see Naas, who was there for the day, so I could give him his copy of Die Ambassadeur. Yesterday I lay around in a swoon all day. Today I’m working like mad.
Your lovely, dear letter had arrived in the meantime; it lay open, with all the details about our week there for all to see. Estelle said nothing specifically. Just let it be known that it had come as a “shock” to her. Presumably she did in fact read it. When will the embankment collapse? “Blow, wind! Come, wrack!” I am tired. I don’t know what lies ahead. All I know is that I am impossibly in love with you, and that I’ve so foolishly hurt you.
Your parcel ended up at this address – ridiculous! I got it today (the slip arrived last week). The black-and-white set looks especially nice. The rest are more ordinary. I’ll send them on to you. I would so love to see you in them, especially in the little bikini with the ribbons.
January?
“Lord, I am not worthy.”
The spirit is dark across the darkening water.
The stag calls out in the desert.
Creation is unborn and waits, yearning.
I say your name, Ingrid. Your tender, lovely, virginal name. I say it with love and painful tenderness. And I hail you with need and yearning.
Your short hair with sun, sea, smoke, and with hair’s own fragrance,
and the little curl on your forehead;
your lovable ears that don’t always listen,
that are so very sore, especially after car accidents;
and your brown eyes, happy or sore,
laughing and crying, quiet or cursing;
and your soft mouth, kissing and talking;
and your chin that teases and provokes;
and your fragrant, smooth, speckled shoulders;
your back, brown from the sun;
your white, round breasts, full and with milk,
with those lovable nipples – breasts that calmly move as you breathe and read;
and your soft, labile little tummy;
your little arms with their beautiful hands,
the messy nails and the notch in your back;
and your legs, enticing twist of calf-muscles when you wear black shoes;
and your loveliest feet with the leucodendron, walking across mountains, refusing to take rides with strange men;
your white backside that turns sitting into an enchantment;
and your small, high hill, nestling confidentially under my hand
and deep and warm and soft the cocoon
my cocoon, eager and hungry, tender and passionate.
Everything. You. You.
Mine and also not mine.
Mine.
My darling I love you.
Appallingly yours,
André.
Castella
Monday, 18 November 1963
My dearest André,
What exactly I’m drinking this Martini to, I don’t know; your dust cover didn’t arrive; and you are not here. Then “to the sadness at the source of your valiant joy”. On Friday night the castle was so clean and bare with all your stuff gone that I decided to go with Chris after all – but the performance was terribly bad; you probably saw in the newspaper that Pietro [Nolte] disappeared on Saturday – they found him in the bushes that same night “battered” and without a shirt or jacket, in a state of shock. Poor thing! Phoned today, his mom says he’s playing again this evening, at least. He gets these “slumps”; apparently he had an argument with Laurie van der Merwe. We “artists” are probably quite a miserable lot? I missed you so much, especially on Friday night when there was a man in the audience who looked just like you. Thank you very much for Die Ambassadeur with its impressive cover (binding) and the BRINK on it. It looks LOVELY. I’ve lent the sewn one to Chris in the meantime. He can’t wait to start. And thank you again for everything last week, my dear treasure. There’s always so much that I’m grateful to you for that I feel completely embarrassed. I received your telegram on Saturday. Glad that you are at least physically safe. (“I who wanted to rescue you / with hands and feet forever safe / On bridges without danger.”)
And on Saturday Marcelle du Toit (Varney) and I went to fetch the old know-it-all’s daughter and her little girls for Simone (with her beautiful “Cinderella”) – and went to the beach; on Saturday evening Jack had supper here; Sunday, dejectedly, I went to sleep at my sister’s flat from two to eight; no moesie-mine. I wonder what you’re thinking and doing and whether everything there also tumbles and plunges like here with me and at Van Wyk’s. Probably, how can it be otherwise? I am so sorry about my part in the tumult of inner tension that developed in you and which probably caused that sudden “crash” (be warned!). I wrote or tried to write to you so many times over the weekend; but at this stage we can probably just say, as you did in your little letter: just love. “Perhaps the heart will remain for us, perhaps the heart …” And: “Wij gaat dood, en wij leven …”
Amusing: Anne was shocked at my bare hands: “Ag, Ingrid, and he was your last hope!”
I don’t think we should deliberately break off or “decide”. God, not again! Also, not that our “row” isn’t important in its own right, but that the circumstances are dangerous. Will all this thinking actually matter when you’re standing in front of me again one day? Probably not. But form and direction we’ll always seek, because we are born to give form and direction. My beautiful and precious André, I still love you and you love me, I am still your friend and I am still here.
Love for your red hair;
Love for your beautiful tooth;
Love for your moesies and your navel
And your long hands and the papie;
For your singularity, and your purity,
Love for your love,
Cocoon.
Tuesday, 19 November 1963
NO MOESIE-GIRL JUST LOVE ALWAYS = COCOON
Castella
Wednesday night, 20 November 1963
My dearest André darling,
Thank you for your heavy letter this morning at 9:15. My God! Child! And in a while you’ll call; the Oxleys have just come back, and I from Simonetta – I have finally decided – the child must come back to me, she feels “cut off” without me – I’ll simply have to make a plan to get her here, whatever it costs.
Dear man – so the car accident happened after all – thank God you were only driving at 35 m.p.h.; you probably got quite a big fright though, my dear lost darling.
Last night when I was preparing the meal, strangely calm – chicken – sacrifices – for Jack – you were wandering around the kitchen with me – I was so acutely aware of you and your need – “how sensitive to the details is pain”. You mustn’t feel so guilty – I must have needed punishment. Try not to worry about it. Thank you, treasure-mine, for the call earlier. Had to have tea after that with the Oxleys. There’s in fact little time for oneself. It’s 9:30 again and then I still have to sleep to be prepared for the MADHOUSE tomorrow. It was lovely chatting to you earlier; if you were here now, you’d be lying sleeping on that little bed and tomorrow I’d have written a beautiful poem and you your engrossing Orgie – I hope you’re chatting nicely with Frieda and sleep sweetly and serenely, thank you for your voice and laugh and impossible analyses, and for the parcel that’s on its way and for the love that endures and compensates for everything. And thank you for the letter.
On Friday I’ll celebrate Die Ambassadeur again. Tomorrow I’m having a meal with Mrs Bouws. Saturday I’m going to go and thrash the lawyer about my money for Simone. On Sunday I’m going for a swim, longing but comforted. One wants, after all, to live “quietly”. I bless you with love and tenderness. My André.
’Night my beautiful,
Cocoon.
Grahamstown
Friday morning, 22 November 1963
Cocoon, darling,
This is happiness. It’s ephemeral and quite soon everything might – probably will – be quite different again. But as I sit here, now, I’m happy; suddenly whole again, and completely and entirely yours. In spite of a sleepless night (because I lay there all the time thinking: last week this time, on this night ...) I woke up feeling well-rested. It’s as hot as Hades outside. Here in my study it’s a little cooler. When I look up, I see the picture of you on the bookshelf on the other side of the room – so tender, so intensely vital. The fine raindrops of a Mozart composition playing on the turntable are nothing short of scintillating. Below my left elbow lies Tristia, on my typewriter, to my right, are the first rough notes on Die Ambassadeur, which I’ve just finished sorting out. This afternoon my first copy of Die Ambassadeur will be arriving by plane (the rest have been delayed and will be arriving in Port Elizabeth; Koos arranged – guiltily – for a taxi to bring them here. It’s 84 miles, but I think I’ll fetch them myself). Koos read W.E.G. Louw’s review over the phone to me yesterday (he received a proof).
All that is urgently lacking is you: your beloved, fiery, soft presence. I very nearly took to the road this morning with Rob – he left for the Cape to do examining work. But two members of the department are not allowed to be away at the same time. This of course did not prevent me from wanting very rebelliously to go along – I still do – and to arrive at your doorstep; this time we’d celebrate properly, in full knowledge of each other.
I know I should’ve written yesterday already, but it was one of those tasselled days when one sits and picks at all manner of disparate things that don’t form any meaningful pattern, until you yourself just unravel.
I want to walk through town with Simone again, feed the squirrels and watch her offer Koos a single peanut from a warm, clammy hand; I want to lie with you on the warm sand, in the beaming blue sun, or in a cool little cove under a rocky overhang, and let my secrets disappear deep inside you while the light and dark make patterns on our half-closed eyes. I want to walk again with you in the dark, fragrant evening, through avenues of blossoms, laugh and be irresistably happy; I want to sit on the settee’s red cushions in the little castle and think and listen as you busy yourself companionably somewhere or get fed-up and say ‘God!’ I want to see you in your black-and-white bra and panties. I want to bath with you and kiss the leucodendron.
And I never again want to fight with you.
I love you, delightful person, indispensable person, woman, girl, child.
This afternoon I have to deal with the second section of Tristia in my honours class – “Groet in Bruin” [“Salute in Brown”] and all the other divine stuff he wrote for you, on my behalf.
These days offer summer sun, but they don’t offer your presence. Little bride, little Ohola, little virgin, I wander about in terrible – but cathartic – longing for you; it’s a kind of penitence, my purgatory; I drift like Dante’s figure of the lover, yearning, on the dark wind. But on the other side of this purgatory awaits the holy wound, paradise, heaven, you.
I don’t want to bind you. I just want to love you, always, always, always.
I want you to be happy. Little swift lost in the sky: sing.
Forgive my unforgivableness. Love me the way I love you.
Man and woman: so the Lord God of the hosts created us and nothing can separate us. Let me always love you.
And this small human happiness,
Let it last, oh Lord, let it last long.
I’m sending you a small cheque because I know you need it, with Simone’s birthday just around the corner.
Always with yearning love,
André.
Friday, 22 November 1963
BRAVO CITIZEN BRILLIANT AMBASSADEUR BRILLIANT CAREER ALL LOVE ALL CONFIDENCE CONFIRMED = COCOON
Castella
Saturday night, 23 November 1963
My dearest André,
A mad day yesterday, mad today, sand sun sea, and Simone and I wonderfully burnt; I have just fallen into her little bed. Dearest man, firstly, congratulations and once again congratulations on Die Ambassadeur, which only appeared today; and for which you had to drive all the way to PE; and now you’re having a party; who’s there? Since Guy [Butler] is in Cape Town, not him of course, but Rob and company and Frieda … I hope you got my telegram yesterday; the dust cover I have not yet seen – definitely Monday; when our lost parcel will probably also arrive. W.E.G Louw’s review is of course very favourable; but as a review it is not clear and not good enough; I read Die Ambassadeur again; quick this time, hey? and once again found it revelatory in every respect; my only objection remains that if the ambassador was in reality confronted with our situation, it would contribute to his fall. W.E.G.’s objection, therefore. But the human relations are fine, true, good, and the characters grow on one – even this Stephen; though not yet Gillian; but maybe personal – because this “conflict with God” is for me, personally, such an unthinkable situation.
It is exactly the objection that I have against Jack’s new book, from the first page; the actual MS is lying here in front of me: Ag, child! I miss you – Antje, a Dutch woman who read the cutting about Die Ambassadeur with Uys today – says you look like me. For some stupid reason, this touched me. Are your shoulders better again and where did you swim? The Caligenic is still on the window sill behind the yellow curtain. Mercilessly cruel words. Can anyone hate them more than a writer? Words instead of your hands, instead of your beautiful red head against my breast. I wish we could be together just once without feeling that we’re buggering up other people and ourselves in the process, free and peaceful and responsible and whole.
I received the three Vasalis books from Mrs Bouws on Friday: Parken en Woestijnen, De Vogel Phoenix and Vergezichten en Gezichten. Do you know her? Apparently she was awarded the Reina Prinsen Geerligs Prize in 1957. Everyone loves me so much, as Jannie Gildenhuys says.
André, you must please not have an “acute conscience” about our clash or whatever. I see you as a whole person, and I love you as such. And don’t be afraid. Fear is evil. I read your heartsore letter of Monday over and over again. I was damn insensitive as far as your distress is concerned. And about that I am sorry; but the pangs of conscience I feel about all that are positively subsumed in love, which heals everything. I want to exist in reality, and not be deadened by a dream. Lovely man, reddish longish hair, precious mouth, hands, lovely white moesie-body and cute little cock, protective force “that looks like me, that looks like everything I love” –
Yours in passion and longing and happiness and acceptance,
Your Cocoon.
PS: I’m meeting (hopefully) with Johan [Cilliers] on Monday and with Koos about Die Ambassadeur.
And come again soon, and tell me everything.
Your Ingrid Jonker.
PPS: You do belong with me after all. Love and darling. IJ.
And more: Write, man! “Stage fright?” Had it too, but it’s nonsense.
Read [Adam] Small: good, hey? I.
Grahamstown
Tuesday, 26 November 1963
Beloved, faraway darling,
Day after day I am errant, wandering, aware of “all that fall”, of an ever-increasing need to communicate, to break through to you, to exorcise you (like [Gerrit] Achterberg’s dead lovers), to utter the “Sesame” that will make everything open up. “But wherefore could not I pronounce ‘Amen’? I had most need of blessing.”
How many times haven’t I come and sat here, and then all I have to show for it is a blank sheet. And my heart. “Forse il cuore ci reste, forse il cuore …”
Paper – pen – letter. But how do I capture everything in this futile little snare? Over and over again, the shimmering bulbul slips away, teasing me from the nearest branch – “parrot-gaudy echo”. And I know, all the time, that the same desire afflicts you, because you’re also not writing. The silence is wondrous. (“Die woord is daar om die stilte reg te stel. Maar die stilte is on-her-stel-baar.” Karel Jonckheere.)
This has now become a week in which I have done nothing and cannot do anything, trapped in the daily round, on purpose, because it keeps my hands busy. (But the heart – “dat altijd luider slaat, altijd maar luider”?)
De profundis clamavi. Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, oh Lord. Verse for today.
What happened has done nothing to change the preciousness and the irremovability of that which existed before; but it has placed before us this mountain (not even a “holy” one) which we’re going to have to climb, as in the days of myths and legends, when obstacles had to be conquered before the hero could take the young virgin away from her castle.
You in your little castle?
Oh my love, my cocoon, oh mine. We will get beyond this, too. We will be spared nothing, neither pain nor darkness, because we’re only human.
But you: you didn’t deserve this. I, who was supposed to be your guide through these “three days of darkness”, I sit here upon the waters, forsaken, not knowing on which distant shore I will find the light again.
Everything here has tensed into habit – a mimicry without sense, a complete lack of communication. I feel written-out sick-and-tired – not even this little harbour is a refuge. So I’m translating, mechanically, day in and day out. Suspend “life” and learn to exist like a Pavlov-dog?
We’ve no longer even got the telephone to reach out to each other.
But perhaps – I want to believe this (I must) – this is the deep darkness before daybreak (without the bitter berry). The guard on the wall …?
“News”? Die Ambassadeur has finally arrived; I had to drive to PE twice, on Saturday and Sunday (170 miles each time), to fetch the parcel. Friday night’s little celebration with Frieda and Jack Meyer went off without the book, again (he says he met you last December? You’re not likely to remember: that was a time of great confusion for you). I received W.E.G. Louw’s review. Rubbish. Ignorant. Even his praise has a hollow ring to it. Iritating sloppiness and overhastiness. What does it matter, anyway? Die Ambassadeur actually exists; and – for me – it’s now in the past. Forward march. Orgie. Always the horizon that one never reaches. Will-o’-the-wisp. Why does one do this? Vanitas vanitatum. And each time, Sisyphus again begins to roll his rock to the top. Uncrucify us, Lord. And yet: what would we do without this? It’s the only bit of “being” that we have. (For the rest, we’re orphans!)
Should I send this misery-on-paper? It’s unfair, and yet: if I throw it away again, when will you ever receive a letter from me? You will know well enough to see through the darkness to the love behind it that always remains, and remains.
… die klein, skuilende
verontregte, verontwaardigde
ding: wat in die looggat
afkyk: homself gaan bewapen.
And I think about a morning, naked in the sun, at a river mouth: our last dazzling morning before the “battalions of lies” and the “organizations of hate” made their approach. Our small little Paradise. Sometimes the angel with the sword has to fall into a slumber at the gate. Then, we go back, we become whole again, me me, you you, us us, little dual-unit in the flesh, and the God of love born from us, short-lived, but there.
Love: with everything that I have in me, your holy name: Ingrid, from
André.
Tuesday, 26 November 1963
My André,
Your lovely letter that touches the earth nowhere arrived yesterday. The one you wrote in the study; was that in your house or at the university? The one after your sleepless night. Was it awful to mull over everything like that, and why do you do it? Did you get a letter from me on Friday or Saturday, though? Or on Thursday already?
And what notes are you making now for Die Ambassadeur, my treasure? I only saw the dust cover today. Koos hasn’t sent me mine yet; he would have on Monday already, and then we would have gone and had a drink to celebrate. Today I went to Nasionale Boekhandel and looked at it there. Initially I didn’t like the cover AT ALL, except of course for the lovely heavy paper and the production, but later actually more comforted – and now that I think back on it, it works. The ornate little section with the mirror just maybe a bit jarring in terms of tone – or not? It’s all over the Boekhandel, and then I asked Kosie (Nasionale Boekhandel-drudge) if they weren’t going to put it in the window, and he said no, they only put their own publications in the window, especially at this time of the year. The TASTE of the boere!
Then Kosie said caustically: I see you have a whole page for yourself. So then I went to Juta’s and told Mr Herbst that he should exhibit it well, I’m taking him a review tomorrow as well as one of your photos. He was happy.
Hello, darling! Oh yes I saw Rob on the beach on Sunday, he came to visit Uys. We were all busy reading bits of the Sunday Slimes, and Uys put a sheet down for him to sit on. Rob said, “Oh, I’m sitting on Uhuru.” “What?” shouts Uys, “You’re sitting on a whore?” Rob then shyly explained “the news about Uhuru”. Etcetera. It was a divine day. Rob arrived still warm from you. But he didn’t say the post was still available in Grahamstown. That evening, Jack and Manfred Hirsch (advertising manager for Contrast) and I went to a party, and last night I’d have gone to Beckett with Manfred (dead dead innocent), but Jack phoned him, and then me too, about my “pitiful behaviour”! Was completely astonished. I find Manfred not in the least attractive – that’s the first thing – and secondly, I am still unfortunately boss-less. Further news: saw Freda Linde. I sent her a book and we went to have tea together, and everything there is right again.
Liefsteling, thank you very very much for the cheque from yesterday, but you mustn’t! I know you work very hard and you can’t also support me and Simone! Still, I bought her the most beautiful white-and-gold sandals today. But I have lots left for the birthday cake, among other things. And I actually don’t know what I would have done without the cheque. Asked Bartho to send me my honorarium, but haven’t heard anything yet. Thank you, my generous angel, and don’t work yourself to death and lie awake all night, like you do.
Your parcel STILL hasn’t arrived! I think you must enquire at the post office; maybe they sent it via goods train, and then it will only get here by the time you come again, January?
“Forgive my unforgivableness.”
My André – you are not unforgivable, you are pure and precious and generous, with moesies and little laughs, and you make me happy.
As soon as my tape recorder is fixed I will tell you about Éluard. And the unsayable, all of it.
Love darling,
Cocoon.
PS: The unsayable? Sat quietly for a long while now and looked at your name on the envelope. André P. Brink: “Zo buiten mij geboren …” and then read a few of your letters again. Lord! Last night I dreamt you were a girl, we had a meal somewhere together; you ordered so much food they had to bring it in a big bag, and then I wanted to kiss you, but I wasn’t allowed to. Public opinion, etc. But in a hotel we had a little island. Then you weren’t a girl any more! My God, my André, is it all possible? And here we live in such an ordinary way, and why, “I don’t understand …” But love you, I do, in my way. André, the unsayable. You alone know what that includes and means. “I was born to know you, to name you …” Kiss, kiss the papie. My papie, which is waiting to get little wings.
And with love, love,
Ingrid.
{Thank you for review Sestiger; I’m going to read all the other stuff this evening too, but especially yours, of course. Where is our lost moesie?}
Grahamstown
Thursday, 28 November 1963
Most dear, lovely darling,
I feel guilty about my sombre letter of the day before yesterday, which is likely to make you miserable, too. But the scales are tilting; I see light again. “Stage fright?” you ask in your letter of yesterday. Yes. But let us join hands and rise together, beyond the lights, in the light, and stay there. The actual turning point in my pessimism was yesterday when I phoned Chris Barnard and he told me, without any prompting, about Rook en Oker’s selling almost 700 copies. That’s really fantastic. I mean, not even Tristia sold that quickly. This means you’re being read, that people are eager to read what you’re writing, and your work is being anticipated. I’m glad about this, and happy to hear it.
I have now – at last! – retyped Orgie for you. I’m sending it with this letter. I think parts of the 4th and 5th cantos are some of the best writing in the whole work. Some dull spots remain (too much “realistic storytelling”, occasionally?), but they’ll be reworked. I want to refine it for Bartho though only in February; it need not appear before September.
Last night I did a sample translation from Die Ambassadeur – the start of the third section (“How can I talk about her chronologically …”); the handful of people I showed it to say it’s even better than the Afrikaans. I hope the rest goes smoothly, too. It’s hellishly difficult work, but also a challenge, and a very good exercise. First, however, I must do Colette for Bartho – 250 pages in fine print – and it doesn’t translate easily!
Rob returned from the Cape last night. He would have “heard” a fair amount from [Ernst] Lindenberg and company. I would very much like to talk to him. Why can’t a person just be completely open? You are the most precious thing in my life, I love you, and whatever happens at times that seems to muddy the waters, please just know that, keep believing it. If I hadn’t possessed the conviction of your love, I would’ve taken the (melodramatic) “final step” just a day or two ago. I got up on Tuesday night, almost physically ill with longing for you, and from deprivation arising from a life here that has to continue without any form of communication at all; I came and sat here in my study for hours. Drove out the next morning to the bluegums overlooking the town and just sat there. It was as if everything was finished, as if all that remained was for me to perform the deed with my litte black Beretta, or with a length of hosepipe attached to the car’s exhaust.
Everything was so incredibly desolate. And there was only one thing that I knew for sure, and know now, still: that I love you, and you me, and that I should at least remain worthy of you.
Child, my darling, I want to come lie against your bosom like an infant, comforting you, and being comforted. I am unsettled; but I love you. If Anton hadn’t been here, along with the huge responsibility I have for his entire life, I would come to you without a second’s hesitation, and stay, and never again drive away on a Sunday afternoon or a Monday or Friday morning. I would even accept the risk to my father’s condition. That much I know, now.
Let us continue to live in reality, and continue to dream.
And you, darling, Cocoon, my own? What’s going on with you? Did Jack go off to the farm? Was he sorry to leave? Were you sad? What’s his book like? How is he towards you?
On Sunday it’s your blonde little girl’s birthday. My best wishes; give her a kiss from me, because I like very much to think of her as mine, too. Will I never have a daughter of my own? Or might the next time I come down be more “opportune”? Because the thought of you bearing my child and giving birth to her – it’s begun to mean so very much to me.
The future’s lying in wait, slumbering in a crystal ball. (“En wéér het kristal. / Nu vóór nie.”) Anything is possible, the creation is yet to be brought into being, God continues to wander through his garden in the nightwind, everything is still untouched, virginal, beautiful. Tomorrow a new day begins. Tomorrow we begin.
I charge you in your beauty and splendour: sleep like a little lamb, like a brief sigh, until my words awaken you.
I will sleep with you. Now. In everlasting love,
André.
Friday morning, 29 November 1963
{Postscript to last night’s letter, which has already been sealed inside a large envelope:}
Dearest mine,
Thank you for this morning’s adorable letter that almost brought me to tears, so very happy was I that it was there – because when I checked the first time, there was nothing in my postbox.
Just to answer the few questions you asked: When I write “study”, it means here at the house; “office” means I’m at the university. I always write to you here – my office is too impersonal.
I meant the first rough notes for Die Ambassadeur, which I sorted – dating from Nov. last year to Jan. this year. Not new ones!
Personally, I’m quite impressed with the cover. Are you satisfied with it? And did you and Koos have your little drink together?
I’m concerned about the parcel. They wrapped it up in such a flimsy sheet of paper, and then I put the whole thing into a big white envelope and posted it, just like that. If it doesn’t arrive within the next week, I’ll order another one. The parcel wasn’t registered or anything and so they won’t be able to track it down.
Have you spoken to Johan Cilliers yet – and found a new job? I’d be so happy if you could get out of that grey pit. But wouldn’t you lose all the bonus money you’d get in February?
I’m glad things are okay with Freda Linde. Despite that unfortunate episode a long time ago, I think she could still mean a lot to you.
Oh love, my darling, I long for you hopelessly, despondently.Thank you for your restful, glittering recent letters.
Thank you for your strange dream about me as the eating girl!
BUT I CAN’T KISS THE PAPIE!
You kiss your hand with those gorgeously messy nails, and then use them to greet the little cocoon, and the electric switch inside there. (As I say this, I can feel the papie growing!)
I love you. And I am no longer “unbalanced”, either. In love I become whole for you.
Always,
André.
Castella
Thursday evening, 28 November 1963
No, God! Child! This is not a letter, this is a note. Letters I did write, and listen well, redhead, here are the dates they were posted:
19 November: Telegram: No moesie.
20 November: Letter.
21 November: Letter.
22 November: Telegram: Bravo citizen brilliant Ambassadeur brilliant career all love all confidence confirmed.
25 November: Letter.
27 November: Letter.
So you see, I committed acts of communication with you almost every day in spite of your drawn-out silences! Like you, I of course also feel hopeless about the words-words-words-on-paper, but I would not be so heartless as not to write you at all; especially now. Notes, evidence: even dates posted. You’ll make a methodical person of me yet. I’ll keep waging a campaign for you with statistics and love. Funny that you, before your word-despair (I refer to your letter which considerately arrived today at Castella), also thought of a bird: so often in the last week-and-a-half I have thought of Elisabeth [Eybers]’s “klein koggelvoël wat roep in my”.
… Oh fill me
with strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automation,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing …
…
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
8.Juta’s made a lovely window for you with the review and the photo. I wrote to you about it a while ago.
9.Be still, my dear heart. I haven’t changed. And “hierdie las van reën wil ek nie sien nie / Op die water van jou voorkop / Op die water sonder bodem van ons eenheid”. Write soon – any bladdy thing – but write! Go and enquire about my letters. I wouldn’t like it if those tender things were lying around at Rhodes University. I also don’t want anyone to know that we fought. They’ll say it’s my fault (!). If anyone had to read how sorry I am, how much I love you, they’ll think I’m chasing after you.
10.Come here just one more time and run to the kitchen to tell me: “Do you know what? I had a John Collins today!” Let me again put the radio on to provide a banal background to our unseemly squabble. And then let me sleep with you, allow me to forgive and be forgiven. André.
Cocoon.