Grahamstown

Monday morning, 2 December 1963

Dearest little devil,

This morning I received a surprising letter from one Mr Prinsloo who addresses me as “darling” and signs his name as “Cocoon”. He asked me a whole lot of silly questions, but as he didn’t supply a full address, I’ll send my answers to you – then you can pass them on the next time he spends a night there:

1.Why do I say, in the past tense, that nothing has changed about the preciousness of what “existed before” –

a)Because the preciousness of what exists now cannot be taken away by something that happened in the past (our “evening”).

b)Because it might have seemed, that night, as if we were “breaking down” everything that existed before – but now it’s quite obvious that it didn’t change anything – it just made everything more intense and profound. (Often a whole past is changed by its future; but our past – like our present – can be disavowed by nothing.)

2.You don’t understand French. But what I wrote wasn’t in French, it was Italian, from Quasimodo, a poem that I read to you in Italian. It means: “Misschien blijft het hart ons over …” Don’t mind me while you blush a deep pink of embarrassment.

3.Who is Koos Meyer?
I don’t know. I wrote about Jack Meyer, head of the Centre for Arts here, Frieda’s friend; 34 years old, very dear and kind, slightly effeminate; when he saw the picture of you, he said he remembers you with longer hair, last December at the sea.

4.That’s it with the questions.

5.Dear-dear-darling, little goddess, it’s fucked-up amazing how much I love you this morning. If only we could be back at Steenbras River Mouth right now …

Your voice last night was a mercy, yet again, a blessing that made me wonderfully positive again and full of happiness about you. Today I just want to do crazy things. I’m so ecstatically happy about the probability of your prize. But please keep it a secret! (“A woman’s idea of keeping a secret is refusing to reveal who told it to her”!) You must get a bursary, too, and go overseas; and if Die Ambassadeur perhaps wins the CNA Prize, then I’ll see if I can come over for a holiday and show you Paris; we’d walk around where no one knows us and the nights belong only to us. Rob says he and Opperman and Ernst [van Heerden] all said Die Ambassadeur would have won the prize if APB had published it. But I’m glad the book’s with Koos – because I’ve been wanting you to get the prize all this time, not out of charity but on merit. Yours is not an insignificant little voice. Rob says some of the poems in Rook en Oker are “great”.

I’m holding thumbs for a job with Cilliers. You’ve had enough of your current hell. Oh, be happy, and free. In February you must come and visit here.

Bartho says he’s not in a hurry for the Colette, so now I can finish translating Die Ambassadeur first. The first 30 pages have been completed and checked; I handed them over to a well-attuned English friend for critical revision. I’ll have it typed up bit by bit, as it emerges. I’d like to have a completed manuscript by the end of January. Koos will act as my agent overseas; he’s already entered into agreements with publishers in England and America. (I mean: general agreements, not specifically for Die Ambassadeur.) He also had my contract worded in such a way that I get 75% of the translation income and not just the usual 50%.

The fact that Colette has to wait is a bit disastrous financially because I’m so terribly broke I don’t even know how I’m going to get to Potch. But I’ve sold a plot there and should get something from that – not a lot, because I still have to pay a R500 debt I owe my mother.

But now I have new hope for the future. I feel I’m living again. I felt extremely close to you all day yesterday; then, last night I was able to talk to you – make contact with you so enjoyably – and sleep with you afterwards. (Did you … with me …?)

Congratulations, again, on Rook en Oker’s deserved – and, hopeful – success. Let me smother you with kisses: your happy eyes and your little curl; your naughty ears; your enchanting mouth and the playful tip of your tongue; your soft throat and your speckled brown shoulders; your full, gorgeous breasts and those provocative nipples; your long soft back; your little buttocks and your tummy; your unbelievable thighs; your dearest calves; your hands and feet; and your beloved leucodendron. Then, let me kiss your little mound and that deep, living love-stamp until I hear your breath, feel your stomach moving – and I continue kissing until you say “hell!”, clamping your legs in ecstasy such that I can no longer gain entry.

That’s how much I love you. And even more, every day more.

Always, jubilantly yours,

André.

Castella

Tuesday night, 3 December 1963

Dearest my André,

Thank you for yesterday’s two letters and the really dynamic 2nd part of Orgie. Review yes, but later. It’s too late now; 11:30. Thank you for your telegram for Simonetta, her big wish for her birthday was for a BACKPACK, which I found at Garlicks. And thank you for your call on Sunday with the unbelievable news: alas! so all was not in vain! But I must say that was the last thing I expected. God is a god of surprises.

News here: Lots. Saw Johan Cilliers this evening at 7:30 at the Café Royal, but he was befuddled and I am aware that I’ll just have to stay at the Press for the time being … at least it’s not so long any more … Will write you later in more detail about the interview; now just saying good night, little treasure, every night it’s so late with people and appointments and Manet [Simone] and obligations. Also saw Dudley [D’Ewes] (Molteno Trust) this evening; bought a beautiful expensive dress; yellow; sunlightdress, sweet. I am half asleep; you ask so many questions in yesterday’s letter; but I’ll answer comprehensively tomorrow evening. One thing I am more than upset about is your pessimism on Tuesday and the gun and all that. No, my darling – you must never think that way, things always get better sooner than one expects; and you don’t know me yet, my spirit is just in-des-truct-ible.

Rob. Rob. Rob knows.

Liefsteling; I am so terribly tired. Just know that I think of you constantly – and you are with me more than ever before.

’Night to your precious red head,

And to your beautiful tooth,

And to your long hands,

And to all the moesies,

And to your beautiful papie,

And to your tenderness,

And to your protection,

And to your loneliness,

And to your purity,

And to your humaneness,

And to all your little laughs.

Love is what I feel for you; your sleepy girl and your

Cocoon.

Grahamstown,

Wednesday, 4 December 1963

Most beloved Cocoon,

I don’t know what the red number at the top of this page means; it’s the first sheet from a new ream of paper.

I have a few minutes before my honours class begins, so I’m writing to say hello and send my love. And I’m sending you a funny piece of “evidence” with this letter.

Here it is:

That, my little pixie, is a thorn, a Gordon’s Bay thorn that came out of my big toe last night. Now you can see a) that I wasn’t complaining for no reason, and b) that Gordon’s Bay wasn’t just a dream!

Here on this side, things are somewhere between Scylla and Charybdis. Fortunately I’m feeling positive and happy about you; and for that reason, all the more disillusioned about the emptiness here. It’s starting to look as if I’ll be moving to the study soon, bedding and all. I’ve been so terribly negative; can’t do anything and don’t want to, either; I feel as if I have no energy, quite vegetative in fact. I want to live in the way I learnt to live with you. Things are coming to a head. I have no idea what might still happen in this holiday period. You’ll have to keep carrying me with your love, and keep trusting me; and be good.

The translation of Die Ambassadeur has now reached page 50 or thereabouts. Heavy work, but also enjoyable. And now at least I’m catching all the printing errors (god, there’re a lot of them!).

I’m reading Offerland [Land of Sacrifice] [F.A. Venter]!!!

Enjoy the wedding this weekend and send me a photo of our little Simone-flowergirl as soon as you can.

I miss and love you; I believe and I trust, and I’m happy, in full certainty about you in this uncertain world.

With everything,

André.

Castella

Wednesday night, 4 December 1963

My dearest André,

When I got home from Simone a moment ago (it’s ten o’clock) your letter was lying here; the one in reply to Mr Prinsloo; had to rush up quickly to borrow Mrs Oxley’s pen, and since I did some gardening on Saturday and gave her some roses yesterday, she is very friendly again. But all my little plants are dying in the heat; will definitely have to wake up at seven o’clock tomorrow to water them – heavens, the responsibilities. My whole life is taken up with fulfilling obligations.

Dearest treasure, I still can’t believe that about the APB; but why do you say “probability” in one spot. The other two books that are due will surely not be something? I’ll die if I don’t get them now. Only Chris and Jack know – those two will definitely say NOTHING, or even imply in the slightest way – of that I can assure you. You still speak about visiting there in February. Where, exactly? At your home? And will I still be in SA then? Because I leave as soon as I get it. I hope you get the CNA, which you ought to get, there is surely a possibility that the committee won’t just automatically give it to Opperman. God is a god of surprises. Chris and Jack received the news with much excitement and emotion. And one of my first thoughts was: so then it wasn’t all for nothing … and the Pastor is just lying. And I will have to go to Johannesburg? I’ve got a lovely yellow-and-white dress with a pleated skirt, which I’ll wear. It’s an expensive dress, too.

News, news. Met Johan Cilliers at half past seven yesterday evening; he had a few fantastic stories that I’d rather not write down; the work – SA Litho, is apparently “giving” him an office, he “may” use their typists – those would be my duties too if I go and work there – Hey, hey. Sandberg “resigned”. The rest of the staff “can’t come to Cape Town”. I think the company’s had it. And so – the grey – in the meantime – Paris – Holland – London – Rome. And that’s that.

Saw Molteno Trust’s Dudley Dewes [D’Ewes] yesterday evening at nine. He says it would help a lot if I had another bursary too or something like that – the Molteno is a “rounding up” bursary. And so I had to just keep quiet. But he was kind, even though like a priest. Wrote to Braaksma and also to the Brits. And now wait wait wait. When will the APB thing be made public? At work of course I now constantly feel the need to say “Fuck you, sir” or to stay away.

Thank you for your beautiful lovely letters. You ask some questions.

1. Jack’s going to the farm tomorrow.
2. No, I am not sad. I bought him some biltong.
3. Don’t think he is sad either.
4. He is kind towards me, just wants to be with me, walks quietly around in the garden, is a bit of a pig if you phone or when I talk about you, treats me like a million Rand.

On Friday night I have to accompany Simone to Upington (Oh god!) and next Friday again; the wedding is on the 14th. Two weekends. Joys of motherhood.

André, André, do speak to Rob. He is sympathetically disposed towards you. I think he’d like it if you spoke to him. I know it.

And BE CAREFUL of women.

I can’t bear it that you have to be away. This letter writing. “De daad is proza, maar de klacht, de traan is poëzie.” And the writer? Piet Paaltjens. Letter-writing. It embarrasses me. God! You should have been here this evening – the castle is wonderfully homely, but so empty. My mother had a cricket for company at night. I’ll have to get myself something like that too.

Saw Lena today. She says W. says it’s “unbearable” at home, but she says she is often there and it’s not unbearable at all.

Beloved red pyjamas with horns. What will you do when I am overseas?

The last part of Orgie, I think (very tentatively) is better than the first – affecting, but where is the greeting, “hail tristesse”, at the end? I was giving it a quick read-through on Monday evening, when I was again held up by guests. Now I am (like [Louis] Hiemstra) going through the whole thing carefully and systematically, with notes. I’m thinking and half feeling my way around everything. Thank you for your thoughtful notes. I’m not so stupid!

I’m glad you are now happy again. Sunday (at the beach) I went through everything so carefully, details, also the horrible ones, but there was an intense “atmosphere” of presence – as W.E.G. Louw would say.

Uys was SICK. He told everyone (in detail) how many times and also how he threw up. But he’s better again now. Jan and Marjorie have gone on holiday. Chris sends loving regards; he’s writing to you – the lazy thing! Hiemstra says you’re a “fantastic person”. He says it so inquisitively and then looks at me, so sweet.

And you, read Éluard page 184. (Revelations …). And you, lovely and preciously fierce you, my André Phillipus Brink (did you see your review of Caesar in Die Burger?).

André Brink, I carefully draw a cross on your forehead, André Brink, I call you by your name, you I love with a love broader than the Limpopo (or does that sound funny??).

Good night, sweet prince.

In happy love,

Your Cocoon.

{PS: My ear is sore. IJ}

Grahamstown

Saturday morning, 7 December 1963

My Cocoon,

My rebellious but compliant, restful but passionate, laughing but despondent, unemployed but hardworking collection of paradoxes; my angel and succubus, virgin and bitch: hello!

Salutations from the morning, with its fragrance of soft rain and gleam of a pale sun.

“The ups and downs of love”! – after our phone conversation the night before last I felt depressed and dispirited. It was one of those hide-and-seek routines (“Oh, where are you, where are you?”). Mischievous little thing, with all your accusations, grudges, and provocations. And the damned intrusive exchange operators at the end.

But yesterday morning your dear, sleepy letter arrived here, and I could hear your drowsy voice and guess at the lazy movements of your hands and your body as you surrendered to rest, to the little bed at the window.

(Are there still so many flies early in the morning?

Are you still so beautiful?

Are you still as wonderful as ever, girlie?

Is the castle still a little refuge?)

I’m glad that you’re finally free – or will be in a day or two – of the monotonous job. But I’m concerned about your itinerant condition, my splendidly rich, dirt-poor little wanderer. Let me know if you need material help, whether a lot or a little.

I’m feeling calm and whole this morning. I’ve been lurching from pillar to post in the last while. And I’m no longer enjoying translating Die Ambassadeur. I need to find something else to whet my appetite. I have a huge amount of work to do during the holidays, not least preparing for two honours courses (literary theory, and modern Dutch prose); these are courses I didn’t ever take myself. The prose especially is taxing – these people all produced such long novels, and wrote so much!

My plan is to leave here for Potch on the 19th. You can therefore send letters to me at this address until Monday morning the 16th.

Tonight there’s a dinner at Frieda’s place; a whole bunch of people getting together for one last time before we all go our different ways. Should I give her your address? She’s leaving for the Cape on Monday and she’ll be there for a month. I wish I could also come to you that soon, for Christmas.

Will you be at Anne’s wedding tonight? And how will you get there? Oh, damn! I’ve just realised it’s next Saturday. (Why did they have their wedding invitations printed in English?)

I’m looking forward to Bartho and company tomorrow night; I want to show him Orgie. The “salutation” at the end will be there. And please send me a complete list of your objections, because it’s our story, and it mustn’t be half-baked.

Hopefully I’ll write again this weekend. Just know that I love you. I know you’re feeling restless about not having work right now, but I’m very much with you, a huge bit; and I love you and everything that’s in you, for your name – Ingrid, pure, beautiful; Cocoon, deep, penetrable, safe, of the future –

Your André.

Sunday night, 8 December 1963

My dearest treasure, dear god, have I had people!

It seems everyone likes Castella very much – yesterday one of Uys’s cousins was here from two till ten and I couldn’t get to anything. Don’t worry, jealous, he doesn’t appeal to me at all! At least he helped me move my stuff from the hotel; unfortunately the clothes are just GONE, but I could at least save some of my books. Thank you for your Thursday evening surprise – I told you, didn’t I, it was a mess at work, I sent them ten complaints and didn’t go to work on Friday. So maybe things will be better tomorrow. It is truly fantastic that they really think they’ll succeed in making a THING of me. I haven’t yet been able to get hold of Johan [Cilliers] (who called) – maybe I should accept his proposal; for the time being … because everything here is becoming more uncertain and temporary for me now, since the big possibility of going overseas has sunk in. Marking time. It’d really be a great experience. And I want to make it all worthwhile – it’s a responsibility. I may not disappoint anyone – and must simply read and write a lot – with the grace of God.

Child, do you know what? That bladdy Maggie threw the sponge away. I was quite upset about it. She probably thinks I’m mad to go on about something like that. And you know what else? My tape recorder is working again – and this week I’m going to make you a recording of Éluard poems. Thank you for you, darling! So, have you been walking around with this dagger of memory the whole time? And are you in the study now and how did it all work out? Write to me about it. And when are you going to Potch? Can I send you some money?

It’s cool here, was a beautiful weekend for going up the mountain, but my pals are all so lazy, and I can’t go alone. So Simone has gone; and next Friday I follow her.

Bambi said she saw you at the Sea Point Pavilion – having tea. She said you were wearing your rust-brown shirt – remember, you wore it often last time, my beautiful thing. She says you were sitting looking at the sea. But she wasn’t certain it was you. Was it?

I’ve only now read Eric van Dyk’s stupid little piece about Die Ambassadeur in the Argus – I’m including it in case you haven’t seen it. He is the stupidest I have ever come across in a daily – and he’s been writing for them for years. Everything on the same six-year-old intellectual level.

Listened to your last tape again. Listened again to your “Groet in Bruin”. Perhaps in a forlorn effort to bring you into the flat. Everything looks so uncertain and vague – like the harbour in the thick mist outside – and here – the silence. “I no longer want to sleep alone.” And this:

Ek het die mag om te bestaan sonder noodlot

Tussen ryp en dou tussen vergetelheid en teenwoordigheid

…

Koelte warmte hulle raak my nie

Ek sal die beeld van myself wat jy my bied

Laat voortreis deur jou begeertes heen

My gelaat het net een ster

…

Ek bly in my eie blare

Ek bly my eie spieël

Ek meng sneeu met vuur

My klippers het my soetheid

En my seisoen is ewig.

Dear, beloved lonely André. It must be terrible to live there like that without communication. Patience! I think of you constantly “like a lamb looking for me”. (That’s from my “drama”, do you still remember?) (How dare Eric van Dyk use your beautiful sensitive face next to his piece of banality …!) This “thinking” of someone – it’s actually funny, because “think” isn’t the right word, it’s mostly just a vague presence. You say you’re doing nothing, I’m glad you’re doing nothing, but then you must REST and relax, and go and play tennis or something. You MUSTN’T work so much – I know the translation – and it is indeed a big job – must use up a lot of energy – but apart from that you must do nothing, can’t you understand that you are tired?

Apart from your work and translations and writing – there’s all the other emotional stuff – here as well as there. And it’s been like that all year. “Now you must sleep, my tender, beloved child …”

With tenderness, with longing,

With love,

Cocoon.

Castella (untidy)

Wessels Street (windy)

Cape Town (empty)

Tuesday, 9 December 1963 (sick)

Dearest little-old heart,

Thank you for your letter of a moment ago – if you hadn’t annoyed me in it, I probably wouldn’t have written again tonight! Horrible child with an ugly jersey! In the telephone call I didn’t “accuse” you at all – all I said (that I can remember) is that it is out of a feeling of lovelessness that one commits suicide. And that you must have felt that way that Tuesday. I know, after all. And I often feel that way, you or no you, Simone or no Simone. But it passes again. I didn’t mean that you were feeling specifically loveless towards me, and this you surely feel at times, otherwise you wouldn’t be human! And of course I also wanted to scold you about that, because that letter upset me so much more than all that other “misery” in the previous one which was tormenting you so! Because you are PRECIOUS. What else did I say, André? I’m sorry about it in any case, but didn’t actually mean anything, otherwise I would have remembered it exactly. (And on top of that maybe THOUGHT UP.) But Thursday was a TERRIBLE day at the grey pit, and then Bambi came for a drink and I was too tired to eat. See? So I told the old lot that I’ll stay on a while, in case I don’t get that money. That in itself would make me jobless for a week. Everything went fairly well today and we were given (as a favour) a fictional work to read about a decomposing body.

What makes me despondent at the moment is purely and simply physical. Everything infected, sore-ish: the sensitive membranes: eyes, mouth, bladder, ears, the canal. God knows why. Headache. Fever. Nothing too bad. Just there. This started creeping up on me yesterday. I just wish it would get a little worse, then I won’t have to go to work tomorrow.

You people in the North really dawdle.

Child! Darling! What’s going to happen? How are things with your precious little soul? (Read S.)

I was lying on the beach yesterday and I said to Uys: “I have a secret.”

His eyes swivelled away from the sea in a wide arc – I wish you could have seen the display then! Later on he even threatened me. “André?” “No.” “Jack?” “No.” “Jan?” “No.” “Then why do you look so happy if it has nothing to do with you?” Etc. Etc. But I didn’t tell him. Mean! (Commentary on my feeling for others, hey?) But it was absolutely worthwhile. Oh yes, and he wants to know which five Afrikaans books you regard as best. Prose. And except for your own.

Dearest darling, I am not accusing you of anything. You are human. Just with MORE of everything. And like me.

Love, darling,

Cocoon.

PS: I am afraid of Frieda. I.

PPS: Your medicine – “The Mixture – One tablespoon every four hours. SP. 30. 55c. Brink 91 – 95 High St Grahamstown” – it says here. It makes me miss you desperately. I.

{PS: Why do you now always write to Castella? IJ.

Finale: I’ve just re-read my letter with great delight. We should have gone to the 191 tonight. But right now my eyes are really red!}

Grahamstown

Wednesday, 11 December 1963

My darling,

I just hope this letter gets to you before you go off to Upington. (Are you going by train?) You’re likely to feel very neglected this week; especially now, when you’ll be experiencing the inevitable reaction to giving up your job, I should have been more attentive, instead of curling up into my own ball of misery. (Do you know where the word “ellende” [“misery”] comes from? Ali landi, cf. “alien land” in English; thus a kind of outcast-in-strange-lands …)

It was, and is, “most kak” here. Daily strife, growing distance, stiffness, desolation, guilt, responsibility for Anton, and my longing for you, my need for you. This morning it led to a long, honest conversation without any euphemisms, emotion or evasion. The question, on both sides, was whether there was any sense in staying together simply for the sake of keeping things the way they are. And the inevitable answer, also mutual, was No. At the moment the sticking point is whether Anton’s future should weigh most heavily; also: what will, and can, that future be? But, believe me, my darling, I know this holiday – terrible as it’s going to be – will result in a crystallisation. Please just trust me in the fullness of love, and stay true yourself. In you my entire happiness rests.

What a year this has been. I don’t know if I’ve ever been this ex-hausted. It brought the greatest, most complete happiness and enchantment I have ever known, but also the worst hell; it was my most creative year ever, and also the most sterile. Still, I wouldn’t want it any other way. “Misschien zullen wij nu beter kunnen leven en volkomener.” One grows sadder and wiser.

Bartho and company were here on Sunday night, dog-tired but in high spirits, and the conversation was wonderful. He is excited about Orgie, and it seems they’re going to enjoy the experimentation with typography.

The Paul Kruger biography has appeared. To my surprise, Bartho said it’s brilliant. Rob hasn’t received his copy yet, but I’ll check with him regularly and let you know the moment I hear anything. I’ll be holding thumbs hard for Rook en Oker. Apparently there’s no second publication on its way, it’s just the biography. Bartho says he’d be happier if a prose work or poetry got the prize rather than something like biography. When I saw him, he hadn’t yet seen Rob and therefore didn’t know about Rook en Oker.

The prize, by the way, will be awarded only in March, although the winner will of course know what’s what before the time. The award will apparently be made just after the CNA Prize. If a miracle occurs and the two of us make the “grand slam”, we might be able to arrange things so we’re both in Jhb for the prizes at the same time. Dream, dream … But I don’t hold out much hope with the current prize committee, even though I’m convinced Dolosse is nowhere near Opperman’s best work. We shall see. It’s just such a long time to wait.

Everyone’s left for the holidays and Grahamstown feels quite abandoned. I’m working like a mule on Die Ambassadeur’s translation, but it’s very slow going. The result, though, will hopefully be good. If it ever became a bestseller overseas, we could emigrate to a place like France or Spain or Italy and buy ourselves a little fisherman’s cottage (or a small Medieval castle, like Durrell?) and then live with our band of children, happily ever after.

What would we humans do if we couldn’t dream? Where would I run away to if I didn’t have you? [Anton] Chekhov wrote: “He who is afraid of loneliness should not marry.” It’s true, now. But “until eternity, thank God for you”.

Be good, my little child, my Cocoon, be bright and whole. Wait for me in purity. I’m coming.

I love you dazzlingly,

Your André.

Grahamstown

Friday, 13 December 1963

Beloved, indispensable Cocoon,

I’m tired, my girl. These days I have to work non-stop until eleven at night or even later, and then, on days like today, when Anton’s teething makes him fretful and he wants to get up at five, Estelle says she’s “tired” (from reading Femina?). Then I have to jump out of bed and look after him until the servant comes in at nine.

But I don’t want to complain today. I have used your red jersey to protect myself from the world, as I do nearly every day, isolated here in my study. I am complete, and I’m with you. Today I feel especially close to you. Do you have any idea how much your beautiful letters mean to me? Any notion of the extent to which I live in gratitude for you every day? Do you understand, my lovely, beloved one, how much I love you, and that my love is growing bigger, more mature, more tender and passionate by the minute?

Today you’re embarking on the long journey to Upington. Try not to get too tired. Enjoy it and be happy. Are you still feeling ill? How are all the parts that were feeling sore? A kiss for each: the little nose and the cheeky ears and the sweet, naughty mouth, and the deep, enchanting little cocoon, all of it. I was very worried about you; it all sounds so wretched, and you need to be healthy.

How did you manage to get your things from the hotel? With Bartho’s advance? You should have given them hell about the lost clothes. I’m happy about the books. And where is the swallow’s nest picture? Will you send it to me? Immediately?

Thank you for the Argus clipping, which indeed I hadn’t yet seen. Quite a shock. “Disgusting.” It makes one feel so despondent when they take a thing apart like this – undoubtedly with good intentions! – reducing it to repulsive pettiness. “The secretary flirts, among others, with the ambassador’s wife. He, in turn, flirts …” God! And: “The ambassador can do no better than catch him out on ‘undiplomatic behaviour’ …” God Almighty, he didn’t even read what’s written there. Why do such things still upset one so much? It’s undignified.

In the meantime, I’m translating. Finishing off the “Chronicle” section today. (Do you see how much still lies ahead? I want to have it finished before New Year’s Eve, otherwise I’ll be in a tight situation with my impossibly heavy workload during the so-called “vacation” (dark gallows humour).) The friend I’m giving it to, Ron Ayling (actually, his wife, Janet – she was the first “model” for Nicolette’s outer form – without her knowing it) said yesterday: Can’t I go a little faster? They can’t wait to receive each day’s batch of pages – so much so that they’re fighting to read it first! You once observed, and with such accuracy, that our ridiculous little egos so desperately need this kind of vanity!

My own, my one, mine, unnameable, irremovably mine – how divinely happy I feel about this year, a year that grafted you onto my life, that taught what it means to be human (with growth pains and birth pains, but also with ecstasy and with heartfelt gratitude). “I can’t summarise it, neither a lifetime nor a conversation …” But my year, our year, nevertheless has a magic formula, an “Open Sesame” that revealed the treasure in the cave (the location of the treasure remains a secret!): and the formula consists of two sweet words: Ingrid Jonker. Strange, strange, my child. Previously this name simply represented two neutral words on the white cover of a slim little volume of poetry, and sometimes a tiny headline in the Sunday Times. And if I thought about it, it called up the image of a “lady” – civilised and rebellious – of about 35 or so, wearing glasses, and with longish feet.

And then: (listen, child, listen) then a young girl arrived in Jan’s living room carrying with her the scent of paint and food; she was small; everything about her was small. Her hair was long, light-coloured; she was wearing a bright yellow blouse and green slacks, with beautiful feet in gold sandals. She had soft, neglected hands, one of them coolly enveloped in my own for just a second, and a nonchalant voice and questioning, lovely, slightly displeased eyes; and a very prominent little mound. We (supposedly) read a letter together at the table. And we began talking about poems (!). I was offered a glass of milk to calm me down. I lay awake all night long, just thinking. The next night, she was sleeping alongside me. One night later, she slept with me. God, my little thing – “I’ll make the babbling gossip of the air cry out: Ingrid!” I am mad with love, and soothed. As long as you’re there I can, like a daisy, “say something in reply, believe something, know something”.

Remember, after receiving this letter, to write to me at c/o The Magistrate, Potchefstroom. I’ll try to phone you from there, probably in the afternoon (a Saturday, possibly, if you’re still working) – I’ll telegraph you in good time with details. If I phone on the afternoon of Christmas day, which number should I use?

I received a long letter from Christie [Roode], terribly self-reproachful. I can’t understand how, in the heat of the moment, he could have been so rash with the telegram, how he thought he might be able to assist in “solving” a human “problem” with a “diagnosis”. It sounds like he understands a little more, now, about living “in irony”.

What remains is faith, hope, and love – these three things. But the greatest of them all is love.

I beseech you to be happy and quiet and patient. I’m coming: a groom to a girl with a lamp that runneth over with oil.

Love and happiness,

André.

We were both born on a Wednesday. Children of woe.

Study, Grahamstown

Monday, 16 December 1963

DAY OF THE COVENANT

Little pixie, Cocoon, darling – Ingrid,

I won’t keep you in a state of unnecessary tension but rather give you the main news immediately. I’ve just come off the phone with Rob. He says he’s quickly read through the Kruger biography, “doesn’t yet want to give a final judgement”, but adds that it doesn’t seem to him like “the kind of book that one awards a prize”; as far as he’s concerned, it won’t even be considered. And yes, Ernst van Heerden is overseas, so the final decision lies with Rob and Opperman. But insofar as it’s humanly possible to be certain, it looks as if our “very young poet”, my precious little chick, is going to be on the receiving end of R2 000.

Go to the bathroom now before you finish reading, otherwise you might wet your nice little white panties. (Or are you wearing the blue ones?)

Thank you again for Saturday night’s call from so far away, which surprised me even though I had a hunch you might call. I would very much have wanted to be there to test the hotel out with you. And now – 10.45 am – you’re probably lying and sleeping after the long night-drive? This afternoon it’ll be the sea, and the sun on your smooth, tanned body (“as brown as the baked earth near Siena –”).

Your call had certain consequences over here. Estelle apparently got wind it was you – I think she heard me calling you “my precious” – and while at first she remained distant and stiff, she later went for a walk – and then returned with a new “tactic”: loving affection, “pretend nothing happened”, and cooking a “stylish” meal. God, this is actually more nerve-wracking than everything else.

And now, my angel: make a booking for us at the Van Riebeeck for the weekend of Friday afternoon the 17th January till Monday morning the 20th. Do it right away, otherwise they may not have room. I’ll be in the Cape a few days earlier and we’ll have seen each other, but the weekend must be ours, alone. It should be just “right” – although with your overseas plans it might not be quite “right”?

Did your period arrive on Saturday – with all that fuss and the tears and so on?! Let me know so I can get my notes up to date.

I’m sending you another letter; this one came from an Indian. Send it back again, please! I believe that these naive, sincere little missives are, in the long run, one’s greatest reward.

Did I tell you that an English woman wrote to me saying she wanted to translate Lobola? I don’t mind, she can do it, and then I’ll do the final editing myself.

The Ambassador is now at page 130. God, it’s hard work! I’m sending you two sample pages to “evaluate”. (You can keep these.)

I’m also sending a small cheque, mainly to cover the phone call.

What’s going on with the job? Be careful of Cilliers.

But you always tread lightly, because you’re a girl; a small, intense, tender, absolute being “who does not even have to think of God”.

I love you. In you everything finds a form. Even the four elements: fire, water, air, earth.

I greet you in longing and secure love.

A kiss for the little chick.

Always,

André.

Castella

Tuesday evening, 17 December 1963

My dearest André André,

Thank you, liefsteling, for your two letters – the one of Friday, the one we spoke about on Saturday evening from Upington – heavens, I wrote back a piece or six that night, tore it all up and phoned – and the one that was waiting here on Monday afternoon when my Transvaal friends and I got back from the beach – the beautiful one with the story – the Bethlehem story about us. Tired tired tired. Left Sunday evening at six, drove through the night; home Monday morning at nine – safe – after an almost-accident at Hex River – my girlfriends were here and we chatted till eleven – slept till one-thirty and went to the beach. And last night only got to bed at two again – so you see, I am the most TIRED of all. But I want to say hello, and I hope you got my telegram today and don’t feel deserted because my quiet time (pray, pray) was so long. And with your driving to Potch, there’s even more of a delay, of course. I hope everything goes quietly and clearly – whatever happens. You are so lovely and precious. Hello mine!

Bonnie [Davidtsz]’s little friend [Iris] is nice; she’s an art student but can’t continue because she doesn’t have any money and first has to work for a year or two to save. For now, she’s going to stay here at Castella.

What else is happening …? Heavens, what’s going to happen? When are you planning to come? I live in your “pendulum existence”. The uncertainty of everything holds a kind of horror and enchantment. Just to be able to rest in your arms safe and without any questions and the tangled undergrowth of words.

I telegraphed about Nico [Hagen] – god! – Wednesday evening (afternoon), he sends me a little letter: “Meet me five o’clock at the hotel where we once had a drink. I have something to say. I’ll wait for you till half past five, maybe longer. Nico.”

So simple. I had an appointment with Freda but went to meet him first, because I immediately assumed that something was wrong. But we had very little time; then I had to leave. He couldn’t actually say much – inner problems, I think, and problems adjusting; wants to chat, get clarity. Made an arrangement then to talk the next evening – he didn’t arrive; on the way, a car accident; skull fracture; back; still unconscious. Only family allowed. And all those bladdy rubbishes are walking around in the sun outside. While the saints have to be maimed and mown down.

Er is een boom geveld met lange groene lokken.

Hij zuchtte ruisend als een kind

terwijl hij viel, nog vol van zomerwind.

Ik heb de kar gezien, die hem heeft weggetrokken.

O, als een jonge man, als Hector aan de zegewagen,

met slepend haar en met de geur van jeugd

stromend uit zijn schone wonden,

het jonge hoofd nog ongeschonden,

de trotse romp nog onverslagen.

He’s getting the gold medal for Art this year. (Maybe now, hey?)

Ag, my André, I don’t want to sound despondent. But daily the assaults and the shocks and the whys. “Like a lamb to the slaughter.” Immoral, humiliating.

And your light, lovely, loving, radiant letter of light. Your love. Your lovableness. Your surrender. Your sparkling youth. Your you-ness, my Other-me. André.

Sleep time. Tired time. Quiet time. Pray time.

Everything good and healthy again. Maybe just a sensitivity at certain times, maybe a lack of certain vitamins or something like that.

Why are you wearing jerseys now? It’s so warm here.

Why do you write to Castella, Philippus?

Why do you love me? “Come to my heart …”

You mustn’t work too hard. You must get rest. Please. And you must sleep with me lekker and often. I see you. And it puts me in the mood.

I miss your being-here. Far away, “begrijp ik het niet …”

Silly letter before bed. Good night, sweet prince.

Tender love from

Your lovely Cocoon,

Ingrid Jonker.

Grahamstown

(I almost wrote Green Point!)

premonition?

Wednesday, 18 December 1963

Dearest,

Very briefly, amid the bustle that precedes a holiday – and this with a pen that doesn’t want to write!

I’ll be posting your parcel(s) today. Please let me know if, and when, they arrive. By this time you should already have received the new bra-and-panties parcel that I re-ordered a week ago.

I need Anne’s vocabulary to describe life here. One HELL of a fight again this morning. (Is this what they call the Christmas feeling?!)

I’ll be on the road at the crack of dawn tomorrow – a fourteen-hour drive. And it looks like we’re set for murderously hot weather. So be it.

The translation [The Ambassador] has reached page 164.

But I’m not writing to give you “news”. I just wanted to say I love you impossibly, and I’m happy – no matter how strange this may sound in view of all the daily frustrations – because I’m living in a state of such complete certainty about you.

I’m looking forward to your letter about the Upington excursion. Where and how did Nico hurt himself? How does he fit into the picture?

Look after yourself nicely, be good, live in light and patience and grace, my lovely, lovely, indispensable person.

I’ll write again soon. Please also write.

Meanwhile, I hold you with love and fullness and continuous thankfulness.

André.

Potchefstroom,

Saturday afternoon, 20 December 1963

Most lovely child, my darling,

Thank you for your beloved letter of yesterday, arriving as it did in this impossible heat. And thank you for the beautiful parcel. I didn’t want to wait until Christmas, so I took a quick peek and tried it on. It fits wonderfully; it’s really lovely and I can see I’ll be wearing it a lot over here. (On this side – as there, too, it seems – the weather’s insufferably hot, literally unbearable. Grahamstown, on the other hand, is often cool in the summer, cool enough to wear a jersey sometimes.)

I’ve been wanting to write to you very badly, but the first day’s settling in here, and especially the lack of a much needed place to isolate myself, frustrated my efforts. Now, while the others are having a nap, I can be with you in quiet contentment. And maybe sleep with you a little later to heal me a little of my longing (although that also makes it more acute).

What a massive expedition this business of visiting the family is. One realises what a complete lack of connection there is. Nothing to talk about. I can’t even express modest outrage about a newspaper report on police abuse of convicts without causing an uncomfortable silence, as if it’s an “attack” – everyone here is of course NATIONAL, in capital letters. The same goes when it comes to the church. Even family bonds are nothing to write home about. My adolescent brother is an irritating little shit. My sisters wear very long, prim, calvinist dresses, and they wear their hair in frizzy little curls; my mother and her lot pick up hideous, monstrous “paintings” at bargain prices and think it’s culture.

That’s all there is here – just downcast Doppers who wear forced expressions of Christmas “goodwill” on their faces like OK Bazaars masks; self-righteous moral prigs who pronounce the word “Lobola” as if it means “Antichrist”. Platteland people. So Transvaal, so Afrikaans, and with a hot-as-hell God. Not even a sea in which to cleanse one’s sins, or those of one’s family.

I haven’t done any work yet. How can one? I first have to get into the “mood”. “Our delicate and tender souls.” “Sinful artists that we are.”

In this place I feel like a [Moses] Kottler statue on display at a public building.

(“Of course no one’s allowed to be open …” and there are so many PeePee-de-thises and PeePee-de-thats, it’s like the whole place is steeped in its own peepee.)

Thank the Lord we can laugh at the spectacle of humanity (oneself included!). Let us close the catechism for just a second, dear congregation, and laugh.

Let us laugh and fuck and be human.

Beloved child, I miss you. But my longing comes from purity and quietude, without the distress of a while ago.

I’m shocked about Nico’s news. I hope things are going better now. It’s always so perverse, this “family only” attitude. If something like that were to happen to me, family’s the last thing I’d want around me; just you. My little sister – oh your dance is delightful, with the mountain eagle’s fire-plume on your forehead, blessed are you among women.

I’m sending this to Castella, minx, because I haven’t yet heard from you what eventually became of the Citadel job; and I don’t want any of my letters to have to pass through those corridors (or tunnels).

Have you phoned the Van Riebeeck yet to book a room for us? If you don’t, we may have to “lie low” in the little castle (or lie flat) – and you now have a chaperone!

How are things with our little blonde child?

And with my soft, fiery, virginal little whore?

Write – a lot.

I love you and live quietly for you and remain happy for you; soon I’ll be with you again.

I hail everything, with tenderness and enthusiasm,

In fulfilment and longing,

André.

Castella

Saturday night late, 21 December 1963

My precious André,

With your hands that have a future

that burn like dew

that live like weighty birds …

A few lines for you. Heavens, child, Cape Town is alive! People. Bonnie and Iris still here. Bonnie is out; Iris was – Simone asleep – me, you, with our kind little candle, now. Liefsteling, thank you for the beautiful beautiful gifts you sent me – that Jean Patou Amour Amour is the most precious perfume – and the Van Ostaijen wonderful – I haven’t begun my voyages of discovery with it yet; but you spoil me so. And you’re naughty. You don’t register your parcels. No, the little bra and things haven’t arrived yet. You refuse to learn, don’t you? But that’ll probably come later. And thank you for the cheque. I always have to say so many thank yous, and they’re so inadequate, because one lives so completely in prayerful gratitude and compassion and tenderness and concern.

News. I saw Bartho and the rest of them – he told me openly that the choice is between me and Jan – I tried to look surprised – everything very secret – the award has to be an absolute surprise – the writer will be notified confidentially about a month before and be given an airline ticket – it’s going to be a real occasion in March; Jan and I made an agreement at the party last night – if he wins, he gives me R50; and vice versa. The dear old crowd were all at Stephen [Etienne Leroux] and company’s place. Jack friendly and concerned; he was here when your Patou arrived; I opened it and, thrilled, showed it to him and Bonnie – he brazenly says it’s rubbish (!). Organised the house thoroughly today; everything in its place – washed and combed and dressed Cinderella – everything down to the last detail. Iris can stay here; a fine, especially sensitive little person, I think we’ll get on well …

Booked at the Van Riebeeck; child, love-child, it’s not too long any more – they have to write me a confirmation letter, Castella. Heavens, it’s going to be an island with your laughter, desirable, disarming, you. But tell me more, are you all in Cape Town then? And how …? Sleepy, man. I’ll write more tomorrow. And I can’t even sleep with you, because Simone and Iris are sleeping in the same room; but still, I am with you so unutterably often – participating in your existence.

Dates: Early; period 11 December; 17 January will be about “right”. Dearest my own papie, for now I’m saying Good night, sweet prince. Tomorrow, bright blue day, I’ll write more – but first I urgently want you to know that you are a part of me – in love and an unbearable tenderness – and for you, ag, du … du … in my arms, in my bed, nightly, beloved …

Till tomorrow,

Your own Cocoon.

PS: Do you like your little gift? You’re bound to look very impressive in it! I see you.

IJ.

Monday, 23 December 1963

THREE O’CLOCK 399363 STOP THANK YOU AMOUR STOP OUTSTANDING CHRISTMAS JANUARY LIES AHEAD MY LITTLE ELEPHANT LOVE = COCOON

Potchefstroom

Christmas night, 1963

Beloved, beautiful, “fairly good” child,

Finally, some seclusion in which to converse with you, as I promised this afternoon. Thank you for your voice, your light, and your happy spirit. It brought a certain radiance to the rest of the day. I know how clichéd it sounds to say that I miss you; but it’s true, dearest darling. Things are going badly here. Today we said “good morning” to each other – just perfunctorily, because there were other people around – and since then not another word has passed between us. She knows I phoned you this afternoon; and she knows about your lovely gift, which I stored, with note and all, right at the top of the drawer. Oh god, child, it’s not the alienation that upsets me – I welcome that. It’s the frustration of keeping up appearances in front of my parents, for my father’s sake especially – and for the sake of the general good, given the situation. But how much longer can it go on like this? I want to break free, come to you and stay with you; and be with you always.

This is the reason why you should remain good, rather than just “fairly good”. Entirely. Yes: I am jealous. But it would be unnatural for me not to be!

Last night I knew you were sleeping at Jack’s (even if it was just sleeping over!), because I was restless and upset, and I lay awake almost the whole night.

I believe you. (All your lies –?) But if you do sleep with him, please don’t ever hold it back from me just to make things “easier”, or because it’s too hard to explain. It would be hell to know, but necessary. This is an honesty that keeps things unsullied – I’d much rather have it this way than let it be unspoken out of “consideration”, thereby creating “suspicions”. PROMISE?

I’m happy to hear you’ve found a flatmate, but how on earth can you afford it, my generous, open-hearted little thing? Shouldn’t I help you again? Just say the word.

I said to you my plans for the trip to the Cape hadn’t been finalised. But it now looks like I’ll be back in Grahamstown on 10 Jan (evening). That’s a Friday, and I’ll probably spend the weekend there, arriving in the Cape on Wednesday (15 Jan). Our island of quiet and rapture will thus be from the 17th to the 20th. In all likelihood I’ll be gone again by the 22nd.

We can talk – must, in fact – about the possibility of you visiting Grahamstown when you get your vacation-cum-bonus (though obviously I’ll cover your expenses).

Are the people at the Citadel treating you more humanely these days? Do you still get your tea? Does your boss still accompany you to the bathroom? Who’s reading with you now, in Anne’s place? There’s nothing that’s not important for me to know!

Chris is probably out of town, Uys busy with translation. Jan and Marjorie? And: Jack …?

Now begins that really awful wait for the prizes. If I only had your sense of certainty. But I have strong doubts. Even so: I dream about next Christmas, the two of us in a sunny Spanish fisherman’s village (in spite of the winter); God, so happy.

Yesterday morning I woke up with such a strong sense of you that the papie almost got me into an embarrassing situation – with untimely secrets. And this despite the fact that I sleep with you a lot as it is. (If you want to know, that’s when I say: “Darling, darling, darling – ”)

I’m still carrying my little scar, proudly and happily; and I hope it stays there always.

I want you; I love you. All of you, which I hail with passion – the way I’m doing it now at the end of Orgie:

A vivid salutation to all your vivid parts:

your fair head

and the faraway tenderness of your half-closed eyes

the mysterious pain and happiness of your mouth

the tension in your arms

your beautiful hands

your legs

and your speckled shoulders

the shy, intimate touch of your breasts

your smooth back and stomach

and the narrow, hidden path to the anemone.

This is how much I love you.

And I ask you to remain chaste and lovely.

“My girl, I appoint you with an appointment.”

Always, for ever,

Your André.

Castella

Boxing Day, 1963

My delightful little sparring partner,

Your voice (rather dejected) yesterday afternoon on the phone; we should’ve been able to go up the mountain; and you should have been an interrogator: dearest my André, it feels as if it’s been years since I last wrote to you and yet it was Sunday; you have been entirely assimilated into my existence – my existence, at the moment; Christmas rounds; presents – Pa let me know that Simone may “come home” if she’s at Anna’s – which is why my Christmas Day was with Jack and Uys and the rest of them (the old lady hates me and the children are stiff and unfriendly). I think stiffness and (usually false) obtuseness are sins. I turn away from you (like a swinish God). And the stiffness yesterday after your phone call; that’s also sinful. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin.” Reading for today.

Liefsteling. Iris is out; went to buy some cigarettes; we were on the beach today, burnt; hitchhiked there and back; I was quite crabby after your phone call because one can’t properly communicate that way; it’s like this – everything magnified and out of context, because words are all there is, without facial expression or the touch of a hand – the rushed conversation because time is gold; etc. etc. But our time lies ahead. Had a letter of confirmation from Van Riebeeck Hotel addressed to you; they say they have a mountain view for us, with breakfast. I asked because we had a sea view last time – and “we would like to have you again”. Civilised, at least. So, golden, valuable, precious, whole, again.

Did I tell you I read Lobolo again? And each time I know you better, I love you more; still a little scared to go through Orgie again, have a week’s “holiday” – when it will happen. Busy on my play ’n Seun na My Hart [A Boy after My Own Heart]. Did you ever read it? Uys says he and I should rewrite it together. I wonder if you and I …?

I miss you, far away, strange, but still, you remain strange. “The paradox” of love. As you once put it. Always amazed. “Always born outside of me …” And yet … Maybe because of that, “make love”.

For always,

Cocoon.

PS: Did I write to tell you I visited Nico in hospital? God, but he’s confused – recognised me only occasionally. Funny, too. He teases the man next to him – the man upsets him because he sometimes ignores him. Nico can’t hold onto anything – coordination gone to hell – and speaks with difficulty even though he speaks so rudely – and laughs.

It’s now early Friday morning, I want to quickly go and post this. Have already forgotten what the other news is – the bra-parcel very cute. If one had a baby you wouldn’t need to take anything out. Now I’ll put it away nicely till you come – just had to wear it once. And how do you look in your charcoal affair? You must bring it with you next month. Have I told you yet that Stephen [Etienne Leroux] and Renée [his wife] like Rook en Oker very much and Bartho does too – the party at Stephen and Renée’s was lovely – wish you’d been there – it reminded me a bit of old Bill’s. Morning, beautiful. Must rush off now to post. Be good, my little elephant with the little trunk.

Cocoon.

Potchefstroom

Sunday night, 29 December 1963

My own darling, Cocoon, Ingrid,

A few moments of quiet before I have to bath Anton. Had a lovely swim this afternoon, and yesterday. But I’m still far too white. I’ll do my best to add a bit of earth-brown before I come down so as not to embarrass you too much, divine little woman. Tonight in just three weeks’ time we’ll do another of those long walks along the sea, cut off from the organisations of hate, completely happy, and together. And shortly thereafter: inside each other. I have a very physical need for you, too!

Before I go on and forget to mention it: forgive me the “ignorance” of my poor memory, but who wrote “For each man kills the thing he loves”? I want to use it as an epigraph in Orgie and need the information URGENTLY. In between translating Die Ambassadeur. I’m also typing up Orgie. On nice stiff white sheets, with a new typewriter ribbon. Looks impressive; I’ve done quite a thorough revision. Want to hand it over to Bartho as early as January so I can work with [Marc] Achleitner on the typography, otherwise there’ll be delays and misunderstandings. Orgie isn’t a major work; but it has to be poetic, and pure. It’s very important because it’s so completely ours.

The final sentence of the dedication now reads: “All of this, conjoined, is hereby yours, with love: ‘private words addressed to you in public’ (T.S. Eliot).” Happy?

“News”? It’s a morgue, this place. I’m working sixteen hours a day. (But The Ambassador will be done by tomorrow; Christie’s Retha is going to type it up.) I’ve seen Christie twice, and will see him again tonight – “they” (!) are going away the day after tomorrow – but he’s very subdued, doesn’t ask any questions, and refrains from offering unsolicited comment. Actually it’s all rather uncomfortable.

Bill sent a Christmas card (as “subtle” as a bull in a china shop): with a picture he took in France when he visited us there. And a note: “Come over for a chat some time”!!!

Otherwise: a different kind of hell: Estelle drives me round the bend playing the “patient, long-suffering wife”. As if there’s nothing wrong. But I keep to myself. And, thank god, we sleep in complete separation. After New Year she and her mother are going to Pretoria for a few days.

That’s about it.

Delightful child: (good – completely good – child?) I love you, find life in you and wish to bring you living water; thank you for sending me those precious, lovely lines; wait sweetly and quietly, with restrained passion. Before very long I’ll be there. Then our new memory will begin. Then, together, we can write a new stanza for our lovely poem. We’ll suspend time, in just “one blind deed” of love and trust that keeps us pure and human. With much love, and with everything, always,

André.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Castella

30 December 1963

My dearest and most jealous god of the elephants with tiny trunks – lord of my heart, prince, André,

Your two letters arrived simultaneously on Saturday – the one where you’re so the hell-in with Potch and the stranger-family (but don’t you know you have to make your own family, your friends? God, then you can at least use your own discretion!) and the jealous one from Christmas Day – after which I lay in a swoon for 24 hours – or I swooned, as Iris and I now say. I already feel afraid when I share a bed with another man, afraid that you’ll be angry and afraid for the whole false situation in which we find ourselves. And then you still talk …! (I forgot to say, it was excruciating for two hours, just until I fell asleep, and then I woke up again and went and lay with Simone.)

Seems to me you think everything here is always friendly and kind, but Jack is sometimes so morose and unpleasant towards me, there’s almost constant tension, and ever since your phone call, petulance and open quarrelling. You’re not the only one trying to make life “liveable”! I don’t want to argue with you too. I just want to say. And I say it softly, considerately, and I am holding your hand nicely, and see your mouth like that time at the 191 when you said: Your hand, which will never manage to turn me away from you. Listen, darling, I do love you, I am even more prepared to stay with you always. Do you understand? But before you can come to me like that, I am afraid of all hope, all surrender to possibilities … always possibilities … I don’t want to be “killed by a dream”, to quote myself. And it will be devastating for our relationship as it is now. And that’s why I try, in spite of my oneness and connection with you, to simply accept things as they are. Fine, if I am not allowed to lie with other men – I understand that you will be jealous because you love me, but Estelle is after all also someone, and someone you once loved and with whom you stay; and I don’t WHINE like that!

And now; another thing – the “camp”, the “John Kannemeyer” – little heart, you also “keep up appearances” – which you so kick against in your letter. You must decide – as indeed you did once decide, whether we don’t dare rescue ourselves from this entrapment – if I win the prize I can take you with me overseas – there is nothing I’d rather do. And before I dream about that – child, everyone will know that Estelle is also in Cape Town and that I am just running off with you: which puts me in a highly unpoetic light. But I am prepared to do it. So you mustn’t get so terribly jealous. I also have to live in a reality here, such as it is. I have to take the child somewhere for Christmas, and I haven’t been invited to my parents. I suppose I’ve preached enough now, hey? And I framed your beautiful portrait, and tomorrow I’ll be eating with Koos – and I still work in the grey pit – like a big human rat – darling treasure, you must see Castella now – we’ve arranged it to make room for Iris – a lovely person – the bedroom is her room and “studio”, mine is the “library”, and Simone’s little cubbyhole is the “study”. She, Iris, knows about you, of course – if we want to be alone we’ll simply lock her in her room! And now I have to go and eat. Oh yes, your “greeting”, which is now far more literary, is less beautiful than your heartfelt greeting. You must use the original in Orgie.

Yours with longing and flaws and joy and love and again longing and a salute for the 15th.

Cocoon Cocoon.

Potchefstroom

31 December 1963

My darling, mine,

Thank you for this morning’s lovely, desolate letter, so full of rebellion against the dourness you’ve had to endure there; and so desperate to make the estranged me closer and truer. I want you to know, my Cocoon, my Ingrid, that you have been especially close to me over the past few days. That I lay alone in the room this morning for a long time, half-sleeping, half-awake, dreaming up a long scene with you: we had a house, a Malay type of dwelling, double-storeyed, just a little box with windows top and bottom, with a little door, and it was dazzlingly white. I was sitting and typing; you were on your way back from work and I went to meet you, one block up, under shady trees. As we began kissing each other, our clothes fell away, right there in the street with its patches of sunlight and pools of shade – and we walked back arm-in-arm, God, so happy.

And so my day began, with beauty and feeling – New Year’s Eve.

This year of thankfulness and truth is over. Will the year ahead be one of fulfilment? Why do I believe so strongly that we won’t be apart next year this time?

This is no mere adolescent yearning. I want to marry you and be with you; be a father to our children, contented and fulfilled. I’ve had enough of emptiness and lack of contact and a life with no physical touch because it is devoid of spiritual content.

Stop.

Christie’s just arrived, so I’ll continue writing later.

Later. Once again, thank you, little child, for what you opened up and liberated inside of me this year, allowing me to remain open, from now on and always, to the winds of paradise and to you, fleet-footed child. (Leucodendron: how are things with you?)

I’m off to Johannesburg this afternoon, just for two days, staying with Naas Steenkamp. Anton will remain behind in Potch. Be back here on the 2nd. Please continue writing. From Monday the 6th you can send letters to Grahamstown again.

And then – and then: the two of us in our bedroom facing the mountain, to which we can raise our eyes when we need help. I’ll wear my lovely sweater, and you your naughty bra-and-panties. This time I’m going to take beautiful pictures of you. With those exquisite breasts of yours, you’ll be full and voluptuous. (But won’t it be too late for us, yet again, to make a moesie-girl? Your last period came a little early, didn’t it?)

Keep working on the play. You told me about it; but you’ve yet to send it to me for reading. And yes: let’s work on it together. Not Uys!

I still want to write a new story for Bartho’s anthology. Apparently pictures of all of us will be appearing on the back cover. I told them to order one of you from Desmond.

And now it’s time to take my leave of you, you with your lovely, precious parts: I hail your dreams, your words of tenderness and wonder; your sleepy, truth-laden eyes. I hail your hands so full of compassion; your shoulders with their freckles; tummy with its shadows softly playing in the light; the small, dear, tanned back; your breathtaking buttocks, delicious legs, fleet feet; and a parting shot, deep and long, passionate and tender, with mouth and hands and eventually the papie itself, for the cocoon of quietude and fire, the essence of dance, with its secrets about the future, beginning tomorrow.

And a wish for the New Year: that it will indeed be new.

And happy.

And serene.

With love, and more love, whispers and a song,

Yours,

André.

Thursday, 2 January 1964

LOVE AND BORN BUTTERFLIES FOR OUR NEW YEAR MY PRINCE = COCOON

Castella

Thursday, 2 January 1964

My dearest Prince,

Prince of poets. And Prince, God, stupidest, “Yet each man kills the thing he loves …”, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” – Oscar Wilde – I’ll send you a book about it:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,

…

Some do it with a bitter look,

…

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!

…

For each man kills the thing he loves,

Yet each man does not die.

Or something like that. I’ll send the complete thing. Beautiful ballad.

Darling, my own André P. Brink, I am sorry about my angry and ill-considered letter the other day, but “everything is necessary” and your two letters today were so amiable; don’t know what I would do without them. I got up at 10:30 this morning and in my pyjamas tottered out sleep-drunk to the postbox and they aroused me; and then I felt like such a CAT about my last letter; but more than anything I was upset about your unhappiness and our separation and the fact that we cannot surrender completely because always maybe, maybe, maybe, and now your leaving and the “deceit” – “the battalions of lies and the organizations of hate”; but never mind, never mind, my papie, when we get to our island again on the 17th the doubts will disappear so easily and naturally and freely and mercifully.

Child, it’s one o’clock; really tired and burnt to hell, I want to be brown when you come again, you really don’t have to worry about your whiteness – and then you’ll always have your lovely brown moesies and your long big papie which opens me up and hurts and heals so beautifully.

Your innocent white paper; your new typewriter ribbon – your Orgie. When you come, we’ll go through it word for word; Child. Yes, the dedication is lovely. And I believe in your love and I am proud of it, that someone like you “can love ignoble me …”

Glad Christie’s behaving better; Bill’s postcard message is a scream. Poor thing.

Little “martyr” woman – I do, nevertheless, feel sorry for her; and GUILTY.

Yes, completely well-behaved. And you are nearby and good; it’s so good … You say “thank you for the lovely lines”– does that refer to a LETTER from me? Thank you for your telegram – I froze when I thought your father might open mine because you wrote you’d be away for a few days – the “born butterflies” is our baby, out of the papie-cocoon. Dream …?

Now your two letters are mixed up. We’re still going to get that Malay house; I’ve already chosen it; just from the outside, beautiful, white, without a stoep. Heavy door, and cheap. Hey, I object: “I am sitting and typing and working, you were on your way back from WORK …!” Good God.

Wait a while with Orgie; we’ll do it together; you need to get rid of all the self-pity; remember your “glowing sadness”, don’t be in such a hurry, my love; just be in a hurry with me.

Leucodendron; means Silver Tree. It’s nice and sore and happy. Full breasts with “the milk of human kindness” (hopefully).

Iris and I alone on New Year’s Eve; waited up till twelve o’clock: slept; entertained [?] 1st; only went to the beach today.

No, time’s right (according to my calculations) for the moesie-girl – ours. It’s probably also not very wise … and won’t old Piet then come and take Simone away …? But I so badly want to be pregnant with you.

I’ll keep the play for us. Small parts (intimate conversations) I’ve reworked in Rook en Oker and will have to find other images. They must put our photos next to one another on the anthology’s back cover … Sentimental …!

Thank you again, my heart, for all the beautiful things you are and which you give to me – and sleep sweetly and happily, I love you and would so much like to have you here always. I draw a cross on your forehead; good night, good morning, tomorrow through the little curtains, and to the moesies and your hands and your heart that beats and to your beautiful tooth, which doesn’t always want to listen.

With love,

Your Cocoon. Kontjie.

Non Con.

PS: What else did you get for Christmas? IJ.

{Braaksma (cultural attaché for the Netherlands) sent me a beautiful diary for Christmas. IJ.}

Potchefstroom

Sunday night, 5 January 1964

Beloved mine,

I’ve isolated myself here in my brother’s room to share with you, once more, my drawn-out days of longing since I last wrote. However, it’s no longer a matter of dejection or simply feeling trapped. And it’s more than just the fact that, tonight in two weeks’ time, you and I will go walking far into the dark of Gordon’s Bay together … It’s a very interior kind of restfulness, a belief that we have now arrived quite close to a point of acceleration.

The general atmosphere here has also changed – I mean the oppressive “family atmosphere” I fulminated about in one of my recent letters. My people and I have rediscovered a sense of connection after planing away the inevitable differences that arise following six months of total estrangement. I had a few long conversations with my mother about the two of us. It weighs heavily on her, and she still dare not raise it with my father; but she realises it’s my life and that no one can or dare cast judgement from the outside.

And: I will never again sleep with Estelle in the double bed. (Here we sleep separately anyway.) I’ve therefore also removed that prickly little matter for you.

Because, delightful, essential one: I am yours, you mine, we are one flesh and one future. If I didn’t have this to believe in, there wouldn’t be anything left for me.

Tomorrow it’s back to Johannesburg again for a few days, until Thursday morning. I’ll be seeing all my friends, chatting with everyone, helping to plan Orgie’s typography, and talking about you a lot. Bartho said he wants to start the reprint of Rook en Oker soon – with the same setting and paper, but in a larger format – like Adam Small’s. And then he’ll do the revised arrangement of the poems – which we can discuss again when I’m in the Cape. (And the Dedication? Or do you want to keep it the way it is, after all?)

Child: write to the Population Registrar, Dept. of Internal Affairs, Pretoria – IMMEDIATELY – and ask for an identity card. You will need it for passports etc. and they can damn-well take their time if you don’t get the process going soon enough. I must also renew my passport one of these days.

Remember to let me know at the Grahamstown address, by telegram if necessary, and before next Monday (the 13th), at what number I should call you before I come down. When exactly in February do you get leave and your holiday bonus?

It’s only now – after completing the translation, and getting Orgie print-ready – that I’m actually begining to take a few days’ holiday, and swimming a lot. But it’s always damn-well cloudy when I go, so I’m still barely “off-white”; pinkish, like suckling pig. But with a little mercy – and some sun – from Above, the worst of my “whiteness” might yet be camouflaged before I make it to Gordon’s Bay. (Oh the ecstasy of those sun-and-sea days, for us; you’ll be having so many Martinis, and getting so lazy again, sleeping a lot, and grumbling when I want us to stay awake.) Then you’ll say: “No, André”, “Hm-hm”, “HM-HM” as I slide in behind your smooth, brown little back and lazily begin searching for your cocoon. And, I’ll be giving the leucodendron another bath. And I’ll run my hands through your hair. And maybe I’ll start itching and scratching at myself, as always, to your great annoyance and dearest exasperation. You’ll be wearing your whitest, most see-through little nightie – just so that I can pull it off again for a big little wet-and-warm sleepie. And we’ll go swimming, and talk, and read poetry, and your play, and eat asparagus, and bath, and laugh a lot, and be still, and passionate – hell! so lekker – and be consoled. Together, in the reaffirmation of the flesh, the new and far flight of the spirit, and all of it, entire, poetry.

Virginal child, ripe, ripe woman, blessed person: fill your little lamp, your bridegroom is coming.

Meanwhile I hold my hands over you and say an incantation against evil; I lie on you and protect you in love, and become with you: human, and free.

Your André.

Castella

Sunday night, 5 January 1964

Dearest beloved man,

Do you know what the time is? 2.45 am. Iris and I are sitting here with a drink of “sea, carnations” – gin – but then I have to add that I slept from eight to ten. Thank you, my dearest, for your letter – child, child, where you write that you “accept the separation”, and for what you said to Bartho and Kita [Redelinghuys] in Jhb. It makes me feel so much surer. Not that I’m not sorry about the mess – but still, still, we need each other so much. Ten days. Already said I was sorry about the letter where I climbed into you again: thank you that you are so understanding: knew you would understand how utterly difficult things are here most of the time. Of course you can be as possessive as possible; when we live a reasonably natural life! Estelle’s reaction is STRANGE, but you will probably have to bring it home to her; the “columns” in Femina say one should … (cat).

Still. I’ll send you the HEART-greeting when I can find it amidst the radiance of all your letters – or record the 17th on tape …? Haven’t ever flown before, hope you’ll be able to from Grahamstown – god, it would be unutterably wonderful! Did I tell you about my beautiful golden yellow “twistdress” and my white BABY-DOLL DRESS – wait a bit. I’ll write everything. Now I’d like to meet Estelle, so that she can see I exist (and I can see that she exists?). Darling André, I’m just saying goodnight to Potch and greeting you, you must drive safely and well; I am waiting for you, IMPATIENTLY.

Apart from this, you’ll just have to read Die Wit in die Poësie [The White Space in Poetry].

Date: Early, again; Friday. That’s right. Right?

Stay with me, my treasure.

Your darling COCOON. (Good.) Fixed up?

(I’m getting a real kitten in two weeks’ time.) Simone is flying to Jhb on Tuesday for a holiday. Otherwise, everything flourishing. And my garden is full of flowers, both inside and out.

{Dearest Papie

Man mine

André P. Brink

Bye, Potchefstroom. Welcome, Grahamstown. But not too much like last time. I accompany you with love.

Your Ingrid.}

Thursday, 9 January 1964

My dearest André,

The wings of your “child of light” are fairly creased today – I’ve had a swinish letter from my father; I wrote him that I would very much like to give him Rook en Oker personally (a first edition, which he collects), and this was the answer.

Dear Ingrid,

After all you’ve done to me in interviews with the Sunday Times and other newspapers in the past year, I am not inclined to meet you in a café or any other public place.

If you want to discuss anything with me, you know where I live. All that is required is to call me to enquire as to a convenient time. On weekend afternoons I usually go fishing.

With love from

Pappa (ABR. H. JONKER)

Typed. All day I’ve been wondering whether it’s really possible – how and where and why it all began – the injury, mostly the secrecy – and does he honestly think – does he expect – that I, who may no longer meet him in public – will do so in secret – not on an equal footing, not as one person to another – never mind daughter to “father” – and WHY? Where does the pettiness and the rot and the “narrowness and smallness and bitterness and closedness” begin – and where does it end?

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still

But thank you for your preciousness and for your darling letter of today – you must come and tell me everything you said to your mother – I am so glad she understands – and yes, the double bed (!) but my little treasure – does the gradual dying and uncertainly really help us all? Questions. Questions. I don’t want you to have to remove this little irritation for me – but only for yourself, if needs be. And now I must say good night again, and that after such a “piece of misery”! But first: while I was writing, old Jan and them hammered at the door, visit – and I went for coffee and Van der Hum at theirs – it was nice – Jan quite kind and courteous and friendly, and showed me the favourable review of Rob’s new Standpunte and Rook en Oker. And your Schutte satire and her humourless little sentence; and the attack on you by the journalist in J. at the back – and the little Van der Westhuizen article. Just scanned it – wasn’t your satire cut? News: mostly alone with my little chaperone – reading Sê Sjibbolet [Adam Small]; African Poetry; swoon, and have (had) slight kidney infection; done with pills – just don’t want to swim in Clifton cold yet. I can never get properly sick – everything just so latent, constitution like a (little) bull.

Ag, my André, my beautiful and rich human being and man-mine in your red-pyjama surrender, with your hands and feet safe for ever – in less than a week you’re in the city – may I then have a meal at your place one evening? I want to meet Estelle and especially Anton (my little word). Arrange it. It’s probably necessary that the three of us become more aware of one another’s existence: Estelle, me and Anton. And we’ll order a bottle of wine for Dutch courage.

It’s been a while since I saw Jack – went away to the Koue Bokkeveld with his two-faced mother – and I am completely good and pure and virginal. I greet you with my body, my Royal Highness.

1. Love for the papie with the scar of light and love.
2. Love for the redhead and the green eyes without glasses
3. and the creative hands that make the world of my body blossom
4. and for his laughing tooth.

Till then till then,

Your Cocoon-est.

PS: Monet left by plane for Jhb; she looked beautiful and was very excited. There is our child of light. I.

{Drive safely, precious. IJ.}

Potchefstroom, for one last time

Thursday, 9 January 1964

Child of light, my Cocoon,

Thank you for your two letters – the one on Monday, just before my trip to Jhb; and the other, today’s brief missive just as we’re leaving Potch. Both luminous; the first one with a kind of lucidity that I read and listen to over and over again.

I had three days of hell in Johannesburg. The whole idea behind my going was that Chris would be back and that I’d be able to talk to him during the day, but in the end he returned only yesterday – after mixing up the dates – and so I had to sit in Bartho’s office day in and day out, talking about the same old stuff. And then last night the visit came to an appropriate end, with Cleopatra. Oh my good Lord! If there’s one thing that makes me the hell-in (as Gert Pretorius might say?!) it’s those two saggy tits with Elizabeth Taylor’s face looming above them.

But there were some light moments, too. Bartho (and Abraham!) are crazy about Orgie – they’ve already sent it to the printers – with the understanding that I can still make changes on the proofs. And I will. I told them that you and I would be going through it all from scratch. Bartho says he doesn’t think there’s any self-pity in the closing poem; Chris thinks there may still be one or two passages I could clean up in this regard. Strange, they all prefer part 1 – and I think it rests far more firmly on the solid (impure) earth than the rest; not quite so lyrical, so “clean”. One valid point of criticism, I feel, is that I should make more of her search for herself amid all the roles she plays. But that’s something we can talk about – DO YOU REALISE – in a week’s time.

But the expense! The format’s going to be identical to Sê Sjibbolet, bound with the same fine German thread as Rook en Oker, on that Finnish paper. Printed in roman, italics, and purple (the underlined parts). And, as I’ve already mentioned, the book reads sideways, with broad left-hand margin, and two identical page numbers:

I’m very excited. Delivery date provisionally set for my birthday, end of May; but given the layout issues there could be delays.

I’ve received a copy of Rook en Oker where we must make our changes next week (sequence etc.) for the book’s reprint. Bartho wants to put the dust-cover design on the back of the book, too, so it no longer has an empty white space. Nice, isn’t it? My poet, my Sappho, my Ingrid Jonker, Cocoon; you!

I’m reading a book on magic – or maybe I should say nibbling at it. The Key of the Mysterious. Beautiful things in this volume. This is specially for you:

The least perfect act of love is worth more than the best act of piety.

Judge not; speak hardly at all, love and act.

My only issue with this is that every act of love is an “act of piety”, is essentially religious. That’s all the religion we have, all we can be certain about, and – perhaps – all the religion we need.

The book also provides a magical explanation for all the different numbers in the occult. Your birth-number, 19, goes like this: “It is the number of light.”

Unfortunately, the magical numbers only go up to 19! I therefore remain in outermost darkness!

My thoughts are jumping all over the place: back to Jhb and the three days among Naas’s yelling children. The youngest is just four months old, a little girl, as sweet as honey. And, like a mushy sentimentalist, I walked around with this smiling little thing in my arms and looked forward to our own little girlie with all her moesies!

But your date is so early – the 3rd. That means it will come around again by the 28th; the best “period” – by my calculations, and conviction – is therefore between 12 and 16 Jan. But I’ll be sure to come and fetch you from work before the 17th, take you home, and send Iris to the beach …! Hopefully I’ll arrive in the Cape on Wednesday evening the 15th, probably quite late. I’ll make arrangements – Thursday afternoon at lunchtime and at five or so.

This time Estelle will know – not by deduction, but by my telling her – that I’m going to stay with you and not Jan. I want to walk openly with you – under the sun and the moon and the stars.

I live in a state of anticipation, in peaceful ecstasy; you were such an object of desire for me during the dreary Jhb days.

Tomorrow, the long road back home.

And soon thereafter: you, us.

Live sweetly, my precious Cocoon, live happily and in love, even inside that grey cage of yours.

And let Maggie spread the chaste white sheets across our bridal bed.

Yours, impassioned and whole,

André.

Monday, 13 January 1964

SIX FIFTEEN TONIGHT OXLEY STOP WEDNESDAY THE WORD BECOMES FLESH LOVE = COCOON

Grahamstown

Sunday night, 26 January 1964

My darling, Cocoon,

Verse for today:

But wherefore could not I pronounce “Amen”?

I had most need of blessing, and “Amen”

Stuck in my throat

…

Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor

Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more.

Nights, nights – not of “ecstasy’s duress”, but of lying in burning wakefulness, lasting agony, the knowledge of love and yearning; and so mixed up, so confused. And the future: absence.

And then your voice that night: “That I asked you to lie for one hour against my bosom to be consoled, and to console me, and you refused – that I cannot forget.”

And me? Ever?

And this from a sense of anxiety that seems meaningless in retrospect, but was meant from the bottom of my heart: such an hour would just hurt you all over again because you would face this inexplicable confusion for which I haven’t been able to find any answer – not even for myself, nothing.

May I just say that you can be sure – even just a little – that I look upon myself with repugnance? And this when my only certainty is that I love you; need you.

On that first night with you, you said No – you didn’t want “it” to happen all over again; you were wounded, tired, suspicious. But later you heeded my call and we learnt to love each other; and then I did to you what you’d predicted that first night.

My tender thing, my sensitive, precious child: if only I could give you some sense of what these past few days have been like (a prelude to my future?) – every little blonde girl I see becomes Simone; here, a small gesture by an unknown girl in a café reminds me of you; there, the colour of a dress; or someone wearing a white shirt with black slacks. You, you, darling, everywhere, you.

And in the wakeful nights, still, despite everything, the certain knowledge – this much at least, thank god – that our nine months together were expectation and fulfilment, an encounter with life, an intensity and a kind of poetry without which everything would be pointless.

“News”: an urgent telegram from Bartho saying he needs Rook en Oker for a reprint; I’ll send it off tomorrow morning, after discussing that one change with Rob.

Did you see the review (P.D. van der Walt) in Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe? Ignorant. I’m sending it along “for the record”.

Rob will be getting Orgie tomorrow. After that I’ll send you the original copy, as I promised a while ago.

Tomorrow I must start working on the Colette translation for Bartho. (How am I going to get into working mode with such an unsettled heart – and with the practical, daily confusion of a boy for whom I must care day and night, along with an ill wife? Nerves. And, of course, the unbridgeable chasm.)

Last night, as I sat here on my own – I arrived home only late yesterday afternoon after two days of neglect, from sheer necessity, in the wake of the Great Brak River trip for Estelle’s illness – a bunch of policemen arrived to arrest my “trusted” gardener, whom I had paid extra to look after the house and who, in the meantime, had been breaking into houses elsewere, also stealing some of my clothes. And I had such absolute faith in him.

You will say: the minor upheavals of middle-class life.

Perhaps.

But child, woman, human being: more urgent than anything else is you, along with the love I feel for you, and the great burden I must always carry with me – knowing in my own heart that I have damaged the most precious thing of all: unquestioning trust.

Misschien, misschien, blijft het hart ons over.

And in the twilight I lean wordlessly towards you and hail you.

Your hair all mussed-up on the pillow.

Your eyes half-closed, and free.

Your naked ears with their little lobes.

Your mouth that laughs, possessing poetry.

Your lovable arms and your small, still hands.

Your dark back, like the earth, and your freckled shoulders.

Your soft, playful breast, tender-tipped.

Your coy, labile tummy.

Your plumpest, most provocative mound with its deep quiet and plunging happiness.

Your narrow, smooth thighs, and the moesie.

Your calves, around which my fingers fit.

Your lovely feet, made for sand and sandals.

And your leucodendron.

All you.

And in the future, also you.

Want héel dit leven is een wond’re, bange,

Ontzétbre dróom, dien eens de nacht weer vaagt –

Maar in dien droom een droom, vol licht en zangen,

Mijn droom, zoo zoet begroet, zoo zacht beklaagd.

In quiet affliction and love,

Your

André.

Castella

Wednesday, 29 January 1964

My dearest André,

Thank you for your long letter of yesterday: I have replied so often but then I put it aside again or tear it up: God, it really looks as though we are retreating along the same path as E. Eiers [Elisabeth Eybers]. Or like W.E.G.’s “Terugtog” [“Retreat”]:

Die digter worstel met sy engel

Weinig wol, baie wind:

Terugtog heet sy jongste bundel –

Juistemint

Oh, my little treasure! I’ve been sick-sick-sick. This long year, the ecstasy of it, and now – this rupture – as I rather romantically put it in a previous letter – I feel like a plucked flower. It is a bright sunny day outside: for the mountain and sea, quiet and open. And thank god, this morning I was down at the sea, an isolated little beach, so at least I can now sit here calmly and write to you.

It must have been terrible travelling with Estelle who was sick and Anton – greetings from the Gardens to our beautiful little boy – and, as you say: “how can I work with this agitated heart …?” Courage, André. I have not changed, though the circumstances certainly have. The invisible “battalions of lies and the organizations of hate” have finally won, it seems. I will not simply throw in the towel, because maybe you will come to me one day as a free man, and I can meet you on an equal and better footing. We’re still young …

I don’t know what all I said to you that last night on the telephone, which I wanted to smash into smithereens, in fact. But I know I was quite het up and so absolutely hopelessly trapped. But I am sorry about it. And what more I can say right now, I do not know –

Because I do not hope to turn again

Because I do not hope

…

Because I do not hope to know again

The infirm glory of the positive hour

Because I do not think

Because I know I shall not know

The one veritable transitory power

Because I cannot drink

There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is

nothing again

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are and

I renounce the blessèd face

And renounce the voice

…

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death

Pray for us now and at the hour of our death …

My André, will you no longer turn around for me after you have locked the cupboard, with a smile in your hands?

Cocoon.

Thursday, 30 January 1964

REPEAT POEM US FOR ANDRÉ STOP SORRY DARLING = COCOON

Grahamstown

Saturday, 1 February 1964

Dearest – Cocoon,

Thank you for yesterday’s telegram about the failure to make a moesie-girl. Given the Dutch precaution we followed, it wasn’t entirely unforeseen, and yet – “hope springs eternal”! I read “Us” again, solemnly, and with a heavy heart (as if reading was actually necessary: I know it so well). My dear, intense, sensitive thing.

I’m sending Orgie back to you – not the second-hand copy that you had, but the original, as I’d promised. It’s messier, of course. But “straight from the heart”. Rob read it in his capacity as an assessor, and he wrote a wonderful report that concludes like this: “The publication of Orgie might well become an event in Afrikaans literature.” That’s what I want so badly – not for the sake of the work itself but because it’s our witnessing, and I wouldn’t be able to endure it if something that emerged directly from us was anything but good.

Rob also read “Us”. I’m sending you his letter, where he says it’s set to become one of the loveliest poems in the new edition. And where he suggests that you retain “Gesien uit die Wond” [“Seen from the Wound”] and rework it a little to make it a “great poem”. I’ll be telegraphing Bartho today to say he should use both poems, and that you’ll write to him as soon as possible about a revised text of the poem about the cross.

Rob leaves for the Cape this morning. He’ll be there for a week, staying somewhere in Green Point. You’ll be able to get in touch with him via Lena, Jan, Uys or Koos; maybe go through the poem with him line by line? I suspect he might also try to look you up.

I’m isolating myself and working terribly hard on timeless modern prose for one of my honours courses. I’m living ascetically, in devotion to you, feeling sad and guilty, but no longer confused. Because what has emerged from the distillation of my longing during this period is that I now clearly understand how my confusion did not arise from any incompleteness between us, but exclusively from the guilt of responsibility for Anton, something from which I could never distance myself. In my heart, you remain unalloyed, a need, a love, a great longing. And I’m not just saying this to make nice-sounding words, magic woman. It’s because “my maelstrom has passed and I can now see clearly again”.

With driving lack, continual gratitude, yet knowing that I dare not ask you to forgive me for what I broke down inside of you, with love,

André.

Tuesday, 4 February 1964

WAIT FOR MY ORGIE EDIT THANK YOU BEAUTIFUL MANUSCRIPT ANSWER HEAR LOVE = COCOON

Castella

22 Wessels Street

Green Point

Wednesday, 12 February 1964

My darling André,

Thank you for your letter of the other day – the one with the lots of news – and the new (?) slanted handwriting that looks much like mine. It doesn’t sound as if it’s going too badly with your soul – or are you just being “considerate” …? Because I’d really like to know whether you are well, and everything, and everything. Are there still fights or are you now more or less back into the “normal” routine? Or am I not allowed to ask so many questions? You say you’re busy on a new work – Bevryding [Liberation] – what’s it about and where does it come from? I’d like to read your new “Paris by Night”.

I wrote to you late last night, but now I’m busy rewriting. I will in any case send you the Éluard tape this afternoon, you’ve wanted it so long – and which I made on Sunday evening (night). You might have to adjust the volume now and again because I was sleepy and couldn’t sleep. “Nou na jou sterwe kom jy my eens nader, en soms is jy so helder en heel hier by my” [“Now after your death you come closer to me, and sometimes you are so clear and whole”]. I miss all your letters and tapes and everything – but I no longer have faith – it’s as though nothing will be built between us – or are you just punch-drunk? So many questions. Frustration about the phone call – I’m standing on the other side of the glass door again – entry prohibited – it’s clear that you “went back” but really, and different to last time. This is not a reproach, you hear. It’s just so bloody sad.

I have discovered a new capacity for this sort of sadness – hail to it! It looks like an endless capacity for sorrow. And you? I wrote a little poem for you “Waterval van Mos en Son” [“Waterfall of Moss and Sun”] – that little sex metaphor I told you about – do you remember? Let me know what you think of it. And I’m busy with Orgie and am scrupulously making notes of the suggested amendments – and will send them next time. But I do not want me and you – our gleaming love – to die like this – with a now-and-then friendly-loving letter.

I heard from Bartho – and I’m in the mood to fly over to Grahamstown for the hell of it and to get off there, just like in our old plan, but you say nothing in your letter! I want to take you overseas with me. I have the form for the passport – probably leaving on the Cape Town Castle on 17 April. Simone is a problem. Everything will go very fast and quickly now and bare – quick stripping off and leaving, completely and utterly alone and screaming lonely. My darling treasure, precious creator, I can’t bear that something so virile and positive and powerful should silt up. You. Us. And yet …?

Mrs Oxley is being pig-headed about Castella. I don’t care. She has 101 silly little reasons – she, too – but I am leaving regardless. Your big portrait is here in front of me. Your ring I wear on my finger – my ornamental lamp – but it doesn’t talk to me about Spain and Paris. It just sits there, like a sick little bird whose bloodied heart beats feebly.

I hope you don’t think it’s a miserable letter – as I say, the endless bottomless capacity exists. I just miss you so much. I would so much like to sit opposite you and have some ice-cream and chocolate sauce and know … tonight … now. There’s too much to say and to tell. The blue in the letter. Where are you, do you hear me, do you see me? Good night, sweet Prince. My Prince, André Prince Brink. With the unsayable and love.

COCOON.

Grahamstown,

Thursday, 13 February 1964

My darling: little child, generous being,

May I please, just for fifteen minutes or so, come and and rest against your bosom now, as I experience this desperation of the heart?

I wish there was a counter somewhere where I could go and complain: “This life you people advertise is not what it’s made out to be. Can I please have my money back?”

I’ve been feeling things so acutely in the last while: the “I”, this spirit, this body that has experienced what it is to give and receive generously, freely – must now remain closed down until further notice, for a whole lifetime, waste itself in sterility, making a mockery of longing and yearning? It’s so undignified.

And through it all, one must suffer the trifles that disrupt one’s existence (maybe the rude awakening lies in the fact that irrelevancies can upset one so!). Like this morning’s mean, piggish letter from Chris Barnard. So very “friendly”. Then incidentally, in a five-page missive, this kind of thing: “Don’t you guys maybe also have a post for me there with Rob? Seems it helps one a lot in getting good reviews.” Or (about Orgie): “Have you noticed everyone’s always writing about your work. The idea is old, but the form? Well, for me new ideas are a lot more important than playing little games with external form.”

God, why is one so defenceless against “friends”? Against life? Everything, actually? And above all, oneself.

Always, always it is you who resides in me so light-filled, and so heavily: you embody Baudelaire’s words, my “green paradise of childlike loves”. A paradise from which I expelled myself and allowed myself to be expelled, now guarded over by angels with glinting swords. Most bitter of all is that I know: for the sake of my child’s future it dares not be otherwise. But my own future? God, Cocoon, if only it wasn’t so empty.

I am confused, terribly confused. I gave you a dream and then destroyed it. How might I have any further claim to happiness? I’m so snarled up in it all. I don’t see light anywhere.

And how dare I come to you with all this bitterness after already wounding you? I just want you to know, however, that everything that’s happened, that happens, and that never stops occurring, breaks my own heart, in my tiny core of humanity. One must apparently “be strong and endure”. But how does one endure that which is unendurable?

I love you. I can’t do without you. But now I must. And there’s the rub. For me, too, it’s a matter of “to be, or not to be”, of longing for, and the struggle with “the bare bodkin” that must put an end to the futile everything.

You will be in Johannesburg on the 28th [to receive the APB Prize], lovely, lovely thing, woman of light. I should also have been there. We should have been able to enter the wonder-world together.

I shall have to turn the ending of Lobola around, and let it talk to you: “Candle, I am burnt out. But you – you still remain.”

Still. Still. Still. Remain so, darling. Stay there, my woman. You live. Live without restraint, free, elevated, worthy; and meaningful.

I love you and kiss you gently on your mouth and breasts.

I kiss your fair-headed child and mourn the moesie-girl who never arrived.

I hail you with unembarrassed tears,

André.

Castella

Thursday, 13 February 1964

Thank you André for the doll you gave me, she’s got such lovely hair. Thats why I got it, I wanted it. And thank you for the crayons that other time you gave me its such a lovely doll this. André, her name is Cindarella. You know what, there was a big fire and three houses was in danger – there was two policemans and they didnt do nothing they just watched, and you know another policeman he hided his revolver and he took off his shirt and he went to fight the others what made the fire down.

What are you doing? Are you well? And is it nice there. Isnt it raining? Cindarella sleeps with me and I wash her, I wash her hair. Are you well? Sometimes I let it hang, her hair, and sometimes I put a ribbon over it and I make a phoney-tail and sometimes I do it up. Im back from Johannesburg and Ive got new things. And my mummy is so happy. The house is very tidy and its got flowers in; Jack and Granny gave her flowers for the prize and gave my mummy a vase. Me and my mummy are well and we go to sleep so nicely.

Cindarella can do cartwheels and handstands. Wait, Im going to the toilet …

(Absolutely wanted to write to you: funny, she constantly asks how you are … I’m listening to a radio programme meanwhile – here she is again.) I musnt say I want to do no. 2. I must say my tummy wants to work (!). You see, I play very nicely and my mummy goes to work; sometimes she has to stay with me and she can’t go to work. My mummy is in bed and I’m telling her what to write. I got lots of dolls and dresses, they cant even fit in a case. I have a beautiful tiny little case. My mummy is going overseas. Im going to school – to [?] Convent; I love it; sorry, Im just going to give Mummy an ash tray. And thank you for the doll. When are you coming again, and you know my mummy drink lovely wine and smokes and she gets smaller and smaller and smaller, shes so young (!) Cindarella’s surname is Brink. Love,

Grahamstown,

Saturday, 15 February 1964

Oh my beloved Cocoon,

Thank you for this morning’s dear, sore, sore tristesse-on-blue-paper; for the tape with its gorgeous famous poems – and the hypnotic conclusion with its sense of the inexorable. Time, the alarm I know so well. Sleepy child, slumbering girl, night child, wise and heartsore little swift – thank you also for the long narrow waterfall poem with its beautiful ending and lovely repetitions. (To be soberly critical: take all the capital letters out except the very first one and the “You”; maybe “heart/thief/thief” is not entirely essential: I’d like to see a stronger whirlpool, in just one word, penetrating the heart of that unforgettable little pool in which I have so often, in fact always, found myself – a pool with a frisky frog, glimmer-eyed, wet-snouted, living, trembling, tender.)

I love you.

Today in two weeks’ time it’ll be the Big Day. Darling, I’m still searching – in this vacant Grahamstown! – for something to send you that you can wear on the big night to go with your ravishing yellow dress. And I want to send you a small gold cross so you can wear it round your neck when you’re overseas, cherished next to your breasts.

17 April. To think that the heart, too, can be summarised so prosaically in a mere date. But what right do I have to be selfish? (And yet –!)

News, you ask: “everything”. But all that matters, in the world of events, is inside of me. My days go like this: I work from eight in the morning to midnight, taking off ten minutes or a quarter of an hour for lunch; in the evenings I go for a little walk on my own; or bump into Rob or someone when I check for post, and then spend a few minutes chatting. Play with Anton. Sleep alone. No, no fights – just neutrality. My body’s healthy. (Except: my “seed spilt on the ground”. I sleep with you a lot. Plenty. Escape.)

I’m not really “busy” with Bevryding yet – just thinking about it, sorting out my thoughts, because I don’t know if I’ll have any time for writing this year. It’s a very old thought that’s only now making sense to me – through us, through you. Even so, it’s still quite vague: a stranger, an individual, “I”, returns from a foreign, idyllic landscape to an anonymous Big City to deliver a message or something at an apartment somewhere high up on the thirtieth or fortieth floor, close to the moon. While he’s there, it appears that a plague of sorts has broken out in the building and the whole place gets sealed off; all the doors walled up from the outside. So, there he sits, trapped with a bunch of strangers (a kind of bourgeois South African microcosm) who start committing suicide one by one till he’s the only one left. All narrated very prosaically, in a no-nonsense way, with italicised passages – his longing for his home country, for someone there, for sense, for something beautiful – scattered here and there. Across the street, visible through a separate window, is a girl, a symbol of the past, of an unattainable beauty: you. They are unable to talk to each other; all they have is a wordless yearning via gestures. Until she puts on her wedding dress and they both leap out simultaneously, towards each other, into oblivion. All that is found on the hard city asphalt underneath my character is a tiny pool of blood and some seed (and perhaps a small shoot of grass emerging from a crack in the road?).

But, as you can see for yourself: it’s still just a rough idea that has yet to find form – both poetry and substance.

And you, you?

How are you getting by? Where will you go and stay now? When are you leaving Castella – irrecoverable little dream castle with its colourful curtains, heavy with our whispered nights: we would always speak so serenely, in carefully hushed tones, afterwards …

Further, the question I have no right to ask, and yet must: Jack …?

I lie awake a lot at night with you very close to me, seeing you, feeling you – with my empty hands, and my hot, desolate loins.

Write to me, darling. I won’t abandon you to silence again.

Because I want to say to you, simply, crudely, youthfully, even beseechingly: I love you, I carry you in my dreams and in my blood, you live in my eyes and my hair and my chest, my gut, my hands and my papie; in the deep, hidden seed from which the future is born every moment.

I call out to you, listen to your voice – the voice of your body; and your breath; and your heart; the voice of your virginal spirit,

Your André.

Citadel

±18 February 1964

Thank you, dearest my André,

For your beautiful golden lucky cross: it’s not hanging between the doves. American Swiss still has to lengthen it. And for the delicate little blue-and-silver pendant. Thank you very much for the enchanting everything and for your letter.

This is a telegram:

1. Depart from Castella this coming Saturday, probably to Mt Curtis Hotel, Main Road, Sea Point.
2. Leave Citadel 26th Feb, in a week’s time.
3. Simone is flying with me to Jhb. Piet refuses to let her go overseas. God, I feel so terrible about this away-time. You’ll know.
4. Jack and I tried again, but it’s not working any more.
5. Therefore, overseas, naked, alone, stripped – already in that terrible train and see everything through wet windows.
6. Trying to distance myself.
7. Don’t work so hard, please. You’ll get sick.
8. Rather go and play tennis, otherwise you’ll get FAT.
9. SLEEP enough. I am worried about you.
10. I hear you cancelled Spain.
11. I’m including a poem – also have it in Afr. It’s my own translation. Beat. Bitter beat. [“I Am With Those”]
12. Letter from Simone. God, once I was also like that …!
13. Maybe the heart will remain for us …
14. And maybe a sense of humour.

André! André! I am overwhelmed – people, arrangements, changes. “Simply by living one does not perish.”

My love,

Little Cocoon.

PS: I’ve always told you! (Chris Barnard.) IJ.

PPS: Did the MS arrive on time? Chris Lombard promised to send it immediately. He had it. Couldn’t get hold of him immediately. – Con.

[incomplete letter]

Grahamstown

Thursday, 20 February 1964

My thinking on the novella is moving at a pace that sometimes astonishes me. I’m beginning to consider giving it a different title: Elders Bewolk en Koel [Elsewhere Cloudy and Cool] (referring to the “elsewhere”, the lost paradise of shelter from the Sun, for which one never ceases to yearn).

It’s now developing into something with blood and violence: the group of people in the closed-off flat begin to become primitive, tearing off their clothes and conducting devilish sabbaths; rape and murder occur at night … an old woman is embalmed alive and venerated … and through it all, memories of paradise, seeing the serene girl across the way, unreachable; until this small civilisation wipes itself out and humanity returns to blood and seed. I want to use it to shout out all my powerless resistance against my entrapped life; it has to be an indictment of sterility; a destruction; longing for the dream, the one Woman, you.

“Now, my love, it’s time to say goodbye” – “in thy orisons / Be all my sins remember’d”.

Forever loving you,

Your André.

Grahamstown

Saturday, 22 February 1964

God, my Cocoon,

You who become smaller and smaller and smaller as you smoke and as you drink all that lovely wine! Thank you for the agenda-like letter, and Simone’s dearest chatter, and the painful, iron-hard, powerful poem. I want to see it in Afrikaans, too. I would take out “with those coloured africans depressed” – it’s too obvious, not as shockingly genuine as the rest; “atom-bomb of the days” is perhaps a bit too strong given the context; the rest – oh God, it hurt, and it’s major. Have we both changed so much in a month that I am now going to write a novella about terror and violence, and you, this? God, posterity will probably say it was all very good for our art – but I’m not the next damned generation. I am what I am – someone who loves you, sitting here, captive, experiencing ever more “the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to”.

Yesterday’s little shock: Opperman got the CNA.

And what did I do? … went to my room and slept, the whole day and right through the night (“I am with those who get drunk …”). Even felt, with a kind of diabolical pleasure, that I was repeatedly being stabbed in the heart. Which today persists.

Well, if I must perish, then so be it. Rather that than the “petty pace from day to day till the last syllable of recorded time”.

I feel I’m living in transit, waiting for something to happen, no longer bothering with anything, because what is there left to bother about, anyway? What do I have to show (your ouma would have said: “Must I go with empty hands, must I meet my Maker like this?”) – all I can show is that I made you bitter and broke you down. Good – then I’ll break myself down, too. And fuck the rest. To hell with the rest.

Remember life.

My child, my little child, my soft, small thing, my life: in this manner I do not want to write to you. I’m the one who came looking, and made a decision, and now I’m getting my just deserts. But you, but you; you!

You are still here, in the midst of my pointless days, and all I know is that if I hadn’t known about you, then there would simply have been nothing. But in you I can believe, and know – my Namaqualand daisy, little saint, little flame.

Now, today, Castella is also just a memory. Gaudy curtains; knobbly bed with its little buttons; ash-filled orange saucers; ant-covered kitchen; white sheets; lunch in the nude at the tiny table; the always-locked wardrobe; sandals lying around; Dutch hat on the window sill; tube of ointment on the bathroom shelf; a plate of asparagus butter-sauce on the bathroom shelf; your fleet-footed movements: a naked little girl with pale buttocks and pert nipples; long, wet nights; laughing together, crying together, being together; kissing, touching, making love; passion; serenity; day and night; cool light and caressing darkness.

There’s still another letter I sent to Castella; please go and fetch it. (I posted it yesterday, or the day before?) From now on I’ll write to you c/o Bartho in Johannesburg.

I’m thinking of you, through all the current pressures and loosening of bonds; I am with you.

Will you be staying in Jhb very long? And will you be working at Citadel again, until 17 April?

I’ll write again once I’ve emerged from this terrible depression. Just this little bit of contact with you has already helped. Because you are luminous, always have been and always will be.

With love from my ailing heart,

Your André, always.

Grahamstown

Tuesday night, 25 February 1964

My own darling,

I’m so happy we had a chance to talk yesterday, so unexpectedly, despite the upsetting news about your father’s unforgiving spirit. As you say, corrrespondence is of little help. And yet, as long as that – and the heart – remain, it is at least something, and I must, I want to make use of it to communicate with the only person who is precious to me and who possesses human value.

And – strange, inexplicable, how subtly everything clicks in – it was precisely this little talk that lent a slightly more positive shade to the terrible misery of the past while. Now I know, again, that the heart is indestructible. And, in spite of your understandable resentment about going to Jhb for the prize and everything, it’s a wonderful thing that’s happening to you; Saturday is a big day. It shows that people believe in you – in the beauty you create – and the necessity, the meaning of your being in the world.

If only I could help with the destructive fights-fights-fights on your side. But are they really more destructive than a blend of neutrality and distaste? In the form of a void, a futurelessness? And maybe – says my jealous, longing heart – maybe through it all, you do in fact still sleep with Jack every now and again to get a taste of human contact? (On this side, the thought of “sleep with” doesn’t even appear on the horizon of my sterile bed.)

The past week was just too frustrating for any kind of work (thus creating the extra frustration of knowing one’s work is piling up!); tomorrow, and the day after, I have to do admin work, of all things: help with student registrations. On Friday, lectures begin all over again. Such a mountain still lies ahead of me. If only I didn’t have Bartho’s damned Colette translation to do as well. (After all this time – and I won’t be rid of it for a while; worse than Ela Spence!)

If only I had time to write something. But so much work still needs to be done on Bevryding before its own liberation sees the light of day.

But – in connection with your Éluard quotation – people do not perish merely by living.

I spent the whole day in court today – my gardener’s case. I feel dirty from the contact with justice. There is so little dignity in legal procedure. (In between all of this, during a break in proceedings, a jovial sergeant who’d read about Lobola tried to get “pally-pally” with me by stating that I must surely teach the “arts of pussy” at Rhodes. God, the bourgeoisie. This is how one is dismantled. This is what remains.) And you probably saw: it [Lobola] is likely to be dragged before the [Publications Control] BOARD after all?

The only recourse is to live small, within oneself, the “I” barricaded, armed – writing letters to you, slotting an envelope into a postbox – while I want to enter you, to be, to become, and to know about being and becoming, alone and together: a small journey in the void, but so very certain, so happy, so irreplaceable, so beautiful.

Cocoon, despite everything, in spite of it all, let us love each other, let us be. And let us make a small advance against oblivion and lies, with enough purity and beauty and compassion and dignity never to perish, always to remain precious.

This is how I’ll be going out to meet this big weekend of yours, and the future, and everything.

I love you, and you are lovely,

Your André.

Grahamstown

Thursday night, 27 February 1964

Cocoon of light, beloved,

Ik wilde ik kon u iets geven

tot troost diep in uw leven,

maar ik heb woorden alleen,

namen, en dingen geen.

Dearest beloved, I’m sending this via a carrier … just a letter, just more words, more words of love, more love, more.

You’re very busy this weekend! You’ve travelled by air and felt just how precious your own little share of humanity can be, and you’re happy, excited, tired, a little confused, and lost. You’re wearing your yellow dress, the beautiful one, along with the tiny blue-and-silver pendant. You’ve just taken a bath in the bathroom of a lovely hotel.

Me, on the other hand – trying to read Giuseppe di Lampedusa and just sitting here with the book shut; it’s simply too painful, too full of piety, because I started reading it during that first weekend in Gordon’s Bay, in that sea-room, sun-room, bedroom, our room.

I carry with me an imaginary garland of roses with ninety-four rosary beads. With that, and with everything that continues to live on in my heart, and that’s become part of my blood, my dreams, I am with you this weekend, very much with you – a big little bit. Terribly proud of you. Madly in love with you.

I don’t want to use up any more words to say this. Because you know, after all. Just [Herman] Gorter’s words:

Gij staat zoo heel, heel stil

met uwe handen, ik wil

u zeggen een zoo lief wat,

maar ’k weet niet wat.

Uw schoudertjes zijn zoo mooi,

om u is lichtgedooi,

warm, warm, warm – stil omhangen

van warmte, ik doe verlangen.

Uw oogen zijn zoo blauw

als klaar water – ik wou

dat ik eens even u kon zijn,

maar ’t kan niet, ik blijf van mijn.

En ik weet niet wat ’t is wat

ik u zeggen wil – ’t was toch wat.

And, like the conclusion of a [Ingmar] Bergman movie, I feel myself becoming smaller and smaller and smaller, until I completely disappear in you, dissolve in your light, glow in your light.

For now, and for always: love, pride, gratitude and humble tenderness. Sister Water, you are so very needed, so modest, precious and chaste.

Smoke of dreams, ochre of the earth – that’s you. And that you must remain, always.

Because I love you.

André.

Saturday, 7 March 1964

AFTER CONSIDERATION I CANNOT CHIN UP DARLING LETTER TO FOLLOW FLYING TO CAPE TOWN = COCOON

Grahamstown,

Saturday night, 7 March 1964

Cocoon, love,

Tonight I’d like to write to Salvatore Quasimodo, and say to him: Dearest, naive old Salvatore, you were wrong, too optimistic, because the heart does not remain for us, after all.

Your telegram today –

So, it was too good to be true, after all. Everything was ready: we’d have had the whole afternoon, from two to six, to ourselves here at home; my bed in the study made with clean white sheets; my red pyjamas freshly laundered; and the hotel room booked. I’d have a “meeting” that night, and the world would have been ours from seven-thirty to eleven-thirty. You’d have strolled with me along my bush-path; my classes on Wednesday postponed so I could be with you from eight in the morning until your plane took off. God, to suddenly begin counting off days and hours in anticipation of something, a trace of happiness, a bit of meaning. I lived so completely for this visit.

“The heart has its own reasons –.” And you’ll have your own reasons for the direct flight back. “Good sense”? “Wisdom”? “Consideration”? There are so many names one can give to things that are in fact too subtle for words.

There is so much toxic, sterile, arid cynicism in me tonight.

Among other things, I looked at the calendar and discovered that your ship – “memory”? – sets sail during our term time; even for that I won’t be able to come down. All the banal little realities that so often shipwreck one’s dreams.

Too disturbed to write. Too wounded to live.

And yet there remains a thin little candle flame, the belief that I trust you in everything, to the fullest extent; I love you, still, still, fatally so.

– Me.

Sunday night, 8 March 1964

Sappho: “Pain penetrates / Me drop / by drop.”

Mt Pleasant

Victoria Road

Clifton

Tuesday, 10 March 1964

God, my André, I thought I was doing the right thing – on that desolate flight to Cape Town without Simone and without anyone even to meet me – I tried to write to you – Sunday, Monday, wrote to you, but things became completely unsayable.

Johannesburg and the big prize are now behind me, and now I must look ahead – I depart on 27 March. Were you very disappointed with my telegram on Saturday – ag, André, everyone would know, they always know, and how would it go with you then, and with us? I’m going away, but you’d have to stay behind with the big new changes there. On the other hand, things have already been destroyed at your home – what’s to become of you? Are you still going to come to Spain? (I would so much like you to come. And I missed you so much in Johannesburg.) Nothing is accomplished here. It was all just stories. And god knows it’s as hot as hell.

Here before me, the sea is making a noise. And it’ll carry on making a lot of noise for me – it’s a two-week boat trip. How did you go? Did Estelle go over with you? What I mean is, did you go over together? Mad! Because that’s a prospect I do not relish. The going alone, the breaking off and distancing myself from everything here, and how now, with this wounded heart? Did you see your own precious poem in Die Vaderland with that lukewarm review? And where did you get that photo? Will we meet one another again here or there? What will the answer be, yes or no? I’m not really being silly today, I am distressed, and angry, and feel ungrateful that every damn curse that has ever landed on me is thanks to my “talent” which often makes me so over-sensitive and makes me think so small. But I want to be light-hearted like God:

Incubus. Anaesthetist with glory in a bag,

Foreman with a sweatbox and a whip. Asphyxiator

Of the ecstatic. Sergeant with a grudge

Against the lost lovers in the park of creation,

Fiend behind the fiend behind the fiend behind the

Friend. Mastodon with mastery, monster with the ache

At the tooth of the ego, the dead drunk judge:

Wheresoever Thou art our agony will find Thee

Enthroned on the darkest altar of our heartbreak

Perfect. Beast, brute, bastard. O dog my God.

Maybe ironic, also [George] Barker. Darling, I still have to talk to you about Orgie. I can’t write, even worse on the smooth paper with the smooth pen that slips and falls. And now I must go, to fetch my passport photos, and to get the thing signed. My travel expenses there and back were R393.30. My room here is warm and solitary and on the walls of my boredom I write your name. When I come close to you, I come close to God. Then I think of your smile and your precious hands and your big heart and all your writing and experience and thinking and your tears and your little laugh and the 89 times, and by then I have hanged myself with a rope of tears and consolation.

News: I’m sending you the Transvaler cutting.

And love,

Your Cocoon.

Grahamstown

Thursday, 12 March 1964

My delicate, absent, present darling,

I read your anguished, desolate letter, and the nice newspaper report you rummaged through barefooted, while playing with your stray little curl; wearing the tight slacks that drive me so mad, and the smile that makes your voice deep and full, like a pomegranate – oh, Christ Almighty I don’t know what to think any more. I sat in my office and stared at your picture until I no longer minded that tears made seeing impossible. The day before yesterday, especially, was terrible, when the empty plane arrived and the bed in my study waited in vain for the weight of our bodies; when the bush-path remained untouched by the gentle steps of your feet, with the leucodendron.

And now you’ll be leaving on 27 March. In which ship will you be sailing off into the future? Two weeks from today. Everything in the future tense. Will you, when you get back, give me a baby daughter? Or when I’m in Spain with you – because I’m negotiating urgently with Koos about December. There’s nothing left for me here, except daily emptiness and brokenness. But darling, darling, during these two weeks I don’t want to feel wounded and desolate and then not be there for you because my own heart is lost. These two weeks, always, I want to be with you in stillness and strength, so you can know I support you, carry you; I touch your breasts softly with my lips, I cast a quiet incantation over you. Because I am you, you are me, we are a true grapevine with shoots and we must bear lustrous grapes that grow from deep below the earth, up towards the sun. Your going away is not a going away, just a journey of discovery, an adventure. Little child, walking through an autumnal forest, stirring soft, fragrant leaves with your feet, your eyes full of wonder, and quiet, and everything gleaming, happy, and melancholic; strange and known; great and full of wonder.

You must please give me a cool, clear account of everything: is your first stop London, where I can write c/o South Africa House? Just three months in Amsterdam? (Getting to know Elisabeth Eybers –)

How long will you be drifting around? When? Where?

Did you get the other bursaries and awards?

Let me know if you need money while you’re there. I want to know everything, even the most banal things. And the most beautiful, of course.

Where can I phone you in the evening? Don’t be confused, Cocoon.

And write to me, despite your being so busy and on the go.

I love you. Over and above all else, this remains firm.

About you, Plato said: “For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing” and that is you, just as exquisite, just as pure; for that, I live, and that is why there’s meaning in life.

For always and always,

Love,

Your André.

Mount Pleasant

Victoria Road

Clifton

Friday, 13 March 1964

My dearest André,

Your letter of the day before yesterday. I only read it once – but remember it always in my sad memory …

In two weeks’ time my boat leaves. I’ve bought a few nice things, and begun to feel excited. Lay in the sun this morning, read Tristia – this afternoon, finally, Swart Pelgrim [F.A. Venter]. Phoney, with a nice turn of phrase sometimes. Already travelling, reading, untying … will I one day be able to pick up the strands again? I’m lying naked under the cool sheets now and I’m burning from the sun, your bitter letter is chafing somewhere … God,

Wou [Moet] ek gee

My

Goed

Wou [Moet] ek gee

My

Reg.

I conducted myself correctly. I know one doesn’t feel hugely justified and puffed up about that. Do you think it was easy? Do you think I didn’t want to come? And on top of it all I remembered your hesitation … And: “the moment has actually passed …” Hesitation because it would have been difficult for you afterwards. Unfortunately we don’t only live in the present. “Want al ons dade, al ons dénke selfs, lê so ons lewensgang aan bande.” You have to learn to leave me a little room as a WOMAN. I have to protect myself, and in turn protect my “precious ones”, as Uys would say. You are precious to me. I don’t want to scrutinise and speculate, but remember the Grahamstown idea was mine, right from our letter-writing time: during our last call you said: “Send a telegram about what you decide, I’ll understand.” And I think you do indeed understand, now. My André, I want to be reasonable towards you, not just for one night, but a reasonableness that endures, I want to give you a thoughtful, selfless, edifying love. You musn’t feel “cynical”: look, I am not cynical! I understand you, really I do. Do you know what? After the breaking off of our engagement I had three attacks in one day (I am ashamed of anything like that, where your breathing becomes so disturbed that you faint, struggling to breathe until you faint – and Dr Katz with his syringe). It’s nothing. I come out of it and next day I walk in the sun again, in love. It doesn’t disturb the inner growing and bleeding, and that’s all that matters. And God knows I don’t hold it against you. God threw the dice and it fell wrong for us, that’s all. My little treasure, I would love to comfort you in some way or another, but how? You know I accept you as you are, and will take you into my heart as a free person and hold you there, in this situation everything looks difficult, but not unresolvable. (Love will find a way, so why worry!)

Here next to me on the bed close by, you are lying and sleeping, sunburnt, redhead, in the lovely knowledge of a Martini and a long soft night that lasts and lasts … My pure, humane human, stay faithful, in the true and broad sense, and believe in me. Don’t be cross with me. Don’t be against me, because then you are against yourself.

All which I took from thee I did but take,

Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.

I’m going to sleep now. Absent. In the wonderful womb of sleep and the childlike unconscious. Still with love and tenderness.

Cocoon Cocoon.

Grahamstown

Wednesday, 18 March 1964

Darling darling,

I’ve just returned – yet again – from the postbox. And once again, nothing from you. This silence, silence, is driving me crazy. I know you’re terribly busy, but in ten days’ time you’ll be gone, and then letters will become very scarce; I still don’t even know which boat you’re sailing on, and whether you’re first disembarking in London and will be able to pick up post there.

Even if you just write a short note. Just to say “I miss you” or “I feel afraid”. God, even if you have to say: “I’ve just slept with Jack” … Anything. But this sterile silence, no.

Did my little parcel ever arrive? It went off on Monday by airmail. It’s not a gift – it’s too small for that, and I’m terribly broke! – just a small something for your darling feet.

And, ironically: from Good Friday onwards (you’re leaving on Easter day, like Nicolette!) I’ll be alone here with Anton for the whole long weekend. Estelle’s going to visit her mother in Pretoria. Thankfully I’ll be able to phone you on Thursday night – at which number?

Oh my dear little thing, this is such an entrancing time to be in Europe: now, late winter, and then the first rush of spring, everything new, so delicate, and good.

I’m reading – Zen! And I feel inspired. Discovering with a sense of near-astonishment how much of it I’ve already come up with on my own, as a matter of conviction. And how much of it you and I have already experienced in sex: the full metaphysical enquiry, stripping away all that is incidental, life in the essential wonderful irrational moment – eternity. So aware of each other and of meaning.

Busy, buzzing little bee, retain your serenity during the superficial pressures of making preparations. Keep your passion. Live. And remain human, my little thing, my woman, for seconds, for nine months, a year, always.

Let us live

Among the white clouds and scarlet woodlands

Singing together

Songs of the Great Peace

(This is what Zen sounds like!)

Please excuse the desperate rebelliousness that my letter began with. I’m feeling calm again, because I’ve been talking to you, because you’re so close by, and so familiar to me, so strange, holy and beautiful.

I bless you with outspread hands in the name of the lover, the loved one and the unborn child.

Love,

Yours.

Wednesday, 18 March 1964

EAST TELEPHONE STOP REACH YOU OUT OF BREATH SOMETIMES BETWEEN SUITCASES AND SANDALS YOU HEART OF THE DAWN LOVE = COCOON

Grahamstown

Wednesday/Thursday, 18–19 March 1964

Cocoon, my own darling,

It’s seven-thirty, and I’ve worked myself into a state of exhaustion; I sit here and exist in my little spot of light, which is no more than a starting point for the eternal journey towards you, you in your unknown, warm little room somewhere that I’ll probably never see, like all the rooms of your most distant past. But still, I do know it all, because it’s full of you, full of your fragrance: you’re freshly bathed, lustrously soft and sleepy, and sublimely untidy, like the chaos that reigns before the spirit comes and hovers above the water. With cigarettes, a bottle of wine, a pair of leather shoes, a bra strung across a chair, and you in bed, smoking or reading in your white nightie, the one that gently brushes against your breasts; your curls are tousled, with the one on your forehead ready to be twisty-twirled.

Thank you for the lovely telegram that brought me back to life with such a sense of gratitude, back from the outermost darkness; and forgive, forgive me my reproachful letter of this morning; it was nothing more than desperation pouring forth from a yearning heart.

Now things are quiet. Quiet? Also not. Because everything is alive.

“Mijn bleeke denken dwaalt tot u door diepe nachten …”

Little child of light and warmth, with dewdrops on your fingers and poetry in your laughter, and the soft butterfly in your cocoon – even if I must fall back on inadequate words: I love you.

Go far into the big, wide world, but come back, come and give me a child. I’m still urgently negotiating with Koos about Spain. I can already see us lying on a pale-gold beach among fishing nets; at night we’ll sit under plane trees, drinking dark-red wine and listening to the glimmering of an invisible guitar. Then we’ll return to our small white room with its big golden bed and live many hours in the full, unbearable bliss, the honesty of our bodies; then we’ll sleep, languid, drowsy, spent, fulfilled and sweet, your arm across me so you can hold my papie, mine folded around you, resting on the satisfied lips of your divine little sesame-cellar.

Believe, hope, continue to love. I carry you and live through and for you. The sun is still there. And the heart. And the body that will remain chaste; true to you. Live on the boat in the sun, and pick up an even deeper tan in your white bathing costume. Make poems, and work every day on a long letter that you’ll post in London.

I’m going to sleep now, knowing that you’re with me. I hail you, and say goodnight:

’Night to the curls of sun and smoke.

’Night to the ears that listen to the stars.

To the mouth that touches the wind.

To the speckled shoulders so lovely and smooth.

To the back that carries the weight of love.

Good night to the cool breasts that are always full.

To the soft tummy that touches me as it breathes.

To the derrière that sits so nicely, so deliciously.

To the tanned legs that are so playful, and lazy.

To the little feet that step over a world so lightly.

’Night to the inimitable leucodendron.

And ’night, ’night, ’night, little cocoon with your one pouting lip, voracious kontjie, generous kontjie, precious konnetjie.

With love and mercy and passion, and with generosity and gladness and tears, everything,

André.

Mount Pleasant is not, I hope, the same as Mount Venus?

Grahamstown

Thursday, 19 March 1964

My own Kontjie,

Your letter for today has already been posted. But after the call and your beautiful letter, which says: “Stay faithful, in the true and broad sense” – I want to sit quietly for a moment and talk to you, as honestly as you talked to me. My distress about your “news” has passed. And I just want to “explain”, in rather woolly words, so that you can understand: I’m not jealous in the narrow, rational sense of the word. And I understand; fully understand your need, your fleeing from darkness, grabbing hold of the possibilities that present themselves to you.

What I do feel, however, is conditioned by the way I regard sex: not as a means to an end, not as escapism, not “unimportant”. But: ultimate sincerity, ultimate truthfulness, ultimate reality. I cannot use sex to achieve this “ultimate” experience – and therefore I cannot, and I have never wanted to, sleep with Estelle after you.

This is all that I fear, all I’m uncertain about. Two things: first, that you do this with Jack out of need and not “ultimate sincerity” – and in doing so you damage your own purity. Second: if you’re sleeping with him out of “ultimate sincerity” … then I fear this indicates that our own sex was not quite as essential for you; otherwise how could it take place so soon again?

And with that, we’re back to the conversation of Saturday 18 January, and the shadow that looms behind you.

That’s all. It’s not jealousy. If I didn’t feel this way, I wouldn’t love you.

But going overseas breaks the evil cycle; out of this distance something will “gather itself into crystal”. And my trust and love and faith remain pure. That’s the only justification that still remains for my existence – an existence that, without you, has become extremely limited and meaningless.

“Stay faithful, in a true and broad sense.”

Come to me Tuesday, please, if you can.

I love you very much,

André.

Grahamstown

Monday, 23 March 1964

Love, my love,

I’ve already thought so much about the letter I wanted to write you for the ship, full of faith in the future, full of sea and sun. But it’s me, after all, who said to you I shouldn’t create pretty images of the future. God’s dice doesn’t fall quite like that. And now, god knows, the irony: I’m unable to send you a selection of platitudes – especially not you. I’m simply feeling too desperate to write today. But if I don’t write, then my letter might not arrive in time for the boat, since it’s almost Easter. Now I need your help: please believe me when I say I’m fighting my way through the bush.

It is better that you never know

how burdensome talk is for boys.

Virgo, virgin. Those born under the sign of Virgo are apparently practical, down-to-earth. And in that practical, sober manner you decided about the right and wrong of your coming here.

There was a time when we didn’t have conversations about “right” and “wrong”, when we simply loved each other.

The conflict between right and wrong

Is the sickness of the mind.

If you want to get the plain truth

Be not concerned with right and wrong.

(Seng-Ts’an)

Please: I’m just talking, feeling, not blaming, because I’m only human, and sinful.

I just want to know: if it was wrong for you to come to me, how can you ask that I come to you? What would make that “right”?

And was the very first night also “wrong”, then, and afterwards? Love will not allow itself to be denied so easily.

And – it’s cruel, but it has to be said: Why is it forbidden for me to come back to you unless I can offer you a future; but for Jack it’s not forbidden to use your little body and your heart, knowing full well that he offers you no future at all?

For the sake of purity between us?

Darling, darling: we must not err on one extreme by mutually building up an ideal of purity just because we need a sense of the pure. We’re just human, and impure, too; full of deceit. The little honour we discover, must arise out of our being together, must be distilled out of our turmoil.

Nothing is simple. You are virginal; you’re also a little bitch. You’re thoughtful; but you’re also cruel. Spontaneous; but also calculating. Unemployed; and yet self-sufficient. It’s because of the endlessness of what you are that I love you – and why I feel despair; why I know ecstasy, and agony.

This is exactly what I’ve been trying to achieve – I don’t believe one ever gets it right completely, and I can only try: the fact that everything is not merely simple and straightforward. That you can write to me about my coming back, in complete sincerity – while you’re sleeping with Jack, and enjoying it. The one doesn’t exclude the other. And, for a while, I was wrong to see it that way.

But I’m still young in matters of love and have much to learn. I am inestimably thankful for the precious part of your life that you did in fact open up to me.

It was just, up until now, the torture of living chastely for the sake of someone who can’t herself live for me in the same way. And that was my blindness – that I didn’t realise you were in fact staying true to me, despite what was also happening in parts of your life that didn’t belong to me. Nevertheless, in my limited, human way, I remembered how you’d told me you’d lived chastely for months for the sake of Jack, when he was away; for me, not even a month.

Once again, let me repeat: this is the way I saw things. But now I get it. I won’t again make comparisons. I won’t again think only on one level. I shall learn to live in irony. (I mean this seriously; I’m not being cynical!) That’s why you should’ve been here, so that our words wouldn’t fall flat, on their own, but derive meaning from voice and gesture and eyes, a whole body with a hunger, hunger, hunger, a body that’s lonely, full of longing and darkness and uncertainty, flung to the dark winds.

You’re going away, on a sea of light and sun.

For a while, at least, I will say, with Baudelaire: “I am embarking on a sea of darkness.”

Oh Lord God, darling, now I’m sounding self-pitying again; like I don’t believe in the honesty of your decision; as if I’ve forgotten that it all began when I left you in the lurch.

But oh you should’ve come, you should’ve come and talked to me, ambled with me through the bush. Since you phoned, I’ve wandered around there like a lost man, haven’t even eaten, got soaked in the rain, lost among the tribes, lost to heaven.

But you said, and so urgently: Nothing has changed …

Everything changes, always.

But I believe, I must believe, I know your decision was made for the sake of love alone.

It’s not just you who’s going on a journey. I’m also about to go – through a very lonely region of the spirit.

“Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate”: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” But at some point (“on the other side of the water, bright and happy” as your ouma would say) I’ll reach the light, and find you.

I hail everything about you. And I’m not embarrassed that I have tears in my eyes.

I’ll write to you in London.

The heart, the heart remains.

With love,

André.