University of Cape Town

The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University ofof Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University title: OHNELAND by: Mark Curry Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Town (Creative Writing) in the faculty of the Humanities at the University of CapeCape Town of supervisor: AlProf. S. Watson February 2001 This work has not been submitted previously in whole, or in part, for theUniversity award of any degree. It is my own work. Each significant contribution to, and quotation in, this dissertation from the work, or works, of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced. Signature: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people to whom gratitude is owed during the several years it has taken to complete this work. First, I'd like to thank Stephen Watson for support, advice and his helpful criticism from the outset. Others have offered comments and critique and I'd like to thank Greg Robinson, Alex Moore, Martin Theron and Jinty Jackson in this regard. Many others have been indispensable for their assistance In various ways, notably Kwak Giroong, Kim Chang-dae, Kim Mun-hee, Kwak Young-hwa, John Bennet, Michael Roilo, Lee Myong-soon, Nam Hyun-kook, Cho Jae-ho, Cho Jae kook, Jung Dong-hun, David Wardle, Martin Kuessner, the TownS.H.C., Park Mi-kyoung, and my family. Cape of University OHNELAND Town by Cape Mark Curryof University - Is traditional story. To our old times culture. Is story to great pitiable. Sorrow. You can understand? So is young girl, Miss Sim-chung, have blindness father. No can to see. But Miss Shim-chung, she can to love her father very, very much. She want he's to be seen again. So the fishers to that folk story - they can receive the rice, something sacrifice. Is like sacrifice: so peoples then they is can to be healthiness once again. Is praying system. Something like that. So usual every people's give some rice to fishers. So fishers sacrifice to Fisher King inside sea, down. Throw rice to him's give the good lucky. But Miss Sim-chong have been too poor. Too much very poor girl. So she sacrifice life, hers own. She go. You can understand? She's go because she no have the rice to give fishers, Fisher King. So she's die. She's go down bottom sea and getting the new once again life to ... from Fisher King. Later, some time, she's getting chance go come back hers home. When she's return her home, his father can to be seen again. Peoples was very surprised about that thing. Is happy story, somehow. AboutTown love of Miss Shim-chong to her father. It ... wait a moment, please ... It is Filial Piety story. She closed the pages and looked around sharply as one who hasCape exceeded some unspoken limit. There was no comment from the other students. One yawn was softly prodded back out of sight by a discreet palm. Perhaps they had heard this story many times before andof could no longer be impressed. The silence became a rupture in the value of the time: the money that had to be paid for it. The English lesson. Their eyes became expectant once again. A pencil's tiny step dance ceased altogether. But there was no language on hand to lend any help, it seemed. * University Through the bus window the airport's name suggests itself in English. It appears suddenly to interrupt the effect of all the orange air and dust that typically collars and upsets the skyline of the city even on fine days, even this late in the year. Like a good mother hen he keeps considering his pieces of luggage, counting them, placing them. He fmgers the tag that bears his name and considers that, too. There is still alcohol in his blood and it makes him fidgety. It picks at the pustules in his heart. He knows he will fumble as he hands the documents to the glossy assistant behind those overlarge check-in counters. The words on the tag remain unfamiliar, unpleasing, and one in particular, the surname, makes him grit his teeth. But he knows how he will answer when the time comes, and without confusion too. If they ask for a birth date, he can give that confidently. He has long wanted to flick off the names and all they entrain, but because of a sense that there is time enough for this pursuit and a wariness of the bureaucracy involved, he has not been 2 hasty. Into the future he savours, as it were, the timing, if not the planning, that the full move to a new name entails. And he knows how he will behave in the terminal as he manages his FlughaJenschmerz: he will check the boards, endure brief flurries of panic, shrug off goodbyes as gently and quickly as possible and then, when all is set and there is only a spell of waiting to be done, troll around the duty free places watching the exchanges and wondering what, if anything, he might buy before he leaves. He has come to see himself as a leaver of such consistency and variety of situations that it surprises him when people question his experience of himself as a foreigner in different lands. He is more often cornered by the foreigner in himself. The bus makes its broad, majestic sweep up to the terminal for him and wheezes to a halt. When it is his tum, he passes by the driver's white gloved hands, the black sunglasses, and extends thanks. Abruptly, the doors shut and the bus pulls out. * You can come and visit if you like, it's on the third floor of that apartment buildingTown on the corner, 301. There're two other apartments on the landing just like it. That is a building, by the way, that very nearly burned down during the winter in what would have been a fine comedy for this neighbourhood except that a woman, who nobody really knew and who evidently lived, orCape at least sometimes stayed, in a small storeroom at the back of the garage, died in that fire. I took a look in there the day after it was put out: just a storeroom for any beggar's quantity of stuff. And also ofthe remains of a bed on the floor, bedsheets and some sort of clothing lying all over it. In the corner, a wash basin, some personal effects: toothbrushes, some toiletries; on the floor a few pairs of shoes. A lot of it was surprisingly undamaged - the fire, I think, didn't get in there until the end - but everything in that room had been drenched. It was black and stank like hell. You might say, Imagine dying like that! Suffocating in an inferno, poisoned by all the fumes of paint and chemicals that lay about in there on the floor and shelves! But you know what I think? Imagine living like that. Every damn dayUniversity is a compound interest lOan. And this city must be full of people living in' holes just like it. Actually, some people around here think she died before the fIre and the fIre was designed to cover up how that might have happened. That's apparently what the police think. Mystery. Anyway, the gutted cars and bikes haven't been cleared out - some official order says they've got to stay that way until the investigation is finished. And soon it's going to be spring. But you stand if you like, sit down if you feel better that way, and I'll tell you about the comings and goings of this avenue. We're part of it all. That's what I think. Sure, you can put your feet up, I'll make coffee. The gas range, as you see, has to bum continuously - the fire damaged something in the underfloor heating system. And, believe this, it took a week to clean my room up. But you might as well pity the guy in the basement apartment: seems the building has shifted on its foundations there, you can see the cracks in the walls, they're new - pipes 3 broke and his place, in addition to getting caked in smoke and soot, was flooded as well. We're still here. God knows for how much longer, though. Town Cape of University 4 One Onwee. On we go. Morning came in the darkness as a twitching of toes in want of blanket. Hanging in the darkness was the regular twig-snapping of the clock, announced afresh, all out of time with the roughness of Niall's face on the pillow. With distaste he smelled the dead breath he had been breathing into it. His sleep amputated, he took leave of the giver of things otherworldly and tempting to dip into. Gone was the smile of his mother from the pine wood interior of somebody's kitchen. The neighbours all those years ago from around the bend, maybe. Where had they moved to with their grandmother from Canada? She had seemed an odd one. Always giving treats to the kids of the street and unable to speak properly. Niall shoved the clock back into the thicket of coin, paper and fruit peels on the narrow desk against the far wall and then curled his back over his knees.

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