Thumbnail, and Removed It, Taking Care to Provide Enough of a Muddy Bed for His Precious Cargo

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 The Wading by Tom Eaton ETNTHOOO 1 Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Art in Creative Writing Department: English Town Faculty of the Humanities University of Cape Town 2001 Cape of This work has not been previously submitted in whole, or in part, for the award of any degree. It is my own work. 6 September, 2001 University My thanks goes to the National Research Foundation for the financial assistance given me during the writing of this dissertation. The town was white in the afternoon. Dusty streets of flat roofs and pale thin trees, lay bleached and naked on the plain below the monument of the mountain. A narrow quay drifted motionless on the glass surface of the harbour. The beach was a golden slash, cutting the ocean away from the town. A tiny scar ran inland across the sea of yellow grass, a ribbon-wide dust track towards the wooded flank of the island. A single cyclist meandered towards the trees, a rolling scarecrow in a giant cornfield, his shadow a dark blob below him. He reached the tree line, his bicycle and body disappearing into the shadows. A clattering of wings, and a flock of pigeons rose like smoke above the trees, circled once in a wide sweep, and began to beat their way up the slopes of the mountain. A figure stepped from the trees. Muller screwed up his eyes, despite his broad felt had. His shoes were scuffed, his trousers covered with powdery dust. His jacket, dark and thick, was slung over his shoulder, and his white shirt, buttoned at the neck, clung moistly to his back. A half-buried stone caught his toe, and Muller pitched forward, the pebble springing free from the earth. Slowly he bent down, a hand on his knee. Muller's hands were sinewy and blotched, his fingers inordinately long and tapering. The jacket billowedTown out like a sail as Muller wheeled about and hurled the stone towards the trees. He watched it fly, licking saliva from the corners of his mouth. His lips were thin, stretched tight across his even teeth like white silk in the shadow of his hat. The dark eyes wereCape concealed beneath heavy lids. He pressed his hat down on his heat, resettledof the jacket over his shoulder, and walked on towards the Vineyard. The cicadas had become hushed, and the crunch of his shoes on the track was loud. Through the missing windscreen of the wrecked car, half a mile away in the grass, Muller was silent, a small bent figure striding across the shimmering haze while the mountain waited for the evening. University 1 "In a remote southern part of the turning world, there is an island with a mountain draped upon it. A businessman, his suit too tight and his watch too heavy, is almost sure to see at one time or another: tired of the peanuts swamping him, he will glance out of the window - such a tiny window on so great an expanse! - and see the little fried-egg-on-a-pavement shape on the sea far below, just peeping out of a mat of clouds that stretch away northwards. "Unless the sun is low, the mountain will look something like an amoeba seen through a microscope, very green and blue, and all too much like a blot to be worth pointing out to the person next to him. And even if the sun is melting into the horizon, the shadows of the mountain stretching across the flat sea like an angel's sundial, he might think it too small to be a real mountain. Perhaps a reef; perhaps nothing more than a trick of the light. "But the mountain is most certainly a mountain: it pokes into the hard blue sky in all weathers and circumstances. Its steep cliffs are home to a hundred thousand white birds, clamouring for space on the rocks and in the sky. They dip a,nd wheel all the day long, and when the sun begins to relent, and dives for the horizon, they stand, backs to their white wall, and screech through the night. They are very tiny against the mass of the mountain. "About the island, as witnessed by the claustrophobic businessman, there is less certainty. On the three maps on which the island appears, it has been drawn as a neat circle, the point at the base of an exclamation mark: it nestles up against a larger island that no-one has bothered to chart, an ever-widening mass of land that forms the body of the exclamation mark, hidden under clouds all year round. It presents an unchanging fayade to the little island at its southern tip: a vast rank of grey, hot mountains. Only one pass climbs into those mountains. On one of the maps - in a great curve over the larger island - a bored, perhaps disenchanted hand has scrawled 'Here there be thorn-bushes'. "And so the traveller will fly on, recalling the amoeba blot nestling against the bronze wing of the dark continent to the north, the barren land shroudedTown in cloud and mist. For a moment he might think to ask a friend about the two lands he has seen. "But the island, the neat little circle, has deceived the aerial traveller and the cartographers in their boats. For at certain times ofCape day, when the tide and wind are just right, a tall person can wade to the Mainland - for thatof is what the mountainous dash, disappearing thorns and all into its eternal cloud, is called by the inhabitants of the island with no discomfort. On some hot days, in the middle of the afternoon, it is in fact a very pleasant wade: the sand is soft, velvety, say the tour brochures. "Then there is a certain breed of little fish with big lips that come to tickle the feet of the wader. The squeamishUniversity shriek and chum up the water in their rush to return to the island; but once one has acquired a taste for the touch of the earnest, busy lips, the slow progression to the Mainland is a lovely way to spend an afternoon. Of course, there is nothing to do on the Mainland, unless one is a collector of volcanic rock and empty tortoise shells, slightly blackened by fire. But the desolation of the countryside is softened by the promise of the returnjoumey. The island is rightly named: Cape Formosa. "That is how the island stands every day, how it is standing now, but this day it had about it an unusually smoky veiL The lines of the mountain were softened, shadow and light on its buttresses more pleasing to a romantic eye. Sounds too were ,muted - muffled by the haze. The shriek of the birds high upon the mountain drifted down as a gentle sustained creaking, like the door of an abandoned shed fidgeting in an evening breeze. "The smoke in question was curling up from behind a row of four wind-blasted oak trees. They were - and are, although now they are three - oaks in name only, these squat blocks of grey wood, man-high, bent almost double by the wind that blows (it is estimated) for 295 and a half days of every year. Indeed, the island's children had long since come to the sensible conclusion that either Robin Hood and his Merry Men were all two feet tall, or else the Sheriff of Nottingham did a quite terrible job of hunting down the green outlaws; for who could possibly hide among oak trees? The older Locals, as the native inhabitants are known here, sitting in silence and wreathed in the smoke of their malodorous pipes, oblivious to the stories their grandchildren hear, shrug and say that the oaks, as with most things the foreigners brought and hold dear, are disappointing. "But as if out of some duty to their species, the little trees have stood for a hundred years, refusing to die, yet always unable to flourish against the bombardment of the winds. Their emaciated branches clutch a few twigs which in turn hold on to some two dozen bleached, parchment-like leaves. "Today these flapped pathetically over the column of smokeTown that rose into the still air over the Vineyard, like the ghostly deep-sea fish the men sometimes catch and toss onto the glaring decks of their boats. "Open fires are unusual upon the island: theCape vegetation on the upper slopes is too lush to burn, and the wind that rips across the beachesof and lower flats, home to the sprawl of houses that make up he Vineyard, the white of the egg in its blue pan, usually tears any small flame off at the roots. It was therefore quite clear to all who took the time on this day to look at where the smoke was coming from, that the old spy was off somewhere behind the Oak Ridge burning his secret files again." University Muller had not found it a satisfying description ofthe town. The article's tone was hysterical, its information sketchy. Nevertheless as he had turned the glossy pages, and felt the small thrill of seeing a photograph of his stool at the bar - in a magazine read all over the world - Muller had rubbed his chin and wondered why they had not got a real writer to do the job properly.

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