The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town The Road to Absalom Michael Gastrow GSTMICOO 1 A minor dissertation submitted in partial fulljilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Arts in Creative Writing Faculty of the Humanities University of Cape Town 2004 COMPULSORY DECLARATION This work has not been previouslyUniversity submitted in whole, of or Capein part, for the awardTown 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. s;gnature:~/ ____ Abstract - The Road to Absalom The Road to Absalom is set in contemporary South Africa, where, for much of the predominantly young population, the country's ancien regime is little more than a childhood memory. David is a young articled clerk living a hedonistic and carefree life with his model girlfriend, Georgina, in Cape Town. When the entire family of the Xhosa chief of a remote rural valley is murdered he is sent in search of any remaining heirs. The new chief would be a lucrative client for the law firm. The search begins at the site of the massacre. David discovers that the only surviving heir, Absalom, has been missing for several years. He picks up the trail at Absalom's old university, where an ex-lecturer tells him about Absalom's early political consciousness (dismay at his family's collaboration with the white regime), his increasing rebelliousness, and his eventual disappearance. Local gangsters tell David more about Absalom's life as a criminal and an exile from his own family, circumstances which led him move to Soweto. David drives across the interior of South Africa to Soweto, but does not find Absalom. His contact there arranges a meeting with Absalom's mentor and protector­ Pius, a chief drug-smuggler resident in Swaziland. The hours of driving give David the time and perspective to reflect on his life in Cape Town: his dysfunctional relationship with Georgina, his fixation on his mixed-race high­ school lover, Angeline, his unwanted job and his ambivalent relationship with his family. He suspects that his supposedly convenient life has been constructed from fear or self-deception, and he is forced to re-evaluate his motivations. The meeting with Pius uncovers broad issues involving local and global politics that have contributed to Absalom's family's massacre and to his disappearance. However, Absalom has left to train as a Sangoma. David drives to Durban, where another sangoma gives him directions to the initiate's retreat in the Drakensberg mountains.Town He finds Absalom's spiritual master, a secretive bushman shaman, who explains that Absalom had abandoned his spiritual studies when he was told to do so by a powerful Spirit of nature. With the shaman's help David experiences a vision of Absalom's new hide-away on the coast. In the morning David follows the directions of his vision until he finds Absalom. The pair combine their knowledge: it emerges that their respectiveCape pasts have locked them into their present trajectories. David's family and his law firm (as well as a giant construction company and the World Bank) are involved in theof events leading up to the massacre, while the past betrayals of the chief's family helped bring about their deaths. Ilowever, the pair abstain from the roles described for them by history, choosing instead to construct their own responses in an attempt to continue towards self-determining lives. University THE ROAD TO ABSALOM 2 CHAPTER I--FORT CAMPBELL The men from the morgue are late and the bodies are stiffening andTown starting to smell. Policemen sit around smoking cigarettes, complaining about the morgue workers. Smoke drifts around the airless chamber. 'They are drunk,' Capesays one policeman. 'They are lazy,' says another. 'No, they are picking up AIDS bodies from across the valley,' says a third. of They glance around restlessly. Until the men from the morgue arrive, this pile of bodies is their problem, their responsibility. The corpses lie in a comer of the cement-floored courtyard that separates the Fort Campbell police station from the holding cells two cement blocks where criminals are held overnight for petty offencesUniversity such as public drunkenness, dagga smoking or wife-beating, and where more serious offenders are detained until they are transferred to the prison in Umtata. The policemen have dragged a table and three chairs into the courtyard. The bodies need to be watched so that they are not pecked at by crows or burrowed into by cockroaches or used as nests for maggots and wasp larva. The bodies need to be watched so that prisoners do not THE ROAD TO ABSALOM 3 spit on the corpses of their enemies, so that policemen are not tempted to cut off body-parts for sale to the muti-men, so that prisoners know that when their time comes, when their corpse is lying face-down (a bit of a misnomer in this case since none have any remaining face to speak of) on the concrete in a pool of congealed blood and shit they will be watched over by the forces of law and order so that their corporeal remains will not be violated and desecrated in death as they no doubt were in life, in this very prison. The policemen taunt the prisoners with their cigarette smoke. 'Gee ve ons assesblief 'n entjie meneer,' is the cry of the prisoners. 'Net een.' 'Clean up the blood, my brother,' says one policeman, in deep resonant Xhosa. 'No my brother, you clean it up, I'm tired.' 'Tired? We are all tired. It's been a long day. I'm just sayingTown please clean up the blood. There is a white lawyer on his way here. We can't have him seeing our house in such a mess.' Cape 'Well if you're so concerned why don't you clean it up yourself? I don't see why of white lawyers can't live with a little blood just like we can.' 'Ag, you donkey. Fine. You see what happens. He is a rich English whitey from Cape Town. Probably a moffie. He will puke and pass out when he sees this. You want vomit and a passed-out umlungu in our courtyard as well as this mess? HeyT 'Fine. I'll call UniversityYoliswa. Yoliswa! Come here! Clean up this mess!' Yoliswa scuttles over and mops up the blood; blood stains her knees red. The courtyard has one heavily barred window that looks onto the front yard of the station through which the policemen watch a white BMW crunch over the gravel and swish to a halt. A young white man steps out. He is tall and lightly built, but he carries himself THE ROAD TO ABSALOM 4 with the air of one who has spent plenty of time at the gym, at the hair-stylist, in the Parisian label shops. He wears the informal clothes that whiteys like to wear: denims, sandals and a short-sleeved shirt sporting a gaudy floral pattern. As ifhe is too rich to dress properly in a suit and shoes. His dark brown hair is spiked up unnaturally and glistens in the sun. His face is long and finely featured, with pale skin and a dusting of freckles. He has hooded, sleepy eyes whose colour changes according to the surrounding light sometimes green, sometimes a cloudy, greyish blue, sometimes streaked with hazel like a tiger's eye. His expression seems to be permanently lugubrious, although those that know him well would detect a sparkle in his eyes that betrays his penchant for farce, for sensual pleasure mixed with a dash of pain. His eyes scan the police building and its rural surrounds with a mixture of interest and disdain; his beaky nose rises and sniffs the air. He seems pleasedTown with its rural freshness, the odours of dry grass and cow dung and summer flowers. The whitey steps up to the police station. The captain emerges from the office to Cape greet him, a short bovine man with dark hairless skin and a noncommittal air about him. of 'Good morning, Mr Barendse,' he says, his Xhosa accent only slight and his voice high for someone of such portly stature. 'Good morning. Please, call me David.' 'How are you, David?' 'J am well. HowUniversity are you?' 'We are well, thank you, except for all the dead bodies packed into our little police station. Three of them won't even fit into the fridges. We are waiting for the men from the morgue to come and take them away.' 'I see. I'm sorry for the loss to your community.' THE ROAD TO ABSALOM 5 The captain glances around as if he is hunting swallows. 'Indeed, it is a great loss. It is quite tragic the way human life is wasted. And right after Siphiwo's funeral. He will be sorely missed. Siphiwo was a great leader.' He looks back at David, his yellowed eyes moist and gleaming and steady. Fort Campbell is in the domain of the chief, but while the chief is dead and no heir has been declared the captain is the highest-ranking member of the community.