lleke Boehmer has written two Fiction sharply focused novels: each E have heroines who are charac­ terised by passivity, their failure to see, and to act, beyond the confines of their white South African lives. Boehmer explores her characters with often Restricted Vision acute subtlety and by writing the kinds of books she does slips the boundaries which have frequently confined South African writing. They are richly lay­ ered texts, alert to the many resonances SARAH NUTTALL traces continuities between Elleke Boehmer's of Boehmer’s subject, and they con­ front some of the challenges of writing two novels which explore the limits of white women's lives in about ‘restricted vision’. I will talk about her new book, An Immaculate South Africa. Boehmer raises the question: is innocence simply F ig u r e , after looking at her first, Screens Against the Sky. a lack of knowledge or can it be implicated in guilt Annemarie, the narrator in Boehmer’s first novel, lives in her own little white South African world. mother and daughter, the way they the way for new writing more auda­ ties, Boehmer’s own story moves Growing up in a suburb of a segregated knock against each other, rather than cious and flamboyant, as Boehmer has beyond them. She offers her text as town in South Africa, she reads the warmly bond. Once they have moved said, in its concerns. only one reading, signalling the limits time away — and writes in her journal. to a flat in another town, they sit and Boehmer hints at literary ‘enclo­ of her own vision by refusing to name, She is bound up with, but also bound in read together in an a-historical vacuum. sures’ which she seeks to escape: she and therefore contain, ‘South Africa’ in by, stories: they are a means of escape, The radio is turned off at news time deliberately writes against the guilt and her text. Yet Boehmer also walks a nar­ bringing her contact with a different and so is the TV because, Sylvie says, row tightrope: the enclosure of world, but they also enclose her, pro­ ‘it shows the bad in the world too Annemarie’s existence which she so viding a substitute for action. clearly ... Reading at home, you learn vividly creates means that Boehmer’s more than you ever would elsewhere’, text is narrowly focused, its energies and Hoopstad, anyway, ‘lacks history’. spent on the portrayal of passivity and Annemarie walks ‘a little way in the lack of response. In her next novel, direction of the township’ outside though it contains many of the same Hoopstad, but feels she must get home themes, Boehmer widens her focus, to her mother. She also walks to the and takes many more risks. compound at the back of the clinic where she has a job ‘to have another n An Immaculate Figure, the heroine Annemarie makes several attempts to look at things’, but is reprimanded for under-reads the world, or possibly break out of her sheltered life but they her trespass. When Adrian, who by Ireads it and is not saying. This is at are always limited, too tentative to Annemarie’s standards counts as a least the potential promise of the story, amount to much. She decides to ‘take friend, gives her a suitcase for safe­ and the hope the reader holds_ out. the affairs of the nation to heart’ by keeping, she does not know that it con­ Rosandra White is a young white copying out newspaper reports and tains illegal anti-apartheid pamphlets. South African woman who has grown writing them into her journal. ‘The Her mother finds out, however, and up in Cradock, where she wins the reading made all the action and was insists that they dump it on the rubbish local beauty competition, and has the exciting enough’, she says. When pile outside the building. Soon after potential of becoming a national or Simon the gardener reacts to the news this incident, and the disruption it has Elleke Boehmer international model. She is perfect, of Steve Biko’s death — announced on caused, they again leave town. immaculate, and apparently vacuous, the piece of newspaper Annemarie has ‘seen totality’ which has characterised gliding over the surface of things, reg­ brought him his lunch on — she realis­ oehmer has written a story about the liberal South African novel, and istering little or giving nothing away. es there is a whole other story of which enclosure, and failure to escape. she refuses to write an unambiguously To Jem, her childhood friend who has she knows nothing. This is an ‘item of BAnnemarie again and again returns to‘woman’s novel’. She writes what she been in love with her ever since, she is information’ she cannot immediately her m other’s house, and idiom, and it is calls ‘a Black Conciousness novel by a ‘inscrutable, a mystery heroine’. Jem transfer to her journal, and, realising white writer’: Annemarie is excluded wonders ‘What had moved her? What that there are events ‘not subject to the from the black world, but at the same had she loved?’ Much later, Ahmed control’ of her pen, she stops writing time it is her nascent political relation­ says that her charm ‘is in her cute, the journal. Screens Against the Sky ship with Simon which is her deepest irrelevant comments’ but that ‘behind Simon is connected to a world of Bloomsbury, London, secret, and the one more threatening that silence there’s an endurance and political resistance which is doubly 194pp„ £13.99, June 1990, than the secret that she has had sex strength and a lot of thinking going inaccessible to Annemarie not only with her cousin. One of the richest and on’, Yet Rosandra persists in being because she is white, but a woman. 074750674 4 lightest portrayals is Boehmer’s char­ blank, dead-pan, absent and ‘still’. When Annemarie takes Simon his acterisation of ‘African romance’. The Boehmer is interested in the way lunch, she also hands him coffee in a An Immaculate Figure day Annemarie learns of Biko’s death innocence can itself be guilty: the fron­ mug inscribed with the words ‘Our Bloomsbury, London, is the day, Boehmer writes, ‘her tispiece to the novel is a quote from Dad’. Simon, as a man, is the inheritor 231pp., £15.99, May 1993, African romance ended’. Graham Greene, ‘Even innocence ... not of her father’s politics, but of his 0 7475 1386 4 Just before this, Annemarie and her took on a dubious colour’. Rosandra access to politics. Politics, throughout mother go on holiday to a mountain has ‘no stain on her character’ and can­ the novel, is mediated by men. The resort, and Annemarie falls for the man not see ‘the taint’ in the world around ‘Our Dad’ lettering is also an incongru­ in the hut next door who smells of her, but Boehmer gives her heroine a ous label, suggesting that in the grass and sun and reads adventure sto­ flaw on her perfect white body: a big, apartheid context, people and situations ries. He invites her to go ‘reconnoitring black birthmark. At first it is ‘a huge carry false names (Simon wears a T- a return too to the mother in the sense along the boundary fence’ and freckle’, ‘a gravy stain’, a harmless shirt with the words, ‘Bay City that Annemarie never comes to maturi­ Annemarie, although she never goes, idiosyncrasy. Later it becomes a Rollers’), as well as the absurdity of ty and finds her own means of expres­ takes up the story, complete with ‘wound’, a ‘malignant’ growth, a ‘rot­ the mug as being the last relic of the sion. Her lack of growth repeats the macho hunters, in her journal. ting, sprouting polyp’ with tentacle father’s rule (the influence of the patri­ wider stuntedness of her society, and Boehmer hits off the careless fortissi­ edges, and the ‘outer stain of a hidden arch, despite his death, is pervasive the inability of certain forms of life to mo with which romances are written, infection’. Rosandra persists in seeing throughout the book). flourish. It is Annemarie’s confine­ the repetition of themes and the adoles­ nothing, and, seeing nothing, being After her father’s death, Annemarie ment, her partial vision, which is cent sexual desires that drive them: absolved, and this is tinged and tainted and her mother are thrown together in telling and which is the locus of the ‘The veld patroller and I kept watch at as she acquires a ‘hidden past’, if only their isolation. There is little of the ‘sis­ story. It is this lack which has to be border fences, living rough, outwitting a series of acquired images — a dead terly congeniality’ Annemarie has understood, Boehmer implies, before strong predators, sharing water mouth body here, an overheard conversation hoped for: instead, her mother goes on white South African women can escape to mouth, enduring. I wrote with my there. Her implication, growing and tranquillisers, stops playing the piano these limits. White South African fic­ left hand jammed firmly between my spreading, is her taint, potentially as and grows fearful. Boehmer shows up tion too, by drawing attention to the thighs. I forgot the time ...’. ugly, tentacled and alive as other harm­ the tensions and rivalries between retardedness of white vision, can open By mapping out these literary identi­ ful perpetrations. SOUTHERN AFRICAN REVIEW OF BOOKS July/August 1993 Rosandra is ‘taken up’ by two men, learns that Michaelis, Thony’s black similar to the opening words of the as Boehmer explores the intricacies, as and she tells the story of her life with international art buyer, is an undercov­ book (‘It made a picture ..