Archive for the ‘Book Excerpts’ Category
by Carolyn on May 9th, 2012
Evette Weyers se boek, Wat die hart van vol is, is deels dagboek, outobiografie en reisjoernaal, wat ryklik met foto’s geïllustreer is. Dit vertel die verhaal van haar kunstenaarskap en haar verhouding met haar man, die akteur Marius Weyers.
Cas van Rensburg het by die Weyers-egpaar in die Kogelbiosfeer naby Hermanus gaan kuier en uitgevind dat Evette inspirasie put uit die natuur, haar “oermatriks”, en woorde waarvan sy die oorsprong en betekenis noukeurig naspoor:
Emoyeni. Dit is die naam van die huis waarin Evette en Marius Weyers in die Kogelbiosfeer naby Hermanus woon. Dit is ’n saamgestelde Zoeloe- en Xhosa-woord wat “in die wind” of “in die gees” beteken, en dalk gepas, want dit is hier dat Evette haar beelde maak en Marius sy woorde leer en die kreatiwiteit dwarrel.
Vandag is dit egter windstil. Marius kom op die stoep langs met ’n wasgoedmandjie in die arms.
Dié keer is die onus nie op hom nie, maar op Evette. Sý dagtaak wag in die waskamer. Die honde kom eerste hek toe om te groet, en Marius sê: “Wag eers dat hulle jou ruik.” Die groot rifrug, Tookwie (dit is ’n Khoi-woord vir “donderende reën”), styg behoorlik bo die hek uit terwyl Paljas, ’n straatnommer, onderlangs snuif.
Lees ‘n lekker lang uittreksel uit Wat die hart van vol is, wat met foto’s aangevul word:
Verhoudings herinner my aan ysberge – nege-tiendes verborge onder die oppervlakte. Ek het ’n hele reeks beelde van ysberge gemaak. Een van Tsjekof se dramas en een van Goethe se gedig oor die Elwekoning wat die ylende kind kom haal. Nog een van my en Marius. Dit was gebaseer op ons goeie verhouding, ten spyte van ons uiteenlopende geaardhede. Ek voel ons kyk in verskillende rigtings, maar ons handpalms raak aan mekaar. Ons staan rug aan rug en maak mekaar sterk. Die nege-tiendes onder die oppervlakte van ons ysberg is propvol liefde, paradokse, respek, tergery, verdraagsaamheid, kontraste, aweregse humor, ’n bietjie woede en nog tergery. Marius het van die liefdesgedigte waarvan ons baie hou, op die ysberg-beeld geskryf; onder andere Marlize Joubert se “Ballade van die minnaars”. Een van die liefdesgedigte van Pablo Neruda is ook op die ysberg geskryf. Ons het dit in Spaans geleer en dra dit saam voor terwyl ons soggens oefeninge doen. (Ons noem dit grappenderwys ons “paringsritueel”, want ons doen die oefeninge teenoor mekaar, soos in ’n spieëlbeeld van mekaar.) Marius het die beeld van ons liefdes-ysberg herdoop na “Wie sal my kan sê hoe díép die liefde lê”.
Spies, skild.
In ’n Chinese verhaal van drie eeue voor Christus probeer ’n man ’n spies en skild verkoop. Mense vra hom hoe sterk sy spies is. “Dit kan enige skild deurboor,” is die antwoord. Nou wil hulle weet hoe sterk sy skild is, en hy sê dit kan alle spiesaanvalle weerstaan. “Wat sal dan gebeur as hierdie spies hierdie skild tref?” vra iemand. Daarop het die man geen antwoord nie.
Terloops: Die Chinese woord vir paradoks het uit hierdie storie ontstaan. Letterlik vertaal, is dit “spies-skild”.
Boekbesonderhede
» read article
by Sophy on Apr 20th, 2012
Today we are delighted to bring you an extract from the short story “Warm Enough”, which appears in Colleen Higgs‘ brand new collection, Looking for Trouble. The collection consists of ten stories, centring on the Johannesburg suburb of Yeoville in the late eighties and early nineties.
In “Warm Enough” – a nostalgic and humorous piece – we are privy to one side of a conversation between old friends who have lost touch with each other:
* * * * * * * *
Grant lived in a flat at the bottom end of Dunbar Street. You didn’t ever see his flat did you? I only went there a couple of times. And the one time I visited him there he’d filled his whole flat with branches he’d brought in from when the Council pruned the plane trees in his road. He was so mal, hey. Bos bevok. He didn’t want to leave them there to die in the street like rubbish, he said. His place spaced me out, completely. Apart from the branches, which was enough to push me over the edge, his flat was dirty and I mean vuil, hey. Dishes and pizza boxes and crusty pots rotting all over the place and I’m not exaggerating. Stompies and bottlenecks – not even in ashtrays. The oke was living like an animal. I was glad my old lady couldn’t see how he was living, she would have turned in her grave. Well she isn’t dead yet, but you know what I mean. No furniture apart from the mattress and sheets and blankets so filthy you couldn’t tell what colour they were originally. It was worse than bergies, and that’s saying something. I couldn’t stop myself from tuning him, “Sies man Grant, how can you live like this? Are you a dog?” But you know what? Not even dogs, not even pigs live like that.
Old Grant was always such a joker, so full of life and laughs, I felt like a dried up old prune around him, even when we were kids. He could always make you hose yourself. But I’m sorry, that flat was the end for me. Something inside me tightened. It scared me. I don’t think Ruth ever went there, she would have run a mile. Grant used to visit her in his leather jacket, somehow emerging from that bloody pig sty cleaned up enough for a person like Ruth to be cool with. No you’ve got to hand it to the oke, he’s pulled off some tricks in his day and getting involved with Ruth was one of those occasions – big time.
[...]
I remember this one night, we were all at Dawson’s. It was before Ruth and Nathan split up, she and I were still friends and somehow Grant came along for the ride that night. He used to pitch up at my place when he wanted something to eat and he couldn’t come up with a better plan. One time when he couldn’t find me he ate loquats from one of those big gardens in Jan Smuts near the Zoo, where the trees hang over onto the pavement. Anyway I think that was when they met, Grant and Ruth. The Radio Rats were making a comeback and Dawson’s was cooking. People like James Phillips and Johannes Kerkorrel showed up. Definitely the best jol in Joburg that night. We all danced like mal, even Nathan, who wasn’t really a dancer. His heart wasn’t in it, but that night he was jiving with the best of us. That journalist who got shot a few months later in Katlehong was there too. Everybody was at Dawson’s, even the short drug dealer who always wore that mustard-yellow felt homburg. When I think about it now, it was like we were celebrating the end of something terrible that we’d lived through our whole lives. It was like the war was over and who the fuck knew what would happen next?
* * * * * * * *
Book details
» read article
by Sophy on Apr 17th, 2012
In February this year, Michigan State University Press released Joining Africa: From Anthills to Asmara, American Charles Cantalupo’s memoir of Africa. In Joining Africa, Cantalupo, Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and African Studies at Penn State University, documents his 20-year journey across the continent with a mixture of personal and national history.
Warscapes has released an extract from chapter six, entitled “Rome’s Rome”, in which Cantalupo describes his time in Asmara, Eritrea:
I traveled as a kind of pilgrim. I wanted to witness the site of one of Africa’s greatest, harshest, and most recent revolutions for independence: Eritrea’s thirty-year armed struggle—the longest war in modern African history—to liberate itself from Ethiopian colonial rule, added on to Eritrea’s seventy-year struggle to liberate itself first from Italian and then British colonial rule before Ethiopia took over. Yet I also traveled as a literary pilgrim: to write about what I experienced and toting two of my books, published by Kassahun Checole’s Africa World Press, to personally deliver them to Arefine Tewolde, the manager of its office in Asmara and Kassahun’s uncle.
“Ah, Cantalupo. Benvenuto a Asmara. Avete un buon viaggio? Venga all’ interno e rendasi comodo.” Arefine stood in a huge glass and iron open doorway under a red, yellow, black, and green sign with “Africa World Press/Red Sea Press” superimposed on an image of the earth with Africa in the center.
Book details
Photo courtesy A nave do bom gosto
» read article
by Sophy on Apr 13th, 2012
Efioanwan Edem invites you to read three chapters from his upcoming novel, Broken Portraits: Jonathan’s Chronicles. Set between Nigeria and South Africa, Broken Portraits chronicles the lives of two young Nigerian men who grapple with love and loneliness.
Read chapters eight, nine and ten on HarperCollins’ writing community site, Authonomy:
“Where on God’s green earth have you been?” Bengy asked by way of greeting when I got in late Sunday night. He burrowed himself out of the mess of cardboard paper and came to a halt in front of me. Our apartment’s near-empty living room had been turned into a temporary designing studio; Bengy was doubling as the graphic artist and costumes designer and he had a small creative staff working with him most of the day. I averted my eyes. It was an awkward situation I had put myself in. I had never had to keep any secrets from my best friend before. Yet, I knew I could not allow anyone, not even Bengy, a glimpse of my escapades that weekend.
“Ol’ boy, how far? Oh, wow that’s a good one,” I said referring to the charcoal outline Bengy had spread on the floor.
“Do you like it then?” Bengy asked uncertainly.
“Do I like it!” I bellowed.
It was a sketch of the famous balcony scene. There was Juliet, clad in sixteenth century garb, staring dreamily out of a window, and Romeo down in a garden, dressed in a three-piece suit and tie. The whole queer mix of the old and new fad was a perfect depiction of our twenty-first century remaking of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It would make a good poster.
» read article
by Sophy on Mar 30th, 2012
As the most talked about book of the past year, Teju Cole’s Open City needs little introduction. Geosi Reads offers us the chance to read the novel’s first chapter, and familiarise ourselves with Cole’s New York:
And so when I began to go on evening walks last fall, I found Morningside Heights an easy place from which to set out into the city. The path that drops down from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and crosses Morningside Park is only fifteen minutes from Central Park. In the other direction, going west, it is some ten minutes to Sakura Park, and walking northward from there brings you toward Harlem, along the Hudson, though traffic makes the river on the other side of the trees inaudible. These walks, a counterpoint to my busy days at the hospital, steadily lengthened, taking me farther and farther afield each time, so that I often found myself at quite a distance from home late at night, and was compelled to return home by subway. In this way, at the beginning of the final year of my psychiatry fellowship, New York City worked itself into my life at walking pace.
Book details
Photo courtesy Writers Institute Blog
» read article
by Sophy on Mar 25th, 2012
Guernica has released part one of “Things”, an original short story by the late Portuguese author, José Saramago.
“Things”, which is divided across the magazine’s March and April issues, is one of the stories from Saramago’s forthcoming collection, The Lives of Things, which will be published by Verso next month.
The following is translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero:
As it closed, the tall, heavy door caught the back of the civil servant’s right hand and left a deep scratch, red but scarcely bleeding. The skin had been torn here and there, raised in several spots which began to hurt, for the uneven surface and roughness of the wood had not exerted the continuous pressure or prolonged contact likely to cause an open wound or pull back the skin, thereby allowing the blood to gush out and quickly spread. Before going to the tiny office where he was due to sign on in ten minutes and work a five-hour stretch, the civil servant made his way to the First Aid Room (FAR) to have the wound dressed—his work brought him into contact with the public and there was something unsightly about that scratch. As he was disinfecting the wound, the nurse, on being told how the accident had happened, commented that this was the third such case that day. Caused by the same door.
—I suppose they’ll take it off, he added.
Using a brush, he smeared over the scratch a colorless liquid that quickly dried, taking on the color of his skin.
Book details
Photo courtesy the Guardian
» read article
by Sophy on Mar 20th, 2012
The Times:
Blame my favourite writer. You have not “felt” writing unless you’ve read Maya Angelou, the great African-American author, poet and activist who wrote I know why the caged bird sings.
But it was her Letter to my daughter that really got my attention. As I read her letter I could not think of a greater gift to offer my own children than the life lessons I’ve learnt from hard experience.
Of course our parents (and other elders) leave all of us letters, so to speak. I mean those sayings we call to mind in later years in the form of “my mother always used to say that” or “my father’s favourite line was”, and so on.
With this in mind, I decided to put onto paper my own letters to my two inspiring children, Mikhail and Sara-Jane, over a period of 365 days, in other words a letter for every day of the calendar year.
This was not only for my two biological children. It was a way of communicating some core commitments to my more than 30000 other “children” at the University of the Free State.
The daily letter became a short statement on twitter (@JJ_UFS) of a precious lesson I learnt somewhere on the road of life. The scope of lessons covered subjects ranging from leadership to learning, about love and living, schools and the workplace, public service and materialism, and from “how to drive” to “how to leave the country” while your body remains at home.
“Jy het ‘n moeilike perd opgesaal” (you have mounted a difficult horse), said one of the campus dominees, correctly predicting the difficulty of committing to a new letter every single day.
Book details
» read article
by Carolyn on Mar 16th, 2012
Troy Blacklaws’ first two novels, Karoo Boy and Blood Orange, have received international acclaim, and his latest novel, Cruel Crazy Beautiful World, promises to be another fascinating read.
We’re pleased to bring you an extract from Chapter 1 of Cruel Crazy Beautiful World in which Jerusalem (Jero), a young man of both Jewish and Muslim descent, is forced to go to Hermanus to earn a living after his father tells him that “the freeloading’s over”.
* * * * * * * *
Cape Town. December 2004.
A boy tracks a skinny dun cow along a caged footbridge over the N2 highway out of town. The bridge is wired in to keep crazy cows from jumping and bitter boys from dropping bricks onto motorcars that shark along the tarmac below. For such boys Mandela’s longed-for freedom is a joke.
A haze of smoke and summer dust hangs low over Crossroads shantytown.
Behind us the sun hovers over Table Mountain.
On the roadside a tow truck, like a morbid mantis, dreams up its next victim.
And on the radio Miles Davis blows high, cicada notes.
See my old man with a lazy palm on the wheel of his mystic-green ’74 Benz and his other hand combing his ducktail. Zero Cupido: in his flaring Hawaiian shirt and snakeskin boots, he looks the part of a dodgy Cuban dealer in an American film. In fact he’s half Cape Malay, half Cuban. With just a jot of Hottentot blood. In theory he’s Muslim. In reality he loves his whisky and pig and hasn’t gone to mosque for a long time. He has no intent to go on Hajj, yet he enjoys orientating his life to Mecca. He draws an arrow in the sand with his foot whenever he’s on a beach. He has pencilled an arrow under the roof of the veranda. Ghosting through Cape Town, he’ll cast his eyes starwards to find south and then figure out the angle toMecca. That imaginary notch in his mind keeps the world from spinning too randomly, he tells me.
Now, out of the blue, Zero’s put his snakeskinned foot down. Jero, the freeloading’s over, he said to me. He’ll no longer fork out good money (?!) on a son who is a drifter and a dreamer: forever lolling on the harbour wall, forever sipping cocktails with flaky gay artists, forever writing sappy po-ems. He spat out the word poems as he might a litchi stone. He has no time for fucking daffodils dancing in the breeze. It’s unclear whether he is recycling the one line of poetry he recalls from his school days, or is calling all poets and other artists daffodils.
My old man sees himself as a realist. He endlessly waxes his Benz, fills his hands with a whore’s tits, slices kudu biltong against his thumb, douses his fish and chips in vinegar, turns sizzling chops with his bare fingers and licks them off. He has zero finesse at the bone. His idea of finetuning is running a kind of spit cloth through the barrel of his Colt 45, or measuring and adjusting the gap in his spark plug. He wants the spark to jump far … so it burns clean.
I silently scorn his world of dabbling and dealing, of whistling at schoolgirls in skimpy skirts and shooting pool in murky bars, of totting up takings on a Lion matchbox and smoking fat Havana cigars.
It’s a mystery to Zero how I’m so tuned into the ephemeral, into things neither here nor there. I’m fazed by the sound of old men sucking air through gaps in their teeth. I sniff the wispy smoke from under a just-unlidded beer bottle as if it is perfume. I love Parma ham shaved in opaque slivers. I linger in a cinema long after a film ends to ride out the vibe as long as I can. I enjoy arthouse films with their zen endings that hang in midair. I gaze into a lava lamp until I see flamingos and phantoms. I listen to indie folk and whimsical garage instead of hard rock. All
this renders me a moffie in his eyes. A free-verse fairy with a footloose soul.
He has a point. I still have zip on paper after two years of reading for my thesis on García Márquez at the University of Cape Town. I got lost in the dusty labyrinth of his Latin American mind. All the thoughts I placed on paper somehow became poems … and a play. Lost? This is beyond imagining for Zero. He never goes beyond the Cape Flats without a map in hand. He loves to unfold a road map and follow the N2 all the way to Durban with a finger. Then to laugh at my fumbling bid to origami the map along the original folds again. Ironic, for a man of such hazy ethics to be so focused on compass points in a land where booming shantytowns render maps old overnight.
I curse him for exiling me to survive all alone out in Hermanus: boondock harbour town south-east of Cape Town. Hermaanus. I hope you’ve never heard of it.
We go by a fire raging on a highway island. A wizardy old man shakes a fly whisk at the flames.
My amigos pity me. At dusk today they’ll all head down to the Cape Town harbour for sundowners. They’ll jabber their dreams of recording music and put forward their beer-foam theories on why Mandela’s rainbow dream fell out of focus in this land of antithesis. And where will I be? In Hermanus, other side of Hangklip, far from the jazzy verve of Cape Town.
– My father and my father’s father were fishermen in Kalk Bay, Zero intones. Jero, my boy, you come from a long line of fishermen.
He swivels his focus away from the Benz icon to glare unblinking eyes at me, to spook me out.
This is, I think, his bid to prove the futility and absurdity of my reading García Márquez.
– But Dad, this sea’s been fished dry and the fishermen are dying out. Besides, my other grandfather taught philosophy.
He taught in Vienna until 1937. Then he sailed for Cape Town. He was one of the few lucky Jews. Lucky to have eluded the Nazis then. Lucky too to have keeled over before his daughter fell for a Muslim.
Zero flicks my words out the wound-down window with his ducktailing hand.
– And he had to sell newspapers to put a roof over his head when he came out to Cape Town. Philosophy won’t put fish and a beer in your hands. I tell you flat, my boy, if you want to survive … you have to have something to trade.
That’s Zero’s Survival Tip #1.
He’ll hand you his hard-earned wisdom free of charge. One hand palm up (as if balancing the circle of the wheel) and the other with fingers down (tapping on his drum-taut gut), he may just remind you of Buddha calling on the earth to witness his moment of illumination.
* * * * * * * *
- Cruel Crazy Beautiful World is published by Jacana Media
Book details
» read article
by Sophy on Mar 13th, 2012
We are thrilled to be able to bring you an excerpt from Lolly Jackson: When Fantasy Becomes Reality, written by Sean Newman, Peter Piegl and Karyn Maughan and released by Jacana Media last month.
Lolly Jackson: When Fantasy Becomes Reality reveals the story behind the murder of the late Teazers founder and provides unique insights into his personal life and business affairs. Read an extract from Chapter 2, The King of Teaze, titled “Women, Wheels and Poker”:
* * * * * * * *
To the outside world, Lolly Jackson was the embodiment of the devil – a shady businessman who had questionable friends and who had been arrested on several occasions for alleged crimes ranging in severity from assault to human trafficking. To add fuel to this fire, Lolly offered no excuses for his life of excess. He glutted himself on fast cars and even faster women, and cared little for consequence or popular opinion. His megalomania sometimes offended the public and Lolly himself encouraged certain misconceptions as there were parts of himself that he was at pains to hide. Robyn Teixeira, who had worked closely with Lolly for many years, says he was simply misunderstood: ‘Lolly chose to be that way. He was a vulnerable man and he took everything to heart.’
Over time I learnt that Lolly Jackson was a complex being and it was this complexity that contributed to the downward spiral of his turbulent life. Lolly was driven, confrontational, and demanded loyalty and obedience. He was ultimately ruled by a cruel taskmaster – his ego – and it needed to be fed. Lolly had to be known – feared, respected or loathed; he cared little either way. To Lolly, anonymity was unacceptable.
The man known to South Africans as Lolly Jackson began his life on 24 September 1956 as Emmanuel Zachary. He was born in Elizabethville in the Belgian Congo to Greek parents, George and Soula. Soula ran a small general dealer store and George was the owner of a Texaco petrol station. In 1960, after weeks of violent riots which left hundreds dead, the country achieved independence and became known as Zaire. Violence continued, mobs ransacked businesses and the Zachary family decided to flee. George reinforced their 1950s Oldsmobile and they broke through the borderpost barricades and fled south to safety, eventually settling in Germiston, east of Johannesburg. In an effort to assimilate the family with their new community, George changed their surname to Jackson. It was Soula who renamed Emmanuel. On returning from three months basic training in the SANDF, a highly excited Soula began shouting that ‘Lolly’ was home (Lolly being a diminutive of Emmanuel) and this expression, much to her son’s chagrin, was echoed by a friend. From that moment on, Emmanuel Zachary was no more.
Around the time Lolly was 22, he met and started dating Vivian Starkey. After a year, Vivian fell pregnant. Driven by a code of responsibility inculcated by his parents, Lolly married Vivian in 1980. Their son George was born soon after but tragically, only four months later, the baby succumbed to cot death.
A distraught Lolly was beside himself and, with what later became his trademark explosive temper already in place, he started upending desks and furniture at work. Later, when grief replaced his anger, he was found sitting at the morgue, refusing to move until staff had to throw him out. Caught up in a personal hell, Lolly blamed Vivian for the tragedy. In the years that followed, the pain receded and two more children were born, Samantha and Manoli. Within six years, however, the marriage was in trouble and the couple divorced in 1986.
As I spent more time with Lolly, I witnessed his wariness of the fairer sex. I think it had a lot to do with his traditional Greek upbringing, where men are deemed superior to women. Lolly subscribed to this mindset, and I believe his wariness had more to do with Lolly feeling that women couldn’t do a man’s job, rather than pure distrust.
In 1990 Lolly met his second wife, Sharon Tracy Fensham, while she was working as a receptionist at Goldstein Attorneys in Germiston. He was a client of the firm and, ever the ladies’ man, he started flirting with Sharon the moment he saw her. Sharon’s boss, who knew Lolly well, encouraged her to accept his client’s invitations to dinner as he saw Lolly as extremely lonely and felt that the company would be good for him. They hit it off after the first date and their meetings became more regular. Lolly was working as a DJ at the time and enjoyed being the life of the party, but he was driven by ambition for greater things and he soon bought a brick and paving factory, making his first million in the years to follow.
Sharon moved in with Lolly five months after that first meeting. The couple were engaged a few times as ‘he kept buying me dud rings’, Sharon good-naturedly remembers. Lolly would boast that her rings were worth thousands, but she’d later find out that the ‘diamonds’ were in fact cubic zirconia.
Sharon recalls that they ‘had a really good relationship, but it was volatile. He was always playing around and flirting. His whole thing to me was he never had affairs and I had to catch him. I spent my life trying to catch him.’
Once married, Lolly and Sharon moved to 40 Kloof Road in Bedfordview. Lolly’s ego dictated that he had to live on this street in the affluent suburb, even though their home was quite dilapidated. It took a year to revamp, but Lolly’s determination paid off. ‘Lolly was passionate about everything he did,’ says Sharon. Unfortunately, the price of this passion was Lolly’s tempestuous mood swings. The slightest frustration would send him into a rage and he’d destroy anything he could lay his hands on, from cellphones and laptops to furniture.
‘Lolly was terrible at fixing things,’ Sharon recalls, bemused. ‘We didn’t even have a proper wall around the property and Lolly was trying to fit the TV into the wall unit. It didn’t have a hole in the back to put the wires through; he was trying to force the wires down the side instead. As I turned around, I saw our neighbours walking towards our house in order to introduce themselves. The next minute, the TV goes flying past me! Lolly kicked that unit to pieces.’
Despite the fact that their relationship appeared solid to the outside observer, the marriage came under severe strain because of Lolly’s flirtatious nature. He would openly tease women in front of Sharon, writing down girls’ telephone numbers on his wife’s cigarette boxes. Lolly explained this by saying that he was only trying to keep her interested. Sharon says, ‘It actually destroyed me in the end. I had to see a therapist after a while.’ It was also difficult for Lolly and Sharon to spend quality time together because of his rigorous work routine, which added to the demise of their relationship.
From the start of their marriage, Sharon had wanted to have a child with Lolly. He wasn’t keen as he was already father to Samantha and Manoli. His attitude changed when he suffered a major heart attack. As Sharon walked into the ward shortly after he had been admitted to hospital, she could see that her husband was terrified. He said he wanted to leave her ‘with something of me’, should anything go wrong in the future.
After falling pregnant with their son Julian, Sharon’s trust issues intensified. Just prior to their decision to have a baby, Lolly had opened up a business called the Gold Card Club which was, in effect, a brothel. Despite promising Sharon that he’d only have to go there to collect money, Lolly spent increasing amounts of time there. Sharon never felt comfortable with Lolly’s involvement in this business and soon the couple’s disagreements escalated to a point that became untenable for Sharon.
Another factor adding further pressure to their relationship was that Lolly was proving to be a poor father. With his old-school Greek notions of parenting, he had no interest in dealing with screaming kids – he liked the idea of being a father, but that was it. In his mind, children needed to be seen and not heard, and certainly not to be the cause of stress in his life. His role therefore became solely that of a provider – one he played perhaps too well. In a discussion about inheritance, Sharon mentions that as part of the divorce settlement Lolly had given Vivian a house. When questioning his generosity, friends had been told that it wasn’t for Vivian; it was for Samantha and Manoli. ‘If he hadn’t given everything to the kids, it would have gone to the SPCA,’ Sharon says. ‘Lolly didn’t trust women.’ Before his heart surgery, Lolly sat up in bed and rewrote his will while his wife looked on. He left the vast majority of his fortune to his children. He was at pains to make sure his children would be well taken care of. Sharon and Lolly were divorced in 1997.
Book details
eBook options – Download now!
Photo courtesy MSN Business
» read article
by Chiara on Mar 8th, 2012
The following is an excerpt from Steven Boykey Sidley’s recently published debut novel, Entanglement, a story about a man who is fast losing his sense of humour and certainty about the world around him. Entanglement, which has been praised by Rian Malan as “astonishing, masterfully controlled, an extraordinary debut novel”, will be launched this evening at Exclusive Books Hyde Park.
Read Chapter 28 in full:
* * * * * * * *
Jared has always been partial to bars, especially ones where he is more or less alone. He loves the feel of strangers gathering, keenly alert to the chance of some heightened experience, whether it be flirtation, laughter, sex, conversation, a fight, or even just the vicarious view of the crowd from a small table in the dark corner. Before he was married to Gwen, he sought out bars, the more unfamiliar the better. Not really for drinking, although he was never teetotal, but more for the unpredictability of possibilities. He sometimes made new friends, a few of which remain so to this day. Occasionally a chance meeting of eyes would end up turning carnal later in the evening, the anonymity fuelling the lust of the encounter. On other nights he sat alone with a beer, using the dark atmosphere and rumble of conversation to catalyse interesting thoughts about physics, which would not have happened at the loneliness of his desk. Being in a bar never depressed him, even when he remained alone, but going home often did.
On an academic trip to Los Angeles very early in his career, he found himself at a loose end one evening, and so took his rented car and headed out in the general direction of the Hollywood sign, which was about the only visible landmark from his downtown hotel. He ended up not getting there, because he decided to stop in at a Polynesian-themed bar along the way, attracted by the plastic coconuts, palm trees, luaus and gaudy neon sign saying, simply, ‘Tahiti’.
The bar was dark, wooden, smelling of Raymond Chandler and old cigarette smoke. It was about half full, with drinkers straddling the spectrum from pretty young trendies to sad and grey drunks, rheumy eyes down, hands fastened around nearly empty glasses, and who clearly had lifetime tickets to the lush life.
He ordered a beer, found a spot at the bar and watched. Small dramas and scenes were being played out throughout the bar – first dates, predatory hunters, bickering couples, girls’ night out, a few jocks getting loud, presided over by the grim and battered ancien regime dotted around the bar.
At some point during the evening, a pert and petite dark-skinned girl shouldered her way in next to him and flagged down the barman for a drink. She had a tattoo of Trotsky’s face on her shoulder.
He caught her eye. ‘Trotsky, huh? That’s unusual.’
‘Is it?’
Direct stare, strong voice.
‘I suppose. You a communist?’
‘Nah, not interested in politics.’
‘So why Trotsky?’
‘Someone told me he was iced in Mexico City. That’s where I was born. So it reminds me of home.’
‘Ah.’
‘Also, I like his goatee.’
‘Any other interesting tattoos?’
‘Yeah. Frieda Karlo on my left boob and Kurt Cobain just above my pussy.’
Jared kept his cool with great effort, because there was an instantaneous tightening in his trousers. ‘Why not Kurt on your boob and Frieda above your pussy?’
‘Because I am not a lesbo.’
‘Ah. Makes sense.’
‘You’re cute, gringo. What you do?’
‘I’m a physicist.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Er … I’m a scientist.’
‘Cool. But what do you do?’
‘I teach.’
‘Where?’
‘Long way away.’
She smiled for the first time. Her teeth were straight and white. ‘Hey professor. You alone?’
‘I guess.’
‘If you buy me a couple of drinks, maybe I let you see my tattoo.’
‘I can see it. It’s Trotsky.’
‘You can see the other ones. Maybe. If you’re still looking cute after a few drinks.’
And so he did. She drank straight Vodka. He drank beer. He asked questions, she answered. Her immigrant parents, withered and broken by lives of manual labour in the fields, her gang banger brother, in and out of jail. Her grandmother in Mexico, grieving for lost children. Her dreams to become a hairdresser, actress, singer, race car driver. Her truncated education. Her love of partying. She ordered more and then more. He did too.
‘OK, gringo, time for your show. Let’s go.’
He followed her outside and she swung around the building and into an alley. She opened her bag and pulled out a glass pipe.
‘You get high?’
‘Er, what is that?’
‘Rock.’
‘Thanks, I’m good.’
She lit it, inhaled deeply, eyes closed.
Then she lifted her skirt. She was not wearing panties.
‘Come in for a close look, on your knees is better.’
He did.
‘Much closer, professor, you gotta see the detail.’
He did.
She came in about 10 seconds. Another drag on her glass pipe.
‘You’re OK, gringo. I gotta go.’
‘I like your tattoos.’
‘Thanks, maybe one day you teach me science, OK?’
Jared is partial to bars. Always has been.
* * * * * * * *
Book details
» read article
Download this eBook at LittleWhiteBakkie.com
Download this eBook at LittleWhiteBakkie.com
Apr
