By Antony Osler
I am lying in the ward of a private hospital. It is a week after the South African national elections. The ruling ANC has lost its majority and are deciding whom to befriend in order to stay in power; one obvious ally being the official opposition, the white-led Democratic Alliance. I put on my free earphones and tune into a talk show on the national English-language radio.
The callers are all furious. And black. From every corner a barrage of insults – white racist capitalists, apartheid reactionaries, greedy homeland whitecoats, pseudo-revolutionaries … spitting on the graves of ancestors, tyranny of national disunity, coalitions of the devil . There is blood on every wall. Everyone some kind of traitor. I am jarred and upset, fatally infected by the name-calling.
It is the emotions that drown me. The suffocating anger. I listen in vain for something else, for debate or discussion, for some sense of opportunity or possibility. Surely there is a different way of meeting this moment? Am I too white to understand? And speaking of whites, where are they? Do they not listen to the radio anymore? Are they too scared, too comfortable? I am white and I don’t call in either; I wince and duck. I am searching for rainbows, for vision; don’t get it. I turn off the radio and take off my earphones.
Around me the white men are complaining too; corrupt government, economic doom, cold coffee, lazy nurses. Salvation by braaivleis and Jesus. The word ‘black’ is absent and everywhere. The suffocating agreement. Again I am drowning. Again I am too cowardly to speak. Has the whole world gone mad? As my friend Kobus Moolman writes;
I want to drive out far
on a dirt road into the hills,
then turn around
and hurl myself at the moon.
But I put on my fluffy slippers and shuffle off in my back-to-front gown, as absurd and exposed as my hairy buttocks. Real blood oozing from real wounds, what a relief.
* * *
Then, by accident, I walk into the children’s ward. A little girl with big eyes asks me why I have a bandaged hand. ‘I got my wave fixed,’ I say. I lift my hand and wave at her. She waves back. ‘And what are you doing here?’ I ask her. She shrugs her tiny shoulders, tells me that today she is going home and granny is waiting for her. A little pink backpack stands neatly beside the bed. ‘Granny will be very happy to see you,’ I say. She tells me granny is her cat – Granny. The small girl with the granny cat and the absurd man wave at each other.
I walk out healed; humming, waving at nurses as I go. Fixed my wave, I tell them. They don’t see me. No problem. Back into the ward. ‘You all still moaning?’ I say, and tell them about my visit to the little girl. They begin to tell stories about their children and grandchildren. A quiet man in the corner clears his throat; ‘I was much too far out all my life, not waving but drowning,’ Stevie Smith 1957; I was an English teacher,’ he says.
Sometimes, whoever we are, we just need to shout and complain and that’s the truth of it. If there are opportunities for a wider life, they will come out of that. What does it help to add emotion to emotion, to look for rainbows out of season? As a convicted Polyanna, I keep on looking for freedom from reality instead of inside it – stupid, stupid. And thank you, little girl.
* * *
Poster for the original production of La Bohème, 1896, by Adolf Hohenstein. Image: Wikimedia Commons.
I get back into bed and put on my earphones. I still don’t have the courage to listen to the English talk show, so I turn the dial and find opera instead. I hate opera. But not today. Today I am crying. The voice of the counter-tenor fills every corner of this universe. On the other side of drowning, on the other side of waving – freedom inside Puccini. It is beautiful.
* * *
FEATURED IMAGE: The opera composer Giacomo Puccini (22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924).