David Beresford
ANOTHER COUNTRY
The image which comes to mind is of Ulysses binding himself to the mast of his ship so that he could hear the song of the sirens without being trapped forever in the land of the lotus eaters. Here I am, trapped on the shore watching him sail on by, trapped in a picture postcard eternity – the sun shining ever gloriously over the Atlantic seaboard, the clouds drifting dreamily over Table Mountain, the lonely cry of the ships as the fog edges ashore …
Our latest attempt to escape Cape Town, for what Ulysses might have considered the real world of Johannesburg, came just a few kilometres up the N1 last Thursday when the needle on the car’s dashboard surged, signaling the engine was, once again, labouring under the misapprehension it was a kettle. We resignedly turned back and – our ever- optimistic mechanic having taken his enthusiasms and our money elsewhere for the long weekend – began the hunt for a couple of friendly sofas upon which we could take up Easter residence.
By a stroke of luck we stumbled across a holiday cancellation and landed up in a Clifton bungalow. It is there – gazing across Second Beach at the artist’s palate that is an Atlantic sunset in these parts – that I am visited by a fit of angst and the fantasy, that at any moment a ship will sail (stage left) across my horizon, Ulysses writhing at the mast-head as a chorus of Baywatch sirens on the sands below me sing of the delights he is missing ashore.
“But what does one do around here for a sense of purpose?” I demand of Henrietta Dax, whose reputation for purposefulness has soared since The New York Times hailed her as the Marco Polo of African book dealers. She responds by digging out the latest copy of The Atlantic Sun and presents me with the letters page.
The Sun, it transpires, is a journal seemingly much favoured by the sunny- side-uppers – those whose homes luxuriate on the Atlantic side of the Peninsula – and its correspondence columns have apparently been full recently, with heated debate over the meaning and significance of some paint splashes on roads around the mother city. I had never noticed these Hansel and Gretel- like paint trails, despite having driven over them on numerous occasions, and if my attention had been caught I would have blamed them on one or two careless contractors driving around with leaky paint pails.
Not so, thunder the experts, giving vent to their indignation in The Atlantic Sun pages. The newspaper’s correspondents offer two theories.
One is a conspiracy theory articulated by J Abrahams of Sea Point who discloses that, several years ago, the leader of the Satanic Church of America, Anton LeVay, “proclaimed bloodshed over the city from the top of Table Mountain”. This uncharitable act had been given further impetus, he said, by the recent Parliament of World Religions in Cape Town, which drew “many Satanists” to the mother city.
Daniel Stroh, also of Sea Point, excitedly backed this view, declaring that “their aim is obviously to curse our roads, bringing confusion, disaster and bloodshed” and confiding that “we” have been hard at work, praying over these “curse lines” to break their power. “We have been given the authority to do so,” he adds, somewhat mysteriously.
The other explanation for the paint splashes is what I would describe as a “cotton reels” theory and is offered by “Conidaris Winberg & Greshoff Architects”. This, no doubt distinguished partnership announced that the markings pose a “crisis of extreme urgency”. Listing some of the roads marked by splashes they say: “We speculate that the packing of paint products has recently changed as this phenomenon was not previously noticeable. We believe that a pollution crisis has developed which has a negative effect from both a visual point of view, but has equally serious implications from a road safety point of view.”
Conidaris Winberg etc trumpets huffily: “Letters referring to the issue have been sent to the city engineer by ourselves on two occasions and we are still awaiting a reply.”
I classify the architects’ contribution to the debate as a “cotton reels” theory, because of a repetitive nightmare I used to suffer in my youth, in which I was endlessly pursued through a featureless, grey landscape by three giant cotton reels which shuffled after me in a ponderous, but lethal sort of a way. This troubled me until I decided it was a message from my genes, a tip-off by a well-meaning ancestral spirit, or a coded communication from an active service unit of an unidentified liberation army fighting the oppressive rule of the cosmic jester. Whatever its origin, I took it to be a stern, but well- intentioned warning against the frame of mind which, when faced with the wonderful mystery of paint splashes, proceeds on the assumption it arises from “the packing of paint products”.
Years ago in Amsterdam, I visited an exhibition of modern art, determinedly puzzling my way through a series of exhibits before I came to one which stunned me. It was constructed out of nothing more than chairs, but clearly with a master’s hand – a symphonic edifice of chrome and leather patterns. I believe it was at that moment that I came to some understanding of art, as I paged hurriedly but in vain through the catalogue for the creator of this wondrous construction and then gazed in bewilderment as a cleaning lady dismantled it. You see, the paint splashes …
Sorry, but I must get to the airport. I do not know whether the gorgeous hostesses who service one’s every whim and fancy aboard the Cape Town flights to Johannesburg will have heard of Ulysses. But perhaps I can persuade one of them to add a few padlocks to my safety belt.