The new book by Pamela Jooste, prize- winning author of Dance with a Poor Man’s Daughter, is out Shirley Kossick Like Water in Wild Places (Doubleday) is Pamela Jooste’s third novel, following the prize-winning Dance with a Poor Man’s Daughter (1998) and Frieda and Min (1999). Like Water in Wild Places tells the story of Conrad Hartmann, a young man deeply influenced by Bushman mythology. Hartmann Senior is harsh and reactionary, determined to “make a man” of Conrad, and cruel to his despised wife and daughter. The action spans Conrad’s formative years to his conscription and experience of border warfare, with echoes of the Boer War. We also encounter members of the “dirty tricks” department and Conrad’s beloved sister Beeky’s tragic involvement with student activism. I asked the author about the various elements in her new novel.
You use a lot of Bushman mythology in Like Water in Wild Places. Could you discuss how you came upon this and why you think it is important to the book? In Kimberley, at the William Humphreys Art Gallery, I stumbled upon a treasure trove of Bushman stories which intrigued me. I was interested in discovering how harmoniously the San [the Bushmen] lived with this harsh continent, and I couldn’t help but compare it with the way people are living here currently. How is this pertinent to Conrad, the one most influenced by Bushman myth? I think that Conrad, throughout the book, is trying to find a way of life, to find harmony. He comes from a very discordant family and he has a lot of pressures. As a younger man he had the opportunity of knowing a Bushman tracker who had some influence on his life. He has been shown a path to harmony. So it is the influence of the Bushman tracker that is his redemption: his coming to terms with the continent and himself.
Conflict of various sorts plays a very important role in your novel. Why did you include the Boer War? Introducing the Boer War was not my original intention, but my editors in London said I had to put in some reference to give [overseas readers] a touchstone about Afrikaner history. So I introduced some background on the Boer War realising that it worked for me: it was another kind of warfare in a different period. I go on to discuss Conrad’s experiences in the border war, but it was hugely challenging to try and condense a history of the Boer War to give some background. You seemed to know a great deal of what went on in the border war and how the men reacted. How did you find that out? I found somebody who had been in that situation and I actually used his story, which he was generous enough to share with me. He had a university degree so he didn’t go in as a schoolboy and also he had a BSc degree so he could tell me about the plants and the animals around him. There are some harrowing things in the book, but perhaps you would like to say something about the more loving relationships?
Conrad’s relationship with his mother is very warm and loving. She is a softening influence in his life, and indeed, in the worst periods during the conflict he thinks about his mother and about the happy times in his childhood. Conrad also has a very warm and protective relationship with his sister. The father is an irredeemably horrible man, I’m sorry to say. I couldn’t think of anything bad enough to do to punish him so I gave him a new “madam”. Yes, she is an objectionable woman, but interesting because there is a lot of humour in that section and also in the section describing Jerome’s mother, who is an equally horrific woman, but in a different way. Jerome’s mother is doing a very good job of turning a blind eye to what is going on around her. She just happens to have produced this rather dangerous, awful son, but she does a typical mother thing -she only finds good in him. In the strange relationship the two women are locked into, they are actually a comfort to one another – they are almost like a chorus in the background.
Yes, they are complementary. You talk about your characters as if they are people that you’d met, rather than people that you had invented.
But in a sense they are. They take on such life and do things that I don’t want them to do. They take on a will of their own. I was quite pleased with Conrad’s uncle, Oom Faan. When Conrad is a boy in distress he can’t comfort him, because something in his code says he can’t touch him. But when he is an older man, he too has trodden this path and he is actually able to physically reach out and touch this young man. Not all my male characters are irredeemably horrible.
No, certainly not. Conrad is a very sensitive and likeable person. He has an awful struggle to find redemption, but he does find a way. My editor suggested I give him a romance? I said I wouldn’t. Because he didn’t want a romance. It isn’t a book about romance. I don’t know what happened to Conrad at the end of the book and I hope he lived happily ever after. There are several very important themes in your book, but I think the most important is the theme of betrayal. Perhaps you would like to talk about that? It is very interesting because I never thought about it like that until you suggested it to me. Then I realised, of course, the major betrayal is the betrayal by a father of his son, and it really represents the betrayal by the older generation of the younger generation. When I thought about that I realised I had entered this Chris Louw debate. He speaks about the anger of the young Afrikaner but it wasn’t just Afrikaans boys who were involved. The father represents exactly that. The paternal authoritarian figure who entices the boy further in, saying, “If you’re going into the army, this is the right thing to do,” but he himself does not have to face any of those horrors. He wants to enjoy continued power, he wants all the spoils of war and the boy has to pay the emotional price. That’s a terrible betrayal by a father of his son. The title Like Water in Wild Places remeind one of Like Water for Chocolate, the novel by Laura Esquivel. Why did you choose that title specifically? Of course, Like Water for Chocolate is something that would spring to mind, but I didn’t choose that title – my agent did. It is a quote from the end of the book in which Conrad refers to the sound of water which, of course, in an arid landscape is a most precious commodity. He regarded the sound of dripping water as being as beautiful as playing on one of those thumb pianos – that was “like water in wild places”.