Out of the Wreckage

Allan Kolski Horwitz

Description

This collection of 47 parables and “flash fictions” can be described as follows: The dream-like; the waking fantasy; the reverie; the parable that instructs; the story that informs; the story that provokes the underbelly of consciousness; the story that becomes a slip of the mind; the story that registers alarm; the story that registers ease; the dream that illuminates the waking eye; the dream that gives voice to the silenced tongue; the dream that brings shivers; the dream that brings orgasm; the parable that offers a path out of the dark confusion of crisis; the dream that is light as a laugh; the dream that saves the dreamer.

Sujets

• Littérature Africaine
• Littérature Africaine

Informations

• Publié par: Botsotso Publishing
• Date de parution: 29 décembre 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781990922107
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

OUT OF THE WRECKAGE

Allan Kolski Horwitz

Dream Parables

Botsotso Publishing

Published in 2008 by Botsotso Publishing Box 30952, Braamfontein, 2017 Email:[e-mail] Website:www.botsoso.org.za

©in the text:Allan Kolski Horwitz

ISBN 978-0-9814068-2-4

We Would like to Thank the National Lottery Development Trust Fund for its support.

Acknowledgements Some of these stories have been previously published in the following anthologies, magazines and websites: Botsotso Manuscript Exhibition 1, Green Dragon, In the Rapids, Litnet, Mad Hatter’s Review, New Contrast, Ons Klyntji, Unity in Flight, Viva Life,Viva Love.

Cover and text design Katherine Finlay

The President / 7

Discover / 13

CONTENTS

A Faraway Shopping Mall / 17

The Dog / 2

1

Red Beard / 2

3

The Tap Plant / 2

Brown Baby / 3

Gerhard / 3

5

1

7

She was Taken Captive / 3

9

Mystery in the Cottage / 4

The Feast / 4

5

The Camp / 4

7

She is Alone / 5

Blue / 5

5

1

All against All / 5

Excursion / 63

Escalator / 6

5

9

Out of the Wreckage / 6

She Whom I Love / 6

The Sick Man / 73

9

7

1

Journey to and beyond the Border / 77

War Time / 81

Black Coat / 87

Torment and Pleasure / 9

Ashford / 9

3

Unloaded Rubbish / 9

9

1

Accidents / 101

The Festival / 105

In the Courtyard of the Zealots / 109

Four Seasons / 113

It was Raining / 117

The Edifice / 119

The Doll / 121

Second Chance / 125

The Beauty of Intelligence / 129

Investment / 135

Two Worlds / 141

Know/Yes / 143

Hurry / 147

The Intersection / 149

The Sleeping Man / 153

Plato’s Coach / 155

Trains, Buildings, BIRDS and Pigs / 159

Determined Love / 161

The Defiled Sanctuary / 165

White Magic / 167

Ahead / 169

Sometimes the veil fades slowly Sometimes the veil slips Sometimes the veil is ripped in one motion

A wave forms swells reaches its high point then breaking is followed by a lull -a windy or calm surface

Slowly the new tide rises

A young man catches a fish a small fish He laughs excitedly throws it back into the ocean -it is too small to eat or tosses it into a can to be used as bait

He still dreams of a big fish

Sometimes the veil yields to another veil Sometimes the veil itself decides to unveil Sometimes we cannot believe the veil is a veil

Sometimes the veil is so beautiful we insist on it

THE PRESIDENT

fter many years of unchallenged power, the President - A intermittently, haltingly, often incoherently - begins to question himself; begins to examine his tribe’s relationship with other tribes in their country. Particularly the ones who had opposed him at the start of his rule; the ones who had resisted his coup and organized demonstrations in the capital, and when their protests had failed to persuade him to respect the election results, had caused diplomatic petitions to be circulated all over the continent, and forced the United Nations to pass resolutions of censure. But he had stood firm, called their bluff. And when these resolutions were shown to be ineffectual (they had not moved him to renounce his illegal action in favour of the elected candidate who was from another tribe, nor motivated him to hold fresh ‘free and fair’ elections), these other tribes had taken up arms and challenged his army. And though their rebellion had been well supported, so much so that the country was effectively partitioned, he had not shrunk from pacifying them, leading to months of all out war when nothing seemed to work except the methods that in his youth he had attacked the old imperial powers and the corrupt military juntas of other countries for using . . . But now, thirty years down the line, all those ancient doings should have been entirely washed under his belt, and under the splendid new bridge built over the brown river on whose banks the old colo- nial city had been hacked out of the jungle (the stylish and impos- ing bridge designed by a new generation of engineers from the old empire which had been - as was to have been expected - named after him by the Party). For now, of course, the President is absolutely en- trenched and opposition to his rule is a figment of memory, a fiction.

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And the President, like all his subjects, cannot truly recall that time so that these reflections (on the manner of his having come to power and the resultant abuses) occur in a disorganized, rambling manner, generally when he is alone, often in the early hours when indigestion has forced him awake, or his wife (or the mistress he has chosen for that night) has unknowingly rolled onto him, breaking his sleep. Ah, sleep, always precarious . . . How can presidents easily close their eyes and slip into dreams? So it is that these thoughts of his corruption gnaw away at him in a desultory and fanciful way given the great odds against remembering, given the obstinate and obtuse historical haze. Then one afternoon, while a servant is wheeling in a trolley with delicacies, and he, in his capacity as governor of the Central Bank, is about to sign a report on the economic prospects for the coming quarter (a report prepared by a foreign expert on behalf of a multi- national corporation interested in ‘developing’ various mineral re- sources), rationalizations and denial can no longer sustain him. He admits to himself that for thirty years he and his tribe have exploited the defeated, seized their land, displaced them from the civil service, shut them out of schools and universities and forced them into the most menial, low paying jobs. And from this day, though the President sits at his desk appear- ing affable and collected, he is possessed by guilt and remorse. How could he have betrayed the ideals of his youth, the very motives that had pushed him into political struggle: the vision of justice? And the inner conflict causes him to gradually lose composure, so that his control of the country wavers, as does his ability to tolerate those around him. For each day he has to witness (and stomach) the arro- gance and duplicity of his fellow tribal politicians, generals, govern- ment officials and businessmen; all of them, none less than himself, having handsomely benefited by wielding the levers of patronage. He has to sit in meetings and banquets, receptions and other ceremonies, laughing and conniving with them. And then, once the nerve-wrack- ing day is over, he has to face the night. Every night he dreams he is in a hospital. And there in that hos- pital he ministers to the downtrodden and diseased of the most op-

THE PRESIDENT

pressed tribe. He washes and cleans their sick and destitute, empties their bedpans, patiently feeds them when they are too weak to do so themselves, sings lullabies to comfort their dying children. Night after night he makes amends for his past crimes and those of his tribe. But every morning, instead of waking refreshed and purified by these acts of piety and contrition, he feels more unsettled. And sitting up in his capacious bed, still warm and languid, sated on the voluptuous woman beside him, blinking in the well tempered light of his luxuri- ous bedroom, he struggles to admit that the reason for his discomfort is seemingly trivial, and yet so humiliating. For every night the dream ends with the same climax: In the bed at the end of the ward, near the door that leads out onto a scummy red concrete stoep, lies an old woman who refuses to allow him to touch her. He wants to serve her, to wash and perfume her, but every night she spurns him. And her scream, warning him to stay away, shocks him awake; a jagged scream impregnated with insult that he can no longer bear so that he fears falling asleep. Revolted by the behaviour of his tribespeople, wracked at night by the dying woman’s rejection, the President sinks into depression. He becomes obsessed with his country’s suffering: the disintegrating hospitals and schools, the potted roads and dilapidated buildings, the starving children in the urban slums. But he knows that to carry out the necessary changes will necessitate a dramatic upheaval - his past cronies will think him insane, and mock him. And should he have the audacity to challenge them, and hold them to account, they will rise up against him with the backing of the generals, one of whose number will be appointed the new leader once he is either killed or driven into exile. Months pass, each more disturbing. But, finally, the President calls a special sitting of parliament (despite ‘one party’ rule the institution enjoys a certain status and is partially successfully in creating the illusion of democracy), and instructs the state media to report that an important proclamation is to be made. On the appointed day he arrives with the usual cavalcades and military parades. And once the assembled functionaries have eased back into their seats, he informs them of his annulment of all discriminatory and oppressive legisla-

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