Читать книгу Lansdowne dearest - Bronwyn Davids - Страница 5

IF YOU SEE the past in terms of numbers, it becomes a lot easier to understand.

In the present, there is one singular I. Before that there were two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents, and so on. The story that follows is minute in scale to the stories that could have been told of this ray of ancestry reaching back, right out and far away from Africa.

Please note that some dates used in the first chapter are estimates, like the exact date Great-grandpa Joe bought the family property, and when and where my uncles were born. Also, to avoid confusion, I have called my parents by their names, Mavie and Ivan, and so too the two aunts we lived with.

The titles of the opening and closing chapters are taken from The Confiteor, a prayer said at the start of the Catholic mass. These lines are from the start of the prayer: ‘I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters … that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do.’