Читать книгу The Shallows - Ingrid Winterbach - Страница 11

The trees are being stripped of their leaves. Every day it gets light a little later. In the mornings I have my tea in bed and look at the mountains. My gaze, I see in the mirror, is laconic. My spirit is refractory and troubled. The negotiations with Professor Marcus Olivier – professor emeritus in history – are not making headway. He is the father of the Olivier brothers, twins, on whom I’m writing the monograph. That such a father could beget such sons! I want to talk to him, though I’m still not sure what I’m hoping to learn from him. The more obstacles he places in my way, the more determined I am to gain access to him. I don’t negotiate directly with him – all communications (telephonic or by email) are channelled through his secretary-cum-housekeeper. I have no idea what she looks like, but I picture a curtly competent woman, dressed in a uniform, with sensible leather shoes with thick rubber soles.

On cards I enter everything relating to the brothers and their work. Biographical information (the father, the absent mother, their youth in South Africa), their training (undergraduate as well as postgraduate), puppetry, literary influences (Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, etc.), surrealism (a vital component of their work), music, the technique of stop-action filming (their technique of choice and a field in which they are regarded as modern masters), the critical reception of their work (a lot has been written about them). Meanwhile I’m negotiating with the secretary-housekeeper. I intend to persist until I manage to secure an interview with the old father.

The town is pretty, but also repugnant.

I avoid people. This is a time of isolation. In the foreground: the mountains and I and the brothers. At times there is a zooming in the air. The mountains vibrate. In the background: the absent but urgent presence of the pig-headed old father and his sidekick-cum-housekeeper. Sometimes I meet up with you in town. Always we talk about him, because his death is still fresh in our minds. At times it’s better, at times it’s worse, you say, but the emptiness remains.

When I’m not occupied with the cards, I follow links on the internet. I read that Philip Roth says in an interview that he’s done with writing. He’s devoted the largest and best part of his life to the novel, but now he no longer feels the compulsion. There’s a photo of him: he looks like a disillusioned old man, but his gaze remains piercing. Done, presumably, with characters like Mickey Sabbath: panty-sniffing, outrageous Sabbath, singing a paean to the clitoris, masturbating on the grave of his lover with the short legs (or am I confusing her with another character – Winnie Verloc, perhaps, in The Secret Agent? Winnie, for whom life did not bear much looking into).

Then, one fine day, the secretary, a Miss De Jongh, phones. Professor Olivier is prepared to grant me an interview. But the interview is subject to strict conditions. It can’t be longer than half an hour, perhaps even shorter if the professor finds that it exhausts him too much. I will have to submit my questions in advance for the professor’s approval.

We make an appointment for the end of the week, at four o’clock in the afternoon.