Читать книгу English for Life Grade 12 Learner’s Book Home Language - Lynne Southey - Страница 9

by Lionel Abrahams (1928-2004)

A strange elation overtook Felix a few minutes after he had bumped into Willem Prinsloo one day in town. Over the years, chance meetings with other former fellow-inmates of the Home had usually rather depressed him, reminding him too keenly of how disliked he had felt there (‘unpopular’ was the word used then), how often displaced and endangered. Yet Willem Prinsloo was the bully he had particularly hated and feared, while most of the other boys in the senior section for children over fourteen had shared his feelings, had been his allies against the tyrant.

His throat contracted when he recognised the robust man limping toward him across Harrison Street with a young woman on his arm. He had often toyed with fantasies of facing Willem in the grown-up world, but now that it was really about to happen he did not know what to expect. He was trembling a little as he spoke the first words of greeting.

‘Willem … Hullo. How goes it?’

‘No, it’s okay with me, thanks. And you?’

The perfectly civil answer amounted to a reprieve, and not now needing to escape, Felix dared, ‘And what are you doing nowadays?’

‘Oh, diamond cutting, you know …’ There was no sarcasm, though Felix ought to have remembered, that being the trade many of the boys became apprenticed to. Then, unprompted, Willem added, ‘This is my wife.’

And so, with a minute of cool politeness while they waited for a robot’s permission to move on, the encounter passed and they walked away from each other. Perhaps it was simply relief that accounted for the elation that now swept Felix up. There had been, on Willem’s part, none of the old harshness or rudeness or menace, and no sign of recrimination – and this softening might have had to do with his wife’s presence, the public place, or some ten years of forgetting. But on his own part, Felix was surprised to discover a complete freedom from bitterness. So there was more to his little euphoria than just relief. That decade-old toxic element in his memories of Willem seemed suddenly to have been neutralised. He allowed himself a fanciful regret that he had not invited the pair to join him for coffee in a nearby tea-room, so that once more after so long he and Willem might partake at the same table. How different it would have seemed, how delicious the contrast with those many meals at the long tables when all he wished from Willem was not to be noticed by him.

Why had he been so daunted? It must have been some particular degree of unripeness in his adolescent outlook that had induced him to hug his fear and caricature Willem into a monster. Reflecting now on the face he had just re-encountered, Felix found no quality there, after all, that necessarily bespoke brutality and arrogance. Those quick-moving eyes under the brow that so readily rumpled in heavy frowns, need not seem fierce or suspicious. He recalled noticing just such features on someone he knew only as mild and tractable.

And Willem’s gestures and habits also appeared in a new light. Even the way, with his grin or laugh, his tongue-tip would protrude, pressed against his lower lip as though to restrain his eagerness, keeping the curve wet and hungry-looking, had lost its malign aspect. Felix had recognised that old habit, when it had reappeared while they chatted, with something like a secret greeting for himself.

But he could remember how in the old days when Willem Prinsloo laughed, when his tongue-tip showed and his bull voice leaped up the scale into a shrieking giggle, smaller boys would melt with terror. It made Felix smile. What queer exaggerations had stifled their reason and moused their courage. How grossly their lack of perspective had distorted reality.

In the hierarchy of physical strength that framed the society of thirty or forty boys at the Home, Willem Prinsloo’s place was at the summit. Felix’s was usually near the bottom. The only boys on whom he could impose his will were bed-patients – like Nemus Marais who was paralysed from his chest down and who died during his second winter there. He was a thoughtful, older boy with gentle manners whom Felix liked to chat with and play at chess, drafts or Chinese checkers. Yet from time to time he could not resist teasing Nemus for a little, pretending to try to push a cake of soap into his mouth, amused by his helpless giggles and breathless protests as they came by turns.

But Willem Prinsloo, with his cabinet of strong henchmen, ruled the whole community. And regarding him from his station in the system Felix was bound to perceive him wrongly. He figured as a simple, all-powerful instrument of motiveless cruelty, at once despicable and fearful. Felix would freeze in a stupor of dismay as Willem appeared and strode toward him, bawling one of the contemptuous nicknames he favoured – ‘Joodjie … Pigmeat … Proffessorr…!’

What followed was often a treacherous game. Taking his subject gently into the strong circle of his thick arm Willem would adopt an almost fatherly tone, murmuring, ‘Come on , come, Joodjie, it’s about time I got you a bit tough. Let’s teach you how to take it, eh …’ Then he would begin, flicking Felix’s ears with his fingernails, perhaps, grappling knee muscles with timber-hard hands, punching biceps, blowing illicit cigarette smoke into his face. There was always the chance that his mood would push him across a certain boundary, and he would bring the burning end of his cigarette closer and closer to blistering point, until enough terror showed. Once he rubbed with a moistened thumb at a spot on Felix’s hand until the skin broke and was left to leak and fester …

‘I’m only playing with him,’ he invariably explained if any of the staff happened on the scene of his game.

With his new perspective, Felix judged that he would feel quite differently about such things if he had to undergo them again, far less negatively. After all, the bully only rarely inflicted a real injury. The way things appeared now, if Willem puffed smoke at him, the knowledge that cigarettes were strictly forbidden to the boys would add to his sense of grazing up against Life as he choked and struggled to turn his face away, a touch of admiration, a tickle of mirth at Willem’s bravado. And he played with the thought that the other ex-inmates of the Home, similarly broadened by experiences of life away from that protected hilltop, ought also to see the remembered Willem cloaked in this benign nimbus of revised appreciation. When, with the benefit of maturity and detachment, they recalled the things he had done to them, they ought to chuckle nostalgically, or even feel grateful.

There was, for instance, the tall big-boned fellow whom Willem once dealt a black eye. Granted some perspective, that boy might find the memory more than a little amusing – especially recalling that the bruises round his eye were outlasted by the days that Willem’s sprained hand first had had to be wrapped in sticking plaster – and laugh out loud while rocking on his callipered legs and crutches.

And the feelings of the dwarfish boy whom Willem had swung round in the air while holding him by the ankles should be, whenever he looked back on the incident, a surge of gratitude for a unique experience. Counting up the number of times his head touched the floor as he whirled round and round through that switchback circle, his gratitude should grow in proportion to Willem’s ingenuity and determination and strength. And so through the ranks of all who had lived in fear of the top dog’s whims. All would be able to recall his ‘punishments’ and ‘lessons’ in a light-hearted, positive spirit, instead of with the bitterness of victims. Ripeness had surely endowed them with the same genial balance that Felix now felt he enjoyed.

In those days, however, his outlook had been as distorted and narrow as any. It was as though, somehow, he had remained fixed for months and years in the after-effects of his first fright from Willem. As a new boy, he’d been jerked awake one night by the suffocating pressure of a heavy hand clapped over his nose and mouth while the dark simmered with giggling. While he kicked and squirmed, Willem muttered in his ear, as though giving some kindly advice, ‘Suffocation … You shouldn’t of told anybody this is what you scared of.’

He had led a gang of pyjamaed raiders from upstairs to give the smaller boys’ dormitory a little skrik, just for fun, just to remind everyone who was boss. But the shock had left Felix unnerved and bitter. In the shallow soil of his inexperience he had, after that, rooted an unrealistic tree of heroic righteousness. He conscientiously hated Willem with the abhorrence of a Round Table knight for villainy. He cherished dreams of revenge; and meanwhile, whenever it seemed possible to do so, he regarded it as an honour to foil the bully.

That was why, when he had seen him swinging that pigeon-chested boy by his ankles and heard the thump that came each time his skull bounced on the floor, he had burst noisily into tears and created so much surprise – and perhaps it had never before happened that one boy cried because of something that was being done to another – that Willem had stopped what he was doing and turned to growl, ‘What the blerry hell’s the matter with you …? Shut your bek or I’ll donner you,’ before stomping out the common-room.

And then there was Basil the Catholic boy with the good singing voice who slept in the bed next to Felix’s in the downstairs dormitory. When Willem had wanted to push Basil in his wheel-chair around the building to the quiet, hidden part of the lawn, and then to undo the hank of rope he always had hanging from his Scout belt and fold it into a thick lash, and then to have one of his henchmen take Basil out of the wheelchair and place him on all fours on the grass, and then to … When Willem announced that intention to his justice committee, Felix found that he had to intervene. He came out with, ‘No, Willem, don’t give him lashes. He’s weak, and you might damage him seriously.’

‘What the hell you talking about? You shut up. He’s got to be punished.’

‘Yes, sure. But Willem, listen, I know what … Just let us tell him that on Wednesday after supper you are going to take him there and do that …’

‘What you mean?’ Willem demanded. ‘He’s got to have his punishment. There’s got to be no stealing from lockers.’

Yes I know. But he will be punished.’ And then Felix explained how they would let Basil wait three days in suspense, and how at the end of that time, on Wednesday after supper, they would have him wheeled out to that hidden part of the lawn as though that were the time for it, and how only then Willem would tell him that he had been punished enough.

‘That won’t teach him not to steal.’

‘Oh yes, it will,’ Felix pointed out. ‘It will be even worse than the other.’

Willem looked at him suspiciously. ‘But listen here,’ he growled, ‘I’ll break your blerry neck if you tell him we not really going to punish him. Hoor jy?’ Then he told someone to go and fetch Basil into his presence.

The reason for Felix’s sudden promotion to Willem’s counsels was that it was his locker that had been robbed. It was his purse with his one-and tenpence in it that had disappeared. He had hunted for it and told the boys of his dormitory. The word had got to Willem, their policeman, judge and executioner, and he had summoned all the boys into the common room and commanded them to own up, and in the usual way had been met with a sheepish silence. Then he had ordered a search of all downstairs lockers. It was fruitless, but afterwards the purse had been found under Basil’s mattress.

The recovery of the purse satisfied Felix, but of course it also meant the finding of a culprit, and that demanded Willem’s judicial attention. ‘There’s got to be no stealing from lockers,’ he proclaimed. ‘Anyone who steals form lockers has got to be severely punished.’

Basil, the dormitory’s songbird, omitted his usual ritual of singing softly to his roommates after lights-out that night. In fact he remained very quiet during the whole of those three days leading to Wednesday evening. He sat drooping in his wheelchair, bothering to drive himself only when and where he was compelled to. His eyes avoided every face, and his answers to anyone who addressed him were short and absent.

When Felix saw that no one else was nearby he came close and said, ‘Listen, Basil, don’t be anxious about what is going to happen on Wednesday. Believe me, you don’t have to worry about it. I …’ Basil gave a start, thrust out his trembling lower lip, glared for a moment, then turned his head aside, without answering a word, and began to propel himself away. It was the same the other two or three times that Felix tried to pass him a hint about the real state of affairs. ‘Look, about old Willem and Wednesday after supper, you don’t have to …’ But each time a surge of blind fear and anger made it impossible for Basil to take in the comforting news.

On Wednesday at sunset when he was wheeled round the building to the hidden part of the lawn his face was very pale. And it became even paler when Willem said to him, ‘Nou ja, boykie, you in for your punishment now,’ and lifted him out of his wheelchair and set him down on all fours on the grass, then ordered a hanger-on to hold Basil steady while he got ready. He undid the hank of cord on his belt, folded it to the right length for the lash, and tested it noisily two or three times on his hand. But Basil’s features retained that greenish shade even after he had been lifted back into his wheelchair and Willem had announced to him that he had been punished enough, and explained, ‘But, hoor jy, Basiltjie, next time you won’t get off like this if I ever hear you been stealing again. I know you always praying, but that’s not gonna help you. There’s got to be no stealing from lockers.’

While he was giving each of the little justice committee a smile of gratitude and relief Basil’s cheeks remained pale, and immediately he was done he hung his head. As soon as he could suppose that no one was watching, Felix saw him cross himself and mutter something with shaking lips. That night again there were no songs in the dormitory after lights out. Basil had climbed into bed and gone to sleep very early.

Looking back on it all from the vantage of his perspective on Willem Prinsloo, Felix saw how a similarly broader vision might have opened Basil to happier possibilities. Instead of being so shocked and angry, so damaged because he had let himself be terrified, Basil might at least have relished the relief of his reprieve. And he might have taken a little comfort from the realisation that after all Willem was not absolutely and uncontrollably dangerous. He might even have appreciated a kind of joke in the charade he had been through. The lesson Willem had intended might have been the least of what he had learnt about life that evening in the hidden corner of the lawn. And he would have given that half-hour after lights out to singing, to more exuberant singing than usual. And might, out of something between mockery and gratitude, have sent someone upstairs with a note to Willem inviting him to come down in his pyjamas and listen to the recital.

At that time nothing would have been stranger to Felix than the idea of Basil reacting in any such way. The victim’s restricted vision was equally his own. Indeed, his perspective on Willem was even narrower and gloomier than Basil’s and everyone else’s. He was on their side and against Willem. He even felt, as perhaps the favourite subject of his attentions, that he was secretly their leader against the tyrant. In some way it was left to him to exact retribution for all his crimes. He dreamed of a distant day when they would be men and Willem would somehow be in his power, and he would darkly and mercilessly torture him until he had exacted from him as much agony as he had squeezed from their hearts.

That was why, on that Sunday some weeks after Willem had left the Home to take up his diamond cutting apprenticeship, when according to the custom of old boys he paid the place a visit, his reception was so unceremonious that his first visit was also his last. When Felix glanced around himself that Sunday afternoon, he found that all the boys on the lawn were gathering and forming themselves into a crescent behind him, like a Zulu impi.

‘You, Willem Prinsloo,’ he shouted, ‘listen, I’m going to tell you a few things … And you’re an outsider now, don’t think you can bully any of us any more …’

As his taunts and insults poured forth, his limbs trembled uncontrollably, but his voice remained so strong that he felt it could flood the whole huge plane beneath them with Willem’s humiliation. ‘You thought you were the king because you could boss us around, but nobody respected you. They were only frightened because you were such a cruel bully.’ And though he saw that face darken and twist in anger, those huge legendary fists fold up into terrible hammers, he knew that now the bully was impotent against them, so nothing could stop his tirade, which went on until Willem turned and began to limp away, shouting over his shoulder, ‘You going to hear from me. I’ll see you with the police! Just wait …’

Since that day Felix had not seen him again and lately rarely thought of him until this casual crossing of paths with Willem as an ordinary pedestrian walking arm-in-arm with his wife. So he was surprised at how a bare minute of contact in Harrison Street alongside the City Hall could change his feelings from that last rancorous triumph to this broad-minded and worldly forgivingness. No, to an emotion even more positive than that. For the truth was that Felix found himself suffused – as he threaded his way among streams of strangers who were excluded from the experiences Willem Prinsloo and he had lived through together – with a feeling of brotherliness towards him.

[Taken from The storyteller, Juta’s Grade 12 anthology, 2008, from Mail & Guardian 2002, reprinted by permission of Jane Abrahams]

Post-reading:

1. Discuss in a group whether you think Lionel Abrahams’ own circumstances have anything to do with this story.

2. Whose idea do you think is worse for punishing Basil for stealing: Willem’s or Felix’s? Relate your answers to your own experiences.

3. Look at the dialogue. How does the way in which Willem’s words are written indicate more about him to us? Give examples to illustrate your answers.

4. There are parallels between Felix and Willem. In your group, discuss this statement.

Reading a review

You read a review of the film version of Othello earlier in this cycle. Here is a review of The Great Gatsby. Remember that reviews are personal, but that they attempt to give fair comment. A different reviewer might have a totally different opinion.

Activity 3.8 - Reading an example of a review (individual and pair)

 Read this review of the novel you began in the previous cycle silently to yourself, after reading the questions as pre-reading activity. During reading, look for the answers.

A review of The Great Gatsby

1 F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby offers damning and insightful views of the American nouveau riche in the 1920s. Fitzgerald seems to have understood the lives of those who are corrupted by greed and are sad and unfulfilled. The novel is a product of its generation shown through the character of Jay Gatsby, who is urbane and world-weary. He is really nothing more than a man desperate for love.

2 The novel’s events are filtered through the consciousness of its narrator, Nick Carraway, a young Yale graduate, who is both a part of and separate from the world he describes. On moving to New York, he rents a house next door to the mansion of the eccentric millionaire Jay Gatsby. Every Saturday, Gatsby throws a party at his mansion and all the great and the good of the young fashionable world come to marvel at his extravagance (as well as swap gossipy stories about their host who – it is suggested – has a murky past).

3 Despite his extravagant lifestyle, Gatsby is dissatisfied. Years before, he had fallen in love with a young girl, Daisy, and although she has always loved Gatsby, she is currently married to Tom Buchanan. Gatsby asks Nick to help him meet Daisy again, and Nick finally agrees. The two meet and rekindle their affair. Tom begins to suspect what is happening and challenges the two of them one day in New York – also revealing something that the reader had already begun to suspect: that Gatsby’s fortune was made through illegal gambling and bootlegging. Gatsby and Daisy drive back from New York alone, and in the wake of the emotional confrontation, Daisy hits and kills a woman, who happens to be Tom’s mistress. Gatsby takes the blame.

4 George Wilson, who is told that the car that killed his wife was driven by Gatsby, shoots him. Nick arranges a funeral for Gatsby, and then leaves New York, saddened by the fatal events and disgusted by the senseless way in which the people he knew had lived their lives.

5 The power of Gatsby as a character is inextricably linked with his wealth. From the very beginning of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald sets up his hero as an enigma: the playboy millionaire with the shady past who can enjoy the frivolous life his wealth brings him. However, the reality of the situation is that Gatsby is a man thwarted in love. He concentrates everything in his life on winning Daisy back.

6 It is the way that he attempts to do this that becomes central to Fitzgerald’s view of the world of the time. Gatsby creates himself – both his mystique and his personality – around the wrong values, the values of the distorted American dream: that money and popularity are all there are to achieve in life, and that the one can buy the other. He gives everything he has,emotionally and physically, to winning Daisy back, and the way he goes about this contributes to his downfall.

7 In the closing pages of The Great Gatsby, Nick considers Gatsby in a wider context. He links Gatsby with the class of people who were so prominent during the 1920s and 1930s. Fitzgerald attacks shallow social climbing and emotional manipulation, which only cause pain. With a decadent cynicism, the partygoers in The Great Gatsby cannot see anything beyond their own enjoyment. Gatsby’s love is frustrated by the social situation and his death symbolises the dangers of the path he chose. The Great Gatsby captures the American dream in a time when it had descended into decadence.

[Rewritten from http://classiclit.about.com/od/greatgatsbythe/fr/aa_greatgatsby.htm]

Post-reading:

1.Discuss the following questions with a partner:

a. Reread the first sentences of the first and fourth paragraphs. Are they fact or opinion? How do you know?

b. Does the reviewer summarise the story or is he/she analysing it? Support your answer.

c. From the review, what do you think Scott Fitzgerald’s purpose was in writing the novel?

d. What is your opinion of the review? Should the reviewer have given away the ending in this particular case? Give reasons for your answer.

e. Would you want to read the book if you haven’t yet after reading this review? Explain your answer.

2. Using the information in the review, write a summary of the story. Use your own words as far as possible. Do not include any opinions. Swap with your partner and discuss each other’s summaries.

A review

You have read two reviews in this cycle, one of a film and one of a novel. You should have a good idea of what a review looks like. There is no set format but the general reason for writing a review determines what it contains. For example, in a review of a new film, the reviewer will not give away the ending. In the activity below you will write a review of a book you have read.

Activity 3.9 - Writing a book review (individual)

1. You belong to a book club. Each person who reads a new book first writes a review about it to give the other members information that will help them to decide whether to read the book or not. You should give an idea of what the book is about, the setting, theme, and characters, but do not summarise the whole story or give away the ending. You should include your opinion about the writing and the content. Do not directly state that you recommend or don’t recommend the book; your readers should be able to decide for themselves from what you say. Your task is to decide what book you are going to review: it may not be a set work.

2. Write your review, using all the information you have received. Use the writing process (180-200 words; 25 marks).

 Your teacher may take in the reviews for evaluation. If not, then swap with a partner and check each other’s reviews. You can all place the reviews in a file for the rest of the class to read as a resource when they are looking for a good book.

Review of Cycle 3

You can use this self-assessment checklist to review what you have learnt.

When listening and speaking I can
Take part in pair and group discussions
Understand a listening text
Follow in my book while my teacher reads to me
When reading and viewing I can understand
Biographies
A poem
A short story
A review
I can write
Answers to questions
A magazine article on a famous person