Due for release next month “The Elusive Moth” comes to us
from South Africa, originally written in Afrikaans, it was the winner of the
M-Net Book Prize (considered South Africa’s major Literary Prize an Award that
Ingrid Winterbach has won four times – once under a pseudonym) as well as
winning the Old Mutual Literary Prize. The translator passed away before being able to complete this work, it being completed by the author herself.
“Come on! Shock me! Show me how
everything is connected, and how perverted it is!”
Our story centres on the female protagonist Karolina, who is
visiting Voorspoed, a remote location which brings back childhood memories. Whilst
travelling there, to research a species of moth, she picks up Basil. He was
saved from death’s door by a tribe who wrapped his bullet wounds with leaves
and mud and nursed him back to health. Since then he’s studied natural
indigenous medicines and can foresee a person’s imminent death. On their
travels to Voorspoed Karolina visits a fortune teller, she then dreams every
night of the men she has met – which one is the one to “love her always” and
during the day she dreams of every woman she’s ever met – who is her “lifelong
friend”?
The plot includes a mysterious saying by Basil “I have my
money on the red one?” as well as weekly dances with the local Kolyn, a person
you get the impression is involved in some clandestine activity, he’s too
silent, too mysterious.
Just about every day Karolina visits the local Ladies Bar
and Snooker Room, where she mingles with all the locals, a sharp undercurrent
of male sexuality, violence and racial tension. The book opening with a quote
from Walter Lindrum about the importance of attentiveness and listening when
approaching a billiard room. The games they play each day has numerous
references to the green felt, the yellow light, the tensions, all obviously a
metaphor, but what? A game?
She drove through the hazy
landscape in the hour immediately preceding sunrise. This desolate stretch of
veld had been an arena of bitter conflict and bloodshed in the history of the
country. Behind and to the right of her rose the mountain (obscured by the
mist) where the Boers and the English had fought one of their bloody battles.
She slowed down – from the corner
of her eye she had seen a sudden movement in the road ahead, some distance
away. Thinking at first it must be an antelope, she made out a dark human form
running across the road towards the right, pursued by two or three men. They
proceeded down the steep embankment at the side of the road, then vanished into
the veld, obscured by the mist.
There was a stationary car on the
left-hand side of the road, its doors thrown wide open. It looked like a police
car, and a single passenger was seated in the back. Her heart beat
uncontrollably. Immediately after she had passed the point where the men had
run across the road, one, two, three shots rang out behind her, then the gentle
silence descended again, on this erstwhile place of confrontation.
Although the undercurrent of racial tension simmers
throughout this work, there is plenty of exploration of the female angst:
In her paintings she was trying
to portray herself as a hero, but it seemed it was not easy for women to be
heroes, she said. One could not portray a woman in the heroic style in the same
way as one could a man. Anything experienced by a man – however deviant – is immediately
regarded as an extension of human experience, whereas the experience of a woman
remained deviant, eccentric, idiosyncratic.
And:
“Oh, men!” said Adelia. “Men are
obsessed with the phallus from the moment they’re born. They want to stick it
in everywhere all the time. There is nothing in this world they don’t see in
terms of the phallus.”
To add to the mystery surrounding this work we have Jess,
bringing his Buddhist sayings and teachings to the veld. A constant reminder on
the meditation on death. We have graveyards, predictions of death through urine
readings, indigenous cures, depression, suicide, and of course racial violence which
seems to take a back seat.
Although a number of the male Afrikaan’s characters are abhorrent,
the one failing I found was the black characters are meekly sketched, they play
a background role. A number of times I found the writing stilted and
disjointed, occasionally a paragraph appearing from nowhere with no explanation
or connection to the story. The swearing (although limited) appears suddenly
and almost out of context, forcing you to double check that it actually fits
into the plot and the mood.
Not a word to give any indication
that things were constantly brewing underneath the surface.
Although I’ve opened this review with a quote asking for
everything to be “connected” there is a distinct lack of connection throughout.
All the characters fell victim to
their own best intentions, to a corrupt, exploitative regime.
We also have an exploration of Karolina’s relationship with
her deceased father, from whom she became estranged, but for who she owes her passion
for entomology. A reflection too on her strained relationship with her sister
and her (also) deceased mother. One thing I didn’t really understand was the “elusive
moth” motif, there are numerous references to the “twenty-nine orders” so why
only twenty-three chapters? And the metamorphosis of a moth is not really an
underlying theme, unless I completely missed something.
A novel which meditates on death, the fickleness of human existence,
our relationships and the importance of living in the present moment:
The landscape was the great
constant, the human groups moving across it were small and irrelevant,
insignificant, coincidental, peripheral.
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