‘But would you acknowledge that it was also self-serving, in a way, to admit it was you?’
‘Oh yes. If I reveal that I was the writer whose work I advocated banning then I inoculate myself against criticism. I do see that entirely. But it’s the truth, and even though it should immunize me there’s also something damning about that, isn’t there? As if I had planned it from the beginning — a way to indemnify myself against ever being called to account for my work as a censor. See, I would be able to say, I may have banned a book, but it was only one of my own. I fear I did not think quite so tactically at that age. If anything, it was an experiment. And the experiment failed, in a way, when the book was delivered to me for review. Some other censor might have read it and decided it should pass, though I cannot imagine that would have happened. Or they might have read it and said, This is indisputably the work of Clare Wald. Though that is even more unlikely, because the book was nothing like anything else I’d ever written, and not least because at the time Clare Wald did not have an unmistakable style or trademark. My first few books were so different from one another. At the time, Clare Wald was too young to be known or even recognizable. There, you have trapped me into talking about myself in the third person,’ she says, holding out her cup for me to refill. She smiles in a way that looks almost compassionate, but I’ve learned not to trust my readings of her expressions. The face says one thing and she’ll be thinking something else altogether.
The afternoon progresses and while I try to concentrate on the task at hand, returning to points we’ve covered in the past and clarifying a few areas that still seem fuzzy, the whole time I’m thinking of Laura, of what I’ve learned about her, and of standing on Clare’s porch at her old house. I look at Clare and I see her younger face, behind the mesh of screen, and I see her daughter’s face, too, as I last saw it in the hills above Beaufort West. In moments of silence between us I try to understand what Laura’s care for me means in light of Timothy’s revelation, but I can’t reach any conclusions. All I know with certainty is what I experienced and what I observed. In the absence of evidence, everything else is hearsay and conjecture.
Clare’s face gradually falls into the look of disappointment I’ve come to know so well. I’m letting her down, but if she wants me to ask about my own place in her life, the place that almost was, I still can’t bring myself to do it. The dread of hearing her answer is enough to keep me mute on that point. If only she would give me some concrete sign that she remembers that day on her doorstep.
‘You might have guessed that the other thing I have to ask about is Nora.’
‘Yes, I thought you would come to that.’
‘Absolution is fiction—’
‘I didn’t want to call it that. The publishers insisted. It’s easier to sell a novel than a weird hybrid of essay and fiction and family and national history, although it’s really the latter — both fiction and something that is not quite fiction but less than proper history or memoir. That is why I said I didn’t think it would usurp the position of your own book.’
‘So the confession about your role in Nora’s assassination is which of those? Fiction or non-fiction?’
‘I leave that to you to decide, Samuel. You know I am loath to explicate my own texts. All I will say is that there is no evidence to support either conclusion — that the historical Clare Wald did or did not make herself complicit in the assassinations of the historical Nora and Stephan Pretorius, as distinct from the fictional analogues for all three of those individuals, which is how I would urge anyone to read the characters in that book.’
‘And the wig? Was the house invasion real?’
‘It was real. The wig was stolen, and recovered more or less as the book suggests. But it remains, like so many crimes in our country, unsolved.’
‘But—’
‘No, Samuel. Really. I’ve said as much as I dare.’
One half of Clare’s mouth turns up in a smile and she looks like she might want to say more, but it’s clear that I can push her no further. Just then Marie returns having taken much longer than necessary to buy the Australian writer’s book. Clare tells her we’ve almost finished, explaining to me that she has a dinner appointment with the Festival organizers.
‘I have a great many commitments over these few days. More and more people are scavenging for a shred of my time. The university wished for me to spend a month with them and did what such institutions are capable of doing, dangling bewitching amounts of money in an attempt to convince me I should be resident on campus and give a whole series of readings and lectures. “Really, I do not need the money,” I told the very nice woman who approached me. “But think of your children, and your estate,” she said. “One of my children has long been missing and presumed dead,” I told her, “and the other is quite rich.” “Then give it all to a deserving charity and think what good it would do,” she said. “I have a better idea,” I suggested. “Why don’t you give it directly to a deserving charity of my choice and we can leave it at that?” “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” said the woman, explaining in her terribly nice way that it was money in payment for services, as though I were some kind of working woman and the university the wealthiest of possible tricks. That is unkind of me. In fact I think nothing of the sort, but it is not quite my idea of what a writer’s life is supposed to be, all that punditry, puffery, public intellectual posturing and — I’ll avoid the most obvious word since we both know what it is. In the end I told her no and begged her give the money to one of a list of charities I thought worthy of support. She said she would do what she could, but suspected it would not be possible. Would I at least give a lecture? she asked. I submitted to that. So I must also come back here next week. It is exhausting even thinking about it. You will have to forgive me, Samuel, if I must say goodbye for now. Others make demands on me and I lack the strength to fight off all of them.’
Though she looks sympathetic I can’t help wondering if it’s a performance of sympathy and she’s just a very good actress, playing the role the situation demands. I gather my recorder and notebook and stuff them into my satchel. Before I leave the hotel room, she stops me, a hand on my arm.
‘This you may take away,’ she says, passing me a thick envelope that she’s pulled from the drawer of an end table, her hands shaking, lower lip finding its way in between her teeth. ‘It is for you. I mean, you may keep it. It’s something I need you to read. Wait until you get back to wherever you’re staying. Do not read it now. Do not read it in front of me. Please do not read it in the lobby downstairs and come racing back. Read it and think. I shall wait to hear from you.’
I can’t help being intrigued, but I promise to wait. I walk back into town and then turn south, towards the river, stopping at a café on Ryneveld when I can’t contain my curiosity any longer. Inside the envelope there’s a letter and a thin typescript.
Dear Samuel,
There are questions you came to Cape Town to ask that you did not ask. There are questions I should like to ask you as well. But in the absence of either of us having the courage to ask the questions for which we most want answers — the answers without which the entire process seems to me pointless — I offer you the enclosed text. I thought I knew how to frame the questions, but I did not. I also thought I should find the courage to ask you, and I did not, still have not. The text I offer is for you, not for the book. It is for you and for my daughter and for me, not for publication. The only way I know how to ask the questions is to write around them, to interpose my own imagination into the events as parties necessarily invested with their own versions of history have related them to me. What I want from you, if you feel able to offer it, is an indication of where I have gone wrong in this imagining. I am asking in the only way I know how, for you to tell me what you know.