ANOTHER MORSEL: "A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA"
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 25, 2011
REFERENCE:
Walking today, I could not get a half hour of the “Glenn Beck Show” that I watched yesterday out of my mind. I am pro-Israel but I am not pro-hysteria. I have no idea how people can watch that show or listen to Rush Limbaugh, or others like them that rely on half truths, innuendoes and outright lies. When I say “lies,” I mean when you stack a bunch of truths on top of each other, the sum total can be an absolute lie, such as certain thinkers are in collusion with foreign interests to drive Israel into the sea.
This excerpt from A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA is shared for reason. A great hero of American history, Teddy Roosevelt, perpetrated a great betrayal of the American people. He promoted the idea of Empire in the tradition of Great Britain with his bravado, which the American people took to heart. Roosevelt was a great president, however, if for no other reason than spiriting America on to building the Panama Canal, a project that the French attempted and lost thousands of men and much of its treasury. It has been the subject of one of my missive (type in “Panama Canal” in the “find” column and the missive will come up).
That is not the main reason I’m sharing this chapter. It is because in this dinner party – which incidentally happened pretty much as explained here only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. In 1968, at this dinner party, the protagonist, Seamus “Dirk” Devlin and his wife, Sarah, saw the last remnants of British Empire on display.
Now, forty-three years later, with all the bickering over Libya, and who is to take the leadership role, you see the remnants of the American Empire, after the fatigue of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the financial crisis. Draconian rule in Arab countries is crumbling. You cannot push the water nor put toothpaste back into the tube.
The American hegemony will continue as the British hegemony continued long after the British Empire was on life support. The West is no longer the center of this small planet, nor is white people. It is the nature of history. Biographical fiction, with a little help from the Almighty, may, just may capture a figment of this inevitability.
THE DINNER PARTY
Devlin and Sarah along with Martin and Meghan Matthews were invited to the St. John’s Wood Estate for a dinner party. It was located in Regency Park in northeastern Johannesburg, the home of Sir William Trenchard, a British subject but with a home in South Africa. He and his wife, Lady Anne, were playwrights and had just completed a play, which had been accepted and fully banked for the London stage titled, “John Donne Resurrected.” This dinner was a celebration of that achievement.
Devlin knew nothing of the play and had no idea why he and Martin were invited. He tried to beg off, but was strong-armed by Sarah and Martin. Sarah never knew a party she didn’t die to go to while Martin considered it good for business. It so happened Devlin was a fan of Donne’s poetry with the signatory line of the poet coming to mind from his Triple Fool: I am two fools, I know, for loving and for saying so in whining poetry, who are a little wise, the best fools be. Amen, to that dear bard.
He wondered if his country bumpkin patina showed, he, a card carrying member of the lower class dining with royalty. What could be more absurd? As for Sir William, he resembled a Bengal tiger masquerading as an Englishman. His features were grand, medium height with the lean handsome face and stiffness of military command, his eyes like lasers with a tinge of green. They sparkled with radiance as he greeted his guests, after a tuxedoed Swahili giant had announced them: “Mr. Seamus Devlin & his wife, Sarah Devlin, Mr. Martin Matthews & his wife, Meghan Matthews.” He knew Sarah was eating this up like a thousand calorie dessert, while Meghan seemed to take it in stride.
They then ascended the wide staircase lit by mellow hues of stained glass windows passing the cavernous and eloquent laden library and moving into the main dining room. It had all the ambience of three hundred years of colonial rule with paintings of empire from India, Singapore, China, Africa, Canada, Australia, on and on.
Devlin wondered if anyone noticed the absurdity of this. None of the guests, he was certain, were Afrikaners, as the Brits looked down on them as second-class citizens. That was strange as it was the Brits who had never acclimated to South Africa as their ancestral home in the way Afrikaners had. The Brits bodies might be in South Africa but their hearts remained in Great Britain. South Africa’s mother lode of gold and diamonds managed to support the nostalgia of lost empire. Hypocrisy, Devlin thought, was palpable but in an odd way fetching.
* * *
The British Empire in South Africa was stunned in 1948 by the loss of power as the Afrikaners took charge. Now, here in 1968, the Brits were essentially vanquished with the remnants of Empire holding a fragile identity with Prime Minister Ian Smith of Southern Rhodesia. Great Britain looked into the headlights of the future and decided to party as if nothing had changed.
Sir William and Lady Anne, in addition to being playwrights, were magnets of the British television industry, but thus far they had been unsuccessful in opening television to South Africa, a media that was vehemently opposed by the Afrikaner government.
Devlin noticed lights flooding down the curving staircase as he climbed to the dining room, silhouetting a figure in evening attire that was slowly descending to meet them. He was a tall, loose-limbed young man not much older than Devlin with dark tousled hair, bruised bloodshot eyes ruddy cheeks and a well lived in face with contours of early aged wrinkles. Too much sun, too many cigarettes, Devlin mused. He was smoking a cigarette and did not removed it from his wide full-lipped mouth, as he said, “Got here early, missed the crush.”
Devlin stopped, looked at him with a puzzled expression. “You are …?”
“Dabney Marshall, “ he said offering his hand, “I’m with IT&I, your friend Lucky William’s boss.” And then making a stiff-shouldered bow to Sarah, “And I take it this is your lovely wife.” He added a curt smile, which she returned.
“I’ve been here five years, wretched politics, can’t wait to get back to the States, how long have you folks been here?” They were holding up the line of guests who were now bunched on the staircase, but Marshall seemed not the least concerned.
“Sir,” Devlin said, “we’re holding up the line. I suggest we move on.”
Marshall looked hard at Devlin being rebuked, and then at the faces below, waved his cigarette with a dilettante’s flair, moving back up the stairs, “if you insist.”
Sarah turned and whispered in Devlin’s ear, “Display some social grace, please.”
He wanted to say I may be a hayseed but he’s a bozo, the ugly American in full form, but he knew this would have no traction with her.
He was still thinking of the library they had passed wondering how much of it was used and how much for show. He’d like to spend the evening in there finding out. They then passed a richly furnished anteroom, where several were already congregating with pre-dinner cocktails in their hands.
Sarah moved to stop but he continued passing through the open double doors of the dining room that he estimated to be ten feet high, and eloquently carved in a baroque style. He roamed the room stopping to view and to feel the warmth of the place in late afternoon. The sun highlighted the well-attended garden beyond the terrace. The dining room’s French windows framed it. It was such a marvel he wished he had his Polaroid to capture it.
Someone was playing soft music on a finely tuned piano near the door. The sandy-haired man turned from the piano and beamed in Devlin’s direction. He, too, was in evening dress. Sarah was dressed appropriately in an evening goon, but he insisted in coming in a business suit, and consequently, stuck out, as she had predicted, like a sore thumb.
He looked at the placards where everyone was to sit and noticed Sarah was far removed from him. He sighed with relief, no lecture tonight, at least not during dinner. There must be a God. He sat down next to a woman old enough to be his mother. She was fanning herself with her hand. He noticed that most of the diners were middle-aged men and women with the girth to confirm their prominence; only the host and hostess were slim and athletic looking, while everyone sported a good tan except the lady next to him.
Devlin had not spoken to either Martin or Meghan since they arrived, but saw that they, too, had been split up. Clearly, this was by design to prevent people from talking shop. It however increased his unease because it was so clearly contrived. He was uncomfortable in social settings in the best of circumstances, but this was the extreme. He felt non compos mentis and was afraid it showed.
Martin was waving his dinner program at him. He waved back. He was still trying to decide if Martin was an innocent or the injured party from the fiasco at Kruger National Park. He wondered, too, if Meghan had talked, and decided that would be the last thing she would do. Sarah had been distant, as if she had something cooking in retribution. Whatever it was he was sure he would know in due course.
Martin was dressed to the teeth in a tux, and looked quite handsome. He even looked sober. Devlin studied the faces seated across from him, and then took a pirouetted glance to the right and left on his side, the eminence of Johannesburg society, at least the British wing. He felt in a time warp, imprisoned in a gilt-framed portrait of another time and place, which should be lodged more properly in a shadowy grotto among neglected books. He was certain no one shared his gloom, as they waxed so gay and garrulous you could eat the noise.
Do you see me, da, from your place in heaven? Your son is an interloper, party crasher. In your fifty years of life striving to maintain a sense of decency you never envisioned this for your son, did you, his joining the enemy who crushed you!
“That man across from us is Count Stanislas Kospinski of Poland, he is the one with the full whiskers, and next to him is the president of Barclay Bank of South Africa.”
Devlin appreciated this as a conversation icebreaker. He never developed the art. Obviously, he was meant to be impressed. He looked at the lady next to him, sharp-nosed with a whey-face and small, twinkling bead-like eyes, and nodded.
Undeterred, she put out her hand, “I’m Manya Sklodowska. That was the name of my great-grandmother, Marie Curie, the scientist, don’t you know. I carry her original Polish family name. My husband is that chap over there, perhaps you’ve already met him, Pierce Edmund, he’s South Africa’s most eminent bookseller.”
That perked up Devlin’s attention. “What kind of books?”
“All kinds. Why, does that interest you?”
“I’m a bit of a reader.” He wasn’t about to launch into his interest in writing. He’d never shut her up.
“I see, and you are?”
“Devlin, Dirk Devlin.”
“An American, I hear it in your deep melodious voice. Are you a professor?”
“No, I work for a chemical company.”
“How impressive. You must be very smart like my great-grandmother.”
“Hardly.”
“What do you do if I may be so bold as to ask?”
Now, that’s why I hate these things! How do you explain something that is mainly coded in silence and is not available for public consumption? You can’t. So you don’t. The question begged dissembling. “I do a little bit of this and a little bit of that,” he answered inanely.
Clearly miffed she turned to the gentleman on her right who was already three sheets to the wind but more than happy to accommodate her with his inebriated lies.
* * *
Sir William touched a spoon to a glass, asking for everyone’s attention. After welcoming the guests, he went on to say something about their new play, how difficult it was to get it right in terms of costume, customs, character and history, and how they agonized over it for the past four years before bringing it to fruition. Nothing was mentioned about their respective globetrotting in support of their financial interests in radio, television, newspapers and magazines, many of which they owned.
* * *
It was an intimate dinner party of some thirty or so people. Devlin noted there were as many attractive Bantu men and women serving as there were guests. The Devlin’s and Dabney Marshall were the only Americans. There was an Australian investment banker and his wife, a Dutch engineer and his wife. The engineer had been looking for oil in South Africa without success. There were three professors and their wives from Witwatersrand University. Devlin imagined they were from the Fine Arts College of the university. The count displayed a chest full of ribbons, which along with his broad mustache and silver dome made Devlin think of a Nutcracker doll. It was interesting to see that the South African banker and his wife were seated on either side of Sir Williams and Lady Anne. Then a late arrival caught Devlin’s eye.
* * *
He was a man about Devlin’s age darkly handsome, bearded, though not extravagantly so, perfectly attired in evening dress, tie-pin and watch chain glistening, the thumb of one white kid-glove resting on his cummerbund, while the other on his hand swung a cane in slow silent arcs beside him. Devlin found him distracting in a vague way while he noted what appeared to be a private smile slice across the man’s thin lips. The man was the embodiment of Empire, he thought, splendid and decadent in a time warp.
It appeared as if his late arrival was deliberate. Devlin’s attention, once idly focused was now clamped on him. As he passed the other side of the dining table, nodding to this and that person, he felt Devlin’s watchful eyes and stopped, looked Devlin in the eye, and then bowed. Devlin dropped his eyes. He felt suddenly cold, confused and embarrassed as if he were a peeping tom.
Shortly thereafter, Devlin was shocked as if by a bolt of electricity as he felt a hand resting gently on his shoulder. “I’m Norton James of ICI, and you are, I take it, the young American that is going to make us all very rich.”
“Pardon?” Devlin shuddered, as he rose to shake hands with the eloquent bearded man, only to have the hand reappear on his shoulder and gently have him remain seated. He took no comfort in having Mr. James loom over him.
“They tell me it is you that is putting this clambake together, our horribly incompetent affiliate, the Stone Age specialty chemical division of African Explosives, and your company’s exquisite subsidiary. I don’t even know your name, but the description of you is so accurate that I knew who you were as soon as I saw you.” He took out a cigarette from a silver case offered Devlin one. He nodded it off. “Don’t smoke? I envy you.” Then he smiled broadly, as he lit his cigarette with his Ronson lighter. “Some of your admirers call you ‘angel face.’ I see what they mean, but they missed your steel, am I right?”
Devlin ignored this assessment, but introduced himself, offering his hand, “I’m Dirk Devlin, everyone calls me Devlin.”
James reached down and took his hand, and held it. “How odd, don’t you think to go by your surname?” When Devlin made no move to respond, but extricated his hand from the man, a strange thing happened. James touched his chest with his cane. “I’ve a confession to make. You’ll think me terribly uncouth. I knew your name, knew you preferred to be called Devlin instead of Seamus, and right now I feel terribly wicked. Can you forgive me?”
When Devlin did not respond, he raised his cane hand to his bearded chin, and appraised Devlin. “My informants missed you completely. They missed your uncompromising spirit, your no nonsense approach. They also missed that steel in your eyes.”
James took an elegant drag on his cigarette, and blew the smoke away from Devlin. “I can see how that could happen. You’re neither into small talk nor of looking people in the eye. You don’t go for all that folderol. Some take this as weakness, but it is apparent you don’t care what they think. They missed that, too.” Devlin still did not speak. The man mesmerized him as if out of a book in the library of this august house.
“Yes,” Norton James continued, tapping another cigarette out of his silver case and depositing his butt into a small silver container, which disappeared into his coat pocket. Devlin memorized the initial on the cigarette case, N.W.J. Noticing this, James said, The W stands for William. My mother was a history don at Oxford, and an authority on William the Conquer. Need I say more?” He waited. Devlin finally moved to speak but James filled the void before he could.
“I suppose she hoped that I might conquer something for bloody old England before it completely expires.” He lit his cigarette. “I also know while I’m in a confessing mood that you don’t drink or smoke. See how busy my agents have been? Now, be honest, aren’t you a bit squeamish about all this clandestine intrigue?”
Devlin didn’t answer. The man’s public school voice put him in mind of Martin. They must take elocution lessons instead of studies. Close up James appeared more a contemporary of HB than him, but the comparison to HB ended there. James wore his confidence on his sleeve; HB’s resided in his head. Yet, he felt naked before this man. Why?
Reading Devlin’s unease, James added, “Sorry, old sport, to upset you.” What makes him think he has that kind of power? “In any case, you’ll be happy to know I’m not MI-5.” He timed a dramatic pause for Devlin to ponder, then resumed haughtily as before. “I said we had not met before, which of course is true, but my man Cavendish has met you, described you to the pence, but missed your steel. I suspect he’ll pay for that.”
“You’re over BAF?” Devlin asked innocently, deciding two could play this game.
“That’s right, out of ICI’s London digs. I’m Cavendish’s minder. I feel for him in this assignment now that I’ve met you. He’s ambitious to the core, but doesn’t care much for homework.” He accented this assessment with a puff of smoke. “I suspect you’re all about homework.”
“If you mean doing the job your paid to do, the answer is yes.”
He laughed. “I don’t suspect he’ll be a member of your inner sanctum.” He extinguished his cigarette, and went through the same routine of stamping out the butt, disposing of it, lighting another, and resuming his soliloquy. “Don’t you agree?”
Devlin remained silent. Silence was his secret weapon and he employed it with the skill of a surgeon. Norton James seemed oblivious to the fact that he failed to respond to a single one of his questions. He thought of pomp and circumstance without the music.
“Pity,” James continued. “We Brits are an obvious ruin to be exploited by our American cousins without fanfare. John’s into resurrecting Great Britain’s honor and glory. He doesn’t see the lay of the land, sorrowfully so.”
* * *
To Devlin’s relief, Sir Williams asked for everyone’s attention inviting them to go to their designated places for dinner. With that James waved his cane in departure, “I enjoyed our seminar, and plan on taking your advice.”
“But I didn’t give you any.”
“Sure you did. Your silence spoke volumes.”
People crowded around the tables now, examining placards, looking disappointed and moving on, organized chaos the British way, Devlin thought. Eventually, he saw James reappear on the other side of the dining table directly across from him beaming like a Cheshire cat. He had to smile to himself. The man sat not far from Sir Williams, the Bengal tiger, but looked like a Cheshire cat in comparison, bookends of the British Empire thought Devlin.
How could you trust any man that talked in disparaging terms of his South African operations and of the man that headed it, John Cavendish? Much as James attempted to bait him he didn’t see Cavendish as friend or enemy, just someone he had to persuade to do his job for the common cause.
James thought he knew him. He had no idea what visceral hatred Devlin had for the British for what they had done to Ireland. His roots went back to Dingle Bay outside the Six Counties of Northern Ireland. How did James miss that? Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps the steel he saw in his eyes was British hatred.
* * *
As the Bantu servants rushed in with steaming casseroles of food, coffee pots, and wine bottles, with the clang of silverware with dishes, sideboard conversations of the diners drowned out Sir Williams attempt to hold court. He finally gave up and withdrew into the group around him.
Devlin had turned his wine glass over and his coffee cup up. No one loved coffee more than he did. “You don’t drink wine, young man?” It was the whey-faced lady addressing him. “Wine has medicinal and nutritional benefits to rival food, surely you know that?”
It was clear she had already had several glasses of wine, but hardly touched her food. He had scarcely eaten anything himself, as the main course was a bird so small it seemed better suited to a cage where it could chirp the night away.
“Did you hear me, young man? I asked you a question.”
“I’m sorry, my mind was drifting. Would you mind repeating your question?”
Just then a young servant coming out of the kitchen with a huge bowl of cold soup was upended when a gentleman rose from his chair abruptly and backed into her with red tomato soup spewing into the white hair and white gown of the lady next to him, as well as turning his white dinner jacket into a splotchy red and white. It resembled a crime scene as a pool of soup on the mauve carpet had the appearance of spilled blood.
A hush went through the dining room and then nightmarish silence. This only lasted seconds as the diners finally fathomed what had happened. Lady Anne, who was also splattered with the soup, fought to maintain her composure but lost it in the end. “How could you do something so bloody stupid?” she chided the servant, then caught herself, and smiled. “Please,” then more quietly, “get assistance to clean this mess up, now!” Then added, “And bring in new linens and chairs.” The satin seats of the chairs of the offending gentleman and his lady friend were mortally wounded with the stain.
“Yes, my Lady,” the young servant said in perfect English fighting back tears.
The accident had not been the servant’s fault as Devlin had a perfect view of the whole affair as he faced the door to the kitchen on the other side of the dining table. Sir Williams seemed undaunted by the mishap, which surprised him. It was as if he was used to a modicum of chaos.
Devlin watched as people programmed to empire quickly resumed as if nothing had happened. The tomato stained guests disappeared, Sir Williams again resumed holding court to his coterie, Lady Anne reappeared in a new gown with a fresh face and coiffure, now sparkling with composure. The contretemps was replaced by the celebrated British stiff upper lip.
The whey-faced lady looked at Devlin, as if nothing had happened. “As I was saying, why do you not drink wine? This is the best that I have tasted in ages.”
Wondering what he should tell the lady, she resumed. “You’re not a Moslem are you?”
He looked at her, the women’s face wrinkled in seriousness, and almost lost it in a bellicose laugh, but instead turned his head and coughed into his sparkling white napkin.
Where did that come from? Do I look like a Moslem, actually not knowing what a Moslem looked like? He was just about to invent his wine phobia, when she started to cry. Huge tears welled up in her beady eyes and caused her mascara to streak down her cheeks like Indian war paint. She wiped her eyes with her napkin, turning it black, still crying and muttering to herself. He thought thank God I didn’t laugh.
Devlin didn’t know what to make of this, or what to do. He looked around him for help, but everyone seemed engaged in private conversations. “Can I help you?” he asked helplessly.
“No one can help me. You won’t even drink with me.”
Then he knew. She was drunk. “Madam, I don’t drink alcoholic beverages, wine included, because I’m allergic to alcohol. I could go into a coma. Now you wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”
“You poor boy, why didn’t you tell me? Why did you sit there mute as a cold fish on a platter causing me to think . . .? She started to cry again.
Then he felt someone behind him. “Don’t get up! I’m Pierce Edmund, Marie’s husband.”
“She called herself Manya something.”
Mr. Edmund smiled. “I know. She hates these things. Drinks herself into a stupor. Uses her great aunt’s name to cover her self-consciousness. I could tell you were listening to her. I hope we can see you again under better circumstances, you are?”
“Dirk Devlin, I’m with …” Mr. Edmund wasn’t listening as he was lifting his wife out of her chair without protest and almost carrying her away. “But is she related to Madam Curie, the Nobel Laureate?”
“Oh, yes, that part is true. She has the same inquisitive mind as her great aunt, but unhappily, has never developed the tools to facilitate it as her ancestor did. One of life’s many little tragedies.”
And whose fault is that? Yours? Devlin wanted to say.
“Pierce,” the whey-faced lady stirred, “aren’t you going to the smoker? I’m not keeping you from it, am I?”
“Some other time, love,” he moaned feeling her dead weight in his arms. “We’re going home now.”
Devlin could see the relief in her face. “You’re taking me home?” Her voice the lyrical rhythm of a child, “Pierce, you’re so good to me.”
“Yes, dear, I’m taking you home.”
Devlin watched them leave deciding something else was going on. This was a lonely lady who felt abandoned; a woman who didn’t relish her aloneness yet retreated into booze as her only comfort. Isn’t it ironic, he thought, two loners in proximity to each other but unable to negotiate their aloneness with any candor. He knew too late that he was fond of the lady.
* * *
The smoker to which the lady had referred was a separate ritual to the evening affair. Men and women retired to different rooms, men to the library and women to the anteroom where he had seen them having cocktails at the head of the stairs as they arrived, men having their cigars and whiskies and conversations around politics, business and international affairs, women smoking cigarettes, drinking champagne, wine and whiskey, gossiping about their dinner conversations as if international spies.
John Donne may have written No Man Is An Island, but the present company, himself included, suggested otherwise. Devlin didn’t want to hear about the dirty tricks during the presidential campaign back in the States, about the conspiracy surrounding the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Nor did he relish a rehash of the riots in Detroit and Los Angeles. The high jinx of the US presidential conventions in Chicago and Miami, the stalemate in Vietnam, even Soviet tanks in Hungary were treated as entertaining failures of their American cousins.
Since he had spent so little time in the States in recent years, he confessed honestly to no valid comment to any of this. He would have preferred to have a discussion of Donne’s poetry and its role in the new play. That was not going to happen.
No, he didn’t want a cigar; no, he didn’t want a whiskey or beer; yes, he would take a cup of coffee. He decided to keep in motion hearing the buzz as he past clusters of two to three men, cup in hand looking at books in the well stocked library, which were so expensively bound he dare not take them off the shelves. He studied the paintings on the wall and recognized a Degas wondering if it were an original, and decided it most likely was.
The room was embellished in a solid cloud of the disgusting odor of cigars as if an umbrella to shelter the nervous chatterers who looked as if they typically ate and drank too much and exercised too little if at all. He had an urge to declare, Attention, plump and pompous movers and shakers of South Africa, you are living on borrowed time under apartheid. Enjoy it while you can! The self-righteous thought depressed him. What was he doing about apartheid? Nothing!
* * *
It was as if Sir Williams read his mind. He was quite drunk by now, waving his cigar, and spilling his drink as he spoke. “Imagine what this country would be like without apartheid,” he asked rhetorically as everyone stopped talking to listen. “Then imagine if these monkeys were ruling what would be our destiny?” He paused. “Most of us here tonight would be scalped, murdered, our houses burned to the ground, our businesses raided, our wives and children raped and kidnapped, our schools ransacked and torched, replaced by drug traffickers, roaming militias, unemployed blacks killing each other, disease rampant, society totally unhinged, reduced to chaos, and the country driven into the Stone Age. So, I toast the government, I toast apartheid for the good of all Brits.”
“Hear, hear, hear!” yelled the group in an inebriated chorus.
Devlin watched in amazement, white-headed and bald-headed men alike, cheering like fanatics at a football game, not a naysayer in the bunch, not even sandy-headed Martin Matthews who held his drink high in agreement.
In the sanctuary of the library, Sir Williams could rage apocalyptically what he dare not say in public, here professors could raise their drinks in agreement while writing anti-apartheid books, here iconic wealth and power could display its fear as if refugees from a mental institution
Devlin wondered if this were the prevailing view of South African Anglos, that the Brits were complicit with Afrikaners because of fear as well as business reasons. Surely, they must know the servants in this house hear this wailings, members of the 14 million in the majority, and will not forget on their way to social justice. Had he wandered into a den of iniquity? He felt himself a coward for not speaking out. He knew why he hadn’t. He couldn’t afford to, and in that sense HB was right.
* * *
He looked forward to discussing this harangue with Josiah. If Josiah were white, he would have a splendid career in South Africa, but would he think like these men?
Devlin had had many conversations with his chief chemist, Rung Viljoen, and not once did he refer to the Bantu in derogatory terms, and certainly not as monkeys. Nor did he see the Bantu as a race apart with no redeeming values. He spoke of Afrikaner history as a struggle against the British, and sometimes the Bantu to establish a nation state. Nor did he think the Bantu, the Coloreds, or the Indians were godless. He did have trouble understanding why people were critical of Afrikaners when they had given the various ethnic tribes homelands, and herein lay a blind spot.
“What if your homeland is arid, underdeveloped with no infrastructure or industrial-economic base, and you are forced to flee to the Afrikaner centers for work, what then?” Devlin had asked the ADM chemist.
Rung looked at Devlin in disappointment. “You are judging the Bantu with Western idealism. You have no sense that it is necessary for us to prod them into the modern world. They are primitives, unwise in the ways of the modernity. We are guiding them into the twentieth century.”
It was futile to argue but Devlin still felt the need to point out the fact that the Anglos still controlled commerce. Otherwise, why was he here?
That stung. “Before 1948,” Rung said, “the British exploited the Bantu tribes for 300 years. They exploited us as well. They pushed us out of our own homes on the Cape, resulting in our trekking across the continent, not once but twice in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Diamonds were discovered on one trek and gold on the other. Both times the British followed to steal our wealth and discoveries, both times we capitulated and were subjugated, that is, until 1899, when we fought them in the Boer War, which we lost, again enduring subjugation and humiliation.” He paused to see if Devlin was listening.
Satisfied, he continued. “We are a tribe like the Bantu. We have a different language, different customs, different religion, and different traditions than the Bantu. But the Bantu have several differences among them. They are not and never have been a homogeneous group. We know that. We have tried to deal with that fact strategically and systematically, and for that we are criticized.”
Devlin imagined he was being given a history lesson that was typical of Afrikaner grammar school children. Rung was a university graduate with two degrees from the University of Pretoria but his thinking seemed frozen in that early recitation of Afrikaner history.
“Surely, you can see, Rung, that this is self-serving, a rationalization that hardly justifies draconian apartheid.”
“I will concede apartheid hasn’t worked as planned, but I will not concede that it is draconian.”
“It may be a valiant attempt but, Rung, you must admit it is a valiant failure.”
“That may be how you Americans see it, but don’t you think that is a little hypocritical? You have your own history of slavery. We don’t consider the Bantu slaves.”
“No, not today,” Devlin conceded, “and yes, it is true we have our own 300-year history of Negro enslavement. But, Rung, you left out the fact that one of the reasons your people left the Cape was because the British wouldn’t allow you to treat the Bantu and the Hottentots as slaves in the early nineteenth century. This, too, is a matter of history.”
“Oh, come now!”
“Are you saying that is not true?”
“I’m saying it is exaggerated.”
Incredible, thought Devlin, he doesn’t know his own history, so much for education. There was no point in pressing on with the discussion.
Rung Viljoen was not through. “We Afrikaners were enslaved by the British from the moment they followed us to Cape Town in the late seventeenth century, denying us our religion, our language, then following us across …”
“You’ve already said that.
“We have done our penance. What have the British done for the Bantu other than exploit them as they have exploited us?”
“Well, they did crush the Zulus Empire in the late nineteenth century, didn’t they?”
“Yes, but only a year before they were favoring the Zulus over us.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“There is a lot you don’t know. You probably don’t know the British tried to drive us off the Transvaal a year later. We finally made a stand. It was 1880. That was the First Boer War. You in the West remember only the Second Boer War fought in 1899. In defeat, the British treated us as bad as the Germans were treated at Versailles at the end of World War One.” Rung took a deep breath.
“The Second Boer War ended in 1902, and for forty-six years we plotted our revenge. We went to school, studied hard, which made ourselves ready for governance. We developed our own language, created universities, wrote books, composed music, and created an indigenous white South African race of people. This is our homeland. We are a nation. We have nowhere else to go.” His eyes watered.
“The world sees us as a gang of thugs because of the Sharpeville Massacre. They don’t see that the PAC (Pan Africanist Congress) provoked it. Think of this. We were only a few years in power when disruptions were manufactured on the Transvaal to put us in a bad international light. With hoards of riots staged, the rational became the irrational, the strategic was reduced to tactics, the desirable was lost to necessity. I am not justifying the massacre. It is a dark day in our history. Any thinking Afrikaner will admit it because he is not for destroying people, any people.”
“How do you feel about Nelson Mandela?”
“What do you know about this man?”
“I know he has been in prison a long time.”
“Six years.”
“I know he was head of the African National Congress, a lawyer, and against apartheid.”
“You surprise me. You know more about my country than most foreigners. Mandela is an organizer, a rebel, some say a terrorist, who wanted to overthrow the Afrikaner government for majority rule. That is seditious in any country. For that, he went to prison. He is an ideologue with an untenable agenda.”
“That’s your point of view?”
“I’m not finished. In prison, he has been treated with respect, dignity, and appropriate decorum as a leader and a man of principle who has broken the law.”
“I’ve not read of any campaign to release him.”
“No.”
“Why is that?”
“I should think it is self-evident. He would be a threat to the government and possibly instigate civil war.”
“That’s the Afrikaner point of view?”
“A realistic point of view.”
“If you like.”
“The fact that we are talking civilly and openly about a terrorist who has reached respectable status, should I think, speak well of my country’s tolerance for dissent.”
“You see him as a terrorist?”
“No, I don’t but I’m a moderate Afrikaner. I don’t represent the majority view.”
“So, there is division on apartheid in Afrikanerdom?”
“Indeed, verligte Afrikaners like me accept inevitable change, but verkrampte Afrikaners resist even the most modest change, such as sharing public toilets.”
This resonated with Devlin. “We are still dealing with that exact issue a hundred years after the American Civil War in the South.”
“I know and am not surprised. We are a white tribe like your American Pilgrims who came to America about the same time my people came to Cape Town.”
“Your point?”
“We Afrikaners want to avoid Civil War. The verligte feel majority rule is inevitable, but we want it to be peaceful, and have a role for Afrikaners. We feel it must be slow. There is poverty among the Bantu, but the living standards of South African Bantu is superior to the rest of the black races on the continent.”
“This is true according to what I have read,” Devlin agreed.
“It is no accident. We know that the Bantu must be elevated professionally as the Anglos will leave in droves once majority rule is established creating an incredible vacuum that Afrikaners cannot fill.”
“You see this, or you fear this?”
“Both, as a verligte.”
* * *
It was strange that Rung’s conversation should come to mind as Devlin looked among the books in this library surrounded by pampered Anglo aristocrats who had nary a thought about the coming tide. When there was a lull in the conversation, he asked, “Where will you all be when the ANC takes over?”
All heads turned and looked at the tall blond American. Devlin didn’t fill the void, but let the question agonize through their minds.
Then someone said, “Sir William, I don’t think the American will be attending your play.” The place erupted into comic relief.
Sir Williams looked at the group and then at the American, moved to say something, then thought otherwise. He stuck his cigar in an ashtray with force, and said, “I believe it is time to rejoin the ladies.”
* * *
“What was so funny that the rafters literally shook?” Sarah asked on the way home.
“Somebody told a joke.”
“I heard it differently. I heard it was you sticking a pin in their balloon. You’ll get us deported, you know.”
“That will never happened, my dear, with this crowd.”
“Why do you say that? They run everything.” She would not mind getting deported.
“They run everything but they are in charge of nothing. There is a difference.”
She shook her head. “God, I wish you drank!”
* * *