HOLDING BACK MIDNIGHT



HOLDING BACK MIDNIGHT

Maureen Isaacson

The night is shooting past. (Time goes by quickly.) It is bright jet (Jet is the colour black. Bright jet is an example of an oxymoron because bright is in contrast with black. It is a bright black night.) and hot. The air is as smooth as the whiskey we sip on the verandah of the old hotel that has become my parents’ home. We are safe from the faded neon and slow-moving traffic lights outside. The bubbles of fifty chilled bottles of champagne are waiting to spill as we touch down on the new century. (It is New Year’s Eve. The champagne will be opened at midnight.)In our own way, we each believe that from that moment on nothing will ever be the same. (It seems the people think the new millennium will change everything.)

Anything could happen at midnight. President Manzwe (The story is set in Johannesburg, South Africa. Apartheid is over and a new government is ruling. This new government will surprise its people with an announcement.)has said he has a surprise for us. What can it be?

‘Cheers!’ echoes her friend Ethel.

Smoke and disillusion (The mother and her friend Ethel are disillusioned by the new government and their own lives.) have ravaged their voices. Their tongues are too slack to roll and olive pip. (They are already drunk. They cannot control the movement of their tongues.) They walk slowly among the guests, in silver dresses that were fashionable once (They live in the past. These dresses are inappropriate and not in fashion. Later on you will read the daughter is wearing a dress made of paper.) They teeter on sling-back stilettos. They offer salmon and bits of fish afloat on shells of lettuce leaves.

Don’t people at this party ever think about AIDS? (They serve the fish with their bare hands. Times have changes so much that the new generation is wearing gloves and masks to protect themselves against AIDS. The older generation is not as careful as the younger generation.) Out there in the real world, they give you cling paper gloves in restaurants lest you should bleed from an unnoticed cut. Waiters wear them. Doctors. Environmentalists, like my husband Leon (Leon is a non-white.) and me. (The “me” is the narrator of the story. She is white. She is the daughter of the people who host the party.) The lack of sterility makes me queasy tonight. (The fact that they are not clean and careful makes the daughter uncomfortable. She is afraid she may catch some illness.)

‘What is the time, Dad?’ I ask.

‘Be patient,’ he says.

Hopefully the moment we are waiting for will release him from the grip of history. (The father is caught in the past. The daughter hopes the arrival of the new millennium will change her father. Her father has not accepted all the changes that already occurred) History is ever-present (This shows the father lives in the past) in my father, like the patterns that shimmer from the chandeliers over the cracked walls. (This is a simile. The father remains in history like the decoration is part of history.) It is trapped in the broken paving outside his hotel (History is trapped in the broken paving. It the paving could talk it would tell you a lot about past events.) where angels of delight (prostitutes, non-white) once fluttered eyelashes as if they were wings at white men. (A simile. The eyelashes are compared with the wings of angels. The clients of the prostitutes were white. In the old South Africa there was a law against white men sleeping with non-whites. Her father had so many friends in high places that he was able to break this law without getting caught. His friends in high places came to the hotel to sleep with the non-white prostitutes while they enforces the Immorality act in other parts of the country.) History hovers (History hangs over this hotel, the past hangs over this hotel), with the ghosts of the illicit couplings (illegal relationships with the non-white woman) that once heated the hotel’s shadowy rooms. It is funnelled through my memory. (The daughter has concentrated memories of these events because she was young when it happened.)

Here comes my Uncle Otto, ex-minister of Home Affairs (when the government changed, uncle Otto lost his position as minister. The fact that the daughter calls him Uncle shows you that her father’s friends had high positions in government in the old South Africa.), glass in hand. Looking at his ginger moustache, I am seven years old again (the daughter has a memory flash of when she was seven). I am sitting on his lap at the bar. Don’t tell your mother, he is saying. His hand is on my knee. I feel the closeness of flesh. Angels are rubbing themselves against the men. Men against angels. (The girl is witnessing the men and the prostitutes in the bar. What must the girl not tell her mother? That she is sitting on her uncle’s lap or what she is seeing?)

‘Why angels?’ I want to know. (The prostitutes are called angels. It is an example of euphemism. The little girl would never associate an angel with a prostitute.)

‘Because they take the white men to heaven,’ says Uncle Otto.

Like the street names that have been removed for their Eurocentricity (The street names have been changes because they were not African enough. They were too European or white.), my parents and their friends are displaced (Things have changes so much that the old people feel unfamiliar with their surroundings.) They do not understand the new signs. Their silhouettes glide across the garden, outlining their nostalgia. (The older generation are like shadows from the past. They way they are dresses emphasises their longing for the past.) Through the shrill chirp of the crickets, I catch the desolation in their voices. (The old generation feel left behind and alone.) The talk of lifts that no longer work, of the rubbish that piles up. (These are things the old generation are not used to: lifts not working and rubbish. They blame this on the new government.) There goes our old dentist Louis Dutoit and his wife Joyce, speaking of ‘Old Johannesburg’ (They live in the past. Old Johannesburg is what the old generation long for.) For all the world we are still there. (It seems to the daughter that this party resembles the Old Johannesburg and that nothing has changed.) Except for Leon and me of course. Were could not have married in the old days, him being coloured and all. (The only thing that reminds the people at the party that things have changed, is Leon. Their marriage would have been illegal in the past.) Doctor Dutoit would not even have filled Leon’s teeth. (The story teller refers back to Apartheid and rascism.)

How graciously they tolerate us now. (The people don’t like Leon, they pretend. They only tolerate them because of her parents.) We have breezed in from our communal plot (This shows you they don’t live in the city, they share with others.) in the outer limits of the mega-city these people are too afraid to visit (It seems that all the suburbs and townships became one mega-city and the older generation is too afraid to go there because they don’t feel safe.)

‘Not without and AK-4777 rifle,’ (The AK-4777 rifle comes from Russia. It is a machine gun that was mainly used by black terrorists. The old generation remembers it as the instrument of terror. The father expects to still find this rifle in these areas and he wants to fight back with the same rifle.) my father has said.

Instead they ruminate in this, the last of the shrunken ghettos that began to decline when cheap labour went out. (The suburb where the old generation lives has lost all its former glory. There are no more servants to do things for them.) Not for them the spread of shebeens and malls that splash jazz from what used to be poverty-stricken township to the City Hall. The place we now call Soweto City. (Soweto, the once poor township has become the centre of business. The young generation lives there and visits the places for fun. The old generation still avoids the area.) Connected by skyway and flyway, over and underground, as steady as the steel and the foreign funding on which it runs. (Soweto has an airport. There are trains going there and coming back. Foreign countries invest in Soweto and new building rise.) Talk about one door closing. The Old Order was not yet cold in its grave and the place was gyrating, like a woman in love. (Soweto developed very fast. It became a hive of activity.)

And the people out there? There are millions of us (all races living together, the young generation) – living the good life advertised by laser-honed graphics that dazzle the streets. We are fast-living. Street-wise. Natural. We till the land. Our food is organic. See this party dress? It’s is made of paper. (The new generation is rich. They care about the environment. They grow their own food. They recycle things. They seem free.) Tomorrow I’ll shred it. Recycle later.

I thank heavens for Leon. I envy him his equilibrium. (Her husband seems to be well balanced. He is not bitter because of the past, like her parents.) Forgive and forget. That’s what he said before we came here tonight. His kind of thinking has helped me cope with the effect my parents have on me. (The daughter does not agree with her parents’ point of view. Her parents upset her.)

‘Thank the Lord Leon’s surname is also Laubscher. Some people willnever know,’ is all they said when I told them about our marriage. (The parents are not happy with the marriage. They are just happy the Leon’s surname allows them to hide Leon’s colour from their friends. Leon’s surname sounds white.).

Dad is the perfect host. But earlier this evening his sentimentality got the better of him when Uncle Otto reminded him of the New Year’s Eve parties, five times the size of this one, held at our old house. Foreign diplomats, caviar, black truffles in Italian rice. (One cannot help but wonder if these parties were paid for by the country.) Now he embraces Ethel. One-two. One-two. (The one-two resembles the dance steps they take.) He dances a little jig with her on the verandah, cooled by the breeze that fans the palm tree. I squirm, reminded of the way he used to cavort when the hotel was in its prime. (The daughter’s memories of how her father jumped around and partied in the old days, makes her squirm.)

‘I’m a miner at heart,’ he used to say, insisting that the place was a private sideline of no consequence. (The father worked at the mine. The hotel was just a sideline. History in South Africa claims that the whites made their money with the mines.)

Was anyone fooled into believing it was anything but a thriving business? (The hotel was a business, it was not just a sideline and it made a lot of money.) We had more maids than rooms that needed polishing in our double-storey house. (Why did they have so many maids. Could they have been ‘angels’?) My parents had owned three game farms and four cars. A relic of the Old Regime, my father will never forgive the New Order for destroying this lifestyle. (The New Order redistributed wealth. Those who owned a lot had to give up some of their wealth to give to the poor. The father had to give up some of his farms) I am sure that in his dreams he still sells the kisses of angels to those who would cross the forbidden colour line by night, endorse it by day. (At night white men paid her father to sleep with non-white prostitutes. Something that was against the law. During the day those same people arrested others who did what they did at night.)

‘Would you like to dance?’ ask Paul Schoeman, once minister of Law and Order. (If the minister of Law and Order is one of their old friends it shows how corrupted officials were. The minister of Law and Order must have known about her father’s business and did nothing about it.) ‘Mona Lisa …,’ sings Nat King Cole. (It is ironic that these party goers should listen to Nat King Cole. Nat King Cole is an African American Singer.) I shuffle. Our feet collide. He holds me close, looks into my eyes and says, ‘How can you live in a native township?’ (The minister of Law and Order once deployed his men in the native townships to fight the Africans. He can not understand that a white person could live there.)

I am unable to persuade old Schoeman that the change has brought with it a downswing in crime. (The new generation notes the changes but the old generation does note the changes.) I say all the thins my father will not hear. (The old generation don’t even listen to the explanations of the young generation. They don’t want to hear the truth and they have made up their minds that there is nothing good about the new government.) IBut like Dad he does not grasp a word about redistribution. (Redistribution is die herverspryding van rykdom. Die wat arm is kry nou geld en grond by die wat te veel geld en grond het en op die manier is almal beter af. Vir die dogter maak dit sin maar nie vir die ouer mense nie.) About progress. How can they when they insist without blinking that English and Afrikaans are still the official languages? (The old generation is narrow minded. There are more then just two languages in South Africa and you cannot keep on ignoring the other languages.)

‘You talk too much,’ he says and pulls me towards him, gripping me so tightly that my left nipple sets off his security panic button, (The older generation were so insecure that they wore security panic buttons for protection while the younger generation had no fear of crime because they embraced the new society.) the kind my parents pay a fortune to wear around their necks. A siren wails. Up here on the verandah, men remove the fleshy fingers they have been rolling over their wives; naked, sagging backs. The whites of the wives’ eyes show. Paul Schoeman grabs my breast. I scream. I put my hands to my ears. I want to block out the wailing. The barking of Rottweilers. The jibbering of the guests. Four armed response security guards appear. Their sobriety creates a striking contrast. (Everybody else at the party is drunk. The guards are still sober and that forms a contrast.)

They are not amused when my father says, ‘False alarm. Who let the dogs out?’ Leon is nowhere to be seen. (Leon is nowhere to be seen because he is afraid of the dogs. The dogs have been trained to attack non-white people.)

‘Have a snack,’ mother offers. It is anchovy, tart and salty.

‘Is it nearly time for champagne?’ (In other words: ‘Is it nearly midnight?’) I want to know.

‘It won’t be long now,’ says Dad, as if he were meting out a punishment.

‘What is the time?’ shouts someone. One minute to midnight, says my watch. My father pours me another whiskey.

‘Be patient,’ he commands. Any minute now, I tell myself.

‘To the year two thousand!’ I shout. ‘To the future!’ (The young generation embraces the future. The actions of the daughter represents the young generation embracing the future and all the changes.)

‘There is nothing to look forward to.’ Dad’s voice is weighed down. (The older generation still wants to live in the past. The older generation is represented by the father. They don’t want to embrace the future and they don’t see anything positive about the future. They want to live in the past.) Now two of him are saying, ‘This is the future.’ The thick curl of his cigar smoke throws me back into a time when I believed he had power over the planets. Now I am starting to believe that my father is actually capable of holding back midnight. (The daughter realizes how caught up in the past her father is and as long as he does not accept the changes, he and his friends will live as if it is still the past. She knows how much they will miss and how much will pass them by.) I want to call the security guards with their military boots and pistols to return.

‘Do you want to see the real danger we face here tonight?’ I will ask. Then I will see what they can do about the fear that washes this party like a backward-moving current. (The old generation at this party is afraid of the future, the new government and the changes made. They are ruled by fear and this fear holds them captive in the past. This fear prevents them from progressing. The daughter hopes this fear can be removed in some way.)

I am standing alone when it happens. The blackness of the sky is split as the crackers explode brightly into two million broken stars. (It is midnight.) An ethereal (sounding like angels, heavenly) chorus resounds above the voice of Nat King Cole, above the marabi jazz that plays on Station Nnwe (The country changed so drastically that the names of the radio stations also changed. It is not European anymore but African.) As the heavens shift, time dissolves and my rapture rises.

Down below, the profusion of papyrus plants, the beds of lobelia, chrysanthemum and wild hydrangea (all types of flowers), the lawn that is overrun with weeds are illuminated by an unearthly light. (The lawn is overrun by weeds because there’s no more cheap labour to remove the weeds.) ‘Happy New Year!’ Leon embraces me from behind. ‘Did you hear what Manzwe said?’ he asks. (Leon embraces the New Year. He represents the young generation and they accept the new President and the new country.)

From a great distance, I hear my father saying that there is still one minute to go. (By saying there is still one minute to go the father shows that the old generation is not embracing the future. By refusing to accept the arrival of midnight, the father is also not accepting the future. This is how the father keeps back midnight, by not accepting the future. The moment the father accepts the future, the New Year would arrive.)

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download