Bryan Rostron’s Black Petals is being launched next week at the Book Lounge. There has been a low warbling of anticipation in SA Lit circles since details of the book were released back in February – not least because publishers Jacana have come up with another winner of a cover.
The novel is about an archivist, Macaulay Vogel, in search of a peculiar kind of truth, the truth of his former self, whom he doesn’t recognise in the police file that he discovers with his name on it.
Which brings us to the moment of today’s book excerpt: the moment when Macaulay Vogel comes face to face with “Macaulay Vogel”:
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ON Saturday afternoon, opening the lime green folder with his name blazoned in capitals on the cover, Vogel discovered that it contained seven red lined, foolscap pages, with some sections typed, others handwritten. Each entry was signed and dated. Though a dozen or more agents had contributed to his file, there was a uniform, impersonal style. This added to the overall impression that it was a trustworthy, strictly factual document.
That morning he had worked at the Castle. It was a way of keeping his rising excitement under control. As he’d left at noon, the soldier at the gateway smiled. “Watching the big match this afternoon, sir?” “You should search me,” suggested Vogel recklessly. “I could be taking government stuff home, you know.”
The guard laughed, “Not you, Dr. Vogel,” and saluted. “Ube nemini emnandi.”
“I’ll do my best,” replied the archivist, adding cheerily. “You have a good day, too, my friend.”
The city was quiet and hot. Vogel had dawdled on his way home, prolonging the suspense. He wanted to savour the contemplation of that moment when he would finally open the green folder. He wanted to be calm, fully prepared to relish the occasion. Friends, events and excitements that he had not evoked in a long while surfaced. It was like watching a silent film. Arbitrary images appeared to him – unexpectedly, delightfully – in a new and daring light. At the flower market he’d bought another two garlands of lilies, a double extravagance always reserved for the weekend. This offering he laid reverently by the photo of Marda; an avowal that she, too, shared his anticipation of the approaching, pleasurably-deferred sacramental moment.
Bougainvillea petals, blown through the house by the previous day’s wind, lay limply on the kitchen tiles. The petals had dried and they crackled underfoot as Vogel prepared himself a large sandwich.
He rescued the green folder from its hiding place among pants and socks. Entering his study, by habit, he had locked the door behind him.
As always when about to tackle a new document, the archivist took off his glasses, wiped them; then rapidly skimmed the contents to gain an overall impression. This initial scan, despite days of tension and expectation, seemed at first as humdrum as any other workaday professional appraisal. There was no expected illumination, no shriving revelation.
The archivist was also bewildered by his chilly, totally unexpected detachment. It was as though he were reading about someone he’d never met.
Vogel felt dazed, somehow deflated … even, heartlessly, let down.
A landward breeze sprung up, insinuating and sticky. The temperature kept rising. Vogel felt prickles of sweat on his chest and wondered if he should take a shower. Perhaps that would rouse him out of this curious torpor; this unexpected, tumbling discouragement.
A lone petal, gusted upstairs, lay on the carpet; scarlet faded to russet.
With only one half-shuttered window overlooking the courtyard, his study grew quite dark. He switched on his desk lamp and began to read the first page again more attentively. There were dates of various meetings he’d attended, lists of names of those who had also been present, and a précis of what had been said, by whom. Mostly these accounts consisted of plain, entirely deadpan facts. He remembered the majority of those occasions; indeed, most had been public demonstrations, details of which could have been gleaned from newspapers. With other entries he had to think for a while before a familiar name or reference reminded him of the event. Some he simply could not recall.
The first page was almost exclusively a list of early protest meetings, often broken up by the police. Vogel may or may not have been present. There had been so many such demonstrations he could not recollect them all. It was dull, unexciting. There was nothing confidential or personal; no hint of his secret life, covert activities, not a trace of heroism.
Vogel experienced a mounting simmer of resentment. He began to feel affronted. He deserved more than this, a paltry register of attendance at public events … indexed as a mere bit player in the crowd. The archivist now recognized the source of that abrupt sensation of deflation and consequent, enveloping lassitude. He had simply not been given his due.
He should not, he knew, have been surprised. This duplicated the pattern of so many hundreds of similar documents that he had studied: lacklustre, derivative and repetitive. Vogel, however, was unable to stifle a rising bile of indignation. If another archivist had examined this dossier, his true role would not be apparent at all. He felt cheated.
“Idle bastards,” he muttered aloud.
He had been underestimated, underrated. Undervalued.
It was a professional affront, too. Vogel felt this strongly. A major enjoyment of his work was to measure himself against a gifted antagonist; an agent who honoured the basic detective work – the footslog and lurking, sleuthing and surveillance, but who also possessed a shrewd understanding of his quarry and their aims.
“Worthless,” he said, irritably. “Sloppy work, guys.”
On the third page he lingered over the half dozen or so paragraphs which mentioned Grethe Cilliers. At first glance these had revealed little beyond dates, timing and places where they had been spotted together, and as several of these entries were handwritten they had been difficult to decipher. But as he examined these sections in more detail, Vogel began to enjoy himself a little more. He deduced from the sparse detail in these accounts that it was Grethe who had been followed to the assignations. Here, too, was a reference code, CCT704, recorded in brackets after her name.
It was clear – at least from this file – that the security police had no idea Grethe and he had been compiling encrypted messages, some to be smuggled abroad, others transmitted to distant parts of the country. This is where comparison with Grethe’s missing dossier would help complete the puzzle. It was entirely possible it might contain more informed observations; that some clerk had been indolent in copying details into his file, for instance, or that the agent in charge of her case had deliberately withheld information from colleagues, either from professional habit or in order to grab all the glory of exposure and arrest for himself.
Vogel cheered up. He and Grethe had operated on the assumption that she was the more likely to be under observation, and here was evidence that they had apparently succeeded in outwitting the opposition. Of the frequent occasions he and Grethe met, the police had only managed to track fourteen. Vogel had always relished the intricate stratagems of evasion for their meetings. Assignations with Grethe were cloaked in mystery and danger.
He also noted, with added satisfaction, that their pursuers had no proof that he and Grethe had ever been lovers. Specifics were scanty. One report was reduced to conjecture, remarking that while Vogel remained unmarried, young Grethe, though fleetingly wedded, had recently separated.
It concluded, “Motive for rendezvous … sex?”
He was amused to observe this brief entry relied, for corroboration, on adducing Grethe’s magnetism, her feral allure and lustrous ginger hair. If Vogel had been analyzing the file of someone unknown to him he would have taken this as the unreliable, resentful projection of a bored foot soldier. The very next entry, the last on Grethe, merely stated: “Sex? Of course!”
Now that he was paying closer attention, Vogel noted that subsequent entries on the next page, though still meagre, were more specific. They no longer referred to public events, but concentrated on clandestine gatherings. He had not detected this on his first, rapid reading. The archivist felt a bristle of expectancy, as always when he discerned a faint shift. At this point, it would seem, he was under closer observation himself. Vogel was no longer an object of attention merely because Grethe led there. He was the hunted.
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