Название: Cokcraco
Автор: Paul Williams
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Контркультура
isbn: 9781922198099
isbn:
He is the opposite of Zimmerlie, if people can be opposites. He exudes a healthy dark glow, and grins with a self-confidence that you see can never be shaken.
‘Ah, Professor Mpofu. I … your … office … ?’
‘My office is temporarily indisposed,’ says Mpofu.
‘There was an accident,’ says Zimmerlie. ‘A fire.’
You detect a flicker of embarrassment between them. No, more than embarrassment: a lie.
‘We Zulus have a saying,’ says Mpofu. ‘Khotha eyikhothayo … The cow licks the one that licks her. John has kindly let me use his office and facilities.’
Zimmerlie presses his fingers together. ‘Thami has an apropos proverb for every calamity.’
They speak like one creature, a two-headed monster. Opposites, but twinned, symbiotic opposites.
‘Come in, come in.’
The walls of the office ceiling are plumped with books, framed certificates, photos. The Journal of Southern African Literature. Leavis’s The Great Tradition, Harold Bloom, Kristeva, Derrida, Barthes, Foucault, Saussure, Structuralist Poetics. The books speak for themselves. You are now entering the world of Literary Criticism, another world, another language. And there are shelves of literature, too, with a capital L: The Collected Works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, John Donne, The Romantic Poets, Thomas Hardy, DH Lawrence. Be warned: this is the world of Literary Criticism, and these are Literary Critics.
A LITERARY KRITIK
KritiK: a person who rubs his or her legs together to make a noise. Not to be confused with a KriKit, the singular of the game played with a bat and a ball by humans dressed in white. Not to be confused with a KoKroach, another hardy insect that has outlived the dinosaur, and doesn’t Kriticise anybody.
KritiK: Arch enemy of writer.
A strange thing, a literary KritiK. Always seKondary. Though KritiX themselves do not think like this. KritiX always trail behind writers, mopping their words, examining their faeces for meaning, signifiKance, signifers and signifiers. Would it not be better to be the writer yourself? Maybe that’s what KritiX are, failed writers, wanna-be writers, and this whole industry of literary aKademia is a green pool of envy and failure. The right brain telling the wrong brain what to do.
But we shouldn’t disparage them: they’re a dying race, and no longer have anything to feed off. XtinKt. Once they bred in the sewers of universities all over the world, and now all we have are their empty KarKasses. No one reads anymore.
— Sizwe Bantu, Seven Invisible Selves, 2008
The window looks out on an idealised African image: rolling green hills, dotted with grass huts under a deep blue sky.
They haven’t let you speak yet. You put it off as long as possible, rehearsing the words, slowing your breathing down. The sweat has dried sticky and cold on your skin in the arctic air-conditioning in the room.
‘Sit, sit. You must be tired. How was the trip?’
You sit. Consider. Should you tell them about the sixteen-hour flight, the Durban hotel you stayed in the night before adjacent to a shebeen that played loud music to the early hours of the morning, the air-conditioning in your overpriced rental car that didn’t work, the last few minutes of terror when you were sure you’d be dead?
‘It was fine. No worries.’
‘No worries? I like that.’
‘He’s Australian. Australians don’t have worries.’
‘Australians have a sense of humour.’
‘You’ll need a sense of humour to work here, Dr Turner.’
‘Tim. Call me Tim. Or Timothy.’
A suit does wonders. Paste a self onto your shimmering non-being, and people believe you to be solid.
‘You’re replacing a man who has been suspended from office,’ says Mpofu.
‘It’s been a terrible business.’
‘As we Zulus say, Umlomo, ishoba lokuziphungela.’ He offers no translation this time, but you nod anyway. You do a lot of nodding. The puppeteer up there in your brain jerks the head string way too often. But that is what humouring is.
The differAnce between pretending to be what people wAnt you to be and humouring them by Acting in a certain way is quite indistinguishable. Always mAsk; AlwAys pretend; AlwAys protect yourself. But don’t inhabit the mAsk. Don’t feel inferior: only Act as if you Are inferior. Be deferentiAl, but don’t yield.
– Sizwe Bantu, AfriKan Metaphysics, 2007
Zimmerlie sighs. ‘He’s fighting the case, of course. Suing the department, the university, has even made a personal case against each of us.’
‘The case could go on for months, years …’
‘A delicate issue,’ says Zimmerlie. ‘We shouldn’t talk much about it.’
‘The less said the better.’
‘There’s a trial, an inquiry, an investigation.’
You have to ask. ‘Who … ? Who are you talking about?’
‘Makaya.’
‘A horrible man.’ Zimmerlie holds up an enormous weight of air with his hands to measure, you guess, the enormity of the horror. ‘It may be a semester, or perhaps longer—we just don’t know—because now he’s refused to accept dismissal and there’s a board of enquiry—and he’s taking us all to court …’
‘Dr Turner, if he is fired, there’ll be a permanent post here and there’s a good chance you’ll get it—we didn’t want to bring you all the way from Australia for nothing.’
‘What’s this?’ Mpofu takes the blue-bound thesis from your hands. ‘The novels of Sizwe Bantu?’
‘My doctoral thesis, in case you’re interested, is on the novels of Sizwe Bantu.’
They don’t seem to be, so you offer more: ‘You know, the author who made himself famous venerating the cockroach.’
Blank, unreadable faces. Zimmerlie’s furrowed eyebrows. Mpofu licking his lips. Go on, prod their memories. ‘African International Book Prize. Nova Award?’
Zimmerlie takes the thesis from Mpofu and riffles through the two hundred pages as if it is an animation flick book. ‘Interesting.’ He hands it back without reading a word.
Mpofu speaks in a tone that can only be interpreted as patronising. ‘He’s a rather contentious writer around here.’
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