Landscape of loss and light

A writer returns to the landscape of his youth, the small town of Rouxville in the Free State. Accompanying him is one of his creative writing students, who is always eager to hear stories of a bygone age.

There is something awkward about the figure walking along the road. The gait appears almost uncertain, the feet paying careful attention to where they step. Small rucksack hooked over the shoulders. Long black sleeves under the Free State sun. I slow down. A man, I see now. Eyes still cast towards the earth. In the shadow of his hat, a greyish beard.

I stop. “Hi, hello. Is everything okay? Can I offer you a lift?”

The man approaches in silence. When he stops beside the car, he looks back towards Smithfield, then in the direction of Rouxville. When he finally makes eye contact, I detect a hint of a smile. More in the eyes than around the mouth.

“Good afternoon. I’m perfectly fine, thank you.” The voice sounds friendly.

A pair of spectacles hangs on a string around his neck. In one hand he carries an unusual little cool bag. I clearly look at it for slightly too long.

“Padkos. Actually, tonight’s supper. Where are you heading?”

It feels like that should have been my line.

“Just to Rouxville. I’m writing a story about the town.”

His eyes squint towards Rouxville. What is he wondering? What does he see?

“My plan was to spend today and tomorrow walking the stretch between Smithfield and Rouxville,” he says. “I grew up in the area and I’m working on a book where much of the landscape and its people come to the surface. But your arrival seems to be an act of providence. Maybe I should join you in getting to know the town and find out what fresh insights you have?”

What do I have here? Why do wanderers always have the strangest tales? My hesitance must seem obvious, because he adds: “I can tell you many stories about Rouxville.”

Had he not spoken so beautifully, I’d have cut and run. But I invite him to get in. There is no skipping towards the passenger door. Almost all his movements are timid. Scared. Like a dassie stalking the morning sun. He slowly settles in his seat. Rucksack at his feet, the cool bag on his lap and a hand on each leg. Thin, white hands. Writer’s hands. Hands that work only with the alphabet and punctuation marks, not with wood, iron, soil, heat or cold.

I extend my own pale claw. “Willem.” “Thank you, Willem. I’m Francois.”

ROUXVILLE AWAITS BEYOND A HILL, beside a long bend in the N6. From this slight vantage point, it’s clear that not much is happening here.

“There it is,” the author beside me exclaims. “Our broken, choking town.”

I jump at the sound of his voice, now louder. Not only at the sound, but also

at the blow his words deliver towards the source of the decline.

The township stretches across a dusty expanse. “Roleleathunya. The place of red dust,” Francois translates. As we travel along the highway skirting the town, I see one or two small shops, a U-Save and a Total garage. Rouxville has little to reveal to passers-by.

“What would you really like to see?” Francois asks.

I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s anything here worth seeing. Where does his collection of stories begin? How is it possible for a story to germinate in this dull little place?

“Maybe we should start at the bestlooking building,” he suggests, and I follow his softly spoken directions. It feels as though the untarred streets are taking us somewhere completely different. An older town. Still timeworn, but with peaceful shadows beneath large trees, and sandstone buildings that have survived a century’s worth of owners, August winds and politics.

We stop in front of the heavy castiron gate at the NG church and raise our eyes to the tower. The large clock had stopped one day – or possibly one cold night – at 12:40.

“Many things have started and ended here,” Francois says. “For me, too. I was baptised here. Later, I brought my sister into church for her baptism ceremony. I was confirmed as a member of the church here. And this is where our mother’s memorial service was held.”

Surprisingly enough, the church’s door is open. We enter. The gloom smells of wood and leather Bible covers. The rows of pews, so straight, so expectant of a message and a psalm. The pulpit a small citadel. Organ pipes gleaming like the trunks of poplar trees.

“Everything is still the same,” Francois whispers as he slides into a pew. “Our family didn’t have a particular place to sit. But it was often here. Never in the gallery. My father >

said a person should not elevate himself above the Lord’s emissary. The words should descend over you.”

He recalls Tannie Jakkie du Plessis seated in front of him, a fox-fur stole draped over her shoulders. The animal’s head resting on her back, the sly alabaster eyes observing him throughout the service.

“Then there was Oom Jannie Henning, who would sit down and take a Wilson’s XXX mint from his pocket. Extra Strong. He’d fold open his pocket knife and then, whap!, cut the mint in half. One half for him and the other half for his wife. Every Sunday.”

Wandering writers on unfamiliar roads make one curious. They make one wonder about their behaviour, the directions they choose, the thoughts behind their eyes. Are they searching for – or travelling towards – things we know nothing about? This is why I ask, hesitating slightly: “Do you still believe in God and the commandments?” He weighs my question.

“I like to believe in something. There is beauty in the yearning for God. I believe, just as the Bible taught me, that love is the greatest of all. It can cover sins and conquer all. This is why I find faith and writing to be very similar. They are both about love for others. When you write, you need to focus intently on how someone else will experience your work. It’s not about you.” that, for my next piece of writing,

I need to move away from the Free State. Not physically, but spiritually. I have never been a cheerful person, but I know that I have to get myself into a happier space.”

Francois gestures towards a building: the Rouxville District Farmers’ Union Agricultural Centre. “My book was born there, in Dr Willem Hanekom’s consulting room. He was more a philosopher than a doctor and would examine you with a smouldering Rembrandt van Rijn cigarette dangling between his lips.”

We walk over to the Sentrale Kafee. The old “Whites” and “Non-Whites” entrances are still visible. Inside, the Bangladeshi owner tries to catch a cat between the packets of rice and tinned foods. Frightened off by the camera, he disappears into the kitchen to hide.

“Yes, many things have changed here,” Francois says. “This was once Oom Ford’s shop. He had a sjambok, and children and black people were afraid of him. He was the first person in Rouxville to put a screen over his black-and-white TV so he could watch it in colour.”

One morning at school, the boys excitedly told Francois and the other boarding-school boys that Farrah Fawcett was featured in the latest Scope and one of the stars had not printed correctly. “That same afternoon we ran from the hostel to Oom Ford’s shop. And indeed, the new Scope was on the shelf. When we opened it at the centrefold, Farrah was there with one of her stars round about here,” Francois says, pointing to his stomach.

“Until that moment – I was probably in Standard 6 – I’d thought women had stars on their breasts. For the first time, I saw a woman’s nipple. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

Francois attended boarding school in Rouxville from Sub A until matric in 1982. “On my first day I couldn’t believe how many white children there were. On the farm, all our friends were black. Now, there’s probably not a single white child in the school. >

Writer Francois Smith looks out over the landscape of his youth. “The Free State has seen intense trauma, but the land is impervious to it and life goes on,” he says. “It reveals nothing of the tragedies that played out here. It’s always this open and light.”

Rouxville was the home town of former state president Jim Fouché – his farm was named Babel. This is also where, in the seventies, Danie Fick sold more Datsuns than any other dealership in the country. But for now the years of living off the fat of the land has passed.

“He doesn’t like feeling like a child, and that’s what happens in church: he is a schoolboy again under the eyes of the elders in the congregation. Let them rather come to him; in his consulting room he has enough contact with people and there is ample opportunity for being neighbourly. It’s a concept he learnt here, he thinks, the idea that you have to love your neighbour as you love yourself. He knows the smell of the word, like an open hymnbook when you hold your nose close to the seam down the centre.” – Gustav van Aardt’s thoughts as he stands in front of the NG church in Die Kleinste Ramp Denkbaar.