THE BACKSTORY
Eben Venter talks about writing
Wolf Wolf (translated by Michiel Heyns, Tafelberg, R240).
The father loves his son. The son tries to love his father. At times the father is like a menacing wolf with all his how-to-live codes. The son fails miserably. Yet in his dying days it is this very son who cares for the old man.
These complexities are present in father-son relationships. I know it, I hear about it.
Whenever I visited South Africa I stayed in the Rondebosch and Observatory areas of Cape Town. My senses were on alert. I’d notice strollers and their dogs skirting the bergies on the Rondebosch Common, or two plump policemen entering a fish & chips shop on Main Road, waiting their turn in the queue like proper citizens. And on my way to the inner city, I always passed an elegant Cape Dutch home secured by fleur-de-lis fencing.
So my father and son story found its location. Then I inserted all sorts of smaller stories into the big one so that it would move fast and furiously ahead. That’s how I experienced my country after 1994: fast and furious. And surprising. And beautiful too.
At the time I became enamoured with pornography. I couldn’t get enough of all the images freely available on the internet, 24/7. Maybe the son did take note of the Old Wolf’s cautioning codes at this point and he started reading about the effects of obsessive pornwatching on the brain. This was how the character of Mattheüs, the protagonist of the story, started gaining flesh.
Then one day the father died and everything changed, just like it did in South Africa. The age of inherited privileges was over. The son had to step out and fend for himself. He displayed courage and integrity, exactly the way he was taught. But now there was another menace. It came at a time and in a way the son couldn’t possibly have expected, and it left him powerless. It was like the children’s game they used to play, gingerly walking behind the wolf, never knowing the hour he was going to call out and get you. —
Interview by Jennifer Platt