A Single Swallow Read Online Free
Author: Horatio Clare
sailors used to visit the temple of Aphrodite (in Punic times the temple of Astarte) and there make offerings to her, in the belief that the goddess controlled storms. The tradition has survived in that the Madonna of Trapani is recognised by the Vatican as the patron saint of sailors. Because I am fond of the place and the story, I say a quick prayer to her. I will go like a sailor; the roads will be my ships and the countries will be seas. My religious convictions â suspicions would be more accurate â are non-aligned. In need, distress or exultation I will worship God in any language. The major faiths condense the multiple spirits and deities the ancients perceived into single figures.
â
Bismallah al rahman al rahem
,â I mutter. In the name of Allah the almighty the all merciful . . .
I fall into a doze as we cross into Algerian airspace. Just before I drop off I see fires down there, rosy blooms of flame in the dark desert: oil wells. Two hours later we are still over Algeria. My head swims with muzzy forebodings: this is mad, it cannot be done, the swallows are just too quick, it is just too far, the plan is a joke . . .
I think of my father, somewhere in Cape Town and looking forward to tomorrow, to showing me around for a few days before he sees me off. He is there for a couple of weeks, researching his book about South African history, traced through its literature. Strange that the swallows should take me straight to the part of the beginning of my own story which is a mystery to me. South Africa, my fatherâs story; somehow our familyâs story, which I have heard about but never seen.
âAs you see,â my father says, âSouth Africa is white!â Black waiters zig-zag between packed tables, frowning at the effort of carrying and distributing so much, much food. The tables are packed, and every customer is white.
I laugh a little, â
Je-sus
. . .â
âIt is a pretty spot though, isnât it?â
Cape Townâs waterfront is an orderly jumble of boats and quays, ofdrilling rigs, restaurants, bars and day trips, chopped at by the South Atlantic, with a wind, this lunchtime, coming from behind us, from the other side of Table Mountain, the southeaster from the Indian Ocean. The city has all the beauty of San Francisco; the luminosity of light, which sharpens colours to the peak of their intensity; the fresh sea winds which never abate; the different levels of streets and houses which seem to applaud the prospect of the ocean; the deep blue shadows and, out of the wind, the golden heat of the sun. The rich areas on the skirts of Table Mountain have an American opulence about them. Near where we are staying is a ranch with tall blue-gum trees and fine horses, ridden and groomed to a gloss. In Campâs Bay a white woman who looks like a model queues at a supermarket checkout wearing tiny scraps of transparent white cotton. The black man who serves her does not know which way to look. There are super-cars, Ferraris and Lamborghinis, jockeying for position in the freeway traffic, which hurtles along with a kind of recklessness. There is a recklessness in the wind and an untameable ferocity in the cliffs and abysses of the mountain. There is a tension in the air, as if all who live well live on borrowed time, and the millions more who live hard are running out of patience. San Francisco is a hundred times more at ease with the San Andreas fault than is Cape Town with the human earthquake that has not yet come, which merely rumbles, daily, in the crime round-ups of the newspapers. It is as though Table Mountain is a volcano.
âAs you see,â my father says, the next day, âSouth Africa is black!â
Now we are driving through Khayelitsha, a suburb where over a million people are living in tin shacks. We are the only whites on the road. Cape Town is cut into quadrants; it is half chessboard, half minefield. The residents speak in colour code: here
â
Bismallah al rahman al rahem
,â I mutter. In the name of Allah the almighty the all merciful . . .
I fall into a doze as we cross into Algerian airspace. Just before I drop off I see fires down there, rosy blooms of flame in the dark desert: oil wells. Two hours later we are still over Algeria. My head swims with muzzy forebodings: this is mad, it cannot be done, the swallows are just too quick, it is just too far, the plan is a joke . . .
I think of my father, somewhere in Cape Town and looking forward to tomorrow, to showing me around for a few days before he sees me off. He is there for a couple of weeks, researching his book about South African history, traced through its literature. Strange that the swallows should take me straight to the part of the beginning of my own story which is a mystery to me. South Africa, my fatherâs story; somehow our familyâs story, which I have heard about but never seen.
âAs you see,â my father says, âSouth Africa is white!â Black waiters zig-zag between packed tables, frowning at the effort of carrying and distributing so much, much food. The tables are packed, and every customer is white.
I laugh a little, â
Je-sus
. . .â
âIt is a pretty spot though, isnât it?â
Cape Townâs waterfront is an orderly jumble of boats and quays, ofdrilling rigs, restaurants, bars and day trips, chopped at by the South Atlantic, with a wind, this lunchtime, coming from behind us, from the other side of Table Mountain, the southeaster from the Indian Ocean. The city has all the beauty of San Francisco; the luminosity of light, which sharpens colours to the peak of their intensity; the fresh sea winds which never abate; the different levels of streets and houses which seem to applaud the prospect of the ocean; the deep blue shadows and, out of the wind, the golden heat of the sun. The rich areas on the skirts of Table Mountain have an American opulence about them. Near where we are staying is a ranch with tall blue-gum trees and fine horses, ridden and groomed to a gloss. In Campâs Bay a white woman who looks like a model queues at a supermarket checkout wearing tiny scraps of transparent white cotton. The black man who serves her does not know which way to look. There are super-cars, Ferraris and Lamborghinis, jockeying for position in the freeway traffic, which hurtles along with a kind of recklessness. There is a recklessness in the wind and an untameable ferocity in the cliffs and abysses of the mountain. There is a tension in the air, as if all who live well live on borrowed time, and the millions more who live hard are running out of patience. San Francisco is a hundred times more at ease with the San Andreas fault than is Cape Town with the human earthquake that has not yet come, which merely rumbles, daily, in the crime round-ups of the newspapers. It is as though Table Mountain is a volcano.
âAs you see,â my father says, the next day, âSouth Africa is black!â
Now we are driving through Khayelitsha, a suburb where over a million people are living in tin shacks. We are the only whites on the road. Cape Town is cut into quadrants; it is half chessboard, half minefield. The residents speak in colour code: here