My father and I used to say consistently weeps. It is unclear why, because we did not do Russians or Wepsen. Wasps was in the Weespse summer, by the way. We are not on the west side, where the new building as a caterpillar and neverthow through the green eats towards Amsterdam, but on the east side, where the Vecht has been winding towards Muiden for centuries. The cupboard is bluer than the sky and wishes us ‘lots of reading’.
Countless sweet books, about dreams, friends, police dogs and Louis van Gaal, but also the winner of the Booker Prize 2021, The promise From the South African writer Damon Galgut, translated by Rob van der Veer. That is, how shall we say it, a sometimes less cheerful book. It describes the redsigns of the white family Swart, just before and after the end of apartheid. The promise from the title is smeared by the mother of the family on her death bed with her husband: that their servant Salomé will get the house in which she has been living for years. Father does not resolve his promise to the frustration of their youngest daughter Amor.
This family story is also the story of a country. Father works in a reptile house and will die when one of the trapped poison snakes he believes he has under control there bites him in his leg. “Dad was always obsessed with the cold -blooded blow, was not so good with mammals, and certainly not with humans.”
With which we at the greatest charm of The promise Come: the great way in which Galgut tells. He approaches his characters with an irresistible mixture of empathy and ridicule. In the first part of the novel, he lets the spirit of the deceased mother wander through the house. She is confused: “That is not uncommon, the dead are often unable to accept their condition, in that respect they look like the living, but they have forgotten what they are homesick for, while passing a lot is lost and when they see you they don’t know you.” And whether that is not nice enough: “Tojo the German Shepherd observes her coming and going without problems, because he has not yet learned that something like that is impossible.”
Elsewhere, Galgut is prosaic in his imagery, such as in the scene in which the as helpless as an impossible aunt Marina tries to make contact with Amor in vain when she drives it home for her mother’s funeral. “The disappointment of the older woman is almost tangible, like a sneaky fart.”
Galgut leads the family to ruin through those virtuosities. After the mother’s death everything falls apart. Astrid, the oldest sister, clings to status and externalities and will eventually be killed in the assumption that prospective President Mbeki is about to ask her telephone number. (To her own surprise, she suddenly found black men attractive after the revolution.)
Anton, the son, deserts from the army and will be hidden from government and family for a long time. To his surprise, his completely apolitical desertion from the apartheid army later applies as proof of political virtue. Amor – as a child struck by lightning – first takes the neighborhood to Europe and after returning works far below her stand and skills as a nurse in Durban: a penance for the broken promise of her family, now yes, for more of course.