Fools' Gold , livre ebook

Copyright is held by individual authors. The authors include Jayne Bauling, Jo-Ann Bekker, Tinashe Chidyausiku, Melissa de Villiers, Colleen Higgs, Sandra Hill, Lauri Kubuitsile, Sarah Lotz, Reneilwe Malatji, Julia Martin, Wame Molefhe, Isabella Morris, Jolyn Phillips, Arja Salafranca, Alex Smith, Meg Vandermerwe and Makhosazana Xaba.
Copyright for this edition Modjaji Books 2019 www.modjajibooks.co.za
ISBN 978-1-928215-84-4 (Print) ISBN 978-1-928215-85-1 (ePub)
Cover artwork and Lettering by Jesse Breytenbach Book and cover design by Monique Cleghorn
Acknowledgements: NB Publishers for permission to use Jolyn Phillips’ story ‘The Fisherman’ from Tjieng Tjang Tjerries and other stories
Contents
Foreword
Botswana Rain WAME MOLEFHE
The Red Earth MEG VANDERMERWE
The Thin Line ARJA SALAFRANCA
Stains Like a Map JAYNE BAULING
In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata LAURI KUBUITSILE
Fool’s Gold TINASHE CHIDYAUSIKU
The Outsider ISABELLA MORRIS
Heaven (or Something Like it) SARAH LOTZ
Spying COLLEEN HIGGS
Vicious Cycle RENEILWE MALATJI
Prayers MAKHOSAZANA XABA
The Chameleon House MELISSA DE VILLIERS
Southbound SANDRA HILL
Letter to Management JULIA MARTIN
The Dream of Cats is all about Mice ALEX SMITH
The Fisherman JOLYN PHILLIPS
The Good Housekeeping Magazine Quiz JO-ANN BEKKER
Authors
FOREWORD
A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film. – LORRIE MOORE
Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. They are journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner. – NEIL GAIMAN
There’s no other description of the short story that describes it as succinctly and perfectly as that of the American short story writer, Lorrie Moore. A snapshot of lives, and without the lengthy commitment of a novel, some say a short story is ideal for our busy, digital-led lives. They are coming into their own, having faded in popularity at times, this year alone has seen a plethora of individual story collections being published, which is good news for the form.
Modjaji Books in South Africa, of course, has believed in and published short story collections almost from the beginning of its inception in 2007. To date ten collections have been published and two anthologies, The Bed Book of Short Stories in 2010 and Stray in 2015. This collected volume of short stories celebrates both the form and over a decade of publishing short fiction. There’s one story each from the ten individual collections and a handful from the two anthologies, showcasing an enormous variety of stories, styles, voices and talents.
I was both excited and honoured to be chosen to edit this selection of Modjaji fiction. I love the short story – have loved it from my teens and into university, where as part of my undergraduate degree I read short stories for both English Literature and my major of African Literature. While I have always loved the sweep of reading novels, the short story offers something entirely. Within a few pages a writer can evoke a world, a moment or a bright epiphany, that lingers and reverberates long after the initial reading. A writer doesn’t need a novel to tell a story, or create a powerful impact in their story telling. Who can forget the power and the twist contained in Can Themba’s famous short story, ‘The Suit’ for example?
And the short story is remarkably flexible – ranging from microfictions of a page or two – to more conventional lengths to the sinuous, winding length of an Alice Munro story, which contain novel-like worlds in them. There are stories that verge on novella-length works, and there are novellas that might just as easily fit into either classification. But whatever the length, they are, as Gaiman notes, ‘tiny windows into other worlds’ that still allow you to be back in time for dinner. They provide instant hits, so to speak, without the commitment of following a novel’s plotlines – perfect for commutes, whether reading on a bus or train or listening to an audio book in a car, and perfect for our time-poor lives. Or, read a short story before bed.
There are stories that are so full of meaning and depth that they been filmed as feature-length films or plays. The list here is long. Again I’m thinking of ‘The Suit’, which has had been performed many times. And there’s the equally powerful ‘Brokeback Mountain’ by E Annie Proulx, which was made into a successful movie. And there are others, so many others.
Ranging from deep immersion into other lives, highlighting relationships, peoples’ motives, societal problems, Aids, poverty, orphaned children, dementia, resilience, to stories of humour and pathos, the following fictions are delightfully varied.
In Meg Vandermerwe’s ‘The red earth’ we are witness to the thoughts and fears of a woman with living with Aids, her sense of isolation and fear palpable throughout. Meanwhile in Reneilwe Malatji’s ‘Vicious Cycle’ the woman narrator ponders the problem of so many absent fathers in a story that sensitively explores this issue.
Relationships form the backbone of many of the stories. In my own story, ‘The Thin Line’ I explored the fissures and cracks that seep into relationships – friendship or romantic – and break open bonds that we thought might last forever.
Similarly, Wame Molefhe’s ‘Botswana Rain’ is a mediation on the compromises inherent in some lives and some relationships, where it is necessary to be thought ‘normal’.
Colleen Higgs takes us back to the Yeoville of the early 1990s with ‘Spying’ in which a twentysomething narrator remembers the love she took so long to get over, with bitter-sweet memories. This story perfectly captures the hopes and dashed innocence of the narrator.
And in Jo-Ann Bekker’s ‘The Good Housekeeping Magazine Quiz’ the story is told through a magazine quiz format in which a woman can see only too clearly the threat her husband’s former lover poses to her marriage.
A deeply poignant story, Makhosazana Xaba’s ‘Prayers’ examines childhood through the prism of a thirteen-year-old looking after her four-year-old sister, both parents having passed away within months of each other. The same youthful resilience is displayed in the young girl at the centre of ‘The Fisherman’ by Jolyn Phillips, who needs a job fishing, as her father did, casting her line into the waters of luck.
A group of young South African women share a flat and cadge for whatever the cash they can to live on in ‘The Chameleon House’ by Melissa de Villiers, in a story that has a deeper, darker heart at its core.
And then we’re pulled into the past, into 1923, in ‘Southbound’ by Sandra Hill, in a wry story about an Englishwoman’s life in Durban, as told through the various viewpoints of others, and their theories about her life.
Moving on from these debut volumes, The Bed Book of Short Stories is centred on the theme of ‘bed’ and bursting with a variety of stories tha imaginatively interpret this theme. It contains a wide range of writers’ voices – both well-known and just starting out.
There’s Lauri Kubuitsile’s wonderfully humorous ‘In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata’, which centres on the sexual prowess of the late McPhineas, well-known bachelor, and the village men’s desire to emulate his success with their wives.
Equally humorous is ‘Heaven (or Something Like It)’ by Sarah Lotz in which a woman returns from the spirit world to her old flat, and settles right back in, watching TV 24/7 and puzzling the tenants who take on the place.
There’s ‘Stains Like a Map’ by Jayne Bauling, which focuses on a bed purchased by a young Mozambiquan couple, a bed which follows them through marriage and into a clandestine new life in South Africa with all its challenges – the bed here is metaphor for life itself.
Isabella Morris’s ‘The Outsider’ is a haunting and achingly poignant story of a young woman looking for something less than love with the army guys who pass through the Free State town she lives in.
‘Fool’s Gold’ by Tinashe Chidyausiku is another story that catches you in the solar plexus – the story arcing over a day in the life of a young man eking out an existence carrying baggage for others.
The latest short fiction anthology from Modjaji, Stray , themed around the subject of animals. This volume showcases two of the stories from that book. Julia Martin’s ‘Letter to the Management’ tells the story of a mother’s dementia and her daughter’s awareness and guilt that although her mother’s memory is gone, she is still aware of her less than ideal surroundings. Alex Smith’s ‘The Dream of Cats’ is the moving story of a lonely man’s meaningful encounter with a street cat, and the effect animals can have on our lives.
Reading and re-reading these stories was a powerful immersion into the variety of fictional worlds offered in these debut collections and the anthologies. The story is both photograph and love affair, and these varied pieces hold up a mirror to our lives and the places we live in.
ARJA SALAFRANCA
JOHANNESBURG, OCTOBER 2019
Botswana Rain
WAME MOLEFHE
It was my mother who rang to tell me. She called at that ungodly hour of the night when messages of birth and death were usually conveyed. I felt the vibration of my cell phone on the bedside table.
“Sethu,” she said when I said hello, “I have sad, sad news for you.”
I knew then that it was serious. It was rare for my mother to call me by the name she used when I was a little girl, rarer for her not to know the right words to say.
“Kgomotso is gone.”
“What do you mean Mama?”
“She passed away.”
“No Mama… How…When?” I whispered, pressed the cell phone to my