The Promise

No, no. It can't be true, what her aunt has just told her. Nobody is dead. It's a word, that's all. She looks at the word, lying there on the desk like an insect on its back, with no explanation.

Prachtig boek dat aan de hand van vier sterfgevallen in dezelfde familie de roerige geschiedenis van Zuid Afrika tijdens en na de apartheid over vier decennia invoelbaar maakt.

For there is nothing unusual or remarkable about the Swart family, oh no, they resemble the family from the next farm and the one beyond that, just an ordinary bunch of white South Africans, and if you don't believe it then listen to us speak. We sound no different from the other voices, we sound the same and we tell the same stories, in an accent squashed underfoot, all the consonants decapitated and the vowels stove in. Something rusted and rain-stained and dented in the soul, and it comes through in the voice. But don't say we never change! Because guess who else is there in the front pew, an honorary kinswoman today. See how far we've come in this country, there's the black nanny, sitting with the family!

De belofte uit de titel is de belofte die de vader doet aan het sterfbed van de moeder, dat hun (zwarte) hulp het eigendom zal krijgen over het huisje waar ze al jaren in woont. Die belofte wordt in de komende decennia steeds weer niet ingewilligd, om diverse smoezen en redenen. De jongste dochter hoort (denk te hebben gehoord?) en lijkt de enige die zich hier druk over maakt.

Anton can see a black man in the next bed, bandaged up like a mummy. Verwoerd must be spinning in his grave, can't believe they haven't changed the name of the hospital yet. The man groans aloud from inside his wrappings, not quite a word, unless it's in a foreign language, the language of pain. Apartheid has fallen, see, we die right next to each other now, in intimate proximity. It's just the living part we still have to work out.

Aanrader!