Ingrid Winterbach Archives

The Experience of a Woman: A Review of Ingrid Winterbach’s The Elusive Moth — Benjamin Woodard

Sep 102014

Author Photo: Leanne Stander

The building goes up in flames, causing the protesters to scatter, and turning the attempt at damnation, at justice, into a bloodbath consuming not just those involved, but several innocent bystanders, as well. The scene eerily echoes recent, similar real-life protests in places like Ferguson, Missouri, and though Winterbach does ultimately bring righteousness down upon the villains of The Elusive Moth, she does so at the expense of the justice-seekers, as well, calling into question the true value of their efforts. — Benjamin Woodard

The Elusive Moth
Ingrid Winterbach
Translated from the Afrikaans by Iris Gouws and Ingrid Winterbach
Open Letter
198 pages ($14.95)
ISBN: 978-1-934824-77-1

Often, we travel for the same reasons we read stories: escape, insight, knowledge, adventure. Stepping off of an airplane in a new environment offers the same opportunity for internal charge (or recharge) as the mental submersion provided by a great narrative. In both cases, home is far away—if only sometimes in the reader’s mind—and endless opportunities await engagement. So it’s no surprise that Ingrid Winterbach’s The Elusive Moth, originally published in 1994 but now translated for English-speaking audiences, succeeds as both a novel and literary expedition, for as Winterbach ushers her protagonist, lepidopterist Karolina Ferreira, from her urban home to the small community of Voorspoed in the Free State—a town full of singing lawyers, seductive economists, and corrupt officials—so too does the reader feel the pull of investigation. This land functions as setting and as a character, with its intense heat and unpaved roads, providing an ideal stomping grounds for Karolina and her associates. And while the novel lingers in a period two decades removed from our own, never does it read as a dated volume of yesteryear. Rather, Winterbach’s clever, fascinating meditation on gender and power echoes societal flaws still present around the world, making the volume vital and timely.

As The Elusive Moth opens, Karolina spends her days in the veldt outside Voorspoed with Basil, a part-time resident of the town who she picked up during her travels. Here, she studies moths, specifically the “distribution and breeding patterns of the moth species Hebdomophruda crenilinea,” while Basil, himself a pupil under a local herbalist, scours the land for unusual vegetation and natural remedies. In the evenings, back with society, the duo loiters at the nearby hotel bar, playing games of snooker, drinking whiskey, and observing the locals. As in the scrub fields, their critical eyes work overtime in town to separate the wheat from the chaff, finding focus on those that make the community’s ecosystem function. They make fun of some, like the sullen magistrate, or the lawyer Pol, and question the political tactics of others, particularly Lieutenant Kieliemann, who sexually harasses Karolina nightly, pressing against her until she forces him off, and his boss, Captain Gert Els. There are also the many fleeting groups that interact with Karolina and Basil: a theatre troupe secretly organizing the residents to rise against the town’s authorities, a man trying to escape his captors, and a pair of travelers who befriend Karolina while passing through the area. As these characters and engagements slowly stack up, Karolina devotes far more time to the community of Voorspoed than its desolate outskirts, dancing on Saturday evenings, striking up a romance with a man named Jess, looking for a pair of mysterious lovers in the cemetery, and investigating the men who run the small town with inordinate amounts of power. Her research shifts from moths to men.

And yet, much like the long, lazy days that it paints on every page, The Elusive Moth refuses to latch onto Karolina’s suspicions in the same way a lesser novel would. Instead of using her wariness to sprint forward in a series of action set pieces, Winterbach lets her characters meander. While Karolina supposes Gert Els of nefarious doings, she never acts quickly to call in the cavalry. Instead, she goes on long walks with Jess, or picnics with Basil. And this is one reason the novel works so well: it establishes a firm rhythm for Karolina early—some combination of research, drinking, snooker, investigation, repeat—and then rarely strays from this framework. As such, there’s an authenticity, not to mention a relatability, to this routine and the way Karolina approaches her actions. Instead of molding the generic Hollywood heroine who instantly transforms into a superhero the moment she doubts an individual, the author constructs characters that experience life as it comes, fitting in cries disbelief between rounds of snooker. Karolina does not see herself as the hero, therefore, she does not act as the leader to right wrongs.

This is not to say that Winterbach crafts a novel of little consequence. Far from it, for nestled firmly within The Elusive Moth’s brisk 198 pages are several shrewd musings on gender and power. For example, there is a certain reasoning argued by Winterbach for Karolina’s lack of heroics. Throughout the novel, Karolina’s interactions with the opposite sex tend to materialize in two forms: from those who view her as an intellectual equal; and from those who view her as a sexual conquest, complete with lustful, unwanted advances. These second encounters frequently come from men of certain high regard in the township and help reinforce Karolina’s distrust of authority. And though she never finds a way to articulate the feeling of this emotion and confusion verbally, an artist friend composes a strong definition in a letter written to Karolina, which appears about halfway through the novel:

“In her paintings she was trying to portray herself as a hero, but it seemed it was not easy for women to be heroes, she said. One could not portray a woman in the heroic style in the same way as one could a man. Anything experienced by a man—however deviant—is immediately regarded as an extension of human experience, whereas the experience of a woman remained deviant, eccentric, idiosyncratic.”

When examining The Elusive Moth with these words in mind, Karolina’s languid advancement toward the evil of Voorspoed reads less like a conscious decision of the character and more as a commentary on South African culture in the early 1990s, one filtered through the pen of a wise female, South African author. There is a suppression and degradation of women at play, one, in other words, that makes it difficult for Karolina to be taken seriously by most, and even harder to lead the charge, even within her own story, a hindrance that continues to bare its teeth in many corners of the world today.

In addition, Winterbach uses these same ideas to speak of peaceful protest in the face of abusive power. Eventually, the power hungry are confronted, and though Karolina does not head the group of townsfolk who bind together in an effort to remove Gert Els from command, she is present for their final confrontation:

“’We have come once more to bring the charge that the captain would not receive this morning,’ the man said calmly.

‘I am not accepting it,’ Els said. (His tongue heavy and cold.)

Philemon Mhlambi stepped forward suddenly. ‘You have to accept it!’ he said, and held out a piece of paper to Gert Els.

Els stepped forward too, and slapped Mhlambi’s face with the side of his hand, causing him to stagger to one side and fall down.”

The confrontation quickly heightens in intensity: Els trains his pistol on the unarmed group, and as he threatens their lives, Karolina hears an explosion from the snooker room nearby. The building goes up in flames, causing the protesters to scatter, and turning the attempt at damnation, at justice, into a bloodbath consuming not just those involved, but several innocent bystanders, as well. The scene eerily echoes recent, similar real-life protests in places like Ferguson, Missouri, and though Winterbach does ultimately bring righteousness down upon the villains of The Elusive Moth, she does so at the expense of the justice-seekers, as well, calling into question the true value of their efforts, perhaps, and placing the virtuous in a camp similar to that of women in South African culture: Regardless of effort, of desire, the truly powerful will always find a way to strike, even when facing the ultimate downfall.

In the end, The Elusive Moth succeeds thanks to Ingrid Winterbach’s fearlessness, both in penning a work unafraid to relish in the minutiae of life as well as one willing to speak to the abuse of societal power found in South Africa. The novel is wise, funny, and playful, and through its slow amble toward an enlightened conclusion, the reader is able to see reflections of today in a world twenty years old.

— Benjamin Woodard

Benjamin Woodard lives in Connecticut. His recent fiction has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, Cheap Pop, decomP magazinE, and Cleaver Magazine. In addition to Numéro Cinq, his reviews have been featured in Necessary Fiction, Publishers Weekly, Rain Taxi Review of Books, and other fine publications. You can find him at benjaminjwoodard.com and on Twitter.

The Book of Happenstance: Fiction — Ingrid Winterbach

Jun 172011

Of The Book of Happenstance, a novel from the award-winning South African author Ingrid Winterbach, our reviewer wrote: “The Book of Happenstance is about memory and death, yet paradoxically so, for the novel is ebulliently alive, ironic and smart. The characters seem hyper-linked to Google and Wikipedia; the book is full of spontaneous eruptions of intelligence, and that is fun to read.” Here’s a delightful excerpt from a new translation hot off the presses at Open Letter Books. Read the whole Numéro Cinq review here.

The dead move along their own orbits, like planets. Like celestial bodies they encircle me in their elliptical courses. My mother, not urgently present in my thoughts for a long time, now appears in my dreams night after night. Her soft, elliptical path is at its point of closest proximity to me, and each of her appearances ushers in a great sadness. I see her lying in a small room, with only a bed and a tiny window. She is sleeping. She is abandoned, she is sick or dying. There is something indescribably desolate about her sleeping form under the blanket. There is something about the blanket which lends it an unbearable emphasis. I cannot hold on to the dream to reflect on it. Even worse is when I know that I have dreamt of her, but cannot remember the dream.

If Marthinus Maritz should describe an orbital course, it would be that of a distant, cold planet. Would he be one of the outer planets? Neptune with its howling winds? Uranus with its aeons of darkness, where time gets infinitely extended? Saturn, so light that it could float on an enormous lake? Or Pluto, the smallest, coldest, darkest, and most distant—the only solid outer planet, with its surface of ice and methane, a frozen rock?

Sof phones again late one night, shortly after we had sat in the car looking out over the sea in the manner of Mrs. C and Vercueil. At least this time I am not asleep. I am still immersed in my unravelling, in my laborious journey through evolutionary and geological history. I am still trying to make sense of the magma ocean, of iron pools, of the cooling earth crust, of the crystallising of the earth’s mantle. (How in God’s name should I conceive of all these processes?) My eyes are burning. Much more than a therapist (and here I have to differ from my lover), I need a geologist to guide me step by step through this inaccessible and treacherous terrain.

“Am I disturbing you?” Sof asks.

“No,” I say.

“I’m thinking of taking a lover,” she says and clears her throat slightly.

What can I say to this? Have you anyone particular in mind? Who is the lucky man, or woman? Nowadays anything is possible, and I am not yet familiar with the ambit of Sof’s sexual preferences.

“Who is it, Sof?” I ask.

“It is my children’s paediatrician,” she says, and gives an exculpatory little cough.

“I see. What does he look like? She? What kind of person is this—a kindred spirit, a concordant fellow being? Is there a future in it for the two of you?” I am tired, the nightly acquisition of complex knowledge is taking up much of my energy.

“He’s a cripple. I think he had polio as a child. He has reddish hair. He has heavy eyelids that flutter slightly when he speaks, as if he can open his eyes only with great effort,” she says with the unmistakeable tremor of erotic excitement in her voice.

“That has to be irresistible,” I say.

I know the type; I am familiar with the erotic persuasiveness of a russet complexion. (Perhaps I should never have terminated the relationship with Felix du Randt.) As regards the other afflictions, I do not need much convincing, since I have been beguiled by a variety of aberrations and deviancies—physical as well as psychological—myself. Consider the bony brow and the blunt death’s-nose. I should have re–mained true to Felix du Randt. He would have been a good man for me. He would have kept me on the straight path, the virtuous way. I would have been less exposed to temptation and spared many woes. My impressionable spirit would have been less contaminated. I am suddenly under the impression of the lifelong burden of emotional sullying (from the French souiller, to soil, Theo would have pointed out).

“It is!” Sof says. “It was the fluttering, half-mast eyelids that finally did the trick.”

“When was the deal clinched, so to speak?”

“This afternoon.”

“What is the next step? Where will you meet? Will you go dancing? No, sorry, I guess that’s not an option.”

“I’m meeting him in his consulting room on Friday afternoon after five. We will take it from there.”

“Sof,” I say, “this is unexpected. I don’t know what to say to you. I wish you luck. Happiness, ecstasy if needs be.”

(If I had the choice now between the bitter excitement of a drawn-out erotic intrigue and the grind and risk of writing—to which Becket refers as the “bitter folly”—which would I choose?)

“I’ve just read an interesting article,” Sof says with a little cough. She is embarrassed; she wants to change the topic. “All writers are actually pursuing a single ideal, namely the universal.”

“I’ve always thought the universal to be suspect.”

“It is,” she says, “but it does not make the striving of writers less valid. All writers intuitively know this—the one who gets a grip on the so-called universal attains the upper hand. The trump card. Whatever. I thought it would interest you.”

•

During this time Theo sometimes leaves the office in the afternoon for an hour or two to attend auctions. He returns with a feverish glint in his eye. In this state of heightened excitement he listens to Schubert’s piano sonatas to calm himself down. He breathes deeply, closes his eyes, and surrenders himself to the music. Only then can he resume his work.

Did you see lovely things? I ask cautiously. (What is the ironic undertone doing in my voice?) Beautiful, he says, but does not elaborate.

Enamoured of something? His heart set on objects of beauty? With that I am well acquainted.

His hands are not small, but well-formed, like his wrists. His nails are somewhat fan-shaped, the way I like them. He is no longer a young man. The well-defined, youthful male form has begun to soften. The eyelid is softer, it looks more vulnerable, as does the skin of the neck—I know how desirable I find that in my lover. The hair on his chest (what is visible of it) is beginning to turn grey. All these things appeal to me. I am here to assist him. The documentation of words no longer commonly used, that is our shared purpose.

I return to the cards. Eindera, regional term for eintlik—actually. Eindjie—archaic form of entjie—a little way (stap ’n eindjie met my saam, my lief—walk a little way with me, my love). Einste, originally eienste—decidedly the same. Eindtyd—the end of time, end of the earthly dispensation. Êit!—restraining exclamation: êit, kêrel, nie so onverskillig nie—easy, lad, not so reckless! Elkedaags and elkedags—outdated variants of everyday. Elkelike—regional term de-noting regularity. Elkaar and elkander (each other); elkend-een (everyone); elkendeur or elkensdeur (time and again); elkenkeer or elkenmaal (every time)—all of them outdated forms. Ellend (variant of ellende—misery).

“Die ellende staan blou in die blom,” I say. (Misery stands blue in the bud.) “A lovely expression. What would be the origin of ellende? Of the word, I mean.”

Theo explains that the Dutch ellende is derived from the Middle Dutch ellende,which means another country, or exile, also a disastrous condition, grinding poverty, and privation. This may be compared to the Old Dutch elelendi from the tenth century, the Old Saxon elilendi, and the Old High German elilenti, of which the el was abbreviated from elders, alja, and lende, landa—which literally means land elsewhere, that is to say, sojourn in a foreign country, exile, and its accompanying feelings of uprootedness.

“Thank you,” I say. “Now I understand that our earthly existence is essentially wretched.”

Theo smiles, but will not take the bait. I wonder how often I am mistaken about him.

We often listen to Schubert during this time. When Theo is relaxed, he sometimes whistles softly to the music.

A day or two later he shows me a ring that he has bought at an auction. It is an antique Indian ring, white gold, inlaid with countless small amethyst stones. He must have paid a fabulous sum for it.

“Is it a gift for someone?” I ask (cautiously).

“Yes,” he says.

“For your wife, perhaps?”

“Yes,” Theo says, “yes. It’s a present for my wife.”

“Then she is a lucky woman,” I say.

“Do you think so?” he says, and looks at me searchingly for a moment.

He holds the ring in his left hand with the tips of four fingers and a thumb. I notice that his fingers are trembling slightly. He is under the impression of the beauty, of the costliness of the ring, his face suffused with blood, his eyes gleaming with gratification. I can see that it gave him plea-sure to buy it. He turns the ring ever so slightly for the stones to catch the light. He slips it on the little finger of his left hand and spreads his fingers. He looks at it as a woman would look at it. I have seldom seen him so pleased, elated even.

At the end of July we have completed the letter D. From doodbabbel (babble to death), to deurween (to thoroughly bewail). From dadedrang (the urge to act, to do the deed), to dabbeljasgras (edible grass, on which the man from Am-ster-dam survives in the riddle). From diepborstig (deep-chested) to donkerbloedig (dark-blooded—with or from blood of a non-white, sic). From droeflik (a sorrow-filled state), to duiwel,sometimes duwel: the devil incarnate and carnal, the real, the one and only, undisguised and palpable, Beelzebub and Belial, the Foul Fiend, old Nick, old Scratch and Harry, the Evil One, lord of the evil kingdom and underminer of the salvation of our soul. All his folk names we have written up: Asmannetjie and Bokbaard (Ash Goblin and Goatbeard); Bokhoringkies and Bokspoot (Little Goat’s Horns and Goat’s Hoof); Broesa, Damoen, Drietoon (Three-toe); Gratebene (Fishbone Legs); Herrie, Horrelpoot (Club-foot), and Hans Jas (Hans with the Coat). Jasbok, Jonkers, Joos, Josie. Kantvoet (Lacefoot)and Klamhandjies (Little Damphands). Knakstert (Snaptail); Kopertoon (Coppertoe); Oortjies (Small-ears); Oupa langoor (Grandpa Longear); Ou Vale (Old Grey); Penkop (Peghead); Pikhakskene (Tarheels); Pylstert (Arrow-tail); Stofjas (Dustcoat); Swart Piet (Black Piet); Vaaljas (Old Drabcoat); Vaalkaros (Greykaross); Vaal-toon (Greytoe); Veins-aard (Trickster); Vuilbaard (Dirt-beard); and Woltone (Wool-toes). All the devil combinations we have written up.

“Duiwelsnaaigare?” I ask. Devil’s serving thread. Also called monniksbaard (monk’s beard), nooienshaar (maidenhair), perdeslaai (horse salad), or duiwelstou (devil’s rope), Theo Verwey explains. Duiwelsloënaar (devil’s denier), and duiwelsprenteboek (devil’s picture book). Duiwelstuig (devil’s instrument), and duiwelstoejaer (jack of all trades—my role as Theo’s sidekick and factotum).

The endless death combinations have been rounded off and written up. The cards have been alphabetised, brought up to date, catalogued. We move on, the devil and death and all the possible names and combinations we leave behind us. Too long we have tarried there.

—Ingrid Winterbach, translated from Afrikaans by Ingrid Winterback & Dirk Winterbach

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Summoning Eternity: Review of Ingrid Winterbach’s The Book of Happenstance — Jacob Glover

Jun 172011

Author Photo by Val Adamson

The Book of Happenstance
Ingrid Winterbach
Open Letter Books
Paperback, 254 pages, $11.95
978-1-934824-33-7

Though Ingrid Winterbach sets her novel, The Book of Happenstance, in contemporary South Africa, a country dominated by a history of racial oppression, the book is not about race or the inheritance of Apartheid. The Book of Happenstance is about memory and death, yet paradoxically so, for the novel is ebulliently alive, ironic and smart. The characters seem hyper-linked to Google and Wikipedia; the book is full of spontaneous eruptions of intelligence, and that is fun to read.

Winterbach (who wrote earlier works under the pseudonym Lettie Viljoen) lives in South Africa with her husband and two daughters. She has a degree in Afrikaans—one of the main characters of the novel is an expert in Afrikaans. She is also a visual artist and has won all kinds of awards for her work in her native land including the W. A. Hofmeyr Prize, the M-Net Book Prize (for the book in hand), the University of Johannesburg Award, and the Hertzog Prize. The new English version of The Book of Happenstance, just out with Open Letter Books, was co-translated by Winterbach herself and Dirk Winterbach (I checked but was unable to pin down the relationship).

The novel is about a middle-aged woman, Helena Verbloem, hired on a research grant to help compile a dictionary with the scholar Theo Verwey. One night thieves break into Helena’s house, steal her sentimentally priceless sea shell collection, and shit on the floor. When the police appear uninterested in helping her recover the shells, Helena starts investigating the robbery herself. Some of the missing shells have turned up at the feet of a recent suicide, a man who killed himself by hanging.

The shell investigation trajectory involves two visits to a town a day’s drive away where the suicide (and his family) lived. Helen and her girlfriend Sof meet the locals in bars, disguise themselves as members of a Bible group delivering pamphlets, take pictures of the suicide house, question family and friends and come up with precisely nothing. In fact, what they learn is that the shells are gone, who knows where, and that her house had been broken into by accident by men looking for drugs. At one point Sof quotes the opening lines of Kafka’s The Castle: K has just arrived, the Castle is hidden in mist and fog, the village shrouded in snow, gazes up into “seeming emptiness.” Of course, the passage is even more enigmatic because it’s quoted in Afrikaans.

The shell plot is comic and Kafkaesque and ends in apparent inconsequence. The novel’s parallel plot belongs to Theo and Helena in the museum—less action than the quasi-investigation plot but many delightful scenes. The work scenes go like this: Theo and Helena sit in an office organizing words into alphabetical order, Helena fantasizes, talks about books, sometimes she asks Theo about a word and he—a human dictionary—answers with comic completeness in little essays like entries in an etymological database. Helena is obviously attracted to Theo, but the attraction is an intellectual crush not so much a romantic longing and certainly not lust.

Slotted between the interwoven main plots are a series of recurring but unplotted scenes in a tea room, more often than not Helen and another museum friend drinking, yes, tea and discussing the origin of life and evolution. These scenes are comic, exasperating—Helena’s naïve and ingenuous questions prompting lengthy, erudite answers which she seems to ignore half the time (inserting lengthy parenthetical scene commentary in the middle of the explanations). Helena’s interest in life no doubt evolves out of the context of death that surrounds her. Already, as novel begins, Helena’s parents and sister are dead, her brother estranged, she herself is divorced, her daughter is out of touch.

The novel is written in the first-person present tense. The present tense conveys immediacy and a kind of spontaneous propulsion that more conventional past tense Freitag-ular narratives don’t. In other words, Winterbach’s novel didn’t happen it keeps happening, throwing itself forward with a kind of whimsical blind hopefulness, a summoning of eternity.

In the first two sentences Winterbach announces the time frame of the novel: March to October—in March Helena starts working on the Afrikans dictionary with Theo Verwey, and by October Theo is dead. At the outset, we know the parameters, we know the course of the novel; Winterbach seems to splice the story out of the larger reel of time and in the same act warrant its significance, as Walter Benjamin suggests in his essay “The Storyteller.” “Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.”

Much of the novel consists of memories and reflections. When writing the memories Winterbach steps in and makes a stylistic choice. She writes a number of the memories in the past tense and some in the present and, a few times, seems to mix the two. The weaving of tenses together seems to add to the eternal bracket around the novel. Winterbach wants Happenstance to break out of linear time and rest securely in the present. Therefore, even the memories, past events, occasionally happen in the present. There is, I think, an ironized search for the eternal in the novel. The shells in their way seems to represent something beyond time to Helena, considering “their beauty restored [her] trust in all of creation” (59). At one point Helena’s friend Sof says, “I’ve just read and interesting article… All writers are actually pursuing a single ideal, namely the universal.” To which Helena replies dryly, “I’ve always thought the universal to be suspect.” (130). But her denial rings with irony.

Happenstance is a terrific read. It is consciously intellectual without being pretentious or didactic. It is smart and knows it but the irony runs deep. Against the etymology, we have Helena obsessing over the shit on her carpet; she associates the lingering smell of aftershave in her apartment with crime, so that she qualifies every clean-shaven man with the thought: Could he have shat on my rug and stolen my shells? And then there is the whole Sof/husband subplot: Sof’s hatred for her husband and her desire to have an affair with a crippled pediatrician. Even Theo’s funeral has a comic aspect: a member of the museum staff, nicknamed Sailor, shows up drunk, wearing a natty white suit, and tries to jump into the grave with the coffin.

Finally: Why happenstance? The title of the English translation seems to refer the coincidental nature of the crime, the shell-robbery, perhaps the Kafkaesque and coincidental nature of all life. The novel forces the death of Theo Verwey and the loss of Helena’s shells together, but their juncture is conditional, fleeting and evanescent, means almost nothing except in the pleasurable connection of words, obsession, human affection, and our ultimate end (itself likely to be comic). It is all happenstance.

(Read an excerpt from the novel here.)

—Jacob Glover

Jacob Glover is studying Classics & Philosophy at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His work has been published previously on Numéro Cinq: essays (on Kierkegard, Montaigne, and Spinoza), translations, and poems.

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