Houses Built Close Together

Zuboja township, Bojanala District Municipality, South Africa

November 1982

As a child, Sithi Nzeogwu's mother had told him that even a small house can hold a hundred friends. She also told him that houses built close together burn together.

Their house in the township wouldn't have held a dozen friends, never mind a hundred. It stood on a ramshackle plot at the edge of the town, the sheeted walls bolted onto one another at random angles like a patchwork quilt. The window frames were devoid of glass and sloughed with dirt. There was no fenced yard, just a wide dustbowl dotted with patches of thorns that sloped slowly downhill towards a creek at the back.

The last of the evening sunshine daubed the horizon orange as a figure ran behind the house in a wide circle. It was a boy, sixteen, but tall and skinny for his age. He had a deflating football bouncing between his feet. Though there was no crowd, he provided a dramatic commentary on the speed and swiftness of his movements, a sidestep here, a feint there. He could hear the cheers of a hundred thousand people as they urged him on.

Standing awkwardly to the left hand side of an invisible line marked with a shirt at each end, a second boy, some five years younger or more, squinted into the light. He had jet black hair and a fat nose, but every other part of his body was hopelessly skinny. As the striker bore down on him, he made no attempt to narrow the angle of the shot that followed, raising his arms in a half-hearted fashion as the ball flashed past him and rocketed into the back of the house. A woman shrieked in the distance.

The older boy let out a victory whoop, blazed past his younger counterpart, almost knocking him aside, and pulled the front of his t-shirt over his head in celebratory fashion. He stood there for a few seconds, saluting a sunset he couldn't see, before pulling the shirt back down and finding himself looking down at an accusing pair of eyes.

'Baako, I don't want to play any more.'

'Sithi, it's more fun if you actually try to save them, you know.' Baako jogged to the ball and flicked it up between his heels and onto his shoulder, where it rested for a second before falling back to the floor and throwing up a tiny cloud of dust.

'I don't want to play any more.'

'Yes, you said,' Baako agreed, lowering his shoulder and jinking past an invisible challenge. 'But if you won't play, who will? My friends aren't around this evening so you have to be in goal.'

The younger boy watched him gloomily. 'I always have to be in goal.'

'It's because you're rubbish at football,' Baako said with evident relish. 'You think they would have asked Pele to play in goal? He's the master, he scores the goals.'

'You're not a master,' Sithi said. 'Pele is much better than you.'

'Maybe,' Baako says, 'but can Pele do this?' He abandoned the ball, sprinted over to Sithi, tripped the younger boy up and then sat on him.

At that moment, an older woman opened the back door and stepped out into the evening. Her face bore the early lines of a hard life, one that had persevered through defeats and sorrows, but more through bloody-mindedness than virtue. She glanced suspiciously at Baako, who was by now wearing a very innocent expression.

'Baako! Get off your brother!'

'Mother, I was just helping him up.' Baako stood and dragged Sithi more or less upright before nudging him in the ribs.

Sithi was a mess, his clothes more dirt than cloth, and his face was caked with mud. 'He tripped me,' he said, in a small reedy voice.

'Sithembile, don't tell tales on your brother. We're supposed to be a family. Can't you two just get along?'

'He's too weak to even play in goal,' Baako grinned.

'I'm not weak!' Sithi yelled back. Unfortunately for him, his voice had yet to break and his yell came out more as a squeak than a shout, which made his brother laugh.

A shadow passed over their mother's face. 'Baako, if you have to play football, don't kick it against the side of the house. You're knocking things off the shelves and you know that you don't want to be waking your father.' The sudden silence that followed this was telling; all of them were afraid of the man sleeping in the front room.

Their mother smiled then, breaking the spell. She said, 'Baako, if you must play, take it down to the creek.'

'The creek!' Baako smiled and lurched at Sithi, grabbing his collar. The younger boy, nimble and well-versed at dodging attempts to dunk him in the creek, slipped away, leaving only his shirt behind as a prize. From a safer distance, he sat and glowered at his brother.

'You'll need to come in soon,' their mother said. 'If you're smart, you'll be in bed before he wakes up.'

Baako waited until his mother's shuffling steps were lost to the wind before pouncing once again on Sithi, who curled up into a ball and lashed out ineffectually with his stumpy legs. It was a brief struggle, and then the younger boy was being held in a headlock and marched towards the creek.

'If you don't want to play football, little brother, maybe it's time for a swimming lesson.'

'No,' Sithi protested feebly.

'Ah, but yes,' Baako said. He had a full foot in height and a significant weight advantage over Sithi. To an observer, it might seem as unnatural a matchup as watching a gorilla wrestle with a dog. The younger boy did have one advantage though; his natural cunning. By letting it appear as though he was even weaker than he was, Sithi was able to manoeuvre his mouth into position. Just as Baako thought he had won the fight, Sithi clamped his teeth down hard onto his brother's arm.

 

Baako sucked air in as the pain hit and he let his brother go. It was only a temporary respite for Sithi. Before he could gain any distance, the older boy kicked his legs out from under him and before he could regain his feet, he had Baako's knee pressed against his throat. It was not a play-fight any longer.

'Let me up! Let me up!' Sithi shrieked.

'Not till you learn your place, little brother.' Baako's lips were twisted into a sneer that made him look unconscionable and ugly. When he pulled this face, he reminded Sithi of their father, and a hundred other beatings undeserved.

'You were going to dump me in the creek!'

'Now I'm not going to bother. You should just be thankful that I don't snap your neck.' Baako reached down and cuffed the younger boy around the head, like he might do to a errant dog.

'I'm not afraid of you,' Sithi whimpered. But he was.

'Apologise,' Baako demanded, leaning more weight onto his knee. Sithi said nothing. But Baako demanded again, and this time raised his fist and let it hover over Sithi's face, high and slow and dangerous.

'I'm...I'm sorry, Baako,' Sithi said. In the end, it is his sense of injustice and not his fear that reduces him to tears.

'Remember, little brother. I'm the oldest. The oldest, and the strongest. You'll never be stronger than me.' Baako cuffed him again, harder this time. 'Don't you ever forget that.'

Thirty years will pass from the time that his brother's knee is lifted from his throat, but Sithembile Nzeogwu has never forgotten it.

Four Thousand Words reviews 'Assassin's Apprentice', by Robin Hobb

'Assassin's Apprentice' is the first book in the Farseer Trilogy, one of several fantasy series' by Robin Hobb.  Hobb is a pen name for Margaret Ogden, who has written ten other books under alternative names, as well as a plethora of short stories and collections.

I read Assassin's Apprentice as the designated monthly novel of the Norwich SciFi and Fantasy book club, where it received ratings of between 7 and 9 out of 10.  I tend towards the lower end of that spectrum, but every fantasy novel I read these days is compromised unfairly by due comparison to Game of Thrones.

'Assassin's Apprentice' follows the story of the upbringing of royal bastard Fitz, sometime son of the King-in-Waiting, Chivalry Farseer.  From his earliest memory of being dumped on the royal doorstep, Fitz makes a home at Buckkeep Castle, including friends, enemies and lessons.  When he reaches his teenage years, King Shrewd moves him from the protection of stablemaster Burritch to the care of the Royal Assassin.

The long years of Hobb's own long apprenticeship are immediately apparent, with her words bringing to life a colourful kingdom that immediately felt very real.  Each chapter begins with a telling of a minor matter of history or intrigue about the Six Duchies, and this helps to bring them to life.  A reader can fully appreciate Buckkeep, 'an end place for a journey, a panorama of noise and people', the kingdom of Jhaampe, 'best compared to chancing upon a patch of crocus, pushing up through snow and black earth' and the salty spray that heralds the unwelcome arrival of raiders from the Outislands.

Outislanders  - Vikings that zombify their victims.

Less engaging is the interaction between characters, and the necessity of the POV means that you typically see more of the characters in relation to Fitz, rather than as a complex web of interrelationships that bind characters to one another.  This is not a deal breaker by any means, but inevitably the narrative suffers in comparison to Game of Thrones, which has the luxury of multiple POVs to build greater complexity.

That same POV is guilty of other sins as well.  Fitz narrates directly, which would give him scope to grip the reader, but there is a notable degree of drag in many of the scenes, and lulls both before the action truly begins and whenever there is even the most scant opportunity for pause.  At one point halfway through the book, Fitz mentions the killing of many men in the service of his king, but the details are glossed over within a sentence and we are instead shown an instance where he employs diplomacy and his knowledge of animals to defuse a relatively minor matter.  There is no doubt that this was a deliberate decision, but for me it undermines the premise of the title and left me distinctly underwhelmed.  I felt like the real action was happening somewhere off the page.

There was also a certain sense of disappointment about the Wit and the Skill, trite names for important concepts within the novel.  That the chief scourge of the Kingdom, the raiding Outislanders, have the ability to somehow dehumanise their victims, making them little more than zombies, is an interesting idea, but the name they give to this process - Forging - somewhat undermines the fearful nature of the concept.

A love story is hinted at, and then seemingly disregarded.  Obviously, this is something that may be explored more fully in future books, but it contributed once more to a feeling of a story that falls rather flat in the wrong places.  Fortunately, the supporting cast is more well-rounded than Fitz himself, adding emotional depth that the main character fails to supply.  There is one particularly satisfying moment when a notably foul character receives a lesson, and I felt genuinely cheered by this.

Overall, 'Assassin's Apprentice' is an extremely well-written effort set in a simple but effectively designed world.  It is clear that Hobb can create absorbing characters, but I felt she could have done more to swiftly capture the events that drive the narrative and engage me as a reader.  While I would be happy to read more fiction set in this world, I wouldn't rush to read more about Fitz.

Robin Hobb's next novel, 'The Fool's Assassin' (book 1 of a second trilogy about the same main character) is set for release in the UK in August 2014.

Write What You Know

'Write what you know,' the wise ones say.

Of course, it's easy to say that when you know a lot of things.  I'm sure that if you're Noam Chomsky, or Brian Cox, or indeed anyone with a dog-eared passport and enough life experience to fill two autobiographies, that this is all good sage advice that's well worth following.

Noam Chomsky - Not writing a Jamaican cookbook near you.

But what about if you're a white, 30-something male doing a reasonable job in an unremarkable city close to where you grew up?  What if you're a young woman working in PR in London with an optimistic nature and a disastrous love life?  What about, in short, if you are the kind of person for whom the phrase 'Check your privilege' was coined?  Sure, you know things, but those are things that everyone else already knows - things that have been written about a million times before.

So how do we write something that is new, interesting, worth reading?  What, in fact, do I actually know?  Well, I know that getting up in the morning is tough, but I do it anyway.  I know that bacon makes it easier for me, and coffee makes it easier for everyone else.  I know that I prefer working smarter to working harder, and I know that luck plays more of a part than I'd like to admit.  I know success (of a sort) and failure (of many sorts).  There's love too.  I know a bit about that.  I know what it feels like to have, and I know what it's like living without.  I know that when you are faced with disappointment, all you can do is dust yourself down, and come back better.

But as we've already said, none of this is new.  So maybe there's a context, a zeitgeist, against which it can be painted a different way.  In my lifetime, apartheid came to an end in South Africa.  The Berlin Wall was pulled down, and the Iron Curtain came with it.  Planes flew into the World Trade Centre.  Capitalism has been dragged to its knees, and China is rising again.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989

What of the societies in which we live?  Do we still believe in social contracts?  Do we still want to give and take, or are we now reverting to naked self-interest and self-sufficiency?  Are our laws working in our interests?  Are we beholden to the internet?  Should we fear corporations?  What of Peak Oil, and Malthusian Catastrophe?  Can we afford to tackle a looming environmental crisis?  Can we afford not to?

Context gives us ideas, acts as a playground for our imagination.  With context continually changing, what remains the same?  People, and stories.  We human beings are all still adrift in a miasma, trying to make sense of our fragile, fleeting existence.  One of the most successful and well-known books of recent years, David Mitchell's 'Cloud Atlas', is based on the premise that human struggles and experiences are universal, and they link us all together in a single narrative.  Successful writing and memorable characters tap into that narrative.

What we can say with certainty is that the world grows smaller each day.  Largely thanks to the internet, research is easier than it has ever been, and while we should be choosy about our sources, we can take advantage of the fact that we are interconnected in ways we have never been before.  This is a golden age for writers and researchers - an information age.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, in recent times there has been something of a backlash against anyone suggesting that you should write what you know.  There are those who feel that this approach is somehow limiting, and that it discourages a curious writer from asking, 'what if?'  The truth is that we are all experts on ourselves, and perhaps a more appropriate response is acknowledging that we all know more than we think.

The Long Walk

You know the road, the feel of the gravel underneath your feet, the way that the sound of your steps echoes off the sky. You know the road.

You're not here so often now, with the nights drawing in and the chill settling on the promontory. The mist is descending, dropping deeper with the passing of the days. Soon it will be winter. The Long Walk stretches out in front of you, four miles from your front door to the small town cemetery, taking you along the old harbourside. You make the trip alone.

It wasn't always this way, and there's pain in the memory. Silence now was birthed by constant chatter then, and small, boisterous footsteps that played around you and your regular, easy tread. You dressed her in yellows and pinks, because she liked them, but also so you could see her at night. She disappeared from the road often, lost herself amongst the trees. She followed the crickets and their evening song, only to be distracted by the deadwood fungus that grew into fist-sized bowls amongst the moss.

Questions. Who's buried at the graveyard? No-one we know. Why, she asked you, why do we go there? I like the walk, you said.

You tell yourself that you're one with the stillness but in truth, it weighs you down, threatening to smother you. The air is heavier than you remember, or maybe you aren't as strong as you once were. Your thick woollen coat is a necessary burden. The sleeves are too long and there are tears under the arms, but as long as you turn your palms to the earth, the wind can't get in. In a world of few faces, a nod is as good as a wave, and far easier than learning your way around a needle and thread.

She would sing sometimes as you walked, making up songs from what she saw or repeating tunes she had heard on the radio. When the fog surrounded her, only her reedy voice remained, tremulous on the high notes. You took baby steps, your nerves taut, until she stepped back into view. The energy in her tiny frame terrified and amazed you in equal measure.

They told you the practical things, what to feed her, how to get her to sleep at night. They never mentioned the questions and the questions are constant, at least a hundred different ones every time you take the Long Walk together. What's this creature? Where does it live? Why is it doing that? Is the forest really alive?

You answered some as you walked, and some you left as mysteries, because wonder is the best part of being young. Of course, you knew that the forest was alive, but how could you explain the passage of centuries to a child? So you explained that the trees were always asleep when you passed, and it takes a practised eye to tell slumber from death. This just confused her more. She had no words for death, not yet.

In an effort to distract her from her questions, you tried to find other things to occupy her time on the walk. Mostly she had no attention for them, but you were able to show her how to press flowers inside books. In the springtimes, there were bluebells, and occasionally sunshine.

Those sleeping trees open up on your right and give way to the waterside. An ancient fishing boat lies bloated on the wet sand. It has the pallid hue of a peeling corpse. You walk over to it as though it is a lost friend, and in some ways it is. You know the name, 'Mary', without needing to see it painted on the side. In your mind, you can see the stout, smiling crew of four that took her out on the lake in the days when there were still shrimp to be caught here.

There were three shops on the harbour back in the day. The first sold groceries, including the shrimp caught on the lake. The second was a post office, and some of the storefront still remains. The glass has been painted white or boarded over, but some of the shimmering silver letters still remain above the door. Next to them, you can see the keening shadows of their lost companions.

The last of the three was an old-fashioned milliner. For a few years, the summer glades had been popular with city types who wished to get married among the willow trees. The milliner's windows had never been covered and three stock mannequins remained in place behind the glass, lace bonnets still tied atop their heads. Featureless and statuesque, they might have intimidated a girl of lesser purpose, but she was fascinated by their stillness, the sense of time captured like a ship in a bottle. She would press her snub-nose up to the windows, and leave breathy palm prints in her wake as she danced away.

More questions. Do people work here? They did once. Why did they leave? They had somewhere else to be.

Her nose wrinkled then, obviously dissatisfied with your response. It was the only time you remember this happening. You tried to distract her with stories about the harbour people you'd known, but she'd fidgeted and glanced back furtively, as though some greater truth was being exposed behind her.

From then on, she ran ahead every time to look in the milliner's window. You never stopped, but you slowed your pace so that she caught up with you as you passed by. She would cover her eyes and then stare at the scene anyway through her pudgy fingers, as though daring it to change. You watched as the pearlescent mannequins beckoned to her, and she seemed to ache to join them.

Your stomach knots, even now, when you remember the time that you took your eyes off her for a moment to find that she wasn't orbiting you like she usually did. You'd glanced back, expecting her to be a footfall or two at most behind. Instead, she had wandered a distance away to the lakeside opposite the shops, where she was trailing her fingers in the water.

You'd covered the distance between you more quickly than you would have thought possible, for you aren't a man given to speed. As she leaned over, the ink-coloured water seemed to swell, form hands and reach for her.

You scooped her up, your arm around her waist, foisted her out of harm's way with a single rough movement that caused her to cry out.

What are you doing? I wasn't going to fall. I wanted to do the sort of things they would have done. She pointed at the milliner's window, where the alabaster dolls were lined up to watch. Why are you so fascinated by them? Because they call to me.

Voices lost in the quiescence. In the aftermath of that day, you became a hawk, always twitchy by the harbourside, but you wouldn't give up your daily toil. Your footsteps were marked; the Long Walk owned you the same way that the sinister effigies puppeted her. Meanwhile, the line that marked her height climbed the wall by insouciant degree, and her face twisted and soured with the one question that she never asked. You could feel her eyes on you as you sat by the kitchen fire reading. When you turned the pages of your books, dessicated flowerheads fell out and turned to dust.

At last, when she could take it no longer, when every question she asked was drowned out by your heavy footsteps, there was a single one that remained to wound you. Why don't I have a mother? She was lost. Is she dead? No reply. Is she a ghost? Like the ones at the harbour. Is that why you go to the graveyard every single day? I like the walk, you said again.

You wouldn't tell her more, how could you? As her anger caught fire, grew arms and legs, she snapped aside the branches she had once studied so thoroughly and crushed the fungus cups into their fibrous bases. You knew her intent, and it was all you could do to match her pace.

The headlights hovered in the distance, but they were coming fast. She sprinted forwards, elbows and knees askew, ready to meet her oncoming destiny. The gravel underfoot pulled at you, every step a jerking torture, but you were there before the cones of light could snatch her away and swallow her whole. You were always there.

The car thundered past, lost to the night. Beside you she lay, tearful and furious. You were worried, but not unduly. You knew she would forgive you in time.

No cars come this way anymore. These days, they can take the highway, and they leave the road to you. You aren't as nimble as you were either. Limbs that took such firm, decisive steps now trudge. The wind cuts through you, threatens to turn you around. You force one foot in front of the other and proceed.

At last you reach the corner and turn sharply upwards towards the cemetery. You open the catch with unconscious ease and the gate creaks before falling back into place behind you. In the distance, you can see shadows as you approach. For a moment you expect them to be the milliner's lace-draped children, blanched and faceless, but with each step they solidify as the church's volunteers go about their work.

They've done well too. The paths are marked, the weeds removed and the hedges are bursting with fat roses. The willow trees are tended, salacious beards of catkins stroking at the grass. Looking around now, in the lengthy shadow of the church itself, you feel that it is better kept than it has been for many years. You aren't a godly man, but the thought pleases you all the same.

The group gathers around, lowering their spades and whispering to one another that the time has come. In the middle of the group, a child grown to woman stands in front of a flat marble stone and pulls a book from a worn jute bag. You look past her at the gravestone, and you recognise your name.

Her friends form a respectful circle around her, smiling at the edges and looking down at the worn turf. She flicks at the pages with a blunt-edged thumb and a single pressed bluebell falls out, resting by the stone at her feet.

'I hope you can hear me, Dad,' she says. 'I hope you understand. I'm sorry. I miss you every day.'

You are close enough to put your hand upon her shoulder, though in life such moments often passed you by, and this one is no different. She turns away, leaving the small dried flower in the grass. You are reminded again of the things she did in her younger days. She has indeed forgiven you, just as you hoped she would. She still takes the Long Walk.

Knowing that, you breathe out and it's like the whole world is exhaling with you. The breeze whips around you in an eddy, lifting you upwards and away, spreading you to the four winds. But you know that this is not the first time this has happened, and it will not be the last. You'll be there again, the feel of the gravel underneath your feet, the sound of your steps as they echo off the sky.

You know the road.

By Night, in a Pillar of Fire

Hello to everyone - it's been a long while since I posted here, but between my trip to the US, my accountancy exams and writing my novel, it has been really difficult to find spare hours to write my blog.

I have a few goals for the year to come, but central to all of them is to finish and self-publish my novel.  I've joined together with a number of my Nanowrimo colleagues to try and have a finished work by the end of June 2014.  You can find out a bit more about it here, but to assure you all that I am actually making some progress, here is an exclusive excerpt from the second section of three, entitled 'By Night, in a Pillar of Fire.'

(Please note that there is a trigger warning in the following excerpt for victims of domestic violence.)

 ***

Zuboja township

January 1980

Cicadas chittered away in the trees as a small pair of hands rested unseen on the outer sill. Blankets covered the windows, but the child could hear the shouting from inside all too clearly.

'So what are you saying? I have to feed all four of us?' His father's voice was low and sharp, like the crack of a whip.

'It's not my fault,' his mother protested. 'They wouldn't accept my dompa.'

'I suppose you didn't bother to argue. It's not as if you'd fight to do work.'

'I was lucky they didn't arrest me,' she said.

'You're always lucky,' he replied.

'You think I didn't try to argue?' Her reply was venomous. 'I shouldn't have to fight for the pleasure of cleaning up after lazy women who can't be bothered to look after their own children.'

'And who is looking after ours?'

'Fuck you,' his mother said. 'I told them that I work in that street, I even have the family's signature on the document to confirm it.'

'You should have told them to check,' his father said.

'They didn't care whether I was telling the truth or not.'

'You should have tried harder.' His father's voice became a wheeze and then descended into an ugly coughing fit. The child didn't need to pull the blanket aside to know his mother would be standing as far away from his father as possible, her arms cocooning her body.

When he had recovered somewhat, his father said, 'Every day I work in the mines. I sweat and bleed for you and our sons. Where is my gratitude? My thanks?'

Sithi could hear his mother's tears.

'You are no wife,' his father said. 'I expected so much more from you.'

Something smashed. The family owned few enough possessions before the argument had begun; now they owned one less. The child rested the side of his head against the crumbling wall and the argument within became a dull throb in his ear. He was dimly aware that in other places, children didn't live like this. They lived in houses built of red bricks and travelled around in shiny cars. Even so, he wasn't really jealous of those things. He did wonder if those children's parents fought as much as his did.

The grass that he knelt on was cool, a welcome respite from the heat of the dying day. The light was fading now, and his stomach rumbled. He wanted to sleep but he didn't dare set foot inside until the anger there had subsided. Instead, he moved away from the wall and voices became distinguishable once again.

The wind was worsening, causing the roof to rattle. Someone had been up on there earlier in the day and weighted the corrugated sheets down with rocks so that they didn't get blown away during the night. The child wished that the roof would lift off, so that everyone else could see what was happening inside those walls.

He sat cross legged in front of the house and reached out his hand to where a twig had fallen in the grass. He scratched at the surface of the wood with his thumbnail, and when he was satisfied with its strength, he began drawing stick figures in the dirt.

His mother, short, squat, but with a heart as big as the world. He drew the heart, separate from her, and then he drew her hands reaching out to it. At her feet, he drew squares, to represent the pieces of paper that she used to help teach him and his brother to read.

Behind her, he drew a smaller figure to represent himself. The only facial feature he added on his own figure was the one that everyone commented on – his flat nose. He imagined it big enough to fill half his face. Then there was his brother, and he made his brother taller than him but shorter than their mother. This wasn't how it was, his brother already as tall as a man, but the child felt it was how it should be. He frowned as he considered the physical implications of this.

Finally, he moved to the furthest corner of the dirt patch, a hand's width from the other figures, and drew one with a sad face and no hair. He was the tallest of all and his spine curved around to fill the available space. At his feet, the child drew his father's chair and the bottles that surrounded it. When all other elements of the figure were complete, he drew a single long arm that ended in a ball-shaped fist above his mother's head.

The child surveyed his finished drawing. In the house behind him, his mother's voice, suddenly shrill, was silenced abruptly by the sound of a slap. The child flinched.