A journey through the idea of nation

Die Buiteveld
John Miles
2003
Human & Rousseau, South Africa
269 pages

Reviewed by Richard Bartlett

It takes love to learn a new language. Not the utilitarian level of "Your moustache looks big in that colour", or "Can I have chips with my strawberry?". To get to grips with a new language requires passion, together with a willingness to make a complete fool of yourself in front of strangers, an utter absence of self pity, and a good command on your own language, otherwise you will forever speak with an accent that identifies you as tourist. But passion above all else.

Smerski, the central character in John Miles' latest novel (written in Afrikaans and roughly translated as ‘Exile’ or ‘Foreign Fields’) cites this need for passion as his motive for learning to speak Portuguese so well. His love was for a woman who saved him from almost certain death. But that comes later. When we meet Smerski it is as a Portuguese linguist/lexicographer who is on holiday in the north of Portugal, with a strange interest in pelourinhos, columns built in the town square on which criminals were suspended for all to see and ostracise – a Portuguese equivalent of stocks.

As an amateur photographer Smerski captures pelourinhos in their modern setting, and the first one we are led to has a plaque noting its date of construction: 1652 – a significant date in South African history as it is when Jan van Riebeeck established a Dutch refreshment post at the Cape of Good Hope.

It is gradually that Smerski’s South African link unfolds – he was born in Mozambique of a mother from Reunion and lived in South Africa for a while after Mozambique became independent in 1975. Yet he dreams in Afrikaans. South Africa remains a subtext through most of the book, a fulcrum which Smerski does his best to keep secret, the language unspoken. As a fellow traveller, Willibald, says:
"Vir iemand wat daagliks met soveel woorde werk, gebruik jy self maar min."
"For someone who works with so many words every day, you use very few yourself."
To which Smerski replies: "Ek sukkel met betekenisse." "I struggle with meanings."

"The characters discuss the nature of books, forcing us to grapple with the idea of book as construct."

Apart from working for a language institute which is compiling a Portuguese dictionary, Smerski is also editing a collection of poetry written in exile, in Portuguese translation. That is all we ever get to know about this work of Smerski’s. He treasures it, guards it, and it remains hidden, an allusion. Much of Die Buiteveld consists of literary allusions – the journey of Smerski takes us not just through northern Portugal, but also through Portuguese literature, and particularly through the work of José Saramago, a Nobel prize winner. Saramago is mentioned once, briefly, in explaining why it is so difficult to translate his work into English. It has to do with a formal version of the pronoun ‘you’, which exists in Portuguese (tu, você) and Afrikaans (jy, u), but in English one would have to resort to ‘thou’. But the absurdity of English is voiced more directly by Smerski: "Engeland is nie eintlik 'n plek vir tale nie. Kommunikasie is die woord, kommunikasie in één taal." "England isn't really a place for languages. Communication is the word, communication in one language."

But that is almost in passing. However, Saramago, or themes which have formed the basis of his many novels, constantly appear within the same context in which Saramago created them – such as bureaucrats changing the course of life through the slip of a pen, a community afflicted by their inability to see, rewriting of history or history as words rather than actions. Saramago is but one of Portugal’s many well known literary figures who repeatedly raise their heads as we are introduced to the landscape of Portugal – Luís Camões, Fernando Pessoa, Antunes, Queiroz all feature as names, as characters, parts of the landscape.

These names are almost unseen because they are part of environment which Miles has created, yet at a more direct level there are frequent reminders of what we, as readers, as doing. Miles has his characters discuss the nature of books, of literature, forcing the reader momentarily back into the present, away from the idea of book as story, and grappling with the idea of book as construct. Willibald’s opinion is:

"Jy moet jou lesers vang en die sekerste manier om dit te doen, is met die verwagting van seks, die subtiele uitstel en uitwagting op…die spasiëring van seks…. Die beste manier om die lesers se gedagtes te beheer is met sex."
"You must ensnare your readers and the surest way of doing this is with the anticipation of sex, the subtle postponement and expectation of…the spacing of sex….The best way of controlling the readers’ thoughts is with sex."

But Smerski disagrees:

"Net ’n klein sinnetjie hier en daar is voldoende, hang af: dalk ’n ongewilde politieke opmerking, ‘n reaksionêre interpretasie van die geskiedenis, miskien ‘n uit-die-mode stukkie filosofie…"
"Just a short sentence here and there is enough, it depends: possibly an unpopular political comment, a reactionary interpretation of history, perhaps an out-of-date piece of philosophy…"

So it is. As Smerski suggests, so John Miles has created – a bit of sexual tension between Smerski and Willibald’s wife Elena, unbridled passion between Smerski and Isabel, his new lover, and much in the way of reactionary political comments, philosophical nuggets and a bit of xenophobia thrown in for good measure. Then the tension develops as Elena finds a new lover, and Smerski unpacks his baggage.

Miles tells the tale of Smerski from Portugal back to his hidden history in South Africa through a first-person narrative. It begins with Smerski describing the first two days of his holiday. Smerski’s narrative ends briefly when a woman he compares to Goya’s Isabel de Porcel reappears in his life. As he says to her when he meets her:
"Jou portret hang in Londen. As jy maar weet van jou duisende bewonderaars. En dis nie oor Goya nie, maar die beeldskone Isabel."
"Your portrait hangs in London. If you only knew of your thousands of admirers. And it has nothing to do with Goya, but with the beautiful Isabel."

Smerski’s role as narrator ends when Isabel climbs into his bed. It is she that unwraps his past, who coaxes him into revealing how he came to be a Portuguese national from South Africa with an East European surname. It is in this gradual unwrapping that the subtext of South Africa, and apartheid, moves steadily into the foreground. It is not surprising to learn that Smerski is not all he says he is. But in telling Isabel of his real past, of everything but his name, he exposes himself, to her and her family, who have powerful friends.

Smerski resumes the role of narrator on his return to Africa, when his past accidentally stumbles into him, and he has to adapt to what he left behind so many years ago. But we also realise what it took for Smerski to fit into his adopted environment. That is where the passion comes into it. He learnt the language and adopted the culture – that is what his journey through northern Portugal is all about. It symbolises his immersion into all that is Portuguese. His familiarity with its artists, its writers, its glorious, and its painful, history. But when a true passion comes into his life, it replaces all that went before, and Smerski must understand who he is, and where he is from. "Are we ever free of our ancestors?" he wonders while admiring a pelourinho in Bragança.

Love, like revolution, is accidental, and both are intertwined. Smerski, despite his life story, missed all the revolutions that shaped his life: Portugal in 1974, Mozambique in 1975 and South Africa in 1994. Yet he found passion, and both times it changed his life. He spent his life going from one state of exile, from one buiteveld to the next, and these constructed places are determined not so much by environment, as by language, hence Smerski’s fixation with languages. And also his need to return to Afrikaans. Isabel persuades him to speak some for her, she describes the sounds:
"alles tussen sy lippe, so natuurlik soos water in ‘n eeue oue gleuf oor ‘n rots".
"everything between his lips, as natural as water over a centuries-old groove through rocks".

Smerski’s is a journey through language, through the idea of nation, through concepts such as history and family and identity and justice. The tale Miles weaves fulfils all the criteria for a good book that Smerski set out: a bit of sex here and there with reactionary comments and pieces of outdated philosophy (What makes Europe so different from Africa?) and some pearls:

"Ek is allergies vir die Engelse arrogansie waar die liberale tradisie jou toelaat om alles te doen en wees solank jy Engels bly. Engels is mos neutraal. Ten spyte van hulle deeglike kennis van die Romeinse en Griekse kulture is daar geen insig in the tydelikheid van die Engelse wêreld nie."
"I am allergic to the English arrogance where the liberal tradition allows you to do anything as long as you remain English. English is neutral anyway. In spite of their thorough knowledge of Roman and Greek cultures there is no insight into how short-lived the English world is."

At times it is easy to cringe at some of the reactionary statements that Smerski voices concerning post-apartheid South Africa. But are they actually reactionary? Is Miles voicing his own concerns or is he creating a truly representative cross-section of Afrikanerdom in the contemporary South Africa? To judge Miles is to misunderstand the entire book. As his disclaimer opening the book states:

Aan die werklikheid is gepeuter , by tye is roekeloos darmee omgegaan en oral is tekens van genetiese manipulasie. Maar die Onvoorsienigheid laat haar nie nabaoots nie.
Reality has been tampered with, at times with reckless abandon and signs of genetic manipulation are everywhere. But Unexpectedness does not allow herself to be copied.

Richard Bartlett is the co-editor of the African Review of Books.