The book of happenstance. Ingrid Winterbach
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my spool I have five photographs of the small building in which Patrick Steinmeier hanged himself. Although I did not particularly focus on the landscape, I took four photographs of the magnificent sandstone cliffs, as well as a picture of Sof next to the car, with the mountains in the background, and she in turn took one of me. (Sof, of whom I actually still know little, who accompanied me to Ladybrand on the spur of the moment, and whose pastorie persona made the visit to the dead man’s family home considerably easier.) Eleven photographs on a spool of twenty-four. Before I hand it in for development I should perhaps fill up the roll. I bought the film because I intended to document the exact arrangement of the shells next to my bed. But I never got round to that.
For many years I have had a preference for a heavier, larger kind of shell, especially for the conches – that wonderfully large variety of solid forms from tropical waters. But in the past four or five years I have been looking with more interest and appreciation at other, lighter shells, and have begun to augment my collection with tonnas, helmet shells and harpas. The twenty shells next to my bed were all medium-sized. (The heavier conches and dramatic murexes I displayed in the lounge.) Their colour varied from sandy whites, muted ochres and pink ochres to the darker brownish pinks of the harpas and the delicate blues of the Tonna perdix. I set them out next to my bed in three rows. Sometimes the light fell in such a way that they were lit from beneath, so that they glowed and appeared almost weightless – with an otherworldly beauty, like the host of angels, the ranks of the saints. These shells were the last objects that I would see at night before switching off the bedside lamp, and the first that I would rest my eyes on in the mornings when I awoke. By looking at them, I felt myself strengthened within. Their beauty restored my trust in all of creation. I felt myself at one with the immense variety of life forms on earth, a small link in the immeasurable chain of coincidence that binds us all together.
I hand in the film spool as it is. I can think of nothing else I want to photograph.
I do not tell Theo Verwey about my visit to Mrs Rosie Steinmeier in Ladybrand. I do not tell him about the hanged man and the photographs I took of the small building. I fear he will find it laughable. Maybe it is laughable – my efforts to follow the trail of the lost shells. After the burglary I mentioned briefly that my shells had been stolen and left it at that.
I sit with the cards in my hand. We are still busy with the letter D. Dorskuur – cure brought about by restriction of fluid intake. Dorsnood. Suffering from the throes of thirst? I ask. Similar to other less commonly used word combinations like dorsbrand (burning caused by thirst), dorsdood (death from thirst), dorspyn (pain caused by thirst), Theo explains. Shall we go and have a drink? I ask. (Theo smiles.) Dos (decked out). (How charming he looks this morning, decked out – uitgedos – in that fine, cream silk shirt.) “Gedos in die drag van die dodekleed,” Leipoldt says. Decked out in the apparel of the shroud. Doteer (donate). Douig (dewy) – not a word particularly suited to this province. Douboog (rainbow formed by dew), doubos (dew bush – word used in West Griqualand for the shrub Cadaba termitaria), doubraam (bramble bush of which the fruit is covered with a thin waxy layer). The many word combinations formed with draad (wire), with draag (variant of dra – carry) and with draai (turn). Who would have thought, I say to Theo, that simple words like these could be the basis for so many combinations? Draaihaar (regional word for hair crown). Has it been your experience as well that people with many crowns in their hair are unusually hot-tempered? Theo smiles and shakes his head. Draaihartigheid (disease caused by a bug found in cruciferous plants whereby their leaves turn inward). The word sounds like a character trait, I say, a twisting and turning state of the heart. Theo nods and smiles. Draais (the word used by children when playing marbles, yet sounding so much like a synonym for jags – horny). But it is especially droef (sad) that interests me. Woeful. Indicative of sorrow. Causing grief or accompanying it. Evoking a sombre or doleful mood. Bedroewend – saddening. Also in combination with colours, to indicate that a particular colour is murky or muted and can elicit sadness, sorrowfulness and dejection. Droefwit (mournful white). And droefheid is the condition of being sad, sorrowful or mournful; inclined to dejection, depression and despondency; something gloomy, cheerless and downcast, as opposed to joy. Is that all? I think. So few words for an emotion with so many shades? The complete colour spectrum – from droefwit (mournful white) to droefswart (mournful black), from droefpers (mournful purple) to droefrooi (mournful red). (Droeforanje, droefblanje, droefblou – mournful orange, mournful white, mournful blue.)
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