The Snow Sleeper. Marlene van Niekerk

I followed his gaze to the still water beneath the arch of the bridge. What did he see there?

      He straightened, still murmuring, his hands in the air like a conductor before the orchestra strikes up. And then he gave the first beat. And from under the bridge came two swans, swimming towards him, majestic, bowing their necks, as if they belonged to him.

      It was as if I saw for the first time what a swan is: feathery raiment of milk-white glass, a neck blown in a dream of fire, a vase under sail, coupled to its reflection, masked twins, breast to breast in a dance, a dark music in the webs.

      The swan caller untied his bundle, and – yes, read on, it says what it says, Professor – took out a rope ladder, with which he lowered himself to the deck of a small sailboat docked at the quay.

      A god in the crib of the rime-white dawn.

      On his stomach, with his hands stretched out over the water, he called the birds, their tails wagging, their heads close to his. Orpheus on the bank. That I could write with my finger, in my meagre breath, one line by a forgotten poet, and have it leap from pane to quay and change into a swan whisperer ... Such serendipity enchants the heart.

      *

      I did not buy it. Do you? I could guess what was going to happen next. And I was right.

      Kasper falls under the spell of the so-called swan whisperer – which translates as: He falls for his own fantasy about the swan whisperer, and unto us a story is born. Every day he follows him through the city, and at every bridge he bears witness to this homeless man’s so-called swan ritual. The man lifts his hands like a priest, he murmurs something, a magic word or formula, the swans come from under the bridge as though summoned, and the swan master descends his rope ladder and bewhispers them.

      And then follows a passage which I simply cannot neglect to read to you. My correspondent writes:

      At this point I can hear your thoughts, Professor. You are thinking: This is not going to get interesting, Kasper. Your story contains: 1. A writer with writer’s block. 2. A pair of binoculars. 3. A maladjusted vagrant with a swan fixation. This is not enough material, I smell a parable, you will have to get your characters involved with each other, because there is nothing like relationships between people for getting rid of symbols. I know, dear Prof, that given your limitations you will not be able to read this letter as a cry for help. You will appraise it as a piece of writing and nothing more. Well, luckily writing and living coincide entirely in this letter, because involvement is precisely what happened to me, the very next day, when I spotted the man across the way again. I went outside and followed him down the rope ladder onto the boat. What was it he smelt of? The aroma of compost? I lay down beside him on my stomach on the deck. The eager pupil. Would you not have done the same? Would you not have tried to discover what he was whispering to the swans? Could it be scripture, written on the plumb line of their flanks, runes from the cygnic depths?

      With or without scripture, dear listeners, from here on the story picks up pace. Kasper takes the vagrant home, yes, Kasper feeds the vagrant. Young, unsociable South African man, an overbred neurotic afraid of germs, offers accommodation to a grimy, maladjusted stranger. And in this tale it does not stop at lodgings, it turns into nursing. Because this swan whisperer was not well. And moreover – Kasper the philosopher takes pains to impress this upon his reader – this patient of his was a blank page. For what hero would want to take care of an eloquent invalid? Kasper’s was a tight-lipped stray. The man could not or would not talk. His gaze was dull and vacant. He was purposeless and passive. He did not even know how to use the bathroom. This is how it played out:

      I removed his grimy coat and the worn-out trousers and shirt. He did not have any underwear, and wore his boots without socks. I was shocked. He was very thin. There was brown gunge around his ankles and wrists and neck. His frayed clothes stuck to a crust that covered his entire body. Together with his body hair, it formed a kind of flaky silver fleece. Was this the reason for his odd odour? A layer of rotting hide? In his crotch, the hair formed a thick, caked mat. His sex was shrunken. The hair under his arms was long and white. His toenails and fingernails were overgrown and badly torn.

      I put on the dishwashing gloves from the kitchen drawer and made him sit on a stool in the shower. I sponged his body down, soaped him up with disinfectant and started washing him carefully with a soft cloth.

      Why did trying to clean him feel so much like trespassing? Can you explain that to me, Professor? You who understand these things so well? Why did such sorrow engulf me as I stood washing this damaged person? I was grateful for the steam, the water my tears could run into without being noticed. Who was I actually washing here? And how was I to complete what I had started? I helped him stand up, pressing my forehead against his chest to keep him upright, while using my body to prop him up as I turned him around in the shower stall.

      I was scared to death, there under the shower, to strip him of his shell. But as far as I could tell, it would be more deadly not to try, deadlier for him, and even more deadly for me, do you see?

      My clothes were soaked and the bathroom was completely steamed up. I caught a glimpse of our ghostly figures in the mirror, him with his hand on my shoulder, where I had put it to scrub his upper arm. Did I long for him to extend a limb or shift his weight, to give a sign of wanting to cooperate, of being willing to help me help him?

      I was startled by the effect of my ablutions. Where the crust came off, his skin was tender, with inflamed red patches on the flanks and around his waist, something that looked like scabies. Or was it shingles? A proliferating eczema? Psoriasis? There were rough areas on his arms and legs, and in some places his skin seemed bruised, suffused with purple-red blotches; there were burst blood vessels and ridges that oozed pus, a few open sores on his buttocks and shoulder blades.

      Het ziet er niet so best uit, I said, maar maakt u zich geen zorgen, wij komen er wel uit.

      *

      And what does Kasper do next in this fairy tale, colleagues? He purchases salves and oils and balms at the pharmacy. He goes to the Hema and buys new white clothes, a new coat and shoes and the most nutritious ingredients for an invalid’s meals. And here I must mention a remarkable writerly invention: Kasper describes pushing his two tables together, the one of musings and the other of science, the poetry table and the prose table, covering them in white towels, setting up his reading lamp like the light in an operating theatre. He helped the naked swan whisperer onto the tables, and set about tending to him from head to toe, three times a day, fourteen days in a row.

      I could not read any further.

      This, then, was the third time I put away the letter. This time I stashed it with my teaching materials, along with the white dummy book, because I thought I might use it to explain the problems of magical realism to my junior students. Not that I ever did; I was busy with other things. My novel had been translated, the translation checked and approved. There was a short respite in my own writing obligations and I decided to give my house a spring-clean, to have the place painted and pruned, have the squirrels removed from the attic, set a trap for the mouse, and let my wrist heal.

      But then, about a month later, the clean-up in full swing, the letter all but forgotten – the mimic book unread, the cassettes unplayed – I received a third shipment, an oddly thick envelope in my postbox.

      I tore open the envelope, standing there surrounded by painters from Wonder Wall in their white overalls. It was filled with sand – a good handful of pure white sand fell onto my feet. I remember stepping back and staring for quite some time at my two dark footprints on the paving. I sent the workmen home for the day. Who could have sent me an envelope full of sand, who but Kasper Olwagen? I checked the back of the envelope: no sender, just a scribble made with something like a stick of charcoal, the name Dwarsrivier.

      Why Dwarsrivier – “cross river”? Some allegorical joke? Maybe his letter, which I still had not finished reading after all that time, would hold some clue? Maybe I should have a closer look at the logbook? And then there were also the tapes I had not listened to, in the Woolworths bag in my broom cupboard. I gathered all Kasper’s missives together on the kitchen table.

      First, I picked up the letter and read