Damon Galgut on the genesis of 'The Promise'

Damon Galgut's The Promise has been shortlisted for the Sunday Times Literary Awards fiction prize, in partnership with Exclusive Books

The winner should be a novel of rare imagination and style, evocative, textured and a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction.

Our judges called it “a masterful, measured, well-paced and compelling study of a once-privileged family in terminal decline”.

Galgut on the genesis of his book

Writing this book was an act of revenge on Pretoria, religion in general (and the Dutch Reformed Church in particular), PW Botha, the apartheid military, the process of ageing, the narrowness of most literary ambition ... I could go on.

I listened to a friend talking about the funerals of his parents and siblings, and realised that he was telling me the story of his family. I thought about how SA has changed since I grew up, and realised that this was my story.

I heard another friend talk about a piece of land his mother wanted to give away, and realised that this was SA's story.

So I told the stories.

EXTRACT

Who is to say, perhaps all these dreams might merge together, making a single, larger dream, a dream by the whole family, but somebody is missing. At this very instant he’s stepping out of a Buffel in a military camp south of Johannesburg, wearing army browns and carrying a rifle. He used the rifle yesterday morning to shoot and kill a woman in Katlehong, an act he never imagined committing in his life, and his mind has done little since except turn that moment over and over in wonderment and despair.

Swart.

Ja, Corporal?

The chaplain wants to see you.

The chaplain?

He’s never spoken to the chaplain. It can only be, he thinks, that the man knows what he did and wants to talk to him about it. His sin has somehow transmitted itself, he has taken a life, he must pay. But I didn’t mean to. But you did.

She was throwing a stone, she bent down to pick it up, a flash of rage passed through him, concomitant with hers. He didn’t think, he hated her, he wiped her away. All in a few seconds, an instant, over and done. Never over, never done.

So that even after the man has told him, he still believes he’s responsible. My mother is dead, I killed her. I shot and killed her yesterday morning.

We’ve been trying to get hold of you, the chaplain says. We sent a radio message. We thought you received it.

He is in the chaplain’s office, sitting in front of his desk. There is a Christian poster stuck with Prestik to the wall, I am the Way and the Life, but aside from that the room is drab and ordinary, too ordinary to contain the feelings that have been let loose in him.

I was in Katlehong, he says. There was a situation.

Ja, ja, of course. The chaplain is small and fussy, with hair growing out of his ears. He has the rank of colonel, but is wearing only a tracksuit right now, his face blurry with sleep. Having done his painful duty, he’s keen to get back to bed, it’s 0300 hours on the clock.

Here’s a seven-day pass, he tells the conscript. I’m sorry about your mother, but I’m sure she’s at peace.

The young man doesn’t seem to hear him. He is staring out the window, into the dark. We had to bring things under control, he says slowly.

Ja, of course, that’s why you’re here. That’s what the army is for. The chaplain has never struggled in his soul with questions of this nature, the answers have always seemed obvious. He wonders vague­ly if this boy is a subversive type. Would you like a longer pass? he says. Ten days?

Oh, the young man says. No, I don’t think so.

All right then.

My mother turned Jewish, you see, or went back to it, rather, and they like to bury their dead quickly. Same day, if possible. But they’ll wait for me to get home and do it tomorrow.

I see.

It’s all been planned like that. She’s been dying for months. Everybody just wants it over.

All right then, the chaplain repeats uncomfortably.

The young man gets to his feet at last. My parents should nev­er have married, he says. They were not alike.

He wanders back to his tent through the dark roads of the camp. Under canvas, hundreds of others like him, stacked in rows. My mother is dead. The portals through which I entered the world. No way back, not that there ever was. I shot and killed her yesterday. But I didn’t mean to. But you didn’t do it, you did not kill your mother. Somebody else’s mother you killed. And therefore mine must die.

He is very tired, no sleep for forty hours and no prospect of it now, not till he’s home. Crackle and burn. The fuse is lit. There’s a smell in his nostrils perpetually, of rubber on fire, rising from somewhere inside him. He comes to his tent, where his bed waits for him, but keeps on walking, liking the sound of his boots on the road. Slumber, little soldiers, while the minotaur stamps by. Slouching towards Bethlehem in the Free State.

At the furthest edge of the camp, a soldier is on guard. A troepie like him. What do you want? he says, sounding scared.

I want your gold and your women, Anton says. Speaking Afri­kaans for some reason, though he can hear the other guy is English. My father’s tongue, forever foreign to me. No, I’ve changed my mind, I come in peace. Take me to your leader.

You’re not supposed to be here.

I know it. I’ve known it since the day I was born. He hooks his fingers through the mesh and lets his weight hang down. Yellow floodlights send strange shadows across the tar. On the other side of the fence is a lot filled with military vehicles, many of them Buffels like the one he was in when it happened. Yesterday, only yesterday. So much life still to get through.

I have lost my mother, he says.

Lost her?

I shot her with my rifle, to protect the country.

You shot your mother?

What’s your name?

Payne.

Oh, wonderful. He switches to English. We’ve met before. Are you an allegory? Are you real? Do you have a first name?

My first name? What do you want to know that for?

He holds up his hands. I surrender, Private Payne.

Are you all right?

Do I look all right to you? No, I’m not all right. My mother is dead. Thank you for your company, Payne. I’ll see you down the line.

He lurches away in the direction he came from, and the con­versation disappears, as most do, into the air, or into the earth, it sinks or it rises and will never come back again. Four hours later, Rifleman Anton Swart, nineteen years old, stands at the side of the road near Alberton in a military pickup zone, hoping for a lift home. He is haggard, he is pale. A handsome young man, brown eyes and brown hair, something in his face that will never be at ease.

He calls the farm from a phone booth in Pretoria. Eight thirty in the morning. Pa answers, sounding dazed. He doesn’t recog­nise Anton’s voice. Who is this?

It’s me, your son and heir. Can you send Lexington?

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