Portrait with Keys, by Ivan Vladislavic
Portrait with Keys, by Ivan Vladislavic. Random House Struik Umuzi. Cape Town, South Africa 2006. ISBN 9781415200209 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0020-9
Ivan Vladislavic's "Portrait with Keys" is a painterly example of the kind of exploration quietly taking place in South African local literature, it is neither memoir, novel, nor a collection of short stories, but all at the same time.
When a house has been alarmed, it becomes explosive. It must be armed and disarmed several times a day. When it is armed, by the touching of keys upon a pad, it emits a whine that sends the occupants rushing out, banging the door behind them. There are no leisurely departures: there is no time for second thoughts, for taking a scarf from the hook behind the door, for checking that the answering machine is on, for a final look in the mirror on the way through the hallway. There are no savoured homecomings either: you do not unwind into such a house, kicking off your shoes, breathing the familiar air. Every departure is precipitate, every arrival is a scraping-in. In an alarmed house, you awake in the small hours to find the room unnaturally light.The keys on the touch pad are aglow with a luminous, clinical green, like a night light for a child who's afraid of the dark. How bad a man was Scrooge, that model of solitary mcan-spiritedness? 'Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge.' The unequal exchange of directions is one of the most touching relations possible between people in the city, and so it is a measure of Scrooge's inhumanity that he was never once, in all his life, engaged in it. Asking lor directions, city people, who set great store by their independence and hard-won knowledge of the streets, who like to think that they 'know their way around', declare their vulnerability; giving directions, they demonstrate a capacity tor dealing kindly and responsibly with a life put in their hands by fate. In the countryside it is different. Strangers and locals stand in a simpler relationship to one another. Strangers are few and lar between, and they are therefore less threatening rather than more so, as one might suppose. Locals know the world around them like the backs of their hands, as the saving goes, and landmarks are more conspicuous and easier to describe. In any event, a country person (if he did not have the whim to send you on a wild goose chase) might think nothing of walking along with you, or driving ahead, to show you the way. [...]
This is an excerpt from: Portrait with Keys, by Ivan Vladislavic
Title: Portrait with Keys
Subtitle: Joburg & what-what
Author: Ivan Vladislavic
Genre: City portrait
Publisher: Random House Struik
Imprint: Umuzi
Cape Town, South Africa 2006
ISBN 9781415200209 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0020-9
Softcover, 15 x 22 cm, 211 pages
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