

Devorah's Prayer

By Vincent Gray

Copyright © 2016 Vincent Gray

## Smashwords Edition

This book is a work of fiction. All the characters developed in this novel are the fictional creations of the writer's imagination and are not modelled on any real persons. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 9781311622877

## Author Biography

As a son of a miner the author was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg during the 1960s and matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school he was conscripted into the South African Defence Force (SADF) for compulsory national military service at the age of seventeen. On completion of his military service he studied courses in Zoology, Botany and Microbiology at the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree he worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. Following the initial conscription into military service in the SADF, like all other white South African males of his generation, he was then drafted into one of the many South African Citizen Military Regiments. During the 1970s he was called up as a citizen-soldier to do three-month military camps on the 'Border' which was the operational theatre of the so-called counter insurgency 'Bush War' during the Apartheid years. Before and in between university studies he also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales representative. The author is now a retired professor whose career as an academic in the Biological Sciences has spanned a period of thirty-three years mainly at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Before retirement he lectured and carried out research in the field of molecular biology with a special interest in the molecular basis of evolution. He continues to pursue his interest in evolutionary biology. Other interests which the author pursues includes radical theology, philosophy and literature.

## eBooks by Vincent Gray also available on Smashwords as Free Downloads

The Girl from Reiger Park -The Barracuda Night Club Trilogy. Book No.1

Who was Oreithyia? -The Barracuda Night Club Trilogy. Book No.2

The Barracuda Night Club Mystery - The Barracuda Night Club Trilogy. Book No. 3

The Girl from Germiston

The Tale of the Sakabula Bird

Rebekah of Lake Sibaya

Segomotso and the Dressmaker

Devorah's Prayer

Farewell to Innocence: The full uncensored saga of Hannah Zeeman

Send Him My Love (Short Story)

Three Days in Phoenix (Short Story)

The Soccer Player (Short Story)

Raghavee: The Immoral House Keeper (Short Story)

Waterlandsridge (Novella)

## This book is dedicated to my wife Melodie and my daughter Ruth

### Chapter 1

The midyear June exams were now over at last, and the short wintery days of July which had descended over the Witwatersrand ushered in a welcome respite from the scholarly regime for all Wits university students, a respite in the form of the mid-year student vacation.

Now at 17.30 pm all that remained of the sun was a dying ember glowing dimly on the horizon beneath a diffuse red halo. The skyline now spectral with its black charred silhouettes of blue gum trees, telephone poles and flats, rapidly succumbed to the rising tide of darkness. The frozen sky began to twinkle with the icy glimmer of stars. And as shadows filled the streets, the street lights seemed to appear brighter. The lone figure of a person wearing an olive green woollen beanie stood beneath a cone of yellow light radiating from a lamp on the platform of Brakpan Station. While stamping his feet, rubbing and blowing his hands to keep them warm against the chill of an Antarctic cold front which was now advancing over the Witwatersrand he kept his eyes anxiously fixed on the signal lights. He wore a black anorak over a navy blue polar neck jersey which his mom had knitted for him. He zipped up his black anorak and stuck his hands into the pockets of his new blue Levi Strauss jeans and continued to stamp his feet to stop his toes from freezing. With the moonless Saturday night having finally engulfed the deserted station platform, no random passer-by, gazing from a moving car window, could ever have imagined that this unknown solitary figure, appearing as a mysterious inky black silhouette, was standing at the threshold of enchanting and also frightening prospects.

After what seemed to be an eternity the signal light finally turned green and within minutes, right on schedule the train arrived. He boarded the heated carriage and with his hands still in his pockets he slumped into a seat closest to the exit. All the coach windows were opaque, misted over. He was the only one in the carriage.

He was aware that under normal circumstances this journey would have been quite insane. This was the first time in his life that he had taken a train, an empty train, to Johannesburg on a Saturday evening. It was just five hours ago that the phone rang. He was standing by the window in his bedroom. Until then he had been deeply preoccupied with an interesting idea that involved the quantum mechanical formulation of force and work using the particle in a box as the model for solving this problem. After scribbling down some solutions for the particle in the box wave equation he pushed back his chair and got up from working at his desk. Deep in thought, his gaze fell on the park across the road, taking in absentmindedly the bleak wintry scene of dried kikuyu lawns and skeletal trees bathed in shafts of pale light. From his window he could see Brakpan Dam, now officially called Jan Smuts Dam. On the north side of the dam stood the still sizable remains of a once massive ash dump that been left behind as artefactual evidence for the existence of one of the very first coal fired power generation stations that had been built to electrify the operation of the mines on the Far East Rand gold fields. A number of fairly rich coal deposits were discovered in close proximity to the gold bearing Main Reef outcrops that stretched across the Far East Rand, enclosing in the arc of its wide embrace the far flung towns of Dunnottar and Nigel which lay beyond what become the City of Springs. After learning that the renowned author Nadine Gordimer had been born in Springs and had grown up in that town he read all her books, which had made a lasting impression on him. It was hard for him to believe that a person of her literary stature could have come from Springs.

The effluent leaking from the Brakpan municipal sewage works which had been built on the eastern side of the dam appeared to be the cause of the foul smelling emerald green eutrophication of the dam. From the window of his bedroom he could hear the intermittent familiar short single-noted 'krrp' sounds which characterized the calls of coots which could be seen floating on the dam, sounds which he grown up with. Before the decline of the dam he and his friends, while growing up through their adolescent and teenage years, had spent endless hours at the dam, fishing or canoeing or sailing their self-fabricated model yachts.

He suddenly noticed that on the north shore the dense bed of reeds had been set ablaze. Within moments after it had been set alight he could hear the rapid crackle of combustion accompanied with sporadic loud fiery explosions out of which showers of sparks erupted into the sky above the reed beds. Soon tall flames began to dance high above the reeds. Clouds of grey and white smoke rolled up the sides of the coal ash dump, enveloping it and quickly blocking it from view. While watching the fire rapidly consuming the entire reed bed he heard the faint ringing of the telephone in the entrance hall near the front door. A minute later he heard his mom coming down the passage to his bedroom door.

"It is for you Franco, a young lady wishes to speak to you," she said with a smile on her face and eyes that teased, for no girl had ever phoned Franco before.

When he heard the message his heart skipped a beat. As he walked down the passage to the front entrance hall, the old Oregon pine floor boards creaked loudly under his rapid tread, his mouth became dry, he began to feel slightly breathless, and his heart started to pound. He knew that it had to be Devorah; there was no other young lady who would have needed or would have wanted to phone him, especially so unexpectedly. He felt overcome with nervous excitement as he stood and stared for a few brief seconds at the telephone receiver lying on its side at the end of its extended leash as if it had suddenly become a strange animated object, like a black fish about to flounder on the shore. He picked up the hard heavy black shiny receiver and said as calmly as possible:

"Hello, it is Franco."

"Hello Franco it is me, Devorah. Are you doing anything tonight?" She asked straight out without any dithering.

"No, not really," he answered, wondering where her question was leading.

"Fabulous! That's great! Look I have two front row seat tickets for Samuel Beckett's play _Waiting for Godot_ at The Nunnery for tonight, would you like to come," she asked, leaving out the more intimate 'with me' at the end of the sentence, even though it was implied by the tone of her voice.

"What do I owe you for the ticket?" This was all he could think of saying at that moment, instead of giving a simple yes or no.

"You owe me nothing; it is on me," She replied, suddenly sounding almost business like.

"Thanks, what time must I be there," he said, confirming with an unambiguous signal of enthusiasm, that he had immediately accepted her invitation, that is, accepted it without any shade of reservation.

"Can you get to The Nunnery by 6.45 pm tonight?"

"I will need to catch a train," he said, indicating that he would be able to get there at the designated time, as the problem of the logistics of transport, of time and space, were instantaneously solved in his mind.

"Marvellous! I will see you then later. I will wait for you outside The Nunnery." There was an excited sound of relief in her voice, which she had failed to douse effectively.

The words 'fabulous', 'great' and 'marvellous' resonated in his mind. They carried an exciting freight of promise that felt almost tangible even in the dim light of the entrance hall. He put the phone back on its receiver.

After showering, washing his hair and shaving he put on aftershave. He had never put on aftershave before in his life. It was a bottle of cologne that he had received as a Christmas gift four years ago. It had stood unopened and unused in the toiletries cabinet fixed to the wall above the wash basin which stood next to the toilet in the bathroom.

It was highly improbable that Franco Sorrentino the grandson of an Italian prisoner of war and the son of a panel beater and Devorah Kirschenbaum the granddaughter of Jewish grandparents who had fled Warsaw in 1939 and the daughter of a prominent Johannesburg businessman could ever have become acquainted under any normal circumstances. But improbable events do not happen by chance alone nor do they require the prevalence of abnormal circumstances for their occurrence. Sometimes under abnormal circumstances the remotely probable becomes a real and distinct possibility.

The abnormal and unusual had actually happened. During lunchtimes at Wits something extremely rare was going on, something that would have been unlikely in the life of any university in South Africa. As a result of the convergence of a chain of accidental events a most eventful occurrence in the history of student life in South Africa had erupted on a university campus. In 1975 a lunchtime open-air speaker's forum had begun to flourish outside the canteen of the student's union building.

It was ideally situated to capture an audience among the steady traffic of students flowing to and from the main campus canteen. It became a place where what no one had ever dared to whisper in secret was now being proclaimed from the roof tops. Topics for debate included homosexuality, black consciousness, feminism, African socialism, existentialism, the evils of Capitalism, the revolution in Mozambique and Angola, support for Frelimo and the MPLA, the need to free Nelson Mandela and of course everything that served the political agenda of the student Left at Wits University.

It was a time when the student body at Wits vibrated with an incredible amount of creative and exuberant energy. What professors' spoke about in lectures continued to be debated by the students on the library lawns and in the student canteen. A substantial proportion of the white student body had become politically radicalized and identified strongly with what they referred to as "The Left." Among themselves they openly expressed their intellectual allegiance to Marxism and articulated a fairly sophisticated class analysis of Apartheid as a vehicle of Capitalism for the exploitation of black workers. Within the inner circle of the student Left on Wits Campus many admitted quite openly that they were Communists and viewed themselves as hard-core Marxist-Leninists.

Franco Sorrentino and Devorah Kirschenbaum had regularly, but quite independently, joined the crowded audience of captivated listeners at the lunchtime speaker's forum. They had gathered to be entertained by a string of talented Leftist student orators. As regular attendees they soon noticed each other. Devorah happened to be one of those rare young women who always stood out in a crowd. She was buxom, but on the slightly plump side of buxom, or on the healthy looking side of plumpness, having distinctively curvaceous hips and prominent breasts. She was also below average in height but not too short, with a head covered by a massive uncontrollable bush of curly dark red hair which made her seem taller than she actually was. Her hair was unusual, its dark almost dark red wine colour contrasted sharply with her extremely pale milky white complexion and striking dark green eyes. Because of her unusual appearance his eyes were constantly drawn to her and she soon noticed that he kept staring at her. At first she frowned, feeling a bit self-conscious by this unexpected attention that bordered on blatant intrusion. But then it dawned on her that there was something more than mere curiosity to his frequent indiscreet glances, he was showing genuine overt interest in her, even though it should have been done more inadvertently, or more surreptitiously, in a sort of covert or unobtrusive, chance-like fashion rather than just staring at her the whole time. She thought that he was obviously and harmlessly clueless when it came to women and courtship. She too began to stare back at him when he was not looking, in a less obvious manner, of course.

So at speaker's forum they began to exchange frequent glances, and their eye contacts grew more intimate, more lingering, like the touching and holding of hands. And then they began to smile spontaneously at each other, especially when they recognized in each other's demeanour that what had been said in the fiery debates had resonated deeply within both of them. When same chord had been struck in both of them, they shared nonverbally that information of mutual awareness, in the frequency of their reciprocal and meaningful smiles, which started to confirm that the seeds of a growing intimacy had taken root between them.

She started to feel drawn to this person who was also slightly below average height, but with an attractive, athletically sculptured, and graceful physical frame. He was definitely not unhandsome in any manner of speaking, he had striking features, a distinctly Roman nose, thick black hair, deep blue eyes and she also liked the dark masculine shadow of stubble that always formed on his jaws and chin by lunchtime. This was because he shaved at 5.00 am every morning. He had to get up early so that he could catch the 6.15 am train from Brakpan to Johannesburg.

While not being pretty or a beauty in any obvious way, her strange enigmatic sensuality definitely made her attractive to the intelligent gaze of any man. Her lush lips and high cheek bones gave an exotic touch to her face. Her slightly aquiline nose enhanced the sensuality of her facial features. She looked at his nose and smiled. They shared a feature, something common between noble Romans and Jews. Their respective noses were ever so slightly different, his was clearly Roman, almost aristocratic, but hers was unmistakably Jewish. In fact everything about her was unmistakably Jewish, it would have been impossible for her to disguise her Semitic identity, in spite of her porcelain skin.

Franco Sorrentino had grown up as a member of the small Catholic community in Brakpan, all of whom were descendants of Italian, Portuguese, and Lebanese immigrants. They also formed the core of the devout flock that had been in the pastoral care of Father Agostino, a Franciscan priest from Italy.

While Devorah's grandparents who had been Trotskyites were lucky to have escaped certain death in Poland, all her relatives who stayed behind in Warsaw died in the genocide at Auschwitz. Her own parents in reaction to the radical political and socialist proclivities of her maternal and paternal grandparents rebelled against everything these Polish émigrés had stood for and believed in, by joining the ranks of the Johannesburg community of conservative observant orthodox Jews with strong Zionist leanings.

Devorah had inherited the radical inclinations of her grandparents. Her parents had made peace with their wayward daughter who was only Jewish because of her genetic ancestry and not because of any deep seated Jewish convictions or devotion with regard to Judaism. So as long she continued to take her university studies seriously they were happy.

Devorah was co-majoring in political science, philosophy, and English (PPE). She decided to take English in place of economics, so she was not the typical PPE triple major BA student which characterised a Witsie student who had radical Leftist learnings. Franco wanted to study Mechanical Engineering, but being dependant on a Department of Education teaching bursary he could only take certain prescribed teaching subjects which would be relevant for the prospective or candidate high school teacher. So in lieu of engineering, he had chosen to major in physics and mathematics as an alternative to doing engineering. They were both in their 3rd year, the final year for their BA and BSc degrees, respectively.

When Devorah first came to Wits it was her initial intention to major in psychology and sociology. All her peers who had come to Wits mainly to look for husbands advised her that a BA in psycho and socio would be her best option if she wanted a future. But at first year registration she signed up at the last moment for philosophy, political science, and English. Both philosophy and political science seemed to be the trendy and sexy courses to take, so she too soon drifted in the general political direction that most PPE students took, later finding that she too like the rest of her PPE peers had become ineluctably drawn more and more to the radical fringes of student life at Wits. So at registration she chose an alternative destiny, so instead of embarking on the academic path recommended by her peers, which was the safe path to take, especially if you happened to be looking for a husband, she at the spur of moment changed her mind, she abandoned all intentions of become 'husband bait' which would have been the case if she took psychology and sociology as her majors. In spite of the sound advice offered freely by her husband-searching peers, she drifted instead into political science and philosophy which seemed to be where her real interests lay, with English becoming her third major.

She was warned that as a nice Jewish girl she would not find a suitable husband if she became one of those PPE cockroaches. She was warned that lawyers, accountants, doctors, and dentists preferred the female psycho and socio majors as wives as they tended to be good home makers and mothers because they would have acquired through their studies the sound and necessary theoretical groundings when it came to child rearing skills and managing a home.

Drifting into something without planning seemed to have been the story of her life, until Franco appeared on the scene. With him hovering around, making her feel attractive, significant, and wanted, she for once started to feel like a real person. She was amazed and surprised with herself, that she could actually be captured in the way that Franco had seemingly inadvertently drawn her to him. He had ignited feelings in her for him.

Before long they started to regularly greet each other whenever they happened to walk pass each other on campus. One day after spotting her sitting by herself in the canteen drinking coffee, he carried his cup of coffee over and asked if he could join her. It was the week before their exams. With the postponement of Speakers Forum until after the June exams and the July holidays, they managed to meet a few more times in the canteen for coffee before university went into its winter recess.

He thought about Devorah's phone call. Before he had received that first telephone call from Devorah an interval of several weeks had already gone by since he had last seen or spoken to her at Wits. He wondered how she had got hold of his telephone number. There was only one Sorrentino phone number in the phonebook for Brakpan and one would need to have access to the East Rand telephone directory to get it. So it was evident that Devorah must have made an effort to track down his telephone number.

He questions in his mind about Devorah's phone call.

Had she called him because there was no one else she could ask to go with her to see the play? He wondered about that. Maybe she knew that he felt something for her. But he hardly knew her. How many times had they drank coffee together, was it 3 or 4 times? And each time, they were together for not more than half an hour. Yet a spark had been ignited between them, and flame which drew them together was now burning stronger than ever. In fact, it had become a blaze.

She thought that maybe the way she that felt about him was reciprocal. Maybe he shared the same kind of feelings for her that she had for him.

And so he too guessed that she felt something for him, he concluded that this was the real reason why she phoned, she wanted to see him. He smiled to himself. She certainly has lots of chutzpah he thought. She went out on a limb in phoning him, asking him out at such short notice.

### Chapter 2

Devorah opened the built-in cupboard doors and surveyed the contents of her cluttered wardrobe. It was a mess. She shook her head; she did not have any decent outfits. She also suddenly felt conflicted. She wanted so much to look attractive tonight, possibly even sexy, but she also wanted to be feminist, and Leftist, in appearance if that were possible, and on top of all this she also wanted to be comfortably warm, all of these goals seem to be incompatible. She had neglected her wardrobe, not because of a lack of money but because of a lack of interest, no male had expressed any interest in her until Franco came along and gate crashed into her life and had turned it upside down, kindling all kinds of feelings that she began to have for him.

Before Franco came onto the scene, she had lost interest in the way she presented herself to the world. There was no incentive, because no one who she found interesting happened to also find her interesting and desirable. No one had shown any sign that she was desirable. No one else had noticed her before Franco started staring at her and had become overtly preoccupied with her, making her feel wanted, special and desirable in just the way she was. Now that someone finally seemed to be interested in her, she suddenly felt vulnerable enough to start panicking about herself, especially about her image, about her appearance, about the way she looked, or how she would be perceived by someone else who had now become very significant to her. Suddenly she was filled with an urgency bordering on an anxiety attack to make not only a good impression, but a lasting impression.

She looked at the reflection of her face and body in the mirror and wondered what a person was besides something that necessarily speaking had to have a body. Does a person need to have mind in order to be a person, and what is mind, and what is consciousness, and does it mean to be conscious, and are all sentient beings conscious in some kind of way, in a way that was peculiar to their own kind of being? In the case of humans, a person had to have something like a mind in order to be self-aware or self-conscious, which was always necessarily a conscious awareness of the fact that they were a self, or that they possessed something which represented selfhood, even if it was only a thinking self, which is much more than being a mere subject, a subject is something that feels pain, that feels emotions, that feels desires and everything else that a subject could possibly be inflicted with, or afflicted with. She realized that there was this dualism of selfhood versus 'subject-hood,' which had become a legacy of Descartes's _Meditations_ , a Cartesian legacy that refused to go away, a legacy that continued to haunt all thinking no matter what. In a way Descartes had invented the modern idea of the self as a thinking substance. No one before him had spoken about the self in the same way that Descartes had initiated. With Descartes everything changed. Modern philosophy was born with Descartes _Meditations_. This she felt certain of.

To be a subject you had to have a body, but does a mind or self need a body in order to exist? Can we exist without bodies, that is, without being subjects at the same time, subjects who can be subjected to afflictions? Is it possible that the self can be disentangled from its subject-hood?

'Here we go Descartes,' she thought. 'You have got me thinking again. I am a thinking self, a something that thinks, a substance that thinks, I exist because I think, but can I trust my eyes, can I trust all my senses, how can I possibly know for certain that the image I see in the mirror is me and not a thought, not a mental image, not a mental object, not a mental picture, or not something which has been planted in my mind, in my brain by some demon. Could I be a dream from which it was impossible to escape by means of waking up? How do I know that I am not dreaming all of this stuff?' She wondered as her eyes remained fixed on the reflection of her image in the mirror.

'I have green eyes and a bush of dark red hair, can that possibly be me? Is that really me? Could I become someone else, someone with a different physical appearance?' She mused.

'Surely a person in order to be a person must have more than just a body, a person can only be a person if they also have a mind, thoughts, memories, ideas, fears, convictions, passions, intentions, feelings, beliefs, desires, sensations, wishes and hopes? Surely you can only be a person if you are able to experience sensations and have thoughts, thoughts about those sensations. Or are we just complicated machines with thousands of macroscopic components and billions of microscopic machine-like moving parts all jiggling frenetically about in a Brownian storm of thermal fluctuations in symphony with the simultaneous firing of hundreds of billions of neurons going off like an exploding giant supernova. And out of this electrical and mechanical maelstrom, mind, feelings, emotions, sense impressions, ideas and thoughts all emerged like some binary coded ticker-tape from the black box of the brain.' She considered while all the time reflecting deeply on the mystery of her image reflected in the mirror.

'Who am I actually? What am I actually? Am I experiencing some kind of psychosis right this moment?'

'Am I just a girl who is plumb with a bush of dark red hair? What kind of animal I am? Can I know and experience the animal that I happen to be or that I am? I have no soul, I am just some kind of being with thoughts, a being that has evolved to be this thing that I now see in the mirror.'

All of these images of the internal universe of the human body and brain were conjured by an imagination which had been fed a diet of science fiction pulp which Devorah had intellectually consumed during her high school years as an eccentric and tubby teenager, when she flittered like a butterfly from one circle of school friends to the next, and like a butterfly moving from one flower to the next, she never settled down for very long.

At King David, when she stopped believing in God in standard 8, she also stopped believing in the existence of the soul. For her there was no ghost in the machine. We were only some sort of animated substance that had emerged in the depths of time from primordial slime as a result of random fortuitous chemical reactions at the bottom of some warm dark pool. A creature that has emerged from the slime without meaning or purpose was how she sometimes felt about herself.

She looked again in the mirror, and wondered what kind of a creature has a mind, body, and face like hers? Does her mind embody her character, where does her personality reside? If she did not have a soul and there was no ghost in the machine, then what was the ontological status of her personality or of her own personhood? She believed that she was indeed a person, otherwise how could she be feeling various emotions and how could she otherwise be asking all these self-reflective questions?

She wondered again: How could she possibly be thinking all of this stuff if she were not a person, if she were not an actual existing person?

It was all really quite baffling. Even after taking first year psychology and having done philosophy as one of her majors she was still in the dark regarding many questions about mind, body, and freewill. And with all of these questions that plagued her mind, one could not escape the question of morals. For starters, without a mind and without freewill there could be no question of morals, and we would not have to worry about 'what we ought to do' in various situations. Without a mind, a body and freewill, there could be no moral agency. And without any moral agency there could not be a moral universe. Also if people did not have material bodies that could feel pain and suffering, there could be no question of morals? Without injury, suffering, pain, and death there could be no moral questions. It was as simple as that! What is the meaning of morality if we could not experience pain or know what suffering was like? If we were not subjects who could suffer afflictions then morality would have no meaning and a theory of ethics would be an absurdity. The experience of pain is the foundation of ethical theory.

Her thoughts returned to Franco. He had turned her life into this state of perpetual crisis. He had made her vulnerable.

Over the past few weeks she often wondered what he could possibly see in her. She realized that he was obviously attracted to the whole package, the body with the person in it, and the mind, and the self that was connected with the body. What kind of embodied person was she that made her attractive and interesting to him?

After examining her image in the mirror with a jaundiced eye she suddenly felt dreadfully overweight. 'I am not much of package-deal' she thought despondently. In desperation she pulled in her stomach, pushed out her bust, and straightened her shoulders. She still looked plump or slightly tubby. She remembered that as a child close relatives had referred to her as been tubby. She grew up to be a tubby teenager. She looked critically at her legs, her thighs, and calves. She thought her legs looked shapely. They were actually well built she thought as she cast her eyes over her calves and thighs. Yes, well-built and shapely because they had to support and carry a fat body she concluded. Sometimes fattish people do indeed have good looking legs. She found some comfort in the knowledge that her legs were not that bad looking. Turning around before the mirror she again critically examined her naked body, this time with new eyes, not her previous eyes, but the eyes of Franco. She tried to imagine how he would see her, especially if she wore a tight fitting or clinging garment, or if he saw her naked, what would he think of her? Would he still be filled with desire for her? Would he want to hold her and make love to her? She looked at the soft mound of her lower abdomen, the padding on her hips and buttocks, her well-developed but firm and shapely breasts. She thought her breasts were OK; she also drew some comfort from this anatomical fact. She had good legs and good breasts. On second thoughts, she concluded that her breasts were actually nice. Everything else seemed to be well-padded with a layer of fat. She looked once more at the image of her body in the mirror and pulled a face. 'I look and feel like a hippopotamus' she thought to herself. 'What could he possibly see in me? Oh Lord I will die if I can't have him.'

This bombshell realization struck her like a revelation. She had fallen in love with him, and she suddenly felt totally inadequate. All kinds of insecurities about her self-perception began to invade her thoughts like an unwelcome visitor who could only be the bearer of bad news.

If he had not been so persistence in noticing her, she would have been blissfully oblivious of his existence and would now be free of the emotional turmoil that threatened to overwhelm her. In a sense, if Franco had not appeared on the scene, then she would have been free, even self-confident, because there would be no threats to undermine her self-confidence. But now her moods changed from moment to moment. One moment she felt so elated that she even found the courage to phone him, and practically ask him out on a date. After she had spoken to him on the phone, she was filled with the hope of certain possession. She felt such incredibly joy; she was filled with such good emotional feelings.

But now after seeing her reflection in the mirror and the mess in her wardrobe she had fallen into a state of despondency. It seemed like that she would end up losing him. It seemed to be a certainty. Now she felt incredibly vulnerable. Now she felt that she had got herself into a proper mess.

And that was not all.

Lately she had become aware that she was sighing at odd moments, like an old woman. She felt that she had lost all control over herself, over her life, over her emotions and over her own thoughts; but then again she never felt that she actually ever owned her life in the way of being in control of it. In fact, her life had always being about losing control, of never having full control over any situation, losing ownership, losing agency. Yes, she distinctly lacked agency. She often wondered about freewill. It was impossible to use your freewill to control feelings and desires. She wanted him even though she feared having him, because in having him she may also end up losing him.

Now ironically, she was even less free to be herself, whoever that person may be, because now there would always be this gnawing lack of self-confidence that would eat away at her sense of freedom, her agency, her happiness, and her contentment. She would always be overwhelmed with a sense of insecurity, and a sense of loss. Her fate or destiny was indeed to live a miserable life, she was convinced of this. She could not stop the flood of negative feelings and thoughts. She sat naked on the bed and stared at the full length mirror fixed to the closed cupboard door.

There was nothing she could do with her hair. It was a complete jungle. Everybody said she had such lovely hair, so thick and dense. The constant refrain, 'I will kill to have hair like yours,' sounded so hollow and false. No one wanted to kill for the rest of her attributes, her shortness, her plumpness, or her nose. Her nose looked so awfully Jewish or so obviously Lebanese, and her wardrobe was a complete disaster, and she had become overweight. It was all because she had neglected seeing herself as woman. A woman can only see herself through the eyes of a man. Until today she had lived comfortably in the reassurance of all her imaginary Leftist and feminist alibi's, all of whom indulged her, singing antiphonally the same chorus line that she should avoid being a kugel, and that she should not be so bourgeois.

The constant refrain of the Leftist and feminist chorus had played a role in justifying what had become of her appearance, and of what had become of her life, especially after 3 years of university life. It was all due to the inevitable consequences of hanging out with a Yeoville Jewish Leftist clique and becoming influenced by all their judgmental anti-establishment values. It was like being in a religious cult of misfits. None of them had actually read Marx; none of them had actually wrestled critically with Marxist theory. Yet anyone who expressed an idea on Marxist theory suddenly became for some unknown reason a vulgar Marxist.

Or someone who had become very pretentious.

Being a Leftist groupie was no longer a meaningful consolation for the neglect of those deeper needs that had been woken up from a slumber deep down in her inner most being. Being in love suddenly became all important in her search for meaning. Intellectually she knew what was happening emotionally to her. She had become infatuated with this Italian boy, most likely a very Catholic Italian boy, considering his manner, his intelligence, his dignity, his bearing, his sensitivity and innocent naivety when it came to the opposite sex. She recognized that he possessed everything that she wanted in a man.

She eventually managed to put together an outfit that would look sexy and at the same time make her feel warm. She found a pair of black stilettoes, black woollen tights and a tight fitting beige woollen outfit that covered her buttock and reached just above her knees, well more up to the middle of her thighs, and she thought her thighs looked good, even when covered with the black woollen tights, so she would show a bit of thigh, when she snuggled up against him in the theatre. For extra warmth she decided that she would put on her black duffle coat which covered her knees. She could take off the coat in the theatre and in the restaurant if they went to eat something after the play.

Satisfied with her outfit she showered and washed and conditioned her hair with products that she had specially bought, which gave her hair a pleasant erotic fragrance. She had also bought make up. After struggling for a while in front of the mirror with the eye liner, eye shadow, tinge of base and rouge, and lipstick, she finally looked at her face and started to feel wickedly sensual and wanton for the very first time in her life. 'I am doing all of this for you my dearest Franco,' she said looking at her face in the mirror.

After getting dressed she stood in front of the mirror fixed to the clothing cupboard door. Something was missing. She found a shiny black satin sash which she wrapped tightly around her waist. She examined herself again in the mirror. The sash did the job. She did not really look too plump; in fact she decided that she looked delectably curvaceous. Her depression had vanished. She began to feel nervously excited. He was on the train to Johannesburg, coming from the Far East Rand. He must want to be with to her.

"It will have to do," she muttered self-critically.

Her intuition told her that Franco was attracted to her and that she should not try and hold her feelings in check anymore, she must now allow herself to bask in the warm glow of this realization. She had caught him blatantly staring at her so many times. How could she still have doubts? She had no reason to feel insecure. Rationally there was no reason for her to have any doubts at all; he wanted to be with her. It was a done deal; they had fallen in love with each other. Just accept it she told herself, and enjoy the ride. Enjoy it while it lasts. Savour the moment.

"Well tonight I am going out on a limb," she said to herself philosophically, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

'Anyway, I don't think he would have made any moves on me if I did nothing. There had to be some kind of drastic intervention. We would have just sat there in the canteen and drunk endless rounds cups of coffee, and got nowhere, so tonight it is do or die.' She mused to herself.

Chapter 3

The expansive and cavernous concourse at Park Station was deserted. Franco walked across the empty parking lot to the Leyds Street exit which took him through the subway going under Rissik Street and past the Rotunda. Taking Loveday Street he walked to Smit Street. There was not a soul in sight, all the streets were empty, and there was hardly any traffic. He walked swiftly down Smit Street until he reached the Melle Street intersection. He turned right into Melle Street and then left into Jorrison Street. It seemed like no students were hanging out at the pub in the basement of the Devonshire Hotel, which was always a favourite beer drinking haunt for Wits students. Every day during university term time he had walked this route to and from the station. It felt strange to be walking to Wits on a Saturday night through the dark empty streets of Johannesburg and Braamfontein. Unlike Hillbrow which never went to sleep, and where the beat when on non-stop, the streets of Braamfontein and Johannesburg became literally devoid of any living sign of human life at night. After six o' clock everyone deserted Johannesburg turning one of the biggest cities in Africa into an empty grave yard.

An icy wind blasted through the corridors between the buildings. Continuing down Jorrison Street through an abandoned Braamfontein he crossed Jan Smuts Avenue and turned right into Station Road which took him onto Wits Campus. The Nunnery Theatre was practically on the corner of Jorrison Street and Station Road. He spotted Devorah standing in front of the theatre, which used to be the chapel linked to the Convent High School which had now been incorporated into the property of Wits. She smiled broadly as he walked towards her.

He spontaneously lent forward and kissed on her lightly on her cheek.

"You look so amazing," he said.

She felt herself glow at the compliment. Being with him again, feeling his physical presence, made all her self-doubts vanish. She realized that she had panicked for nothing. She suddenly felt confident again. The flame between them was burning stronger than ever. She could now relax and enjoy herself with him this evening. Her stress drained away as she walked down the aisle with Franco to their seats, she felt oblivious to the rest of the world. She felt the restoration of her self confidence, it was a feeling that she did not have very often.

Shortly after taking their seats the stage lit up, revealing a theatrical setting that appeared startling stark and austere in the cold stage lights, the only props were a big rock and a dead naked branch that was so supposed to represent a tree, and the lights in the rest of theatre became dimmer. The physical contact of their shoulders and arms pressing together felt pleasant. Devorah held her hands on her lap, the fingers of her left hand interlocking the fingers of the right hand. She looked briefly down at her hands and yearned for closer physical intimacy with Franco. He was physically so close almost intimately, yet there was a chasm between them. His brow was knitted into a frown as he concentrated on the pantomimic sequence of scenes that presented a visual tableaux that were, in his Catholic and mathematical mind, metaphysically suggestive of something both significant and profound.

She smiled and thought, my darling is such a gentleman, he has the mind of a mathematician, of a physicist, and what could he possibly be making of the meaning of this play, of something that has been repeatedly flaunted by the experts as the theatre of the absurd? Is the play really so absurd? No it was not at all absurd. As an English and Philosophy major Devorah had her own opinions on Samuel Beckett's _En attendant Godot_ which had she already seen on two different continents in English and in French. In her mind as a student of literature, even Beckett did not have God-like authority over what hidden meanings should be attached to his own work, or even discovered in his work. _Waiting of Godot_ was much more than about the singular sentiment that 'nothing happens' and 'no one comes,' these sentiments do not capture the essence of the play. In her mind, even though Vladimir and Estragon, fitted the mould of a Larry and Hardy or even of Charlie Chaplin styled characters, while they moved and spoke in a dramatically charged setting that embodied all the theatrical and choreographical features of a vaudevillistic and music hall spectacle.

_Waiting for Godot_ , whether by intentional design or not, was actually from a purely technical or structural perspective, a highly structured and intensively coded drama. Could it be that its meaning was actually transparently simple, and intimately accessible, rather than something that was incomprehensibly and intractably complicated? It is always us who have made it so complicated by projecting all kinds of interpretations of meaning onto the play, she thought.

'Please take my hand my darling; I am waiting so patiently for you to hold it, I am going to die right next to you, I am in the process of dying a thousand deaths of slow emotional torture, while I wait for you to take hold of my hand.'

She looked up at his face, she caught his attention, he turned and looked into her smiling face, and spontaneously reached and took hold of her hand, squeezing it gently, and she responded and squeezed his hand gently in return. They had established the physical intimacy that she needed. Satisfied, again her tension drained away, and she could relax once more, enjoying the sensual pleasure of the simple physical intimacy of having one's hand held. Her hand lay blissful in his grasp, and she turned her mind once more towards the play, becoming absorbed in the acting, the dialogue, the experience of trying to fathom what was possibly going on in _Waiting for Godot_.

Franco's mathematical frame of mind enabled him to recognize almost immediately the formulaic dimension and structure to Beckett's work. Even to communicate the sense of nothing would be an impossible and contradictory task without the implicit support of the metaphysical underpinnings and conditions of possibility that make every possible kind of communicative speech act necessarily possible. Even silence cannot be communicatively conceived as silence in the absence of a metaphysical commitment which makes the actuality of silence communicable. As a Catholic Franco recognized that there was no escape from reason and meaning, the denial of intelligibility was a futile exercise and was not even possible by escaping into madness. This was the epiphany he experienced in spite of the bleak cold light which metaphorically struggled to cast shadows of doubt and uncertainty and unknowability in the _Waiting for Godot_. For Franco, the veiled allusions, slippery metaphors, and suppressed allegories intruded, invaded, occupied, captured, and subverted Beckett's project. Physics had tutored him in the inescapable intelligibility of every possible kind of visual tableau. There was always more than what seemed apparent to the senses.

The play ended at 9.00 pm. He put his arm around her shoulders as they steered their way through to the exit. Outside the air was icy and frosty. They could see their breath as it turned into clouds of fog.

"I am sure it is a few degrees below zero," Franco commented.

"I know, I didn't realize it was going to get this cold," she agreed. He put his arm around her, holding her snugly, and she snuggled in turn tightly against him.

"So, what do you think about the play?" she asked.

"I don't know. But I enjoyed it. I found it intriguing," he answered.

"You found it intriguing! Goodnight! What is that supposed to mean?" She laughed.

She saw him look at his watch.

"Look it is still early, should we go and have something to eat, you don't have go right now do you? I will take you home," she said looking a bit anxious.

"No it is OK. I will catch the train. I agree with you, it is still early."

"So what do you say, should we go eat something?" She asked.

"Yes we can go and eat something as long as I am paying," he said.

"OK, you can pay if you insist. Where do you want go?" She said smiling.

"Well the nearest steakhouse is actually very close, you know the one just around the corner down Bertha Street. It will only take us a few minutes to walk there. Would that be OK with you? Can you eat at steakhouses?" He asked, after making his suggestion.

"Of course I can eat at steakhouses. It is fine with me. I am Jewish, but not that kind of Jewish. I will eat anything as long as it is edible and tastes nice. Food is food; unfortunately I love food too much, it is one of my weaknesses, I think I eat too much for my own comfort, excuse the pun. But I have decided I got to lose some weight," she said.

"There is nothing wrong with you. I think you are perfect and beautiful," he answered.

She smiled back at him, and then continued.

"What I want to say is that food for me does not have to be kosher before I eat it. My mom kept a kosher kitchen. I grew up in an orthodox Jewish home. I went to King David. All my life I have had Judaism thrust down my throat. I am Jewish in terms of ethnicity if you like, but I am an atheist, I don't believe in God, I don't even care about God, as far as I am concerned he has never existed. We have invented God like Feuerbach argued. If he existed and was all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good, then how could he have permitted something so horrifically evil like the Holocaust or Apartheid? Only someone who is evil and not perfectly good could have permitted the Holocaust and Apartheid," she said.

She then thought to herself, 'Oh dear it sounds like I am trying to get something off my chest. And I may have offended him in the process. I better keep my mouth shut about religion.'

She looked at his face to see what impression her outburst had made. He did not bat an eyelid. She felt a surge of relief. 'But I am glad I can speak my mind with him.' She reflected.

"So we going to have steaks," he said.

"That is fine with me. I am so hungry I could eat horse, never mind a T-bone steak," she laughed.

"We don't have walk there, let's go in my car, and then I will give you a lift to Johannesburg Station afterwards," she said.

"My car is parked just around the corner in Jorrison Street," she said.

She parked her white VW Beetle outside the steakhouse in Bertha Street.

The steak house was practically empty of patrons. The waitress, a fellow student from Wits, who met them at the door, immediately took them to one of the many empty tables, an intimate booth overlooking Bertha Street. Through the window they could see Devorah's Beetle. The waitress gave them the menus.

"Do you want anything to drink before you order," the waitress asked.

"I will have a Black Label," Devorah replied.

"Make that two, I will also have a Black Label," Franco said.

After the waitress poured the beers Devorah lifted her glass

"Cheers,"

Franco lifted his glass and said in an Italian accent, "Salute."

Devorah burst out laughing, lifting up her glass she replied in a strong Yiddish accent, " _Sei gesund_."

"Yiddish?" Franco asked.

"Yes, I can speak a bit of Yiddish, and I can speak Hebrew, it was a subject I took at school, and I also spent time in Israel where I was forced to practice my Hebrew," she answered, her eyes laughing with humour.

"Do speak any other languages?" Franco asked.

"Well I don't speak Italian, if that is what you want to know. But I can speak and read French. I took French at school and I had a personal French tutor since I was in primary school," she said smiling.

"Maybe we should tell each other more about ourselves, you are still something of a mystery to me," she said.

"OK, that is good idea, you go first," he replied.

"No, you go first," she replied laughing.

"OK, if you insist. Do you want to know everything about me?"

"Yes everything, down to the last detail," she said.

'We will be here all night," he said laughing

"I don't mind. If you cannot finish talking about yourself tonight, then we can go on with it tomorrow," she said.

"OK let me see. My story starts with my grandfather who was captured as a prisoner of war in Libya by the South Africa forces in the Second World War during the North African desert campaign. The Italian forces were supporting the Germans in North Africa. He was detained with all the other Italian POWs in the Zonderwater POW camp from 1941 to 1947. After he was released in he decided to stay in South Africa. He had a wife and son in Italy. His son eventually became my father. They came to South Africa and my father married a South African Italian woman. My father is a panel beater. He works for a panel beating company in Brakpan. My mother is a housewife. I was born in Brakpan in the same house in which I still live with my parents. I have four siblings, two brothers, and two sisters. I am the eldest. I went to Brakpan High School. I played soccer in the first team and I ran in the 800 and 1500 meters. I got my colours for academics, soccer, and athletics. After I matriculated I had to do the compulsory military service for a year. After that I came to Wits and the way things turned out I ended up doing a BSc majoring in physics and maths. My hobby is astronomy, I am an amateur astronomer. I make my own telescopes, grinding the lenses and all that kind of stuff. I run marathons. I have run the comrades marathon three times. What else can I tell you about myself? I enjoy philosophy of science which I am currently doing as my arts course and I have started reading books by Kafka and Dostoevsky; they are my two favourite authors. I voted for the Left in the SRC elections. Politically I think I lean to the Left. I think that is more or less whom I am," he said.

"Now it is your turn to tell me who you are from the very beginning to the very end," he said with a smile.

"Well as you know I am a Jewish _gal_. I belong to an oppressed people. My ancestors came to Poland from Western Europe after the first crusade in the 10th century. There they lived for over 800 years. In the Holocaust about three million polish Jews were murdered which represented about 90 % of the Polish Jews. So basically the entire culture and heritage of the people that were my ancestors was wiped out by the Nazis. I grew up in home in which Yiddish was frequently spoken. Yiddish which used to be a living Jewish language was wiped out, especially after all the _shtetls_ were erased from Eastern Europe, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Russia. Fortunately my maternal and paternal grandparents with their children managed to flee Warsaw and settle in South Africa. I was born in Doornfontein in 1954 in my grandfather's house during the time that my parents were having huge financial difficulties. I love both of my grandfathers very dearly. I am the youngest of three siblings. I have two older brothers who are now medical doctors. Before I was born one of my grandfather who was a Yiddish speaking Trotskyite also run a plumbing business and all other kinds of businesses on the side to keep his head above water while he and his comrades who could barely speak a word of English tried to foment revolution by printing pamphlets and publishing a workers newspaper in the 1940s. Being mainly dreamers they were very unsuccessful revolutionaries. I grew up mostly in Doornfontein, Yeoville, Bellevue, and in Linksfield. I went to King David School in Linksfield. I was useless at sport and only just managed by a hair's breadth to get a university exemption pass for my Matric. My favourite subject was French. After matric I travelled overseas for a year with a very close cousin. We have been like twin sisters our whole lives; she is also a Kirschenbaum, the daughter of my dad's brother. She is now studying medicine, and she is also in her third year. We share a flat in Hillbrow. When my cousin and I started university my dad and uncle bought the block of flats and we live in one of the apartments as non-rent paying tenants, which my dad and uncle somehow have managed to write off as unclaimed rents or bad debts or something like that in their balance sheets. Well we don't strictly speaking live rent free. My cousin and I are caretakers and the rent collectors and we are not paid a salary for that job. Anyway as I was saying after matric we practically travelled the world together. We stayed in Israel in a kibbutz for a few months, it was actually an awful experience, and then we escaped to Greece which was wonderful, and then we travelled to Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Austria. We then crossed the channel and stayed in the UK with family for some time and finally we flew to America and stayed in New York again with family for a few months before finally coming back to South Africa. We were both in two minds about staying for good in America. We both felt very at home in New York compared to all the other places we visited. My dad and uncle paid for everything. My dad bought me the Volkswagen for my 21st birthday and I get a monthly allowance. Well that is the story of my life far. It sounds like I have been a spoilt kid for most of my life, which in a sense is the truth."

Franco had listened attentively. He smiled at her, and she smiled back at him.

"Is that all?" he asked

"What else do you want know about me?" she asked.

"Personal stuff?" he said.

"Such as what?" She asked.

"Your interests, what you like, what you dislike, that kind of stuff," he answered.

"Hmmm, let me think. One of my favourite authors is Albert Camus. I have read all his work in French. Camus' book _The Rebel_ is one of favourite books. I also like Merleau Ponty. I have read most of his work. Recently I have begun reading the Frankfurt School writers and especially Jurgen Habermas who is in a way a product of the School. I am interested in the writings of the so-called neo-Marxists; you know Marcuse, Fromm, Adorno and Max Horkheimer. I also like the writings of Walter Benjamin and Georg Lukacs. I also like the work of Hannah Arendt. What else is there? Oh I have also started reading Foucault and Derrida, both of whom I find incredibly interesting. Politically and philosophically I feel most comfortable in the neo-Marxist camp. Intellectually I am not too enthusiastic about the French Marxist Louis Althusser. So while I regard myself as a Communist, I am not a committed Leninist, and I don't equate Leninism with the only avenue or path to Communism, so I don't hold to any kind of strict and inflexible vanguardism. I have a great regard for Rosa Luxembourg. As a Communist I believe the road to Communism has to be undertaken experimentally. Communism will inevitably fail if it is violently imposed by means of a totalitarian bureaucratic machine that represents nothing more than a system of repressive political domination. Politically I believe in the direct and unmediated dictatorship of proletariat, I believe in popular political power, I believe in the sovereignty of the people and not the state, I don't have much faith in any form of representative democracy, you might say that I have some anarchist leanings," she said, laughing suddenly. She laughed because of the look of intense interest on Franco face as he seemed to be hanging onto every word she spoke. She felt warm inside and wanted to kiss him and squeeze his hand.

After laughing, she sat staring at Franco with a smile on her face, waiting for him to say something. He smiled back at her. She broke the silence:

"Well?"

"Well here we are, both of us studying at Wits, both of us from very different backgrounds, it is amazing," he answered.

"Amazing?" She asked with a curious expression.

"Yes amazing," he reiterated.

"Is that good or bad?" She asked.

"It is definitely not bad," he laughed.

"So it is good," she laughed back.

"Yeah it is good," he said.

"I am glad to hear that," she answered.

"Talking about studying at Wits, you know, it is funny in a way. I always thought I was stupid. I was totally surprised when at Wits I started getting such good marks for all my essays. I then decided that I was not so stupid after all," she said, laughing again. She stopped speaking, looked at him while smiling, waiting for him to say something.

"Well?" She asked, prompting him to say something.

"Well, you have told me your interests and what you like. What is it that you don't like?" He asked.

She thought for a while, raising her eyes to the ceiling.

"What don't I like? Hmmm, let me think about this. It is quite important I suppose. I don't like pretentious pompous individuals who think they know everything. I don't like sarcasm. I don't like dishonesty. I don't like insensitive people. I don't like people who easily become offended. I don't like sulking and self-pity. I don't like smoking, and I don't like argumentative people who always want to have the last word, I don't like people who are narcissistic, who can't stop talking about themselves, and that is about it, I think," she said.

"What else do you like?" he asked.

She laughed gaily.

"You want know everything about me," she said, now smiling mischievously.

"Well let me think about what else I like," she mused.

"OK, I like good food. I like strong coffee and chocolate. I like pork ribs, pork chops and bacon and eggs. What are my faults? Well, I am disorganized and untidy. I am forgetful and absent minded. I can never find my car keys and flat keys," she said laughing.

"So have I passed the test," she asked.

"You have passed the test will flying colours," he said also laughing.

"Well I thank for your kindness, generosity of spirit and understanding," she replied.

"And do I pass the test," he asked.

"Well, let me think. Hmmm, let me see, this is going to be very difficult to decide, there are some good points in your favour, and then again there are the other points, which don't look too good. Well after due consideration, weighing the bad points against the good points, I glad to say you have only just passed the test, but only by the narrowest of margins," she said playfully, a teasing smile playing on her lips.

"Only by just the narrowest of margins?" he asked, pretending to be shocked and disappointed in her verdict.

She laughed at his acting.

"Yes, by a very, very narrow margin," she said , holding her forefinger held very close to her thumb, to indicate visually how narrow the margin was.

Her eyes sparkled with joy and Franco began to laugh good naturedly at being caught out and teased by Devorah.

She reached over the table and squeezed his hand.

She felt the perpetual smile on her face, and she became conscious that she had not laughed so much with anyone before.

"Where is our waitress?" He asked, sitting up and looking around.

She picked up the menu and glanced through it.

"So what are we going to have?" she asked.

"Well there are pork ribs, lamb chops, lamb shank, rump steak, schnitzel, chicken, and T-bone steak on the menu. I think I'm going to order the 500 g T-steak with chips," Franco said.

"I will also have the T-steak, medium rare with chips," she said.

After their steaks Devorah and Franco each ate a waffle topped with vanilla ice cream and covered with syrup. While drinking their coffee she looked at her watch, it was 11.15 pm, they were the only patrons left in the restaurant, and the manager was anxious to close the shop for the night.

"What time do you need to get your train to Brakpan?" She asked.

"The next train is at 11.50 pm. After that I don't know," he said.

"Should we go park at the station until your train comes?" She asked.

"You wouldn't mind?" He replied, indicating that he liked the idea.

"No of course not, I want to," she said.

"OK, I think we are finished, let me settle the bill," he said.

"While you do that I need to go to the bathroom," she said.

The waitress brought the bill. He paid her and while he waited for Devorah he popped 3 spearmint Beeches into his mouth.

In the ladies room Devorah quickly examined her face in the mirror. She opened her hand bag and scratched in it for a few seconds. Taking out a breath freshener spray, she sprayed several shots into her mouth. When she returned he needed to go to the toilet. He washed hands without even glancing into the mirror.

They stepped out into the cold night air. She unlocked the car, they climbed in. While briefly revving the engine she set the heaters on full blast. The warm air quickly made the car comfortably cosy. She switched on the car radio and pushed in a cassette with tape recordings of her selection of compilations. They pulled off and she turned into left into Juta Street and drove down Juta Street until they reached Biccard Street. She turned right into Biccard Street then left into Smit Street, all this time they drove in silence listening to the tape. From Smit Street she turned into Loveday Street, and taking Leyds Street she drove into the station parking lot. At the station the parking area was deserted. She parked the Volkswagen, switched off the engine, and turned off the headlights.

"Should we leave the music playing? I really love some of the lyrics," she said.

"I really don't mind," he answered. She switched the tape player back on and adjusted the volume. She looked at him, her eyes bright in the dark. He stared back into her eyes.

"What...?" She exclaimed smiling, her lips glistened.

He touched her cheek with the palm of hand; she placed her hand over his hand.

"You hand is so warm," she said.

"And your cheek is so soft, smooth and silky," he said,

She leant over towards him and stroked and caressed the bristly stubble of his jaw.

"It really feels so prickly, I love it, it is so masculine and sexy, so very Italian," she chuckled.

Adjusting their positions, they embraced each other, lips pressed together passionately; they smooched with closed eyes, open lips and tongues in continual motion while the subtle lyrics of the Animals' _San Francisco Nights_ filled their ears, and as the condensation made the windows of the VW Beetle opaque.

His cologne filled her nostrils with a scent that stirred her pleasantly. He stuck his nose into her hair and breathed in deeply. Its fragrance was erotically intoxicating. She laughed while he sniffed her hair. While he kissed her neck and ears she whispered something about having had a wonderfully evening with him.

"Can you give me your phone number," he asked

She put on the light, reached for her hand bag and scratched around in it for pen.

"Have a look in the cabby to see if you find a scrap of paper," she asked.

He gave her a slip of paper and she wrote the number down for him.

"Thanks I have to go now. I phone tomorrow," he said.

Before leaving, they embraced each other tightly and kissed each other deeply. Getting out into the cold, he waved as he watched her drive off, the lyrics of the Animals' _San Francisco Nights_ still echoing in his head together with the memory of the exquisite sensation of her lips still lingering alive and fresh in his mind. As he walked to the brightly lit station concourse he could hear the distinctive sounds of Devorah's Volkswagen as she drove back to Smit Street. He waited for a short while until he heard the Volkswagen accelerating away down Smit Street towards her turnoff into Hillbrow.

Chapter 4

The warm carriage made him feel sleepy as the empty train raced deep into the night, tracking the Main Reef outcrop on its passage to Brakpan. The silence of the black darkness outside seemed to amplify the hiss of its brakes as it slowed for the winding bends. Now the all too familiar sounds of the metallic clanking of the couplings, especially as the train accelerated out of the bends, and now the constant background rhythmic clickity-clak beat of its spinning steel wheels on the shining slivery steel tracks lulled him to sleep against his will. While still in his sitting position his body relaxed, his eyes became heavy with sleepiness, and his lids closed allowing his head to flop sideways towards his shoulder, gradually his body sank down towards the seat until his head also rested against the seat. With his head on the seat he slipped into a deep sleep, he subconsciously pulled himself into a foetal position.

He began to dream, he began to dream of a train journey, a journey that raced into the night, through strange darkened landscapes, a journey that raced to an unknown destination, a journey that took him through unfamiliar places, into dense forests and through twisted tunnels. In the dream, as the train raced on and on, his dream became increasingly filled with disconnected scenes from _Waiting for Godot_ , scenes in which many railway lines, emerging from blackened skeletal leafless forests, converging from all directions onto a gigantic steel archway, an arched façade that was starkly silhouetted against a deep purple sky filled with stars, the gates of the archway were flung wide open, the gateway looked like open, gaping, shark-like jaws, the gateway was the entrance into Auschwitz. Converging onto the gateway were mobile theatrical props consisting of long trains of cattle cars jam-packed with Jews, the cattle cars were rattling and rumbling into the gaping jaws of Auschwitz from every direction. He saw a familiar figure with a bush of curly red hair standing at the entrance under the archway waving at him, the sound of his own voice woke him up. He was shouting her name, Devorah, Devorah, Devorah.

He woke up from the shocking nightmare. He sat up and rubbed his eyes as the train pulled off from Benoni Station. In a sleepy state he mumbled incoherently, 'I think I must be hopeless in love with Devorah, I suppose I fear losing her because she is Jewish, and Jews are so otherwise, so very different, they are so otherwise, they are strangers, it is so weird becoming so mixed up with someone who is Jewish, when I think of Jews, I cannot help thinking of Auschwitz, I cannot think of a Jew without at the same time thinking of Auschwitz, the Jews are a haunted people, the Jew's shadow trails behind like a nightmare...When I see a Jew, I feel immediately guilty, the Jew reminds me of my guilt.' He struggled to stop himself from falling asleep again.

Getting off at Brakpan Station he made his way to Voortrekker Road. The hotel bar on the corner of Voortrekker Road and Station Street has long since closed for the night. He could smell the fragrance of Devorah's perfume and shampoo clinging to his jersey and anorak. He walked down Voortrekker Road until he reached the intersection with Prince George Avenue. While walking down Prince George Avenue the frozen silence of the icy night was broken by the rolling thunder of an approaching motorcycle speeding down Voortrekker Road. He could hear the volume of the throbbing beats of the 750 cc engine subside to a low throated rumble as the biker slowed down as he approached the railway subway, and then the deafening roar as he accelerated at full throttle down and through the subway, passing under the railway lines, railway lines which stretched endlessly, east and west along the entire length of the Witwatersrand. He listened to the forlorn fading sounds of the motorcycle as it sped off into the night. The lyrics of the Animal's _San Francisco Nights_ echoed again in his mind, bringing with it the remembrance of Devorah's passionate kisses _._ He began to softy sing the lyrics.

He walked along Prince George Avenue until he reached the intersection with Hope Street. All the parks and gardens were shrouded in a thick blanket of frost. It looked as if it had snowed. Turning right into Hope Street he finally reached his home in Elliot Street. A strong smell of the veld fire and burnt reeds still hung heavily in the air in Elliot Street.

Unlocking and then locking again the front door he treaded as softly as possible in the dark down the passage to his bedroom. But the wooden floor board creaked eerily.

"Franco is that you?" his mom called softly from the bedroom, her voice having an anxious edge to its tone.

"It is me mother," he answered softly standing by his parents' bedroom door. He could hear his father snoring softly.

"You have been away for a long time. I was very worried. I was unable to sleep," said his mother. He could hear the concern and love in her voice for him.

"I was with my new girlfriend," he explained.

"Thanks be to God that you are safe," she said.

"Yes mamma," he answered.

As the wind stirred up by the cold front which had swept in from the Antarctic rattled the fifth floor flat windows with chilly gusts, Devorah lay content and warm under the covers of her bed reviewing in her mind everything that had happened that evening. She felt that she may finally have found her boyfriend, and a good looking fellow to boot, who seemed to want her and found her desirable even though she was so voluptuously plump. He had embraced her so tightly, he had kissed her lips so passionately, and he had been so reluctant to leave her, it was so perfect. She turned over onto her side and smiled herself to sleep. _San Francisco Nights_ she mumbled as she fell asleep.

Chapter 5

After Mass he phoned Devorah. Her cousin answered the phone.

"It is Franco, can I speak to Devorah," he said.

"Hello Franco, I have heard all about you. I will go and call her. She has been waiting anxiously the whole morning for your phone call, the poor child is in such state," she said chuckling into the mouth piece.

"Hello Franco, it is me Devorah how are you?" she asked breathlessly, he could discern the elation in her voice.

"I am fine, and how are you?" he asked.

"Fabulous, just fabulous, I had such a great time last night," she said, speaking enthusiastically.

"Could we meet for coffee today," he asked.

"Why yes, that will be great," she replied immediately.

"Where should we meet," he asked.

"The Café Zurich is an option or the Café de Paris in Kotze Street; it is also quite a nice place. You know where they are?" she asked.

"I know the Café de Paris. I have been there before," he answered.

"OK let's meet then at the Café de Paris," she agreed

"Let's make it then for two o' clock. If you are not doing anything else this afternoon, later on this evening we can also have dinner somewhere in Hillbrow, if you like," he suggested.

"Two o' clock is fine I will meet you there and yes we can do dinner as well, that would be fabulous, bye for now," she said.

Now at quarter to two she was standing on the pavement on the corner of Kotze Street and Twist Street, dressed in her black duffle jacket, fluffy yellow jersey over a T-shirt and black slacks. She spotted him several blocks walking towards her up Twist Street. She recognized his distinctive gait. Yes there was definitely something graceful and energetic to his gait. He walked as if he was dancing. She smiled to herself at the thought and started walking towards him. She waited for him on the opposite side of Twist Street. He smiled broadly when he saw her walking towards him, when they reached each other he embraced her, kissing her on the lips. Taking her hand they walked back to the Café de Paris.

"How was the train journey?" she asked humorously.

"It is going to be the last time that I will be taking the train to see you. I am going to get my car on Friday. I have saved up enough to buy it," he replied.

"What are you getting?" she asked.

"A red Volkswagen Beetle, it is in good condition and I am buying it from the original owner. It is still in mint condition," he said.

"But I will still be catching the train from Brakpan Station to Wits every day. It is much cheaper and convenient. It is impossible to find parking at Wits," he said.

"Don't tell me that, I know," she said.

At the Café de Paris they choose a table overlooking Twist Street. A waiter placed a menu on the table and asked if they wanted to order something to drink. She picked up the menu and looked at the cakes and pastries.

"Should we each order a slice of cake?" she asked.

"Yes why not? What do you recommend?" he replied.

"Let's have the red velvet," she recommended.

They ordered cappuccinos and a wedge of cake each.

"Was that your mom who answered the phone yesterday," she asked.

"Yes, it was my mom," he said.

"She sounded so sweet on the phone?" she asked.

The waiter brought their cappuccinos. Franco didn't touch his coffee; instead he looked at her with a serious expression on his demeanour. She could clearly see that he had something important on his mind.

"I need to ask you something important," he said.

She knew instinctively what he was going to ask. It was more than female intuition. She could also read his face. She looked at him, a shadow of a subtle smile played teasingly on her sensual lips, she inclined her head slightly to one side, and she cocked an inquiring eyebrow. With the edge of her fork she cut off a mouth sized piece of cake.

The sensual expressiveness of her face captivated him and he felt the pace of his pulse quicken. He cleared his throat.

"Will you go out with me?" he finally asked, almost gulping down the words, and feeling embarrassed at the way his voice may have sounded. His request was not made on impulse; he had wrestled with prospect on the train journey to Johannesburg. The decision to take the plunge was well considered, he had nothing to lose, and now that he had taken the plunge, the die was cast, he had laid his cards on the table, he had shown his hand, he had bared his emotions, there was now nothing lose, but yet it was a gamble, a life changing gamble possibly.

"Do you really want me to be your girlfriend?" She asked smiling with a naughty playful expression on her face. She then carefully, in an erotically graceful movement, placed the piece of cake onto her tongue without a crumb sticking to her parted red lipstick lips, she closed her mouth. With closed lips moving only slightly, she ate the cake thoughtfully while she waited for his reply.

"Yes," he answered, keeping a serious look on his face.

"Does that mean you don't want me to see any other boys and go out with them on dates, does it mean that you want me just for yourself only," she said, her face also becoming serious, even though she was smiling.

"Yes, that is what I want. I want you for myself only. I want a commitment from you," he said, feeling like someone who had perhaps jumped into the deep end a bit too soon, but he thought, 'what the hell,' as he looked at the creature across the table from him, with her red lips, exotic face and hair that flamed like a wild bushfire in the shafts of wintry sunlight as she turned her head and gazed thoughtfully out of the window at the street below.

"OK I will be your girlfriend, but does that also mean that I too can have you only for myself?" She asked with a wickedly enticing smile. Nothing escaped her sharp eyes and her quick grasp of situations; the flash of relief passing over his face did not escape her notice. He had got what he wanted, and she had also got what she wanted.

"Yes," he answered.

No one had ever asked her to be their girlfriend before. Ever since high school and university she had gotten-off with boys at parties, but it never went further than that. She had always been treated as the vulnerable plump girl who was perceived to be grateful for any kind of male attention, and it was expected that she would be most accommodating to their designs out of sheer thankfulness for the privilege of been noticed by someone at the party. So they expected that she would oblige them, and would allow them to fondle her breasts and stick their hands up between her legs and allow them to fuck her, using her as their guinea pig to acquire sexual experience, without any commitment to her as a person. In spite of all the pressure she did not succumb. Instead she remained a virgin. No one had ever phoned her after a party and asked for a date, even when they had smooched up her the whole night in a dark corner, with their hands groping her body. She knew that the boys at school, and now lately some of the guys at varsity, had all with much back slapping and laughter joked about her and gossiped about her behind her back.

She decided that she was not going let just anyone have the pleasure of fucking her for fun. She was not going to be some desperate plump girl for boys to experiment with.

So of course she was surprised that someone like Franco was actually pursuing her, well in a manner of speaking that is, with his blatant stares, at Wits, at lunchtimes, when they stood listening to the oratorical contests at speaker's forum. He was good looking, he could easily have got an attractive girlfriend, yet he showed an interest in her, yet it appeared that he wanted her.

She had reflected on the matter. She thought maybe it all had something to do with Darwin, she remembered the few lectures that they had been given on the then very nascent theory of social biology by an American guest lecturer who was visiting Wits. He proposed that Darwin's theory of sexual selection played a significant role in mate choice which eventually led to successful reproduction even in humans.

Maybe there was something in the physiognomy of her body, face, eyes and hair that had subconsciously and inexorably drawn him to her, maybe they triggered something in his brain and body, generating irresistible impulses that induced him to act in the way he did. Could they be mere puppets dancing to biological forces that they were not even aware of? Could it be that free will was also a myth, a kind of delusion? Why was she attracted to him? Why did he seem attracted to her?

She was beginning to feel a bit too warm. She stood up and took off her duffle jacket and adjusted her jersey, pulling it down over the top of her slacks. She noticed that he was looking at her ample bust.

"I love this jersey it is so comfortable and warm, but it makes me look like a puffed up fluffy fat chicken," she said self-deprecatingly.

"No you look terrific," he answered, disagreeing strongly with her.

"Do you believe in freewill?" She asked.

"Why do you ask?" He answered with a question.

"Are we actually in control of all our thoughts and actions? Where do all our feelings and desires come from? Aren't many of our most significant actions caused by feelings and desires which we did not knowingly initiate, and upon which we act often in a seemingly impulsive manner as if we have been provoked without been able to first engage in any kind of internal self-aware deliberation or any self-conscious reflection on the consequence of what we are about to do, if you know what I mean?" She answered with her own questions.

"I know exactly what you mean, it is an interesting problem. We need to start with the idea that everything that happens, always happens because it was causally determined to happen, otherwise it could not have happened. Nothing can happen without some form of causation. There can be no effect without any cause. If we follow this line of thought we can state that everything that happens always results from earlier preceding or antecedent causes. So whatever happens in the future is determined by what has already happened in the past. If this is true, then we have no real freedom of action, we are not free agents," he said.

"That is really a stark way of putting it. It makes me shudder. What about our consciousness? Do you think that the contents of consciousness, of our minds and thoughts are predetermined by some hidden chain of causality that begins within the neurons of our brains? That is, initiated by some kind of chemical reactions in the neurons of our brains? Could everything be reduced to brain chemistry and physics? Are we actually just machines, machines that seem to be intelligent? " She asked, making her eyes big.

"In order for us to be free agents who happen to be consciously in control of all our actions in a self-aware and reflective manner, it would be necessary to show logically and empirically that our actual actions have not been causally pre-determined in advance by various internal and external factors which are outside of or beyond our direct self-aware conscious control," Franco elaborated.

"But all of these factors which are outside or beyond the reach of our direct control could be so numerous, so complicated and so vast that we may never know if we are actually capable of acting as free agents through the conscious exercising of our will. So there may not be such thing as freewill after all," she proposed.

"Maybe consciousness will remain an unsolvable mystery forever. Maybe it will ultimately prove impossible to unravel the causal chain that gives rise to conscious," Franco mused.

"Well a dead brain does not show any sign of consciousness. If consciousness as a mysterious subjective capacity or power depends only on brain chemistry and physics, then conscious necessarily vanishes into oblivion when the normal chemical reactions and physical processes of a functioning brain stop," Devorah proposed.

"If we wish to explain the essential nature of consciousness, then we have to resort to mechanistic and reductionistic explanations. With a reductionist investigation into how consciousness arises, we have to establish the origination of consciousness at the microscopic molecular and the quantum mechanical level, and in order to do this we have to go to smaller and smaller dimensions in order to get to the very roots of conscious, and as we go to smaller and smaller levels, right down to the microscopic scales of the quantum realm, then the normal everyday forms of causality vanish, and we are left only with probabilities of outcomes, which happens to be a form of pure indeterminacy in a very real sense, we are left with quantum mechanical wave functions that summarized the range and limits of the dynamical behaviour of quantum mechanical particles or entities. So it may be that deep down conscious arises as an epiphenomenon on the surface of a sea of indeterminacy and uncertainty, so then nothing can be ultimately predetermined in advance by going down to the very microscopic molecular roots of consciousness, so maybe, just maybe, consciousness is ultimately free of all determinations, " Franco reflected.

"You have just convinced me that consciousness is an unexplainable and unfathomable mystery, and that just maybe, like you hinted, we are indeed really essentially free in the most fundamental sense, and that we do actually possess freewill," she responded, as she grasped what Franco had implied.

"Well this has turned out to be a very serious discussion considering the circumstances that we find ourselves in," she said with a chuckle.

The Café de Paris had become crowded, noisy and cosy. It had also become less private. Friends from Devorah's wide circle of acquiesces kept on bumping into their table, continually interrupting their conservation so that they lost the train of their thought. In fact Franco could see that the constant interruptions of their conversation, in order to introduce him to what seemed to be a never ending stream of friends was becoming tiresome for Devorah.

He was amazed at how many acquaintance and friends she knew. Yet he sensed that she had always experienced real loneliness and estrangement in spite of having a crowd of friends. But now it had become public knowledge, to everyone's surprise, Devorah had found a boyfriend, and he was some unknown science student who hailed from the far East Rand, and who did not frequent the social universe of the Wits Left. No one knew who Franco was, or cared for that matter. Franco and Devorah settled their bill and stepped into the chill of Kotze Street.

"What should we do?" he asked.

"Let's go browse at Exclusive Books or alternatively we could take a walk to Joubert Park," she suggested.

They decided to go to Joubert Park.

"Do you think our joint decision to go to Joubert Park was causally determined in advance by various internal and external factors which were outside of our direct control?" She asked as they walked downhill along Twist Street to Joubert Park.

"That is an interesting question," he said as they both laughed at the possibility, which seemed absurd.

"Maybe we should stop and break the chain of causal determinations at the root of our consciousness and exercise our freewill by changing our minds and go to Exclusive Books instead," she suggested.

"Maybe we should write down all the names of the different places in Hillbrow on separate little bits of paper, and fold the papers up, mix them up in hat and draw one out at random to see where we should go, this would break the determinism of cause and effect, and only pure chance will determine what our next moves will be, we could really then embark on a random walk, on a journey to some unknown destination," he said.

"That's an excellent idea and we shall be free at last from all influences outside our direct control, we will let chance decide everything for us, the roll of the die will determine what we will do next, this is how we will live our lives from now, it will an experiment," she agreed with a humorous grin on her face.

The aftermath of the cold front still lingered like the lost souls of dead men wondering through the streets of Hillbrow. The clear winter skies mirrored a bright blue in the weak winter sunlight. They ambled down Twist Street like new lovers, with no sense of purpose in their steps, except for the work of gravity on their soles. She put her arm around his waist and he put his arm around her shoulders. He kissed her on the cheek, and she turned her face so that he could kiss her on the lips. As they walked their chattered was punctuated by laughter, as they thought up one absurd state of affairs after another to prove that they could exercise their will freely. To any observer they appeared as two people who were so engrossed with each other that they had become completely oblivious to the world around them.

A crowd of flatland visitors dressed in jackets and overcoats had braved the cold to escape the depressing Sunday solitude of their apartments to wonder about anonymously in the park sharing the fading afternoon in the welcome company of strangers.

They watched the chess players playing chess with giant chess pieces on the huge chest board which looked like a duelling arena. They watched the game for a while before wondering off. As they walked on the path through the park they passed an old man, possibly a pensioner, who was feeding pigeons with bread crumbs from a brown paper packet. An old lady walked by with her white Maltese poodle on a lead. Two young men stopped Franco and Devorah; they had attended a training workshop on Christian Evangelism at the YMCA down the road close to Braamfontein. They shared the five spirituals laws with Franco and Devorah, both of whom politely listened to what the two young men had say about being saved and having eternal life. The two young evangelists were about the same age as Franco and Devorah.

Devorah said she did not believe in God and that she also happened to be Jewish, whereas Franco, courteously indulging them with his infinite patience, said he believed in what they had to say and confirmed verbally that as a Catholic he accepted their message of salvation. The two men were puzzled that about this very odd couple, who seemed to be so much in love with each other, yet held such diametrically opposing beliefs about God, the one an unbelieving Jew and the other a believing Catholic. The one rejecting what they had to say, the other accepting their message warmly and openly with genuine sincerity.

They saw with their own eyes, the seed which was the Word of God's salvation, falling both on hard rocky soil and on fertile soil. The two young evangelists then shook Franco and Devorah's hands and went off in search of more souls, to lead to salvation.

As the lengthening shadows of the fading afternoon invaded and enclosed Joubert Park with the early signs of the gathering gloom of dusk, the couples perambulations in the Park became uncertain and hesitant, like birds that have stopped foraging, they gazed up at the grey skies signalling the closing overture of their imminent departure to their roosts before the last light of the setting sun vanishes from the day.

"You don't have to be at Evensong or evening prayer or something like that?" she asked with an irreverent smile on her face, taking a good natured and innocent dig at Franco apparent religiosity.

He laughed, his eyes filled with humour.

"In the Catholic church evening prayer is one of the divine offices more commonly known as Vespers. The Anglicans call their evening prayer 'Evening Song'," he said.

"What are divine offices?" She asked.

"The original medieval order of the daily divine office or office of the hours was based on observing a set number of selected intervals during the 24 hour daily cycle that were set aside for prayer and song. Vespers was celebrated in the late afternoon to early evening. After Vespers, Compline was sung at mid-evening, then after a period of sleep shortly after midnight there was Matins. Then there was a second period of sleep which was followed by Lauds. Early in the morning after Lauds, Prime was sung. After Prime the working day was punctuated by breaks for Terce, Sext and None. Then the working day ended with Vespers or Evening prayer as you already know. Each office of the hours began with an opening vesicle and response, then a sentence of scripture, which was then followed by hymns, sung or chanted Psalms, sung or chanted Canticles, and finally the office was ended with prayer and blessings," he said.

"What is a vesicle and response?" She asked

"The vesicle and response of almost all divine offices involves singing from the first verse of Psalm 69 the following two lines: _O God make speed to save me; O Lord make haste to help me_ ," he answered.

"The exception is the Office of Matins which begins with verse from Psalm 50, which goes as follows: _O Lord open thou my lips; and my mouth shall show forth thy praise,_ " he elaborated.

"And what is a canticle?" she asked.

"It is usually a scripture which is either chanted or sung. The _Song of Songs_ is an example of a collection of canticles. The canticle for Vespers or Evening Prayer is the _Magnificat_ or song of Mary which goes as follows:

My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour;  
Because He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaid;  
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed;  
Because He who is mighty has done great things for me,  
and holy is His name;  
And His mercy is from generation to generation  
on those who fear Him.  
He has shown might with His arm,  
He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.  
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,  
and has exalted the lowly.  
He has filled the hungry with good things,  
and the rich He has sent away empty.  
He has given help to Israel, his servant, mindful of His mercy  
Even as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity forever.

Devorah did not say anything for a while after Franco had recited the _Magnificat_. They walked in silence. A thoughtful expression came over her face, and then she decided to change the subject away from religion.

"So you don't have to be anywhere soon?" she asked.

"No I have nothing else planned. The night is young and _and the beat goes on_. Why don't we go back to Hillbrow, we can do something there, have supper, have coffee, talk, or walk around there," he said.

"OK, sounds good to me _..._ Yeah and the beat goes on,"

She started singing: _The beat goes on_ , imitating Cher's voice, while swaying her hips and moving her shoulders and arms in the rhythm to the lyrics.

"I still love Sonny and Cher. I used to have that 7 single and played it nonstop over and over again on my little record player in my bedroom until I practically wore out the needle and the record. I was just 13 years old and I drove my mom and dad mad with: _And the beat goes on_ ," she laughed.

"Well let's then hit the road Jack, what do you say! _H_ _it the road Jack_?" she said singing a bit of the Ray Charles lyric.

Franco begun to laugh at Devorah's singing antics. She had a surprisingly good singing voice.

"I say yes," he answered to the question in the words of the lyric.

"I feel so happy that I think I have gone stupid," she laughed.

"No you have not gone stupid. It is good to be happy and carefree," he said.

Going uphill, they tramped slowly and unhurriedly up Twist Street. It was already dark by the time they reached Pretoria Street. Aroused from its Sunday afternoon slumber Hillbrow finally got up to usher in another endless night with blinking and blazing neon lights. People started to fill the streets and cars quickly filled up all the parking places as they walked down Pretoria Street towards Exclusive Books, the Hillbrow Record Centre, and the Ambassador Hotel, near the corner of Claim and Pretoria Street.

For the next two hours they wondered in and out of Exclusive Books, the Hillbrow Record Centre, City Books Too, and the Estoril Bookshop before going off to High Point. Again Franco was introduced into the never ending stream of Devorah's acquaintances, both male and female. He leant quite confidentially off-the-record who was a bitch, a backstabber, a cow, a jerk, an arse-hole, a gossiper, a two-face, a know-all, a person suffering from verbal diarrhoea and a pompous narcissist. He could not understand how anyone like Devorah, who he had grown to know in way over the past 24 hours, could be part of such a toxic community without herself also being a toxic personality, or whether such a community of toxic acquaintances could indeed exist at all in reality. It disturbed and unsettled him; he had never experienced anything like this in his life on the Far East Rand or even in the army. There seemed to be a human jungle out there, all red in tooth and claw, of which he was completely oblivious of.

He became subdued as they wondered around High Point. A frown creased her brow as she became aware of the shift in his mood. She squeezed his hand.

"Is everything OK," she asked looking concerned.

"I found it very depressing that all of your friends seem to be complete jerks and arse-holes, and that not a single one is a decent human being, I find that hard to believe. I prefer to give others the benefit of the doubt than to jump to all kinds of negative conclusions about their characters and intentions," he said, mainly because many of them in his own opinion did seem to be nice friendly people.

His remark stung her deeply.

"Well then you are a better person that I am," she said with a resigned and disappointed tone in her voice.

He ignored her remark. In his own mind it would be pointless to argue about who was the better person.

"Nearly all of them I have known for most of my life. We grew up in the same neighbourhood, we went to the same schools, we have been together at Wits, and we have mixed socially at parties on many occasions. I may have over exaggerated things but I know from personal experiences that those guys I called arse-holes and jerks are actually worse than arse-holes and jerks. And as for the parade of bitches they are in fact bitches or worse. I have always been excluded from their charmed circle. I don't know why. I have been hurt so many times. I don't know what or why it is. Maybe it is me. Maybe something is wrong with my personality which I am not aware of. Look I actually don't feel good about calling everyone a jerk or bitch or cow. You made a good point. Franco you are good person, I don't want things to start going bad between us," she said, with big despondent eyes that stared at him imploringly. Her body seem to sag, her back hunched slightly and her shoulders began to droop.

He put his arm around her shoulders and she put her arm tightly around his waist.

"I am sorry for what I have said," she said.

He sensed her vulnerability. He became conciliatory and tender towards her. He kissed on her cheek, on her neck, on her earlobes and whispered in her ear that he would never want to hurt her or make her feel bad or bring her down.

He said:

"It is nothing. I am sorry too. I believe you."

Her eyes started to brim with tears. She found a tissue in her pocket, wiped her eyes and blew her nose. He kissed her on the lips and hugged her tightly, she hugged him back tightly. He looked at his watch; it was almost eight o clock.

"Should we have a bite to eat?" he asked.

They decided to go to Café Florian. Her spirits picked up, she suddenly felt buoyant, and she realized that they had successfully negotiated their first emotional milestone as a couple. She began to laugh at everything that seemed remotely funny. He smiled indulgently, feeling that something good had happened today.

Chapter 6

"I can't believe it; I managed to get 82% for political science exam on imperialism and colonialism. It was such an interesting course, I really enjoyed it," Devorah exclaimed excitedly.

In the crisp winter air, Franco face broke into an indulgent grin at the spectacle of Devorah's exuberance.

"Modern imperialism was one of my favourite topics," she said, smiling back at Franco.

"Modern imperialism," he repeated.

"Yes modern imperialism arose as the result of capitalist expansionism," she said.

"Expansionism," he repeated.

"Yes you clown, expansionism, expansionism filled with all kinds of unexpected ironies," she sail, laughing at Franco.

"Ironies," he repeated

"Yes, ironies, Franco stop teasing me!" She replied, her face beaming with humour.

"In a sense it is an historical irony that the growth of capitalism also inadvertently resulted in the terminal decline of European nationalism and the nation-state. The decline of European nation-state coincided with the rise of the bourgeoisie, and decline of European nationalism coincided with the expansion of imperialism, this is the great political irony, in a manner of speaking of course. Another irony has been the political discovery that the nation-state is the least suitable vehicle for the unlimited growth of capitalism," she elaborated.

She could see that Franco was interested in what she wanted to talk about.

"The disintegration of the nation-state throughout the Western world coincided with the growing internationalization of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism. The nation-state turned out to be quite a fragile and a relatively short-lived political phenomenon. It is quite bizarre that a political and social phenomenon such as the rise of Afrikaner Nationalism with its own peculiar ideology of the nation-state as a political goal has actually taken place in a world where the prevailing economic forces which have driven imperialism and colonialism have at the same time resulted in the dissolution of the European nation-state. The Afrikaner dream of wanting to create in a completely de novo fashion an ethnically purified nation-state in the form of an apartheid island within an ocean of aboriginal heterogeneity is a historical aberration, a grotesque anomaly, something which is going against the tide of history. I personally think Apartheid represents one of those Frankenstein political economies that only capitalism could create for the exploitation of the colonial aboriginal population as wage slaves," she explained.

She went on:

"Another thing that we need to keep in mind is that the imperialism of capitalism is very different from empire building in the Roman sense. Colonial expansion under capitalism is very different from the kind of empire expansion resulting from Roman conquest."

She knew he was interested in the Romans and especially Roman military history.

"The nation-state was not only ill-suited for unlimited colonial expansion, unlimited capitalist growth, and unlimited imperialism; all nation-states are ill-suited for empire building through conquest. The British failed, the French failed, the Dutch failed, the Portuguese and the Germans failed to build real empires, they failed because nation-states by virtue of their nature as nation-states are incapable of building real or authentic empires by converting their colonies into empires. In European colonization the colonies was politically governed and administered in a really weird fashion, they were never in reality political-legal extensions of the nation-state, this was true even when colonies made provinces like the French did with Algeria or the Portuguese tried with Angola and Mozambique. European nation-states as colonizing powers were completely different to the Roman imperialists. The European nation-states were never true colonial imperialists, because unlike the Romans after the conquest of their colonies they never attempted any kind of genuine political integration and assimilation of the heterogeneous aboriginals of their colonies into a single state. They all allowed the natives of their colonies a certain degree of autonomy and self-governance. Political integration and assimilation could only be made a reality by imposing upon the colonized natives the common laws of the imperial power. Only the Romans succeeded in building a true empire in this fashion," she expanded.

"So the Roman empire was politically different to the British empire," he commented.

"Yes, very different," she replied.

"In a real sense compared to the ancient Romans, European colonization was a political failure. Modern capitalist imperialism succeeded in creating political instabilities and tensions in the colonies by arousing the national consciousness of the aboriginals and triggering their desire for political sovereignty and popular political power over their lives. This eventually triggered the decolonization liberation struggles in the Third World. So here we have another irony, while nationalism as a political ideology was on the decline in Europe, nationalism had become the political ideology of the liberation struggles in Africa and the rest of the Third World. National independence was the political agenda of the Third World after the Second World War and we see the birth of a new wave of nation-states, and also neo-Colonialism, in the wake of the continuing decline of the European nation-states," she elaborated.

"I want to ask you a stupid question," Franco said.

"Shoot."

"What is politics?" Franco asked.

Devorah laughed:

"It is not a stupid question. In fact it is a very clever question. I would have expected that you would have asked such a question. It is also a very modern question. Well modern in the sense that people only started really exploring the meaning of this question quite recently. Well recently in the sense of in the last few hundred years or so, starting with More, Machiavelli and Hobbes. In fact political science as an academic discipline is actually a very recent development, and political science is precisely about trying to answer this question in a comprehensive way," Devorah elaborated.

She thought for moment.

"So what is politics? How does one answer this question? There are so many starting points from which one can engage this question in the search for meaningful answers. The idea of politics and the political is much more than simply about the function of the state or about government or about political parties or about representation or about voting or about elections. Politics is ultimately about power, sovereignty, law, and authority. When I say politics is about sovereignty I mean that the political is about supreme power and supreme authority. The political in this sense is about conflict, about war, about force and about violence. The political is not about morals or ethics. The political is not founded or based on ethics or any theory of morals. The political and politics is about power and conflict over power," she explained.

"So would you agree that war gives rise to politics, especially if the political can be equated with realm of conflict?" He asked.

"Absolutely! The political emerges as a social and economic phenomenon as a consequence of class conflict, as a consequence of the conflict of class interests, and as a consequence of the conflicts that give rise to the class struggle. Politics comes to an end with the dictatorship of the proletariat, but only if the dictatorship of the proletariat is unmediated," Devorah replied.

"What do you by mean by the dictatorship of the proletariat being unmediated?" Franco asked.

"This is a critical issue and no one has really addressed it in a meaningful manner or conclusive manner. Look, with the dictatorship of the proletariat the state is supposed to wither away. The dictatorship of the proletariat can only become a reality if it is not mediated or represented by a vanguard or by a party or by a political elite in the form of an all powerful politburo. In fact the commitment to democratic centralism in socialism is the biggest political obstacle standing in the way of the realization of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The commitment to the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat challenges not only the meaning of political sovereignty, but also its manifestation, that is, its mode or manner of embodiment, or in other words, the form or idea of its essential nature, to use a Platonic notion. So in a real sense the realization and essential nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat is not only a practical structural and organizational issue, it is also a metaphysical issue or an ontological problem, in the sense of how, or in what form the dictatorship is able to come into existence, or what are the conditions that make its existence a reality or a possibility, rather than an mere illusion," Devorah explained.

"I understand that without the capacity or means to claim authority and to exercise power in the name of that authority, there can be no embodiment or representation of sovereignty. I also know that in the real world, state or political sovereignty is always disguised or presented or exercised in the form of representation by a political ruling elite acting on behalf of and for the people, without the people ever really having real or direct power in their hands to decide their own fate, this is the reality of both Capitalism and Communism," Franco responded.

"I agree with you. It is a tragic irony. The socialist revolution has become arrested in a state of political stagnation precisely because a self-perpetuating political elite has always entrenched itself as the sovereign authority and power in a state structure. As the ruling elite they have taken on the role of acting as the sole political representatives of the working class. Under these conditions the working class do not in reality possess any meaningful kind of political power over their lives, and as a consequence of this the proletariat once again become reduced to the social status of passive subjects, without any kind of personal autonomy or real freedom, living under the governance and the rule of a self-serving political elite," she said.

"Can the people ever become through revolution the sovereign subject in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, possessing direct unmediated popular political power and autonomy over their lives?" Franco asked.

"Good question. It is a fact that throughout history political sovereignty in the form of supreme power and authority has always been concentrated in institutions such as kings or dictatorships or despots or states or political parties or political representatives but never directly in hands of the people. Sovereignty has always been hierarchical and has always manifested its power and authority in form of social domination. At the end of the day politics has always been about conflict, war, power, force, and violence, and never about morals or ethics or the good life. Politics will only ever cease to exist under the dictatorship of the proletariat when supreme power and authority is directly in the hands of the people and not mediated indirectly for, over, and on their behalf by a self-serving elite. I suppose Communism can only become a living reality in a society based on anarchism. I want to tell you something interesting that I learnt while living in a kibbutz in Israel. In the kibbutz we were debating the same kind of political stuff that you and I are talking about now. While staying in the kibbutz I listened to the debates on politics that we often had over dinner. And I remembered the substance of these political debates when we started having lectures in political science on Hobbes' _Leviathan_ and also on Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise. Spinoza speaks about God being the sovereign of the Hebrew Republic that existed from Moses until Saul became King. Hobbes also spoke in a similar vein about the Kingdom of God and the Hebrew people. Anyway to cut a long story short, both Spinoza and Hobbes imply that while God was the sovereign over the Hebrew Republic, in the day to day reality, in the actual governance of the Hebrew Republic, sovereignty was not fully centralized or concentrated in any earthly figurehead or institution, but rather it was actually fractured or diffused or decentred, among the children of Israel, and this was the closest any historical society ever came to experience popular sovereignty and popular political power, which in many ways had the flavour of anarchism, " she expanded.

"That is incredible," Franco remarked.

Now after their discussion, standing on the frosty library laws she turned around to face the majestic edifice of the Great Hall loom before them under a grey cloudy sky.

"I have always found the Wits Great Hall a truly magnificent architectural structure with its one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, tall imposing Corinthian Columns and grand stone stairs. It is truly a Great Hall. It is a symbolic emblem, a glorious icon of this noble University. Wits have always been such magical and enchanted haven for me. This place has changed my life forever," extolled a jubilant Devorah.

Having passed her June exams with flying colours and having enjoyed her discussion with Franco, she felt overwhelmed by a sense of elation.

"Come on Franco, don't just stand there grinning like an imbecile at me, do something dramatic, make cart wheels on the library lawns, I feel just so wonderful," she embraced Franco, hugging him tightly.

Out of curiosity she had looked at Franco's exam results which had been posted up on the exam results notice board. She was stunned with surprise when saw his examination marks. She could not help marvelling. It was quite unbelievable that Franco was so dismissive of his accomplishments.

"Are you some kind of autistic savant? Good night! Who gets 100% for Maths and Physics in an exam? Was it that easy for you?" she exclaimed as she revealed that she knew how well Franco had done in his exams.

Franco just shrugged, hunched his shoulders, and stuck his hand in his pockets.

"The questions were not that difficult. Anyone could have got a 100%," he said, with an embarrassed and self-deprecatory grin. His nose and cheeks were red from the unseasonable chill in the late July mid-morning air.

She shook her head.

"You are something else," she said, giving him a look of deep affection and adoring admiration.

"You are also something else, you also got a distinction for philosophy and political science, and you were so worried about the moral philosophy exam, you were convinced you would fail, and just look at you, a distinction for moral philosophy and a distinction for logic," he said, acknowledging her achievements.

"I know, I know, I drove you mad, I was quite pathetic, going over with you every possible kind of exam question that could have been asked in moral philosophy," she laughed.

"Well at least I learnt something about what kind of problems moral philosophy has to solve. I did find the kind of problems that moral philosophy deals with quite interesting and even challenging, it certainly is not a trivial exercise to justify a philosophical position with regard to morals, I would say the logical and analytical exercise that needs to be undertaken in order to justify a thesis in moral philosophy is easily on par with proving a theory in mathematics or solving a problem in theoretical physics," he conceded.

"Ha, ha, you got to be joking," she laughed.

"No I am serious, all the stuff you did, like moral epistemology, moral naturalism, deontological ethics and moral realism, it was really something," he insisted.

"Deontological ethics! Such a big word even for you, I can't believe you would actually remember all that," she replied, with her eyes filled with amusement.

"Don't laugh, I also know some stuff about ontology, and I am also personally interested in the philosophy of moral problems," he answered.

"Why would you be personally interested in moral philosophy?" She asked, now that Franco had triggered her curiosity.

"I have a very personal interest in the moral problems associated with war, especially in the case of the conscripted or citizen force soldier who is not a volunteer but finds him under state coercion to act on behalf of the state in acts of warfare. I am interested in the moral dilemmas that soldiers have to face under these specific circumstances, I am interested in a soldier's moral liability or culpability when he is under state coercion to perform military duties or military obligation required by the state, and initiated by the state without his consent ," he answered.

"Well most soldiers in times of war are forced to be what can be defined as 'coerced moral agents' who are expected or are obliged to perform military duties without their consent being of any fundamental moral consideration to the state or the army acting as an apparatus of the state," she said.

"What are the necessary criteria or conditions which make any person a morally accountable or morally culpable or morally responsible when forced by law to act as a moral agent on behalf of the state? Is freedom or free-will and conscious intentionality a necessary condition for making one an accountable or culpable or responsible moral agent? " Franco asked.

"That is the big moral question faced by all citizens of a sovereign state that claims to represent the interests of its citizens. What is it that necessarily makes any person a morally accountable agent in all possible Universes? This is one of the most fundamental moral questions? What are the necessary empirical, universal, and transcendental conditions which provide the logical and rational grounds for making any sane person a morally accountable or culpable moral agent? This is something that has to be worked out, possibly from first principles or from a set of principles, which can be justified as morally binding on everyone in every possible Universe? I can think of all kinds of difficulties that one would have to be face and overcome when trying to answer this question. Take for example, what kind of question is this anyway? Is it a sociological question, or is it a psychological question, or is it an ontological question, or is it a religious or theological question, or is it an evolutionary question, or is it a philosophical or epistemological question? These questions in turn all depend on other questions such as: do moral facts exist, are there any moral truths, does a transcendental moral reality exist, how is moral knowledge created, how is moral knowledge justified, how do we know that something is not moral or where do moral or moral sensibility come from, do morals come ultimately come from the evolution of human behaviour as a kind of social adaptation to make complex social existence possible?" Devorah asked.

"What is your position on morals?" Franco asked.

"As a materialist, and for consistency of beliefs about the nature of reality, I would prefer to defend the position of moral naturalism," Devorah answered in a reflective attitude.

"What is moral naturalism?"

"Well, I only came to this position after studying for my philosophy of morals exam. In support of moral naturalism I think a case can be made for the objective existence of moral facts in the scientific sense of what counts as a fact. I suppose you can say that moral naturalism is a kind of realism so it would overlap with scientific realism to some extent. My own argument in defence of my version of moral naturalism rests on a theory of human natural history which overlaps with a human evolution hypothesis which goes as follows: Humans or the hominids in general all evolved through natural selection complicated systems of reciprocal social relations which had great adaptive value for their survival. The evolution of language, symbolic and communicative systems, in conjunction with a wider range of cognitive capacities were all integrated or coupled in a reciprocal positive reinforcement feedback circuit which thereby gave rise to forms of consequential behaviours that were distinctively moral in character. The spin-off of this evolutionary dynamic through the linkage of language development, communication abilities and cognitive capacities to the performance of morally consequential behaviours resulted in an increase in the overall fitness of human-like creatures, where fitness represents increased survivorship of individuals and increased success in reproduction, both of which depended on complicated reciprocally consequential social behaviours that were essentially moral, and all in all, this dynamic of reciprocity formed a virtuous cycle, which had a positive impact on the welfare of every member of the group," Devorah explained.

"Wow, I don't believe I just said all of that. You were the catalyst, thank you!" She said, with a look of self-amazement on her face, as she realized that she had just articulate exactly what was vaguely gestating all along in her mind.

"What do you mean by consequential behaviours that have a distinctively moral character?" Franco asked.

"I would argue that a naturalist interpretation of morally consequential behaviours is based on the cognitive recognition that the 'good' occurs in the form of mutually reciprocal benefits. Mutually reciprocal benefits flow to each individual as a direct consequence of the cooperative actions and behaviours of all individuals who are members of social group. And it is these cooperative actions and behaviours which end up satisfying the wide range of needs experienced by each individual, including affection, in a social system," she explained, "and I would furthermore argue that the reciprocal exchange of mutual affection is in itself a moral good, which has been an essential ingredient that has played a key role in leading to the self-domestication of humans."

"I have another idea; do you want to hear it?" Devorah asked, now that she was on a roll.

"This positive dynamic of cooperative social interactions that is mutually beneficial for the welfare of all members of social group can also breakdown under certain conditions. Under these conditions the dynamics of positive cooperative behaviour are disrupted and undermined so that benefits begin to accrue only to a select few in a non-reciprocal fashion. The conditions that result in the breakdown of cooperative social arrangements which secures the general 'good' for the mutual benefit of all members of a social group arises with the spontaneous but accidental emergence of social stratification within a social group. This results in the development of hierarchies of social domination and this becomes the occasion when the phenomenon of moral entitlement arises. The development of moral entitlement may also be co-incidental to the development of social stratification. I got these ideas when I was studying for my exam, I wanted to know what possible social drivers, or triggers resulted in the emergence of the Third Reich and Apartheid in South Africa, without resorting to a simplistic reduction of every possible kind of social phenomena to the social relations of economic and material production. What I propose is not inconsistent with Marxism or historical materialism. I got some of my ideas from reading Habermas. Anyway Habermas does not mention the social phenomenon of 'moral entitlement.' A sense of moral entitlement is a big driver in all of forms identity politics and identity politics are intrinsically racist in sentiment, it is the constant variable in what I would define as fascist tendencies, which include all forms of nationalism," Devorah said.

"What do you mean by moral entitlement?" Franco asked.

"As compensation and reparations for perceived or real historical suffering and injury, moral entitlement usually involves the awarding of rights and claims in the form of material benefits, material advantages, and material reparations. Moral entitlement necessarily involves the imposition of punitive and retributive measures on a selected demographic group of a population. They are necessarily punitive and retributive because they are imposed in the form exclusions, restriction of rights, restriction of claims, restriction of opportunities, and restriction of benefits. The imposition of such measures on a selected demographic group of a population may turn out be counter-productive, destabilizing and eventually self-destructive. Ironically Fascism is a political ideology that is underpinned by moral entitlement, self-righteousness sentiments and racial identity," Devorah replied.

Chapter 7

From the map that Franco had drawn she found her way to the home of the Sorrentinos without any problems. The Far East Rand formed the eastern side of the great lion's head that marked the physical outline of the Main Reef outcrop that had become geologically fixed into the landscape of the Highveld. The distribution of the towns, cities, mine dumps and vertical mine shafts on the Witwatersrand could readily be visualized as the dots on the blank page of a puzzle, and the line that joined all the dots gave rise to the Main Reef Road, and the outline of the lion head which was hidden beneath the grasslands, becomes suddenly visible, like the actual head of a lion appearing above the high grass that once covered the rolling plains of the Highveld. The lion of the Highveld had roared, and South Africa became changed forever by the greatest gold rush in human history.

When she turned off the freeway onto Snake Road it felt as if she had crossed the border into a foreign country, the landscape was filled with toxic ponds, mine dumps, slime dams and tall plantations of blue gum trees everywhere. It was the landscape in which Franco had grown up and in which he had lived all of his life, until he came to Wits. She stopped by the gate in Elliot Street, and fixed onto the gate was a metallic sign which read 'Beware of the dogs,' in English, Afrikaans, and Zulu. Franco had warned her about the dogs. Two huge Alsatians, Romulus and Remus, rushed to the gate and began to bark furiously at her. She felt that she had arrived at the very gates of Rome in more ways than one. The front door opened and Franco stepped out onto the highly polished red veranda. He shouted: "Down, stay!"

The dogs immediately went down into a crouching position. Franco stood still for a second or two on the veranda; he seemed in her eyes to have the bearing of a Roman centurion.

He walked towards her down the concrete paved garden path, she again marvelled at his bearing and gait, he walked like a ballet dancer, and like a soldier combined, with a natural grace that she had rarely seen in anyone before. He unlatched the gate and pushed it open. He was indeed a Roman in many ways, even though he appeared to be slight in frame; he carried himself with a natural sense of authority. The dogs did not move as she stepped through the gate. He closed the gate behind her and kissed her on the lips. Holding her hand they walked to the front door. On the veranda she turned around and glanced back at the dogs, they were still down in their crouched position. Franco laughed.

"They won't do anything to you."

He called: "Come!"

They bolted towards him; she jumped behind Franco putting her arms around his waist for protection. He laughed good-naturedly.

"They won't do anything to you," he said.

He patted them on their heads. Waging their tails they sniffed her and she tentatively stroked them both on their heads.

Walking through the front door via the entrance hall into the lounge felt like going back in time. There was something both foreign and familiar, an odd mixture of the two, about Franco's home. She instantly noticed the old white ornate pressed steel ceilings which she guessed was in every room of the house. The ceiling reminded of her grandparents' home in Doornfontein, and the homes she had stayed in Bellevue and Yeoville. Furthermore, the highly polished creaking pine floors of the entrance hall, passage and lounge which smelt strongly of fresh floor polish also reminded her of her grandparents' house in Doornfontein, and also of the houses that she grew up in Bellevue and Yeoville during the time in which her father was still building his business. The interior décor and the fresh smell of floor polish took her back to her own adolescent and early teenage years, leaving her with a strong sensation of déjà _vu_.

The shining wooden floors were covered with loose lying carpets. Franco escorted her into the lounge. It was warm; a fire was crackling in the fire place. Her eyes swept over the surfaces of things that filled the interior of the room. Standing prominent in middle of the ornate mantel slab above the fire place was a statue of the Virgin Mary wearing her traditional blue robs, indicative of her virginity. She was holding the infant Jesus. Fixed to the chimney above the mantel piece was a crucifix.

Occupying pride of place between two lounge chairs stood a display cabinet filled with trophies and ornaments, and in the corner stood an old pilot radiogram. A framed Vladimir Grigoryevich Tretchikoff print of The Dying Swan hung above the settee. Stuck on the opposite wall were three vintage ornaments from the 1950s, she stared in wonder at the three brightly coloured ceramic flying mallard ducks. In the open space below the diagonal line marked out by the flying ducks hung a portrait; it was a photograph of a Franco in his South African Defence Force military uniform taken shortly after he received his officer's commission during his National Service in 1972. The taste, mood, and atmosphere created by the furnishing in Franco's home exposed all the lineaments that connected his current middle-class existence to his family's original working class origins.

She was fascinated to see again once more after such a long time the familiar baroque style of the early 1950s lounge suite, which was still in immaculate condition. It was the same kind of furniture that she had grown with as a child. It seemed as if time had stood still in the Sorrentino's home. The upholstery of the lounge chairs and couch were covered with the familiar floral motif material that she remembered from way back. The polished heavy wooden baroque arm rests, legs and back frame, had been kept in mint condition by Mrs Sorrentino who did all the manual house work, they had no domestic servant. A 1960s floral carpet covered the lounge floor and the polished coffee table standing in the centre of the lounge was covered with a glass top. A new TV occupied a strategic position.

Before she could sit down on the settee, Mr and Mrs Sorrentino, followed by Franco's two teenage brothers and two adolescent sisters who looked like twins so close was their resemblance, came into the lounge to be introduced to Devorah. She was surprised by the intimacy with which Italians greet a stranger for the first time. Mrs Sorrentino kissed her on the cheek and Mr Sorrentino shook her hand warmly. Franco two younger sisters also kissed Devorah on the cheek and each of the brothers shook her hand solemnly. She felt a natural warmth and affection coming from the family which put her instantly at ease. They all sat down in the lounge for a while exchanging the normal sequence of pleasantries and asking the usual questions. Mr Sorrentino was the first to excuse himself in order to go back to his workshop in the backyard where he was busy fixing something, then it was Mrs Sorrentino turn to go. She had to get back to the kitchen to her cooking and preparation for the Sunday lunch, leaving the four curious siblings behind who could not take their eyes off Devorah. Realizing that the sibling were still in the lounge Mrs Sorrentino came back and chased them out, telling them to go and play in the yard.

When they were finally alone in the lounge Devorah got up and examined the portrait of Franco in his officer's uniform.

He felt embarrassed. His portrait jarred with the political realities that he and Devorah shared. The portrait was politically compromising. He felt that it cast him a bad light. Glancing at Franco, Devorah was aware of this, but she said nothing.

"It is ironical that I landed up becoming an officer during my national service. Because I happened to be good at sport, maths and science I landed up at the officers gymnasium and then at infantry school. My parents were over the moon when I graduated from the officers' training school as a lieutenant while I was doing my national service. When I came back on my first weekend pass after graduating my mother organized a big family surprise party at our home. She insisted that I wear my step out officer's uniform. It was quite a weird experience for me. Everyone was so proud that there was now a military officer in the family, I had become a very important person, I was now Lieutenant Franco, and everyone was saluting me, and I had to return their salutes. Even Father Agostino our parish priest had been invited. He was the priest who had baptised me, heard my first confession, gave me my first communion, and took us through confirmation. He has always been a sort of mentor to me. He always reminded us that while all our achievements should be celebrated and acknowledged, but it was also important that we see things in their proper perspective and never forget our roots or our origins. What are my roots? Most of my life I have always been reminded in one way or another, that I was Italian and a Catholic. In the intimate privacy of our home when we were alone together as a family we always spoke Italian to each other, never English; somehow we always believed that we belonged to Italy and in a broader sense to Europe, even though we as kids had never been there. We remained Europeans in the way we viewed ourselves. We were part of a great civilization. From a young age I saw that when we Italians get together and socialize at any kind of festive gathering we lose ourselves in our Italianhood. We speak Italian, we behave like Italians, we eat like Italians, and we even drink like Italians. In spite of growing up in South Africa we have always been very European in our private home culture. Throughout my whole life I have been living in two universes. At home under my mother's influence Catholicism and being Italian has always reigned supreme. There has always been a sense of unreality in my home life. I have always felt unreal, in reality I am a South African, in theory I was Italian and then many things came just too easy to me, academic colours, and sporting colours and then I became a lieutenant at the age of 18. My grandfather who is actually the last person in the world who can brag about anything always reminded us that we are better than others because we were Italian. I didn't what to tell you this before, but he was always a staunch supporter of Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini. He was an unrepentant fascist until he died. He was also a staunch supporter of Verwoerd and Vorster and the Nationalists. He despised blacks. According to him we were supposed to feel superior like Romans. Yet deep down I felt very ordinary, and I wanted to be ordinary. If we moved back to Italy for whatever reason, I would and my brothers and sisters would feel estranged, we would feel like foreigners. We would realize then that our real home is South Africa."

She listened quietly, as Franco bared his soul to her.

"You don't need to worry about me, I don't care whether your grandfather was a fascist, or if he even supported Hitler, I don't believe that the kids should take the blame for the sins of their fathers or grandfathers. What can we do? We cannot change the past, the past has happened and there is nothing we can do about it. My dad is a Zionist," she said philosophically.

"Are those your trophies in the display cabinet," she asked turning around and walking over to the display cabinet.

"Yeah, they are for athletics and academics. They not all mine, some of them belong to Alfonso and Ricardo, and some belong to Valentina and Isabella for dancing," he said, sounding a bit subdued.

"You not feeling suddenly depressed are you?" She asked looking at him, sensing a change in his mood.

"No I am OK, don't worry," he said, with a slight frown on his forehead, which she also noticed. She could see that he was feeling awkward having her as a visitor for the first time in the intimacy of his home.

"You are a very talented family," she said while looking at the trophies in the cabinet.

"I don't know sometimes," he answered still looking uncomfortable.

"Don't be so modest. You should be smug, not embarrassed. I am proud of you. Maybe some of your magic will rub off on me," she said with a laugh, while giving him an adoring look. She hugged and gave him a kiss on the lips.

"You acting so strange," she said, as she looked intensely and searchingly into his eyes.

"Lunch is ready," Valentina called from the lounge door.

In the dining room the table had been laid. Again on the mantel piece above the fire place in the dim dining room stood a figurine of the Virgin Mary and on the wall was another crucifix. They all took their places round table. Mrs Sorrentino and Valentina brought the starters from the kitchen. For starters they were given battuta di carne cruda which consisted of chopped up raw meat and seasoned with Parmesan cheese.

Devorah realized that she was the guest of honour. The Sorrentinos had prepared a feast for her.

Devorah knew that grace would be said. In response to some unknown cue that only the Sorrentino family knew, Mr Sorrentino muttered:

" _Nel nome del Padre, del Figlio e dello Spirito Santo. Amen._ "

While the Sorrentino family closed their eyes they simultaneously made the sign of the cross in one swift flowing motion that was both elegant and graceful. Franco glanced at Devorah, she smiled broadly back to him, as if saying to him, it is OK, don't worry about me, I don't mind.

He reached for her hand on her lap under the table and squeezed it, she responded by squeezing his hand. Mr Sorrentino opened a bottle of red wine and Ricardo filled everyone's glass.

Everyone raised their glasses and leaned over, and clinked their glasses against Devorah's glass, laughing she said, "Cheers!" about five times.

Feeling famished enough to eat a horse she got stuck in with her fork into the battuta di carne cruda. Mrs Sorrentino smiled with pleasure when she saw that this girl was not ashamed to eat and sip wine. She passed Devorah some Italian bread. Devorah took a slice, buttered it, broke into pieces, and began to eat the bread with her starter, licking her lips with pleasure.

After Mrs Sorrentino, Valentina and Isabella had cleared the table they brought in the first course which was agnolotti pasta and ravioli. While everyone dished up food into their plates, Devorah was encouraged to dish up more by Mrs Sorrentino and she obliged. While the Sorrentino men began to loudly debate European football, slipping every now and then into Italian, Devorah eyes paused on the statuette of the Virgin Mary standing on the mantel piece below her crucified son.

She thought to herself how weird it was that this woman whom gentile Catholics exalt and adore happens to have been a very simple traditional Jewess who was in all likelihood devoted to the Law of Moses and would have been horrified if she knew that people had created effigies of her which they venerated, thereby breaking the first and second commandments. To the majority of Jews, Mary has no more significance than a non-person, she belongs entirely and exclusively to the Christians. Devorah felt sorry for Mary. 'What a tragic fate for any woman,' she thought, 'and what about Jesus? It is an abhorrent sacrilege to any Jew that any mere man should claim to be literally the son of God or even God.'

She realized that her relationship with Franco was enigmatic in the extreme. She was in love with a believing Catholic, even if he was not overtly religious or pious. In fact he was silent when it came to his private beliefs. He was not defensive about what he believed in nor did he wish to justify any of his beliefs. He was Catholic and that was that, take it or leave it. In his own community everything in Catholicism made perfect sense as it all hung logically, beautifully, and rationally together in the magnificent and glorious Magisterium of the Catholic Church with its 2000 year old intellectual heritage of Christian thinking on all matters of life and death. His arguments for his faith slipped out in a disguised form in his analytical and logical defence of what he believed to be the essential nature of reality.

She became aware that he held to a very subtle and interesting philosophical theology which gave rational and reasonable warrant to everything that he believed in as a Catholic. In this he was unshakeable and steadfast. It was this that impressed her, every though she did not show this to him. When it came to philosophical and scientific arguments about the essential nature of reality and to the 'knowability' of the Universe he was much sharper than she was. He always argued that the Universe possesses the capability or capacity or predisposition to be known, and this is what made it intelligible, and this intelligibility was not self-explanatory. While never openly making the connection, she knew that in Franco's mind, God was the reason for the knowability and intelligibility of the Universe. It was his privately held belief, a belief strongly held, but a belief which he did not care to defend or debate about.

By the time the second course arrived she began feel that she too was an expert on European Football as she had heard everything that could be said about the game, in between her own silent musings about the Sorrentinos. Every now and then Franco would give her an apologetic grin, as if to say, I am still here with you, but know how it is when the boys get together, and start talking soccer. She would give him a smile and a look which indicated that she understood what boys must do, but her demeanour also pleaded: 'please don't forget that I am also here and I feel a bit out'. In between he whispered to her that they will go and do something together after lunch.

The second course consisted of bolliti misti or meat balls with gravy, and side dishes of brasato or braised beef and arrosto di manzo or roast beef. For pasta there was _cavatelli_ , and for vegetables there was carrots and finocchi al burro or buttered fennel.

And finally for **dessert there was** Tiramisu, washed down with strong Italian coffee.

After lunch they went for walk around Brakpan Dam.

Chapter 8

Whenever the two Alsatians run a bit too far ahead she would call them back:

"Romulus, Remus, Romulus, Remus, Romulus, Remus, come back."

They responded to her anxious calling and would came bounding back, wagging their tails and licking her hand as she tried to pat their heads. Even though Franco said they would not run ahead too far from them, she was worried that contact with the dogs would be broken and they would become lost.

"Both of you must stay with us now."

They made her feel safe. Franco seemed to be unconcerned about their safety or the possibility of the dogs becoming lost.

They had been walking since 9.00 am and it was now one o' clock, and after the recent rains it had turned out to be a hot and humid October day. They had been walking for a solid four hours almost non-stop, climbing up and down over slime dams, walking around massive mine dumps, walking over mine dumps, plodding through veld along winding footpaths through blue gum plantations between mine dumps and through tall beds of reeds and around ponds and pans of open water that looked toxic. They were now walking through what seemed to her to be very a remote and isolated Eucalyptus plantation. The ground was covered with a carpet of dried Eucalyptus leaves that crunched loudly under the tread of her track shoes.

Her sweat saturated black T-sheet clung tightly to her torso. Her shorts were covered in dry mud from when she slipped and fell flat on her behind on a muddy path. Her legs were red from exertion and were also full of scratches.

Never in her wildest dreams could she have ever imagined that she would end up going on hiking adventures with Franco through the degraded gold field wastelands of the Far East Rand. He seemed to have this itch to walk and walk and walk, sometimes deep in thought with long silences or else talking incessantly to her about every topic under the sun. Her physical endurance on these punishing marches with Franco never failed to surprise him. He now took it for granted that she would manage the physical rigours of their hikes. He showed more faith in her physical strength and stamina than she did. Each time after a long hike she would say to herself never again, but he always reminded her that she never stopped complaining about her weight, about being too fat. He reminded her that the only way that she could get rid of fat was by burning it up through strenuous physical exercise and that there was no better way to exercise than on their long walks on weekends.

On these long walks Franco often exasperated her to the point of annoyance with very clever and subtle logical arguments for which she had no answer. He was simply indomitable in this sense. It was not this that she found it so irritating and which made her fume and mutter. What annoyed her was the calm and innocent manner in which his answers became verbalized into speech, always with his demeanour fixed in a picture of angelic propriety. She often wondered whether the politeness and decorum was in fact a clever ruse, an act, a smoke screen behind which he playfully teased her with his own answers to a range of philosophical problems that she liked to bring up on their walks. He viewed the world through the prism of physics and mathematics.

Just before one of their long Sunday walks she had finished reading _Le Hasard et la Nécessité: Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biologie modern_ the best-selling and controversial book written by the French molecular biologist Jacques Monod. After she had raved about the book to Franco on one of their previous walks, he took out the English translation, _Change and Necessity_ , from the Wits Wartenweiler Library. After Devorah had finished reading the book with a triumphant turning of the last pages, she was ready to announce playfully and teasingly to Franco that at last she had found the preface for her own personal creed.

"Do you want to hear what it is?" She asked Franco as they stood on top of the slimes dam.

Curious to hear what she had found from Monod's book that was so profound and significant enough to become the preface of her personal creed he said OK.

She dramatically intoned the following quote from Monod's book:

" _The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose_."

Taken aback by what he heard, he was genuinely disturbed by what she had taken as a preface to her personal creed, an atheist creed which she had yet to fully work out in all its details, so in complete bafflement he asked:

"Who and what are you?"

"Truth be told, I don't really know, except that my father was a wondering Aramean and he went down into Egypt," she said, breaking the tension between them.

Franco burst out laughing and she also laughed.

"Why are we laughing?" she suddenly asked.

"What made you say that your father was a wondering Aramean?" he asked.

"I don't know, it is just something that I remember about a story that would always to be read by our father at the Passover Seder meal," she said.

"I know the story," Franco said.

"It is a passage that comes from Deuteronomy, it is also a reading used on the first Sunday of Lent in the Catholic Church," Franco said.

"How does it go again?" Franco asked with a smile. He was testing her.

She knew what his game was.

"It goes like this I think," She answered:

" _The priest shall take the_ _basket_ _from your hands and set it down in front of the altar of the_ _Lord_ _your God. Then you shall declare before the_ _Lord_ _your God: "My_ _father_ _was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous._ _But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, subjecting us to harsh labour._ _Then we cried out to the_ _Lord_ _, the God of our ancestors, and the_ _Lord_ _heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression._ _So the_ _Lord_ _brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders._ _He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with_ _milk and honey_ _;_ _and now I bring the first fruits of the soil that you,_ _Lord_ _, have given me." Place the basket before the_ _Lord_ _your God and bow down before him._ "

He listened to Devorah. It seemed so strange and out of character to hear her reciting the scripture of the wondering Aramean as they followed the path into a blue gum plantation.

Shafts of golden sunshine thrust like shining swords through the under understory of the blue gum plantation. He gazed intensely at the glittering suspended dust particles dancing randomly in the slanting sun beams. Flashing and sparkling dappled pools of light rippled on the leafy plantation floor.

Now she stood still for a moment in a patch of bright sunlight, gazing up at the towering trunks of the blue gum tree. He too stopped, turned around, and gazed at her. Her wild coiffure became transformed into the flames of a burning bush. Momentarily transfixed, he stared at the optical firework display of light on her glossy luxurious coils and curls of dark red hair, which glowed brilliantly against the background forest gloom. She had managed to get dark charcoal and mud smudges on her forehead and cheeks. Standing still in her damp clinging T-shirt, bathed in a shower of golden light she became transformed into a savage barbarian beauty. In her shorts she looked like a female warrior. Devorah the only female judge in the Old Testament led the counter attack against the force of Jabin king of Canaan.

He felt aroused and stirred by her unusually unique and almost exotic sensual beauty.

She noticed him gazing intently at her. She was in an ebullient mood.

"So you don't like my personal creed?" She laughed.

"It embodies a logical contradiction," he answered

"A logical contradiction?" She asked in surprise.

Franco was a lot less enthusiastic about Monod's book after he had read the English translation. But it had made him focus his mind on the meaning of words 'necessity' and 'chance,' which were central to Monod's narrative.

"I don't understand, I thought it was a very rationally argued account," she said.

"He uses the words necessity in a very rough and ready fashion without grasping the profound significance of what the word logically and rationally implies, especially in the context that he is using it," he said.

"What does Monod mean by necessity and what does he mean by chance?" Franco asked

"Don't you think chance exists?" Devorah answered with a counter question.

"As in accident, as in contingency, as in the unpredictable occurrence of an event, as in not knowing the cause of some effect or event?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied.

"OK, we agree on that, and necessity, what do you understand by necessity?" He asked.

"Well, philosophically I would associate the idea of necessity with the regularities and uniformities of Nature, which exist as necessities rather than contingencies, and not as chance occurrences or even probabilistic occurrences. Am I on the right track?" she answered.

"Yes and what would be the source or origin of the necessities that we are aware of. Is necessity something which is immanent in the essential nature of things or is it something that is somehow externally imposed on things?" Franco asked Devorah.

"I don't know, I have never really thought about that," she answered.

"Would you say that the existence of necessities in the form of regularities and uniformities in Nature can be taken as evidence that the Universe is governed by Laws of Nature?" He asked.

"I don't see why not," she answered.

"Would you agree that the existence of Laws of Nature, that is, Laws which possess the power to govern the structure, organization, and dynamics of the Universe also happens to be a scientific fact, a fact that in itself remains inexplicable?" He asked, continuing his interrogation of the full meaning of the idea of necessity as an observable phenomenon in the Universe.

"I suppose so," she answered as they walked along side each other slowly through the plantation, with the sound of dry leaves crushing under their treads.

"So if you agree that the existence of the uniformities and regularities of nature are fundamentally inexplicable brute facts, then you must also agree that the existence of uniformities and regularities in nature is not a self-explanatory fact, and that ultimately the existence of the Laws of Nature together with Universe are not something that happens to be self-explanatory in an obvious way?" He asked.

The insightfulness and cleverness of his questions often caught her by surprise. She began to wonder where he was taking her with this line of question and answer, whether its destination was going to be one of the old arguments for the existence of God dressed up in new Catholic clothing.

"So you would also agree that the Universe happens to be intelligible to the rational mind only because it is governed by Laws of Nature?" He asked, as he continued to pursue the interrogation of the idea of necessity in the organization of Nature.

"Yes," she said.

"The existence of Laws of Nature which became apparent to us in the form of regularities and uniforms can be grasped by reason and it is this which makes the Universe intelligible to science, do you agree with that?" He asked.

"Yes, I suppose so, on the face of your proposal," she answered

"But philosophically speaking its intelligibility is ultimately inexplicable and also ultimately not self-explanatory even to the most analytical, rational and logical mind?" He asked.

"OK, that is an interesting point," she said.

"There are two ways we can view the Laws of Nature which govern the Universe. In the first view, the properties, powers, and relations of the different kinds of things which make up the Universe are features or attributes which are imposed on them externally by the Laws of Nature. In this view the Laws of Nature which govern the Universe exists as some kind external agency of compulsion, in the sense that the Laws compel things to be what they are. In this view things are passive, they do possess in-them-selves any innate or intrinsic powers of agency. In the second view, the Laws of Nature which govern the Universe are not external to things or imposed on things, but are intrinsic to things, they are the essential properties, powers, and relation of things by virtue of which the thing happens to be the kind of thing that it is. In this view things are not passive, but possess powers and agency in their own right as it were, and this makes the objects of the Universe active rather than passive, in this sense we can view matter as an active substance rather than something which is essentially passive, and no self-activating," Franco explained.

"What would you prefer, a passive or non-passive view of the things out of which the Universe was built?" He asked.

"I would definitely argue for a non-passive Universe," she said adamantly.

"I also prefer the idea of a Universe that is not passive," he agreed.

"But what exactly do you mean by the non-passivity of the fundamental constituents of the Universe, are you implying that they possess the capacity for some kind of immanent agency?" She asked.

"What I mean by non-passivity is that the fundamental constituents of the material Universe possess potentialities, causal powers, capacities, and propensities which constitute their essential properties, or in other words their essential nature," he said.

"So all things in Nature or the Universe possess powers or predispositions to act and react in various kinds of law-like ways, depending on the circumstances, and this is the basis for believing in the essential non-passivity of things," she said, grasping what Franco was getting at.

"Exactly," he replied.

"Well I am definitely persuaded by the idea that the different constituents of matter in their various forms all possess intrinsic powers and degrees of agency, which endow matter with the capacity for autonomous self-formation into configurations of increasing complexity under conditions of possibility that are only constrained or determined by energy, chance and necessity, acting alone, that is independent of any other kind of mysterious external influence or divine interventions if you like," Devorah responded.

"Maybe the essential powers and capacities possessed by the various entities that make up the Universe and which in turn are responsible for every possible kind of dynamics that can occur within the Universe within the bounds of the Laws of Thermodynamics are deep down a reflection of the intrinsic divine immanence in everything that exists, maybe the very possibility of any kind of contingency in the Universe including its coming into existence necessarily depends of the convergence of God's will and God's essence," Franco retorted with a teasing smile.

She smiled at Franco's mention of God. But it was a sceptical and doubting smile, which made Franco laugh. He found her unbelief funny.

She continued to listen with interest at what he had to say on the matter, and he continued to elaborate on the theme and nature of the non-passivity of the material constituents of the Universe.

"The essential properties, powers, dispositions, and relations of things represent all the features that are necessarily possessed by things for the thing to be the kind of thing that it is. Necessity has a very precise meaning, it is not something that is externally imposed on things making them behave in the ways that they do especially when under experimental observation in something like a particle accelerator," he explained.

"OK so if necessity does not entail the external imposition of conditions which determine the behaviour and property of things, then the laws of nature which determine the essential properties of things are immanent in the things themselves, as something which is innate or intrinsic to the things themselves," she said, grasping the central issues of Franco's arguments, while rejecting all possible links that it may have to any kind of divinity or divine involvement or divine immanence or divine presence.

"Yes," he said.

"Well that makes you philosophically speaking an essentialist, with a possible theological spin, depending on whether or not you happened to believe in God," she smiled.

"What do you mean by that?" He asked.

"Well for starters, but leaving God out of the picture for simplicity sake, essentialism has it roots in ancient classical Greek philosophy, and we also have in modern philosophy recent reformulations and newer developments in philosophical essentialism, especially with regard to various versions of realism. But going back to the Greeks, Aristotle was an essentialist, but while the essentialist theory we have been speaking of shares a lot with what Aristotle proposed, it does differ in that you have applied it only to the fundamental constituents of the material Universe and not to macro objects like plants and animals. I would go along with the kind of essentialism that we have been speaking about. I also like the idea of the Laws of Nature being immanent and not externally imposed," she said.

"So you could be persuaded to believe in essentialism?" He asked.

"Yeah, I suppose I could accept a re-worked version of essentialism that is consistent and grounded in a scientific view of reality," she admitted.

And while she conceded to the ideas that Franco had proposed regarding the apparent materialistic nature of necessity in the Universe, and that he had done this without insisting on God's role, she was still able to discern the Trojan horse like presence of God behind everything, in the way that Franco had articulated his views regarding the nature of reality.

But she also appreciated that he was not hung-up about his belief in God. He did not make it an issue to be debated between them. She felt that it was his choice to believe in God if he wanted to and if he was persuaded by his own reasons and arguments. She began to appreciate that this God thing that Franco held to was not strictly speaking a religious issue; it was more of a theological positioning of his thinking about the ultimate nature of reality. As a Catholic he believed in a transcendental reality in which the divine dwelt.

To Devorah, Franco's faith came to him effortlessly and naturally like his ability to do maths and physics. He could seemly effortlessly grasp a problem in maths and physics and see the solution. In the same way he seemed to effortlessly grasp the nature of the problems of faith and belief and see the solution. What made him acceptable to her as her boyfriend was his complete lack of overt religious piety, even though he never missed Mass, going regularly once a week. For him faith and belief were like maths and physics, it was not based on feeling and emotions, nor was it based on ritual or ceremonial observations, instead it was based on seeing reality in a typically Catholic manner.

Franco had his own peculiar Catholic vision of reality and the nature of faith.

Metaphorically, the experience of faith was not about the intensity of feeling or emotions with respect to something, it was like what happens when walking through the threshold of a door and seeing the world with different eyes, like when he saw the solution to a mathematical problem. He always liked to say that the whole Universe was a mirror which made the invisible presence of God in everything visible to the naked eye, or that Universe was the theatre of God in which good will ultimately triumph over evil.

She often wondered why she was so attracted to him, maybe it was because he was a person who was able to gently resist her atheism in a non-offensive intellectual and philosophical manner, and who also actually genuinely and sincerely believed in God without making it a source of tension or offense or conflict between them. She saw him as more of a mystic rather than as a person who was inordinately religious or obsessed with pious preoccupations concerning the correct observance of religious rituals, religious convictions and various kind of ceremonial actions. In this sense he was in fact completely irreligious and irreverent.

But now she was also aware that she had blossomed as a person, as a woman, under his loving affection for her. It had lifted her up, it had transformed her. She was aware of this. Franco was precious to her and she found comfort and freedom to be in the embrace of his love. And she reciprocated spontaneously, expressing in many ways her own deep affection for him.

It was this mutual affection that deepened the bonds between them.

He liked to walk with a knobkierrie. He got her a knobkierrie as well.

They came upon a huge fallen blue gum tree and decided to stop for a rest and have lunch. He took the rucksack off from his shoulders and put it on the tree trunk. He opened the bag and took out the water bottle and passed it her.

Before taking the water bottle she wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead, nose, and upper lip with the back of her hand. After drinking her fill she passed it back to him. He drank some water and then screwed the lid back on the bottle.

Her face was red and flushed from exertion, but her eyes were bright. She smiled at Franco revealing beautiful her perfect pearly white teeth. She noticed he was again looking at her intently.

"Do I look like a complete mess?" She asked.

"No don't I see any mess, in fact I see an amazing body possessed and inhabited by an amazing person, you look extremely sexy right this moment," he said.

"I don't believe you, you got to be joking!" she exclaim.

"I am serious," he said.

"Well maybe it because I lost quite a few kilos," she announced happily, looking satisfied with herself.

"You really look great. You are beautiful," he said.

"You can't be serious," she answered.

"I am," he insisted.

Her sweat drenched T-shirt which was hanging over her very short mud splatted shorts clung to her body revealing the form and outline of her fine bosom and curvaceous hips. The exercise had pumped up the muscles of her legs and they were pleasant to look at. Her lower abdominal mound had subsisted considerably. She guessed that her wet clinging T-shirt had aroused him. He embraced her and they began to kiss. He fondled her breasts through her wet T-shirt and then pushed his hand down the front of her shorts, she felt herself becoming aroused as his hand slipped under her panties. She was in two minds whether to stop him as he began to caress her intimately between her legs, but soon realized they had to stop, before he completely pulled off her shorts and panties.

"We can't make love even though I want to, I don't want to lead you on, I am not on the pill and I don't want to risk becoming pregnant, especially with our final exams coming up, I promise we will make love soon, after the exams, in the holidays, we have to hold out until then," she said.

"I understand, I can wait, I love you so much, I just want you to know that," he said.

"I know you love me, and I love you too," she answered, hugging him and giving a kiss on the cheek.

"I think the dogs are thirsty," he said, as he picked up the bottle and unscrewed the lid.

"Are you going to let them drink from the bottle," she asked.

"No they can drink from my hand, I will drip water from the bottle into my hand and let them lick up the water from the palm of my hand," he said.

"No let them drink out of my hands," she said, and she cupped her two hands together.

He poured water in her cupped hands and they lapped up the water.

"It such a weird sensation with their tongues lapping the skin of my palms," she laughed.

She could not remember any other moment in her life when she had ever felt so happy. There were no pretences between them. Even when she felt that she looked a complete mess he thought she was beautiful. For the first time in her life she felt that she could drop all her defences, and open up completely to Franco. For once she could truly be herself with someone, without any risk of being hurt or disappointed. She suddenly felt a slight tinge of regret that they did not make love when he wanted to.

He spread a square of aluminium foil on the tree trunk and unpacked their lunch onto the foil which consisted of apples, grapes, bananas and buttered rolls with onion, tomato, black pepper, cheese, mustard and Italian salami.

"I hope you know where we are, I am completely lost," she said just before she opened her mouth wide to take a huge bite out of her salami roll.

"We have completed a full circuit. We are about 15 minutes from where we started," he answered after chewing and swallowing.

"How far do you think we have walked today?" Devorah asked

"Not less than 20 km is my estimate of the route we have walked," he said.

"Wow! How far did we walk on our other walks?" She wanted to know.

"Between 10 and 15 km, and you say you have been walking to Wits every day from Hillbrow, so you should actually be quite fit now," he answered.

"Well I can assure you that this is the fittest I have ever been in my life and I have lost 10 kg just from all this walking," she said.

Romulus and Remus lay down by their feet as they finished eating the grapes. They shared the last of the water.

"Just think about 90 years ago this was all virgin Highveld," she said

Chapter 9

"I have always found railway stations quite interesting places but I feel a bit disappointed this afternoon with Joburg Station. It looks so empty and bare. I expected the concourse to be bustling with people. We have been sitting here since half-past three and there has been no regular ebb and flow of passengers like you would see at Paddington or Victoria Station in London or Grand Central Station in New York," Devorah reflected as she cast her eyes over the cavernous Park Station concourse from the elevated vantage point of the station cafeteria while taking a sip from her coffee.

She noticed Franco looking at the clock. It was already quarter past four, too early for the commuter afternoon rush, which only really starts around five o' clock.

"They are late as usual," she said looking slightly irritated.

They were waiting for Reilly Brannigan and the other Wits students who were involved as activists in the various projects organized by the student's Wages Commission or Wage Com, an organisation that had been set up by the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) to promote black trade unionism and worker consciousness. Reilly the chairman of Wage Com at Wits University was also the person who was responsible for the production and distribution of a newspaper. He had asked Devorah to help with the distribution of the bi-monthly black workers newspaper called _Vuka Manje_ (Wake up Now). Franco as Devorah's boyfriend had found himself becoming increasingly drawn more and more in the activism of Wages Com.

"Here they come," she said as she spotted them trooping into the station concourse.

Reilly and his troop glanced up at the station cafeteria. She waved vigorously. They saw Devorah and Franco sitting at the table next to the window overlooking the southern side of the concourse. Ambling in a straggled train behind Reilly, carrying heavy packages of freshly printed newspapers, were the motley crew of dedicated hard-core Wage Com members, Ariella Pinsky, Carmela Litwak, Leah Vilna, Charlie Matheson, Brent Eaglewood, Jonathan Fleishman, and Paul Spivack bringing up the rear.

Apparently, they were late because the print run for the newspapers had been delayed for technical reasons.

Franco found Reilly who was a lapsed Roman Catholic who hailed from Boksburg where he matriculated from Christian Brothers College to be an absurdly eccentric individual. He was dressed in his typical self-styled proletarian attire. As always, he was wearing his signature un-ironed white shirt without its collar. Also as was his custom the shirt was buttoned up tightly round his muscular neck. The shirt sleeves were rolled down with the cuffs protruding out of the sleeves of his rumpled grey checked jacket which seemed to be a size too large. His creased grey flannels held up with braces were hiked up high around his lower abdomen, making his trousers appear to be a size too short. As he began to march briskly across the concourse towards the cafeteria, the hem of his baggy trousers flapped above his ankles.

When Reilly came to Wits he abandoned his plans to become a Jesuit Priest and instead found his vocation in Marxist-Leninism. Franco knew Reilly from the days when they both played soccer in the East Rand Junior Soccer League. Reilly who had also been awarded provincial colours in amateur wrestling had a stocky muscular frame. He walked with the energetic step of a man on a mission. With his thick tousled dark brown hair he resembled a Celtic look-alike unshaven version of George Best. The son of an East Rand Propriety Mines (ERPM) shift boss, he was one of the most popular orators and personalities at the lunchtime speaker's forum at Wits.

His three female comrades were dressed in T-shirts, over which they wore their usual sleeveless low neck-line long loose hanging embroidered maxi dresses with the hemline reaching their ankles, exposing delicate white feet with painted toenails in leather sandals. Each carrying their package of newspapers they walked with rapid short steps behind Reilly. Ariella whose dress was black wore a bright red bandana tied round her head. Leah wore a black beret with a prominent velvet red star sown on the front.

Ascending the spiral stairs in single file, they arrived in the cafeteria with their arms hugging the heavy plastic-wrapped packages of A3 sized labour newspaper to their chests. They stacked the packages of newspapers on the floor next to the table where Franco and Devorah were sitting.

"Let's join two tables so we can sit together," Paul said.

They also ordered coffees and after everyone had found a place to sit Reilly opened a package and gave everyone a copy of the newspaper to look at. All the articles were printed in isiZulu and Sesotho. Franco turned over the first page, on the second there was large photograph of Agostinho Neto. He was wearing black framed spectacles and he had a moustache. He studied the expression on Neto's face trying to fathom it. Was it a smirk, was it a look of disgust, or was it an expression of resolute stubbornness? Neto's demeanour beamed intelligence, resourcefulness, but it was also strangely enigmatic. In the text he could only recognized the abbreviations MPLA, UNITA, and FNLA. The full page article was obviously on the progress of the revolution in Angola.

On page three there was also another black and white photograph, this time of Samora Machel. Like the photograph of Agostinho Neto he was also dressed in a suite, tie, and white shirt. Again in the text he could only recognize the acronym FRELIMO. In the eyes of Machel's bearded face there was a faint glimmer, a slight flicker of deep pathos, just visible under the veil of unbending resoluteness which characterized his demeanour. He face was not distant and aloof like that of Agostinho Neto. Again the full page article was obviously also about a revolution, the revolution in Mozambique.

A hand drawn map of southern Angola on page two drew Franco's attention. It depicted a road running southwards from Sa de Bandeira to Oshikango which was just south of the Angolan border in South West Africa. All the other towns along the road, Sa de Bandeira, Joaode Almeida, Dongue, Tohibembe, Cahama, Catequero, Fort Rossdas, Peireira de Eça, and Santa Clara were shown by a flame symbol or icon to be on fire, indicating that they had fallen and were under MPLA control and occupation.

Reilly noticed that Franco was studying the map with great interest.

"All those towns have fallen to the advancing MPLA forces; the MPLA has practically taken over all the towns in southern Angola and they control all the roads, bridges, and railway lines. The FNLA and UNITA have been routed and have been driven from every strategic position in southern Angola, as the old saying goes a routed army disintegrates into every man for himself, I foresee in that map the prefiguration of the defeat of the SADF, if not today, then tomorrow, if not tomorrow then the next day, but in the end it will lose the class war against the rising forces which oppose Apartheid, and eventually the Apartheid regime will be washed away like a sand castle on the beach by the rising tide. The front in the class war against Apartheid cannot be pin pointed out on any map, the front is everywhere inside South Africa and not along some road or river or across some bridge in Angola or South West Africa, and this is basically the message in the two articles on page two and three. The message to the workers is that the front of the class war that is being waged in South Africa is every where and in every situation in which the workers find themselves," Reilly said with a look of satisfaction on his face.

The waitress arrived and they placed their orders for coffee. While they drank their coffees they gazed down onto the station concourse.

"Where did John Harris place the bomb?" Ariella asked as she looked through the window down onto the station concourse.

"Apparently he placed the suitcase under a bench over there on the main concourse between Platforms 5 and 6," Jonathan said, pointing downwards, so that they could see the precise location.

"I always thought he placed the bomb under a bench on the platform below," Carmela said with a puzzled frown creasing her brow.

"No, he left the suitcase under a bench here on the main concourse," said Jonathan.

"What happened to John Harris, I only have a very vague recollection of the incident, 1964 was a long time ago, I was still in primary school, I think I was in standard four then?" Brent asked.

"He was hung," Charlie answered.

"He belonged to the African Resistance Movement or ARM," Paul added to the conversation.

"It was white initiated resistance movement," Leah commented.

"Yeah they were mainly white liberals, many were also members of the Liberal Party," Paul added.

"Some escaped but quite a few served jail sentences," said Jonathan.

"It is fascinating that a group of whites started an underground resistance movement, blowing up electric pylons and doing acts of sabotage," Carmela said, adding to the conversation what she could recall about the movement.

"You never hear anything about the African Resistance Movement, it is as if everything about them has been erased from the public memory," said Jonathan thoughtfully with a solemn expression on this face.

"They weren't Communists as far as I know. They didn't belong to the party did they?" Ariella asked, addressing her question to the others.

"They were not Communists, none of the leaders of the African Resistance Movement were Communists or Marxists, they were liberals, no Communist under party discipline would engage in some random act like putting a bomb in public place under a bench," Paul commented.

After they had finished their coffees Reilly fished out a pack of cards from his jacket pocket. Laying out the cards on the table, Reilly used the cards to make a detailed map of the geographic layout of the Johannesburg Park Station precinct, the surrounding streets, and the various landmark buildings such as the Technikon of the Witwatersrand and St Mary's Neo-Romanesque styled Cathedral.

"We will split up into fives pairs for the distribution of the newspapers. As you can see, there are these five streets, all of which intersect with De Villiers Street, they are the streets which the workers will follow when they converge onto the blacks-only entrance of Park Station. Ariella and Carmela will look after the Rissik Street intersection, Leah and I will look after the Eloff Street intersection, Charlie and Brent will do the Hoek Street intersection, Jonathan and Paul will look after the south side Wonders Street intersection, and then Franco and Devorah will look after the north side of the Wonders Street section. We have brought ten packages of newspapers so each one of you will have a package of newspapers to distribute. I suggest you guys stand on opposites on the street. It should take us about an hour to distribute all the newspapers," Reilly said.

Avoiding the open space of the piazza, they decided to take a shortcut through the old Park Station building. Walking past the arches that opened onto the old concourse of the original Johannesburg station they caught sight of the Pierneef panels which he had been commissioned to paint in 1929. They stopped momentarily to gaze at the panels. Surrounded by the Pierneef panels, in the centre of the old gracious concourse, framed between the archways, standing in plain view they also caught sight of an old locomotive mounted on rails fixed to a plinth. They exited the station precinct through old station entrance that opened onto De Villiers Street.

Stepping into the late afternoon sunlight in De Villiers Street, they crossed the street, and before setting off to their designated street intersections, they stopped briefly once more, turning around, they gazed up this time at the grand colonial styled ornamented façade of the old Johannesburg Station. Above the three mounted elephant heads with their flared ears, raised trunks and tusks, they looked in silence at the bronze train of Voortrekker ox wagons, and after scanning the ox wagons they lifted their heads skyward to gaze up at the four pairs of giant Corinthian columns which had been erected for dramatic effect. Now the grand old entrance which had been built in 1930 stood as a monument to the distant past, buckling under the weight of its symbolism the entrance seemed to be dislocated in time and space.

Architecturally it now functioned only as a service entrance, a convenient short-cut into the city, a convenient slip way for a bunch of radical students carrying packages of subversive newspapers. As the grey gloom of the Friday afternoon began to rapidly settle over the city of Johannesburg the five pairs set off to their respective street corners.

"By the way, you do realize that we could be arrested and end up spending the weekend in a prison cell at John Vorster square or the Hillbrow police station. We would have to wait until Monday before we appeared before a magistrate," Devorah said nonchalantly as they walked to the Wonders Street intersection.

"What could they possibly charge us with?" Franco asked with a frown furrowing his brow as he imagined all the consequences of being arrested. His parents would be hard pressed to find money to pay for his bail, and they would not be able to afford a lawyer. It would be a catastrophe for his family if he were arrested and charged for breaking the law. It would shatter them.

"They would charge us under The Suppression of Communism Act," Devorah said with a smile, which he did not know how to interpret. Was she serious or having him on?

"If that is this case don't you think we are being unnecessarily reckless handing out these newspapers?" He asked, still not really knowing whether to take Devorah seriously.

"I have done this many times before with the others and we were not arrested. We just have to watch out for the cops, and be discreet and watchful. But we could be arrested, and if we were arrested we would be in big trouble for promoting Communism. Reilly can be a bit of a risk-taker when it comes to this kind of activism, but it is a calculated risk. I know the others have not really weighed up the full consequences of what we have been actually doing with our newspaper distribution project. Reilly is the one who is exposed to the greatest risk, he is the initiator, organizer and planner, we are just helpers in the cause, we are just the revolutionary foot soldiers in the class struggle, he is the big fish, they will lock him up and throw away the keys," she said with an amused expression playing her face. She seemed to enjoy ratcheting up the danger which they could be facing together.

"Do you really think these newspapers are promoting the Communist agenda, we are distributing material without even knowing anything about their contents? All I know is that there are two articles on the liberation of Angola and Mozambique, what else do you think Reilly has filled the pages of these newspapers with, there could be some really heavy political stuff contained in these newspapers? What kind of material do you think the newspapers contain?" He asked, his demeanour looking very serious, his eyes filled with concern.

"Revolutionary propaganda, stuff above about the class struggle, Capitalism and Apartheid, I suppose, what else could the working class possibly want to read about?" She asked, still with that naughty look in her eyes and that mischievous smile playing on her lips.

He felt that he was on slippery slope with Devorah. She did not seem to be too averse to engaging in risky political activism. She came from a rich family. She was Jewish, Jewish girls do stuff like this, it was expected of them.

"Why are we doing this?" He asked suddenly, as he began to feel the rush of adrenaline that was triggered from the realization they were about to engage in an activity that was fraught with all kinds of unpredictable risks, and was actually illegal. They were voluntarily placing themselves in danger for a political ideal that he did not necessarily agree with, which was Communism. They were all Communists, even Devorah was a Communist. He was the only non-Communist in the group. They were doing what Communists do; they were being the vanguard of the proletarian revolution. And he realized that he had become a fellow traveller.

For him to become a Communist was a step too far for him to take. It was similar to making a decision not to believe in God anymore. He could not stop believing in God. He could not stop being a Catholic. He persuaded himself that what he was doing in the handing out of the newspapers, he was doing because he was a Catholic. And his Catholic faith also incorporated the idea that sin resulted in the destruction of human solidarity. The only authentic and credible way he could identify with the oppressed and exploited working classes was by working towards their liberation, even if it meant working with the Communists, and in doing this he was only doing what the Gospel required of him. 'What you do for the least of these my brothers, you do to me.' So by handing out these newspapers he decided that he was in fact doing his Christian duty. This rationalization of his actions seemed to clear his conscience of any wrong doing. If he was going to go to jail, then it would be because of his Christian convictions.

But then again, could he honestly justify his actions as being the true fulfilment of his Christian duty, if he was knowingly transgressing into the un-demarcated no man's land of political illegality. Being unable to read IsiZulu and Sesotho, he was not in any position to know whether the newspapers articles written in IsiZulu and Sesotho had been intentionally composed to be politically provocative and inflammatory so as to stir up the emotions and anger of black workers.

She looked at him and noticed the flicker of uncertainty in his eyes and the shadow of anxiety in his demeanour. She smiled a smile of encouragement, and then calmly and confidently explained:

"Well how do you expect a revolution of the working-class in South Africa without the development of proletarian revolutionary class consciousness in the minds of the masses? We are engaged in the praxis of revolution, we are revolutionaries engaged in enlightening the proletariat about their real class interests. What we are doing is the revolutionary work of revolutionary insurgents, we are guerrilla insurgents engaged in Communist insurgency in the heart of Johannesburg. We are engaged in the pedagogy of the oppressed. We are only doing our duty as compatriots and citizens. We are doing what history and future generations would expect of us."

Franco shook his head in disbelief at what he was hearing. To Devorah it became a comical gesture and she could not help laughing, even though she sensed Franco's inner struggle and doubts, and real fear of them being caught in the act and arrested by the police.

"We are being completely reckless," he mumbled stoically to himself, as he made peace with the fact that this could be the end of his career as a future school teacher and bursary recipient, not to mention arrest, court trials and imprisonment, but then he felt a sense of honour and obligation towards Devorah and her comrades, and these emotions in turn could be driving him on the pathway to personal destruction, it felt like he was going into the theatre of war, class war, armed only with newspapers. He resigned himself to what they were about to do, including the consequences of their actions. There was not turning back now.

"Sorry, what was that you said?" She asked as the noise of traffic drowned what he said.

"It is nothing," he answered with shrug of resignation to his fate at the side of Devorah.

She found herself laughing again at Franco. His disbelieving shaking head and resigned shoulder shrug were comical outward gestures reflecting his real inner struggle.

Within twenty minutes all the newspapers were handed out to the black commuters streaming to the Park Station entrance. They made their way back to the station concourse where they found the others standing in a huddle talking excitedly. Everyone was supremely elated and in very exuberant spirits.

"Mission accomplished!" Reilly announced triumphantly, his face a picture of exhilaration, when Franco and Devorah joined them.

Reilly asked Franco and Devorah if they wanted a lift back to Wits with them in his VW Kombi. Devorah reminded Reilly that they had come to the Park Station in Franco's Volkswagen.

As they walked out of the concourse into the station parking lot Charlie Matheson suggested that they should all go to the pub at the Devonshire Hotel in Jorrison Street, Braamfontein.

"Hey guys I suggest we go have a bit of celebration at the Dev."

"I hate that place, on Fridays it always crowded with drunken Rhodesians," Carmela Litwak responded.

"I think it is a great idea, I agree with Charlie, lets go to the Dev, it will be fun, we can let the Rhodesians entertain us. There is a party in Yeoville tonight, we can hit out there afterwards," said Ariella Pinsky.

"OK, let's all go to the Dev, I will stick all you guys to the first round, and then later we will hit out to the party in Yeoville," Reilley said.

"Who is having a party in Yeoville?" Leah Vilna asked as she climbed into the front passenger seat of the Reilly's Kombi.

"I don't know," Reilly answered as he slammed his door shut and started the engine.

Walking down the dark stairs into the Devonshire Pub they descended into an atmosphere saturated with the strong aroma of split beer. Standing at the bottom of the stairs while their eyes adjusted to the dim light they glanced around for a vacant table. The crowded pub vibrated with intoxicated laugher and lively drunken chatter. Now the bar's sound system began to pump out the Who's _Won't Get Fool Again_.

Devorah getting caught up in a party mood started swaying her hips rhythmically, bobbing her head, and moving her shoulders and arms as they pressed through the crowded pub, following the gang to a table which Reilly had managed to commandeer.

Minutes later the waiter arrived with a tray laden with bottles of black labels which Reilly had ordered for the comrades.

After the third round of beers, Paul shouting above the noise wanted to know whether they should not be heading for the party in Yeoville. It was decided that they would all head off to the party in convoy, with Franco and Devorah following the Kombi. Swallowing slugs of beer from their bottles they quickly downed what was left of their beers before getting up. After draining their bottles of the last dregs of beer they pressed through the crowd as they made their way for the stairs.

Franco looked at his watch as they stepped out onto the pavement outside the pub entrance. It was already 7.30 pm and they had not eaten. Devorah read his mind and suggested they all go first to the Casablanca Roadhouse in End Street in Berea as it was on the way to the party in Yeoville. Everyone was famished, so it was decided that their next stop would be the Casablanca roadhouse for hamburgers, chips, and milkshakes. Devorah sitting in the passenger seat of Franco's Beetle directed him to the Casablanca Roadhouse. Heading down Smit Street they drove in convoy towards the Catholic Cathedral. After passing the Europa Hotel on the left and the old Synagogue on the right, they turned left in Nugget Road and on the top of Nugget Street they turned into End Street and drove into the Casablanca Roadhouse behind the Cathedral. Between the trees they could make out the twinkling lights of the Hillbrow flatland skyline looming above them on top of the hill.

At the party venue in Yeoville the leafy oak tree lined street was parked full. Franco and the others parked their cars around the corner and then make their way as the Wages Com gang to the house which was being rented by a group of Wits students who shared the large five bedroomed house as a commune. The crowd of student revellers who had turned up at the party carrying bottles of Tassenberg now spilled out of the small lounge onto the veranda and into the garden and sidewalk beneath the oak trees. The fragrance of dagga filled the fresh cool night air. Dagga zols were being smoked by groups in the garden and on the sidewalk outside the property. It seemed that the entire Left wing fraternity of Wits University had pitched up. Some lecturers and professors were also mingling with the students. Members of the NUSAS executive who were based in Cape Town had travelled up to Johannesburg on student business. Standing in a group together the NUSAS leaders formed a charmed inner circle of charismatic individuals. They were surrounded by admiring Leftist groupies and hanger-on's.

Chapter 10

All appeals for a university student military deferment were rejected. First Lieutenant Franco Sorrentino was instructed to report at 08 00 hours on Monday the 24 November 1975 with his military kit and in full military battle uniform to his citizen force regiment at the designated military assembly point which happened to be at the Kensington Garrison, 128 Langerman Drive in Kensington, Johannesburg. Failure to report for military duty carried a heavy prison sentence. On the 25th October 1975 he received by registered mail the ominous official brown envelope containing his call-up papers for a three month citizen force military camp. In spite of the South African news blackout international news reports disclosed that the South Africa Defence Force (SADF) was on the brink of a massive invasion of Angola. The invasion code-named Operation Savannah had already been underway for some time. It represented a covert military intervention in the Angolan civil war. Its purpose was to provide essential logistic, strategic, and tactical military support for UNITA and the FNLA in their war against the Russian and Cuban supported MPLA.

It was a foregone conclusion that Franco's military destination was going to be in the middle of the central Angolan theatre of war and their military task would involve the provision of tactical and strategic support at the front for UNITA and the FNLA.

Franco's hopes of registering for his BSc Honours degree in theoretical physics were shattered. The course would be starting in mid-January 1976 and he would only get back at the end of February if he was lucky. His call-up could also be arbitrarily extended for an indefinite period.

Devorah offered to give him a lift to the Kensington Garrison. It seemed that it would be more convenient for both of them if he stayed over at her flat in Hillbrow which was a ten minute drive to the military assembly point, rather than her fetching him in the early morning from Brakpan. Her cousin, Rebecca Kirschenbaum, being sensitive that Franco's call-up had created a huge crisis of anxiety and fear for Devorah, made alternative arrangements so that they could be alone together at the flat on the Sunday night before Franco left for the border.

That Sunday afternoon Devorah drove to the Sorrentino's home to fetch Franco. As expected his mom was distraught, but put on brave face, fighting back her tears and trying to be cheerful as the family gathered in the lounge for tea and cake. After a tearful farewell Franco and Devorah left for Johannesburg.

Franco sat in the passenger seat of Devorah's Volkswagen. The route linking Brakpan and Johannesburg was now familiar to her. She drove up Elliot Road until it connected with the Main Reef Road at Anzac. They followed the Main Reef Road until it reached the connection with Snake Road. Snake Road took them to the highway to Johannesburg which was the fastest and straightest route to Johannesburg from the Far East Rand towns like Benoni, Brakpan, and Springs. This back route to the highway took them through a landscape dominated with the relics of worked out mines, blue gum plantations, slime dams, and mine dumps.

Turning off Snake Road she took the slipway onto the freeway to Johannesburg. Franco sitting in the passenger seat took in the familiar passing scenery. On the left side of the highway at the foot of a huge mine damp lay the Kleinfontein Lake, which was connected to a string of other lakes. Water from a string of lakes flowed into Kleinfontein Lake. On other side of Voortrekker Road lay Middle Lake and on the right hand side of the highway laid Homestead Lake which decanted into Middle Lake.

Soon the iconic Johannesburg skyline framed between rocky hills appeared before them. Once in Hillbrow they decided to go and have something to eat at the Bar B Que Steakhouse beneath the popular Castle Inn. Afterwards they ambled around Hillbrow taking in the sounds, sights, and flashing neon lights. Walking up and down the streets of Hillbrow they wondered past the Deutsche Bier Keller, Lili Marlene, Fontana, Bella Napoli, Donor Kebeb, Fish Hoek, Lucky Lukes Steakhouse, The Ambassador Hotel, Michaels Tavern, Pancake Bar, Milky lane and Chelsea Hotel.

Later, when they arrived back later at the flat, Devorah switched on the TV just in time for the star of Beethoven's 9th Symphony conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

They snuggled together on the couch and watched the concert.

Now at the climax of the fourth movement they listened to the words of Schiller's _Ode to Joy_.

Freude, schöner Götterfunken,  
Tochter aus Elysium,  
Wir betreten feuertrunken,  
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!  
Deine Zauber binden wieder  
Was die Mode streng geteilt;  
Alle Menschen werden Brüder  
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Wem der große Wurf gelungen  
Eines Freundes Freund zu sein;  
Wer ein holdes Weib errungen  
Mische seinen Jubel ein!  
Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele  
Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund!  
Und wer's nie gekonnt, der stehle  
Weinend sich aus diesem Bund!

Freude trinken alle Wesen  
An den Brüsten der Natur;  
Alle Guten, alle Bösen  
Folgen ihrer Rosenspur.  
Küsse gab sie uns und Reben,  
Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod;  
Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben  
und der Cherub steht vor Gott.

Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen  
Durch des Himmels prächt'gen Plan  
Laufet, Brüder, eure Bahn,  
Freudig, wie ein Held zum siegen.

Seid umschlungen, Millionen!  
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!  
Brüder, über'm Sternenzelt  
Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen.  
Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen?  
Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt?  
Such' ihn über'm Sternenzelt!  
Über Sternen muß er wohnen.

When the symphony came to an end, Devorah softly sang opening lines of _The Ode_. Franco listened to her soprano voice in astonishment.

"I have heard you sing before, but you are actually a very talented singer, you have beautiful singing voice. You could become nightclub singer," he said.

"A nightclub singer! What a ridiculous thought. With my body and hair I would look a circus clown," she laughed

"No serious, you could be a star. You could be an opera singer with that voice of yours."

"What do the words mean?" He asked out of curiosity.

She recited an English translation of the words for Franco:

" _Joy, beautiful spark of divinity,  
Daughter from Elysium,  
We enter, fire-imbibed,  
Heavenly, thy sanctuary!_

Your magic bind again  
What custom strictly divided;  
All men become brothers,  
Where your gentle wing resides.

_Who has succeeded in the great attempt,  
To be a friend's friend,  
Whoever has won a lovely woman,  
Add his to the jubilation_! "

"The words are quite beautiful. Well I have definitely won a lovely woman," Franco said, smiling affectionately at Devorah.

Devorah laughed, and her eyes sparkled with contented love for Franco.

"They are beautiful words, beautiful enough for both the Nazis and the Communists. Ironical isn't it," she said.

He took her in his arms and kissed her.

"I want you to make love to me," she said suddenly.

"I want to make love to you tonight more than anything in the world, but what about contraception," he asked

"I am not on the pill. It doesn't matter, I don't want you to use a contraceptive either, it would not be right for tonight. I am sure it will be OK. If I become pregnant it will your baby and I would want to have it," she answered.

"I would like us to take a shower together. I will wash you and you can wash me," she said.

They both undressed in the bath room. She stepped into the show cubicle and adjusted the water temperature until it was comfortably warm. He joined her in the cubicle and they embraced under the shower head. Sharing a sponge and soap they took turns to lather and wash each other.

Looking at Franco's loins she marvelled at the glory of the fully drawn Roman sword that she had provoked. She was surprised to see that it was unhooded. Franco had been circumcised. Magnificent in its splendour it had yet to draw blood for the first time and tonight it will draw blood from her as she yielded herself to Franco. She wrapped her fingers around it and grasped the shaft tightly in the palm of her hand. She could see and feel that being naked before his eyes she had succeeded in arousing his desire for her and this in turn made she feel desirable.

"I am still a virgin," she said softly.

"I am also a virgin," he said.

"I know and I am glad," she answered.

Naked before her glaze and exposed to her caressing touch she found his physique exquisite. Fully clothed his frame appeared to be deceptively slight. She always knew from the strength of his embraces that hidden under his clothing he had a well-toned, muscular, and athletic body. Seen totally naked his musculature was not of the bulky or unsightly kind that body builders have. He had that superb muscular definition usually associated with a male ballet dancer or a gymnast. She found his wet naked body in the shower cubicle breathlessly beautiful, his calves, thighs, buttocks, lower back, abdomen, back, shoulders, upper arms, forearms, chest, and neck, all seemed so perfect and symmetrical. His bodily beauty was an astonishing revelation to her.

She felt his hands moving over her body, lathering her with soap. He hands lingered on her breasts, fondling and caressing them, they filled his hand like firm ripe fruit. When she felt his hand and finger exploring her vulva, and her anus, her legs suddenly felt weak and to avoid collapsing in response to the exquisite pleasure of his caresses she wrapped her arms around his neck, holding onto him tightly for support. Feeling her weakness in response to his caresses, he placed his arm under the back of her thighs and lifted her up with ease. He carried her to her bed and laying her on top of the bed covers he began to make love to her, and when she was ready he mounted her, thrusting his Roman sword into her, penetrating her vagina up to the hilt of its shaft. She cried out, but then relaxed and started to moan softly with pleasure under the stimulation of his steady, graceful, powerful, and rhythmic thrusts.

Afterwards, they lay in each other arms. Devorah felt blissfully happy in a way that she had never experienced before in her life, even the prospect of Franco's leaving for the border could not dampen her sense of exhilaration and contentment.

"I wish this could last forever, I love you so much," she whispered.

"It will, why shouldn't it, I also love you," he answered.

"Do you really mean that, do really mean that you want this to last forever, to be with me forever," she said turning her head towards him, lifting herself up onto her elbow. Now learning on her elbow she looked deep and earnestly into his eyes.

"Yes, I do, in a way we are one flesh now, we should never have physical intimacy with any other person ever again," he said.

"I can live with that," she said laying her head back down on the pillow, her face facing close to his face.

"Are you saying this because you are a Roman Catholic?" she asked with smile.

"No."

"I can live with you forever, this is how much I want to be with you," he said.

"Forever is a very long time, can anyone make such a commitment?" She asked.

"I don't know, but right now that is how I feel, we are good together, we have something going for us," he said.

"I often have doubts about myself, even when I am with you, I often wonder what you see in me, especially physically," she said.

"You still don't believe that anyone can love you for no other reason than for yourself," he said earnestly.

"It is good to hear that, I am just being silly I suppose," she said.

"I don't think we should underestimate the strength of the bond that has formed between us," he said.

"Yes I know, but we have been only being going out for six months," she said.

"People fall in love at first sight and then remain together for the rest of their natural lives," he said.

"I can't imagine myself being with anyone but you," she confessed.

"It is the same with me, and I accept you as you are, I don't want to change you, I want you to be you," he replied.

She looked at Franco with a soft gentle smile on her face.

"My dearest Franco, you believe in the transcendent, in the infinite, in absolutes and universals, you believe in something that is Ultimate, that is the source of all meaning and to which you are answerable to in some strange and mysterious way, but I don't believe in anything that is Ultimate or absolute," she said.

"I know, and I am not asking you to change any of your convictions for my sake. But you also have to accept me as I am. That is the package deal that comes with me. If I accept you as an atheist and as a Communist, you have to accept me as one who believes in the reality of universals, and also as a consequence of this, a one who believes in the existence of a being, someone who is also a person, who as the Ultimate Being is also the source of all meaning and to whom I am personally answerable," he said

"You drive a hard bargain, but I accept the terms and conditions of the package deal as you put, but that does mean that I have to commit myself to believing in any absolute or ultimate being," she said.

"Can our love be strong enough to overcome that chasm between us, so that we can still love each other in spite of our different beliefs," he asked.

"I also cannot see why not. I don't have any hang-up about your belief in God. We are actually deeply compatible in spite of this one difference. Your belief in God does not affect me, you have your reasons for belief, and I have my reasons for my non-belief, we have made peace with that as a couple, we still love each other in spite of that one difference," she said.

It had turned out to be a stifling warm night. It had been a hot day. The windows of Devorah's bedroom windows were wide open; she had also pulled the curtains and lace curtains away from the two open windows in order to increase the ventilation of the room. There was not even the faintest breeze in the air. Finally she stood up on the bed and pulled the ceiling fan cord. It seemed that every building in Hillbrow was re-radiating heat. In a very short time, because of the heat, her hair had dried completely and had turned into a wild overgrown garden.

"Are your thirsty? Should I go get some ice water?" she asked.

She put on her gown and disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with a tray carrying a glass jug filled with a mixture of cold water and ice cubes, and two glass tumblers. She put the bed side lamp on, turned the main bedroom light and ceiling fan off. After going together to the bathroom to brush their teeth, Devorah pulled off the covers from the bed onto the floor. She took her gown off and climbed naked into the bed under the sheet that she pulled over both of them, leaning over she put the lamp off.

After kissing him good night, she rolled over, turning her back towards him, lying in a foetal position she pushed her buttocks into his lower abdomen, putting his arm around he pulled her body close to his. They lay for a time in silence enjoying the comfort of the physical and intimate closeness of their naked bodies.

"Are you still awake," she asked in soft force.

"Yes," he answered.

"What are thinking," she asked.

"Nothing specific. I am just enjoying holding you and being so close to you," he said.

"I feel the same," she said.

"If anything happened to you, I don't think I will be able to continue living without you," she said.

"Don't say that say," he said.

" I am serious Franco, I love you so much that I will die without you, if I had to lose you I would not be able to continue living, I would not be able to endure the emotional pain of loss," she said.

"I know, and I feel the same for you, but we should rather focus on living for each other, and not become preoccupied with death, and the fear of losing each other," he said.

"I know," she said.

Devorah fell asleep. She lay asleep nestled tightly against Franco. He struggled to fall asleep. He lay on his back, as still as he could, with eyes closed enjoying the feel of Devorah soft warm body against his side. Eventually he turned around towards her and put his arm over her waist, pulling her close to him. He lay holding her for what seemed hours, but he could not fall asleep. In the end he opened his eyes, lifting his arm from her waist, he held up his wrist near his eyes so that he could see the luminous glow of his watch. It was 3.30 am. Devorah stirred next him. As she turned over to put her arm around him, he automatically also rolled over and she cuddled against his back.

"Franco, are you awake?" She whispered after a while.

"Yes, I can't sleep," he answered.

"What is it my darling?" She asked.

"I feel so conflicted and at the same time so powerless. My life has become dominated by irreconcilable moral contradictions and moral paradoxes. I have become intellectually sympathetic to a Marxist understanding of political economy and at the same time I am a Catholic. I find Apartheid a morally repugnant, morally indefensible and intellectually an irrational political ideology, and at the same time I am an officer in an elite citizen special force regiment whose military objective is to defend and perpetuate this very economic, social, and political system that is based on Apartheid. My supreme commanding officer is the prime minister, John Vorster."

What Franco had said caught her by surprise even though she had sensed that he had developed Leftist sympathies. There had developed between them an unspoken mutual understanding that he had become some kind of Marxist orientated fellow traveller. He had never criticized, or expressed strong reservations about the Communist project, so she interpreted this as evidence of his tacit acceptance of revolution and Communism as their shared goals.

Yet even so, she could see that Franco had a lot on his mind.

"There is a lot of stuff about myself that I have not told you about and which I now feel awkward about and I am worried that it may jeopardize our relationship, because you may come to see me in a different light, an unfavourable light."

"What are you talking about?" There was a concerned tone in her voice.

"It is about the army call-up, and what is happening in Angola, everything has become so complicated. I really feel morally compromised. And I also feel helpless and trapped. I am feeling overwhelmed with all kinds of conflicts. I am going to be involved in something that I don't believe in. I feel morally corrupted, I feel morally incapacitated," he said.

"How can you say that, I don't understand?" She said.

"I have been become sucked into something which I cannot get out of or escape. For the majority of South African white males, membership of the citizen-force is compulsory and it is extremely difficult to avoid the citizen force call-up duties that are imposed upon white males. We cannot become non-members. No one can simply leave their citizen-force regiment by writing a letter of resignation stating that they no longer wish to be a member. None of us have any choice in the matter. Either you comply with the law of the land or face the consequences of transgressing the law. In a very real sense we are not free. We have no choice but to comply. The penalties for not complying with your call-up duties are extremely punitive, involving heavy fines and even prison sentences."

"I am aware of your situation," she said gently.

"I know, but things are a lot more complicated than you think," he said.

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"It is a long and convoluted story. I have got myself into a situation. After my national service I was placed in an elite infantry regiment called the Far East Rand Special Forces Infantry Regiment. As strange as it may sound it is a genuine Special Forces citizen regiment. It has been quite a successful citizen force military experiment. It has evolved into a dedicated and committed elite corps of citizen force part-time soldiers. It is led by a team of high calibre citizen force officers and non-commissioned officers. I was promoted to the rank of full Lieutenant because I had voluntarily attended all the courses and diligently fulfilled all the requirements that were necessary to earn the promotion. Because I am an officer I am required to attend regimental meetings in the evening at least twice a month. When the official business is over we are all under a kind of obligation or code of honour to have a few beers and socialize in the officer's pub and talk about army stuff. It is supposed to build up camaraderie and loyalty to our regiment. It would be bad form not to have a few beers with your fellow officers," he said.

"Bad form? This sounds so absolutely English and you are Italian. I would never have thought that you would ever use a phrase like that. Bad form! You know how funny and old fashioned that sounds. Are you saying that obeying the law of the land, getting yourself promoted to full Lieutenant, going to these regimental meetings and then having some beers with your fellow officers has morally corrupted you? " She asked.

"It becomes morally corrupting because it is so complicated, so insidious, and so seductive. It is like being a member of the Nazi SS elite. It is like being a trusted member of a religious sect, or of a gang, or of the mafia. The commanding officer of the regiment is a guy called Colonel KobusVolkwyn. He is very charismatic and all the officers are extremely loyal to him. After a few beers everyone speaks freely and you hear all kind of military and security stuff some of which is in itself extremely fascinating, but other stuff is quite horrifying to hear about, and it is hard to believe that this kind of stuff has been going in Namibia, Angola, Rhodesia and Mozambique. But to know about it, to be privy to things that have been done, which the public does not know about, and this can be morally corrupting, " he said.

"What kinds of things have been done?" she wanted to know.

"Atrocities, all kinds of atrocities," he said.

"Have you been involved in any atrocities," she asked.

"Fortunately I have not being involved in any atrocities," he said.

"But I have heard stories, unbelievable stories."

"Many of the atrocities were so horrifying and so surreal that they are beyond belief. In one story a guerrilla was tortured to death in the lounge of a suburban home in Salisbury Rhodesia by military intelligence officers while the wife of one of the officers, the owner of the house, sat in the bed room playing a John Denver's _Country Road_ 7 single over and over at full blast while the torture was going on so as to drown out the screams and pleadings."

"How to you know this?"

"I heard the full story from a military Special Forces operative at a counter-insurgency training camp that I was on. He was one of the Rhodesians in that house that night. He hates _Country Road_. He never wants to hear it ever again," he said.

Devorah listened in silence in the dark.

"Then there were stories of captured SWAPO guerrillas being thrown out of helicopters. They would take two or three SWAPO guerrillas up in the helicopter and throw one out to get the other two to speak. After they got the information out of the other two they would kill them as well. The same helicopter drill was followed in Mozambique, Rhodesia, and Angola. In Mozambique and Angola they were also throwing FRELIMO and MPLA captives alive from aircraft at high altitudes into the sea."

"Do you think there is any truth to these stories?" She asked

"I have no reason to doubt their truth. The stories were doing the rounds. You heard unconnected people independently telling the same stories. I have heard several times stories about the dumping of SWAPO, FRELIMO, and MPLA captives from aircraft at high altitude into the sea while they were still alive. I have also heard a number of times about captives being thrown from helicopters. The stories are true, I don't doubt any of them, you cannot make up the stories that I have heard, it is not possible, only a sick mind would want invent stories of atrocities that were not true," he said.

"We have the most bizarre situation imaginable in this country. It is an illegal and a punishable offence in terms of the law to stand up for what is morally right with respect to your conscience concerning good and evil," he said.

"What is law, and what is the relationship between law and the idea of the true and the good?" He asked.

"I suppose laws are norms or rules for regulating conduct so that the general public good prevails," Devorah answered philosophically.

"What is the connection between law and justice?" Franco asked.

"From a Jewish point of view I think justice and morality should be inherent in law and not distinct or separate from it," she said.

"Laws should be for the sake of justice, in other words law should be primarily about achieving justice," she elaborated

"Is justice for its own sake the good to strive for?" Franco asked.

"Well first we need to ask: what is justice? Should justice be about achieving fairness and equality? More broadly speaking, should justice be about achieving that which is considered by universal, logical, and rational consensus to be the supreme good?" She said.

"Basically laws promulgated by the state appear to be nothing more than social conventions or rules for conduct which are enforced by the state through the means of penalties in the case of premeditated infringement or intentional transgression of these laws," she said.

"Yes, and but this also results in irrational and absurd legal situations, especially when the law is not directly related to the realization of the GOOD or justice. In South Africa we have the absurd situation where it a punishable offence in terms of the law of the land when a person decides to take a stand which involves resisting the doing of evil, and where doing evil is good and commendable in terms of the law, and doing good by doing what is morally right is evil in terms of the law," he argued.

She listened to what Franco was saying and began to understand the struggle he was facing.

"It is not only a case where resisting evil is equivalent to breaking the law in South Africa, but also the very idea of the existence of laws which are intrinsically unjust is in itself completely irrational, it is like trying to square a circle. Surely law should be rational; surely the notion of law or the idea of law is about justice and justice is always about the good. From a rational perspective, the idea that a law can be unjust is a contradiction, the idea of what is just should be rational and in accord with reason," he said.

Franco continued to speak out his heart.

"There are Higher Laws," he said.

"There is always a Higher Court in which you will face the final reckoning of a Higher Law, for whatever immoral act you were coerced into committing in obedience to the law of your country. As long as you have free will, you are morally culpable, which means you cannot escape from being a moral agent as long as you have free will. You can only be a moral agent if you have genuine free will. I think I possess the power to exercise my will in a free fashion. In theory, if I genuinely have free will, then whatever my intentions may be, I could ultimately be judged, in a Higher Court, as a morally accountable person or legally culpable agent like the Nazis were at Nuremburg. Even if I am coerced by the laws of the land to commit actions which are intrinsically evil, I am still faced with the prospect of being held morally liable as an individual, in a Higher Court, for my actions, even when I was merely acting under the orders of my superior officer. Even when I am simply obeying orders as a soldier, I can still be held morally responsible as an individual for carrying out these orders, especially when they violate universally held moral or ethical norms.

"For all my decisions and all my actions, and I could be held accountable for contravening a Higher Law, higher than the South African laws, in a Higher Court, with higher standards of justice, with higher standards of morality, higher than those of the South African judiciary, like the court at Nuremburg in relation to judging actions performed under the legal regime of the Third Reich. I am an officer in a citizen force infantry regiment I am under orders enforced by law to defend an evil and immoral system, I am in the same situation as the officers in German army who were instructed to invade Russia by Hitler," he explained.

"As an officer I am an active link in a chain of command that goes right up to the Prime Minister, John Vorster. Because I am this active link in this long and complicated chain of command I have in a sense freely chosen to become a cog in the Apartheid machine. As a cog in this machine or huge apparatus of oppression, I carry out all the orders that are passed down to me, and in this way I become a moral accomplice in the promotion and perpetuation of Apartheid and atrocities. If Apartheid is a crime against humanity, then it can be logically argued, and possibly legally argued in a higher international or transcendental court of law, that I am guilty of being both an active agent and a willing accomplice in the commission of Apartheid crimes against my fellow South Africans who are black. Ultimately, wherever may have been proposed as the immediate military and political objectives by the South African government, the border war actually has no other final or higher raison d'être than the continued perpetuation of Apartheid, which basically boils down to the maintenance of white power and white interests at expense of blacks. It is patronising to believe that the blacks need protection from a Communist onslaught when in actual fact they want to be liberated from Apartheid."

Devorah lay quietly in the dark, snuggled against him.

"Devorah, are you awake?" he asked softly.

"Yes, I am listening to what you saying," she answered.

"So you are worried that your attendance of monthly regimental meetings and your status as an officer in the South African citizen force, and the fact you are going to be involved in a war as an officer that you do wish to be a part of, is going to harm our relationship and make me think less of you?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered.

"Why?" She asked, sounding incredulous.

"It was just a thought," he said.

"There must also be something else bothering you," she said.

"I don't know. I just feel stressed," he said.

"It is natural. I feel stressed as well," she said.

"I think you must try and get some sleep now," she said.

"Do you think that all the German people who did not actively resist the Nazis were responsible for the Holocaust?" She asked

"Yes in a way," he answered.

"Do you think that all whites are guilty for the crime of Apartheid simply because by doing nothing, no matter how small to prevent its existence they in way condoned it? In a similar way do you think that all Germans should be judged guilty for the Holocaust because they may have passively condoned the murder on millions of Jews by doing nothing to prevent it?" She asked.

"Yes, whites have not only condoned Apartheid they have endorsed its existence in all kinds of ways. Most significantly, they have condoned and endorsed its existence at the expense of blacks. Their material benefitting from Apartheid has necessarily depended on the marginalization, oppression, and exclusion of blacks," he said.

"Are you also admitting that by activity participating in your regiment as an officer, and by carrying out your duties as an officer in accordance with the command structure that you fall under you are not merely passively condoning Apartheid, but by your actions you are actively endorsing the existence and perpetuation of Apartheid?" She asked.

"Yes, I am."

"And you were worried that I was going to judge you and condemn you, and cease to love you?" She asked.

"Yes."

"Well I am not judging you and nor am I condemning you, I understand and appreciate your situation," she said in a comforting tone of voice."

"I condemn myself."

"Do you feel guilt?"

"Yes, I am plagued with guilt."

"You are plagued with guilt because you are a Catholic," she chuckled, trying to reassure him.

"Are you afraid? Do you feel fear?"

"I feel very mortal, but I am not afraid of dying. I have managed to work though the fear of dying; it is part of the self-discipline and personal self-preparation that is expected of a soldier and especially of an officer. Anyway everybody has to die some time."

"A soldier's grave is by the side of the road," he added.

"That sounds so terrible and so forlorn," she responded.

"But it is true. It is more than a metaphor about the life of a soldier," he said.

"Did you do any self-preparation that involves praying and confession," she asked.

"Yes."

She smiled to herself in the dark at Franco's Catholicism. He has made peace with his God, all is well with his soul, she thought to herself. She wondered whether he had confessed to Father Agostino his great guilt and self-condemnation regarding his sin of shoring up Apartheid.

"Franco, you are a true believer. I admire you for that. At least you are honest. I think if I were in your situation I would be a nervous wreck. To be honest with you, I have suffered from anxiety and panic attacks about your call up for border duty. I have tried to wear a brave face and appear cheerful. But to be honest I am worried about your safety. I don't want anything to happen to you. I am also glad that we have had this conversation," she said.

"War is a complicated business, and morality in war is even more complicated. You know I was surprised to learn that Paul Feyerabend was drafted into the Germany army and was wounded on the Russian Front. After the war he met up Wittgenstein in Vienna. Wittgenstein invited him to come and study with him at Cambridge but unfortunately Wittgenstein died shortly thereafter," she said

"Why are you telling me all this?" Franco asked out of interest. He knew about Paul Feyerabend and Wittgenstein from his philosophy of science arts course.

"I just want you to know that I understand how complex things can get. Good people, good Germans, and good Austrians found themselves in the Germany Army fighting on the wrong side for a horrific cause. I don't think all Germans who were conscripted into the German Army were irredeemably bad. Even Wittgenstein was caught up in the madness of war. He actually enlisted. He joined the Austrian army as a volunteer. He went to war not really for the sake of defending his country so much as wanting to find himself. I can understand what has happened to you. You are the grandson of a war veteran. As a first generation Italian South African you come from a poor immigrant Italian family who through hard work have managed to build a life in South Africa. Your family are proud of your achievements, including the fact that you are an officer, and they have high expectations for you. They expect you as an officer to honour your call-up obligations even if it is for Apartheid."

After a moment's reflection Devorah spoke:

"Everything is complicated in this world, every cause faces the risk of betrayal, every principle faces the risk of betrayal, in one way or another everyone becomes a traitor, people are weak and vulnerable, even the most dedicated revolutionary motivated by the grandest of intentions can turn into a monster, good people become bad, and bad people become good, nothing is certain, the future is open to every possibility, the only virtues are truth and justice, there is nothing else. You can only try to live the virtuous life of truth and justice. You can only try as best as you can to live the good life under the circumstances that you find yourself in. We are thrown into the world; we live in a state of thrown-ness. The world we are thrown into is a world that already exists as one of countless possibilities, and we have to find our own way through the world that we have been thrown into. We have to make it the best possible world by upholding the virtues of truth and justice in whatever way we are able. Sometime we find ourselves in situations where truth and justice as virtues are suspended, we find ourselves groping in a valley of darkness. You are going to find yourself groping through that valley of darkness, but I will be waiting for you when you come out the other side. Just remember that, let that be your hope. You are going to come back a better person. The trial of war can be a purifying experience. So be strong."

"I will be strong."

Chapter 11

For several blocks all parking space in Langerman Drive in the vicinity of the Kensington Garrison had been taken up. Already at 7.30 am crowds of men in their floppy bush huts and sun faded brown army uniforms milled around under the oak trees outside the Garrison with their wives, mothers, fathers, and girlfriends. Devorah managed to find parking in a side street some distance away. After slinging his olive green military duffle bag over his shoulder they walked hand in hand down Langerman Drive towards the Kensington Garrison. To any passer-by they would have struck an image of an odd couple.

Devorah was slightly less plump than four months ago. She wore white takkies, faded denim jeans, and an oversized black T-shirt with a silkscreen emblazoned image of Picasso's most famous work, the Guernica over her ample bosom. She wore no makeup and her coiffure resembled a work of defeat. She had unsuccessfully tried to tame it by styling into some kind of controlled bouffant but instead it had turned into a leaping bush fire.

Franco laughed when he saw the Guernica.

"Its symbolism will be lost on crowds at the Garrison."

"This morning I actually feel like your wife she said squeezing his hand."

"Well we not going to have much of honeymoon my darling," he said with chuckle.

As they drew closer to the gates of the Garrison, ordinary riflemen, corporals, sergeants and staff-sergeants standing outside the Garrison grounds on the pavement of Langerman Drive began to salute Franco's two stars. To the amusement of Devorah, Franco responded formally to each salute with a clean deft salute of his own. It was a novelty for her to witness the flurry of salutes.

They stood at the gate for a while. Devorah stared into the grounds. Numerous olive green military Bedfords were parked on the lawns within the Garrison grounds. Bordering the perimeter of the Garrison lawns stood a two-story L-shaped dark face brick building that resembled an old school. Soldiers were already assembling into their companies on the lawns. Roll calls were being taken. She became emotional and tried to fight back the tears. She clung to him, her right arm around his waist.

"Did you pack the books that were in the lounge? I don't recall you packing them in your bag," she asked with a look of worried concern on her face.

He had packed _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ by García Marquez.

It was time for him to leave. Tears began to brim in their eyes. She put both her arms around him and hugged him tightly with her face pressed against his shoulder. She began weep softly as she clung onto him. He kissed her cheeks which had become wet with tears. He kissed her passionately on her lips.

"You have my contact details. The letters will get me wherever I am. I will write as well."

The citizen force troops of his regiment were already queuing up to climb into the back of the Bedfords.

"I have to go. I love you," he said after bidding her farewell.

"I love you too my darling, take care, and look after yourself," she called out.

He joined his regiment climbing into the front passenger seat of one of the Bedfords. She stood at the gate watching him. He saw her still standing there. She was waving her arm. Leaning out of the passenger window he waved continuously as the Bedford drove out of the grounds into Langerman Drive turning right, following the rest of the convoy. The convoy of Bedford trucks proceeded northwards along the Ben Schoeman Freeway towards Pretoria. At the Voortrekker Monument the convoy took the Eeufees Road off ramp proceeding westwards to Voortrekker Hoogte Military Base. Franco was surprised when the convoy drove passed the main gates of the military base. The convoy proceeded along a winding road that took them through a Pretoria industrial township. At a busy intersection they turned left into the main road to Hartbeespoort Dam.

Just past Atteridgeville they turned left onto a gravel road and after a short distance the convoy of Bedford trucks came to a halt next to a military tent camp that had been erected in the tall grass of an open veld. Their temporary bivouac for the next two nights was situated right next door to the Atteridgeville Location.

From the encampment of rows of olive green tents an unusual topographical landmark drew his attention. Behind Atteridgeville stood a high steep grass covered hillock. On top of the hill stood a lonely but conspicuous turquoise painted township church, strangely and starkly silhouetted against the blue midday November sky. A staff sergeant began to scream. Franco turned around and gazed up for a few moments at the church.

Kompanie! Aantree! Aantree! Aantree!

After dumping their kitbags into a pile in the veld the citizen force troops assembled (aangetree) as a company in order of platoons.

Aaandag!

They stood in silence at attention in knee-deep green grass. Given the huge massing of troops and together with the shortage of accommodation space within Voortrekker Hoogte many of the citizen-force regiments that had been mobilized for Operation Savannah were now encamped in the surrounding veld at various sites outside the perimeter fence of the Voortrekker Hoogte Military Base. As the afternoon wore on the mercury rose to the mid-thirties and exposed to the blazing sun the troops overcome with boredom, but powerless to remedy their situation, stood in long queues waiting for their turn to be processed in a sweltering marquee. Once inside the large tent their personal details were verified, last will and testament signed, blood drawn for blood typing, medically examined for fitness to serve, and following their tetanus and yellow fever injections, they proceeded to a Bedford where they were issued with their R1 rifles, and on receipt of their rifles they joined the growing ranks of one of the two companies assembled some distance away in the veld. By 4.30 pm the processing of the 200 riflemen had been completed.

The military hates idleness, so the men were divided into platoons, and drilled in the veld among the rocks and termite mounds until just before sun set. At 5.30 pm the men, sunburned and soaked in sweat, were dismissed. After collecting there duffle bags they dragged themselves to their tents. At six-o'-clock they queued outside the mobile kitchen to receive their supper. They sat in small groups in the veld with their varkpans laden with rice, potatoes and stewed meat with vegetables.

Late that night Franco learnt at the officer's briefing that they were on standby to be airlifted to Rundu, a military base in the South West African that was very close to border with Angola. As an elite fighting unit they were be spared the tortuous journey by train to Grootfontein in South West Africa. None of the troops or non-commissioned officers had been made aware that this was going to be their immediate destination. From Rundu the motorized columns of infantry, accompanied by Eland armoured cars would advance to the front in central Angola.

The next day after breakfast at six-o'-clock the regiment were transported by Bedfords to the Voortrekker Hoogte shooting range were they spent the entire day target practicing under the full glare of the blazing Pretoria sun.

That night it began to rain.

Forty eight hours later after receiving their R1 rifles, tetanus and yellow fever inoculations the men of the regiment bid farewell to the nearby sleeping Atteridgeville Location as the convoy of Bedfords rumbled away in the dark to Waterkloof Air Base. At 4.00 am sharp the rain began to pour down in sheets as the convoy of Bedfords transporting the regiment crept onto the concrete aprons at the Waterkloof Airbase. The Bedfords stopped and parked in a row next to huge aircraft hangers that had a foreboding appearance in the dark.

Under the cold white illumination of tall flood lights the shining wet Lockheed C-130 Hercules four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft appeared ominously huge and shining in the rain, casting a gigantic monster shark- like shadow against the side of an enormous hanger. The troops starting piling out of the Bedfords in the rain, they assembled in a long queue. The wet grim faced citizen force troops with rifles slung over shoulders and carrying bulky duffle bags began to silently board the aircraft, stepping cautiously up the lowered ramp assembly located at the rear of the aircraft. Shuffling around in the dim interior they felt their way to the small side facing webbed seats and strapped themselves in.

It became pitch dark inside as the hydraulically operated ramp closed like a giant trap door. The pilot started the engines. Franco listened to the distinctive sound of the aircraft's four Allison turboprop engines. The Hercules jerked forward and started to taxi slowly towards the runway in the driving rain. It came to brief halt, the engines began to roar, and the planed suddenly lurched forward rapidly gathering momentum as it sped down the runway. Lifting and then rising steeply into the black dawn it banked sharply and turned in a wide arc away from the rising sun. Captain Duvenhage who was sitting next to Franco shouted above the drone of the aircraft engines:

"I think we are all in for one hellavu fucking adventure, an adventure of a life-time, we will never ever have another chance to be in real fucking war. Thank God we are not going to be guarding some bloody dam or any hydroelectric plant at Ruacana."

Franco deep in thought was caught off-guard by the comment. He felt numb. Nothing mattered anymore. He managed to grin, even though nothing mattered anymore, the die had been cast, they were going into that great unknown which is called war. Rundu was a few hours away, and over the border, north of Rundu, civil war raged throughout Angola.

Captain Duvenhage was grinning broadly. He liked Franco a lot. Colonel Volkwyn and Major Kleynhans were also grinning broadly; they also like Franco a lot. He was in their minds a model soldier, a model officer. And now they were all happy to be off to fight a war. Colonel Volkwyn was proud of his regiment.

They were happy that the regiment was going to be deployed in central Angola. Most of the citizen force regiments would be operating in the southern parts of Angola, where they would be deployed in four combat groups in south to protect the Caluegue/Ruacana Water Scheme and the refugee camp.

A few hours later the Hercules began its descent and soon it touched down in the bright sunlight of Rundu close to the Angola border. Except for Colonel Kobus Volkwyn and Major Christiaan Duvenhuge no one else including Franco knew that the Hercules had landed on a remote stretch of the airbase runway at Rundu. For all they knew that could have been anywhere in Africa.

The ramp was lowered and while the company disembarked from the Hercules two Bedfords and convoy of Unimogs arrived. The staff sergeant began to bark.

"Aantree!"

Carrying their rifles and duffle bags the men quickly assembled into company formation behind the rear end of the Hercules. All the men standing in the blazing sun whose membership of their citizen force regiment was not voluntary were under compulsion by the force of law to render military service to the State of the Republic of South Africa wherever and whenever the politicians deemed it fit in their wisdom. The men standing before Franco had been drawn from all walks of life and most were married with families. Most of them were in their late twenties, and the majority were a lot older than Franco. After their national service at one of the SADF Infantry Battalions they were by an administrative stroke of a ballpoint pen randomly assigned to the Brakpan based Special Forces citizen regiment. Among this hapless company of men, were accountants, lawyers, boiler makers, engineers, teachers, fitter and turners, travelling salesmen, plumbers, electricians, businessmen and traffic cops. Franco gazed at their faces, many of them he recognized, they were all from the East Rand, but today none of them looked like Special Force soldiers. They were all subdued, and grim faced, many looked depressed, and none were smiling. In spite of the dazzling glare of the bright sun and the shrieking white skies overhead, and the full blast of the heat, the pathos of the situation was palpable. Not knowing that they just landed at Rundu, the moment had become frozen with uncertainty; time seemed to be weighed down by the most unbearable bleakness. War loomed on their horizon. It seemed that their fates were sealed forever.

Without ceremony the troops were immediately driven off in a convoy of Unimogs to a huge empty aircraft hanger. After a brief speech by Colonel Volkwyn about duty, honour, obligations, and cowardice they were instructed that all who wish to freely volunteer to fight in Angola should step five paces forward. Those who do not freely wish to volunteer to fight in Angola should step five paces backwards.

"OK all volunteers who wish to fight step five paces forward. All cowards who are afraid to fight step five paces backwards," the Sergeant Major bellowed.

"Step now!" The Sergeant Major barked.

After a brief hesitation the entire regiment shuffled forward. Under the supreme authority and power of the sovereign state to engage in war wherever it wished, every last man stepped five paces forward, freely volunteering to fight in Angola for no other reason than they did not want to be seen as cowards. Not a single man possessed the moral courage to take the five steps backwards. They had chosen the possibility of death, rather than been seen as cowards.

Franco and the other officers, and the NCOs were not given the opportunity to decide on their fate. They stood grim faced and resolute before the two companies.

Everyone then assembled into a long queue to hand over their ID documents, and to sign a declaration that they had of their own free will volunteered to participate as soldiers of the Republic of South Africa in an extraordinary expeditionary force which was going to invade Angola, and finally they signed a confidentiality agreement which bound them forever to an oath of silence.

After they had signed all the documentation and re-assembled into their two companies the Sergeant Major announced:

"Whatever takes place in Angola, whatever you see, hear or do, stays in Angola, whatever remains in your head after Angola goes to the grave without a single word ever been spoken to anyone."

He then read through all the terms and conditions of the legal documents that they had signed, emphasizing that any disclosures will result in a jail sentence.

They were given new non-SADF camouflage uniforms made in Russia and China. They were immediately ordered to strip off their SADF uniforms and put on the Russian or Chinese military fatigues. Dressed in their new fatigues they were driven off to a tent camp while the regimental officers where driven off to the Rundu HQ.

Following the officers briefing on the war in Angola the officers were given their orders. They were informed that their platoons were going to be integrated into the UNITA and FNLA infantry battalions that formed part of each of the following three Combat Groups, Foxbat, X-Ray and Orange.

In the orders coming down from the top SADF brass they were told that they going to be operating very closely with black Angolan soldiers and they were told that they needed to forget about all their Apartheid attitudes regarding blacks when they got to the front. All the black Angola soldiers had to be treated with respect and with the comradeship of fellow combatants. Maintaining good comradely race relations with the black Angolans was of utmost importance. Franco, the other officers and the NCOs were tasked with communicating this message of non-racism to the rank and file.

Franco and the rest of the command structure carried out their orders to the letter of the word and communicated the new non-racist military policy to the rank and file, warning them in no uncertain terms, that any form of racism was strictly forbidden and would not be tolerated in the theatre of the Angolan war, they would be fighting, eating and sleeping with black Angolan soldiers who had to be treated as equals in a spirit of comradely friendship.

Franco was informed that he would be on standby as the most suitably qualified officer to lead any tactical or strategic special force operation that was deemed necessary once they reached the front.

Chapter 12

Unknown to the Western aligned intelligence community the Cubans who had already successfully forced a reluctant Soviet Union into the Angolan conflict with the launching of _Operacion Carlota_ on the 4th of November 1975. _Carlota_ was the name of the Angolan African female slave who led one of the first slave rebellions in Cuba. Against its better judgement Russian found itself committing scarce military assets into a conflict that they could ill afford. Angola threated to become bottomless drain on Russian resources.

In reality, unknown to the Western aligned intelligence community the last thing the Russian's really wanted was to be roped into a military adventure in Southern Africa. In 1975 Russia was in trouble on many fronts, they could not really afford to become involved in the internationalization of a conflict in some remote little known African country.

Yet no one in the international community, and not even the Soviets themselves, had fully comprehended the extent of crisis that the Soviet Union was about face. In reality Russia was terminally ill. Like the Russians, the Nationalist Party government in South Africa had also not yet fully grasped the fact that the Apartheid edifice they had built was in serious trouble, and like the Soviet Union, white ruled South Africa was steadily imploding as an unworkable system.

For the Americans things had already fallen apart in Vietnam and the unravelling of the political situation in Angola into a fall blown civil war remained _terra incognita_ when it came to US-African foreign policy. Similarly, for the Russians Angola it was also _terra incognita_. For everyone, the Angolan crisis could not have come at a worse time, especially when none of the Cold War superpowers knew anything about Angola. In spite of the American reluctance, CIA officials operating in southern Africa managed to persuade the US to embark on a limited strategic intervention in the Angolan civil war by providing sufficient material, logistic and strategic military support for the FNLA and UNITA so as to shift the outcome of the civil war in their favour.

Unknown to the general public in South Africa, but common knowledge to the rest of the world, it had become obvious by December 1975 that Operation Savannah was rapidly unravelling into a disastrous military and political debacle. The presence of South African troops in Angola was no longer a secret to the rest of the world. When this became common knowledge the American support for FNLA and UNITA was suspended. Soviet military hardware in support of FAPLA's campaign against UNITA, the FNLA and their newly acquired South African military ally, had been pouring into Luanda, shipped by sea and aircraft directly from Russia.

A divided leadership in Pretoria together with a steady loss of strategic and tactical advantage had placed the initiative firmly back into the hands of the Cuban supported MPLA, which was now preparing to an offensive. Soon they were recovering ground and strategic bridgeheads that they had previously lost in the first phase of the SADF invasion. The SADF had committed itself to a risk adverse troop deployment strategy so as to minimize the loss of life with regard to white South Africans. This strategy placed severe constraints on the overall efficiency and effectiveness of Operation Savannah with respect to its military objectives. By shifting most of the burden of military engagement onto the shoulders of the poorly trained FNLA and UNITA soldiers the effectiveness of the SADF offensive was blunted.

Chapter 13

At three o' clock on Wednesday the 10th of December 1975 after having enjoyed an outdoor lunch in the shade of a hundred year old Oak tree at the Lanzerac Hotel in Stellenbosch, Devorah and her cousin Rebecca completed the last leg of their journey in Devorah's Volkswagen to their Cape Town holiday destination. They booked into the Ambassador by the Sea at 34 Victoria Road, Bantry Bay. Built on a rocky cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean the hotel was situated in an excellent location. Clifton beach was a short 3 minutes' walk away and the Pavilion on the Sea Point esplanade was a mere 5 minutes' walk away.

Their ocean view hotel room was hot and stuffy. Rebecca opened the windows and unpacked her suitcase while Devorah showered. After her shower Devorah opened her suitcase on the bed rummaged through its contents while Rebecca showered. Because of the afternoon heat with the temperature approaching 34 oC she decided to put on a cool short white light cotton summers dress with a hidden back centre zip closure. Before putting on the dress she examined her figure in the mirror. She saw that she had definitely lost weight. She noticed that her body seemed to have become more curvaceous than being simply well padded and rounded. After Franco had left for the border she had lost her appetite and had lapsed into a mild depression. She pulled the dress over her head, zipped up the back and slipped on her leather sandals. She sat on the bed for a while staring at the mirror on the cupboard doors. She felt that she needed to be alone for a while. She picked up her woven straw shoulder bag containing her purse, sunglasses, pen, writing pad, envelopes, and tissues. Grabbing her wide brimmed straw hat, she popped her head into the bathroom to tell Rebecca that she was going for a walk.

"Hope you don't mind, I am feeling a bit out of sorts, I need to go for a long walk to clear my mind. We can do something together later today. On the dresser there are some pamphlets. I see that there are some good movies at the Labia. Maybe we can go see a movie and try out some restaurant afterwards if you like," she said.

"No it is fine, I understand. I need to have a nap. Catch up with you later," Rebecca answered from the shower cubicle.

Outside at 16.45 pm the December sun still hung high over the Atlantic Ocean in the west. It would only be setting in about 3 hours' time at 8.00 pm. The glare was still sharp and the atmosphere felt sultry, but fortunately not too stifling or sticky. She pushed her hat down onto her head and put on her sunglasses. Slinging her bag over her shoulder she started walking towards the Sea Point esplanade.

The Sea Point Pavilion with it restaurant, tearoom and Olympic sized swimming had always formed the social hub of the promenade. At the Sea Point Pavilion Restaurant she hesitated. The squat rotunda shaped Pavilion with its domed roof had always reminded her of a giant hamburger. According to the tide chart on the notice board at the Pavilion the tide had turned at three o' clock and she could hear the high tide waves generated by the incoming rolling swells of the Atlantic crashing onto the rocks on the other side of the Pavilion.

Two weeks had passed and she had received no letter from Franco. With a complete news blackout everyone was guessing whether or not South African troops were in Angola. Rebecca had noticed on the journey from Stellenbosch that in spite of having two glasses of white wine and a good meal, Devorah's mood had become more pensive and subdued.

Sitting at a table Devorah ordered coffee. Retrieving her pen and writing pad from her bag she began to write.

Letter No 4

_7_ th _December, 1975._

Hi my dearest Franco,

You have passed, congratulations! You have a distinction for maths, physics and philosophy of science. Well done, I am so proud of you. I have also passed.

Rebecca and myself decided to drive down to Cape Town for a bit of holiday break. I always find Hillbrow bleak and depressing in December.

She put down her pen. She felt depressed. She began to write again.

It is funny. For my most of life so many things have been so firmly out of my control and this has caused me so much personal unhappiness. Everyone needs to have to have some degree of meaningful control over one's own life in order to feel that the life you are living is genuinely your own achievement or failure. It is only now that I am slowly beginning to feel that I have some kind of control over my life. I am slowly getting the upper hand over the sense of despondency that often creeps up on me. I have really started feeling good about myself after having met you. But right now I am missing you so much that it has become almost unbearable being separated from you. I love you so deeply. I keep on thinking of our love making before you left for the border. It was so beautiful. I am not pregnant. I was half hoping that I would be. I am taking the pill now.

_You may wonder what I am doing right now. Well it is late in the afternoon. It has been a really hot day. The sun has not yet to set. I am sitting at a table under an umbrella at the Sea Point Pavilion Restaurant. Rebecca decided to have a nap after we arrived at the hotel. I decided to take a walk. Sitting here at the Pavilion brings back a flood of memories_.

I am sorry, this is going to be a short letter.

Love you

Devorah.

She sighed. After tearing the page carefully from the pad, she folded it and slid it into an envelope. She put the sealed envelope, pen, and writing pad back into her bag. She decided to take a walk to Clifton Beach and sit on the beach while the tide come in, and watch the waves crashing onto the beach and rocks. She realized that she should have brought a book along to read.

At the beach she sat down carefully on the sand. After staring at the horizon for a while she decided to write another letter. Taking out her writing pad she began to write.

My dearest Franco,

I have just finished writing a letter to you which I have sealed. I will put a big number one on the envelope so read that letter first. On this letter I will put a big number two, so read this letter after you have read the first.

I am sitting on the beach watching the tide come. It has been a scorching hot day.

_Well I have good news. I have been accepted into the new joint philosophy and political science BA Honours programme_. _I think I am going to work on 'Marx's Moral Philosophy' for my honours dissertation. I have already had a meeting with Professor Heinrich Kurz and he is happy to be my advisor. I have started reading Capital from the beginning and underlining everything that has any ethical or moral significance. Marx does indeed make normative claims and normative judgements in his condemnation of Capitalism as been inherently exploitative of the working class. Take for example his use of the word 'exploitation.' Far from being a value neutral the word 'exploitation' is loaded with moral significance. The word 'exploitation' as used by Marx in Capital means nothing less than forced extraction of surplus value or surplus-producing labour from workers. Forced extraction of surplus labour means noncompensation for a definite quantity of labour that has been expended by workers in terms of effort exerted and time devoted to work. This is morally objectionable. It is morally objectionable for other reasons as well. It is clearly a case of theft which is made possible by the power of domination and coercion, and it also made possible by the threat of violence. So clearly the extraction of surplus labour is actually forced extraction made possible by the power of domination and the violence of coercion. Domination and coercion destroy the freedom and autonomy of the worker._

It is interesting that Marx never used the language of 'rights'. He was not too concerned by the idea of rights. It is possible that the idea of rights only becomes an ethical issue when there is a real absence of freedom and autonomy. The idea of rights is a poor substitute for the real freedom, sovereignty, and autonomy of the working class.

Technically, to exploit someone is to exercise unfair advantage over someone for one's own benefit. But this statement fails to express the full ethical ramifications or the full moral import of Marx's Capital. In plain but stark terms Marx shows that workers are exploited under Capitalism by virtue of the fact that they are forced to sell their labour power at a price which is substantially less than the value of the commodities produced by the expenditure of their labour power. This transfer of surplus-labour into the hands of Capitalists is not voluntary; it is a forced transfer of uncompensated labour, representing a definite quantum of monetary value, from the worker to the Capitalist, which necessarily robs the workers of their freedom and autonomy. The market is not about the fair distribution of rights, the market has as its working foundation the unfair exchange of value.

The other term that Marx uses is expropriation. This term is also not a value neutral term as used by Marx in Capital. It is also a term that is loaded with moral and ethical significance. The Capitalist expropriates surplus labour from workers. They able to expropriate surplus labour power by virtue of the fact that they are the owner of private property.

Does Marx have a moral theory in which the idea of evil has a meaning? I would say yes. My hypothesis in this regard can be stated as follows: The central good in Marx's moral theory is freedom as opposed to rights or justice. It follows from this that non-freedom is an evil. The moral concepts of rights and justice do not seem to interest Marx at all. I would say they are essentially Bourgeois concepts liked to the legal ownership of private property.

The tide has come in; the sea is literally lapping at my feet.

The sun rapidly disappeared below the horizon. The sky turned a deeper shade of purple and a cool breeze began to tug at the pages of her writing pad. As twilight descended over the Sea Point promenade she got up from the beach and made her way back to the hotel as the holiday crowds began to take advantage of the cool of the evening. In the darkening sky the evening star twinkled and she sighed at the prospect of the having to endure another night without Franco.

Chapter 14

On the 3rd of December at 6.00 am, officially one minute after sunrise, a motorized column, transporting a battle ready company of citizen-force soldiers belonging to the Brakpan Special Forces Infantry Regiment, crossed the international boundary into southern Angola. Ten minutes later the invading column of Unimogs travelling at 80 km/h swept through the small Angolan town of Namacunde located a mere 10 km from the South West African/Namibian border. It appeared to be uninhabited, completely abandoned.

As far as the eye could see scrubby Mopane trees with their distinctive butterfly shaped leaves dominated the arid flat topography. The region which was sparsely populated with its far flung scattered homesteads received an annual rainfall that fluctuated between 400 and 600 mm; whatever rain fell it was rapidly soaked up by the deep ancient sandy soils. The soil that supported the Mopane dominated open savannah woodlands were composed of Precambrian basement sediments, the geological relics of an era hidden in deep time that foreshadowed the emergence and explosive adaptive radiation of the different metazoan phyla that currently populate the biosphere of the planet.

In the more recent precolonial past these extensive Mopane savannahs once supported roaming herds of elephants that ranged unhindered over vast distances across the southern African landscape. The climate, the sandy topography with its characteristic vegetation was not unfamiliar to Franco; the physiognomy of the vegetation was very similar to the bush in Ovamboland. He had been based before in Ovamboland, in Oshakati and Rundu during his national service and on citizen force 'camps' or 'call-ups' as these tours of duty were called. The camps normally took place during student vacations and he had completed several obligatory citizen force military camps in Ovamboland. He had criss-crossed the various military operation sectors of Ovamboland on foot, leading counter-insurgency patrols. He had on several occasions endured the long troop train journey to Grootfontein from Park Station.

In spite of his statue and apparent slight frame, the troops under his command always found him a very forbidding personality who did not tolerate fools gladly. Together his bearing, serious demeanour, confident deportment, and sharp mind commanded their respect. He never indulged himself in any kind of small talk or joking with the troops or the NCOs under his command. All his dealings with his soldiers were conducted in a firm business-like manner as befitting an officer.

And so Franco remained an enigma, a mystery to his men, an unknown quantity, someone who they could not easily fathom. It was also his goal to keep it that way. The distance he maintained between himself and those under his command was something he reinforced as a strict disciplinarian. It was what he wanted. It helped him to get the military tasks done effectively and efficiently.

Yet it always remained a military task that was in reality impossible to fulfil with any real kind of significant military success. He was aware of this contradictory fact. It was the same set of facts that resulted in the eventual unravelling of the America military and political campaign in Vietnam which had also recently culminated in the dramatic defeat of the world's super power by the Viet Cong guerrilla forces.

He knew that militarily and politically the counter-insurgency campaign against PLAN the military wing of SWAPO bordered on a charade. It was a complete sham, an exercise in absurd futility. It was a lost cause. The Nationalist Party politicians and the military elite seemed to be blissfully oblivious of the fact that the counter-insurgency campaign being waged politically and militarily through the agency of white male South Africa conscripts and by members of the citizen force was a failure that bordered on a politico- military catastrophe. The overwhelming majority of the Ovambo population supported SWAPO. Only a complete imbecile could not see this.

The presence of the SADF was the best possible publicity campaign that SWAPO could have ever wished for its liberation struggle against the illegal occupation and illegitimate imposition of Apartheid on the country by the South African Nationalist Party government.

It was impossible to disguise or camouflage the disparaging attitudes, the hidden intentions, and the colonial subterfuges from the acutely discerning sensibilities of the Ovambos. They were never the fools that the ordinarily South African soldiers took them to be. Everything about the South African soldier could be decoded and read like an open book, even the sometimes obvert, even the sometimes subtle, even the sometime unconscious, were always unveiled and revealed as plainly visible expressions and displays of racism. It was virtually impossible for the white male soldier to transcend or cure himself of his acquired mental afflictions when it came to engaging the foreign, the other, the unfamiliar, and the racially different. The total comportment of the white South Africa soldier, his very way of being-in- the- world-with-others, his glacially immobile sense of worldhood, his frozen _gestalt_ , his inflexible _weltanschauung_ , his rigid and uncritical _lewens en wereldbeskouing,_ were all symptomatic of a deep seated socio-pathological mind set. He was possessed by a mind that seemed to have become completely contaminated and infected with the virus of racism, a virus that resisted eradication. His racism was thus untreatable and incurable. His mind was immune to enlightenment. Everything in his universe was incommensurable with that of the Ovambos in particular and the blacks in general.

This did not escape Franco.

To Franco all the counter-insurgency drills, the military strategy, and tactics that they had been taught and which they rehearsed many times were based on good insights, sound theory, credible doctrines, and common sense principles. However in the actual transmission of the information from the counter-insurgency instructors to the troops, NCOs and officers, the message changed, after it had passed through racialized prisms and filters the message had invariable undergone subtle changes in the intellectual flavour of its content. This broken telephone phenomenon never ceased to amaze Franco. The message had become racialized and was packaged in a manner that re-enforced the prevailing cold-war mythology and down played or patently avoided the real social and political forces that had led inexorably to the inevitable eruption of the low-intensity border bush war against the Apartheid occupation of SWA/Namibia.

Everyone remained indifferent to the 'rational' goals of the counter-insurgency efforts; everyone remained in a state of self-delusion with regard to the rational social and political aspirations of the Ovambos.

The idea that blacks were just too stupid and retarded to think for themselves had become entrenched in the mind of white soldiers. The Ovambos were viewed as passive and lacking in any kind of agency. They did do anything from their own initiative; instead blacks were been manipulated and exploited like dumb puppets by Communists. Blacks did not know what was good for them nor did they understand what constituted their genuine and valid interests. Blacks did not have the intellectual capacity, the leadership qualities, the moral resolve, the competency, and ability to independently plan, initiate, lead, and conduct a guerrilla war to secure their own freedom on their own behalf. They had merely become useful but ignorant or mindless proxies who were being callously and ruthlessly exploited by Communists, who were plotting behind the scenes to overthrow the Apartheid State, drive the whites into the sea, control the mineral resources of southern Africa, and secure the sea-route round the Cape. That was the essential take-home message of the trans-mutated counter insurgency theories and doctrines after it had passed through the heads and mouths of the SADF instructors. The cold war mythology coupled with racists stereotyping gave the SADF counter-insurgency doctrines their typical South African ideologist twist.

With this toxic ideological cocktail swirling around in the skulls of the SADF indoctrinated South Africa _troepie_ it was not surprising that he acted like a complete moron in his interactions with the local rural black population in Ovamboland. In one counter-insurgency refresher course that Franco's platoon happened to be on during one of their border duty camps the vocabulary of the instructor was peppered with racially derogatory terminology. His pet favourite was _K... se kind_ which he used whenever he referred to members of PLAN or the recalcitrant and sullenly uncooperative Ovambo people.

At many of the kraals that they had visited, sometimes in the hope of getting intelligence, sometimes in the hope of cementing cordial relations with the local population, the Ovambos would become openly hostile and aggressive. On most of these occasions he realized that they had been provoked by various racist signals and cues emanating from the troops in the form of gestures, tone of voice, utterances, demeanour, and deportment. Sometimes there would one or more youthful black men lounging around who could not give a convincing account of their recent whereabouts. On these occasions Franco would reluctantly with a nod of his head and a knowing glance, allowing his sergeant to give the instructions for the individual to be physically examined. The men would be forced to remove their shirts and their upper bodies would be carefully inspected for any tell-tale signs that they had been recently wearing webbing.

The atmosphere in the kraal would become tense and the soldiers would become aggressive and the "K" word would be inevitably be uttered. In their minds they were dealing with _K... se kind_ who could be up to all kinds of devious tricks against the Boers. Assuming that the Ovambos had something to hide, everybody in platoon would switch to a state of high alertness, which exacerbated the tension and hate. In the eyes of the Ovambos they were all Boers including Franco the officer in command of the platoon. At this stage Franco realized that irreversible damage had been done to the counter-insurgency effort. He would inwardly shrug philosophically in resignation. He was trapped in the fate of a soldier who was just going mechanically, and possibly in autopilot mode, through the motions of serving a cause he personally did not believe in, but in which he was trying to execute the job as professionally as possible with due respect to some transcendental ethic or morality for waging war in the right way, if ever that could be possible.

He was aware that his life was full of moral contradictions, the world was complicated, all he could do was to go through the motions of the counter-insurgency game of pretence. They were not going to win any minds and souls.

He was facing the dilemma that many soldiers throughout history had to each personally face at one time or another. As a Catholic he felt the terrible burden of guilt. He believed that before God he was accountable for his all actions even if they were committed under the orders of the South African Apartheid government. He often wondered how German Wehrmacht officers must have felt as they became agents of devastation on the Russian front. Maybe they did not feel anything. Maybe the enemy had become so dehumanized in their own minds that it was not possible for them to feel anything at that moment except the profound exhilaration of easy conquest as they swept across the flat Russian steppes, in the bright light of endless summer days under indigo skies, their faces flushed by the pleasant heat of summer.

But putting that thought aside he knew that they had re-enforced the perception of their roles as hostile and aggressive foreign occupiers and had at the same time re-enforced the local populations support for SWAPO and PLAN.

This situation would be exacerbated when the Ovambos had knowledge that the perimeter of their homestead had been pre-secured by troops and stopper ambushes had been strategically placed to deal with any unexpected eventualities. Their kraal had become a military target that had been secured by a well-orchestrated tactical manoeuvre; it was difficult under these circumstances for them to behave as if this intrusion of soldiers was merely for the sake of a friendly goodwill visit.

Now as the motorized column moved steadily northwards to the front of the Angolan civil war, what became increasing evident was the absence of whites. The white population had vanished, seemingly into thin air. Their homes, farms, and businesses had been pillaged, looted, and ransacked. In the months, weeks, and days leading up to the Angolan independence date of 11th of November 1975, a massive exodus of white Portuguese colonials had taken place. More than 360 000 white colonials had abandoned the 500 year old Portuguese colony. They fled by plane and ship to Brazil and Portugal. Droves of white Portuguese refugees fled southwards to South West Africa. They travelled in kilometre long conveys of bakkies, vegetable trucks and cars, leaving behind everything that could not be put into suitcase or loaded onto the back of truck or the boot of a car.

The once thriving towns that dotted the route of motorized column had been laid waste. They quickly became numb and desensitized to the spectacle of devastation and death.

Franco turned his thoughts back to the experiences preceding their incursion into Angola. Before crossing over the Kavango River into Angola they had completed a gruelling crash-training exercise in semi-conventional war. Working almost 18 hours a day, they had practiced and rehearsed different motorized infantry offensive and defence drills, manoeuvres, tactics and strategies in simulated war game exercises. They had fired thousands of rounds of live ammunition in mock attack exercises. They also fired hundreds of 81 mm mortar bombs. They had thrown hundreds of hand grenades.

Until the early hours of the morning they, the officers and their senior NCOs, were taken through all the phases of the battle plan. They also listened to briefing talks given by senior permanent force officers on the state of the war and its progress in central Angola. They were updated on the latest military intelligence. They learnt that the Cubans were training and leading the FAPLA forces. They learnt that the war had entered the stage where it was been directed from Havana in Cuba under the direct command of Fidel Castro. They also learnt that the Cuban high military command had been trained according to the Soviet battle doctrines and theories which was characterised by inflexible, rigid and hierarchical systems of command that allowed for very little independent flexibility and initiative in decision making and action on the ground in the heat of the battle. Obviously this could be made to work to the advantage of the South Africans and their UNITA and FNLA allies.

They learnt that in fairly typical Soviet fashion the Cubans also did not seem to be too averse with regard to sustaining significant casualties in the pursuit of military objectives. It seemed that Fidel Castro did not place the same value on the lives of his Cuba soldiers and MPLA forces compared to the SADF, which avoided situations that would cost lives or result in casualties. For the Cubans human life seemed to be expendable. This bit of information stuck in Franco's mind. The Cuban high command were prepared to sacrifice Cuban lives, they would not be deterred by Cuban or FAPLA causalities. Most of the Cubans shipped in Angola were black or coloured so that the Cuban force blended in with the FAPLA soldiers. The SADF senior officers did not overlook the irony that it would be black Cuban lives that would be treated as expendable in high risk engagements in the Angolan civil war. They also learnt that the Cubans had grown weary and impatient with regard to the predictable cowardice of MPLA troops when under enemy fire. Summary execution of FAPLA soldiers who had thrown away their weapons and fled in the heat of battle had become necessary disciplinary interventions by the Cubans on the battle field. Summary execution for cheekiness and ill-discipline of FAPLA officers by Cubans had also become a necessary disciplinary intervention on the battle field. The Cubans were definitely not having an easy time in their support of the MPLA.

Franco mediated deeply over the battle plans that they would be followed. Franco knew that warfare was not a science, it was art, it depended on intuition, it depended on deep seated instincts on the nature and game of war. In many respects it was like football, you had to have a head for the game in order to win.

Learning about the Cubans was a revelation. Learning about the Soviet doctrine of war was illuminating. Learning about how the South Africans engaged in the art of war instilled reluctant respect for the SADF. He had also come to the conclusion over the past few days that military intelligence like warfare was also an art. It was the art of making the right guesses. Warfare and military intelligence was plagued by the incurable element of uncertainty. It was becoming increasingly evident that in the Angola theatre of war the situation was becoming increasing fluid and unpredictable by the day. As soldiers the higher ranking officers found the interference of politicians frustrating. He realized that the generals had to constantly deal with directives coming from the highest political authority in South Africa. It became obvious to Franco that the war in Angola was been conducted at different levels. Remote from the death and blood of the battle fields, Washington, Havana, Pretoria and Moscow were all engaged in the games of contest and conflict that are played between political adversaries who were the leaders of sovereign nation states.

This was a game of bluff, a game of smoke and mirrors, a game of guessing, a game of minds and game in which lives were sacrificed and battles lost or won.

It was also evident that they had been briefed only on a need to know basis. He had only a vague idea regarding the full state of the war in Angola. He knew that for the time being, until they received further orders, their task would be to function as a tactical reserve force occupying and holding ground close to any of the major battle zones which could erupt anywhere along an extended and shifting front across the central Angolan highlands. Luanda was tantalising close, its fall seemed to be imminently possible.

Their immediate destination was Nova Lisboa in the province of Huambo. They listened silently and attentively as they were shown on a huge floor to ceiling map of Angola where the frontline of the Angolan civil war was currently located. The frontline extended from Novo Redondo in the west, the town next to the Atlantic, to a town called Malanjie in the east. The brigadier explained that the road connecting the followings towns: Novo Redondo, Gabela, Quibala, Mussende, Cangandala with Malanjie more or less represented the frontline. In recent weeks the MLPA had been driven from all the towns south of this frontline which were now high-lighted in red on the map.

Gazing at the map of Angola Franco realized that it did not take too much intellect to grasp that the essence of war had always been an armed contest for the control and possession of strategic assets and resources like towns, roads, bridges, rail lines, air fields, harbours, communication systems, electrical power and water supply utilities, factories, mines, agriculture and the country side. The Cubans and the Russian were also looking at the same map and were planning their tactics and strategy. Fidel Castro in Havana was also probably studying a similar map with his military advisors. They were trying to guess what manoeuvres the SADF were likely to make over the next few days.

He had seen the board outline of map before in the restaurant in the Park Station concourse. Reilly had drawn the map for _Vuka Manje_. He had drawn the map to inform the proletarian on the streets of Johannesburg, so that they could celebrate the triumphant advance of the MPLA forces into central and southern Angola. Franco and Devorah had helped distribute the newspapers containing the map of the MPLA victories on the streets in central Johannesburg. Now he expected to soon find himself literally moving from town to town on the very same map preparing to advance against the MPLA. On a similar map to which Reilly had drawn, the map before Franco now showed where the MPLA forces had been recently routed, losing all the towns which they had previously held on Reilly's map.

The map also showed which the rivers were going to determine the outcome of the Angolan war. On the instructions of Fidel Castro of Cuba the bridge over the Queve River between Novo Redondo and Porto Ambiom had been destroyed stopping the northwards advance of the South African armoured column along the coast towards Luanda. The bridge over the river Nhia to Quibala had also been destroyed, stopping the north-east advance of the second South African armoured column.

Looking carefully at the map Franco studied the relative locations of Porta Ambiom, Gabela Ebo, Quibala, and Carianga in the east. He also studied the physical topography of the relief map. The war front stretched eastwards over the central Angolan highlands. From the Queve River estuary on the Atlantic in the west the frontline run through the towns that were divided by Nhia River. This was an important fact. Crossing the Nhia River was going to be the most critical strategic objective of the war at this moment in time. In his bones he felt this was where they would be heading.

Franco note that it was a discontinuous front filled with expansive gaps through which the Queve and Nhia Rivers meandered over vast swampy flood plains. The rivers were bordered by granite koppies and patches of Miomba woodland. Angolan FAPLA fortifications were dispersed thinly along the front. They were concentrated only at strategic nodes centred primarily at key towns, roads, hills, and bridges across rivers.

Now deep in Angola he opened her letters and began to read. Devorah's letter came from another universe:

"...... _I am getting quite fit, every afternoon we go on long walks along the Sea Point esplanade or promenade whatever you wish to call it. It is in my nature to be a pedantic, an esplanade is where people walk and a promenade is where people walk in order to be seen. Well it is hard not to be seen; especially with my hair looking so wild, sticking out in all directions like an orange Golliwog. I don't know if you remember the three Golliwogs in Enid Blyton's children books. I can still remember some of the titles, The Proud Golliwog, The Silly Golliwog, and The Golliwog Grumbled. I even had a Golliwog doll as a kid. And then there were all those Enid Blyton Noddy and Big Ears books. Golliwogs, Noddy and Big Ears all so very politically incorrect! I think some of my books may have banned. Rebecca keeps on telling me that I should cut my hair short, but I know you will murder me if I do, ha, ha, ha, only joking. You are such a fantastic lair, always telling me you love my hair just the way it is and also telling me that I am not fat, that I am just perfect. This is what I love about you. I feel like a red headed albino. As usual I have to literally smear myself in layers of sun block, and wear a Mexican sombrero and a kaftan when we go to the beach. Only joking again! I don't want to land up looking like boiled lobster. Thanks to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain my feet got really sunburned the other day. I became so wrapped up in the story that I forgot to cover my feet with a towel. It is quite funny, both Rebecca and myself each carry a heavy load of books to the beach every day, and end up only reading a few pages of just one book._

It seems that everyone from Yeoville and Bellevue is on holiday here. I keep on bumping into old school friends, people that I have not seen in years....

Chapter 15

Because of her sunburnt feet Rebecca decided that after breakfast it would be preferable for her to stay out of the sun for the day and catch up with some reading relaxing on her bed in the hotel room. At breakfast they had overhead that there was now concrete evidence that the South African military forces had invaded Angola. After packing her bag for the beach, Devorah headed straight for the nearest Café to buy a newspaper.

The dramatic breaking news headlines on the front page of the early edition of The Cape Argus reported that four SADF sappers had been captured in Angola. Apparently, on the 13th of December 1975 in the Cuanza Sul province of central Angola shortly after South African forces had established a bridgehead over the Nhia River the four SADF sappers who had been sent on a mission to recover a military vehicle had somehow managed to get captured by Cuban re-enforced MPLA military forces about 20 km north of the bridge over the Ntua River on the road to Quibala. Luanda was a mere 251 km from Quibala and the SADF was 750 km north of the Namibia/Angola border.

For Devorah it was not only terrifying to think that Franco was possibly 750 km into the heart of Angola it was also mind boggling. It was shocking. It was insane. The SADF without any America support had no hope militarily speaking against Russian backed Cuban and MPLA military forces was preparing to take Luanda. Devorah as a Political Science major knew that America had suffered a massive political and military defeat in Vietnam, and because of this Kissinger would not be in a very gung-ho or ebullient mood when it came to the prospect of yet another costly Cold War proxy military engagement in Angola. In terms of _realpolitik_ the prospect of USA being drawn into the rapidly unfolding Angolan civil war had to be avoided at all costs. With the US-Soviet relations now on the brink of the new era of détente, Angola and Africa were very low down on the American list of international priorities.

In the middle section of the newspaper on the right-hand side page opposite the editorial column there was a full page article on the MPLA. The Cubans had established an historical relationship with the MPLA. In 1965 Che Guevara had met Agostinho Neto and other MPLA leaders in the Congo at Brazzaville. Training of MPLA guerrillas by the Cuban took place in Brazzaville from 1965 to 1966.

While she read the middle page article on the history of the Angola liberation struggle with great fraternal interest she could not stop the rising tide of anxiety that began to overwhelm her with fear for Franco's safety and well being. What if he was caught up in the middle of maelstrom of military conflict with the MPLA and the Cubans on the outskirts of Luanda?

As Devorah walked down the esplanade deep in thought she was oblivious to the sea gulls wheeling and squawking in the sky overhead. She was oblivious to the crashing of the waves on the rocks. She did not feel the fine salty spray raining down on her head. The Sea Point Pavilion receded behind her. Across Beach Road she was oblivious that she was passing Graaff's Pool where all the older generation Jewish males bathed in the company of homosexuals who also frequented the baths. The area was also well known as a major homosexual cruising ground.

At the Green Point Lighthouse she stopped and stood with her two hands curled around the top railing of the Promenade barrier and stared at the incoming rolling swells crashing over the concrete slipway that stretched out into the sea. At low tide she had often walked down to the very edge at the seaward end of the slipway.

Staring out towards the horizon of the vast Atlantic Ocean Devorah began to speak prayerfully to God for the very first time in her life:

"Dear God this is quite awkward for me as a self-proclaimed atheist to feel the need pray to you to save Franco from injury and death. I know that I have not being a good Jew for as long as I can remember. I know that I have blamed you for all the suffering that the Jews have had to endure as your chosen people. I don't understand many things about you especially why you allowed the Holocaust to take place. I realize I may have blamed you unfairly for all the suffering in the world. I admit that I have argued that you had to be evil to allow all of suffering, pain and violent death that mankind has had to endure throughout the ages. I don't know where to start or what to say. I really don't know how one should speak to you. It seems so mechanical and meaningless to recite prayers to you.

As you probably know, I have never uttered a spontaneous -uncomposed -personalized prayer in my entire life. I have never felt the need to petition you for anything in my entire life. To be quite honest I find it difficult to pray to you. I find it impossible to have a meaningful conversation with you, especially when I am not sure that you actually exist. As you know prayer for me has always been something that has been done liturgically, something which someone else recites audibly on my behalf, and something which I recite in harmony as a verbalized inaudible sub-vocalization in mind, with my lips going through soundless motions, always making the shapes of Hebrew words while moving soundlessly, somethings with my eyes closed and my forehead creased in concentration so that this will force you to listen. As I grew older my eyes often remained open as my lips moved soundlessly. Anyway as you know for most of my life when I happened to be engaged in ritualized and ceremonial forms of prayer, and while reciting these liturgical monologues, my mind has always had this tendency to drift, and while I was supposed to be reciting a prayer I was usually engaged mentally with other thoughts. Prayer has always been a reflex and possibly a mindless activity for me. To be completely honest with you prayer usually meant nothing to me.

To be really honest with you, I have to confess that for me personally, prayer only exposes the yawning abyss that exists between us, the Jews, and you, and this is true even though for a Jew prayer should be something as natural as breathing. As you know, I have stopped breathing and have been holding my breath for so long. God I don't know what I am doing right now having this conversation with you, maybe it is because I am desperately in love and I am afraid of losing Franco. So God whoever you and whatever you are I am going to take my first breath.

But God before taking my first breath I need to discuss the rational and logic possibility of prayer with you. As you know I am a student of philosophy and I see the world through the eyes and mind of a philosopher. The act of prayer is based on the assumption that genuine communication and dialogue can be possible between a mere finite mortal human being like me and you, a being who happens to be the all knowing, the all powerful and the ever present, infinite Creator of the Universe like. I apologise for not addressing you in a more formal or respectful manner, I know that theoretically and theologically prayer usually involves a relation between an 'I' and a 'Thou' or between an 'I' and a 'Lord'.

Theoretically I know that if you are truly God you would not take offence in the fact that I am not using the proper or formal or accepted conventional titles when addressing you. Nor I am praying in the conventional fashion. I am grasping for suitable words which I string into a prayer to you.

But apart from the I-Thou relationship and what it really means, the question that needs to be addressed is whether in fact a genuine two-way communication can actually take place between an finite temporal human being like me and an infinite God like yourself, who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and atemporal or timeless? It seems to me that logically and rationally a dialogue between a finite human being and an infinite almighty and all-knowing divine being would be logically impossible. If you know in advance what I am going to say then it seems that we cannot have a genuine conversation, and my prayers are an exercise in futility. An omniscient being will by necessity know in advance what I will be thinking, what I will be doing next, and what I will be saying before I even utter the actual words. You will know all thoughts before I have even thought them. You will know what I will say before I have even spoken.

Now I also have another concern. It has to do with the extent of your powers as an omnipotent and omniscient being. You basically know everything in advance and have the power to predetermine everything in advance. It is within the power of an omnipotent and omniscient being to predetermine in advance everything that will take place in the future. So I could argue that if an omnipotent being possesses the power to omni-determine everything in advance, then what is the point of praying when you know in advance what I am going to say, and you know what I am going to say in a prayer even before I actually start praying. How I am to know, that if you are the omni-determinative agent with respect to all future events, that the very words I am going to utter to you have not been placed in my mind by you? How can I be sure that you are not the supreme ventriloquist who has put every word that I utter on my lips? However, it would not be incompatible for an omnipotent being to refrain from acting in omni-determinative manner with respect to everything that happens in the Universe or in the future. It would also not be incompatible for an omnipotent being to voluntarily refrain from acting in an omni-determinative manner with respect to what will happen in the future. It would not be incompatible with respect to the powers possessed by an omnipotent being, for that being to voluntary refrain from predetermining in advance what will precisely happen in the future.

You could quite easily leave the future open as a blank book.

So by voluntary refraining from predetermining in advance what will precisely happen in the future, an omnipotent being could allow the future to be open to all kinds of possibilities, rather than closed and predetermined in advance. I would like to believe that an omnipotent and omniscient being has the power to engineer the possibility for the operation of chance and randomness in the Universe so that the future is not predetermined in advance, but that the future remains perfectly contingent, and in this sense the future remains open to kinds of possibilities, rather than being predetermined in advance. I would like to believe that is this is true for both of us, for you and for me. Could it possibly be that for both of us the future is unknowable and that it does it does have any form of pre-existence in any mind of any being including God?

So could we agree that the future does not exist or pre-exist in any form until it becomes the present moment, the elusive, and transient NOW. Could we agree that there is no such thing as fate and destiny, and that future is open and unknown to both of us? If the future in not open and unknown to both of us, then there can be no genuine dialogue or genuine relationship between you and me.

And prayer would be futile if not impossible.

I believe that this has to be the ontological reality of the Universe in order for prayer to be genuinely possible within the framework of a conversation or dialogue between a finite being and infinite divine being that is omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent, but refrains from being omnideterminative and instead provides the means for contingency and randomness to become operative in the Universe. This allows you the freedom to decide in the present moment what could happen next should you decide to intervene.

Dear God this is all I wish to say to you with regard to my concerns regarding the possibility of prayer, given that you may indeed actually exist somehow in relation to this Universe which is my reality.

Devorah sighed.

It was a mentally exhausting exercise for her to analytically and logically formulate her concerns from scratch on the spur of the moment while trying to communicate with God at the same time.

But the exercise had been done. She had her say and she hoped that God had heard what she had said.

She stood in silence with her eyes closed in deep reflection over the things that she had consciously addressed to a being that would be God.

Without thinking she took the soft T-shirt from her bag which wore over her costume when lying on the beach to protect her shoulders from sunburn and wrapped it tightly like a bandana over her bushy hair. Covering her eyes with her right hand Devorah bowed her head slightly and began to spontaneously pray the Shema in Hebrew.

_Sh'ma Yisra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad._  
(Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.)

_Barukh sheim k'vod malkhuto l'olam va'ed_.  
(Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever.)

_V'ahav'ta eit Adonai Elohekha b'khol l'vav'kha uv'khol naf'sh'kha uv'khol m'odekha_.  
(And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.)

_V'hayu had'varim ha'eileh asher anokhi m'tzav'kha hayom al l'vavekha._  
(And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart.)

_V'shinan'tam l'vanekha v'dibar'ta bam  
_ (And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them)

_b'shiv't'kha b'veitekha uv'lekh't'kha vaderekh uv'shakh'b'kha uv'kumekha_  
(when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.)

_Uk'shar'tam l'ot al yadekha v'hayu l'totafot bein einekha_.  
(And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.)

Ukh'tav'tam al m'zuzot beitekha uvish'arekha.  
(And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.)

_V'hayah im shamo'a tish'm'u el mitz'votai_  
(And it shall come to pass if you surely listen to the commandments)

_asher anokhi m'tzaveh et'khem hayom_  
(that I command you today)

_l'ahavah et Adonai Eloheikhem ul'av'do b'khol l'vav'khem uv'khol naf'sh'khem_  
(to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul,)

_V'natati m'tar ar'tz'khem b'ito yoreh umal'kosh  
v'asaf'ta d'ganekha v'tirosh'kha v'yitz'harekha.  
_(That I will give rain to your land, the early and the late rains,  
that you may gather in your grain, your wine and your oil.)

_V'natati eisev b'sad'kha liv'hem'tekha v'akhal'ta v'sava'ta_.  
(And I will give grass in your fields for your cattle and you will eat and you will be satisfied.)

_Hisham'ru lakhem pen yif'teh l'vav'khem v'sar'tem va'avad'tem Elohim acheirim v'hish'tachavitem lahem_  
(Beware, lest your heart be deceived and you turn and serve other gods and worship them.)

_V'charah af Adonai bakhem v'atzar et hashamayim v'lo yih'yeh matar v'ha'adamah lo titein et y'vulah_  
(And anger of the Lord will blaze against you, and he will close the heavens and there will not be rain, and the earth will not give you its fullness,)

_va'avad'tem m'heirah mei'al ha'aretz hatovah asher Adonai notein lakhem_.  
(and you will perish quickly from the good land that the Lord gives you.)

_V'sam'tem et d'varai eileh al l'vav'khem v'al naf'sh'khem uk'shar'tem otam l'ot al yed'khem v'hayu l'totafot bein eineikhem_.  
(So you shall put these, my words, on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them for signs on your hands, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.)

_V'limad'tem otam et b'neikhem l'dabeir bam_  
(And you shall teach them to your children, and you shall speak of them)

_b'shiv't'kha b'veitekha uv'lekh't'kha vaderekh uv'shakh'b'kha uv'kumekha_  
(when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.)

_Ukh'tav'tam al m'zuzot beitekha uvish'arekha._  
(And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.)

_L'ma'an yirbu y'maychem vi-y'may v'naychem al ha-adamah asher nishba Adonai la-avotaychem latayt lahem ki-y'may ha-shamayim al ha-aretz...._  
(In order to prolong your days and the days of your children on the land that the Lord promised your fathers that he would give them, as long as the days that the heavens are over the earth....)

She removed her hand from her forehead and opened her eyes and stared up at the blue heavens.

The gulls turned and wheeled in the sky, the waves crashed over the slipway and the rocks. A light breeze tugged at her improvised veil which still covered her head.

At last Devorah prayed her prayer, a simple prayer,

'Dear God I fear for the safety of Franco, please bring him back to me. That is all I wish to ask of you. Thank you.'

Having finished her prayer she took off the T-shirt from her head and put it back into her bag. She turned her head to see if anyone had been watching her. There was no one in sight. It was the first time in her life that she had uttered a genuine prayer from the heart.

Chapter 16

Their motorized column continued to press forward towards the front. Having seen the maps Franco was now certain that their destination was the destroyed bridge on the Nhia River and once they have crossed the Nhia River only then will the Luanda offence would take place in earnest. It seemed that their ultimate objective was to take Luanda. With the fall of Luanda the MPLA would be rapidly annihilated and UNITA would become installed as the de facto political power over Angola and it would become an important strategic ally to South Africa. Along the way they had several joint operation planning meetings with UNITA and the relations between the SADF officers and the UNITA military command was good.

But the actual global military strategic goals of Operation Savannah were ultimately about shoring up Apartheid. Anyway as the motorized column drew closer to the Nhia River they were forewarned through radio communications that the Cubans had brought in the new improved version of the Katyusha multiple rocket launchers which were just as terrifying as those that were first developed and used by the Soviet Union in World War Two. The new generation of Stalin Organs had firing ranges of up to 20 000 meters and they were mounted on Soviet trucks, making them exceeding mobile in their deployment.

He would never forget the night when he first heard the distinctive terrifying howling sounds that always accompanied the launching of the rockets. It had been belatedly discovered that the Katyusha's could respond with surprising rapidly with deadly accurate barrages of fire power. The red eyes that filled the night sky wreaked havoc on the South African batteries of infantry mortars and artillery field guns. The South Africans had to improvise when they discovered that their artillery was constrained by lower accuracy and longer reloading times, making them exceedingly vulnerable to counter attack.

The Katyusha's easily outranged and outgunned the SADF's 88 mm G1 and the 140 mm G2 field guns which had a maximum range of 12 250 meter and 16 400, respectively. The SADF adapted very quickly to the superior fire power of the Cuban backed MPLA forces with ingenious battle field tactical and strategic improvisions. They quickly moved the field guns from the rear of the infantry forces to the front and beyond the front in advance of the infantry.

A few kilometres from the Nhia River they made contact with Task Force Zulu and Combat Group Foxtrot which had been deployed along the eastern seaboard of Angola and Central Angolan region respectively. After what had started as a rampart October-November blitzkrieg advance which resulted in the devastating routing of the ill-prepared FAPLA forces who until then had managed to occupy the majority of towns that dotted the sandy arid Mopane and Acacia thorn veld Savannahs of southern Angola, the Central Angolan, the South Africa/UNITA Luanda offensive had ground to a halt at the destroyed bridge over Nhia River in the valley of the Cuanza Sul.

Franco discovered that it was a valley of breath taking beauty. Enclosed by a ranges of mountains on its eastern and western border, the flat highland plains of the valley were strewn with scattered granite koppies surrounded by a patchwork of different shades of green comprised of pineapple, tobacco, cotton and coffee plantations. In this magnificent landscape the road from Cela via Santa Comba and Catofe to Quibala had become the most critical battle zone of the civil war for the Luanda offensive. In the west about two and half hours from Gabela next to the village of Conda rose the magnificent Njelo Mountains.

On the 7th of December after stopping briefly at Cela they received orders to advance in battle readiness to join the taskforce Zulu on the frontline near the destroyed bridge crossing of the Nhia River.

After travelling throughout the night they arrived at the Nhia River front just before the break of dawn on the morning of Tuesday the 9th of December. First lieutenant Franco Sorrentino and the other regimental officers were immediately summoned to an extraordinary battle plan meeting at a hastily constructed bunker sheltered at the foot of a massive thickly vegetated rocky outcrop about one kilometre from Nhia River. Franco learnt that he would be leading a multi-national company comprised of four platoons, a platoon from his own regiment, a white Angolan Portuguese platoon of 'freedom fighters', an FNLA platoon and a UNITA platoon. Their task was to cross the Nhia River about five kilometres east of the bridge which been destroyed and then infiltrate around the concentration of MPLA and Cuban defence installations which were clustered in wide defensive arc facing the destroyed bridge. Their first task was to set up ambush on northern side of the Nhia River HQ within a plantation of blue trees behind the MPLA/Cuban defence positions. Their second task following the ambush was to sweep through the area in an extended line proceeding in a Northerly direction parallel to the road, clearing out and neutralizing any pockets of enemy that had managed to escape the artillery and mortar bombardment.

After receiving his orders he was informed that he had been promoted to the rank of captain. His extraordinary and highly unusual promotion in recognition of his leadership role in the Angolan advance had been authorized at the highest level and carried the signature of the minister of defence, Mr P W Botha. He had been chosen as the most suitable officer to lead the special force multi-national platoons across the Nhia River because of his proficiency in Portuguese which was the language of communication used by the FNLA and UNITA soldiers. He learnt that the UNITA platoon was comprised of soldiers belonging to the Ovimbundu tribe who constituted one third of the aboriginal Angolan population. He also learnt that the FNLA platoon was comprised of soldiers belonging to the Bakongo tribe. Franco also knew that politically, UNITA and FNLA were African nationalist movements with a strong Africanist black-consciousness philosophy which was ironically infused with an anti-white colonial sentiment.

He was aware of the irony that he, a white officer from Apartheid South Africa, was leading a company of soldiers of which fifty percent were comprised of anti-white black-consciousness African nationalist who were fighting a civil war against the Cuban supported multi-racial MPLA whose leadership consisted mainly of mulatto intellectuals who were leaning increasingly towards Marxist-Leninism. This irony was confirmed and further re-enforced by members of the white Portuguese platoon who quietly and discretely informed Franco on what they thought was the true colour of the Angolan political and ideological landscape. It was a landscape of political opportunism. Morally nothing was black or white in Angola. There were only shadows of various shades of grey. This was why Angola was rapidly sinking into a political and moral morass.

The white Portuguese freedom fighters confidentially informed Franco that greed was the real driving force behind the civil war conflict between the different aboriginal ethnic groups. The Angola civil war was only about oil and diamonds and not about socialism or Communism or Marxist-Leninism or freedom or democracy, it was scramble to loot the Angola mineral resources for self-enrichment. The civil war was about the betrayal of the Angolan people the white Portuguese freedom fighters argued.

They assured Franco that they knew what was really going on in Angola; they also had family and friends who had gone over to the MPLA following the revolution in Portugal. They knew that deep down there was actually no real difference between MPLA, FNLA and UNITA, they all wanted the same thing and that was to loot and plunder the rich mineral resources of Angola. They said there were no real Marxists in Angola, the MPLA were only rent-seeking Capitalists dressed in Marxist-Leninist clothing. There was not a single Che Guevara in Africa and never will be. The only thing that mattered in Africa was greed and self-interest. Africa was a moral wasteland, only greed ruled in Africa.

"Why don't you go back to Portugal if you are so negative and pessimistic regarding the future of Africa?" He asked the white Portuguese freedom fighters.

Their standard answer was:

"We are Angolan, this is also our country. We were born here."

"The moral problems we face in the Angolan civil war are complex. There are many completing moralities. There is an MPLA morality, this is an FNLA morality, and there is UNITA morality. This is even a Cuban morality thrown into the mix. But I hold to a transcendental morality," the Portuguese freedom fighter tried to explain.

What Franco, the South African government, and the USA did not know was that the Soviet Union was actually not very keen on getting involved in the Angolan civil war.

Tomorrow they could attack and attempt a bridging of the Nhia River which would spearhead the planned conventional military assault on Luanda.

In the fading light, on the eve of their attack across the river, he began to write.

Dear Devorah my darling,

I hope this letter finds you well and in good spirits. You are constantly in my thoughts. I am missing you terribly. I love you so much.

I wish I was not in the situation that I find myself. Until now I have had no peace of mind. On the eve of battle you find yourself coming to terms with your own finitude, it like a settling of accounts. As I write this letter to you I am beginning feel some peace of mind; in spite of everything I feel this strange peace right now. There is nothing we can do about our situation. We are like the terminally ill who find themselves standing before the doors of death, being forced to face the great unknown without having the option of turning back. Standing before the threshold of a battle that now looms imminently before us is like standing before a huge invisible tidal wave that is about to crash over us, a tidal wave that happens to be filled with unknowable menace. We are standing before this gigantic unstoppable shock wave which filled with terrifying power, and force, is rushing towards us. Paradoxically, we are standing before a tidal wave, which does not yet exist, but which is now accelerating towards us from a non-existent future. The approaching wave will unleash its consequences upon us, consequences which we cannot even begin imagine, consequences which are completely indeterminate and unknowable to us, as we wait for the time to arrive, time which does not yet exist, moments which have yet to arrive.

As the sun sets once more we find ourselves standing at the brink of the great unknown, the great unknown which every soldier must face as a solitary individual in the theatre of war.

Our surroundings are beautiful. I cannot image a more beautiful place on earth. But nature in terms of the biological and physical reality that constitutes the natural world, in which we now find ourselves embedded and entangled, is from a rational, objective, logical and scientific perspective morally neutral. Within nature there is no objective ethical realm, in nature wrong or right do not exist, in nature there is no good or evil. The only possible highest good that makes any rational and logical sense is always one's own personal survival; this is the only thing that ultimately matters when the chips are down, when the die is cast.

I am trying to remember what we spoke about regarding moral theory. It is obvious to me that all moral judgements should be grounded in reason alone. Morality is about rationally justifying the relationship between 'means' and 'ends'. And this is turning out to be a complicated business.

Right now, for me at this moment, the world has become a moral quagmire, filled with inconsistencies, contradictions, and absurdities. Take one example. The SADF has in a manner of speaking suspended apartheid for the moment as a political ideology, and forbidden all racist attitudes and behaviour in its rank and file. We have become integrated with black combatants from UNITA and FNLA. Militarily we have become a multi-racial force consisting of black Angolans, white South African troops and white Portuguese speaking Angolans. Many of the UNITA and FNLA soldiers, who are now our comrades in arms, are veteran guerrillas who have been fighting the Portuguese for some years.

I have also been thinking about the Hebrew Republic you spoke about. Politically I am now leaning more and more to Communism but within an anarchist kind of social-political arrangement or organization. I believe in the unmediated supreme sovereignty of the people. I don't believe in any centralized representative system of democracy. I do however believe that there has to be some kind of institutional forms of representation, but in a decentralized framework or social structure. I believe that individual freedom and autonomy is the highest good and I believe that this is the ethical values and principles that actually underlie the moral theory buried in Marx's Capital as you have explained in your letter. Like you implied in your letter: What is the moral point of Marxism if it is not the realization of freedom and autonomy of the working class? The only way this can be achieved is by means of popular political power within the institutional framework of decentralized 'soviets' or worker councils. I agree with you, I don't believe that democratic centralism or narrow vanguardism will ever realize genuine and authentic revolutionary goals.

I have now entered that strange zone before the great unknown.

For obvious reasons this letter cannot be posted to via the military. If it reaches you, as I hope, please know that it would be by way of a more circuitous passage. I hope this letter arrives in your hands.

I love you so much.

Yours with all my affection

Franco.

Chapter 17

Early Friday morning at the stroke of six on the 12th of December 1975 heavy artillery and mortar bombardment was unleashed upon an enemy that had not yet risen from its slumber. Systematically all of the FAPLA's mortar, artillery, and rocket launcher positions across their entire arc of defence on the northern side of the Nhia River were knocked out. Before dawn under the cover of impenetrable darkness while FAPLA slept the dreamless sleep of those who were already theoretically dead the 140 mm guns and 81 mm mortars were stealthy moved into extremely vulnerable forward positions which put all the identified FAPLA targets within their firing range. This high risk military decision had been taken as the most rational one.

Before the mobile BM-21 _Katyusha_ multiple rocket launchers could reload and fire its third round of rockets they were destroyed by direct hits. Observers occupying strategically situated observation posts on the surrounding hills directed the mortar and artillery fire with lethal accuracy on FAPLA positions, simultaneously destroying almost all of their fortified positions. On the northern side of the Nhia River within the terrain occupied by the FAPLA forces a South Africa soldier from the Recce unit equipped with radio and binoculars had clandestinely crossed the Nhia River and had managed to hide himself for several days on the summit of a high koppie nick-named Top Hat. With the advantage of his eagle eye view of the FAPLA positions and movements he managed to wreak havoc by directing accurate artillery fire onto concealed FAPLA positions. After almost an hour of continuous and saturating artillery fire the signal for the order commanding the armoured panzer and infantry to advance over the bridge, which the SADF sappers had rapidly erected under the cover of fire, was given.

At two in the morning, several hours before the post-dawn bombardment, Franco led the company down into the valley into the cover of the dense riverine vegetation. In pitch darkness they made their way along a narrow game trial until they reached the tall reed beds that covered the banks of the Nhia River. Their task, with the support of white Portuguese freedom fighters, UNITA and FNLA soldiers, was to setup an ambush. The purpose of the ambush was to cut off the escape route of a FAPLA company that was strategically dug in within an old stone kraal overgrown with tall acacia trees under the cover of small rocky hills that was situated between Nhia River and a large blue gum plantation. Within the perimeter of the stones walls which surrounded the ancient kraal was a battery of mortars and heavy machine guns. Their arc of fire covered the tar road and the bridge which had been destroyed. Behind the kraal was a sand road that passed through the blue gum tree plantation on its way to the farm house and sheds. On the both sides of the farm lay hectares of pineapple fields. The pineapple field behind the farm house stretched to the base of a range of koppies. Their objective after ambush was to clear the farm buildings of enemy and then move across the second pineapple field and secure the koppies.

The kraal was situated a kilometer from the banks of the Nhia River on the northern side of the river. In the dark the company crossed the Nhia River using two steel cables that had been spanned across a narrow section of the river where it had cut a deep channel between rocky outcrops. After crossing the river the clouds parted and a waxing moon hovered momentarily above Top Hat in the west. With its half smile it briefly lit up the landscape showing Franco the best route to the blue gum plantation. They carefully made their way through the open savannah veld in a long staggered column silently passing on the eastern side of the rocky hillocks and the stone kraal where the FAPLA forces were dug in. In the distance Franco could make the dark eerie outline of the blue gum plantation. After the moon had disappeared behind the clouds they left the cover of the savannah woodland and walked briskly over the stretch of dewy open veld towards the plantation.

As the moon re-appeared from behind the moving clouds, it smiled briefly at the mystery of the Universe while Franco's company slipped into the dark gloom of the plantation. There was no undergrowth brush covering the floor of the plantation which was carpeted with a thick layer of dry leaves that crunched noisily under the tread of their boots. Rows upon row of towering white-trunked blue trees stretched high into the night sky. Franco decided that they needed to get to the road that cut through the middle of the plantation. In the pitch dark they walked in single file, proceeding from tree trunk to tree trunk, until the row of trees brought them to the edge of the sand road.

There was no ground cover in the plantation to set up a concealed ambush. Even in the dark it was apparent that the floor of the plantation was as flat and featureless as a billiard table. There was only the exposed forest floor covered with a few centimeters of leaves. He decided that they would have to make the best of a bad situation. They would have to scratch out a hollow and bury themselves in a shallow grave under a blanket of leaves. Franco decided that there was nothing they could do now except spread out and lay down in the pitch dark on the bed of leaf litter until the first light of dawn before they could set up the ambush.

The darkness in the plantation remained impenetrable. Franco strained his eyes trying to pierce the darkness. After several hours, with the gradual approach of dawn, the darkness began to slowly lift and he could make out the trunks of the blue gum trees. Most of the company had fallen asleep. He ordered his NCOs to start waking up the troops. Once the company had been roused he quickly orchestrated the setting up the ambush in the form of a right angled formation. In the predawn gloom they quickly lined up the troops and paced out the position for each man on the flat forest floor. Once in their positions the men were instructed to quickly dig themselves into the forest floor and cover themselves in a blanket of dry leaves. With the help of the NCOs and officers each man was instructed on his arc of fire. Each soldier was individually informed to wait until Franco fired the first shot.

All arcs of fire overlapped. The right angle formation extended across the entire width of plantation. Within the killing ground, there would be no cover which would provide protection from the wide arc of overlapping fire.

Once everyone had settled down into his position in the ambush Franco settled down in his own spot. He looked at his watch; it was almost five in the morning, a full hour before sun rise above the crimson horizon. Listening to the silence that now cloaked the plantation each soldier lay quietly on his stomach or side buried in his bed of dry leaves waiting for the first light of dawn. Just before sunrise the birds began to stir. Soon the plantation was filled with the chipping sounds of birds.

At the first light of dawn the shallow valley became shrouded in a blanket of drifting white mist hiding from view all South African battle formations south of the Nhia River that had been set up during the night. Ghostly shrouds of mist began roll between the rows of trees decreasing the visibility of any movement within the plantation. They waited, the silence that now descended over the plantation was thick and heavy, and they waited as the minutes ticked by. They waited, listening and watching, wondering when the artillery and mortar bombardment would start. Franco guessed that the bombardment had been delayed until the mist had dispersed sufficiently to unveil the valley and koppies so that the observers at their observation posts would have an unimpeded view of the targets.

Slowly the mist began to disperse. Now the moon disappeared behind Top Hat and the sky in the east began to turn crimson. Eventually just as the red ball of sun appeared above the horizon of the central Angolan highlands the veil of mist vanished into thin air and the valley bathed in the first golden light of day lay exposed in all its naked vulnerability to the binocular vision of the observers in their elevated observation posts on Top Hat and Big Bang. Shafts of sunlight began to filter between the rows of trees in the plantation. And still the valley at the birth of a bright new day lay tranquil in the innocence of an interminable silence.

Then without warning flashes of sharp light filled the early morning skies, and clouds of white smoke began to billow high above the Nhia River as the boom of artillery began to reverberate incessantly across the valley. Seconds later an inferno of exploding bomb shells shattered the peaceful landscape and the valley became ripped apart by the blast of a white hot storm of flying shrapnel. Supersonic shock waves released from exploding shells tore paths of devastating destruction from which no living soul could escape intact.

At that moment Franco fired a flare. The red flare hung high above the canopy of plantation for several seconds verifying the position of the ambush to the South African mortars and artillery.

Shortly after the flare had been fired, at the edge of the plantation among small rocky hillocks, the fortified stone kraal became the target of intense artillery and mortar fire. They were hit without having a chance to retaliate. Not a single mortar or shell could be fired from any of the MPLA/Cuban fortified positions as they were subjected to multiple direct hits from SADF artillery and mortar fire. From their positions Franco and his man could hear the shell explosions. They waited as the minutes slipped by following the barrage of artillery and mortar fire on the kraal.

Now they could hear artillery shells exploding behind them, exploding in the pineapple fields, exploding around the farm house and exploding in the koppies behind the farm house. The South African artillery was firing over the plantation to soften up the enemy positions that lay to the north of Franco's ambush.

The firing subsided, and they waited. A lull of uneasy silence descended over the valley, and the minutes still continued to tick away. The first barrage of artillery and mortar fire had come to end an. The observers on Top Hill and Big Bang confirmed by radio communication that MPLA/Cuban targets whose locations had been pin pointed had now been taken out.

Franco's heart skipped a beat as he suddenly noticed the black featureless outlines of FAPLA soldiers silhouetted against the orange sun. Oblivious of the danger of imminent death that lay in the path before them they kept on running towards the ambush. In panic they run faster and faster between the trees and along the sand road directly towards the ambush. They had all flung away their weapons. As they ran they stripped off their webbing, they began to throw away their kit. Their pace did not slacken in their haste to escape the onslaught from across the river. As they crossed into the killing ground Franco fired the first fatal shot. Instantly the unexpected barrage of R1 rifle fire began to mercilessly cut them down from all directions, they could not escape the withering fire. The FAPLA soldiers dived for cover, they crawled along the ground, and they tried to hide behind trees. Time stood still as fusillades of rifle fire continued to rip through the bodies of exposed targets.

Scattered bodies lay in great numbers, limply strewn out on the thick carpet of blue gum leaves. The firing gradually ebbed in its intensity and eventually came to an end after a final encore of several rounds of sporadic shots which cut down at random the few remaining odd fleeting shadows trying furtively to hide from view. Thick grey clouds of cordite smoke hung in the still air of the plantation, like the departed ghosts of the dead who were not sure where they should go now that they no longer had living bodies. The ambush had been clinically executed in a devastating fashion. Franco fired the second flare signaling that the ambush had been successfully executed.

Franco became conscious of the shrill singing sound in his ears. His throat felt completely parched. His lips were dry. His heart was throbbing, he felt short of breath. Not sure what to do, everyone remained laying in the shallow cavities that they had carved into the forest floor, they lay watchful, with their fingers ready on the trigger, ready to fire at any movement that stirred in their field of vision. He could hear the multiple clicking sounds of loaded magazines being clipped into the rifles, and the sounds of rifles being cocked. He clicked off his own empty magazine and loaded a fresh one. The signalers radio began to crackle. Franco beckoned him to come over at once. The signaler got up and ran over to Franco in a crouched position with rifle in one hand and the radio's aerial whipping overhead.

In the aftershock of the battle the stark reality dawned on him that he had been sucked ineluctably in the vortex of war. Nothing could have prepared for him for this experience. He could see in the faces of the living that the sublime reality of war was something that was impossible to assimilate or comprehend in its fullest meaning. It had no meaning or sense.

Angolans were killing Angolans.

They had entered into a realm emptied of all morality, in which even the idea of evil or the idea of right and wrong was completely meaningless. For the deeds that they had committed they felt accountable to no one. They were in a zone beyond good and evil. Franco's mind began to whirl. This is what he been trained to do, he had been trained to fearlessly execute a military objective as efficiently and effectively as practically possible under the given circumstances. He had excelled in carrying out his duties and responsibilities as a soldier. He had done what was universally expected of soldiers in the long history of war. He had obeyed his orders. He had executed the military task that had been entrusted to him as a freshly minted captain of a multi-racial and multi-national company.

The surrounding hills began to echo with another barrage of the second phase of mortar and artillery fire aimed at various targets including fleeing Cuban military vehicles.

The bloody and broken bodies that lay unmoving on the thick carpet of dried blue gum leaves under the canopy of the blue gum plantation were now just the dead empty shells of people who once lived, who once had lives, but now they had become corpses, they had become inanimate matter, but matter was not passive, matter possessed causal powers, matter possessed dispositional properties, matter was the bearer of capacities and liabilities. Yet they all remained dead where they lay. And yet the Universe was not passive, it was a living realm in a manner of speaking, it was fully animate in a manner of speaking, it was filled with forces and powers, it possessed all kinds of capacities, and the Universe possessed an inbuilt capacity, an inherent capacity, an intrinsic capacity, for achieving complexity through the capacity for spontaneous self-organization which it paid for in the currency of entropy. The Universe in its non-passivity was fully intelligible to science, it was intelligible to the mind of the physicist, this Franco fully understood as a physics and mathematics major.

It was intelligible, but its intelligibility was inexplicable. To Franco, even as he gazed at the dead bodies, God was the ground of that intelligibility. God was the source of the reason that made the intelligibility possible. God was the ground of reason; to be the ground is to be source.

But in Franco's mind God could not be the ground or source of evil. Evil did not exist as anything in its self. Evil was the absence of the good. Evil can only exist as an absence, as a nothingness, as absence of something else, the absence of freedom, the absence of autonomy, the absence of all virtue, and so on.

Franco's mind began to whirl again once more as he took in the scene of the battle field, which as the sun continued to rise, was now rapidly becoming sprinkled with mobile dappled spots of sunlight, as dust laden golden beams began to filter through the leafy canopy which had now also started to stir in the light morning breeze that promised to bring in dark rain clouds. The lull of silence that had settled over the valley after the morning's bombardment continued to cloak the forest with a strange sense of tranquillity.

The birds began to chirp again. The light as the moments passed was becoming oddly strange. While the sun was still shining, dark clouds continued to gather. The sky was split into two, half sunlight and half darkness.

He felt like he was having a revelation, it felt like he was experiencing an unusual epiphany of sudden insight into the true nature of everything.

Franco realized that the Universe was not Manichean, matter could not be the source of evil or good, the knowledge of good and evil was an illusion, and you cannot have knowledge of something that has no existence. Nothing in the Universe was intrinsically evil; nothing could be the bearer of evil, matter did not possess any intrinsic dispositional capacity or power for the creation of evil from nothing. If good and evil existed in the Universe then where did they come from?

If there was such a kind of thing or phenomenon which anyone were able to recognise as evil then where could evil possibly come from for it to exist? What was the source or origination of evil? It could not come from matter, even if matter was the bearer of all kinds of causal powers and dispositional capacities. Still evil could not be attributed to matter. The Universe was not Manichean. There is no way that evil could emerge as a possibility, or as a something that really exists, as something that could come into 'being' from an assemblage of causal powers and dispositional properties, an assemblage of powers and capacities which could be embodied in some complicated configuration of matter called man, a being that has evolved from the dust of dead stars.

Could it possibly be that evil did not exist? That evil could not be committed, that evil was an illusion. That evil was an invention. That evil was a fantasy. That good was an invention as well. Could it possible that there was no moral order to the workings of the Universe? Could it be possible that there was no moral order governing the Universe?

Franco realized that objectively speaking, in the big scheme of things, in the vastness of the Cosmos, their ambush and their killing of FAPLA soldiers was something which was completely inconsequential, it meant nothing, it had no significance. Whether man emerged from star dust or finally vanishes from the face of the earth, man as a being was ultimately inconsequential. In the vastness of space and time man was ultimately inconsequential. This was what he sensed and it left him feeling numb.

If the Universe is not Manichean then evil only exists as a convention, as a social construction, as an imaginary invention, as a creation of the mind of men, as a perspective, but never as something real. To an extra-terrestrial alien observer, who happens to be another intelligent life form from another galaxy, from another solar system, from another planet, the idea of evil would not exist as a manifestation of human behaviour. To the alien observer, from another planet, whatever humans happen to do, would be a consequence of their natural behaviour, it would be a consequence flowing from their natural predispositions, it would be perfectly natural, but by being natural, it would be beyond good and evil, even if these predispositions, these powers and capacity entailed the killing of one another. It could never be conceived as something evil or immoral, it would be recognized as what humans do as a matter of course in their natural life history. It would be their ecology, it would be their natural behaviour, it would be the way things are ordered according to Nature.

In a silence state of bewilderment that had been triggered by the sudden occurrence of a massive loss of life as a consequence of their successful ambush Franco could not stem the tide of thoughts and feelings that flooded his mind. He knew that if he had not met Devorah or listened to speeches at the Wits speakers' forum he would not be experiencing his current existential crisis. He would have found a way to rationalize what had happened in the blue gum plantation. Yet he was troubled by the intrusive realization that while the Universe was intelligible to the scientific mind, it could at the same time be rationally viewed as meaningless and indifferent. If the Universe was ultimately meaninglessness and indifferent, then the very idea of good and evil was absurd.

As a Roman Catholic Franco knew that he could attain absolution following the earnest, sincere, remorseful, and contrite confession of sin. He knew that he could do penance for his sins. But he also comprehended and understood that the realization and consequent conviction of sin was only possible if there were justifiable foundations for the rational recognition of the existence of good and evil as a consequential reality.

He knew that in the Roman Catholic catechism the commission of sin ultimately entailed the rupture and destruction of human solidarity. As a Roman Catholic Franco knew that everything which worked towards the achievement of human solidarity was good and everything which worked towards the destruction of human solidarity was evil.

He knew from the Bible: _The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate_.....

But then Franco also knew from the Bible: _And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them_.

Franco recollected that Father Agostinho has said that if man was truly the _Imago Dei_ then he should possess the capacity and power for creatio ex nihilo, otherwise man would not be able to mirror the image of God, because the essence of God was the ability to create something out of nothing, and Father Agostinho said that the only thing that man could create out of nothing was good and evil.

To fight evil and work towards the good was the moral duty of man as the Imago Dei and Franco realized that after the ambush experience that he was now obliged by his conscience more than ever as a good Catholic to take upon himself the yoke of moral commitment to work towards the good, which could only be achieved by becoming a Communist.

Becoming a Communist would be his penance.

Evil is overcome by doing the good; by creating the good, by bring the good into existence.

The creation of the good could only become possible in the building of Communism.

He would find absolution in his struggle against evil. To be a Communist involves struggling against evil for the sake of creating the good. He would find his absolution as a Communist. This would be his penance. His works of penance would be the struggle for Communism. Only by means of Communism could achieve man his redemption, and his salvation. The good could only be realized through Communism.

But in his mind he had to deal with the reality that Communism had failed. But Communism's failure was only the failure of one Communist experiment. Experiments fail all the time. But this is no reason to give up the idea. The idea lives on. The idea of Communism still stands in spite of one or two failed experiments. The idea is strengthened by failed experiments.

He gazed over the battle scene once more; he turned his head around and looked at the faces of the troops that were beginning to mill around their positions. They were all waiting for him to act, they were waiting for him to lead. He began to give orders, he spoke to the signaller. The signaller transmitted a brief situation report on outcome of the battle to the command centre. The radio began to crackle, their orders were coming through.

He was ordered to get the men out of the plantation as soon as possible, as it was no longer safe in the forest, the FAPLA and Cuban forces may start shelling the forest with long range artillery and rocket bombardment at any moment. They were ordered to advance northward on the run, parallel to the tar road up into higher ground in the range of koppies behind the farm. Before they left the plantation the troops quickly began to search the dead bodies for food and cigarettes. Among the dead to their astonishment and shock they found women soldiers in camouflage uniforms. Many of them were mulattos with bushy Afro hair styles. One of them even bore a disturbing resemblance to Devorah.

Ronaldo the officer in charge of the Portuguese freedom fighters after glancing at Franco's face took in the full significance of the expression into which his demeanour had become fixed. Franco glanced back at Ronaldo who was a veteran of countless bloody skirmishes in the Angolan Portuguese counter -insurgency bush war, especially against UNITA in south-eastern Angola.

There were clear traces of after shock in the eyes and features of Franco's ashen face. Nothing could have prepared him for this. He listened to the exchange taking place between the white Angolans.

"Morally they deserve to die."

"They died the death of cowards."

"We have done the Cubans a big favour."

It was time to move on.

Between the plantation and the high ground of the koppies were open fields of pineapples. There was no cover so they would have to split up and spread out and run bent low across the fields as fast as they could. While they were running between the rows of pineapples they discovered a wounded Cuban soldier hiding in the middle the pineapple field. His olive green uniform was blood soaked, his face was ashen white and filled with fear, holding up his right arm in a gesture of surrender, he stood in the middle of the field.

They later learnt that he had been flung from the truck after it had been destroyed by an artillery shell. He was the only one that had miraculously survived. Faced with no other option he managed to run for cover into the field and had been hiding there until he was discovered by the South Africans. His bloody left arm hang limply. It appeared to be badly shattered. Exposed in the open field Franco realized that they should not linger longer than what was necessary. He ordered the rest of company to make for the koppie and take cover. Those soldiers who had gathered around the wounded Cuban managed to carry him to the koppie. They found cover between huge boulders. Franco instructed the signaler to send a message updating the battle command centre on their position and status. They had no deaths or wounded. They then sent a radio message stating that they had a wounded Cuban prisoner of war. They were instructed to dig in and provide fire support from the koppie as the motorized column of Unimogs and armoured cars which were now crossing the improvised bridge over the Nhia River.

The radio crackled again and Franco was instructed to provide the wounded Cuban with the best medical attention that they could offer under the circumstances. The medics came over and began to work on the Cuban's arm. They gave him a morphine injection and began to work to stabilize him as he was going into a state of shock. They cut away the fabric of his camouflage around his left arm, cleaned the wounds and bound up his arm.

From their defensive positions in the koppie behind the farm house they watched the motorized infantry and the armoured columns crossing the bridge over the Nhia River. Franco was now becoming aware of a new stream of emotions. He started to feel an overwhelming sensation of existential alienation, powerlessness, social estrangement, emotional emptiness, and moral numbness. He felt his sense of selfhood imploding. Had he become someone else? Could it be that he was no longer the same person who Devorah knew and trusted. What would she think of him now, if she knew what he had done? Had he betrayed her? Had his life become a lie? Had he become morally comprised? Had history with all its vicissitudes, ambiguities, paradoxes, and unpredictability made him an accomplice to the dark forces of reaction? Had he become a divided being?

'God have mercy,' he muttered to himself.

Once Franco was satisfied that they were in state of battle readiness, he went over to check on the wounded Cuban. The medics had managed to stabilize the Cuban. Franco got one of the white Angolans who could speak and understand Spanish to act as a translator. The Cuban was 23 years old; he was married and had a daughter who was 9 months old. Like Franco, he had been conscripted to fight in Angola. He had come across the Atlantic by ship to Luanda. He and the other Cubans had been through hell in Angola, many had been killed, and they had been in many very fierce battles with the South Africans. Then he confessed to Franco that he was a born again Christian, he and his wife belonged to underground Pentecostal Church in Cuba. He also had relatives in Miami, Florida in the USA. Both he and his wife were simple farm workers. He said that he was grateful that God had spared him; he just wanted to get back to his wife and daughter.

As he listened to the Cuban, they came under an intense barrage of rocket fire. They suffered their first casualties. Several UNITA soldiers had been killed and there quite a few wounded soldiers including two from Franco's regiment. The medics were rushing from one wounded soldier to the next as they groaned in agony or screamed for attention.

Franco ordered the signaller to send a situation report to the command centre. They were ordered to hold out. A helicopter would be dispatched as soon as possible. Later that night a helicopter landed on the tar road to casevac the wounded, including the Cuban soldier.

Franco recognized one of the doctors that arrived with the helicopter, he was from Brakpan, he had gone to Brakpan High School, and he had been a medical student at Wits, and was now doing his national service as a doctor in the SADF.

He had the letter he had written to Devorah in his shirt pocket. He took the letter from his pocket and asked the doctor to post it when they got back to Grootfontein with the dead and the wounded.

Chapter 18

In the new-year, on the 28th January 1976, Devorah was back on the road, facing the prospect of yet another 1 600 km long journey to Cape Town, during one of the hottest months of the Summer season, this time as a delegate to the 53rd Congress of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). She had lost count of the number of times that she had travelled on the same two lane narrow tar road from Johannesburg through the Free State and the Great Karoo to Cape Town. She had gone on holiday to Cape Town with her parents every December for as long as she could remember. In July they spent their winter holidays in Durban, usually vegetating beneath an umbrella on North Beach. Sometimes just for a change, her parents had taken the route to Cape Town via Kimberley instead of going via Bloemfontein.

July holidays always started with the excitement of the Durban July. In Durban the weather during the July school holidays was always sunny and pleasantly mild, even in the evenings. She and her friends would spend the day wondering up and down the esplanade, walking past the Lido, walking past Scotty's yellow booth, to be entertained at the Little Top.

By a miracle they managed to be on the road at 5.00 am and they were hopeful to be in Cape Town not too late that night.

Now on this latest trip to Cape Town Devorah travelled as a passenger with some of the other NUSAS delegates from Wits. The delegates that she was travelling with had been drawn from the Wits Local NUSAS committee and the Wits SRC. The vehicle they were travelling in was the Wits SRC's old faded blue VW Kombi. Reilly Brannigan and Brent Eaglewood sat in the front and took turns at the steering wheel and were doing most of the driving. Ariella Pinsky, Carmela Litwak, Leah Vilna, Charlie Matheson, Devorah, Jonathan Fleishman, and Paul Spivack occupied the three back seats. Devorah knew Ariella, Carmela, Leah, Jonathan, and Paul from her days at King David. Charles, Reilly, and Brent were all from the East Rand towns of Boksburg, Benoni, and Germiston, respectively. The other Wits delegates had left the day before in another Kombi and also in private cars. The three Wits delegates who had journeyed in their own private vehicles were student leaders who belonged to the so-called Right-Wing faction of the student body. The group in the other Kombi were part of the general Left-Wing faction of the student body at Wits. The group going down with Reilly to which Devorah belonged were known as the hard-core Communists, who except for Devorah, all subscribed to undiluted Leninist vanguardism as the proper revolutionary strategy to be followed by any Communist Party. Except for Devorah, who was critical of Lenin, Reilly and the rest of the group were all committed to the idea that the historical mission of the Communist Party was to fulfil the role of the revolutionary vanguard in the class struggle against capitalism. Charlie was the Trotskyite maverick of the group. He enthusiastically espoused Trotsky's idea of permanent revolution. Devorah held to a broader more reflective view of Communism and the revolutionary role of the Communistic Party. She had formed her own ideas from her readings of Rosa Luxembourg, Gramsci and the new-wave of neo-Marxist thinkers such as the members of the Frankfurt School.

Because Franco had now been adopted into their ranks they were curious about where he stood politically on the Left-Wing spectrum. Had he become a Communist or not was the question they often asked Devorah. Was he merely a Leftist inclined God-believing Catholic fellow-traveller or was he a genuine Marxist? Or was he just another useful idiot they joked.

She defended Franco:

"Franco is committed to the struggle, he is pro-socialism and anti-capitalist. Franco is the kind of the person you cannot categorize in simplistic terms as being either Marxist or non-Marxist. He is scientist, a physicist and mathematician who just happens to think about things slightly differently compared to the general run of Leftists," Devorah explained.

"And how does the so-called general run of Leftists think?" Camelia asked.

"Well for starters many of the so-called general run of Leftists on campus has not read Marx's _Capital_ from cover to cover. They have not read Lenin and the critical literature on Lenin," Devorah answered defensively.

"And Franco, has he read _Capital_ from cover to cover?" Ariella asked.

"Yes he has, he is that type of person, and he is definitely not the kind of person who is going to accept the opinions of others merely on authority. He likes to work out things for himself by reflecting on the founding principles of any system of thinking. I can assure that he has read not only Marx's _Capital_ but he has also read the _Grundrisse_ and _A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy_ , which happens to be more than the majority of the student Left at Wits," Devorah elaborated.

"But he remains a God-fearing Roman Catholic," Reilly piped out from the front.

Brent burst out laughing. He found the debate about Franco's Leftist credentials amusing.

"You are also a Roman Catholic," Devorah parried back.

"I was a Catholic, but I am no longer a Catholic, being Catholic is not like being Jewish, you cannot be a Catholic if do not believe in the existence of any kind of God," Reilly replied.

"But you can still be Jewish if you don't believe in God," Brent retorted.

"But if you are a Jew and you become a Communist you still remain a Jew, so being a Communist does stop you from being a Jew or calling yourself a Jew, it is not the same with Catholics. A Catholic cannot be a Communist, because to be a Communist is to be an atheist and Franco is definitely not an atheist," Charles argued.

"If you have been born a Jew, you cannot stop being a Jew, you will always be a Jew?" Brent argued.

"And a leopard cannot chance it spots," Charles laughed.

"What do you mean by that remark?" Leah exclaimed with an annoyed look on her face.

"Calm down Leah, we only joking," Charles said, grinning broadly.

"But seriously, I am interested in what makes a Jew really a Jew. What does it mean to be a Jew? Is it something biological, something that you inherit in your genes, something which makes one essentially a Jew?" Brent asked.

"I feel this line of argumentation is becoming very anti-Semitic and offensive as well," Leah responded.

"No it is not," Brent replied.

"Yes it is, I can hear from the tone of your voices that you are being intentionally anti-Semitic," Leah countered.

"Are you using the word 'you' collectively, to refer us goys or goyim, or whatever you call us," Charles said laughing at Leah's sensitivity.

"Look, personally I don't really care if anyone regards themselves as a Jew. I am definitely not anti-Semitic, I would gladly hide any Jew under my bed," Brent said, laughing.

"OK, guys lets not pursue this debate any further, it is pointless and can become quite hurtful and personal," Ariella said.

"I agree, lets leave it," Charles agreed.

"I don't think it is necessary to stop talking about being Jewish. It does not offend me, I think we should pursue it," Devorah said.

"Devorah, I think we should leave it. Ariella is right," Reilly interjected from the front.

"Fine, but Brent asked an interesting philosophical question, he asked what it was that makes one essentially a Jew? I would like to talk about essentialism, it is an important topic philosophically speaking, and I think I can lay to rest this whole issue of what it is to be Jewish or anything else, in an objective and value neutral and non-hurtful or insensitive manner," Devorah persisted.

"It was actually Franco who got me curious about philosophical essentialism. Essentialism and essentialist claims about the nature of things especially in a non-Aristotelian formulation can be justified both philosophically and scientifically. An essentialist view on the ontological nature of things has a lot going for it. Ontologically there are two kinds of entities, individual things and natural kinds. In fact essentialism has a lot to offer as a scientifically grounded philosophy of Nature," Devorah said.

"I would never have guessed that Franco would be interested in philosophy," Brent remarked.

"I thought Franco majored in physics and maths," Paul said.

"Well, he has also done a course in the philosophy of science as his arts topic last year, and it really hooked him, and you don't have to major in philosophy in order to think philosophically about things. Socrates did not major in philosophy. If you can do maths and physics then you can also do philosophy, those two subjects actually teach you to think analytically and logically about everything, I can assure you of that," Devorah parried back.

"Don't criticize Franco!" Jonathan joked.

Devorah glared at Jonathan.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"Nothing!" Jonathan quipped back.

"Anyway, briefly the 'new essentialism' for want of a better label, retains in modified form some of the Aristotelian ideas regarding the existence of natural kinds of substance and essential properties and so on. The new essentialism differentiates in a non-Aristotelian fashion between things that we can refer to as 'individual essences' and 'kinds of essences'. I don't want go deeper into the justifying arguments. All I want to say is that the essence of an individual, be it an individual thing or an individual person, consists of the set of essential properties or characteristics by virtue of which that individual thing is what it is. Now these sets of essential characteristics are necessary, in a natural law-like fashion, as opposed to accidentally or contingently acquired attributes. The point of this differentiation in the kind of properties or attributes possessed by an individual is that the accidental properties can be removed without changing the essential nature of an individual or a thing or an object, whatever it may be. If we take as an example the question of what constitutes the essence of an individual human being, we can exclude all the accidental attributes without effecting what constitutes the essence of an individual human being. All accidental attributes would be religious beliefs, ethnicity, class, pigmentation, race, social position, and age. So being Jewish is a contingent or accidental attribute, it does not define my essence as a human being. Now when one uses accidental attributes to define the essence of any individual human being either negatively or positively we get the different forms of 'racist essentialisms' which include anti-Semitism. Ultimately it is by pure chance, by accident, that I happen to be a Jew and not a Catholic or not a black person. There is nothing special about my being a Jew. I don't have to marry a Jew. I don't have to practice Judaism or believe in Judaism. I don't have to believe in God. In the end what is it that makes me a Jew, it is pure accident. I don't have to consciously live out the contingently acquired identity of being a Jew, I don't have to claim or reject it, I can just accept it as a contingent fact that is not ontologically constitutive of my being-in-the-world in any fundamental or transcendental sense. I am happy to be Jew and to remain a Jew, I am also happy as a Jew to be in a serious relationship with a Catholic gentile, who happens to be Italian if you want to be specific about his ethnicity. I am happy to be a Jew in the same sense as someone would be happy to be an Indian or a black. To view myself as being a Jew as something which is ontological constitutive of who I am will be to fall into the same trap as a Nazi whose anti-Semitic perspective of Jews would be complementary or reciprocally related to my own self-view," Devorah elaborated.

"Devorah is absolutely right. And we can develop Devorah's idea of social or personal identity formation as being consequential, as being the direct result of the accidental or contingent acquisition of attributes, even further in terms of a Marxist analysis. Social identities or political identities or class identities are mostly formed and internalized through the reification of social stereotypes or social categorization, which may even result from identity reification through self-imposed social categorization which in turn may be either negatively or positively influenced by a groups relation to power or class stratification. Social or political identity formation usually results within a dynamic of class alienation that has been forced on a group through the social or class division of labour. In The German Ideology, Marx argues that through division and fragmentation of social labour individual workers find themselves forced into more narrowly circumscribed and mutually exclusive kinds of labour which traps them in one particular specialized kind of occupation, thereby preventing them from a more fuller participation in the social totality of society. It is in this process of the division of social labour that social and individual identities become reified into social categories from which individuals are unable to escape," Reilly said, expanding on Devorah's analysis of the contingency of individual identities.

It seemed that there was nothing more to debate on the topic of personal identity. They fell into a thoughtful silence.

"Anyone for a game of poker dice," Paul asked, breaking the silence. The sun was now high in the sky and the bright new morning gave promise to everyone's belief that a sweltering hot day lay ahead.

After playing poker dice for several hours they eventually became bored. It was just past midday when they reached the simmering city of Bloemfontein. They realized that they were not going to get to Cape Town by evening so they decided to sleep over at Beaufort West, and take it easy for the rest of the journey. They wound down the windows as the air temperature had soared above 35 oC. Hot dry air blew through the Kombi.

After Bloemfontein, the landscape which had been filled with miles and miles of maize or fields of sunflower or open grasslands dotted with lazy grazing cattle, now began to rapidly recede with each passing kilometre on the road, and gradually the passing scenes began to be filled with the Karoo scrublands and flat top koppies.

With the gradual transition in the physiognomy of an increasingly arid landscape they began to notice flocks of merino sheep, and also dorper sheep with their distinctive black heads, and now and then, they spotted through the moving Kombi windows the odd ostrich or korhaan or herd of springbok. In the distance shimmering mirages formed on the tar road and on the horizons of the khaki-grey scrubland. They continued to drive deeper into the heat of the desiccated Karoo which now lay languidly under scorching skies. Eventually they stopped at the side of the road so as to change drivers. Everyone climbed out of the Kombi to stretch their legs. The boys stood a distance from the Kombi and urinated against the jackal proof diamond mesh fencing.

Devorah standing next to the jackal proof fence stared at the mountain ranges in the distance. Now the sun felt unbearably hot on her back. She looked up at the skies. Spread out beneath deep indigo blue skies an intense solitude reigned over the vast Karoo plains. There seemed to be no place where a creature could escape from the sweltering heat. Standing in the sun the heat had became unbearable for everyone. Camelia called out that the inside of the Kombi had rapidly turned into a furnace.

Still lost in thought Devorah stood alone next to the fence. The others had climbed into the Kombi. They called out to her to come.

With wound down windows they continued on their journey, the blast of hot wind coming in from the open windows provided no comfort or relief, and theirs faces shone with perspiration, and their sweat soaked shirts and dresses clung to their hot bodies.

Devorah spotted another solitary korhaan. She sunk back again into her own thoughts. She had received a second coded message from Franco that the tide of the war in Angola had turned against the SADF and the South Africans were retreating slowly back to the Namibian border. The uncensored first letter came directly from the front; it was smuggled out from deep within Angola. It has been written on the eve of a major battle, this fact was clear. She thought to herself thank God that he had survived the battle. He was alive and that was her main concern. More than a month had passed since the Cubans had captured the four SADF sappers. Why was it taking so long for the South African forces to retreat back over the Namibia border? Some of the forces had been more than 1000 km deep into Angola, what had they been doing in Angola for most of January. Were they holding onto ground in southern Angola so that UNITA could consolidate their position in the SADF occupied territories? Were they conducting ruthless and opportunistic seek and destroy missions behind the front to try and annihilate SWAPO?

Ariella was looking at a book on Trotsky that Charles had been reading. Paul, Leah, and Carmela were having a debate on Kafka. Was his work allegorical or metaphysical or experimental modernist? And what possible kinds of situation does the term Kafkaesque describe and how is it possible that we can recognize a situation as being Kafkaesque?

In the west the sun began to set, turning the western horizon into a multi-coloured blaze of red, orange, gold, crimson, and purple with the sky turning platinum beneath the evening star which had become faintly visible against the deep blue vault. Yet the heat remained behind like glowing embers in the wake of the vanishing day, even with the gradual approach of another breezeless dusk. The Karoo continued to radiate its load of heat into the stagnant motionless air long after the sun had finally disappeared. And as twilight crept eastwards over the vast plains, the VW Kombi headlights were switched on, and they spend onwards to Beaufort West.

Night had already settled over the Karoo landscape when they arrived in Beaufort West. After eating steaks and chips and drinking a few beers they trooped onto the pavement outside the Royal Lodge Hotel. The night air had finally dissipated its freight of heat. And now it had become pleasantly cool outside. Reilly had told everyone to bring their sleeping bags along on the trip. While they stood outside the hotel not sure how to pass the rest of the evening, Reilly suggested that they sleep on the pavement next to the Kombi in a quiet side street. Ariella, Carmela, and Leah immediately protested strongly against the idea. Devorah supported them; she too did not feel comfortable about sleeping in the street on the hard sandy ground or on a concrete pavement. Reilly could not hide his disappointment. It was his plan that they should go drinking in one of the local pubs and after consuming enough alcohol they should just crash under the night skies in their sleeping bags next to the road in some quiet street in Beaufort West. The majority did want to go drinking in some local pub frequented by sheep farmers. They all wanted to have a shower and they needed to use the toilet and so on. In the end it was only Reilley and Brent who ended up sleeping on the pavement next to the Kombi across the road from the Royal Lodge Hotel. But before sleeping they drove over to a nearby garage where they brushed their teeth in the toilet, washed their faces in the basin and then after stripping off their clothing they washed the dried sweat from their bodies in the dark with cold water from a tap behind the garage.

Feeling thoroughly refreshed they spread out their sleeping bag on a tarpaulin which Reilly had brought along.

The others soon discovered that in their wisdom Reilly and Brent's decision to sleep outside under the stars was a wise one. The rooms of the lodge were still stifling hot even after 10.00 pm. Having all the windows wide open made no difference. In the end Devorah and the others ended up sleeping naked under their sheets. They were woken up at 5.00 am by Reilly. Everyone wanted to have breakfast, but Reilly insisted that they should rather have breakfast at Matjiesfontein and then lunch at the Lanzerac Hotel in Stellenbosch, and then after lunch they should shoot through to Muizenberg for a swim in the sea before the NUSAS welcoming reception at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

And that was their planned itinerary for the last leg of their journey to UCT. They had the entire day ahead to get to Cape Town. At Matjiesfontein Station they stopped for a sit down breakfast at the Lord Milner Hotel. At the station the sign stated that they were 195 miles from Cape Town. In its halcyon days at round about the turn of the 19th century Matjiesfontein was popular and fashionable holiday retreat for a galaxy of famous historical personalities that included among their ranks the likes of Lord Randolph Churchill (father of Winston), Cecil John Rhodes, Rudyard Kipling and of the authoress Olive Schreiner.

"Did you know that Miss Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner was a friend of Eleanor Marx, the daughter of Karl Marx," Leah announced as they sat down for breakfast.

"She was also a friend of that rogue capitalist Cecil John Rhodes," Camelia said.

"Yeah she was quite an interesting character. She even supported the Boer cause against the British during the Anglo-Boer War," Reilly added.

"Have you read her book The Story of an African Farm?" Leah asked.

With breakfast done and the bill paid Reilly announced:

"Let's hit the road, next stop the Lanzerac Hotel for lunch in Stellenbosch," Reilly added as they gathered their things and headed back to the Kombi.

After a lunch of biscuits, bread, cheese and several bottles of wine at the Lanzerac Hotel they headed for Muizenberg. Devorah had previously enjoyed countless holidays on the beach at Muizenberg with it colourful Vitoria beach huts. It was crowded with countless memories of her childhood and teenage years that she had enjoyed while on holiday with her parents and brothers in Cape Town.

At Muizenberg they quickly changed into their bathing costumes. After locking the Kombi they raced for the beach, and in a state of alcoholic intoxication they run laughing and screaming towards the sea. The swells were huge and the waves were ideal for body surfing. Diving under the breaking waves they made their way into the sea until they stood together waist deep in the water. Smiling at each other and laughing, they all felt in that moment an intense comradeship that boarded on mutual affection; for that brief intimate moment, they were brothers and sisters in arms.

"I have always been scared of sharks at Muizenberg," Ariella confessed.

"So you don't want to swim out with me," Reilly asked with a grin on his face.

"No you got to be crazy!" Ariella shouted about the noise of the crashing surf.

The rapidly rising tide lifted them and soon they were treading water. The huge swells of the sea loomed ominously grey-green behind them.

"It is beginning to feel creepy," Ariella said, looking perturbed.

"Is that a seal," shouted Paul.

"Yes, I see two seals," shouted Leah.

"If there are seals we got to get out," shouted Ariella.

"Yeah, if there are seals there will be sharks, let's get out," Jonathan shouted.

Back on the beach after their swim in the sea a cold shower sobered them up. Shivering the girls out wrapped themselves up with their towels. While they dried the fresh water from their bodies Carmela began to whine that she was feeling famished and almost faint with hunger. Reilly said she should wait until the cheese and wine party at the welcoming reception, but she kept on insisting that they had to stop at a well known fish and chip shop that near the beach at Muizenberg. Reilly gave in to Carmela's demands and they made their first stop at the fish and chip shop. Everyone piled out of the Kombi and everyone bought a packet of piping hot salt and vinegar doused chips, which they consumed on their way to UCT.

After arriving at UCT they parked outside Smuts Hall and carried their bags and suitcases through the main entrance into the courtyard garden where they were almost immediately met by a welcoming 'committee' made up some of the NUSAS executive and their fellow Witsies who had arrived the previous evening.

They were informed that the welcoming cheese and wine party was scheduled for six o' clock in the student lounge adjoining the dining room where they would be eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next 5 days. They had an hour to get ready. A UCT delegate took them upstairs to the second floor to their rooms. Devorah's room which overlooked the sport fields and the Cape Flats was small, quaint, and Spartan. It had a built in cupboard with a few shelves, a mirror, a narrow bed, two chairs, and an ancient wooden desk. There was a small thread bare carpet that covered the wooden floor. The room which had been unoccupied since December 1975 was hot and stuffy. After opening the window wide, she decided to go and have a hot shower or bath. She wondered if the males and females would be sharing the same ablution facilities. No one had told them about the arrangements for the toilets and bathroom facilities.

Chapter 19

At six o' clock the delegates from University of the Witwatersrand, Rhodes, Natal, and UCT started arriving for the cheese and wine welcoming function. The tables were laden with an assortment of cheeses, biscuits, bread, and rolls. And there was an abundance of different vintages of white and red wines which the residence catering staff was busy uncocking. Crates containing wine glasse were being unpacked and arranged neatly on one of the empty tables against the wall. Pitchers filled with ice water were placed on all the tables with glass tumblers.

Delegates topped up their glasses with wine and began to mingle or cluster into small groups of like-minded comrades. With shouts of joy and seemingly affectionate bear-hugs old comrades were once more re-united. Soon the lounge was abuzz with the hum of chatter. Reilly with his natural charm and sharp wit mixed easy and freely. The rest of the members of Reilly's group which included Devorah formed their own intimate cluster and chattered amongst themselves. Standing with her group Devorah sipped her wine while she glanced around, taking in the social dynamics which were being played out among the delegates. She had given up with her hair. With the heat of the journey, the swim in the sea and the shower, she could do nothing with it. It had stubbornly turned in an uncontrollable Afro-styled abomination. When she looked at the mirror after putting on bright red lipstick she saw an image of a clown. In disgust, she wiped off the lipstick. Before leaving her room she wondered if she should take her handbag with. On second thoughts she decided to leave the handbag on the bed, she locked the room, put the key in her pocket, and walked to the lounge where she found the others already drinking wine from full glasses.

The president of the UCT SRC rang a little bell to get everyone's attention. After his welcoming speech the SRC president apologized for the heat as it seemed that Cape Town was in the grip of an unusually severe heat wave. Joking he said that they may have conduct the conference business at night when it was cooler.

Next the president of NUSAS gave his welcoming speech. He introduced the theme of the conference as: "The colonial system and its consequences for popular resistance, in the form of youth, student, and teacher opposition in anti-colonial organizations." After introducing the theme he spoke briefly about the decolonization process that was now underway in southern Africa. Mozambique had been liberated, in Angola the process of decolonization was been hindered by the civil war, Namibia and Rhodesia were currently engaged in an anticolonial liberation struggle. He spoke about the current state of the anti-colonial struggle in South Africa.

He explained that part of the work of the conference was to address in workshops and seminars the problems facing decolonization of the southern African region. He described South Africa as a country which had been under colonial oppression, colonial exploitation, and colonial occupation for three hundred years.

After the toasting the decolonization of Africa, everyone topped up their glasses with wine and crowded around the tables, heaping slices and chunks of cheese, biscuits, rolls, olives, tomatoes and olive bread onto their plates.

"South Africa has not been exploited as a colony for 300 hundred years, that is the biggest load of bullshit I have every heard. Colonial exploitation my arse!"

Devorah turned around to see who was being so belligerent and impolite. It was Alvin Austin a right-wing delegate from Wits. He was on the SRC and was a final year LLB student. He was physically strong and played rugby for Wits. He was also a first lieutenant in a citizen force regiment. He had huge thighs, huge biceps and huge fists. Standing with him was Andy MacArthur also from Wits and on the SRC. He was a Rhodesian with South African citizenship. He was also muscular but also extremely good looking. He was studying engineering at Wits and was also a first lieutenant in the Rhodesian Light Infantry. The third right-wing delegate, John Pennington, was also from Wits. He was a final year Actuarial Science student. He was also tall but thin. He wore plastic black rimmed spectacles.

"This should be interesting," Ariella whispered.

"The only colony that really existed was the Cape Colony. The rest of South Africa was hardly colonized and it habitants were hardly exploited or oppressed until the industrialization of Witwatersrand which only started after the discovery of gold. So if there was any exploitation of labour it was basically from 1887 and it was not colonial exploitation because the Boers fought the first decolonization war. The Boer republics were the first to challenge imperial colonial power, the Boer Republics were not colonies, they were legitimate states and would have become internationally recognized states. To talk about colonization and decolonization in the South African context is an over simplification," he elaborated, speaking loudly, ready to challenge anyone to a debate.

"Anyway as you Marxists and Communists should know the black labourers working on the mines resisted proletarianization, they were land holding peasants. Any educated Marxist who has any knowledge of South African social history should know that the first proletariats in South Africa were white and not black," he went on.

The only person who could go head to head with Alvin, Andy and John was Reilly. As a typical boy from the East Rand he possessed the working class street fighter's fearlessness in his character. He was also brash and articulate. But he was also subtly shunned by the other Left wing and liberal delegates who were not part of the inner circle of friends who were drawn to him. The others did not like him, mainly because was he too different and too arrogant, and he did not fit into the Johannesburg upper middle class mould.

Reilly Brannigan joined Brent Eaglewood, Ariella Pinsky, Carmela Litwak, Leah Vilna, Charlie Matheson, Jonathan Fleishman, Devorah Kirschenbaum and Paul Spivack who were standing together as group quietly chatting.

"I think I am going to have an early night," Reilly said.

After Reilly left, Devorah cast a disinterested gaze over the speaking faces that crowded the lounge.

The hum of alcohol infused chatter steadily increased in volume. An amused smile softened her face as she listened to the flow of conversations gushing from faces glowing with the pleasant effects of intoxication.

"A conscripted-citizen soldier is a coerced moral agent."

"I disagree with Thomas Hobbes, there is no evidence that man in his so called state of nature lived a life that was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short and was engaged in a constant war of all against all. This is complete rubbish. The opposite is true."

"Human nature does not exist. We all drop out of the birth channel of our mothers with our minds a blank slate, a tabula rasa. It is the prevailing bourgeois ideology that we are born with a human nature. There is no such thing as an innate human nature. Everyone is moulded from birth to serve the interests of those in power."

"What exactly do you mean by human nature?"

"I think that the claim that human's do have a nature is quite substantive."

"What do you mean by substantive?"

"I am saying that a claim is substantive if it has factual support."

"Everything that exists has a nature and that is a plain fact. Things are what they by virtue of their essential nature."

Devorah who had been following the discussion on the existence or non-existence of human nature smiled when she heard this.

"What is nature?"

"That is an ontological question."

"What is ontology?"

"Ontology is the metaphysics regarding the the essential nature of things, stupid."

"We have gone full circle without finding out what we mean by nature,"

"No we have not."

"Yes we have, are trying to be stupid just for fun, must I slap you now or later."

"No need to get all aggressive."

"And there is no need to be so stupid."

"I am not being stupid."

"Yes you are."

Devorah chuckled.

"What are you laughing at?" Leah asked Devorah.

"You really missing something just listen for moment to the argument going on over there," Devorah said, pointing with her eyes.

Chapter 20

After robust debate the amended resolution was tabled. And the assembled student delegates voted by a show of hands for the following motion:

That this student assembly, while expressing it condemnation of any attempts to foment violent revolution in South Africa, believes that the South African Communist Party, the African National Congress and the Pan African Congress should be allowed to operate openly within a legal system which caters for the free expression of the full spectrum of political opinion.

Against: 21

Abstentions: 5

For: 32

Devorah smiled. It was a wicked smile. The 21 who voted against wore their disgust on their faces for everyone to see. The 32 yeas smiled smugly at the outcome of the voting. They had nailed their colours to the mask. In the eyes of the delegates, the 32 who had lifted their hands in favour of the motion without a moment's hesitation were either Communist fellow travellers or Communists by conviction, and possibly even secret card carrying members.

At the tea break as Devorah, wearing bright red lipstick and a red bandanna, squeezed past Alvin, Andy and John so that should she get the milk, Andy stepping aside remarked:

"So you are one of reds I see?"

"Read my lips," she smiled.

"So you are a red then! You are a commie, a real commie slut," Alvin exclaimed.

Devorah glared back at him, turned around, and walked away with her cup of tea.

"Sssh, do you know that there are police spies among us?" Andy hinted mysteriously, loud enough so that Devorah could hear.

"Psssh...!" uttered John as he imitated the spraying of a dye from an imaginary spray can over all the delegates having tea.

"I wish I could spray some kind of chemical that would turn any delegate blue who happened to be a secret police spy and every delegate who was a member of the Communist Party red."

"I wonder how many police spies are sitting on the NUSAS executive?" Andy wondered.

"At least two, I would guess," John speculated.

"And who may they be?" Alvin asked.

"Follow my eyes."

"I see, I once blind, but now I see, I would never have thought that he could be a spy, but the other one is a spy for sure," Andy responded.

After tea more resolutions were tabled and another intense round of lively and often acrimonious debate ensued, especially on the topic of the Angolan civil war and decolonization.

At midday the delegates returned to the wooden panelled dining hall at Smuts Hall for lunch. Devorah carrying her plate in a tray joined Reilly, Brent, Ariella, Carmela, Leah, Charlie, Jonathan, and Paul Spivack at their table.

"Do you know anything about the idea of the people's war?" Leah suddenly asked Reilly.

Reilly looked at her for a moment before considering her answer. He knew her question was linked to the motion which they all voted for, which expressed their support for the resolutions supporting the African liberation movements: African National Congress, SWAPO and the MPLA.

"Have you read Võ Nguyên Giáp's book?" He asked looking at her.

"Yes."

"The copy kept in the William Cullen library?"

"Yes."

"Well, then you must know that one always wages the people's war in the enemies rear lines where he least expects to be attacked. You also must know that in the people's war there is no clearly-defined front. The war is fought wherever the enemy exists, that is, in whatever form the enemy's existence takes or in whatever form the enemy's presence becomes apparent. So that means the front is nowhere and everywhere at once. In Vietnam the people's war was a peasant's war against imperialism and colonialism. In South Africa the people's war needs to be waged differently. We don't have t copy the people's war in Vietnam. The people's war will necessarily have to be waged by the working class who live in townships and locations on the perimeters of white suburbs and white owned industries in the white controlled urban-industrial centres. The fact that the black working class has been segregated and concentrated into locations on the perimeters of the white controlled urban-industrial complex provides ideal conditions for the revolutionary education, organization, and mobilization of the working class. This is what we hope to achieve in a small way with our newspaper distribution project," Reilly elaborated.

"What about the armed struggle, what about the people's army?" Brent asked Reilly.

"The people's war is waged everywhere and nowhere. I am not stating a paradox or a contradiction. I am proposing this as a military strategy for a class war that is waged within the urban-industrial complex and not among rural peasantry where armed conflict has been the norm for revolutionary warfare. The arena or theatre of the people's war involves every aspect of ordinary everyday life. Therefore the people's war is fought on every possible front in which their lives are engaged, embedded and entangled. In this sense the war is everywhere and nowhere all at once. The front of the class war is multi-dimensional, the front is everywhere and nowhere. It is everywhere and nowhere in the eyes of the class enemy. This means the class war is fought were the enemy is most blind, that is in his rear, the enemies rear becomes the front in the people's war, his blind spots are the front where we best engage the enemy. We always engage the enemy where he is weakest, we always engage the enemy where he least expects an attack. We engage the enemy not with guns but with the weapons of protest, agitation, education, mobilization, organization and every form of resistance that we articulate, imagine, and invent. For example, the enemy does not expect the people's war to be waged from Park Station with newspapers for workers," Reilly expanded.

After they had finished lunch, Carmela asked what they were going to do later that afternoon after the decolonization workshop. Leah also reminded the group that nothing had been planned for the evening. Paul suggested that they hit out for Sea Point for a night on the town.

Now later that night they found themselves in good spirits sitting round a table laden with beers in the crowded garden of the Victoria Hotel in Sea Point under a beautiful star lit night sky.

Chapter 21

Devorah had kept in touch with Franco's mother, regularly phoning her for news updates. Since Franco's last letter dated the 12th of December 1975, Devorah had received no further news from Franco, nor had Franco's mother received any letters or news. The only news that Franco's mother could get from the SADF was that Franco's regiment would be returning to the Waterkloof airbase on the 2nd of March.

Devorah felt nervous as she parked her car in the parking space at the entrance of the Waterkloof airbase. The reception area facing the arrivals was crowded with children, girlfriends, wives, mothers, and fathers. Devorah felt conspicuous. She felt like an intruder. Yet she could help in sharing in the excitement that had become contagious. Smiling faces exuded joyfulness at the prospect of the imminent arrival of boyfriends, sons, and husbands. But now two hours had passed. It seemed that the flight had been delayed for some unknown reason. Impatient lines and shadows began to form on everyone's face. Her initial excitement had now faded away and had become replaced with feelings of anxiety. She kept on reminding herself that no news is good news. If Franco had been killed then surely his family would have been informed. Yet she could not stave off the anxiety.

Now the public address system began crackle, she listened with a frown of intense concentration on her face, but she could not quite understand the rapid and incomprehensible announcement in Afrikaans. Apparently the aircraft had just touched down.

She waited impatiently for Franco, as boyfriends, sons and husbands flooded through gates into the arrivals. The men of the East Rand Special Forces Regiment, returning home as battle hardened soldiers, citizen force soldiers who had received their baptism of fire were met with cries of joy, weeping, and laughter.

Feeling the rising tide of panic Devorah's eyes remained riveted on the exit gate. At the last officers began to arrive and she noticed a familiar figure with a large duffle bag slung over his shoulder and wearing smiling face approaching her. The familiar figure was approaching her, it was Franco, and she could barely recognize him. He had grown a full beard and he was wearing a Cuban military cap and Cuban sun faded olive green battle fatigues, and there were three bright stars on his shoulders. He was carrying an AK 47 assault rifle.

Before climbing into the passenger seat Franco put the AK 47 on the back seat and then placed his duffle bag over the assault rifle. Devorah was curious to hear about Franco's military adventure.

"I received your letter. It was a very disturbing letter. I began to think that I would never see you again. How was it there?" She asked as she drove.

"It was a complete debacle," he said.

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"Civil wars can go on for years. There is no end in sight for the Angolan civil war. As long as the civil war persists it will be impossible to construct a socialist society in Angola, and UNITA will not be defeated overnight, they have the capacity to prolong the conflict," he explained.

"So the Angolan socialist revolution will be deferred to a long time then?" Devorah responded.

"It is not only the Angolan socialist revolution that is being deferred," Franco replied.

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"The conditions for a genuine socialist revolution have not yet materialized in Africa," he replied thoughtfully.

"What do you mean that the conditions for a genuine socialist revolution have not yet been realized?" She asked.

"Marx was right when he said that socialism can only becomes a realizable possibility after capitalism has reached its highest stage of development, and it is only then when it become impossible for it to avoid or remedy or cure or circumvent its own self-generated state of persistent revolutionary crisis," he replied.

"Are you saying this as an Anarcho-Communist?" Devorah asked with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes and a teasing smile playing on her lips.

"Yes," Franco replied.

"So your Angolan experience turned you into an Anarcho-Communist?" She asked.

"Yes," he replied.

"Wow you must be the only Anarcho-Communist in South Africa, and possibly in the whole world, and how do you propose that the Anarcho-Communist revolution is going to be achieved independently of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, which is the vanguard of the class struggle, and is the vehicle for the proletarian revolutionary overthrow of Capitalism," she asked.

"The Anarcho-Communist revolution will be triggered by revolutionary developments that can only occur within Capitalism. Existing socialism has entered into a state of stasis, it has ended in cul-de-sac, it is incapable of being revolutionary in its current state," Franco explained.

"Please explain," Devorah prompted Franco.

'Only Capitalism possesses the kind of revolutionary creativity and innovative dynamism which is a necessary or essential requirement for the triggering of an incurable crisis within Capitalism and at the same time providing the material conditions necessary for the achievement of the complete revolutionary transformation of society," he answered.

"Revolutionary developments in technology, science, and culture which seems to be only possible under the creative and innovative dynamism of Capitalism will inevitably result in the systemic crisis or structural/functional collapse of Capitalism, and at the same time provide the capacity and foundations for a new revolutionary reconfiguration and transformation of social relationships that are necessary for bringing about the Anarcho-Communist revolution," Franco elaborated.

"Well, what you are saying does make sense given the existing realities in the world. Maybe you have a point, maybe I am open to persuasion regarding this idea of yours," Devorah said.

"Could I try and persuade you over a cup of coffee at your flat before you take me home?" Franco asked.

"I am sure that is possible especially since Rebecca won't be there and you will have my undivided attention, I am sure that once we are alone in the flat you will be able to persuade me to become an Anarcho-Communist, but is it going to take a lot of persuading," Devorah replied.

"But you would like to be persuaded?" He asked.

"To be an Anarcho-Communist?" She asked looking wantonly at Franco.

"Yes," he replied.

"Well, I am open to persuasion if you know what I mean."

"However, I am also curious about why you are so strongly persuaded that Anarcho-Communism is the solution to all the problems facing mankind," she added as an afterthought.

"The Nation-State in all democratic countries that is countries which have regular 'free' elections, are governed by an elected professionalized political elite. In reality the ruling political elite are self-selected and self-appointed through a series of political contestations. Firstly through the process of intra-party electoral contestation for positions of power within the party and secondly through the process of inter-party electoral contestation for positions of power in relation to the control of state and governance of a country. Political contestation involves engaging in electoral campaigns for positions of political power. And a campaign cannot succeed without financial support from donors. Which means that professional politicians are in the pockets of the wealthy."
