it. When I’m sitting on the runway, I often get the feeling that a team of doctors is about to wheel me into the operating theatre. You are powerless, delivered unto others’ mercy and expertise.
I read somewhere that the first ninety seconds of a plane’s ascent are theoretically the most dangerous part of any flight. If something serious goes wrong during this critical period, your family will soon be wiping away the tears in a National Geographic Air Crash Investigation episode.
I have since developed a faintly obsessive habit. As the plane leaves Mother Earth, I diligently count up to ninety in my head and then relax into a false sense of security. “You realise it’s not going to make any difference to your fate whether you count or not,” a friend who likes to think logically has pointed out to me. Obviously she’s right, but I do it anyway.
The technicians apparently on their way, Arjun and I start chatting about our fate in the air.
“Well, I guess if it’s your time, it’s your time, nothing you can do about it,” he says stolidly.
“But what does it mean for us if it is the pilot’s time?” I tease him.
Arjun laughs and shakes his head.
Again, a liminal place, a dormant no-man’s-land. I was hoping to be in the air by now, laptop open, in the death throes of the article. Not here on the runway, where all our electronics have to stay switched off.
The minutes tick by.
* * *
-----Original Message-----
From: Erns Grundling
Sent: 04 May 2015 02:54 PM
To: Pierre Steyn
Subject: Here is Slagtersnek!
Importance: High
Hi Pierre
Attached find Slagtersnek. A bit long, but better now than never.
I’m now between Luxembourg and Paris. Altitude: 39 829 ft. Ground speed: 482 mph. Outside temperature -67 F. Still 525 miles to Paris, where a mad rush for trains awaits me. Tomorrow morning I’m mailing my laptop and cell phone from Bayonne to a journalist in Paris. I’m picking it up from her on the 16th.
Please give a quick heads-up that you’ve received the file. Because then my holiday’s bloody close.
Au revoir!
Erns
The past few hours have been a manic blur. I notched up twenty dollars on my credit card to access the plane’s wi-fi to check the last few facts and contact details for my Slagtersnek story. My laptop battery only just made it.
Not my best piece of writing, but for now the mantra “Don’t get it right, get it written” is more important than producing a tour de force. I suspect, in any case, that the story of a small band of rebels who died under difficult – even unjust – circumstances two centuries ago is too depressing to make Go’s pages. It’s not exactly a comfortable fit with the magazine’s genial tone and its articles’ uplifting escapism.
What an absurd little scene: desperately clicking “Send” somewhere between heaven and earth on the other side of Luxembourg so that a Word doc can announce itself with a bleep seconds later on my editor’s computer in Cape Town, the old Muslim gent mumbling and bowing in prayer beside me, Ice Age 3 paused on his screen, and Arjun, having abandoned the in-flight quiz shows, watching a Bollywood dance scene from Slumdog Millionaire.
Pierre lets me know all’s good, and that I need spend only the first week of the Camino contemplating my deadline-related sins. Finally. I can shut the laptop for six weeks.
The last words I type are an Out-of-Office message:
I’m on holiday in Europe. Digital detox, into the mild. I’ll be back at the office on Monday 22 June. Please email Esma Marnewick for any Weg/Go matters. Adios. Erns
* * *
Entry in Moleskine diary
Maybe it’s like a train riding into rain, Gertjie. I’m somehow thinking of you now in the train between Charles de Gaulle and Saint-Michel–Notre-Dame. It’s almost three years since my father and I were on a similar train not riding into rain but riding into the most autumnal autumn that I can remember and there are so few. Around me people are on their phones or reading books there are umbrellas and accents, I constantly feel I’m hearing Afrikaans but I’m mistaken the robot voice (woman’s voice) of the train has just pronounced Parc des Expositions I just hear “Sex positions” my first impressions of Europeans are probably wrong but I detect a sophisticated indifference, almost as if ubuntu will never fly here – not that ubuntu flies in Africa anyway. At the airport Gert a quick young Frenchman started coming down on me in front of a whole lot of people in an ever-lengthening, stressful queue of Doha-Paris-bound passengers for deliberately brushing up against a woman, according to him, as if I wanted to dry-hump her in a split second like dolphins that have sex in a flash, but his outburst caught me off guard and I couldn’t find the words “I didn’t bump into her on purpose” and went into a whole long explanation of the trains I was chasing instead and said I was just in a rush and not looking where I was going and he just shook his head like the Head Boy of Life and said “Blablablabla” and spoke to the girl and her boyfriend in French and he almost became involved and people started staring and my only comeback was “You should come to Africa” but God knows why I defaulted to that maybe I just wanted to make a point about personal space in Africa or rather the lack of it and that he would have a lot to say in a queue at Home Affairs but there was no time to say everything but at that moment I became hyperaware of a type of pretentiousness and profoundly First World luxury and decorum. Anyway, Gert, God only knows why I’m not reading or doing crosswords rather I’m buggered Gert dead tired from sleep apnoea and fuck-all sleep. It’s dismal in Paris. Hitting pause for a bit.
* * *
I feel a deep ambivalence towards the two Moleskine diaries I packed for the Camino.
I could easily have arranged in advance to write a freelance story or three to help cover expenses. And there’s nothing stopping me from writing a column or a feature article for Go on my Camino experiences when I get back to Cape Town. I could even consider writing a book or a guide. But I just don’t want to. Everything in me is fighting the thought. I’m just completely written out.
In “Famous Blue Raincoat” Leonard Cohen sings: “You’re living for nothing now / I hope you’re keeping some kind of record”. I like the idea of “some kind of record”, even if it’s for me alone. And who knows? Maybe an idea or two finds me halfway along the Camino, in which case I’ll definitely need pen and paper. Maybe I’ll write a bit of poetry again. Or a song, for the first time in ten years. What happens to us when we detach ourselves from all the distractions, especially the cell phone screens that keep us so busy?
* * *
SMS to my father, Monday 4 May, 19:38 p.m.
Guess where I’m standing right now? At Notre Dame! Going to Bayonne just now, then mailing my laptop and cell phone to a journalist in Paris. I’ll fetch them again on 15 June. Got all my work done, holiday starts NOW. Much love.
His reply:
Bon
