Refreshing clarity

“HE leaned against the rail of the Cape Town, the ship of his flight.

From below, the engines throbbed, he saw the water turn to foam. Untied. On the quay they were waving. In the group that had come to see him off, his father and mother stood at the front. Blocking his view. He had to leave, get away, he wanted to be gone.”

It is January, 1935. Rob the adventurer, “the soldier of fortune he had dreamed up”, arrives in Cape Town. Without papers or recommendations, “with his textbook English and a great deal of charm, he talked his way into the country”. Thus begins an existential quest that, first, takes him to the goldmines of Jo’burg where his only friend is a black boy. Yoshua symbolically becomes the keeper of the light, a box of matches vital for survival in the mine, until he is consumed by the dark. Later, Rob lives for the day in bare rooms, unlike his Dutch home where each hand-me-down heirloom harboured memories. Realising that objects have meaning, he rejects attachments. His choice is “to be everywhere, but nowhere at home”. He observes life from afar, “from behind barricades of his own making”. It is this independence that allows him to volunteer for the Dutch East Indies army, ironically following in his father’s footsteps. He spends the war in a Japanese prisoner of war camp on the River Kwai railroad where he teams up with an alter ego, Guus.