The Promise

“They park in the driveway under the awning, with its beautiful green and purple and orange stripes. Beyond it, a diorama of white South Africa, the tin-roofed suburban bungalow made of reddish face brick, surrounded by a moat of bleached garden. Jungle gym looking lonely on a big brown lawn. Concrete birdbath, a Wendy house and a swing made from half a truck tyre.”

This description of the Swarts’ typically South African upper-middle-class home presents a noticeable contrast with Salome’s meager three-room shack. The Swarts’ reluctance to surrender even a small patch of property to Salome stands out as indefensible considering their security. Once again, Galgut uses the Swart family dynamics to mirror the broader political situation in South Africa in the late 20th century.

“[Ockie] imagines himself one of his Voortrekker ancestors, rolling slowly into the interior in an ox-wagon. Yes, there are those who dream in predictable ways. Ockie the brave pioneer, floating over the plain. A brown-and-yellow countryside passes outside, dry except for where a river cuts through it, under a huge Highveld sky.”

Ockie romanticizes South Africa’s colonial past. His dreams of an empty expanse, ignoring the reality that white South African colonizers did not encounter an empty land, but a land already populated. The tension between a view of South African history like Ockie’s and a view of South Africa like Lukas’s forms the core conflict undergirding the novel.

“Don’t look at the house, think about the land. Useless ground, full of stones, you can do nothing with it. But it belongs to our family, nobody else, and there’s power in that.”

Marina’s thought explains why the Swarts are so reluctant to part with Salome’s house. While Manie is willing to give land to Simmers, he cannot bring himself to give a humble patch of land and property to Salome. He thinks of it as giving her an advantage that a Black person does not need or deserve.

“[Salome] was with Ma when she died, right there next to the bed, though nobody sees her, she is apparently invisible. And whatever Salome feels is invisible too.”

The narrator’s assertion that Salome’s feelings are unknowable is one of Galgut’s most striking choices. The novel shifts point of view roughly every page or so and explores the inner lives of minor, fleeting characters and even animals. Thus, the narrator’s refusal to explore Salome’s thoughts and feelings underlines the Swart family’s refusal to do the same.

“So Salome has gone back to her own house instead, beg your pardon, to the Lombard place, and changed into her church clothes, which she would have worn to the service, a dark dress, patched and darned, and a black shawl and her only good pair of shoes, and a handbag and hat, and like that she sits out in front of her house, sorry, the Lombard place, on a second-hand armchair from which the stuffing is bursting out, and says a prayer for Rachel.”

The narrator’s habit of quickly apologizing to the reader for saying “Salome’s house” and switching to calling it “the Lombard place” recurs again and again throughout the novel. By doing it twice in one sentence here, the narrator cheekily juxtaposes the Swarts’ refusal to offer any token of gratitude to this woman with the fact that she is capable of genuine familial affection for them. This is evidenced by her choice to honor Rachel in her own way when apartheid prevents her from attending a white church for the funeral.

“Amor is thirteen years old, history has not yet trod on her. She has no idea what country she’s living in. […] Blame it on the lightning. She’s always been a slow child.”

Although readers could take the narrator’s assertion here that Amor is a “slow child” at face value and read the comment as a slight, the novel makes clear that Amor’s slowness is her strength in comparison to the rest of the family. She is slow to anger and slow to judgment, which sets her apart from her family. While the lightning incident symbolizes her uniqueness, her distinction comes more from her thoughtfulness than from her childhood trauma.

“Survival isn’t instructive, just demeaning. The things he does recall with any clarity he tries not to, pushing them under the surface. Part of what you do to keep going.”

Anton’s feeling that life does not add up to anything meaningful marks him as having an emotional life somewhere between his two sisters. While Astrid exhibits complete selfishness and Amor acts as the family’s conscience, Anton understands the deepness of suffering that afflicts both himself and others. However, he cannot find a way to live with it or relate to anyone else’s suffering.

“[Anton] made a terrible mistake when he exiled himself. Return is the only solution. Not if, but when. And already, as he draws closer to the source, he can sense his future swelling with promise, like a melon ripening under his hand.”

While the novel’s title most explicitly refers to Manie’s promise to give Salome ownership of her house, the novel is riddled with allusions to promises. This includes the “promise” that individual people, like Anton, show for a bright future. The family’s promise of greatness becomes tied to their unwillingness to honor Manie’s promise; the longer they refuse to honor Manie’s promise, the further they fall into decline.

“Apartheid has fallen, see, we die right next to each other now, in intimate proximity. It’s just the living part we still have to work out.”

The novel takes many occasions to note the increasing physical proximity that Black and white South Africans share after apartheid. They can share space in sidewalks, funeral homes, and hospital rooms. But the novel also notes the many ways that the damaging legacy of apartheid lives on even as its immediate spatial effects have disappeared.

“She [Amor] calls the farm a few hours later, but there is nobody around to pick up. […] She closes her eyes, listening. A commotion of longing and revulsion inside. How did it become so complicated? Home used to mean only one Thing, not a blizzard of things at war.”

While the novel speaks to South African politics writ large, it also communicates a poignant coming-of-age story. The Swart siblings, especially Amor, gradually realize that the adults they trusted did not always deserve that trust. Moreover, simple notions of right and wrong can become clouded by competing self-interests.

“Marina resents afresh that her niece, for no good reason, turned vegetarian all those years ago, to the consternation of the adults. […] It seems to her in some vague way like a communist sentiment, part of the general unease in the family around the time that Rachel died, which now appears to have infected the whole country.”

Rachel’s death co-occurred with the national unrest that led to the end of apartheid. That Marina sees these events as connected to “a communist sentiment” shows that she views any challenge to white supremacy in South Africa as some kind of dangerous, radical ideology. Although Marina is the most overtly racist character, her attitudes manifest more subtly in other characters, to varying degrees.

“The question of the Lombard place and her [Amor’s] mother’s last wish and her father’s promise, really several questions although they feel like only one, has followed her around the world, bothering her at particular moments like a stranger importuning her in the street, plucking at her sleeve, crying out, Attend to me! And she knows she must, one day she will have to answer, but why should one day be today?”

Amor’s sense of her father’s promise as a physical entity following her displays the extent to which she is the Swart family’s conscience. At the same time, however, her efficacy is limited. She weighs her desire to help Salome against her desire not to rock the boat too harshly on the few occasions she sees her family.

“A dove, not a pigeon, lies dying on its back on the slate, amid a tiny blizzard of feathers. A thin thread of blood leaks from one nostril. Small creature, small death. One claw stiffens and convulses. The little body cools.”

Doves are symbols of peace. Moreover, the bird dies just as Amor plans to speak up to her family about Manie’s unfulfilled promise. Therefore, the dove’s sudden and violent death symbolizes the difficulty of achieving peace among a group of people who all consider their own self-interest paramount.

“A crooked little building, something out of true at its centre. Three rooms, concrete floor, broken windows. Two steps up to the front door. Cross the threshold. Hello? Your own voice coming back at you. His mother is not at home. She seldom is. Tending the children of another woman, the white woman, over the hill. Leaving him alone in the three joined rooms, full of time and silence, dust motes in the sun.”

Although Salome’s house is the crux of the novel’s conflict and the reason that the Swarts are cursed to decline and die, the reader sees here just how humble and unassuming it really is. That the Swart family cannot bring themselves to part with this small, run-down property for so long proves that their unwillingness to honor Manie’s promise is not about the property. Rather, it is about the principle of surrendering some of their land to their Black paid help.

“When Mandela appears in the green Springbok rugby jersey to give the cup to Francois Pienaar, well, that’s something. […] Hard not to shed a tear for our beautiful country. We are all as amazing as this moment.”

The Swart family’s insertion of themselves into a national moment of healing is both touching and woefully insufficient. They recognize that racial reconciliation can be a transcendent experience, but at the same time, they think that activities like watching this rugby match make them participants in that reconciliation, as opposed to any real introspection or material changes they could make to their lives. It is also telling that the narrator uses “we” here, as if to indict white South Africa as a whole, not just the Swarts and their friends.

“You understand, [Anton] says, people don’t always take what you give them. Not every chance is an opportunity. Sometimes a chance is just a waste of time. Yes, [Amor] says. But a promise is a promise.”

Here, Anton seeks to excuse himself from fulfilling his father’s promise. He falls back on the justification that Salome might not even deserve to own the property, given that she might mismanage it. This justification is particularly ironic because, when given his father’s property, Anton mismanages it so badly that he leaves his wife in debt after his death.

“When the blacks took over the country [Astrid] thought she’d have a cadenza, people were stockpiling food and buying guns, it was like the end had come. And then nothing happened and everyone just went on like before, except it was nicer because there was forgiveness and no more boycotts.”

To Astrid, the historic ending of apartheid, a major event that captured the world’s attention, boils down to an ending of boycotts. She sees the history of racial inequality in her country only in terms of how it affects and inconveniences her. This leaves her blind to the ways that life has not magically become perfect for Black South Africans since the end of apartheid.

“Some bad trouble lately. […] Intruders on the land. Had to call the cops to get them out, and there were threats of violence. Coming to get you, boss. Just wait and see.”

The threats of unrest that rear up in Part 3 remind the reader of similar unrest that roiled in Part 1. Galgut uses this recurrence to emphasize the cyclical nature of history. He proposes that even beautiful, meaningful steps toward social progress like the end of apartheid are not the panacea that many people hope and expect them to be, in the absence of sustained dedication to justice.

“No character in a novel ever does what [Father Batty’s] doing now, i.e., pulls his buttocks apart the better to blurt out his distress. One way to be sure you’re not in a fiction. Did Jesus ever sit at stool? I wonder.”

Galgut’s use of meta-commentary is rarely more acute than in this moment when Father Batty has a bowel movement and thinks about how no fictional character would ever have to do something so undignified as have a bowel movement. In this moment, Galgut underlines his own willingness to investigate all aspects of life, even the undignified, disgusting ones. He also draws readers’ attention to the fact that they are reading a fictional text articulated from a particular point of view.

“Why is he obscuring our view, this unwashed, raggedy man, demanding sympathy, using a name that doesn’t belong to him, how did he waste our time with his stories? He’s very insistent on being noticed, how self-centred of him, what an egotist he is. Pay him no further mind.”

Galgut knows that readers will not actually think the homeless man his narrative point of view follows for a few pages is a self-centered egotist; if anything, Bob is the exact opposite, a man who realizes he is at the very bottom of society’s ladder. These comments are humorous, but they are also interjections that mean the opposite of what they say. The interjection draws attention to the way the text chooses to spend time with the kind of person that both society and fiction usually devote no energy toward.

“Had a few years of wandering around, then I settled down. Married my childhood sweetheart and been running the family farm ever since. Listens to himself with amazement. All of it true, all false.”

Anton’s self-presentation to an old military buddy is factually true, but it highlights the way that even factually true statements can mask deeper emotional truths. Anton may have married his childhood sweetheart, but his marriage is in decay, with neither he nor his wife wanting it to continue. He has taken over his family farm, but he is not making a stable living from it thanks to his gambling and mismanagement.

“They know all your secrets, everything about you, even the things other white people don’t know. The stains in your underwear, the holes in your socks. You have to get rid of them before they start to scheme. Long past time to let this old one go.”

While Amor and Rachel (before her death) see Salome as an invaluable presence in the household whose dedication keeps the house running smoothly, Desirée sees Salome as a dangerous accumulator of secrets. She assumes that Salome must have a hostile attitude toward her and want to spread her secrets. It is as if Desirée believes Salome has no life independent of the family for whom she works.

“It is nothing. […] It’s what you don’t need anymore, what you don’t mind throwing away. Your leftovers. That’s what you’re giving my mother, thirty years too late. As good as nothing. […] And you still don’t understand, it’s not yours to give. It already belongs to us. This house, but also the house where you live, and the land it’s standing on. Ours! Not yours to give out as a favour when you’re finished with it. Everything you have, white lady, is already mine. I don’t have to ask.”

Lukas’s statement to Amor when she presents Salome with ownership of her own house subverts the momentum of the narrative. While the reader has been waiting for the Swart family to finally honor its promise, looking forward to the moment as a redeeming one, Lukas points out that considering it this way fails to take his and his mother’s feelings into account. This also reflects the theme of equitable ownership in a society that reinforced white supremacy ever since the original arrival of Dutch settlers.