Lewis Nkosi: The Black Psychiatrist: Texts, Perspectives, Homage

This rich volume is dedicated to the astounding South African writer and literary critic Lewis Nkosi (1936 2010). In this book, Nkosi s celebrated one-act play The Black Psychiatrist is published together with its unpublished sequel Flying Home, a play on the satirically fictionalized inauguration of Mandela as South African president. Critical appraisals, tributes and recollections by scholars and friends reflect on the beat of his writing and life. An ideal volume for those encountering Lewis Nkosi for the first time as well as for those already devoted to his work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien
• Release date: May 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9783905758955

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Astrid Starck-Adler & Dag Henrichsen

All stories have a starting point, naturally, wrote Lewis Nkosi, when he sat down in Basel, Switzerland, in 2008 to write a first sketch of an autobiography he never could commence to write. The eminent South African writer, journalist, critic and literary scholar, born in 1936 in Durban, exiled from apartheid South Africa in 1960, returning home for the first time in 1991 and finding at last, in 1998, domicile in Basel, died in Johannesburg in 2010.

During his last years, and as part of his memoir project, he embarked on travels in his country, linking up with family members, friends and colleagues, searching for family graves and visiting former schools and working places. The grave of his grandmother Esther Makhathini, who raised him, was particularly important to him. Fifty-two years after her death he finally stood at a gravesite in Chesterville (Durban) that once was hers and grieved, tucking away a small bottle with sand into his jacket’s top pocket and patting it closer to his heart.¹

As a starting point to this rich volume of plays, texts and conversations with Lewis Nkosi, as well as appraisals and reminiscences of him by some of his colleagues and friends, his memoir sketch of 2008 allows us to hear him introduce himself:²

After my wanderings in Africa, in Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, North and South America. I have decided to write my memoirs […] provisionally titled, Memoirs Of A Motherless Child. The title deliberately echoes the famous African American song, Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child . I lost mine at the age of about seven.

At the end of 2006 I reached the Biblical age of sixty and ten (70 years of age), a suitable time, it seemed to me, to take stock of a life begun under Apartheid until I attained the age of 22, and then subsequently lived in many places and societies: in Central Africa, Britain, the United States, Poland, a brief sojourn in France and, finally, in Switzerland.³

The Starting Point⁴

All stories have a starting point, naturally. My life-story commences in a life of a parentless and homeless child. I never saw my father; my mother died when I was seven and my grandmother, to whom my first novel Mating Birds is dedicated, brought me up:

To Esther Makhathini who washed white people’s clothes so that I could learn to read and write.

In consequence, I spent most of my childhood being shunted around from friends’ to relatives’ houses while my grandmother did laundry to put me through school, and these schools were so numerous and my teachers so various that a great deal of my research will entail a search for an army of dead relatives, old teachers (one of whom, Mr Dubazana, a great teacher and revered choir master incredibly [sic] died last year). Then, of course, there are the old school friends and acquaintances. Going to find these individuals will, no doubt, help me to reconstruct my childhood.

After boarding school at Eshowe I worked briefly as a common labourer at a chemical plant for the manufacture of fertilizers. Later I worked at a paint-making factory in Durban and as a timekeeper on a building site. The next move was joining the Ilanga lase Natal before going on to join DRUM in Johannesburg. It is now common knowledge that DRUM writers constitute an important segment among a group of individuals who were in the forefront of the development of modern African literature in South Africa. This group by itself deserves a fuller story. Then as reporters for Drum and Golden City Post we were enabled to follow the vicissitudes of political resistance in all its aspects, Sophiatown, Alexandra, Cato Manor, District Six were its outposts. Nat Nakasa and I used blankets to collect bodies at Sharpeville [during the massacre of 1960]. These locations form a backdrop to our lives. They deserve memorialisation since many of them have been erased.⁵ I hope my Memoirs will help to do this.

The first part of this story comes to an end with my departure into exile. I left the country in November 1960 after Sharpeville when I was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard [in the US]. Without any explanation or justification, which the Government was not obliged to offer, my application for a passport was turned down. Where blacks were concerned this was routine procedure.

One young man offered an American scholarship to study medicine – one chance in a million – on being refused a passport suffered a mental breakdown. I know this to be true. To dig up his name and particulars is one of the discoveries [I hope to pursue] As for myself, I was resigned to not leaving the country. The question is why I should have accepted my fate with such equanimity. The answer is simple. As a journalist on Drum, in spite of the daily harassment by the agents of the regime, in spite of not being well paid on Drum , our work was full of excitement and self-esteem.

In short, we had job satisfaction. On the contrary, it was my friends who were outraged by the callous treatment and offhand rejection of my application for a passport. It was one of them, the late Harold Wolpe, who took the trouble to scour the statute book with the forlorn hope of discovering a loophole that would allow me to leave the country. This he found in the Departure from South Africa Act which laid down that a Government of South Africa had no power to prevent a citizen from leaving the country provided he had no business assets (presumably private capital to take out) and provided he signed a declaration never to return to the country on pain of being arrested and jailed.

Thus began my itinerary into exile. As such, my story, like the title of my book Home and Exile , divides easily into two parts. My plan is to begin by describing the process of growing up under an oppressive regime; the second part will be devoted to the experience of exile and much in between. I hope much has happened to me that is worth narrating, worth celebrating, in spite of the regrets and sorrows of exile.⁶

For 19 years I lived and taught in Britain; ten years in the United States, off and on; eight years in Central Africa during the turbulent years of the anti-colonial wars in Southern Africa; and five years in Poland during an important transition from a planned to a market economy. If done well, this kind of autobiography will constitute a rich source of information for students of literature and postcolonial history as well as provide the ordinary reader with some delightful anecdotes about people and places along the way.

The intention is to make this nothing less than a cultural history albeit narrated through the life and wanderings of a single individual. Living and teaching in universities in Boston, Wyoming, California, and West Virginia in the United States, eight years at the University of Zambia, four years at the University of Warsaw, Poland, and of course, the University of London, was by any stretch of imagination a rare opportunity to engage with young people and with other cultures, which enabled me to gain some insights into how other people live and, by the same token, enabled me to judge and evaluate my own.

My autobiography will attempt to narrate an intellectual history of movements and personalities, especially in the field of African literature, during and after the struggle for African independence. The construction of modern African literature and the portraits of the personalities involved is a story which has yet to be fully told. Through many factors and circumstances, as a teacher, a journalist, a television interviewer, a radio producer, I was privileged to know many of the personalities who occupied and still occupy key positions in that history. I had personal encounters not only with writers who produced this literature, at home and abroad, but interviewed political figures like Jomo Kenyatta and Tom Mboya, knew and interviewed people close to Kwame Nkrumah, black American congressmen and others.

During nearly half a century of life in exile, apart from teaching, I participated and witnessed events which tell their own story. I could mention a few in passing; In the early 60s, commissioned by The London Observer to write on the Civil Rights Movement, I travelled across the United States: I was in Atlanta, Georgia, sitting-in with SNICK students at segregated counters when we were locked in by the owner of a restaurant while racists raged and threw rocks outside;⁷ in Alabama I slept in the motel where a few weeks before four black girls had just been killed by a bomb of the KKK;⁸ in Cleveland I joined students in a campaign to persuade inhabitants of the ghetto to register to vote; in London we spent nights outside the American Embassy in protest against the war in Vietnam and against American support for the Greek colonels after a coup in Greece; in ‘68 I was in France during the students uprising when De Gaulle retired to Colombey-lesdeux-Églises.

On contract to the American Educational Television, I was the first interviewer to travel across Africa to record interviews with leading African writers in French and English-speaking Africa, West and East. I mention these events, images and encounters in order to underline the importance of an autobiography which should transcend the narrative of an individual life, but memoirs which ought to add up to an incredible life and itinerary that I think is worth recording for the younger generation.

This outline of his Memoirs of a Motherless Child remained what it is, an all too short fragment. During his last trip to South Africa in 2009 sorrow befell him, again. Lewis Nkosi died in Johannesburg on 5th September 2010 of brain injuries sustained in the city where his fulminant career as a journalist and writer flourished in the late 1950s.

His friend and South African literary agent, the poet Sandile Ngidi, offered this portrait of Lewis Nkosi at the time of his death:

CHRISTMAS 2010

⁹

for Lewis Nkosi

Sunset over the Melville koppies.

A distant couple kisses the dying year away.

Fries and wine bid the blues good-bye.

For you, Dlamini, it’s wine and chicken wings.

A modest homecoming.

Bitter-sweet memories transcend time and space.

Chesterville to Sophiatown.

Boston to Biafra.

Africa Centre to Martinique.

Dlamini, I miss you.

Your hearty laugh.

Brazen mischief.

Orphaned eyes.

Charming mind.

Bruised brain.

Tears and laughter.

Joyce and Kafka.

Bohemian cafés.

Hotels and dirty bars.

Epic evenings and elegant arty parties.

Home and exile.

Home

Elusive home.

With the poems’ translation into IsiZulu, Vusi Mchunu returned the language to the tongue of Lewis Nkosi:¹⁰

UKHISIMUSI 2010

Nkathi selishona ilanga kwelogquma iMellville Koppies

Qhwa isinqanda sezithandani. Nyame unyaka omdala.

Amashibusi newayini aphebeza inkathazo yalonyaka

Aheshe Dlamini, nalo iwayini, inazo zimpiko zenkukhu

Wenzile wabuya, ebumpofini bethu.

Wajomba isikhathi, weqa umkhathi

Wesula inkumbulo yesikhalo nohleko.

Usuka eChestervile uya eSophiatown

Uthwabaza uthi Boston, Biafra

Africa Centre kuyosho eMartinique.

Dlamini, isizungu sakho.

Uhleko lwenhliziyo yakho.

Hey wena, isigangi lesi

Samehlo entandane.

Yathandeka ingqondo

Yahuzuka ingqondo.

Lezonyembezi. Leyonjabulo

Ngifunga uJoyce noKafka.

Kuthi shazi amashibini aphesheya

Cwazi amahotela, amabha ezintombi

Ubusuku bemicimbi, kugujwa igama lakho

Ekhaya. Ekudingisweni

Ekhaya.

Ikhaya eselifulathele!

Whilst living in Switzerland, South Africa entered the post-apartheid era under its first black president, Nelson Mandela. In the Basel home he shared with his partner Astrid Starck-Adler at the Unterer Rheinweg, he in 2000/1 wrote the one-act play Flying Home!, a satirically fictionalized home-coming for the 1994 inauguration of Mandela as president and a sequel to his acclaimed play The Black Psychiatrist (1983). Now, indeed, he could fly home regularly after decades spend in exile. He abandoned a biography project about his fellow South African writer Nadine Gordimer – It’s in my head, as he used to say¹¹– and instead roamed the libraries of the Basler Afrika Bibliographien and the University of Basel in order to research and write what was to become his last novel, Mandela’s Ego (2006). It was at this stage that he decided to follow the paths of his Memoirs of a Motherless Child. It was left to Astrid to follow some of his wanderings and have his globally dispersed library and papers flown home to his abandoned writing desk in Basel.

It is with these reverberations of a widely-cast life of an astounding writer and intellectual that this volume took shape. We started in 2016 by commemorating his 80th birthday in Basel, and inviting friends and colleagues to join us, and to reflect and write about or even to him. We discovered some of his manuscripts and his address book of which a few pages are reproduced here selectively. Astrid Starck-Adler put up a tomb stone at his gravesite in the Stellawood cemetery (Durban), received parcels with books from abandoned or forgotten bookshelves, or simply a plastic bag with cracked manuscripts, notes and letters rescued from a trunk. And we listened to many recollections and stories – witty, joyful, hesitant, nostalgic, sad, ambivalent ones. All of which made this volume possible.

This volume is intended as a Reader and is divided into four parts.

In From the Desk of the Writer, the two one-act plays by Lewis Nkosi, The Black Psychiatrist, enthusiastically received on various stages across the globe, and the unpublished and unstaged Flying Home!, are presented together for the first time, with additional context commentaries by Astrid Starck-Adler.

In From the Desk of the Critic, another autobiographically informed and unpublished text by Nkosi about his hometown Durban and the world of a fellow writer, Johan van Wyk, and an unpublished interview with the journalist Tiisetso Makube from 2006 with whom he shared his love for jazz music, expand his wide-ranging output and sharp scholarly and political reflections.

Nkosi’s writings are followed by Appraisals and Perspectives from colleagues and friends, as such providing probing critical readings, also with regard to some of his other works such as his novels Mating Birds (1986), Underground People (2002) and Mandela’s Ego (2006), and their imaginative depths, literary radiations and historical roots.

Finally, in Poems, Letters, Conversations and Reminiscences, personal contributions of and reflections about meeting and engaging with the writer, friend, teacher and jazz music lover in Cape Town, Lusaka, Warsaw, Wyoming or Basel convey some of the inspiration, complexities and traits which made and moved him and allowed him to write. Last, but not the least, poetry in this volume in his mother tongue isiZulu but also in French and Yiddish and including a few of his own poems, is dedicated to a symbol of the new Africa, as Aimé Césaire poetised Lewis Nkosi during their encounter.

Once, as Lewis Nkosi recalled in his 2006 conversation with Tiisetso Makube, he suggested, tongue-in-cheek, to students of a writing course: I’m going to join you in the exercise so that you can also criticise my own writing. We hope that this multi-facetted volume brings across the seriousness and playfulness of his endeavours as well as his complex personage, especially to those who are encountering Lewis Nkosi for the first time, but also to those already devoted to his work.¹²

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume has been long in the making and we sincerely thank all contributors and facilitators for their commitment and patience. It is they who made this volume rich, diverse and personal, and we feel privileged to have engaged with them all. During this time, Tiisetso Makube, Ntongela Masilela, Randolph Vigne and his youth friend, Bennie Bunsee, sadly passed away too.

We have retained all contributions in their original form as much as possible, not the least in order to retain individual styles. We thank Judith Kalk for her sensitive language edits of some of the contributions and the publishing house of the Basler Afrika Bibliographien for their unwavering support.

Astrid Starck-Adler would also like to thank Joy and Louise, Lewis’ twin daughters, and Simon and Akin, his sons-in-law, and his beloved grandchildren, Zeni, Themba, Sebe and Khanyi – the future belongs to you –, who will spread their grandfather’s word. She also sincerely thanks Andries Botha, who made the stele with blue birds for Lewis’ grave, Janice Harris who sent his books from Wyoming, Litzi Lombardozzi who gave us a firsthand biography, Sandile Ngidi who, apart from being his agent, looked after Lewis like a loving son, Michael Rogosin who offered a retrospective into the making of the film Come Back, Africa, and the numerous friends, colleagues and former students she was lucky to meet, personally or through correspondence and who opened a tremendous and generous insight into Lewis’ multifold and vibrant personality. Dag Henrichsen thanks Kay Kufekisa Laugery and Danny Holmes in Lusaka for their generosity when searching for another trunk of Lewis Nkosi. The publisher engaged the photographers Sonia Schobinger and Hossein Heidari for some of the reproductions in this volume, whilst the photographers Tessa Calvin and Keiko Kusunose kindly contributed historical photographs to this volume; Joke Stegeman gave us the permission to reproduce images from the photographer Jan Stegeman and kept by Lewis Nkosi. The Carl Schlettwein Foundation in Basel made Lewis Nkosi’s 2008 travels as a Motherless Child possible and the Berta Hess-Cohn Foundation in Basel generously contributed to this publication.

With many thanks to all and hope for more to come.

Below and following pages: Selected pages from Lewis Nkosi’s address and note book.

____________

¹Personal communication by Litzi Lombardozzi to Dag Henrichsen, 26 April 2020. She had identified the gravesite and took Lewis Nkosi to the cemetery in 2007.

²The following text was submitted by Lewis Nkosi to the Carl Schlettwein Foundation, Basel, as part of an application concerning his research into his autobiography. The text has been edited only slightly by the editors, as indicated with square brackets [ ].

³These two paragraphs are from the introductory letter to the application.

⁴The heading and the following paragraphs are from the application.

⁵For additional contextualisations of names and events mentioned here see also the contributions by Litzi Lombardozzi, Ntongela Masilela, Bennie Bunsee and Randolph Vigne in this volume.

⁶The following paragraphs are from the Introduction to the application, with a slight alteration of the sequence of some paragraphs.

⁷Lewis Nkosi refers to the US Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), often pronounced and referred to as SNIK/SNICK.

⁸The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a US white supremacist and fascist group.

⁹Previously published in S. Ngidi (2018), Don’t Tell Me Anything Now . Mahlephula Press, South Africa.

¹⁰ As quoted from an email by Vusi Mchunu to Dag Henrichsen, 15 June 2020.

¹¹ Lewis Nkosi contributed the essay Nadine Gordimer at Seventy-Five to the volume A Writing Life. Celebrating Nadine Gordimer, edited by Andries Walter Oliphant (London, 1998).

¹² Readers interested in bibliographical overviews of Lewis Nkosi’s writing should consult the references to the various essays in this volume and also the volume by L. Stiebel and L. Gunner (eds., 2005), Still Beating the Drum: Critical Perspectives on Lewis Nkosi. Amsterdam (also published in Johannesburg, 2006). At times, conflicting bibliographical details for the same title can occur, usually relating different editions and various re-publications.

From the Desk of the Writer

THE BLACK PSYCHIATRIST

A One-Act Play* by Lewis Nkosi

SCENE 1:

THE CONSULTING ROOM OF A PSYCHIATRIST ON HARLEY STREET. THE WALLS ARE BARE, WHITE, UNADORNED EXCEPT FOR A SINGLE ZULU COWSHIELD HANGING ON THE BACK WALL WITH TWO ASSEGAIS LYING ACROSS ITS CENTRE IN THE FORM OF AN EMBLEM.

THE ROOM MUST HAVE A FEELING OF NARROW CONFINEMENT; THE WINDOWS ARE PERMANENTLY CLOSED AND SET HIGH UP AS THOUGH IN A PRISON CELL. THERE IS ALSO A DOOR LEADING OUT TO THE WAITING ROOM. THIS DOOR IS KEPT SHUT.

FURNITURE CONSISTS OF A COUCH AND STOOL NEXT TO IT. THERE IS ALSO A DESK AND CHAIR AT WHICH, AS THE PLAY OPENS, A HANDSOME YOUNG BLACK PSYCHIATRIST IN HIS THIRTIES, IS SITTING; STUDIOUSLY WORKING THROUGH A PILE OF PAPERS AND NOTES.

OTHERWISE, THE ROOM IS BARE, WITH A STRIPPED AUSTERITY THAT BORDERS ON THE PURITANICAL.

TIME: ONE LATE MORNING IN SUMMER.

THE DOORBELL RINGS.

Kerry: Come in!

A WHITE WOMAN IN HER EARLY OR MID THIRTIES OPENS THE DOOR AND WALKS JUST INSIDE THE DOOR, THEN HESITATES. SHE IS PRETTY, BLONDE AND WEARING A SOFT SHIRT DRESS THAT IS SLIT RIGHT DOWN THE FRONT AND IS SECURED AROUND THE WAIST WITH A BELT. HER BODY HAS THAT RIPE, MATURE APPEAL OF WOMEN OVER THIRTY. THE WOMAN SMILES ENGAGINGLY. DAN KERRY GETS UP FROM HIS DESK.

Woman: Dr. Kerry?

Kerry: Yes.

Woman: Dan? Dan Kerry?

*Apart from typographical errors and a few typographical inconsistencies, no alterations have been made by the editors.

Kerry: That’s right.

THEY STAND FACING EACH OTHER.

Kerry: Please, come right in.

THE WOMAN COMES WALKING IN THAT FINE SPLENDOUR OF WOMEN OVER THIRTY BLESSED WITH GOOD EARTHLY FLESH ON THEIR BONES. THE WOMAN PAUSES.

Woman: Dan Kerry? After all these years! How astonishing!

Kerry: (PUZZLED) Astonishing?

Woman: Yes. I mean if you really are the Dan Kerry.

Kerry: (WRYLY) Well, I sincerely hope I am the Dan Kerry.

Woman: Of course, you are! (SHE WANDERS ABOUT THE ROOM.)

Oh, Dan, it’s simply marvelous! The room I mean. Just as I imagined it would be: bare, naked, empty. Simple, uncluttered space for your immense soul to roam in.

Kerry: (PERPLEXED) Mrs … eh … ?

Woman: Gresham. Gloria Gresham.

(PAUSE. SHE TURNS AROUND FROM HER WANDERINGS AND FACES HIM, SMILING WITH IMMENSE UNDERSTANDING.)

Of course, you don’t remember me. I don’t blame you. It’s so long ago! I myself had forgotten until I came across your name in the newspapers. I couldn’t believe it was really you! But there it all was: COLOURED SOUTH AFRICAN ACHIEVES INTERNATIONAL FAME: FIRST EMINENT BLACK PSYCHIATRIST TO PRACTICE IN LONDON’S HARLEY STREET.

Well, I was absolutely bowled over just seeing your name in print! (SLIGHT PAUSE.) Anyway, how does it feel? To be the first eminent psychiatrist of your race, I mean?

Kerry: I’m afraid I’m not the first, Mrs. Gresham.

Woman: Oh, yes you are! In Britain that is. You most certainly are! Don’t be modest, Dr. Kerry! Believe me, it never pays to be modest. No one respects you for it.

Kerry: I’m not modest.

Woman: I’ve read everything about you. I almost feel I know you.

Kerry: (MYSTIFIED) You just said you did?

Woman: What?

Kerry: Know me.

Woman: Did I?

Kerry: Yes. You suggested we’ve met before.

Woman: Oh, yes! So I did. (SHE LAUGHS SELF-DEPRECATINGLY.) So I did indeed!

PAUSE. KERRY GETS IMPATIENT.

Kerry: Mrs. Gresham, is there anything I can do for you?

Woman: How can I know that? I don’t know the limits of your talents, do I? Of your capabilities, I mean. (PAUSE) I can’t simply say straight off, can I, whether or not you can help? All I can say is, I’m prepared to try you.

(PAUSE)

There are so many quacks in Harley Street these days, one has to be careful about whom one can trust.

(PAUSE)

Oh, I don’t mean you, of course! So far as I can tell, your qualifications are of the highest standards.

(PAUSE)

Your qualifications are impeccable. Beyond any question or doubt. All your patients testify to your tremendous skill, to your personal warmth. They say you have a certain touch.

(SHE LAUGHS SEXILY.)

The touch of the sun, I suppose. There must be many women, Dr. Kerry, white, middle-class women like myself, who find the idea of a personal encounter with you positively overpowering.

(PAUSE)

Do you know my sister has been going to one psychoanalyst now for twenty years without any appreciable improvement in her condition. She must have paid a fortune by now. I’ve told her she ought to try someone else for a change. Someone like you, Dr. Kerry: someone from a different background who’s not afraid to show a little personal warmth!

Kerry: (CAUTIOUS) Personal warmth … Well, yes--there’s nothing wrong with a little personal warmth in a Doctor of Mental Health so long as it doesn’t get too personal. (PAUSE) You said just now you wanted to read everything about me. Why did you want to read about me?

Woman: Oh, I don’t know. To re-live the past, I suppose. (PAUSE) You men are so quick to forget. It’s one gift you all seem to possess, forgetting.

Kerry: Mrs. Gresham, are you sure you’re not committing an error?

Woman: Why should I commit an error?

Kerry: Because I don’t think I’ve ever set eyes on you before … In fact, I’m (HE HESITATES) I’m almost certain it’s all a mistake.

Woman: Ah! Almost but not quite sure, are you, Dr. Kerry?

Kerry: No one can be absolutely sure about something like that.

(PAUSE)

Anyway, you’ve said nothing so far which proves we’ve ever met before …

Woman: (HER TONE SUDDENLY HARDENS) Of course, we’ve met before! (SUDDENLY LAUGHS SUGGESTIVELY) I’d say we’ve done more than meet, Dr. Kerry! I’d say you and I have enjoyed what you might call … very intimate moments.

Kerry: I beg your pardon!

Woman: Oh, dear. I hope we’re not going to adopt that kind of tone all of a sudden.

Kerry: I don’t think I’ve ever set eyes on you in my whole life!

Woman: I mean, it’s not as if I’m making impossible claims on you--yet. I haven’t come here accusing you of paternity for my child or anything of the kind, have I?

KERRY THINKS THE WOMAN POSSIBLY MAD. HE WATCHES HELPLESSLY AS SHE BEGINS ANOTHER WALK-ABOUT IN HIS CONSULTING ROOM, LOOKING THE PLACE OVER. FINALLY SHE STANDS IN A FAR CORNER, HANDS BEHIND HER BACK, LEANING AGAINST THE WALL.

Kerry: Mrs. Gresham--!

Woman: Gloria. Please, call me Gloria.

Kerry: (HEAVILY SARDONIC) If you prefer it!

Woman: I prefer it. (PAUSE) Gloria. That’s what you used to call me. By my first name. (PAUSE) Your voice had a certain gentleness then which I can still remember. It had a certain quality--how shall I put it--of hushed joy. Perhaps because it was spring. (ALMOST HUGGING HERSELF WITH THE PLEASURE OF THAT MEMORY). Oh, how I recall that spring! The jacarandas were in full flower as I remember. Everywhere was the smell of jasmine. You said if we didn’t meet again you’d always remember the smell of jasmine.

Kerry: That’s absurd! I’ve never had anything to do with you.

Woman: (ANGRILY) How can you be sure? You men are so forgetful about things like that. Birds of passage is what you are!

Kerry: Mrs. Gresham, I’m absolutely certain I’ve never had the pleasure …

Woman: (RUDELY INTERRUPTING) Pleasure is most certainly what you had! Listen. (SOFTLY) I suppose you don’t really remember anything.

Kerry: Remember what?

Woman: You know what I mean.

Kerry: No. I don’t know what you mean.

(BRIEF PAUSE. KERRY DECIDES TO MOVE WITH TACT.)

Mrs. Gresham, did you make an appointment with my secretary for this interview? (SMILES APOLOGETICALLY) I’m afraid I’m always in a kind of tizzy at this time of morning.

Woman: That’s not what they told me. Far from it. (SHE TURNS TO SMILE) They said you’d be cool and efficient.

Kerry: Cool and efficient?

Woman: That’s what they said.

HE LOOKS AT HER WITH FOREBODING.

Kerry: Who’s they ?

Woman: People who know of your capabilities.

(KERRY GOES TOWARD HIS DESK AND BEGINS TO FLIP QUICKLY OVER THE PAGES OF THE APPOINTMENT BOOK.)

Please, don’t bother to look in your diary, Dr. Kerry. The truth of the matter is, I didn’t bother to make an appointment.

KERRY STRAIGHTENS UP.

Kerry: Ah!

Woman: I took the liberty of coming --(SMILES)-- unannounced, as it were.

Kerry: I see. (PAUSE) Well, that is slightly unusual, isn’t it, Mrs. Gresham?

Woman: I like to think of myself as slightly unusual, Dr. Kerry.

(PAUSE)

Woman: I’ve always thought of myself as somewhat unusual. That’s how in my own humble way I always like to think of myself.

Kerry: Don’t we all, Mrs. Gresham.

(KERRY SEEMS UNCERTAIN WHAT TO DO NEXT.)

Look, Mrs. Gresham, I don’t mind dealing with your problem …

Woman: Ah, now you’re getting annoyed with me, Dr. Kerry.

COMING TOWARD HIM.

Kerry: I’m not getting annoyed.

Woman: You are though … Just a little bit.

Kerry: I can assure you I’m not. (PAUSE) Not yet anyway.

Woman: Ah, that’s nice. (PAUSE) Slow to anger, are you, Dr. Kerry?

Kerry: In my profession I have to try and keep calm.

Woman: Keep your cool as they say.

Kerry: If you wish to put it that way, yes.

Woman: All the same, I think you’re intrigued by me. Wouldn’t you say you were just a little bit intrigued, Dr. Kerry?

GIVING THE WOMAN COMPLETE APPRAISAL. HE SEEMS GREATLY IMPRESSED BY HER POWERFUL SEXUALITY.

Kerry: Well, Yes. I would say, quite intrigued.

Woman: (JOYOUSLY) You are?

Kerry: Well (SLIGHT PAUSE) Wouldn’t any man?

Woman: (SHARPLY) What do you mean by that?

KERRY LAUGHS FLIRTATIOUSLY

Kerry: Well. A splendid woman of dazzling good looks waltzing into your office at 10 o’clock in the morning without so much as an appointment.

Woman: I see. (SLOWLY) So you think I’m dazzling, do you?

STILL CARRYING ON IN THE SPIRIT OF A HARMLESS FLIRTATION.

Kerry: What man wouldn’t! (LAUGHS) As a matter of fact, I don’t mind admitting: it’s not very often that one gets a visit from a woman of such obvious good …

Woman: (SUDDENLY HARD) Stop it!

Kerry: What?

Woman: I said, stop it!

Kerry: Stop what?

Woman: Whatever you think you’re doing!

(SMALL SILENCE.)

Just what game do you think you’re playing, slobbering over me like that?

Kerry: Ah, wait a minute now, Mrs. Gresham.

Woman: I mean it! Trying to cajole me. All this pep talk about sex! (SLIGHT PAUSE) Christ, I’m hardly in the room for five minutes and you’re already trying to sex me up.

Kerry: Now, look, I think you’re being bloody unfair!

Woman: Am I?

Kerry: Yes. I was merely trying to pay you a compliment.

Woman: What for? You are a psychiatrist, aren’t you? You’re not here to chat up women, are you?

Kerry: I was doing nothing of the sort!

Woman: I’m warning you, Kerry! I don’t care if you’re black and South African and have been oppressed for as long as anyone can remember. This is not South Africa. Here you’re just another psychiatrist, a professional man, like anybody else. No favours. You’re supposed to perform your duties like anyone else without fear or favor.

Kerry: You’re not here to lecture me on my duties.

Woman: As long as you don’t start anything funny with me! God, I hate being chatted up by complete strangers!

Kerry: Complete strangers! Only a minute ago …

Woman: (CUTTING HIM SHORT) Never mind what I said a minute ago! (PAUSE) Just because you’re black you think you can get away with murder. Well, you won’t!

Kerry: What are you talking about?

Woman: Chatting me up!

Kerry: I never chatted you up. Mrs Gresham,if you please. May I make a simple observation. I think you’re obsessed with being chatted up.

Woman: Calling me ‘splendid’ and ‘dazzling’. Do you always pay compliments to women who come to see you? Is that what you do up here? Sweet-chatting women on the National Health Service?

Kerry: Mrs. Gresham, let me put it this way. I’m sorry if I annoyed you. Okay? I apologize! I didn’t mean to be offensive.

THE WOMAN SMILES DAZZLINGLY. SHE SITS DOWN ON THE CHAIR NEXT TO THE COUCH. CASUALLY SHE LIFTS ONE LEG, INSPECTING HER STOCKING, THEN THE OTHER. DELICATELY SHE USES ONE FOOT TO REMOVE FIRST ONE SHOE, THEN THE OTHER.

Woman: All right. I forgive you.

Kerry: (NOT PLACATED) And now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with my work.

HE GOES TO SIT AT HIS DESK.

Woman: Ah, now you’re angry.

Kerry: I’m not angry.

Woman: Yes. You are. I’ve made you feel … very bitter. You’re bitter.

Kerry: Mrs. Gresham …

Woman: You shouldn’t be. It only confirms what they all say about you.

Kerry: Who?

Woman: White people. They say you all have chips on your shoulders.

Kerry: Mrs. Gresham, I don’t care a damn what white people say about us !

Woman: There you go again! Being bitter I mean! Bitterness will get you nowhere!

Kerry: Mrs. Gresham, please, listen carefully to me. This has gone on long enough! In all fairness, I must now ask you to state your business. Or ask you to leave.

Woman: Business?

SHE GETS UP FROM STOOL AND SITS ON THE COUCH AS THOUGH TESTING IT.

Woman: You are a psychiatrist, aren’t you?

Kerry: Yes. Of course. (PAUSE) What I mean is: why did you come here? Did a G. P. send you to us?

Woman: No one sent me. I came of my own free will. (SHE SMILES DAZZLINGLY). Being of sound mind and … No, I suppose that’s not strictly true, is it, Dr. Kerry? You don’t think I’m of sound mind, (PAUSE) do you, Dr. Kerry? You think I’m mad but-- (SHE RAISES HER KNEE TO RUB IT AGAINST THE INSIDE OF HER RIGHT THIGH) --but beautiful. Don’t you, Dr. Kerry?

Kerry: Please, let’s not get back to that subject again.

Woman: Come on! Admit it, you think I’m beautiful, don’t you, Dr. Kerry?

Kerry: I’ll admit you have very striking good looks.

Woman: You think I’m sexy?

Kerry: I’m not going to be led into making any more statements of that kind again.

Woman: (SWEETLY) Nevertheless, (SHE LIES ON HER BACK ON THE COUCH) you think it. That’s what you think. You think I’m sexy!

Kerry: As a general observation, yes.

WOMAN LAUGHS.

Woman: As a general observation?

SILENCE. KERRY COMES AND SITS ON THE STOOL NEXT TO THE COUCH WHERE THE WOMAN IS LYING.

Kerry: Mrs. Gresham, will you please listen to me? I’m a very busy man, Mrs. Gresham. I have many patients in my practice. So I must ask you to cooperate in order to save us as much time as possible. You haven’t told me why you came to see me.

THE WOMAN REMAINS MOODILY QUIET. SILENTLY SUFFERING.

Woman: I came to see what you have become. An old friend. Do I need a reason to come and see you?

Kerry: Who are you? (A DESPERATE TRY) Are you by any chance a friend of Dr. Barlow’s?

Woman: Who is Dr. Barlow?

Kerry: A South African heart surgeon.

Woman: Where does he live?

Kerry: Mada Vale.

Woman: I don’t know any Dr. Barlow.

Kerry: Sorry. I just thought that possibly I might’ve met you at his house.

Woman: You didn’t meet me at any Dr. Barlow’s.

Kerry: I thought I might’ve done …

Woman: Done what?

Kerry: Meet you …

Woman: (INCREDULOUSLY) At Dr. Barlow’s?

Kerry: Yes.

THE WOMAN LAUGHS. KERRY GETS ANNOYED.

What’s so funny?

Woman: Nothing.

SILENCE

Kerry/Woman:     What?

Kerry: I’m sorry. You want to say something.

Woman: Does he throw nice parties?

Kerry: Who?

Woman: This Dr. Barlow.

Kerry: I don’t know what you’d call ‘nice’.

Woman: Interesting then. (PAUSE) Are his parties interesting?

Kerry: I suppose so.

(PAUSE)

One always meets the most extraordinary people there.

Woman: I see.

(SHE GETS UP FROM THE COUCH AND WANDERS AROUND THE ROOM AGAIN.)

Is that why you think you might’ve met me there? Because you think I’m odd? A bit off my rocker? (SHE SWIVELS AROUND) Is that what you think?

Kerry: No, that’s not what I meant at all.

Woman: What did you mean then?

Kerry: Well, nothing offensive, really.

Woman: But you do think I’m odd, don’t you? At the very least, extraordinary?

Kerry: No.

Woman: You think I’m ordinary then?

Kerry: In a nice way, yes.

Woman: What’s the nice way of being ordinary?

Kerry: Being ‘normal’. That’s what I meant.

Woman: You think I’m normal, do you?

Kerry: So far as I can see, yes.

Woman: A woman with normal capacities?

Kerry: Let us say, I see nothing wrong with you.

Woman: You find me adequate?

HE LAUGHS SELF-CONSCIOUSLY.

Kerry: Now, wait a minute. Is this some kind of inquisition or something? (PAUSE) Anyway, you must please try to understand. When I use the word ‘normal’, I’m not employing it in a strictly professional sense here.

(PAUSE)

I mean, in my kind of profession one is soon made forcefully aware that beneath the surface, people aren’t quite what they seem at first glance.

Woman: So you wouldn’t give me a clean Bill of Health? Is that it?

Kerry: I wouldn’t put it quite that way.

Woman: How would you put it then?

PAUSE. KERRY GETS UP FROM STOOL.

Kerry: Mrs. Gresham, I’m afraid this conversation is getting us absolutely nowhere.

SHE SITS DOWN ON THE STOOL NEXT TO THE COUCH AGAIN. CASUALLY SHE LIFTS ONE LEG ON TO HER OTHER KNEE, ELABORATELY INSPECTING HER STOCKING, SMOOTHING HERE AND THERE. THEN THE OTHER LEG. SHE THEN SIGHS AND BEGINS TO REMOVE STOCKINGS. KERRY IS GREATLY ALARMED.

Kerry: Mrs. Gresham!

Woman: Yes.

Kerry: You can’t do that in my consulting room!

Woman: I can’t do what?

Kerry: Remove your stockings! I can’t allow you to remove items of clothing in my consulting room.

Woman: I’m afraid I’ve got to take them off. It’s sweltering in here. I feel as if I’m centrally overheated. Besides I always ladder my stockings under severe emotional stress. I ladder them at the rate of at least one pair a week.

SOFT AND VULNERABLE.

I must be going through a difficult phase in my life.

Kerry: Why do you think so? Anyone can ladder their stockings.

Woman: Not as often as I ladder mine. I don’t know how I manage it. I must be going through a crisis in my life. (PAUSE) All the same, I’m not entirely without hope. (PAUSE) It’s just a phase. I keep telling myself. It will soon pass. Meanwhile, I ruin quite a lot of things, mainly material possessions of which I’m unhappily surrounded--a sign, no doubt, of an immense spiritual wastage going on within.

Kerry: Wastage?

Woman: Yes. Lately, I’ve developed an extraordinary capacity for unhappiness.

Kerry: Is that so?

Woman: What do you mean, is that so?

Kerry: Why, nothing.

Woman: You’re just like my husband. You respond to mental suffering with one resounding cliché after another.

Kerry: Well, I’m sorry.

AN EMBARRASSED SILENCE ENSUES.

Woman: My husband is having an affair with another woman, Dr. Kerry.

Kerry: Is that so?

Woman: (IRRITABLY) Oh, for heaven’s sake!

Kerry: I’m sorry. (PAUSE) What does your husband do, Mrs. Gresham?

Woman: He’s a chemist. An adulterous chemist, Dr. Kerry. He thinks I don’t know he’s sleeping with that Wilkins woman. Some common tart he picked up in the Midlands to work as his assistant in the laboratory. (PAUSE) God, what a joke! All these late nights he keeps in the laboratory … (SNORTS) Always on the point of some major breakthrough. (SHE LAUGHS SARDONICALLY) What a charade! Thinks I don’t know what he’s up to. Always on the point of some astounding breakthrough which the world of chemistry has simply but just simply been waiting for! (PAUSE) Have anything to do with my husband, Dr. Kerry, you’ll hear of nothing else, but near-breakthroughs . They should award him a Nobel Prize just for the late nights he keeps in the laboratory. And the near-breakthroughs, I never heard of so many near-breakthroughs in my whole life.

PAUSE

Kerry: That hardly is an unusual state of affairs, Mrs. Gresham.

Woman: God, you’re boring!

Kerry: You may not like it, but it’s the truth. The history of scientific research is littered with failed hopes and wasted ambition, with near misses as you call them. At all times scientific research is characterized by squandered opportunities and dissipated insights.

THE WOMAN LAUGHS SCORNFULLY.

Woman: My God! Do you always talk like that?

Kerry: What do you mean?

Woman: The way you talk … like a newspaper editorial.

Kerry: (IRRITATED) I talk exactly the way I have always talked.

SHE LAUGHS, THEN QUICKLY STIFLES IT.

Woman: Ah, forget it! It’s my husband we’re talking about. His brilliantly staged adulteries. I suppose if I wanted, I could divorce him. (PAUSE) It would be the easiest thing to do. He doesn’t even eat at home anymore. God, how many times have I cooked something real special for him and when he comes home he can’t eat because he’s already dined with that slut he consorts with in his laboratory. (PAUSE) I could divorce him. Only we are so compatible, Dr. Kerry. Sexually, I mean.

Kerry: Listen, Gloria,--

Woman: Fair is fair! I mean give credit where credit is due. My husband is exceptionally good in bed. He’s a real technician. I can hardly keep up with him …

Kerry: Gloria, you didn’t come here to advertise your husband’s sexual prowess.

Woman: Am I embarrassing you?

Kerry: Nothing embarrasses me. You forget I’m a trained psychiatrist.

Woman: I just thought you were. A little embarrassed.

Kerry: I listen to hundreds of stories like yours every day. Frankly, some of them are greatly exaggerated. Especially stories about sexual performance. I can always take them with a pinch of salt.

Woman: You think I’m exaggerating? You don’t know my husband. A regular sex maniac, he is. Why do you think he needs another woman?

Kerry: That I can’t say. I don’t know your husband, Mrs. Gresham.

Woman: Well, I’ll tell you why. One woman is not enough for him. He needs more than one woman to satisfy him.

Kerry: How long has this been going on?

Woman: Oh, I don’t know. Five, six months, maybe years. (PAUSE) I mean, it’s not as if I’m inadequate or something, is it? Some men have found me more than adequate. I’ve had more than one testimonial from men who’ve found me terribly adequate.

Kerry: I’m sure you’re very adequate, Mrs. Gresham.

Woman: I have a good body. Men still turn their heads when I walk down the street.

Kerry: I’m sure they do.

Woman: As a matter of fact, I’ve always had a problem with men.

Kerry: Oh? What kind of problem?

Woman: In the Underground, in buses, wherever there are crowds, men always try to run their hands over me. Sexually harassing me.

Kerry: Is that a fact?

Woman: They always try to feel me about. It’s most embarrassing.

Kerry: Did you tell your husband all this? That men are always trying to feel you?

Woman: Tell my husband? What for? What are you talking about?

Kerry: It may do your husband a lot of good to know some men desire you. Most husbands like to compete.

Woman: You don’t know my husband. He thinks I invite men to touch me, to feel me about.

Kerry: Surely, that’s a very unreasonable attitude.

Woman: Of course, it’s an unreasonable attitude. My husband is a very unreasonable man, Dr. Kerry. And now he’s having an affair with his assistant. What shall I do, Dr. Kerry? Shall I take a lover? What am I supposed to do?

Kerry: Those occurrences, Mrs. Gresham, are not as unusual as some people might think, especially among married couples of a certain age-group. It’s all a question of boredom.

Woman: What about me? Don’t I get bored? What am I supposed to do? Take a lover? Is that what I should do?

Kerry: That I’m not qualified to say.

Woman: What are you qualified for then?

Kerry: Mrs. Gresham, my brief doesn’t run that far. I’m not here to give advice on matters of an ethical nature. I’m here to help those of my patients who are suffering from severe emotional stress to such an extent that they are incapable of living a full normal life. Consequently, I’m unable to advise you as to whether to take a lover or not.

Woman: I want to be happy. Why don’t I deserve to be happy?

Kerry: Mrs. Gresham, it is not given to most of us to be happy. Merely to be able to cope with our unhappiness.

Woman: Why do psychiatrists talk so much crap ? (SHE GETS UP FROM THE CHAIR.)

It’s so hot in here! Do you always keep the window shut like this?

Kerry: Yes. I’m afraid I have to have complete silence when I’m with a patient.

Woman: August