The Promise, Damon Galgut
The book is divided into sections about Ma, Pa, Astrid and Anton, but overlooking all of them is the youngest sibling, Amor. They live on a farm not far from Pretoria, South Africa under the rule of Apartheid. Ma converted to Judaism, to the chagrin of her family. Pa is Christian and now he can no longer be buried near her. As she lay dying, she extracted a promise from Pa to give their black maid, Salome, the house she has lived in for all the years she has worked for the Swarts. It isn’t legal to do so, at that time, but this is what she wants. When the story opens, we are about to witness Ma's funeral.
Although Pa is a devout Christian, he does not keep his promise. Pa eventually dies also, from a snake bite. He went into the cage believing G-d would protect him from the cobra. G-d did not. As the book progresses, the shortcomings of several religions and spiritualities are explored with a subtle intensity, and they are exposed as imperfect.
Amor was struck by lightning when she was six-years-old, and that event unfairly defined her. Afterwards, she was forever thought of as changed and unable to truly take care of herself. Oddly, she may have been the only one who could exist on her own. Eventually, she escaped from the farm and did not look back. She did not return until her father died. Anton, her older brother was bright, but never reached his potential. He was tortured by memories of his time in the army. He had killed a woman and never quite got past the guilt or the shame. After his mother’s funeral, he did not return to the army. He deserted and did not go back home for years, until his father’s death. Amor’s older sister, Astrid, was prone to jealousy and excessive vanity. She relied on her good looks. She was a bigot who looked down on black people. Her view of right and wrong was skewed, as she made excuses for her transgressions and believed that, as a Catholic, confession would clear her conscience and erase her sins so she could err again. She was a convert. She promised to repent, but always broke the promise.
While her siblings looked at the lives of others, dreamed big dreams and thought of the blacks as inferior, Amor sought only to be kind to others and to fulfill her mother’s promise to give Salome the ramshackle home she lived in, but she carried that burden for decades and was betrayed by her father and her brother when they broke their promises. Salome was selfless, not necessarily by choice, but by circumstance. What else could she do? As a black woman, her lot in life was one of hard work and sacrifice with little reward. After Amor told her she was to get her house, she waited patiently at first, and then, she gave up hope. Lukas, was her son. He had dreams of getting an education, but being brought up in South Africa at that time, it was not really a dream he could fulfill. He was an angry man who felt wronged by the Swart family and the whites in the world in which he lived. He wasn’t wrong, but he also made his own situation worse.
As the years pass, we witness Amor in a long term, but not long-lasting relationship, with a woman, Susan. Amor found she needed more; she needed to tend to those less advantaged than she was and wanted little else from life. She was a nurse, and eventually wound up in Cape Town. Anton, on the other hand, married Desiree, his old girlfriend, when he returned to the farm. He watched the farm and his marriage deteriorate, slowly, as if he was a bystander, not a participant. He was unfulfilled and unhappy. He wanted to be successful. He was the one who was supposed to rise to the occasion, instead, he made excuses for his lack of ambition. He drank to excess and pretended to be writing a novel which was never completed. We continue to watch as Astrid, the social climber, always feels put upon, which is justified somewhat as she was the one who remained at home when her siblings ran away. She divorced her first husband. Her second marriage was a financial success, but she found it hard to stay loyal. She strayed from her marriage vows with disastrous consequences. Anton’s wife, Desiree, was similar, in personality, to Astrid, always disappointed that she didn’t’ have more, always wanting something she hadn’t achieved. She becomes involved with a spiritual leader, Muti, a yogi, and they meditate together, and then some. He tries to teach her patience. He has his own failings, though. They are all searching and never seem to quite find themselves, and they remain unfulfilled.
As the storyteller watches and seems to observe unseen, what is seen, is revealed. It is the everyday, ordinary life of the Swarts family as time passes, almost unnoticed by the observer, as it passes almost at random as one sentence follows another. Each sibling in the Swart family was unique in both good and bad ways. Their views on life were colored by the Apartheid experience and the behavior of their parents and relatives. Told in short staccato sentences, that create tension and put the reader in the thick of things, almost absentmindedly, the story unfolds. As it does, the reader is captured completely and the harshness and injustice of the lives of the black people is revealed, as is the disinterest, prejudice, and arrogance of the white people for whom they work.
The book is about sins, guilt, shame, secrets, broken promises, all kinds of infidelity, absolution, forgiveness, contradictions, corruption on every level, and at the very core, racism. In the end, the anger and injustice on one side, creates havoc on the other and South Africa is troubled, even with the new leader, Mandela, finally freed from jail after two decades. When Apartheid ends, all is simply not sweetness and light. Prejudices still remain and with the freedom to voice their own minds, blacks are also prejudiced against whites. Crime and violence soar.
As the book jumps from character to character the threads of the story knit together with the odd conjunction of issues and events. The mundane moments of life become momentous. Contradictions in behavior, attitudes and beliefs, are illustrated throughout the book and often do not resolve themselves peacefully. As the story unfolds further, it feels as if someone is calmly observing all, watching their world go by. There is a ghostlike, supernatural tangent running through the story, as well. The most likeable characters are Salome and Amor; however, Salome is presented as a saint and Amor as somewhat of a fallen angel.
This is an excellent expose of Apartheid and its consequences and a great book for discussion about the contradictions and conundrums we are all faced with from friends, family, media, teachers, laymen and religious leaders. No one is perfect and the imperfections of ordinary people and the society itself, live large in this book alongside the history of racism.