Looksmart sat on a bench in Independence Square and read a copy of the Declaration of Independence and I saw in my dream how the scales fell from his eyes, poor fellow. America appeared to Looksmart rather in the way that the Angel of the Lord appeared to the Virgin Mary. In Philadelphia, the cradle of revolution, an idea of an African redeemer was born.
Of course he quickly realised that the American Declaration of Independence was a document so advanced in its political thinking that, had it been promulgated on that day in his own country as the manifesto of some new party or movement, it would have been shredded on the spot and its adherents exiled or arrested, banned, imprisoned, or tortured as wild men beyond the civilised pale. It rang with phrases, any one of which would have brought blood to the eyes of the followers of the Regime; it spoke of equality, of inalienable rights, of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. It spoke of Just Powers, and, most startlingly, of the ‘Consent of the Governed’.
It must have been likely that in the years that followed the Revolution some news of its occurrence would have travelled abroad, even as far as Southern Africa. But to judge from all the evidence no such thing occurred. Of course it was not unusual nowadays to claim kinship in retrospect. It was put out by the Regime that they too had fought for their freedom against the Imperialists, to say that ‘we were fighting for our freedom from the British at about the same time as the Yanks, you know.’
In fact they hadn’t stayed to fight at all, they had not been set afire with a light of freedom. Instead, deeply unhappy about the loss of their slaves and chafing at the English overlordship, though they had settled the country with their first colonists at about the same time as the Americans, they put up with successive overlords for years — until damn busybodies got between them and their slaves, and the disgruntled Boers migrated northward with God as their guide and their guns loaded, set the whips cracking over the backs of oxen, and the covered wagons rolling north into the interior in search of fresh grazing, uninterrupted privacy, and plenty of servants, in search of a heaven in the middle of nowhere. A Garden of Eden free of English and full of garden boys. Over half a century had passed since the time the Massachusetts militiamen shot it out with the British at Lexington. But no news of these great events appeared to have reached the Boers. Or if it had, Looksmart suspected, they wouldn’t have liked what they heard. The early Americans wanted a nation free and independent among the nations of the world. The Boers had no nation, distrusted freedom and cared nothing for the world. The very idea would have had your average Boer choking into his brandy. What he wanted was to be left alone and to put as much distance between himself and the English enemy as possible, to trek until he reached that magic land, the land of Beulah, where the game was limitless, grazing good and armies of black slaves kept him in clover. That was the cloud-capped summit of the dream towards which they had trekked. Trekked once more. And Uncle Paul had trekked yet again.
In the end they had to stand and fight. They found you could never go far enough. It wasn’t just that the English were following them, it was history that stalked them down and chased them and in time overtook them and ran them to earth. They fought and lost. But when the Dutch farmers lost the war to the English rednecks at the turn of the century, and Uncle Paul Kruger fled into exile, it was the end of the Boers forever. Those who replaced them, that is to say those who remained, and never took the one-way ticket to the remote Paradise on the Swiss mountains set aside by Uncle Paul for his dispersed people, those who remained got wise. If you couldn’t out-gun the English, you could out-vote the bastards. And they did. And scooped the board and so in exchange for the two Boer republics they had lost, they gained the whole damn southern subcontinent and as many servants as any reasonable man could wish to flog in a lifetime.
On through Philadelphia Looksmart trekked, to Betsy Ross House with its spinning wheel and its first American flag; then to Franklin’s Tomb in Christ Church, to Carpenters Hall and to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the Revolution where Looksmart laid a dozen red roses. And towards evening he set off back down Walnut Street, forgetting, as Isobel had prophesied he would, where home really was, to Penn’s Landing where he fell on his knees to the amusement of a man selling pretzels and gave thanks for his salvation. And he began to plan in his mind his ‘holy experiment’, his own Pennsylvania, his own Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love, which was to absorb him utterly from then on and dreamt in Franklin’s words that he might one day set foot on its surface and say, ‘This is my country.’
It was Isobel who remained loving and true even when he fell so deeply into these reveries that he forgot who he was or where he lived and spent the winter nights in the streets crouched over the iron gratings from which the hot wind blew, like any other bum. And of course it was Isobel who, when the invitation came to present himself at the Barclay Hotel where ‘he would hear something to his advantage’ encouraged him to go at once.
‘You’ve heard of the wandering Jew, well you’re the wandering African. Finding ways to go home.’
Isobel was a dreamer. And a bit of a dope. But she loved him. And though there are some who say that Looksmart would have learnt more of the genius of America in her arms than in all his researches into Benjamin Franklin, they forget how far gone he already was when he met her.
Looksmart’s head had been repeatedly knocked against the wall by Captain Arrie Breek, who today imports famous crooners and entire Las Vegas girlie line-ups to perform in his Mountainbowl Auditorium, and arranges pro-am golf tournaments at his Palace in the Veld, with million dollar prizes, and his part in the little matter of Looksmart’s head should not be forgotten. When you twirl a glass of water, the glass moves but the water stays still; unfortunately, when the head is struck and moves violently this rotation means the brain tries to move with it, with calamitous results for concentration, pronunciation, locomotion.
Looksmart crossed Rittenhouse Square in brilliant sunshine and went up to a suite on the tenth floor where he met a certain Mr Carstens and his friend, Estelle. Mr Carstens said he was an American with plenty of available capital. Estelle was a friend of his from Looksmart’s country. Carstens wore a vivid green and orange shirt. Estelle was dark, authoritative, and her features were chiselled, determined and pert.
Now again, there are those who say Looksmart should have known the score. He should have spotted who Carstens was. And anyone who had looked at a newspaper in the months past would have identified Estelle as Trudy Yssel. But Looksmart did not know the score and he did not read newspapers, not when he had the mountainous literature of the American Revolution to consume.
‘Mr Dladla,’ said Estelle, ‘we are here with a revolutionary plan.’
‘Mr Dladla,’ said Mr Carstens, ‘you may or may not know that there is in our country a new dispensation. A New Order. Changes are occurring.’
‘Mr Dladla,’ said Estelle, ‘I have here a letter of introduction from your brother, Gabriel. He is one terrific guy. And a friend.’
Again, there are those who charge that Looksmart should have known Carstens was a phoney, that his accent was ridiculous, and, anyway the shirt he wore with its mango sun floating above some palms should have been a dead give-away. But Looksmart had long passed beyond the petty day-to-day treacheries of the Regime. He was out of all that. He had entered a new world.
And they overlooked the letter from Gabriel.