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Blood and silver is a fine memoir, a singular achievement. Like the best examples of that genre, it reveals to attentive readers as much about themselves as about the real subject.
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https://www.nb.co.za/bo/view-book?id=9780624093695
Blood and silver
Jan Glazewski
Tafelberg
ISBN: 9780624093695
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It might be a memoir, but Jan Glazewski’s Blood and silver opens like a fairy tale.
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It might be a memoir, but Jan Glazewski’s Blood and silver opens like a fairy tale.
In September 1989, his father, Gustaw, to whom the book is dedicated, ushers him into his Cape Town study one evening for their habitual post-prandial tête-à-tête. This time is momentous, though, since as both Poland and South Africa teeter on the edge of seismic political changes, Gustaw hands his son, an academic at UCT’s law school, typed-up instructions on how to locate the family treasure – the silver of the title – which has been buried in the east of what was then Poland since precisely four decades ago, when Germany invaded the country in the faraway west and the instantly roiled Russian army commenced rumbling in the east.
The family estate, Chmielowa – where Gustaw, trained in France, made wine – was situated in the south-eastern corner of the larger pre-Yalta Poland, close to the banks of the Dniester River, which arose further north near the city of Dorhobych, and coursed south to its conclusion in the Black Sea, at Odessa. The Russian border was ten kilometres away.
Like his three brothers, Gustaw had little choice but to gather his things. The siblings scattered to the four corners of the globe, Gustaw with his pregnant wife in tow. The patriarch Adam, however, refused to leave. After the war, the USSR claimed a thick vertical strip of Poland, the easternmost part. Thus, Chmielowa and the fabled family silver, which Gustaw had buried in a forest before fleeing, fell into Soviet hands. (Today, it is in Ukraine.) Apprised by the local workers of his beneficence as a landlord, the Soviets spared Adam, who lived until 1960. Yet, his sons were not to see him again.
After a short stint in Romania, where Jan’s eldest sibling, Adam, was born, and several years in Palestine, where Adam, a haemophiliac, died and two sisters were born – the third sister would arrive in Cairo – this branch of the Glazewski family set off down the Suez Canal, to distant South Africa, where they would join an already burgeoning Polish émigré community (of which, in passing, this book is an engaging synoptic account). Gustaw found employment in the wine industry in Paarl, where in 1953 Jan was born. He, too, suffered from haemophilia – the blood in the title.
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And so, the memoir’s two narrative and thematic strands – both of which evoke the irresistible pull of the past, of ancestral voices – are woven tightly into a fascinating and compelling account of a life richly and intensely lived. This is a story of family: of losses and of surprising, abundant gains. It is a tale of growing up as an outsider of sorts in a country committed to employing taxonomy to divide.
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And so, the memoir’s two narrative and thematic strands – both of which evoke the irresistible pull of the past, of ancestral voices – are woven tightly into a fascinating and compelling account of a life richly and intensely lived. This is a story of family: of losses and of surprising, abundant gains. It is a tale of growing up as an outsider of sorts in a country committed to employing taxonomy to divide. It is an account of profound physical suffering. So, too, it is a story of life in the academy, of creativity and courage in the law. To boot, a love story, a recording of friendships, a diary of an unlikely type of belonging.
My survey intentionally darts over detail. The book – indeed, Glazewski’s life – is marked by unexpected twists and sallies. There are many surprises that a reviewer should be at pains not to spoil. It is enough to say that I read the book in one short sitting. There are many reasons why this was so. Plainly enough, the book’s themes are timely and timeless. Often, the account takes one aback, perhaps in part because the Polish diaspora to South Africa is less well known than others. In one sense, therefore, it is thrillingly educative.
The book is structured neatly: it is composed of busy, compact chapters. The memoirist’s eyes move chronologically across the progression of his life, which is inevitably also the life of apartheid South Africa. Yet, while his gaze is increasingly not one entirely from the outside, Glazewski’s vantage point remains oblique.
The prose is clean and unobtrusive. The narrator’s tone is at once gently sardonic – often making light of his own travails – and pervaded by melancholy: “It was during my childhood on Cotswold [sc the family farm] that I recollect feeling pangs of loneliness, a feeling that has remained with me for much of my adult life” (43).
Yet, as the biographical account unfurled, this reader’s thoughts kept nagging back to the tantalising opening scene: the quest for treasure. In the last third of the book, Glazewski finally has the time and energy to grasp the gauntlet cast down by his father.
The nature of an odyssey like the one required here – across several decades and many borders that did not exist before – dictates that it cannot possibly be embarked upon alone. Indeed, Glazewski has the good sense to assemble a motley and growing band of wayfaring explorers, with as standard-bearer his niece Layla.
As one expects of a fairy tale, of a heroic quest for a hidden grail, there are many unforeseen impediments, an array of suspected and real betrayals, countless threats to life and liberty. Yet, the reader soon comes to share the narrator’s own growing suspicion that it is not unlike Don Quixote and Sancho Panza that he and Layla tilt after treasure that might be no more than a few badly rusted knives or baubles.
Blood and silver is a fine memoir, a singular achievement. Like the best examples of that genre, it reveals to attentive readers as much about themselves as about the real subject.