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The Eye of the Moon - by Shelley Davidow
Available from Rainy Nights Press: http://elohigadugi.org/rainynights/
An extract...
 It is true, that no matter which hemisphere you are in, no matter which way up the moon is, its face is invariably
sad. In the northern hemisphere, it appears that tears have carved into the moon's left eye, gouged furrows down the left hand side of its face. In the southern
regions, the moon's right eye weeps, tears seem to have been blown up over the forehead by some cosmic wind and the traces can never be wiped from the surface, because they are not surface tears.
After it is rumored that Nelson Mandela will soon be released from prison, South Africa is euphoric. I am just
finishing my degree. The transformation fought for at university, in the streets, in homes and lives, through wars, is at hand. The South African President, F.W De Klerk, a
balding dyed-in-the-wool Afrikaner, is of a new and different breed. He has plans to negotiate himself out of power, and there is cause for hope and optimism. But the
beggar who sat bent over on the corner of Jan Smuts avenue and Jorrissen street, with his hand held up to the sky, is there still. The children in their rags who once
broke the skin on my hand as I offered them a coin, are still there. And there is death everywhere. There are bullets and knife wounds, and high walls with broken glass
around the rich homes in Hyde Park and Sandton. There are thirty thousand deaths from violent crime in a single year. "I'm leaving this place," I say.
*
I was the girl in class who always had a cold. I never breathed through my nose. My mouth was constantly
open. The one with the mucousy voice who was teased however hard she tried to be like the others. "I'm
sorry," she would say if she bumped someone's desk, and they would smirk. "Oops," she'd say as she tripped
over a foot deliberately stuck out from under another desk. She'd smile at the sniggers, try to merge with
the class spirit. But she was set apart because her parents were not rich enough to buy her a new tennis
racket. The one she had was bought for two Rand from another girl in the class. There was a hole in the
racket, which could not be fixed, and to top it all, the racket was warped. "Sorry," she said on the court to the harsh voice of the tennis instructor. "Missed again."
"Move those legs," the instructor shouted, and so she would run, wiping her nose, wiping it and wiping it
as it dripped so that she could not see - felt only the burning green floor of the court and the harsh sun at its zenith in the eternally deep sky.
*
It was hardly surprising then that she began to write. Furiously. And it was hardly remarkable that she fell in
love, became obsessed with a man more than twice her age, who had once been a prominent journalist for
the Star's Africa News Service. What was surprising and astonishing to her, was that the journalist himself
became obsessed. That the girl with the infected sinuses could become a symbol of lust and desire, an image
of femininity, a fantasy of perfection in these older, piercing eyes. That was as jarring as Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory.
*
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Listen to Shelley Davidow
read from The Eye of the Moon:
Click here
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