Free Beautiful Screaming of Pigs by Damon Galgut Page A

– 1989’.
    There were also piles of smaller hand-bills, printed on pinkish paper, giving a history of Andrew Lovell’s life, under the heading ‘Freedom Fighter’. The jargon was repellent
and intriguing to me at the same time; I glanced through it and learned about Andrew Lovell – that he’d been born in Johannesburg and had lived there till going down to Cape Town to
study law in 1979. He’d served on various councils and committees, most of them banned by now. Under the state of emergency he’d been detained and had spent several months in prison. On
being released he’d gone to Namibia, where he worked underground for SWAPO. At the time of his death he was facing charges for refusing to serve in the army. His life, the pamphlet said, had
been one of selfless commitment to the struggle.
    Andrew Lovell had been murdered the previous morning in Swakopmund, at about the time we’d left my grandmother’s house. He didn’t live in that town – he had been based in
Windhoek – but had been visiting temporarily while he organized an election rally. As he came out of the local SWAPO offices, he’d been shot by unknown attackers in a passing car.
He’d been hit by a shotgun blast in the chest and had died on the pavement before any medical help arrived.
    I didn’t learn all of this from the pamphlet; some bits and pieces came to me later, from my mother, from the newspaper, from listening and looking around. But already that morning I had a
clear sense of who Andrew Lovell was, of how very different his life had been to mine. And I had a feeling, somewhere in myself, of something approaching – though I couldn’t say
what.
    When Godfrey had finished with his conversation we loaded ourselves up with the posters and pamphlets and carried them down to the car. The smell of fresh ink followed us all the way.
    My mother and Godfrey were too tired to drive, so I was behind the wheel. ‘I’ll show you a different route,’ Godfrey said. ‘Let’s avoid the main
road.’ Windhoek, in striations of colourless houses, fell gradually away from the car. We crossed over a highway that was still under construction – teams of black men labouring in
overalls – onto a gravel road. Parched yellow grasslands opened around us, dotted with misshapen trees. The road passed through farms; we kept going over cattle grids, through big fields
mapped out in wire.
    Nobody spoke. In the rear-view mirror, her image broken by a fine crack in the glass, I watched my mother doze off. Lulled by the rhythm of the car, her eyelids slipped down, her face flattened
out. In a while she had slumped against the door, mouth open, a vein pulsing in her neck.
    Godfrey noticed her. He was sitting in the front seat next to me and a glance passed between us, followed by a smile of complicity. But after this little moment there didn’t seem to be
anything else to say. The silence went on. The heat and the dust were oppressive. The windows were closed, but a thin grit got into the car. It furred up my teeth, blocked my pores, invaded the
joints of my bones. Outside the bush had given way to mountains of silica: folded, hollowed and haunted. The land was stripped down to its bones. The road wasn’t level any more.
    ‘Is this the desert?’ I asked.
    Godfrey shook his head. ‘The real desert is still coming.’ He looked at me for a long moment. ‘You have never been here?’
    ‘Not this part of the country. Only up north.’
    ‘You didn’t want to see this? The country you were fighting for?’
    ‘I did want to see it. I wasn’t fighting for anything. I was just... ’ It seemed pointless to go on. Instead I said, ‘Did you know him? Andrew Lovell?’
    ‘Sure. He was a friend of mine.’
    ‘What was he like?’
    He thought about this for a while, so long that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, ‘He was quiet.’
    ‘Quiet?’
    ‘Not shy, but quiet. Very intelligent. Good with words – a legal man. Not many