It’s 1986 and SA is burning. As Andrew Robert Wilson’s The Fourth Boy opens there’s a state of emergency in place, activists are being arrested and military conscription for white men is still compulsory.
One such man who has done his reluctant service is 23-year-old aspiring journalist Grant Asher. He recently lost his mother, who raised him as a single parent, and her parting words to him are contained in a letter. She tells him that his father lives in Oudtshoorn and reveals his surname.
Fresh with the tumult of grief and with memories swirling of his time in the army and his encounters with Wayne, a first love, Grant goes to Oudtshoorn with an assignment to write a travel piece. Once there, he discovers that his father, Jan Mazra, has been murdered recently, and his death forms part of a series of linked murders in Oudtshoorn. His story will morph into an investigative piece on the victims, each of whom is missing the tip of their little finger. But there is more than that that links them, as Grant will discover.
And there is also more to this assured debut novel than a hunt for a killer. This is a book that roams across the landscape of memory, desire, the parched towns of the Klein Karoo region of the Western Cape, and those who inhabit them. It is a story that has its roots in World War 2 and one that takes a look at the burning country through a jaundiced lens.
Grant observes what is happening politically, and this is skilfully woven in through the investigation. His comments are sometimes acid, such as when he reflects on a group of people burying an activist: “Nyalas, Buffels and Ratels. Naming these creatures of war after nature seemed to be fascism’s ultimate insult ... My mood was one of anger at this place I lived, but as always, anger was tempered with a flaccid powerlessness.”
Grant encounters the detective in charge of the case, Sgt Deon Klopper, a man whose youthful handsomeness sparks a suppressed longing in Grant, but Deon, it seems, is oblivious to it. Deon recruits him as an unofficial investigator on the case, which throws the two men into close contact.
Grant’s investigations lead him to World War 2, when groups of orphaned children from Europe’s own burning fields were rescued and set sail to SA. Among them were four boys: his father, Jan Mazra; Ted Burda; and Felix Kawal — all of whom have been murdered — and a fourth whose missing identity haunts the investigation.
There are moving passages of what the boys suffered in Europe, as they look forward to their time in this new land. They are housed in the Polish orphanage set up in Oudtshoorn then — a fact that is taken from actual history.
Grant and Deon’s investigation finds them in the home of world-renowned ceramicist Hein Grossman and his home in one of the Karoo towns, Van Wyksdorp. Dinner is set against the backdrop of a humiliating game of snooker, but even stranger is Hein’s proud sweep of a room of Nazi paraphernalia that he has been buying up for years. A dropped book of Yiddish poetry seems utterly incongruous among this scene.
Equally strange is the youthful Belinda, chasing rose beetles late at night to prevent them eating her roses, but there’s a foreshadowing that she is more than just a rose-obsessed character. And then there is also Henriette, once married to Ted and subsequently divorced, who tells her story to Grant, the sadness and vitriol seeping from her in equal measure. As Grant circles these people and as the stories of the past swirl through the text things seem to become more mysterious.
But this is more than a search for a murderer, of course. In between are the descriptions of a 1980s SA at war with itself, the knowledge that banned parties and movements are riddled with informants, and the resulting loss of life that unravels from whispered words.
It is also a condemnation of the evils of World War 2 and how it affected those who were left orphaned and traumatised. There is philosophy, too, as Hein looks at the stars when he and Grant first meet, and wonders if they are simply staring into a delayed blankness, coexisting with an illusion. Grant’s thoughts on love are resonant, too: “There was no doubt that I was in love. Everything else had been stripped away and I didn’t care.”
All these elements come together as the mystery is cracked open, as we discover how the past cuts an arrow through the present, and as Grant undergoes his own coming of age, through the investigation, love and a bitter betrayal. His is a richly textured portrayal of a sensitive man groping his way through young adulthood.
This is an excellent read, thoughtfully probing the impact of the past on people’s lives, while highlighting what life was like in SA’s burning 1980s. It is deeply layered with myriad elements, from philosophy to political commentary, all the while keeping the mystery of the murders at the centre of the story. This is an assured and highly recommended debut.
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