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208 | denis beckett<br />
Mostly, their betting changed a fair bit between the hullo<br />
and the goodbye. at first it was good orthodox stuff – crime<br />
against humanity … worthy recent steps forward … further<br />
pressures necessary …<br />
But the more we fulfilled our duty to vineyards the further<br />
the tone shifted, until, usually, they’d say with greater or lesser<br />
bluntness that South africa was a write-off and so was the<br />
whole benighted continent. This got up my nose more than<br />
somewhat, but that was mutual because when they asked for<br />
my words of wisdom I’d sing the new-democracy song and they<br />
would wonder how they’d got trapped with this crank.<br />
Once in Paris they actually said so. This was at a classy Seineside<br />
restaurant with three Quai d’Orsay people and my friend<br />
Pierre Haski, who had been an institution at agence france<br />
Presse in Johannesburg and was now assistant editor of the<br />
lefty paper Liberation. The host was france’s under-secretary<br />
for africa who was not agog at my case for france to help South<br />
africa catapult democracy to a higher level than had been<br />
reached here in the hub of the universe. He waxed lyrical and<br />
amusing (well, to everyone else) about utopia and political<br />
lunatics. He wasn’t obnoxious about it but departure was in a<br />
spirit of “nice time but nothing to it” until he asked jokingly if<br />
I was related to Samuel Beckett. I said sure, I was going now to<br />
visit him.<br />
french eyes turned to saucers and my forgettability was<br />
forgotten. Sam’s a serious hero in france, I learned. I instantly<br />
became heavyweight by proxy and for the first and I hope only<br />
time I felt what it was like to be dismissed for what you are and<br />
respected for what somebody else is. If Sam had come up at the<br />
beginning they probably would have listened to my politics.<br />
Not that Sam was interested, incidentally, in my politics or<br />
in the magical effect of his name or in anything else other than<br />
the pain in his decaying body. He was in a clinic near Denfertrochereau<br />
and he walked like a character from one of his own<br />
plays. You could have balanced a bottle on his back except the<br />
weight would have crumpled him. We had Jameson’s whisky
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