Look At All the Fire Folk! Part 3

Early days in Ixopo; Grandpa's cousin Lesley, after whom my mum was named

This always brought the conversation to talking about God, albeit in a convoluted and circuitous manner. God was the Elephant in the Room those nights, often alluded to, never referred to, and almost certainly not deferred to. After all, He wasn’t there.

At this point, my mum could not help herself and hesitatingly introduced the Book of Genesis; her take was that if you read it as a myth or legend, where its function was that of explanation. She argued that science in fact sketches out the same basic sequence of similar events, though over a vastly differing time frame and in the language of hard fact and not myth. Stripping out from it the concept of days meaning a 24 hour period, each day’s event nonetheless described a particular sequence of events, from darkness to waters on the face of the earth and then later creatures – and finally humankind – how all this echoes and is echoed in the biological record. 

Grandpa, unexpectedly and almost reverently, conceded her that point. But then he spoilt the effect of his apparent early capitulation by chuckling at how clever men in ancient times were, despite a lack of scientific technical knowledge, and somehow he managed to work in, as an aside, a series of statements as to what a clever people the Jews are. Grandpa’s comments were very interesting, but beside the point, since his insinuation was that men are able to pluck out knowledge in the absence of fact, while mum’s point was that this mythic invocation of how the world began could perhaps be seen as a result of divine inspiration, and not just another instance of human cleverness, even if such humans are or were God’s chosen people.

Once grandpa had utilised the wily politician’s trick of changing the topic of discussion, the better with which to avoid what you didn’t want to discuss, mum settled back into silence, silence of a disgruntled and dissatisfied sort. Grandma always sought to make peace between them, and had nodded her head vigorously at mum’s argument, indicating her full agreement with it, then, cocking her head to one side, had taken in grandpa’s comments but without vigorous non-verbal commentary, which in itself said so much. Although she was unable to disagree with him, since he hadn’t precisely attacked mum’s arguments he hadn’t endorsed it either, and so she was left in the middle again.

For mum’s comments and grandpa’s refrain highlighted an old argument between the two of them, which took many forms, and was never really resolved – so they pretty much skirted around each other, each prodding the other’s sensitivities, like tired boxers circling each other, each unwilling to make the first lunge since both were hurting.

An outsider, unaware that mum’s prime rebellion against grandpa took the form of religion, may have been unaware of the deep currents of tension flowing from one to another. But it did seem a bit unfair that while mum tackled the issue head-on, grandpa had deflected attention away from her argument by simply not answering the implied question at all. While dad and grandma, both loving them both, just said nothing but nodded a lot, trying to keep the peace between them.

My mum, Lesley, inveterate lover of poetry and fine literature

Though Nature was first and foremost, Science, particularly when harnessed directly as explanatory of, and therefore adjacent to, Nature, was never far behind in grandpa’s personal inventory of marvellous things to ponder and wonder.   

Despite dad’s gloomy forecast with regard to other intelligent life, grandpa nonetheless always hoped that the search for other life out there by means of radio waves would one day bear great fruit, and great optimist that he was, he eagerly hoped for such an event in his own lifetime. After all, he said, he was one who had literally been in a laager in his extreme youth and had lived to see man walk on the moon, so there was no reason if the project was successful that he may not be a witness to it. 

Though grandpa remained puzzled as to the mathematics involved, he was soon reassured that the question of whether a signal was random or not was easily enough ascertained. The mathematics involved always both astonished and awed him, though he was easily and not unduly impressed by many things in this world.

We all sat there feeling very small, and very quiet, and very impossible, all at the same time. Huddled around the warmth of the sun’s energy, generated in a hot summer, and now retained for use at the tail end of autumn, where a cold, sharp snap could mean frost, we were cosy which made our confrontation with our own insignificance and impending mortality all the more disquieting and yet all the more absurd. Great planetary systems, wheeling in possible pluriverses, have a habit of unsettling the mind when contemplated at length.   

On quiet, still, cold nights, when the moon was on the wane, or had waned away altogether, Grandpa would sometimes call everyone outside to look at the stars. The nights would be so dark, the hedge would present only as a very slightly darker shape in a world of darkness. We would stumble out into the unexpected black, struck suddenly by role of light in our night lives, and, stumbling along, stubbing our toes on the grey slabs of slate that made up the path, would finally end on the gravel driveway, between the majestic trees, and with dark-adjusted eyes would be able to find enough of the night sky unobstructed by leaves and suitable for astronomical observation.   

Once there and finding ourselves all in one piece, a profound silence would fall as we looked into the immensity of our universe, overwhelmed by its beauty, utterly stunned with awe.  

After an immensity of time, or so it would seem, finally, someone would usually remark at all the stars there were in the sky, which would break up the awe of worship. Grandpa generally began by pointing out our Galaxy to us, our very own Galaxy, the Milky Way, in which our Solar system, and the Earth, is contained. 200 000 000 000 stars, spreading out, expanding imperceptibly into the infinitude always seems like such a lot, even if the total number is a more or less kind of an answer, since one of those questions Science has given up on is the eternal, “How many stars are there in the sky?”  Which lack of an answer indeed perplexes little children, as it should. The unknown and unknowable ought to generate at least some awkwardness in the soul.

It is strange indeed to stand on an earth, spinning off-angle, at the edge of the disk of the galaxy, and, looking towards what is apparently the bulge at the middle of the Milky Way, understand the earth isn’t even a bit player in this vast, orchestral movement of the universe. And that, furthermore, from another angle entirely, the Milky Way is spiralling, Catherine-wheel style, with Earth a mere blue dot somewhere towards the outer edges.

Grandpa, with the keen, far-sighted, searching gaze of the mariner, would talk under his breath while orienting his whole body, as an axis, towards the sky. First, he’d use his arms as pointers, now to north, south, west, and east, muttering under his breath all the while, and then, swinging his body accordingly, he’d work out from the time of the year in which region of the night sky to search for a particular star. Orion’s Belt was invariably used as a landmark in this regard, the three bright belt stars, seemingly all in a row, providing an axis around which the rest could be oriented, while the nebula around the middle one could be seen with the naked eye.

Once he had mapped the sky to match the pattern in his head, grandpa was thereafter able to direct the entire party into a very rudimentary orientation of the sky at night.

The Dog Star, to the west and south of Orion’s Belt, one of the navigational stars, was usually next sought by the old sailor that was Grandpa.

“There’s Sirius”, he’d say, the brightest star in our galaxy, and the one that, in the time of the Romans, rose and set with the sun as the summer heat was turned on - hence the ‘dog days of summer’, though the summer heat has nothing to do with Sirius, and, these days, isn’t even in conjunction with it, most particularly at the lower latitudes, where we lived.

Another very bright presence, only third in brightness after the sun and moon, and equally, though differentially misunderstood in earlier times, is Venus. Its orbit in relation to the earth is such that people thought that the bright Evening Star and the Morning Star were two different stars, until it was found that they both were the same and not a star at all, but the planet Venus. It was the Greek philosophers who worked that out, and it just goes to show that the identity of a thing and the name used for it may be altogether different things.

Dad said that it then followed, logically, that if you thought the Morning Star and Evening Star were not equivalent, but then both turn out to be the same as the planet Venus, then while logically the Morning Star is identical to the Evening Star, from the level of descriptive language, they really aren’t, now are they? 

“Go put that in your pipe, and smoke it!” said grandpa.

Now everyone again was silent, pondering the logical absurdity of logic when applied to language, and what thought really means, and whether, if you catch yourself thinking, you can ever think other than thought. But it was so cold, and dark, and quiet, we shook our heads and crossed our arms closer to our bodies. For now, it was enough to stand and shiver and look up at all the stars in the sky, simply contemplating them, absorbed by their strange beauty.    

“But how do you know Venus is a planet and not a star?” some visiting child was sure to ask.

“Come here,” grandpa would say, always averring that it was better to show a thing than talk about it. First, he’d make sure that the child could really see which particular bright point was Venus by getting down to just their level and pointing it out. He’d explain that while a star is a far sun throwing out its rays into the galactic night, the planets we can see with the naked eye simply reflect light from our sun. The light from both is bent in our atmosphere, which is what causes the twinkling effect, but because the planets are in our own planetary system and their light emanates from a disc and not a point light source, they hardly twinkle in comparison to the stars. Besides, being so close, some of them also regularly outshine even the brightest stars.

It was always with great joy that he would point to the Magellanic Clouds, or Magellan’s Clouds, irregular dwarf galaxies, which, by their very presence in our night sky, would tell us we were living in the southern hemisphere. Magellan, leader of the first voyage to circumnavigate the world, had written near Brazil of how he saw “two clouds of reasonable bigness” appear and remain visible. Bound to our galaxy by gravitation, they of navigational aid, provided you are sailing southern realms, of course, grandpa added.

“I suppose the worst-case scenario is if you think you are sailing in the northern hemisphere and then look up and see Magellan’s Clouds!” Nils ventured, and we shivered at the thought. We heard that the Aborigines of Australia believe they are parts of our Milky Way that split off, and indeed they do look like bits that went floating away from it.

Even the moon, the absence of which was needed for such naked eye star-gazing nights, was not exempt from discussion. The very blackness of the night made you very aware of its usual presence in the night sky. It was surpassingly strange to hear that European children, looking at the same disc of the moon, actually saw a man in it, while to us in Africa, it is very clear that it is a hare. It’s hard to see a man, but the hare is there for all to see, especially since strange though it is, none of us anywhere ever get to see the dark side of the moon.

Mum was always inclined to quote from the book of Job, muttering quietly, almost to herself, sentences such as, “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?” profoundly moved by the magnitude and magnificence of the sky at night. She was always sensitive and poetic, though no-one ever really knew how to respond to her except dad, who did so by nodding his head mostly, affirming her.

The bushmen heard the stars singing, and it seemed as if, if you craned your neck long enough and cocked your head just right, you could hear the stars yourself, singing, like the whistle of ee cummings balloon man, “high and far and wee”.

On evenings like that, your mind expanded by the talk inside and your senses overwhelmed by the bigness and blackness and wonder of the night sky, it was hard not to wonder and hope if, somewhere out there, somehow, some improbable how, some other form of sentient life was not looking back at you? bands of Orion?

In thankfulness to all gardeners, bakers, scientists, sailors, poetry lovers, mathematicians and story-tellers