The Relatively Public Life of Jules Browde

Daniel Browde

• Publisher: Jonathan Ball
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781868427215
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Law Biographies
• Index: Law

I sat there divided. Though my grandfather was visibly shaken by the force of this memory, I felt a bubbly thrill because this was such good stuff, and I remember turning my eyes away from his distressed face to make sure the wheels of the dictaphone were still turning.

When Daniel is tasked with writing the biography of his grandfather, Jules Browde – one of South Africa's most celebrated advocates – he sharpens his pencils and gets to work. But the task that at first seems so simple comes to overwhelm him. As the book recedes – month after month, year after year – he must face the possibility of disappointing his grandfather, whose legacy now rests uncomfortably in his hands.

Daniel's troubled progress stands in contrast to the clear-edged tales his grandfather tells him. Spanning almost a century, they compellingly conjure other worlds: the streets of 1920s Yeoville, the battlefields of the Second World War, the courtrooms of apartheid South Africa.

The Relatively Public Life of Jules Browde is more than the portrait of an unusual South African life, it is the moving tale of a complex and tender relationship between grandfather and grandson, and an exploration of how we are made and unmade in the stories we tell about our lives.

Part One

chapter one

In which we meet a young storyteller who feels the need to lie about the subject of his book

It had rained earlier that evening. The air coming down off the dark slope held the smell of pine needles and wet earth. A few paces from where I stood – on the patio at the rear of the house – I could see the beginning of some stone steps, slick and puddled after the rain. The steps rose quickly and curved into the darkness. I’d been here before, so I knew what I’d find if I climbed them: the heavy palisade fence that marked the edge of the property; the enormous rocks beyond the fence; and the view, back over the house, to the lights on the Brixton ridge. I considered these steps. I knew the climb would probably do me good. But I stayed where I was, held by the faint sounds of the dinner party still going on inside. I looked up at the stars and I tried to enjoy them, to take them in.

I’d been out here less than five minutes when a thickset man in a panama hat appeared in the kitchen doorway and lit a cigarette. With his hat and cigarette he made a neat silhouette against the rectangle of yellow light. This was one of the more well-known guests, a sculptor who had recently returned from mounting a show in the United States.

He must have seen me looking at him.

‘Taking a breather?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘Yup.’

I was standing in what I imagined to be the beginning of the shadow, at the far end of the bricks.

‘It’s lovely out here,’ he said.

I said, ‘Aah, it’s great.’

And for a few seconds, that seemed like it was going to be it. I tried to think of something to add, but before I could think of anything he left the doorway, took a few steps towards me and told me his name, as if I didn’t already know it.

I’d spoken to him once before, and told him so – not to prove a point so much as to establish a truthful context. He’d given a talk at the Johannesburg Art Gallery and I’d stayed behind afterwards to ask him a question. He nodded neutrally at this information and asked if I often went to the JAG.

‘Now and then,’ I said. ‘When there’s something on.’

I told him about my girlfriend, Thenji, and explained that this was how I knew our hosts, Diana and David. Diana was an established painter who for reasons of her own kept a studio in the same run-down building in Fordsburg as Thenji had hers.

He said, ‘And you? Are you an artist too?’

I hesitated for an instant. Sometimes I do think of myself as a sort of artist, usually when I’m overtired, but how are you going to say you’re an artist, especially to some famous sculptor?

I said, ‘No, I’m not an artist.’

I said, ‘I work at a newspaper, as a subeditor.’

Often people don’t know what that is, a subeditor, but I could see he did. He even seemed quite interested to hear this, and nodded again, this time just once, abruptly, as if a fly had landed on the end of his nose. He had finished his cigarette and was half looking around for what to do with it.

I told him the name of the newspaper I worked at.

‘That’s probably the best paper we have,’ he said distractedly.

Watching him, I realised I could still feel the effects of the wine I’d drunk during the first part of the meal.

‘Do you want an ashtray?’ I asked. There was a square metal ashtray on a heavy wooden bench at the far end of the patio.

He smiled.

‘On that thing over there,’ I said, nodding towards it.

He walked over and mashed his stompie into the ashtray and came back. I felt a small sense of accomplishment then, to have been of use.

The sculptor put his hands in his pockets and asked me if I enjoyed working at the newspaper.

I told him that I liked the repetitive, meditational aspect of the job, and also the fact that my workday only started at two in the afternoon.

I saw his interest pick up a notch. That always happened when I told people about the two o’clock-start thing.

‘So I have my mornings to myself,’ I said. Which was what I always said at this point. Some conversations have you, instead of the other way around.

‘What do you do with your mornings?’ he asked.

For a moment I had the uncomfortable sensation that he was humouring me. There was really nothing to give me that impression, though, and I tried to put it out of my mind. I said that in the mornings I usually went for a run, and then worked for a bit on my own stuff before going in to the paper.

‘And what’s your own stuff?’ he pressed, rocking slightly on his heels.

This was all surprising to me. I’d always assumed that in a social setting he would be arrogant, or at least aloof, because of his fame and his hat and everything. But he seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. And maybe it was because of this, or maybe it was the wine, or the fresh air and the trees, or all of it together – whatever it was that encouraged me – I told him that I was working on a biography of my grandfather. This wasn’t something I’d said out loud before, and the minute the words were out of my mouth I regretted them. Because then it came: ‘Oh really?’ he said. ‘Who’s your grandfather?’

Now if this were a scene in a movie, here would be what is called the turning point. That moment, that question right there, which sobered me up in a second, and not because it took me by surprise, but precisely the opposite: the point is just how ready I was to hear it, just how clearly I understood (or thought I understood) what he meant by it. Because even if the sculptor didn’t intend it, I heard in his question a challenge, and saw before me – in the space between us – the same thing I saw whenever I considered that I might, in fact, be writing the book I’d told him about: I saw a pantheon.

It was a classical pantheon, Ancient Greek, but vaguely animated like a cartoon. The set designer in my subconscious had given it a floor of white cumulus clouds. Seated in the centre, on high-backed thrones, were the Giants. Your Churchills, your Mandelas. People who shook the world like elephants shake a tree, causing thick hardcover biographies to fall to the ground all around them. To either side of the Giants stood the Famous: artists, athletes and scientists possessed of such searing talent that crowds lined up to read about their lives like villagers gathering around a winter fire. Then on either end stood the Well-Known: judges, academics and community organisers, people who had Made a Contribution, ordinary heroes who, but for the single book written about them by some noble noticer, might have remained unsung.

What I needed to do, I decided (and come to think of it, I must still have been slightly drunk), was to convince the sculptor that my grandfather belonged there, somewhere near the edges of this pantheon. I hadn’t rehearsed the argument, which became obvious as soon as I opened my mouth.

I said, ‘He was born in 1919 in Johannesburg.’ Then, after a moment, ‘So his first memory is of the miners’ strike. The Rand Revolt? Which was in 1922. He was three years old in 1922! Which I think is kind of amazing. That he remembers that. And he still lives here. He stills works here.’

By the light of the kitchen I saw the sculptor lose interest. He hadn’t said anything, but I read a whole paragraph of boredom in the angle of his hat.

The hat said, ‘Oh, so it’s minor league? A family memoir. A tribute to your ancient zeyde. Something to ring bind and hand out to family members here and in, I’m guessing, Australia?’

He was leaning to go inside, I could tell. I had to defend my grandfather! I had to defend myself! Charged with insignificance, we were about to be sentenced to summary dismissal from the mind of a famous sculptor.

‘He’s also had a relatively public life,’ I said quickly.

I saw the sculptor’s eyeballs turn in their sockets to take me in more squarely. The angle of his hat changed back, it seemed, to mildly interested. This was what he was waiting for: the claim to fame.

‘He was a very well-known advocate,’ I said. ‘He did a lot of human rights work.’ Looking through the open door at the little dimples of light in the dark-red kitchen floor, I said, ‘He was one of the founders of Lawyers for Human Rights.’

‘Okay ... okay ...’ the sculptor nodded. ‘Sure. What’s your grandfather’s name?’

He was doing some kind of calculation in his head. Had he heard my surname earlier?

‘Jules Browde.’

I could feel myself straining away from this conversation and into it with all my might. We were weighing my grandfather’s human worth. Now I had uttered his name, and I was waiting for the sculptor to pronounce on whether he did have a claim, after all.

‘Oh, Jules Browde,’ he said. ‘Yes. His wife is ...’

‘Selma,’ I said. ‘That’s my grandmother.’

‘Of course. The doctor. Yes. A very well-known couple.’

Two other smokers came out of the kitchen. A journalist and a photographer. The photographer was holding a small cup of coffee. The sculptor greeted them. The meal was obviously over. Thenji must have been wondering where I was.

The sculptor took a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and extracted one with practised efficiency. ‘Jules Browde was one of the Rivonia Trial lawyers, wasn’t he?’

I almost lied and said that, yes, he was. If the answer to that question is yes, the conversation stops there. Case closed.

‘No,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t.’

I hoped I didn’t sound crestfallen.

‘But he’s very good friends with George Bizos and Arthur Chaskalson, all those guys ...’

I really did say that, reaching the hard bottom of the barrel right there. And how I wished, at that moment, how desperately I wished that my grandfather had been part of the Rivonia defence team, like his friends, next to whom he suddenly didn’t se...