God’s Pocket by Sven Axelrad (Umuzi) is shortlisted for the Sunday Times fiction prize, in partnership with Exclusive Books
Criteria: The winner should be a novel of rare imagination and style, evocative, textured and a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction.
A naked accountant at the edge of a quarry (or where the ideas for novels come from)
Early in my accounting career, I worked in an office that overlooked a quarry. The quarry was a strangely wild place - a deep hollow, filled with dark water, and bordered on the far side by a high stone wall. At lunchtime, I would sit by the water’s edge, reading a novel, using an Opinel No 7 to cut segments from an apple, eating them off the blade the way my father does. I wasn’t alone out there. There was a family of Egyptian Geese, a legavaan, various cats and a lone King Fisher who would come to stare at himself in the reflected glass of our office windows. There used to be two of them, but something must have gone wrong (death or divorce). I can only assume he kept visiting us to stare at his reflection, to feel less alone. Not far away, in an office much like ours, there was an illegal sex-cam operation which would eventually make the papers. I was none the wiser, eating my apples and staring at the water, wondering how deep it was.
This went on for years, until my company was acquired by a large corporate. Certain we were about to lose our jobs, the remaining employees had a final party, an apocalyptic shindig, a final hoorah for the ages. Late in the evening, doused in whiskey, too flammable to risk lighting a cigarette, I found myself undressing at the water’s edge. Removing my clothes felt like removing a disguise, shucking the accountant I had never meant to become. The calm surface reflected the moonlight and the sounds of a party echoed somewhere behind me. The plan was to swim to the middle of the quarry basin and then plunge headfirst into the dark, freediving like Jean Reno from The Big Blue but this would be The Big Black. I needed to know if darkness had an end or if it went down forever. As I reached the water’s edge, a colleague called out to me from the balcony.
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘There’s something in there.’
If there’s a moment that a book, or the idea for a book, blinks into existence, this might be it, but I’m not sure I believe that. In my experience, ideas are aggregate, they like to accumulate.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera says he keeps writing himself into his novels so that his fictional self can make choices that his real self is too afraid/sensible to make. I might be guilty of this too. The protagonist of God’s Pocket, a young man just out of school, doesn’t choose to study accounting at university. With the help of his closest friends, a group of friends I had when I was his age, he runs away to live in a small cabin in an abandoned quarry. He goes there with a sleeping bag, a typewriter and enough cigarettes to last him six months. He goes there full of hope, friendship and love. He goes there to write a novel. Like all of us, he has no idea what is about to happen.
EXTRACT
Yet Another Scene Taking Place in a Swimming Pool
The night at the pool is a predictable mishap. No one makes the right choice, except Quin who remains tipsy and shrouded in philosophical cigarette smoke, observing his newfound friends choose badly and have much fun doing so.
First, he watches everyone undress with interest. Dio is cavalier with his nakedness. He knows there are no bad angles or reasons to be careful. Filo, on the other hand, seems self-conscious, but no, Quin thinks, not really, he is more apathetic than self-conscious, as if his worth is not wrapped up in his body. Quin doubts he would undress his spirit as casually. Before Quin can think further about Filo’s spirit, he is distracted by Lola shimmying out of her shorts. Such a sight is what Emmanuel Kant must have been talking about: Lola’s bum is/must be the Thing in Itself. If Lola is the sun, then Liv is the moon, and she undresses with confidence or rather in rebellion against feeling shy or reserved. The result is the same, and although no philosophers have named reality after her ass, she is still as alluring as her assigned celestial body. Quin takes another drink and wedges his cigarette in the corner of his mouth in what he hopes is the manner of either Dylan or Bolaño or a combination of the two.
Quin sits forward. For a minute, things look as if they are going to play out correctly after all. Lola and Quin have made eye contact, and Lola winks as she pulls her shirt over her head. Liv has stumbled, her jeans caught on her foot, and Filo is there to steady her. Quin is stunned by this development, astounded. His world views are being shaken to the core – maybe things do work out after all. But then, no, the universe has noticed and will not stand for such blatant serendipity. Entropy is called in to do its duty. Things must fall apart. Shit must happen. Dio grabs Liv away from Filo and throws her over his shoulder. She thumps him on the back as they plummet into the pool. In one of those snapshots that the brain inexplicably holds onto forever, her eyes flick to Filo while in mid-air – click, this memory now belongs to Filo for life.
‘Get in!’ Dio shouts to Quin.
‘Yes,’ Lola says. ‘We need our fifth!’
Quin watches them with growing affection. ‘Okay,’ he says, quite drunk now, ‘but it’s our first night as friends, so I need to raise a toast first.’
‘Let’s hear it then,’ Filo says.
‘This toast,’ Quin says, bottle raised, ‘is to love, in all its variations.’
‘To love!’ the rest chorus. Dio carpes the diem and uses the moment to kiss Liv, unaware of the irony.
‘To love,’ Quin agrees from his seat amid all the foam kickboards and assorted floatation devices. Quin is disappointed but also comforted by the reinstatement of normalcy. The centre does not hold or, if it does, never for long. It is obvious to him that Liv should be kissing Filo, but Quin watches Filo sink slowly until he is completely underwater. It’s a shame, Quin thinks. He takes another drink and can almost feel the hand of chance passing by, introducing rogue variables, causing general havoc.
‘To love,’ Quin repeats, more to himself now, ‘and all the obstacles it must overcome.’
Quin gets shakily to his feet, not realising just how drunk he is until this moment. He stumbles to the edge of the pool. Here he hesitates, but only for a moment before jumping into the deep end with his still-lit cigarette clenched between his teeth.
Everyone cheers.
When he doesn’t surface, everyone stops cheering and rushes to save him.
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