Once Upon a Time

“A creaking of the kind made by the weight carried by one foot after another along a wooden floor. I listened. I felt the apertures of my ears distend with concentration.”

This passage is an example of Gordimer’s method of varying sentence length to create rhythm and heighten tension. The short sentence “I listened.” forces the reader to pause as if listening, and the next sentence forces the reader’s concentration to intensify, mimicking the actions and emotional intensity the narrator experiences.

“I have no burglar bars, no gun under the pillow. But I have the same fears as people who do take these precautions, and my windowpanes are thin as rime, could shatter like a wine glass.”

Here the narrator sets up a comparison between herself and her neighbors who have experienced or are afraid of experiencing outsiders intruding in their homes. She parallels her fears with those of the family in her fairy tale, suggesting that even though she does not seem conscious of it, her fears may be motivated by racism. 

“The misbeats of my heart tailed off like the last muffled flourishes on one of the wooden xylophones made by the Chopi and Tsonga migrant miners who might have been down there, under me in the earth at that moment.”

Gordimer makes specific references to two groups of Indigenous South Africans. Chopi and Tsonga are Bantu ethnic groups that have existed in and around South Africa for over a thousand years, far predating the arrival of English and Dutch colonists. Xylophone playing is native to both cultures. According to an article published in the African Music Society Journal during apartheid, “Chopi xylophone playing is widely practiced and the Chopi orchestras are famous both in the homeland and in the Johannesburg gold-mine compounds” (“Mohambi Xylophone Music of the Shangana-Tsonga” 1973/1974). The connection between Indigenous culture and the gold mines literalizes the way apartheid forced Black South Africans to live as an underclass, subordinating their creative culture to the profits of mining.

“In a house, in a suburb, in a city, there were a man and his wife who loved each other very much and were living happily ever after.”

The first line of the narrator’s fairy tale begins where fairy tales usually end. One of the common narrative elements of the fairy tale is that it ends with a marriage, part of the hero’s or heroine’s reward for having successfully completed their quest. The “ever after” of happily ever after allows the reader to assume that the couple remains happy in perpetuity, as in fairy tale logic, the times before and after the hero’s quest are static states of being. This opening implies that, even if someone believes they have achieved static happiness, in the real world, it is not possible.

“He was masked; it could not be said if he was black or white, and therefore proved the property owner was no racist.”

The disguised would-be intruder pictured on the Neighborhood Watch plaque reflects the residents’ desire to be seen as nonracist. Gordimer juxtaposes this belief with the family’s constant fear that they will be overrun by the township residents, who are Black.

“But to please her—for he loved her very much and buses were being burned, cars stoned, and schoolchildren shot by the police in those quarters out of sight and hearing of the suburb—he had electronically-controlled gates fitted.”

This sentence is an example of how Gordimer’s complex sentence construction allows conflicting ideas and details to exist simultaneously. In this case, there is no causal relationship between the violence in the townships and the need for security in the suburb. Joining the ideas together in the sentence demonstrates the irrationality of the couple’s fears.

“Under cover of the electronic harpies’ discourse intruders sawed the iron bars and broke into homes, taking away hi-fi equipment, television sets, cassette players, cameras and radios, jewelry and clothing, and sometimes were hungry enough to devour everything in the refrigerator or paused audaciously to drink the whiskey in the cabinets or patio bars.”

The description of the burglars using the security systems to their advantage is farcical, suggesting that readers do not take the fairy tale literally. The following sentence, which describes the homeowners’ dismay that the thieves could not appreciate the expensive liquor they were drinking underscores Gordimer’s satirical attitude and the story’ allegorical nature.

“Then the time came when many of the people who were not trusted housemaids and gardeners hung about the suburb because they were unemployed.”

Understated irony in this sentence contrasts the “trusted” status of the suburban residents’ domestic help with the othered status of all other Black South Africans, who, because of the white South Africans’ lack of trust, are unable to gain employment. Apartheid’s unsustainable system of economic inequality is the reason that people from the townships are entering the suburbs seeking work. They are distinct from the burglars who steal from suburban homes, but to the family and the other suburb residents, they are the same.

“[O]n the street side of the wall there were red-earth smudges that could have been made by the kind of broken running shoes, seen on the feet of unemployed loiterers, which had no innocent destination.”

The marks on the wall may not have been shoe prints, or if they were, they could have been made by someone resting their foot against the wall, rather than trying to climb it. The family’s fear of intruders scaling the wall leads them to take further security measures that may or may not have been necessary.

“[T]here were attempts at reconciling the aesthetics of prison architecture with the Spanish Villa style (spikes painted pink) and with plaster urns of neo-classical facades (twelve-inch pikes finned like zigzags of lightning and painted pure white).”

Gordimer’s satire is evident as she describes the suburb’s residents’ attempts to maintain their neighborhood’s style while outfitting their homes with deadly weapons. Like the race-neutral intruder on the neighborhood watch sign, the spikes are disguised to avoid suggesting overt racism. In the midst of their paranoia, the suburbanites want to believe that they are rational.

“It was the ugliest but the most honest in its suggestion of the pure concentration camp style […].”

This brief reference to the Holocaust suggests that the violence in apartheid South Africa is a form of genocide. The razor wire on the family’s property makes a concentration camp of the streets, where Black South Africans are at the mercy of the police.

“There would be no way out, only a struggle getting bloodier and bloodier, a deeper and sharper hooking and tearing of flesh.”

The family’s desire for would-be intruders to suffer this fate points to their belief that their property and safety are worth more than a human life. This belief is common in societies built around home and property ownership. It is notable that none of the security measures the family (or their neighbors) takes involves calling the police. It seems that the police are powerless to suppress the robberies in the suburb but use brutal force, including shooting schoolchildren, to stop the protests in the townships.

“Next day, [the boy] pretended to be the Prince who braves the terrible thicket of thorns to enter the palace and kiss the Sleeping Beauty back to life […].”

The boy creates a fairy tale inside of the narrator’s fairy tale, emphasizing that fairy tale events should be a form of play that remains imaginary, not a drama played out in the real world. The parents’ belief in their imaginary enemy takes their “play” to dangerous extremes. There are multiple versions of the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. In 17th-century French author Charles Perrault’s version, a good fairy places woods and brambles around the sleeping princess to protect her for a hundred years. In the 20th-century Disney movie, an evil sorceress places a forest of thorns between the helpless princess and the prince who wants to rescue her. In Gordimer’s story, the end of the boy’s game suggests that the parents who erected the razor wire are the villains in his story, despite their desire to protect their sleeping child.