Thursday 31 August 2006

 

Reader’s Choice: Homunculus: By Hugh Paxton

 

Best Piece of new fiction for a long time

 

By James Mitchell, Books Editor

 

“Apologies for starting with the back end of this novel, but Hugh Paxton’s afterword bears quoting. "I’m proud to say” writes this splendidly immodest British journalist, “that Homunculus is probably the most bizarre work of fiction ever to emerge from the African continent (African presidents’ memoirs and autobiographies excepted).” Bizarre it certainly is. Also horribly political incorrect and remorselessly downbeat on our current continent. In Paxton’s defence, let me say at once that he’s cynical not only about Afro-lunacy, but also about everyone who sticks their nose into our affairs, do-gooders not excepted. These include foreign mercenaries (South Africans especially); foreign intelligence agencies, foreign correspondents (such as Paxton himself);

UN aid agencies and ‘peacekeeping’ forces; and the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo (remember Tokyo subway sarin gas attack?). Even those with frankly commercial – okay, homicidal as well – involvement are not spared Paxton’s satire.t’s inevitable cynicism about his own occupation that has Paxton reserve a particularly horrible fate for an intrusive CNN crew: they are videotaped undergoing South Africa’s contribution to peace and understanding … death by car tyre.

The tale is set in Sierra Leone, notionally towards the winding down of its civil war.

“The first man encountered on the road to Lalapanzi was not a man. Not really. He was a boy, a kid, wearing nothing but a pair of large, shabby sneakers and holding an AK-47. Like his regional commander, General Butt Naked, the teenaged Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel was – apart from his sneakers – butt naked.”

“He also had a handbag.”

In a few more pages we learn that in the bag were six hands, “two pitifully small; two adult female, their nails smudged with the ancient ghosts of mauve polish; two adult male, all recently parted from their owners but already flyblown.”

Too unbelievable for you? Perhaps you missed the reports out of Sierra Leone at the time. Or perhaps, like most of the world, you didn’t care.

Anyway, Paxton makes his point: Africa is a land of monsters…and then he adds some of his very own.

At Lalapanzi, seat of a former Catholic mission station, resides the Cape brandy swilling Father Jack, Irish alchemist extraordinary and creator of what he describes as eco-friendly homunculi.

These cobbled-together mini-monsters can be programmed to be extremely unfriendly. Which is were Christian Rindert, 15 years a “security consultant” in Africa, senses the unique selling proposition. It’s a long way from his boyhood on a run down cattle farm in Zululand, but what Christian learned there about the power of witchcraft now stands him in good stead. In short, he is a true believer, and so happy to arrange an auction. Hence the gathering of Aum, Zionist fanatics and Columbian drug smugglers. They all want to get their hands on the ultimate killing machines.

But first there has to be a field test.

It takes a mere 17 Indian UN peacekeeper, 3 Liberians and 14 RUF as casualties, versus nil homunculi down, for the manoeuvre to be pronounced a success. There’s an added bonus: all the resultant bodies were taken in for processing. For, of course, homunculi are assembled out of human bits and pieces. (Although Father Jack has advanced alchemy into the 21st century with addition of solar cells and other techno whatnots.)

Furthermore, notes Rindert (he’s one of your bureaucratic killers): “The Homunculus shows a cost effective tendency to initiate and improve on mechanical repair regimes, particularly with respect to vehicle mechanics and direct human anatomical work. They are impressively adaptable and show attractively appropriate inclinations to adjust behaviour to achieve optimum results, while remaining within the boundaries of instructed orders. We have here organic robots. Good ones.” Don’t you just bet the good scientists of SA’s very own Project Coast wrote such memos in their time?This kind of black comedy drags you into its insane world of reality. Which is more weird, more impossible? Exploding Ebola-poxed monsters, or the fruit cakes of Japan’s Aum sect, campaigning for political power while jogging about on bus roofs dressed as pink elephants? Yet Aum was real; the homunculi – so far – not. But I bet there are some who wish they were.Although Homunculus appears under the imprint of Macmillan New writing, Paxton is no stranger to full-length (as opposed to journalism-length) writing. The blurb claims seven un-named non-fiction books to his credit. Curiously, both Amazon.co.uk and the British Library catalogue show a blank in regard to this “secret seven”. He is said to be in his early 40s, and working in Windhoek. I well recall the impact Tom Sharpe made on the literary scene in 1971 with his first novel, Riotous Assembly, set in the “Piemburg” of those days. Where Kommandant van Heerden of the SAP longed for the heart of an English gentleman. Published at the height of apartheid, its fierce mockery exposed the idiocy at the heart of the system.If only Homunculus could do the same for West Africa. Those who pretend possession of a flag and a kleptocratic president-for-life is enough to qualify for statehood will be appalled by this novel, and even more upset because it is so well written, and thus likely to succeed in the market place of ideas. Realists, however will page through Paxton’s epilogue, where he reminds us that “General Butt Naked exists”; that “there is an anti-RUF ‘Born Naked” unit in Sierra Leone”; and that “Choppings, monstrous legions of doped-up adolescents, Kamajor witchdoctors wearing sea shells and waving swords, the St Peter’s church massacre, 8-yearolds with Kalashnikovs” are “All strange, as Ripley would say. But true.” Lest we cry racism too easily, Paxton reminds us of the peculiarly South African dimension to this large continent of horrors. Again, from the epilogue: “Dr Pleasant is a fiction

, but a gentleman working with apartheid’s Civil Co-operation Bureau did his bit for civil co-operation by body-bombing Swapo rebel fighters out of planes over the Skeleton Coast and suffocating captives with muscle relaxants. The same gent poisoned the Dobra wells (unsuccessfully) and did rather appalling things to lots of people. He’s not in jail. Had an engaging laugh. And could conceivably be living next door to you.” Proofreading is not of the highest standard, and I wonder about some of the passing references. For instance, is the “St Peter’s church massacre” in the epilogue not meant to be the St James’s Church massacre in Cape Town?But that’s a quibble. Quite simply, Homunculus is outstanding, the best piece of new fiction I’ve seen for a long time. However, although Paxton threatens a “Homunculus II. More of the same”, I Hope this doesn’t happen. The pace of this one is too frenetic to bear repetition. Let’s hope for something totally different, for a novelist of such skill can surely tackle another genre with equivalent success.

 

*Homunculus is published by Macmillan New Writing at R211, 46 but is available in another edition at R128.”