A postcard from Cape Town (South Africa 5)

(Originally written 29/11/2008)

I’m typing this tonight from the terrace of the Villa Amalfi in Fish Hoek, just outside Cape Town. We hired the villa weeks ago back in the UK, booked tickets from Johannesburg on a local economy airline and flew down here for the weekend.

The villa is set a few hundred yards up one side of the mountains that flank the bay below. Looking down, there’s a curve of sandy beach, with the Indian Ocean lazily rolling onto it, a beach that I have walked upon not ten minutes ago this fine Saturday night, feeling the firm sand giving slightly under my toes. The waves, when they have enough energy to reach my feet, are just on the warmer side of chilly, refreshing these soles that have stood at the top of Table Mountain this morning and tramped through the prison on Robben Island in the afternoon.

And now I’m back at the villa, taking in the velvet sounds of the night, coffee close at hand, trying to capture in words what my camera can’t. No camera could picture this scene, because it could only paint a vista, and I seek to trap a moment to take away with me. If I were to take a picture – if I were to take a hundred pictures – all you’d be able to see is the sweep of the beach below, and you’d say, “That’s nice.” You might see the densely planted bushes, flowers and palms in the garden before me, and say, “That looks pretty.” Behind the beach, you’d see the pinpoint lights of Fish Hoek spread out at rest, and you’d say, “That’s not bad… not bad at all.” Then you’d glance up, and see that the darkness on the other side of the bay is a mountain, and you’d see the faint glow of Cape Town in the sky above that, and lifting your eyes higher, you’d see the thin clouds that promise a fine day tomorrow, and the stars in their unfamiliar constellations… and you wouldn’t say anything at all, because you’d be where I am right now, gently stunned by the casual beauty that’s laid out before me.

Yet… even with a hundred, a thousand pictures, you wouldn’t be able to hear the waves riding gently out of the night to break upon that firm sand, the waves that massaged my ears with their susurration as I lay in bed last night, fighting sleep to enjoy the sound, yet losing the unequal battle within minutes. You wouldn’t be able to smell the night scent of the flowers in the garden, or feel the cool stone of the terrace under your bare feet. A picture would never include the detail of a moth circling the single light that separates me from the darkened garden and the steps that zigzag down to the lane.

This, then, will have to be my postcard, and if ever a “Wish you were here” was truly meant, it is now.  Whoever you are, I wish you were here, to rest upon this terrace, to take in the sound and the perfume of this night, to gaze upon the dark mountain across the bay where the measured pace of the waves seem to slow time itself. And if you were here, you’d say nothing at all… you’d smile, you’d look, you’d look again, and then you’d smile at me… and finally, you’d say –

“You never told me it was this lovely…”