is that you, melanie?
does anyone have a friend nowadays?
do you like bees?
you shut up. let me tell you about bees, and for that matter ants: a bee has a completely altruistic sense of purpose -- based on the common good. a course from which he cannot be deflected. greed, ambition, they mean nothing to him. he lives solely to serve his fellow bee.
there's the rub, my girl. there's the rub. one of these days i'll ask the bees. i'm sure they have the answer. now, you two run along!
i've been peeing too much this morning.
melanie isn't home. you are.
you mean the area or the produce?
what's the world coming to? it's herbs, can't you see? thyme there, oregano over there, feunel next to the tomatoes, sage here and rosemary somewhere. poor plants, they re not in their ideal soil or climate. next time, i'll bring some soil from the mountain of zeus. perhaps the old man's holiness will do the trick.
come, you are just the person to sample my greengage wine. i don't suppose you've ever tasted it? i'm sure i'm the only person in the country making greengage wine. he leads ben to the two old chairs by the back wall. he enters the kitchen and returns with a bottle of greengage wine and two glasses.
the first bottle this year, and you don't have to tell me if you like it or not. tell me, did you ever study philosophy?
not bad, in fact quite good. now where was i.  oh, i was going to say after decades of philosophy, i find myself being forced back to the earth. do you know, ben, we're all living in the spell of abstractions. hitler, apartheid, the great american dream, the lot?
misunderstood.
you don't have to finish it.
melanie has told me a little about you. it's not an easy road you have chosen.
of course you have a choice. damn it. one always has a choice. only thank god you made the choice you did. but all i want to say is, keep your eyes open, young man.
we are both boers, ben. we know how hard our people worked to get a toehold on this land; it was a good life. now look at the mess. it's all systems and no god! sooner or later people start believing in their way of life as an absolute: unmutable, fundamental, a precondition. saw it, with my own eyes in germany, a nation running after an idea. sieg heil, sieg heil. i left there thirty years ago because i couldn't take it any longer. and now i see it happening in my own country, step by step. terrifyingly predictable. this sickness of the great abstraction.
take for example the way the government is handling the electorate; like a bloody donkey. carrot in front and kick at the backside. the carrot is apartheid, dogma. the kick is quite simply, fear. black peril, red peril, whatever name you want to give it. fear can be a wonderful ally, ben. i talk too much, i always do with younger people, they don't fall asleep to me.
you are right. we still have time. history should teach us about those who regarded themselves as the chosen people.
if you lose that you have lost everything. i'll get back to the earth.
i'll tell that hot-head daughter of mine that you came to see her. ben takes his leave.