Rika's Rooms

Rika's Rooms - 5*****

"Pardon me, boy, is this the Chattanooga choo-choo?
Track twenty-nine, boy you can give me a shine …"

Like so many people, I love Glenn Miller's music, and especially 'Chattanooga Choo-choo. I've listened to it for years, and - shamefully - only recently realised that the singer wasn't asking directions from a young shoeshine vendor, but that the use of the word 'boy' meant that he was addressing a black man. Not a child, but an adult African-American, very possibly older than the singer himself. Another fully grown male, but patronised as an infant …

As in America, so in South Africa. Rika's Jewish, and in Palestine after the Second World war she marries Morris, who's a South African Jew, and they go to live close to his family in Johannesburg, under the Apartheid regime. At one point he talks about getting 'a boy' to clean their car, and Rika explodes - "Don't call grown men boys, and don't call grown women girls. Alright!"

In a much later sequence they have a maid and a gardener - both black of course - "Dinah and Johannes eat the food that she cooks for them, mielie meal with meat stews, meat I buy from the butcher - it's called 'boys' meat', just one step up from dogs' meat."

Gail Louw knows this stuff intimately - she grew up in the South Africa she's writing about and went to University there. Her book deals with the big political issues; but at some distance - what she's concerned to show us is the horrible domestic inhumanity of a racist society. When Dinah the maid first arrives, Rika wants to see the accommodation the black domestic staff are given in their apartment block. "It's a different world at the top of the building, almost slum-like, lots of little rooms, one shower, an open air sink, a toilet, one for them all."

As in America and South Africa, so in Britain. Gail Louw is an award-winning playwright as well as a novelist. When I saw a production of her play 'Duwayne' in 2014, I was struck by the incandescent anger with which she told the story of Duwayne Brooks, the friend of Stephen Lawrence who was with him when the black teenager was murdered in London. She dramatised the delay and obstruction by the Metropolitan Police into finding the killers, and the racial abuse and harassment of Duwayne Brooks himself. Reading 'Rika's Rooms' I've started to understand the origins of that anger.

But of course, racist attitudes don't just target black people. Rika is based on Gail Louw's mother, who grew up in Berlin during the rise of the Nazi party. In an early chapter she and her father - her beloved Vati - narrowly escape being beaten by SA stormtroopers, and she and her friend witness the smouldering, glass-strewn aftermath of Kristallnacht. All around them they hear shouts of "Jewish vermin!" Her parents manage to secure her an exit visa, and Rika is put aboard a Kindertransport to Palestine. When they get to Trieste, she and her friend hide their trembling faces from the marching Italian Fascist followers of Mussolini - "bellowing in time to the beat of their boots, 'Viva il Duce! Viva il Duce!' ".

Rika's parents were both murdered in the Holocaust, which helps explain why, when she asks her mother-in-law why Jews in South Africa don't do more to help the blacks, she's told - "Here we are safe, we must keep it like that. If we start wanting to change things, things could change for us. We lived with so much danger and so much worry. Every time something happened we didn't know if we would be killed, or our families would be killed, or our neighbours. What sort of life is that?"

That's why Zionist European Jews considered that Palestine could become a safe haven. Eretz Israel - The Land of Israel. Why they were prepared to fight to gain a foothold there, against the British administrators holding the country under the post first world war Mandate, and also against the indigenous Palestinians. Rika's sister Edith is living and working on a kibbutz - she writes to Rika "We have to get up at four in the morning to work and there's not much food. We also have to be careful because the Arabs have been shooting at us lately. But I love it!".

But they'd been told that they were going to 'A land without people, for a People without a land ' …

If you've read this far, you'll probably think that 'Rika's Rooms' is simply a personalised history of twentieth century Judaism - but it's much, much more. It's a big, complex book; though it's so gripping that I devoured it in just two sittings. It seems to me that it's about ageing - about how physical bodies and minds deteriorate as we get older, and also about how youthful ideals and principles can become corroded over the years.

Complex. When we meet Rika, she's almost eighty, being looked after in a London care home. She's got some form of dementia, and Gail Louw's skill is that she shows us that condition from the inside - from Rika's perspective.

" 'Ma,' Nina, my daughter says, 'we're going next door for dinner. That'll be nice, won't it?' She talks to me like I'm a child. I don't even know where next door is. Next door is my room, next door is the bathroom. Next door? So many doors. It's all doors. Which is my door? I know my door. this one? No."

The awful impotence of being moved - not knowing where you are and who's there with you. Care workers who aren't always British.

" 'Yes, the woman says, 'you must to stay with me now, dahling.'
'Who are you?' I ask. She sounds French.
'This is my home and I have all these people staying here with me. My name is Violetta. You will stay with me too and you will be very happy.'
I look at Nina. Who is this mad woman, I want to ask, but she is watching us with a crazy smile on her face. Is this a place for nutters? What am I doing here? I turn to leave.
'Ma,' Nina says, 'you're going to live here now.'
I look at her. 'Why?' Her eyes brim over and I wonder what's the matter with Nina now. The French woman holds my hand. Am I a child? No. Leave me, I grab my hand away from her.
'Ma,' Nina says, 'please.' Please what? Please what! 'I have to go now,' Nina says.
My daughter says. 'I have to go.'"

A confession. I was in tears reading some of these passages.

How well the author depicts confusion. Her daughter Nina's brought her chocolate, but Rika's obviously living in several different eras of her life -

"She's brought me chocolate. I love chocolate, how does she know I like chocolate so much? 'My father used to give me chocolate, you know,' I say.
'I know.' she says, but I don't know how she knows. She says to me, 'That's a nice pattern on your skirt, ma.'
I look at what she means, and I see the ring that goes round which protects me from getting pregnant. She laughs when I say that and says, 'Who's going to make you pregnant, ma?'
'Janine, of course,' I say. And she looks a bit funny and says, 'Janine's your granddaughter, ma.'
I know that. Obviously."

In Rika's dementia, she jumps back and forth in time, so that we get to see her life story as she relives episodes in her memory. She's devastated to have found out that her parents are dead, and at one point we see her working with the Zionist Irgun resistance, helping to drive the British out of Palestine. "'What's more important than working towards getting our own homeland in Eretz Israel. Independence, independence from those bastard British. We need you, Rika. Will you help your country?' 'Why not?' I shrug. I need something to put in this empty room that I am, something to fill a shelf."

Then later she's horrified by the treatment of black South Africans, and we find her joining an underground cell of the South African Communist Party, helping commit sabotage against the Apartheid government. Similarly, her sister Edith has embraced the Zionist and Socialist values of the Israeli Kibbutz movement. That's a step too far for Rika, though - "They have nothing of their own in the kibbutz. All their clothes are shared, nobody can even have their own teapot in their room. Too bourgeois! Well, it's not for me, I can tell you. I want my own things, my own shoes, my own knickers, my own everything."

It's her own children, too, that keep Rika from continuing her involvement with the struggle against Apartheid. She lost so much as a young girl that she's terrified of what will happen to her children if she's put into jail for those activities. So she gives it up. And as Rika gets older, we see, through her memories, how she slips into the easy life that's possible for a white person in South Africa - the house in a smart suburb, the swimming pool, the Mercedes. In her fifties, she spends her day admonishing her servants, spending money on art, rugs, ceramics, and - eating, eating, eating.

The book's about the entropic degradation of a person's mind, and also about the steadily corrosive loss of ideals in a society. There's a parallel here, that Gail Louw doesn't pursue, between the early pioneering socialist principles of the kibbutz, and the development of the modern state of Israel, with its high standard of living for most Israelis, and the oppression of the Palestinian population. As I said above, she keeps the politics at some remove, but what she does give us, though, is the personal and domestic - Edith's opposition to Rika's daughter Nina marrying a man from Morocco. As Nina's cousin says "It's like a black. Your aunt is not that far removed from white South Africans. She also believes in apartheid."

Rika's Rooms is a truly remarkable book. The timespan it covers, the range of societies and politics it encompasses and, perhaps most of all, the heart-rending depiction of dementia, make it an unforgettable read.

Beautifully crafter but tortuously tragic. 5*****

Beautifully crafted but tortuously tragic and desperately sad, a deeply personal story of love, hurt, courage and survival. Escape from Nazi persecution, a rollercoaster ride via kibbutz life in Israel/Palestine to the underground struggle against apartheid. There in South Africa marriage creaking, imprisonment, fleeing into exile and finally the cruellest of climaxes: the onset of dementia. ‘Why did I carry on living beyond my life, into a living death?’ - the bitter epitaph to a life well lived.

Fascinating Story - Highly Recommended - 5*****

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 April 2024
Having read the book and seen the play quite recently, I can highly recommend both. Gail Louw, the enormously talented playwright of two award winning plays: Blonde Poison and Shackleton's Carpenter, has crafted a deeply personal account based on her own mother's life from Germany to Palestine, and then to South Africa and the UK. Each country in the midst of upheaval and change, as is the protagonist.

A rare gem in a complex world. Fascinating and highly recommended.

Poignant and Personal - 5*****

I absolutely love Gail Louw’s plays and am now a huge fan of her novels. The most important aspects of one person’s life are always so intricately drawn. This is a warm and heartbreaking and extremely powerful read.

Very insightful - 5*****

Have you ever wondered what happens in the brain of dementia sufferers? In my own very personal experience, they seem to move between reliving their lives, their past and trying to make sense of the present. I was therefore fascinated by Gail Louw’s story of Rika. Rika does exactly that and she takes us with her on her journey through her life; and at the same time, we learn about the history of Germany and South Africa during her life. We also learn how family, friends and professionals around the sufferer deal with the situation. It is a story of ‘oral’ history presented in a unique and gripping way.

5*****

knew Gail Louw as a talented playwright, but am bowled over by her as a novelist.. I’ve saw the Rika’s Rooms play, at the Playground Theatre Gail Louw season recently, so how about the book? Kindle readers go for it! It’s based on the life story of Gail’s mother. It grips you from page to page, as does her eponymous play. A fabulous achievement, and I look forward to reading more books by this talented writer -and seeing more plays, too. Here she is with Peter Tate, founder/actor/artistic director of the Playground, both holding books on which Gail has based two of her plays and already nominated for a prestigious Offie award (Off-West End Theatre Awards).

This is a must read - 5*****

A wonderful book written by a very talented and deeply charismatic author…

This poignant story, based closely on the life of the author’s mother, is extremely timely and topical for the early 21st century. It engages with various forms insidious, toxic racism—from the exterminatory anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany, to Palestine before it became a Jewish state, and thence to Apartheid South Africa, suggesting the ongoing legacies of these tragic periods in history, which continue to perturb us in baffling, diverse ways. The often irresolvable moral dilemmas encountered by the main protagonist in a Jewish milieu are exacerbated and blurred by her later descent into the confusion of Alzheimer’s in this heartfelt story, making clear that there are never any easy answers in history. Highly recommended. 5 *****