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Pif Magazine
ISSN: 1094-2726
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Father Antonio's Black Label : Page 1, 2, 3
Father Antonio's house is a fine, square, doubled-storied building in the center of Egreija. Its orange tiles, white walls, and dark green shutters are sparkling clean. They are devotedly maintained, like the dark and gleaming interior, by the villagers of Egreija. In the dining room, Father Antonio sat on one side of the table and the photographer, the mayor and I sat on the other. Paulo the carpenter and the mayor's son remained outside. Father Antonio produced a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, four tumblers and a cake. Christ watched from the cross on the wall. Father Antonio broke the cake and poured generous measures. We raised our glasses. The whiskey tasted like ice cream. We spoke. The mayor translated. Father Antonio beamed at me, interrogated me. I told him my marital status. The mayor referred to him in the godly plural.
"They say: 'Married with three children - very rich people!'"
Father Antonio rose and produced two more cakes and another bottle. These we must take with us. He looked at me with merry eyes, indicating the cakes. "For the wife and children!"
I guarded those cakes carefully on our travels and brought them home. For a time I carried the whiskey also, but one night we got drunk on The Algarve and I borrowed some money from the photographer and the next morning I couldn't remember how much it was. The photographer said he also could not remember.
"Look," I said, "why don't you take the scotch and we'll call it quits." And so it was. But when I arrived home my wife had offered refuge to a friend and the friend had left a present. There on the dining room table, gleaming by divine intervention among the fruit bowls, was the grail offered to us by Father Antonio, there, reincarnated, was Father Antonio's bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label.
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James Whyle was kicked out of the South African apartheid army for recalcitrance in 1981 and wrote his first play, National Madness, about these experiences. National Madness was performed at the Market and Baxter Theatres in the early eighties and published in the collection Market Plays (edited by Stephen Gray.) His second play Hellhound was performed at the Market Theatre in 1992. His story, "Sapper Fijn and the Cow" appears in The Penguin Book of Contemporary South African Short Stories.
Other work includes writing feature articles for Playboy, Style and Sunday Times Lifestyle magazines and producing the South African version of the improvised Theatresports TV show on behalf of the Market Theatre Laboratory. He is a currently a senior writer on the TV3 series Isidingo - The Need.
You can find more of his work at: http://www.artslink.co.za/tasc/jw.htm