Chris van Wyk – Irascible Genius: A Son’s Memoir

In memory of my parents, Chris and Kathy van Wyk

For my wife Tasneen, my daughters Madison and Mila,

and my brother Karl

Chris van Wyk

– Irascible Genius

A Son’s Memoir

Kevin van Wyk

MACMILLAN

First published in 2024

by Pan Macmillan South Africa

Private Bag

x

19

Northlands

Johannesburg

2116

www.panmacmillan.co.za

isbn

978-1-77010-930-8

e-

isbn

978-1-77010-931-5

© 2024 Kevin van Wyk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Some of the names have been changed in this memoir in order to respect and preserve the privacy of certain individuals. All the

Chris van Wyk poems in this text are drawn from the 2020 collection My Mother’s Laughter and used by courtesy of Robert Berold of Deep South Publishing.

Editing by Alison Lowry

Proofreading by Jane Bowman

Design and typesetting by Triple M Design

Cover design by Ninjabreadboy from Butter Represents

irascible: irritable, hot-tempered

genius: instinctive and extraordinary imaginative, creative or inventive capacity

Oxford English Dictionary

Preface

One Sunday evening in 1989, when I was eight years old, I had a mild bout of insomnia. My two-year-old brother Karl was well into the second hour of his dreams in the bed beside mine. I was lying staring at the white ceiling above me, wondering about life, when suddenly the bedroom light was switched on. It was my father, coming to collect his pyjamas from my wardrobe because my mother had hoarded most of the space in their bedroom closet. It was past 10 pm and I would have normally been asleep by then, in which case I would have been none the wiser about the arrival of the late-night intruder. But I hadn’t yet fallen asleep on this evening, and I took the opportunity to do something I had become known for – ask a random question.

‘Daddy, how big is space? You know, with all the stars and stuff in it?’

My father was himself startled, expecting me to have been fast asleep, but his expression morphed into a grin, which indicated to me that I was being a little cheeky for asking this question at that time of night.

‘Shouldn’t you be asleep, Kevs?’ he asked rhetorically.

I didn’t answer his question, only replying with a wry smile of my own. I knew he would entertain me with a response – and a comprehensive one at that.

And so began an almost hour-long discussion with my father crouched beside my bed explaining to me the inner workings of outer space. It was the first time I’d heard the terms ‘solar system’ and ‘gravity’.

‘You see, Kevs, planet Earth is one of nine planets in our solar system.’ (These were the days when Pluto was still given some respect as a planet, by the way.) He continued, ‘The sun is a star, just like all the other stars you see in the sky at night, but the reason it shines so brightly during the day is because it’s much closer than all the other stars in our galaxy. We are part of a galaxy called the Milky Way and it has millions of stars in it – more than you can imagine.’

I was mesmerised by all these facts and figures. He then lifted up a box of matches he had in his hand and released his grip, letting the box drop to the carpet, where it landed with a muted rustle. ‘That, Kevs, is called gravity. The Earth is like a huge magnet pulling everything towards it. If we didn’t have gravity, we’d all just fall off the Earth and be drifting out into space.’

‘Wow!’

‘If the Earth was closer to the sun, it would be too hot for life to survive and if it was much further away, it would probably be too cold. It is just the right distance from the sun for it to provide Earth with life-giving light. Scientists call Earth the Goldilocks planet, like the story about the Three Bears. Earth is not too hot, not too cold, it’s just right.’

This unexpected midnight astronomy lecture was not unusual for a conversation between my father and me. I had always been inquisitive and the questions I asked my father during his life were nearly as numerous as the stars in the Milky Way itself.

‘But, Daddy, how do you know all this stuff about the universe?’

‘Because I read, Kevs. Reading gives you all this wonderful information. That’s why I’m always telling you to read too. But now isn’t the time for reading, it’s time for sleeping. Good night, my laaitie.’ He turned off the light and headed off to get some sleep himself.

Exactly 25 years later my father and I were doing almost the same thing, but this time the tables were turned. I pulled up a chair next to his bed on a Saturday afternoon in September 2014, as he lay on his deathbed. This time we were not talking about the marvels of outer space but about his own life, which, dare I say it, was filled with just as much wonder as the Milky Way.

Stories like these made me believe that my father had ‘an exceptional intellectual or creative power’. That is how the word ‘genius’ is defined, in part, in the Oxford English Dictionary. It must be said that I never thought of him as a genius until I stumbled upon a phrase in a popular science book I once read, in which a well-known scientist was described as an ‘irascible genius’. I had not seen that adjective before so I looked it up.

Irascible: irritable; hot-tempered

As I read the definition I was struck by a feeling of familiarity. The term ‘irascible genius’ could just as well have been used to describe my late father, Chris van Wyk. During his lifetime, I never disclosed to him my newfound description of him, lest he display some irascible behaviour.

For those who knew my dad well, many would agree that he sometimes had a short fuse, but the instances in which his temper flared up were certainly rare and, more often than not, when it did happen to take place, justified. I remember him fondly as being unequivocally generous, ­funny and kind for the better part of his time on Earth. When he got ­older, his temper tantrums became a source of amusement for the family as he got worked up when describing an incident from his day which, for most ­people, would be a seemingly mundane event. For him, however, he’d become agitated all over again at the thought of how someone had done something to make his blood boil. He’d look at our collective smiles of bemusement and end off his story with the inevitable ‘Ag, you know I can be full of shit sometimes.’

I actually never really realised how acutely aware my father had been of his personality quirks until I stumbled upon one of his poems some time after his death. In his memoir Shirley, Goodness & Mercy, he writes with endearing honesty about his father, Nick, who had also suffered from the occasional bout of temperamental petulance. I then came across this poem that I felt was one of my father’s more vulnerable and honest moments as a writer:

I Have My Father’s Voice

When I was a pigeon-toed boy

my father used his voice

to send me to bed

to run and buy the newspaper

to scribble my way through matric.

He also used his voice for harsher things:

to bluster when we made a noise

when the kitchen wasn’t cleaned after supper

when I was out too late.

Late for work, on many mornings,

one sock in hand, its twin

an angry glint in his eye, he flings

dirty clothes out of the washing box:

vests, jeans, pants and shirts, shouting

anagrams of fee fi fo fum until he is up

to his knees in a heap of stinking laundry.

I have my father’s voice

and his fuming temper

and I shout as he does.

When I walk into a room

where my father has just been

I fill the same spaces he did

from the elbows on the table

to the head thrown back

and when we laugh we aim the guffaw

at the same space in the air.

Everything a poet needs

my father has bequeathed me

except the words.

That poem made me realise that my father had been much more aware of his shortcomings than he would have ever cared to admit during his life. My father had been an affectionate patriarch of our family, but he always seemed to keep his most vulnerable emotions in check.

The ‘genius’ aspect of my description is probably a little more subjective. I am aware that there is oftentimes a lazy and unimaginative labelling of a deceased person as a ‘genius’ or ‘legend’, but in the pages that follow I believe that I will present a compelling thesis to have Chris van Wyk recognised as a more than competent intellectual in his own right.

In the months following his funeral, I often found myself thinking of other stories about my father’s life that I could have mentioned in my eulogy. My thoughts were echoed by one of my father’s friends, Dr David Medalie, who penned a heartwarming obituary in honour of my father in which he remarked: ‘Prolific as he was, there is no doubt that his fertile imagination held many more delights in store for his readers. But the sudden onset of his illness prevented him from completing his second novel for adults, and now the other stories that bubbled within him will remain untold.’¹

What better way to pay homage to Chris van Wyk the storyteller than to tell some of his untold stories and how living in the presence of a story­teller impacted the lives of those around him. This is not a scientific or academic analysis by any means, but simply a series of stories recognising my father’s ascent from ordinary township boy to master storyteller, and the friends and family who inspired him along the way. Having had the pleasure of knowing him for 33 years, I believe I had a unique vantage point in understanding what made him tick – and what ticked him off!

David Medalie, ‘Words of Warmth and Laughter’, Mail & Guardian, 10–16 October 2014.

Love and literature

In 1957 the formal policy of apartheid was nearly a decade old and Johannesburg was a rapidly expanding city, confirming its status as the financial hub of South Africa. It was also the year that both my parents were born, in June and July of 1957, but it would take a further decade for their paths to converge. To fully understand my father’s rise as a writer it would be prudent briefly to sketch where my parents came from and how they came to be husband and wife.

At the time that my parents were born, Riverlea didn’t exist. The township that came to define both their lives would only be built in 1962. My mother was born in Plumstead Street, Coronationville, on a winter morning in 1957 at the home of her maternal grandmother, Sarah ‘Mollie’ Probert. She was the eldest child of Raymond and Yvonne ‘Bonnie’ van Wyk. And no, this is not a typo – my mother was born a Van Wyk and married a Van Wyk. She always said that she simply changed from a Miss to a Mrs after her marriage to my father.

Shortly after staying in Coronationville, my mother’s family moved to Horseshoe, which was a collection of small houses constructed in a semi-circle, from which the suburb derived its name. By mid-1963 the maternal Van Wyks were five people strong, as they welcomed Gregory and Charmaine, my mother’s younger siblings, with each birth punctuated at neat, three-year intervals.

After November 1963 they moved to Riverlea. I don’t actually know exactly when they moved to Riverlea, but I remembered my grandmother telling me that she had been sitting on her back stoep in Horseshoe listening to the radio on a warm November evening when a newsflash blazed across the airwaves to announce that US President John F Kennedy had been assassinated. It was shortly after that event that they moved to 81 Colorado Drive, Riverlea.

My father, meanwhile, was born at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto in July 1957 and initially lived in Newclare with his parents, Nick and Shirley, shortly after which his younger brother, Derek, arrived to join the clan. In 1962 the family moved to Riverlea, with Shirley being heavily pregnant at the time with their third child. Family legend has it that my father’s brother Shaune was the first baby born in Riverlea back in October 1962. Although I have never been able independently to verify that claim, it certainly makes for a neat bit of family trivia. Nick and Shirley would eventually have six children in all, each of whom would be raised at 13 Flinders Street, Riverlea, literally around the corner from my mother’s childhood home.

Chris and Kathy attended separate primary schools, so I don’t know how much they knew about each other in their younger childhood years. One of Chris’s closest childhood friends, Keith, lived two houses away from Kathy so I’m sure they definitely would have seen one another as Chris walked to visit his buddy, which happened virtually daily, I believe. But it was at Riverlea High School that their worlds finally converged.

My mother’s parents were both from staunch Roman Catholic families and instilled those same values in their children. My mother’s initial intention of devoting her life to the church waned somewhat during the latter half of her teenage years when she befriended and fell in love with a certain Chris van Wyk. The version they told me is that they officially became a couple when they were both 16 years old and in Grade 10 in high school.

Kathy and Chris tried to hide the relationship from Raymond as best they could, despite rumours swirling around the neighbourhood. My father rarely visited my mother at her house and only did so if Raymond wasn’t there. Instead, Kathy, or Katzo, as my father called her, would visit him quite regularly at his home, under the guise of going to the shop or to visit one of her girlfriends. My mother told me how she would walk up Colorado Drive in the direction of the shops and then take a detour into the yard of a neighbour, scale the back wall and land neatly in her boyfriend’s backyard. The good Catholic girl failed to honour thy father and thy mother.

One morning in the early 1970s, in a scene reminiscent of a soap opera, Raymond stopped halfway on his way to work, having forgotten his office keys at home. Upon arriving back home he collected the keys from his bedroom only to notice the back door in the kitchen slightly ajar at a time when nobody was supposed to be at home.

Wondering if he had walked into the remnants of a burglary, Raymond slowly approached the door and carefully opened it to inspect what was happening in the backyard. There, beneath the grapevine that grew in the yard, stood Chris and his daughter, chatting away when they were both supposed to be in school. What had been heard through the proverbial grapevine was now confirmed – and quite literally observed – beneath it!

‘Oh … er … good morning, Mr Van Wyk,’ Chris stuttered sheepishly, simultaneously trying to hide a lit cigarette behind his back.

‘Please leave my home, young man. You’re not welcome here,’ replied the stern-faced Raymond. He wasn’t someone generally prone to anger, but this encounter brought him to the precipice.

With a quick ‘Yes, sir’ Chris disappeared as instructed while Kathy was given a lecture about her errant and ungodly ways. Of course, Chris and Kathy continued seeing each other at school and their relationship continued to blossom. They just had to master the art of stealth.

While Chris was falling in love with Kathy in the early 1970s, my father had long since spent a sizeable chunk of his free time engaged in his other love affair – books. His love of literature and storytelling began even before he was able to read and write as he listened to stories told to him by his mother and other family members. Later in life, my father wrote endearingly about his Grade 1 teacher, Mrs Abrahams, who was a good storyteller in her own right and helped nurture his love of storytelling. Her class listened to Bible stories, sang nursery rhymes and had access to the magic of picture books. By the time he could read, Chris was swapping comics with people all over Riverlea and devouring whatever books he could get his hands on.

When my father was 12 years old, he was enthralled by the sight of the construction of Riverlea’s very own public library. He vividly recalled how excited he was and how he could not understand how many of his friends didn’t share his eager anticipation of a hall full of books, virtually on their doorstep.

One afternoon in 1975, when Chris was about 17, he opened the Saturday Star newspaper and spotted a small advert inviting readers to submit their poetry. The shy and precocious teenager felt that this was a calling of sorts. He penned a poem, stuck it into an envelope and posted it to the newspaper in the hope that his poem would be among those chosen for publication.

In the weeks following his daring submission, each Saturday morning Chris would go to the local shop, take one of the newspapers from the counter and page through it to see if his poem had made the cut. About three weeks after posting his poem, he opened the newspaper, flipped to the ‘Poets’ Platform’ segment and, lo and behold, in pride of place, there it was: ‘Apologies to a Gardener’ by Chris van Wyk. Almost unable to contain his excitement, my father grabbed two more copies of the Saturday Star, slammed a few coins onto the counter and rushed home to show his ­parents, Nick and Shirley, and the rest of the family. His parents were mightily impressed by their son’s achievement and, in the days following his first official poem being published, my father walked around Riverlea with an extra spring in his step. This emboldened the young Chris to submit more poems to the newspaper in the hope that his career as a writer was finally under way. And to top it all off, the publication of the poem came with a cheque for five rand – a more than respectable reward for a teenager back in the 1970s.

The ‘Poets’ Platform’ segment was run by journalist and writer Robert Greig, who not only published the poems but included discussions and critiques on their subject matter. Within a few months Mr Greig published another of my father’s poems … and another … and another. And then one late morning while Chris was sitting in his classroom half-listening to an Accounting lecture, the principal’s secretary entered the room and discreetly whispered a message to the teacher, Mr Maclean, who looked up at the students in front of him: ‘Van Wyk, please make your way to the principal’s office immediately,’ he said.

An audible murmur ran through the class as Chris got up to obey the instruction. I imagine the walk to the principal’s office would have been filled with apprehension and my father’s slightly bandy-legged, pigeon-toed stride would have been less confident than usual as his mind went through what action of his might have warranted this invitation.

The principal was a relatively short man by the name of Mr Snell, always sporting a suit and tie but hardly ever a smile on his face. As Chris entered Mr Snell’s office, he was greeted unexpectedly warmly, with Mr Snell even managing to force a rare grin.

‘Chris van Wyk, please sit down – there’s a call waiting for you,’ he said, handing my father the telephone receiver.

‘For me?’

‘Yes. Please – take a seat.’

Chris drew the receiver closer to his ear. On the other end was a journalist from the Saturday Star. It turned out that Chris and a girl from elsewhere in Joburg had been chosen as the two best young poets who had submitted their poetry to ‘Poets’ Platform’ and the newspaper wanted to write an article about them. The journalist asked if she could come and interview Chris at his home. A beaming Chris agreed without hesitation.

On the day of the journalist’s visit, Chris made sure that the sand in the yard was neatly raked around the small tufts of grass and weeds that made up the makeshift garden. So excited was Chris about his impending 15 minutes of fame that he went as far as to ensure that there was fresh milk and tea for his esteemed visitor. The interview went well, and Chris was even asked to pose for a few photos in his school blazer. A week or so after the interview, there was Chris’s picture in the weekend newspaper, smiling proudly. He looked more like a fifth Beatle with his sleek dark hair than a distinguished poet, but it was a moment of immense pride for the young Chris and his family.

On Monday morning, one of Riverlea High School’s teachers, Mr Wills, stood up during the customary morning assembly and asked the principal if he could make an announcement.

‘Good morning, students. I have a special announcement to make this morning. Where’s Chris van Wyk? … Can Chris please stand up?’

Having had no prior warning of this announcement, Chris stood up not fully knowing what this was about.

Mr Wills continued, ‘Students, I would like to congratulate Chris for the article which appeared in the Star a few days ago. Chris has had many poems published and was recently recognised as one of the best poets to submit poetry to the newspaper. Well done, Chris!’

The school gave him a polite round of applause, with the shy schoolboy’s cheeks showing a spot of crimson at the unexpected attention.

Indeed, the recognition Chris received from the newspaper should have been a moment of pride for Riverlea in general. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my own life, you are never going to please everyone. What would a feel-good story be without a pantomime villain and there were more than a few at Riverlea High School, none more so than Mr Kirk, Chris’s Afrikaans teacher. Literally the same day on which the school applauded Chris’s venture into writing, Mr Kirk decided to dedicate a large portion of his Afrikaans lesson later that morning to belittle the young man of the moment. Almost always dressed in a drab brown suit, Mr Kirk was an unpleasant man. The only thing that seemed to make him happy was taking orders from his white Afrikaner bosses who ran the Department of Coloured Affairs. His other passion in life was to stunt any sliver of intellectual promise shown by any of his students.

‘Before we start the lesson today, class, I just need to make something clear to all of you,’ he started on that Monday morning lesson back in 1975. ‘Van Wyk – stand up!’ For the second time in one day Chris was being asked to stand up before a crowd, although he knew instinctively that this time would be very different to the first. As Chris stood there with the eyes of his classmates fixed on him, Mr Kirk continued: ‘Van Wyk, what is iambic pentameter?’

‘Umm … er …’

‘You see! What is this rubbish about calling yourself a poet? This business about you being in the newspaper is just a bunch of crap. Just do your homework and stop calling yourself what you are not – you are not a poet! Now sit down on your arse!’

Totally floored by this unjustified dressing down by a man who should have been proud of his student’s achievement, Chris meekly took his seat. In retrospect, I suspect it was events such as these that helped Chris evolve from being a timid, shy boy into the irascible genius he would become.

It must be said that not all his teachers were as disparaging as Mr Kirk. In interviews later in his life, Chris gave a lot of credit to Mr James Bouah, his English teacher during his final years of high school. Mr Bouah spotted my father’s literary promise and introduced him to some of the Black South African poets who were starting to make waves during that time – Oswald Mtshali, Wally Serote, Adam Small and Mafika Gwala, to name a few. Much of their poetry and writing was a lot more direct and less flowery than their European counterparts, reflecting the mood of apartheid South Africa.

Fortunately, Chris would not be discouraged by the likes of Mr Kirk and he continued his writing. He sent more and more poems in to the newspaper, many of which demonstrated his focus on attacking the apartheid regime. He also wanted to make a point to the naysayers who doubted his ability as a wordsmith. Chris would again be rewarded for his persistence because during his final year of school a special edition of ‘Poets’ Platform’ was published and the introduction to the article had this to say:

This week’s Poets’ Platform features the work of just one poet, Chris van Wyk, an 18-year-old pupil at Riverlea High School. Other poets sent in good work, which will wait, and Chris has had poems published here before, but he sent me a batch of thoroughly skilful poems and it seems worth reading in bulk. The first thing about his work is that it contains a lot of anger, of passion, none of it forced and yet this feeling is carved into a form where words pull their weight.

This was one of the poems published on that day:

It was an Accident

God it was ugly

Screeching wheels!!!

And careless metal

Flinging your frightened

Body into a tornado of dust

Sending you against

A pavement of cruel cement

Until blood poured out

Of your dead white skin

God it was ugly

And

I

Always

Thought

I

Hated

You

In addition to the anger-fuelled political poems Chris sent in to the newspaper, he also sent in a few love poems but, from what I could gather, none of these was published. The editor of the column was clearly not impressed with my father’s attempts at being a romantic poet when he critiqued them in uncompromising fashion: ‘His love poems, however, are unremarkable.’

Well, that didn’t matter to Kathy one bit because she was clearly won over by her boyfriend’s poetry. Both Chris and Kathy completed their schooling at the end of 1975 and their courtship continued. A month after finishing school Kathy got a job as a clerk at Barclays Bank in town while my father continued with his writing.

Then a singular event galvanised his voice of dissent even more.

The 16th of June 1976 is a date that will live in infamy and one of the most recognisable dates in the history of South Africa. When the apartheid police opened fire on protesting students in Soweto, it forever changed the complexion of the struggle for freedom. Writers and artists stepped up their voices against the regime and Chris’s writing, along with many of his contemporary artists, took on a renewed urgency. It was around this juncture that Chris began mingling with fellow writers and artists, particularly those who, like him, used their creative talents as voices of dissent against the apartheid government.

One evening my father was invited to join a host of other artists to read some of his poetry at a hall in Soweto. One of the leaders and organisers of this event was a fellow writer called Duma. Upon hearing that Chris van Wyk would be one of the speakers at the event, Duma was very sceptical to have my father share the stage with other writers.

‘Van Wyk? Why does this white man want to come to Soweto, preaching to us Black people about the struggle?’ Duma wondered.

When the day of the poetry reading arrived, Chris was introduced to Duma shortly before proceedings commenced. ‘Oh … Chris!’ Duma exclaimed with evident relief as he extended his hand to greet my father. ‘I thought you were white.’

As my father reciprocated the gesture with a firm handshake, he smiled and said: ‘Duma! I’m as Black as they come!’

Well, that was a slight exaggeration of course, certainly from a literal point of view. My father’s skin tone was far from dark. In fact, it was barely light brown, to be honest. But Chris was expressing his views about his Blackness in accordance with the Black Consciousness philosophy of one of his heroes, Steve Biko. The debates among the artists of the day included Black identity espoused by the likes of Steve Biko here in South Africa and the likes of the late Marcus Garvey further afield.

The proudly Black Chris spent the late 1970s composing more poetry under the guidance and mentorship of Stephen Gray, an already established writer and academic. All these poems culminated in his first published book in 1979 called It Is Time To Go Home, released shortly before he turned 22 years old. This collection contained his most celebrated poem, ‘In Detention’, which would become part of South Africa’s literary lexicon and would be quoted by academics, on TV and in newspaper columns for decades to come. Along with ‘In Detention’, there were many other gems in that collection, including a poem dedicated to a friend who lived in a house without electricity. It is a remarkably simple poem about the value of literacy, which would become one of Chris’s signature messages for the rest of his life.

Candle

(for Caplan)

Read brother read.

The wax is melting fast

The shadows become obdurate

and mock pantomimes of you

laughing through the crude cement

In silent stage whispers.

Read brother read,

though the wax lies heaped

in the saucer

and silhouettes of gloom

grow longer

Read brother read.

Only the wick shines red now

But it is not yet dark.

Remember brother,

it is not yet dark.

Whenever I visit the pages of It Is Time To Go Home, I cannot fathom that Chris was able to compose poems of that calibre at the tender age of 21. But please don’t take my word for it. If you think my words are tinged with an element of bias (which they probably are) my father was awarded the Olive Schreiner Prize for Poetry for that collection.

It was around this time that my father met and befriended Fhazel Johennesse. Fhazel also lived in Riverlea and was himself a budding poet. Their mutual love of literature saw them quickly become the best of buddies. About a year before he died, my father gave an interview to Nicole Stoltenkamp, an English Literature master’s student, whose family was originally from Riverlea, who had been studying some of his work. This excerpt of the interview best explains this time in his life straight from the horse’s mouth:

I read South African poetry magazines and international poets like Seamus Heaney and Pablo Neruda and others. I decided that the noblest artist that you could become ever in your life was a poet … I thought there was nothing better in the world than expressing yourself in words and expressing an emotion and a feeling and an event in such a way that it becomes memorable that people quote it forever.

Fhazel and I started as poets so we decided we should start a literary magazine. Every week we’d get in touch with each other. We’d drink alcohol also – lots of alcohol. Because we thought that was part of being a poet. We had arguments and debates about writing, about politics and about being Black. We taught each other things. It was a special time.

Part of this quote reminded me of a story my father once told me. One evening he and Fhazel hopped into Fhazel’s brown Volkswagen Beetle and headed off to a pub somewhere, probably to discuss politics and literature – and to drink, of course. After an evening of