“Professor Coetzee wishes you all the best with this conference and looks forward to reading the papers you sent him at some time in the future. Good afternoon to you.”

The screen goes blank, and I stare at it with my Ahab eyes. The whale has escaped again. He hasn’t read my interview, and probably never will. We break for tea, and there is a general movement towards the lounge where vegan biscuits and almond milk are being served.

I stay in my seat watching the screen. I have my harpoon in my hand, but the whale swims free. I can see his tail flicking into the air as he dives, and sounds. Then he rises up and blows spray into the air. He swims under water for hundreds of metres, then leaps into the air and falls back with a mighty splash. There is something joyful about his whaleness. He is living his best whale life, freer and more fulfilled than at any other time in his existence.

I wander through to the lounge and pour myself a cup of tea. I become aware of someone standing close to me. It is the sociologist—the black woman who brought my white tears up from a place deep inside and almost caused them to fall. I wonder if she intends to apologise. Perhaps she realises she hurt me, and wants to say sorry. Perhaps she wants to acknowledge that I am not like those other white people, the ones who are unconscious of their privilege. I am the exception. My exceptionalism shines through in everything I do, and perhaps she wants me to know that she is aware of that.

I smile at her, waiting for her to apologise.

“Your story is less interesting than you think.”

It is going to be a long wait.

“But it is my story,” I say. “And I should be the one to tell it.”

“Then tell it.”

“I do. In forums like this conference, and in journal articles like the diaspora collection.”

“I’m talking about a novel.”

This makes no sense, and I say so.

“You don’t like the narrative John Coetzee has created out of your experience, so set up a competing narrative. Write your own novel. Tell your own story.”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. It would make people uncomfortable. No one would want to read it. Coetzee’s story would stand head and shoulders above it. His story is a clean, coherent narrative. It is powerful and iconic. Mine is an uncontrolled emotion dump, lacking in structure and framework. If John Coetzee’s story is fountain pen on vellum, mine is menstrual blood on toilet paper.”

“You have a problem with the way he framed your story, with the way he imagined your thoughts and reactions. So write your own novel. It will set up a tension between the two works. Your story will always exist in intertextual conversation with Coetzee’s story.”