Henrietta Rose-Innes
Nineveh by Henrietta Rose-Innes is an unusual story that can function as an allegory.
Katya Grubbs is a young woman who has taken over her estranged father’s pest control business in Cape Town. Unlike her father who has no qualms about squashing or otherwise obliterating pests, Katya believes in the more humane form of pest elimination. She captures the unwanted pests and relocates them to agreeable surroundings. More comfortable with insects than people, Katya is a loner, socially adrift, and lives in a crumbling hovel. Her skin, dotted with insect bites and scars, is a tell-tale sign of her profession. Her internal scars are tell-tale signs of growing up with an alcoholic, dishonest, and abusive father who denied his family a permanent home; a mother who mysteriously disappeared when Katya was a small child; and a sister who ran away.
Katya is hired by a property developer to rid his luxury gated community, euphemistically named Nineveh, of elusive insects—a type of beetle whose periodic emergence coincides with the rains. The infestation is severe enough to bring construction to a screeching halt. Katya spends a few nights on the property but can find no trace of these insects. And then the rains come. Thousands of beetles mysteriously emerge, invading the property overnight. They crawl up and down walls, into buildings, in and out of gutters, through cracks, and up trouser legs. Every nook and cranny harbors a multitude of creepy crawlers. Katya recognizes their overwhelming numbers render futile any attempt to control them. Her father re-enters her life to help but proves more of a hindrance than a help.
The novel can be read as an allegory that sets up parallels between humans and insects overstepping their boundaries. Nineveh initially exudes a fortress-like security, surrounded by walls, gates, two guards, and a dog. Access to parts of the compound is restricted to those with fingerprint clearance. But Katya soon discovers the security is illusory. Bathroom tiles, copper pipes, furniture, and other odds and ends are routinely smuggled out of the compound through a network of underground tunnels to be sold in the nearby shanty town. Katya’s father is the culprit. He wades through swamp-like underground areas, teeming with insect and amphibian life, to climb up walls, pass through cracks, and enter through windows. He sells what he steals.
Katya concludes although walls and gates may act as a temporary deterrence, they cannot permanently keep out those determined to enter. Similarly, tame landscapes, manicured lawns, and pest control companies cannot indefinitely deter insects and pests. Attempts to relocate or restrict any life form to its designated space is futile. Boundaries of separation are fluid. Movement and flux are inevitable. Something or someone will find a way to burrow into a vacant space so that no space is vacant for long.
Rose-Innes’ prose is lush, rich in detail, and highly effective in evoking an atmosphere of the tumult lurking beneath the surface. Whether it is insects or pests, details of a traumatic childhood, outsiders denied access, or even political movements fermenting underground, sooner or later all will surface in the prohibited space to make their presence felt.
An original story, brilliantly executed, and highly recommended.