Wayfarer
Pravasan Pillay
In 2023, I went on a three week holiday to my hometown of Durban, South Africa from Stockholm, where I had been living with my Swedish wife since 2010. My wife, son and I stayed at my mother’s house in Chatsworth. Chatsworth is a working-class Indian township, which was created during Apartheid, and which is located about thirty minutes outside of the city.
I hadn’t been to South Africa for five years, and, for the first time since I had moved away, I felt out of place, and unsure of what to do with myself. I didn’t have many close friends left in Durban, so I spent most of my time with my family.
During the mornings we go out shopping, or to the beach, or eat lunch at one of the many excellent takeaways in Chatsworth. In the afternoons, I would sit on the veranda of my mother’s house, drinking cheap beer, reading the local newspapers, and watching people walk by on the street.
It was during the second week of our holiday, while on the veranda, that I came across a listing for used books in the classifieds of a free newspaper called The Rising Sun. The staccato-phrased ad, if memory serves, read something like, “Paperbacks. Crime. Horror. Westerns. Romance. Phone ahead.” It listed a name, Loganathan, a Chatsworth address, and a number.
I read a fair amount of crime fiction, and had already gotten through the books I had brought with me, so I thought it was worth a drive there – especially since it was only ten minutes away from my mother’s place. I called the number, and spoke to a gruff-sounding, but friendly, older man for a few minutes, arranging a time to visit, as well as getting directions.
The next day I was greeted at the gate of a neat, well-kept council house by Loganathan – or Logan as he asked me to call him. He looked to be in his late sixties, was short, slim, balding, and had a neatly-trimmed beard. He was dressed in khaki shorts, a loose-fitting checked shirt, and leather sandals – a standard older Indian man uniform in humid Durban. Logan, who informed me that he was a retired teacher, led me to a small outbuilding located behind his house and alongside his vegetable garden, which he called his “study”.
“I spend my days here,” I remember him saying to him as he opened the door to the outbuilding.
The study was cluttered and musty, but not untidy. It was lined with shelves filled with hundreds of books. On the floor were about ten banana boxes tightly-packed with paperbacks. Logan said that only the books in these boxes were for sale.
I spent the next hour going slowly through them. The majority of books were, as per the ad, genre fiction, but there was also an occasional travel or gardening book. I began building a stack that contained a few historical romances for my mother, as well as crime and western novels that looked up my street.
Logan sat behind me, all the while, in a well-worn armchair, smoking Dunhills, and talking to me about his love of crime fiction and mafia movies. We discovered that we were both fans of the writers Elmore Leonard, and Robert B. Parker, who wrote the novels that the television show, Spenser: For Hire was based on.
Logan also showed me some of his prized hardcover editions, which he had on display. He owned a signed copy of Elmore Leonard’s Freaky Deaky, which he said an ex-colleague, who had emigrated to the U.S., had posted to him.
“I’ll never sell it,” Logan said.
Logan’s wife, Saras, eventually brought us tea and homemade scones as we continued chatting. Logan was especially interested in the fact that I lived in Sweden as he had read a lot of Swedish crime fiction, such as Stieg Larsson and Maj Sjöwall. It was while we were talking about the late Larsson that Logan brought out a folder from a shelf, and handed it to me.
“You’ll like this,” I remember him saying.
Inside the folder was about 120 printed pages, filled with double-spaced text, and held together by a binder clip. It was clearly a manuscript, but there was no author’s name on the cover page – only a title, “Wayfarer”.
Logan told me that the unpublished manuscript had been shared on one of the local crime fiction chat groups he belonged to. (It was and still is common to also distribute pirated ebooks in these groups). He said that no-one in the group knew who the author was. It had been shared as a document file, so it was also possible that the author’s name had been deleted at some point.
Logan had long since lost the file but, at the time, had printed it out and kept it for his collection. This was about 10 years ago. He added that he always did that for the books he liked from the chat group.
“I’m saving them,” he said.
Logan said that the book's main character was a streetwise Durban taxi driver. “A hustler,” he called him. The reason why he thought the manuscript would be of interest to me was because one chapter had the driver partnering with a Swedish sailor on a stolen goods deal.
I was intrigued, and I asked Logan if I could borrow the manuscript for a day. He agreed without a fuss, and, if anything, seemed pleased. I ended up buying about 20 paperbacks at R10 each before leaving. It was a good morning.
That afternoon I read “Wayfarer” on the veranda until the light faded and I was forced inside. It was a short novel, perhaps more accurately classified as a novella, of around 25,000 words or so, and a breezy read. The book’s lead character was, as Logan had briefly touched on, a middle-aged Indian man, named Jeeva, who drove an illegal private taxi, on the Durban beachfront, the city centre, and surrounds.
Jeeva, taciturn by nature, often found himself helping out poor people on the margins of the city – or getting into scraps with small-time criminals. The book was episodic, each chapter could stand on its own, as self-contained, but interconnected, short stories.
The writing was competent and unpolished – in terms of style it was short, terse sentences, and dialogue-heavy, perhaps influenced by hardboiled American crime fiction. It was also filled with references to American and South African soul, funk, and jazz music. The chapter titles were often long, and declarative. One chapter involving an illegal cigarette syndicate was titled, ‘A Man Can’t Even Buy a Loose in Peace’.
Judging by some of the references and events, the book was set around the 2005-2010 period.
After finishing reading “Wayfarer”, I made a few notes, and spent the evening searching online for any mention of it. My search showed up nothing.
The next day I photocopied a section of the Swedish sailor chapter at the local mall – mostly to show to a friend back in Stockholm, but also to perhaps eventually write a short piece about it. I had originally planned to photocopy the entire book, but there was a long line at the shop, and I didn’t want to hold it up.
I then drove to Logan’s place to return the manuscript. He greeted me expectantly at the gate, and we went back to his study to talk about it.
Logan was pleased that I had enjoyed the book, but he didn’t seem as taken as I was in the mystery of who had written it. He said that there were many others, with no ambition to be published, who had also distributed their writing in these chat groups, often anonymously or using a pen name.
“It’s just a hobby,” he said.
He added that, while “Wayfarer” was a fun read, its plots were likely cribbed from other crime fiction, but localised; basically it was a type of throwaway fan fiction, and was nothing worth thinking too much about.
“These types of stories, you read them, and you forget them,” Logan said.
I spent the rest of the morning going through Logan’s boxes again, chatting some more about his favourite writers, and buying a few more books.
I asked Logan if it would be okay if I published an extract from the sailor chapter of “Wayfarer” in an article I would write, even though I still wasn’t sure about how I was going to approach it. He said I could do whatever I like, as it didn’t belong to him. But, again, I could see that he was chuffed that it had interested me.
I said goodbye and left with my books.
The next week my family and I rented a beach cottage, outside Scottburgh, on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast. I spent my days there exploring the extensive rock pools, sitting on the deserted beach, reading the books I had bought from Logan, braaing, and drinking beer. It was the highlight of our holiday.
By the time we got back to Stockholm the following week, and returned to our day-to-day life and work, I had completely forgotten about “Wayfarer”, and the piece I had planned to write. (I ended up writing a story about the rock pools and the octopuses that lived there.)
*
In March 2026, I was cleaning out books in our apartment to drop off at a secondhand store when I found the five pages I had photocopied from “Wayfarer”, folded inside a Robert B. Parker paperback. I again searched online but there still was no mention of it.
Here, then, three years later, is an extract of that chapter, which I have copy typed, and lightly edited for grammar, as well as a few factual errors. Any remaining errors are my own. The extract is used under the fair use doctrine for commentary purposes. All rights belong to the original owners.
An Extract from the Chapter ‘A Taste of Swedish Steel’ from “Wayfarer”
Friday night Jeeva picked up Pär and two women from outside his beachfront hotel.
“They need a lift,” Pär said. He talked to Jeeva through the driver’s window. A cigarette hung from the side of his mouth.
“No problem,” Jeeva said. “Where?”
“Point.”
Jeeva unlocked the car doors. “Get in.”
Pär got into the front seat, a black duffel bag on his lap, and the women got into the back.
“Once we drop them off, I want to head to Selvie’s Pub,” Pär said. “You remember how to get there?”
“Sure,” Jeeva said. He waited for a gap in traffic to pull away from the hotel. An Eagle taxi stopped and let his Cressida in. Jeeva raised his hand. The taxi flashed its brights.
The women were noisy, sharing a quart of Castle Lite. Pär produced a hip flask, took a slug, and passed it to them. Chic’s “Le Freak” was on the radio.
Jeeva watched the women sway to the music in his rearview mirror, relaying the flask between themselves. He recognised both of them. Pär had enjoyed their company on another of his visits to Durban.
“What you been doing since this afternoon?” Pär asked. He exhaled a cloud of smoke.
“I had a fare to Roma,” Jeeva said.
“The restaurant?”
“Ja,” Jeeva said. “The auntie’s a pensioner – one of my regulars. She goes once a week. She pays me to wait for her – when she’s done I drive her back to Morningside.”
“Easy money,” Pär said.
“It’s not bad.”
Jeeva looked at Pär and smiled. The Swede was dressed in blue jeans, a t-shirt and a black Harrington jacket. He was freshly showered and smelt of shampoo.
Pär had been wearing his uniform and a peacoat when Jeeva had fetched him at boom gates outside the port authority customs this morning. He was easy to spot amongst the other sailors waiting for taxis – a tall, well-built, tanned blond with movie star looks.
“This is good for your’ll?” Jeeva asked the women. He was double-parked outside Conrad’s Anchor, or Connie’s as everyone called it. The bar was in the heart of Point Road, and popular with working ladies, sailors, and stevedores.
The women ignored him. One of them spoke to Pär. “You coming back, doll?”
“We’ll see. I’ve got some business in Chatsworth,” Pär said.
“Don’t be long,” the other woman said, leaning over the front seat, planting a kiss on Pär’s cheek.
“Take the evening off,” Pär said. He unfurled a roll of cash – a mix of dollars, euros, and rands – peeled a stack, and handed it to them. The women thanked him, got out, and went into Connie’s.
Jeeva drove off. They were soon on the M4 Southern Freeway. He turned down the music, and switched on his police scanner. He was checking for roadblocks on Higginson – the highway leading into Chatsworth.
“How does it look?” Pär asked. He was calmly rolling a cigarette even though the car was swerving to avoid potholes.
“It’s clear. We’ll be there in fifteen,” Jeeva said. He turned up the music again – Lionel Pillay’s “Deeper in Black”.
“I’m going to need some help tonight,” Pär said. He lit his cigarette.
Jeeva didn’t reply.
Pär unzipped the duffel on his lap, and held it open to Jeeva. He looked over. The bag was packed with small sealed boxes.
“Ray-Bans.” Pär winked. “They're worth thirty but I’m letting them go for fifteen to my Chats buyer.”
“What you need me for?” Jeeva asked. This was new. He had been driving Pär to his deals for the past couple of years, but he had never asked him to get involved before.
Pär zipped the duffel shut, and dragged his cigarette. “Rajesh is out of the picture. There’s a new laarnie. His name’s Jik. You heard of him?”
Jeeva shook his head.
“I called him this afternoon, once you left. He wants me to come down from fifteen to eight. I’m not going to do that. I said I’ll consider fourteen.”
“What – you think he’s going to be a problem?”
“I don’t know, man. But he sounded like a thug – not a businessman like Rajesh was. I think I need to be careful with him,” Pär said.
“And you want me to get you out of there fast? If things go shit?” Jeeva asked.
“Right. A wheelman. Jik wants to meet outside Selvie’s. You park nearby. If I make for the car, hit the pedal,” Pär said.
Jeeva took in what he had heard.
“You get a grand on top of your normal fee,” Pär said.
“I can do that. It’s more action than waiting in a restaurant’s parking garage for a pensioner,” Jeeva said. “You carrying anything?”
Pär reached inside his jacket and slipped out a knife, in a hard plastic sheath.
“I got this,” he said. He pulled the knife from the sheath and showed it to Jeeva. The handle was wooden and looked worn with age, but the blade was shiny and sharp. Jeeva could see it gleam even in the dark of the car.
“Morakniv – Swedish steel,” Pär said. “They make them where I’m from, in Dalarna, in the middle of the country.”
“When’s the last time you was home?”
“Shit.” Pär counted off on his fingers. “It’s going to be around three years soon.”
He tossed the small stub of cigarette he had been smoking. Instead of reaching for his tobacco pouch again, Pär opened a round tin of snus, the mouth tobacco Jeeva had sometimes seen him use. He removed one of the small bags and stuffed it under his upper lip. Pär had once told him that they were hard to get outside of Sweden, so he rationed them for special occasions.
A few minutes later they turned into Higginson. Jeeva skipped a few stations on the radio until he found something he liked – George Benson’s “Give Me The Night”.
“Jajamän,” said Pär, drumming on the dashboard to the music. “Let’s go make some crown.”
*
The photocopied section of the chapter went on for a paragraph or so more but I thought that this was a good part to end it on. I would have also liked to have supplemented this extract with an interview with Logan, but, when I phoned his landline, I learned, from Saras, that he had passed away in late 2024. Saras was soon moving in with her son, and in the process of selling her house. She told me she had donated all of Logan’s books to the local Hospice shop.
“There’s no place in my son’s house,” she said.
I wanted to ask about the manuscript, and what she had done with her husband’s papers, but I could hear her begin crying, and decided to drop the topic.
Dedicated to Loganathan Govender (1953-2024)
