Weekend Pilgrimage is the first of three impressively individual novels by the reclusive Tip Marugg, whose life on Curaçao, in the words of one (rare) interviewer, revolves mainly around ‘drink, writing and dogs’.


This is a literature of stasis and reflection rather than action: what has been called Marugg’s ‘tropical existentialism’ tends to focus on situations where the central character is — at least temporarily — isolated and insulated from everyday life and can give free rein to memory (both recent and distant), fantasy and wish fulfilment.


In Weekend Pilgrimage the narrator has been on a drinking binge and on his way home has skidded off the road into a shallow ditch where he spends some hours sobering up during a tropical storm. He relives his aimless progression from bar to bar — the ‘pilgrimage’of the title — his encounters with his fellow-islanders, male and female, contemplates suicide (though, unlike the later protagonist of De morgen loeit weer aan [The Roar of Morning], he does not actually kill himself), feels alienated and restless on this ‘black man’s island’, but cannot summon the energy to emigrate, though he has an air ticket to Canada. Finally he becomes reconciled with his condition: ‘This is my town. This is my island. Am I alone?’ and drives off to face another day of indecision and sweltering heat.


Marugg’s economical and carefully wrought style infuses what could be simply sordid and humdrum with an intense, almost visionary quality.

I’ve sometimes wished I was a Negro. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean absolutely black, but with just a touch of colour in my skin. I fancy that if I was like that I might feel more at home in Curaçao. This is a Negro island, no matter how you look at it. The sun, the sky, the cacti, the coast and the sea — it all goes with being a Negro. A white man has no business here. The hot sun that burns here is a Negro sun. A white man, even if he’s a white man who’s been born and bred here, can’t stand up to it and never quite gets used to it. He goes down to the beach on a Saturday afternoon and two hours later he begins to peel. A Negro’s skin never peels. And the sky and the wind belong to the island too. The everlasting trade wind is a Negro wind, and the grey morning clouds and the white afternoon clouds are Negro clouds. The cactus is a Negro plant. Do any cacti grow in white countries? Yes — in the hothouses, just as they keep monkeys in the zoos there. The coast is a Negro coast, too, and the sea a Negro sea. The coast is rocky, spiky, sharp and treacherous — just as treacherous as the sea, which changes colour so easily and so often. Curaçao once possessed fine white beaches, but the sand’s all gone now, carted off in big trucks to build houses in the town. The few beaches left are mutilated, and in the little sand that is still to be seen there are splinters of broken glass. This is a Negro island, no matter how you look at it. (p. 40-41, tr. Roy Edwards)