conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Nobel, Prize, DIV>The with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Dramas & Plays?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Sorrows and Rejoicings'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Sorrows and Rejoicings
  And it was just as good for me—maybe even better. Those first few months in that shabby bedsitter in Finchley Road were the happiest of all the time we lived together. In that pokey little room with its shilling-a-time gas heater I finally had David all to myself.
  ALLISON: Yes. From the very first time I saw you, trying to be a servant and David trying to be the master, I knew there was something between the two of you. And then when I saw little Rebecca on your back I knew for sure. Poor David! He made it so obvious by deliberately ignoring the child when she was in here with you.
  MARTA: I could see you didn't like me. But jealous? Ag, no Allison. You were wasting your time being jealous of me—you with all your education and a white skin. I had nothing to give him... except trouble and a daughter who doesn't love him.
  ALLISON: No, Marta. You had as much to give him as I ever did... and maybe even more. It has taken me a long time to be able to say that, but it's true. Apart from being the woman you are, you are also a part of this world that he loved with such passion. You are this world, Marta, in a way that I could never be, no matter how hard I tried... and the truth is I didn't try at all. At the time I refused to see that. I refused to see what bound the two of you together. As far I was concerned you were right: you did have nothing to give him except an illegitimate child and big trouble if the two of you were ever caught as lovers.
  ALLISON: Only as "dear Marta the faithful, loyal and devoted servant and friend of the family." At the time I fooled myself that I was being sensitive to his feelings, but the truth is I was afraid of what I would find if I started probing and tried to challenge your place in his life.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: MARTA: No! Only more. I would have only prayed for more... more of everything, the good and the bad.
  I was your age when I first knew I loved him. How it hurt, that love! Because what could I hope for? Nothing!... and that only made me love him more. It happened when his ouma died and he came down from Johannesburg for the funeral. Dawid got permission from the university to stay on here after the funeral to comfort and help his oupa. I was already then in charge of the house. So after I had given them supper, and the old man had gone to bed, he would sit in here and write and I would pretend to be busy doing things so that I could be near him. One night he was very excited by the idea he had for a new poem... walking around and talking about it... it was another one about the Karoo, about Karoo names... you know, of places and people and things like that... so he started playing games with my name... Marta Barends... Haai! The way he said it!... like he was tasting and eating it... Marta Barends!
  MARTA: You lucky girl! All your wishes have come true. I'm so jealous, Rebecca... because mine hasn't. Every night since his return I have gone down on my knees and prayed: "Dear God, please let him live to the millennium, and please, dear God, put forgiveness in Rebecca's heart so that he can see his daughter before he dies... then you can take him." But no.
  REBECCA: I'm not. I came here. Every day since he came back I've been wanting to come here and stand in front of him... but not with forgiveness in my heart. I wanted to tell him what he had done to you, Mommy. I wanted to tell him how you have wasted your life waiting for him—sweeping and dusting and cleaning in here every day as if he was coming back tomorrow. I wanted to tell him that his beautiful stinkwood table wasn't shining from the Cobra wax polish, but from the tears you rubbed into it. I'm not talking poetry. Real tears. Yours. I saw them in your eyes. I saw them run down your cheeks and splash on the table when you was polishing and talking to him.
  Ja, do you know you do that? Talk to him as if he was here in the room with you? I've heard you—many times—when you thought you was alone in here. You tell me there are ghosts in here... well I believe you and you know why? Because I've seen one. You! That's what you've become... the ghost of a stinkwood servant looking after her dead masters and madams.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last three paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Hell, Martha! This land of ours. So beautiful! But also so cruel! Sometimes I think old Eugene Marais was right in his "Song of South Africa": She gives nothing, but demands everything. Tears, the names of the dead, the widow's lament, the pleading gestures and cries of children... all mean nothing to her. She claims as her holy right, the fruits of endless pain.
  No! Don't cry. It's only a poem, Marta... Marta Barends!... Warm brown bread and thorntree honey... Yes! You are all of that.
  AFRIKAANS—One of the official languages of South Africa, developed from the seventeenth century Dutch