Scenes from Provincial Life

by J. M. Coetzee

  In her letters his mother tells him family news, tells him of her latest work assignments (she moves from school to school substituting for teachers away on sick leave). She ends her letters hoping that his health is good, that he is taking care to wear warm clothes, that he has not succumbed to the influenza she has heard to be sweeping across Europe. As for South African affairs, she does not write about those because he has made it plain he is not interested.

  He mentions that he has mislaid his gloves on a train. A mistake. Promptly a package arrives by air mail: a pair of sheepskin mittens. The stamps cost more than the mittens.

  She writes her letters on Sunday evenings and posts them in time for the Monday morning collection. He can imagine the scene all too easily, in the flat into which she and his father and his brother moved when they had to sell the house in Rondebosch. Supper is over. She clears the table, dons her glasses, draws the lamp nearer. ‘What are you doing now?’ asks his father, who dreads Sunday evenings, when the Argus has been read from end to end and there is nothing left to do. ‘I must write to John,’ she replies, pursing her lips, shutting him out. Dearest John, she begins.

  What does she hope to achieve by her letters, this obstinate, graceless woman? Can she not recognize that proofs of her fidelity, no matter how dogged, will never make him relent and come back? Can she not accept that he is not normal? She should concentrate her love on his brother and forget him. His brother is a simpler and more innocent being. His brother has a soft heart. Let his brother take on the burden of loving her; let his brother be told that from now on he is her firstborn, her best beloved. Then he, the new-forgotten one, will be free to make his own life.

  She writes every week but he does not write every week in return. That would be too much like reciprocation. Only now and then does he reply, and his letters are brief, saying little except that, by the fact of their having been written, he must still be in the land of the living.

  That is the worst of it. That is the trap she has built, a trap he has not yet found a way out of. If he were to cut all ties, if he were not to write at all, she would draw the worst conclusion, the worst possible; and the very thought of the grief that would pierce her at that moment makes him want to block his ears and eyes. As long as she is alive he dare not die. As long as she is alive, therefore, his life is not his own. He may not be reckless with it. Though he does not particularly love himself, he must, for her sake, take care of himself, to the point even of dressing warmly, eating the right food, taking vitamin C. As for suicide, of that there can be no question.

  What news he gets about South Africa comes from the BBC and the Manchester Guardian. He reads the Guardian reports with dread. A farmer ties one of his workers to a tree and flogs him to death. Police fire at random into a crowd. A prisoner is found dead in his cell, hanging from a strip of blanket, his face bruised and bloody. Horror upon horror, atrocity upon atrocity, without relief.

  He knows his mother’s opinions. She thinks South Africa is misunderstood by the world. Blacks in South Africa are better off than anywhere else in Africa. The strikes and protests are fomented by communist agitators. As for the farm labourers who are paid their wages in the form of mealie-meal and have to dress their children in jute bags against the winter cold, his mother concedes that that is a disgrace. But such things happen only in the Transvaal. It is the Afrikaners of the Transvaal, with their sullen hatreds and their hard hearts, who give the country such a bad name.

  His own opinion, which he does not hesitate to communicate to her, is that, instead of making speech after speech at the United Nations, the Russians ought to invade South Africa without delay. They should land paratroops in Pretoria, take Verwoerd and his cronies captive, line them up against a wall, and shoot them.

  What the Russians should do next, after shooting Verwoerd, he does not say, not having thought it out. Justice must be done, that is all that matters; the rest is politics, and he is not interested in politics. As far back as he can remember, Afrikaners have trampled on people because, they claim, they were once trampled upon. Well, let the wheel turn, let force be replied to with greater force. He is glad to be out of it.

  South Africa is like an albatross around his neck. He wants it removed, he does not care how, so that he can begin to breathe.

  He does not have to buy the Manchester Guardian. There are other, easier newspapers: The Times, for instance, or the Daily Telegraph. But the Manchester Guardian can be relied on not to miss anything from South Africa that will make the soul cringe within him. Reading the Manchester Guardian, he can at least be sure he knows the worst.

  He has not contacted Astrid for weeks. Now she telephones. Her time in England is up, she is going home to Austria. ‘I guess I won’t see you again,’ she says, ‘so I called to say goodbye.’

  She is trying to be matter-of-fact, but he can hear the tearfulness in her voice. Guiltily he proposes a meeting. They have coffee together; she comes back to his room and spends the night (‘our last night,’ she calls it), clinging to him, crying softly. Early the next morning (it is a Sunday) he hears her creep out of bed and tiptoe to the bathroom on the landing to get dressed. When she comes back he pretends to be asleep. He has only to give the slightest signal, he knows, and she will stay. If there are things he would prefer to do first, before paying attention to her, like reading the newspaper, she will sit quietly in a corner and wait. That seems to be how girls are taught to behave in Klagenfurt: to demand nothing, to wait until the man is ready, and then to serve him.

  He would like to be nicer to Astrid, so young, so alone in the big city. He would like to dry her tears, make her smile; he would like to prove to her that his heart is not as hard as it seems, that he is capable of responding to her willingness with a willingness of his own, a willingness to cuddle her as she wants to be cuddled and give ear to her stories about her mother and brothers back home. But he must be careful. Too much warmth and she might cancel her ticket, stay in London, move in with him. Two of the defeated sheltering in each other’s arms, consoling each other: the prospect is too humiliating. They might as well get married, he and Astrid, then spend the rest of their lives looking after each other like invalids. So he gives no signal, but lies with his eyelids clenched till he hears the creak of the stairs and the click of the front door.

  It is December, and the weather has turned bitter. Snow falls, the snow turns to slush, the slush freezes: on the sidewalks one has to pick one’s way from foothold to foothold like a mountaineer. A blanket of fog enfolds the city, fog thick with coal dust and sulphur. The electricity fails; trains stop running; old people freeze to death in their homes. The worst winter of the century, say the newspapers.

  He tramps up Archway Road, slipping and sliding on the ice, holding a scarf over his face, trying not to breathe. His clothes smell of sulphur, there is a foul taste in his mouth, when he coughs he coughs up black phlegm. In South Africa it is summer. If he were there he could be on Strandfontein beach, running over mile after mile of white sand under a great blue sky.

  During the night a pipe bursts in his room. The floor is flooded. He wakes up surrounded by a sheet of ice.

  It is like the blitz all over again, say the newspapers. They print stories of soup kitchens for the homeless run by women’s auxiliaries, of repair crews toiling through the night. The crisis is bringing out the best in Londoners, they say, who confront adversity with quiet strength and a ready quip.

  As for him, he may dress like a Londoner, tramp to work like a Londoner, suffer the cold like a Londoner, but he has no ready quips. Not in a month of Sundays would Londoners take him for the real thing. On the contrary, Londoners recognize him at once as another of those foreigners who for daft reasons of their own choose to live where they don’t belong.

  How long will he have to live in England before it is allowed that he has become the real thing, become English? Will getting a British passport be enough, or does an odd-sounding foreign name mean he will be shut out for ever?
And ‘becoming English’ – what does that mean anyhow? England is the home of two nations: he will have to choose between them, choose whether to be middle-class English or working-class English. Already he seems to have chosen. He wears the uniform of the middle class, reads a middle-class newspaper, imitates middle-class speech. But mere externals such as those are not going to be enough to get him admission, not by a long chalk. Admission to the middle class – full admission, not a temporary ticket valid for certain times of the day on certain days of the year – was decided, as far as he can tell, years ago, even generations ago, according to rules that will forever be dark to him.

  As for the working class, he does not share its recreations, can barely understand its speech, has never felt the slightest motion of welcome from it. The girls at IBM have their own working-class boyfriends, are wrapped up in thoughts of marriage and babies and council houses, respond frostily to overtures. He may be living in England, but it is certainly not by invitation of the English working class.

  There are other South Africans in London, thousands of them, if he is to believe report. There are Canadians too, Australians, New Zealanders, even Americans. But these people are not immigrants, are not here to settle, to become English. They have come to have fun or to study or to earn some money before going on a tour of Europe. When they have had enough of the Old World they will go home and take up their real lives.

  There are Europeans in London as well, not only language students but refugees from the Eastern Bloc and, further back, from Nazi Germany. But their situation is different from his. He is not a refugee; or rather, a claim on his part to be a refugee will get him nowhere with the Home Office. Who is oppressing you, the Home Office will say? From what are you fleeing? From boredom, he will reply. From philistinism. From atrophy of the moral life. From shame. Where will such a plea get him?

  Then there is Paddington. He walks along Maida Vale or Kilburn High Road at six o’clock in the evening and sees, under the ghostly sodium lights, throngs of West Indians trudging back to their lodgings, muffled against the cold. Their shoulders are bowed, their hands are thrust deep in their pockets, their skins have a greyish, powdery hue. What draws them from Jamaica and Trinidad to this heartless city where the cold seeps up from the very stones of the streets, where the hours of daylight are spent in drudgery and the evenings huddled over a gas fire in a hired room with peeling walls and sagging furniture? Surely they are not all here to find fame as poets.

  The people he works with are too polite to express their opinion of foreigner visitors. Nevertheless, from certain of their silences he knows he is not wanted in their country, not positively wanted. On the subject of West Indians they are silent too. But he can read the signs. NIGGER GO HOME say slogans painted on walls. NO COLOURED say notices in the windows of lodging houses. Month by month the government tightens its immigration laws. West Indians are halted at the dockside in Liverpool, detained until they grow desperate, then shipped back to where they came from. If he is not made to feel as nakedly unwelcome as they are, it can only be because of his protective coloration: his Moss Brothers suit, his pale skin.

  Thirteen

  ‘After careful consideration I have reached the conclusion…’ ‘After much soul-searching I have come to the conclusion…’

  He has been in the service of IBM for over a year: winter, spring, summer, autumn, another winter, and now the beginning of another spring. Even inside the Newman Street bureau, a box-like building with sealed windows, he can feel the suave change in the air. He cannot go on like this. He cannot sacrifice any more of his life to the principle that human beings should have to labour in misery for their bread, a principle he seems to adhere to though he has no idea where he picked it up. He cannot forever be demonstrating to his mother in Cape Town that he has made a solid life for himself and therefore that she can stop worrying about him. Usually he does not know his own mind, does not care to know his own mind. To know one’s own mind too well spells, in his view, the death of the creative spark. But in this case he cannot afford to drift on in his usual haze of indecision. He must leave IBM. He must get out, no matter how much it will cost in humiliation.

  Over the past year his handwriting has, beyond his control, been growing smaller, smaller and more secretive. Now, sitting at his desk, writing what will be the announcement of his resignation, he tries consciously to make the letters larger, the loops fatter and more confident-seeming.

  ‘After lengthy reflection,’ he writes at last, ‘I have reached the conclusion that my future does not lie with IBM. In terms of my contract I therefore wish to tender one month’s notice.’

  He signs the letter, seals it, addresses it to Dr B. L. McIver, Manager, Programming Division, and drops it discreetly in the tray marked INTERNAL. No one in the office gives him a glance. He takes his seat again.

  Until three o’clock, when the mail is next collected, there is time for second thoughts, time to slip the letter out of the tray and tear it up. Once the letter is delivered, however, the die will be cast. By tomorrow the news will have spread through the building: one of McIver’s people, one of the programmers on the second floor, the South African, has resigned. No one will want to be seen speaking to him. He will be sent to Coventry. That is how it is at IBM. No false sentiment. He will be marked as a quitter, a loser, unclean.

  At three o’clock the woman comes around for the mail. He bends over his papers, his heart thumping.

  Half an hour later he is summoned to McIver’s office. McIver is in a cold fury. ‘What is this?’ he says, indicating the letter that lies open on his desk.

  ‘I have decided to resign.’

  ‘Why?’

  He had guessed McIver would take it badly. McIver is the one who interviewed him for the job, who accepted and approved him, who swallowed the story that he was just an ordinary bloke from the colonies planning a career in computers. McIver has his own bosses, to whom he will have to explain his mistake.

  McIver is a tall man. He dresses sleekly, speaks with an Oxford accent. He has no interest in programming as a science or skill or craft or whatever it is. He is simply a manager. That is what he is good at: allotting tasks to people, managing their time, driving them, getting his money’s worth out of them.

  ‘Why?’ says McIver again, impatiently.

  ‘I don’t find working for IBM very satisfying at a human level. I don’t find it fulfilling.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I was hoping for something more.’

  ‘And what may that be?’

  ‘I was hoping for friendships.’

  ‘You find the atmosphere unfriendly?’

  ‘No, not unfriendly, not at all. People have been very kind. But being friendly is not the same thing as friendship.’

  He had hoped the letter would be allowed to be his last word. But that hope was naïve. He should have realized they would receive it as nothing but the first shot in a war.

  ‘What else? If there is something else on your mind, this is your chance to bring it out.’

  ‘Nothing else.’

  ‘Nothing else. I see. You are missing friendships. You haven’t found friends.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I’m not blaming anyone. The fault is probably my own.’

  ‘And for that you want to resign.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Now that the words are out they sound stupid, and they are stupid. He is being manoeuvred into saying stupid things. But he should have expected that. That is how they will make him pay for rejecting them and the job they have given him, a job with IBM, the market leader. Like a beginner in chess, pushed into corners and mated in ten moves, in eight moves, in seven moves. A lesson in domination. Well, let them do it. Let them play their moves, and let him play his stupid, easily foreseen, easily countered return moves, until they are bored with the game and let him go.

  With a brusque gesture McIver terminates the interview. That, for the moment, is that. He is free to return to his desk. Fo
r once there is not even the obligation to work late. He can leave the building at five, win the evening for himself.

  The next morning, through McIver’s secretary – McIver himself sweeps past him, not returning his greeting – he is instructed to report without delay to IBM Head Office in the City, to the Personnel Department.

  The man in Personnel who hears his case has clearly had recounted to him his complaint about the friendships IBM has failed to supply. A folder lies open on the desk before him; as the interrogation proceeds, he ticks off points. How long has he been unhappy in his work? Did he at any stage discuss his unhappiness with his superior? If not, why not? Have his colleagues at Newman Street been positively unfriendly? No? Then would he expand on his complaint?

  The more often the words friend, friendship, friendly are spoken, the odder they sound. If you are looking for friends, he can imagine the man saying, join a club, play skittles, fly model planes, collect stamps. Why expect your employer, IBM, International Business Machines, manufacturer of electronic calculators and computers, to provide them for you?

  And of course the man is right. What right has he to complain, in this country above all, where everyone is so cool to everyone else? Is that not what he admires the English for: their emotional restraint? Is that not why he is writing, in his spare time, a thesis on the works of Ford Madox Ford, half-German celebrator of English laconism?

  Confused and stumbling, he expands on his complaint. His expansion is as obscure to the Personnel man as is the complaint itself. Misapprehension: that is the word the man is hunting for. Employee was under a misapprehension: that would be an appropriate formulation. But he does not feel like being helpful. Let them find their own way of pigeonholing him.

  What the man is particularly keen to find out is what he will do next. Is his talk about lack of friendship merely a cover for a move from IBM to one of IBM’s competitors in the field of business machines? Have promises been made to him, have inducements been offered?