Scenes from Provincial Life

by J. M. Coetzee

  SHE CATCHES JOHN THE next morning as he is setting off on one of his walks. ‘Let me come with you,’ she says. ‘Give me a minute to put on proper shoes.’

  They follow the path that runs eastward from the farmstead along the bank of the overgrown riverbed towards the dam whose wall burst in the floods of 1943 and has never been repaired. In the shallow waters of the dam a trio of white geese float peacefully. It is still cool, there is no haze, they can see as far as the Nieuweveld Mountains.

  ‘God,’ she says, ‘dis darem mooi. Dit raak jou siel aan, nè, dié ou wêreld.’ Isn’t it beautiful. It touches one’s soul, this landscape.

  They are in a minority, a tiny minority, the two of them, of souls that are stirred by these great, desolate expanses. If anything has held them together over the years, it is that. This landscape, this kontrei – it has taken over her heart. When she dies and is buried, she will dissolve into this earth so naturally it will be as if she never had a human life.

  ‘Carol says you are still writing poems,’ she says. ‘Is that true? Will you show me?’

  ‘I am sorry to disappoint Carol,’ he replies stiffly, ‘but I haven’t written a poem since I was a teenager.’

  She bites her tongue. She forgot: you do not ask a man to show you his poems, not in South Africa, not without reassuring him beforehand that it will be all right, he is not going to be mocked. What a country, where poetry is not a manly activity but a hobby for children and oujongnooiens [spinsters] – oujongnooiens of both sexes! How Totius or Louis Leipoldt got by she cannot guess. No wonder Carol chooses John’s poemwriting to attack, Carol with her nose for other people’s weaknesses.

  ‘If you gave up so long ago, why does Carol think you still write?’

  ‘I have no idea. Perhaps she saw me marking student essays and jumped to the wrong conclusion.’

  She does not believe him, but she is not going to press him further. If he wants to evade her, let him. If poetry is a part of his life he is too shy or too ashamed to talk about, then so be it.

  She does not think of John as a moffie, but it continues to puzzle her that he has no woman. A man alone, particularly one of the Coetzee men, seems to her like a boat without oar or rudder or sail. And now two of them, two Coetzee men, living as a couple! While Jack still had the redoubtable Vera behind him he steered a more or less straight course; but now that she is gone he seems quite lost. As for Jack and Vera’s son, he could certainly do with some level-headed guidance. But what woman with any sense would want to devote herself to the hapless John?

  Carol is convinced John is a bad bet; and the rest of the Coetzee family, despite their good hearts, would probably agree. What sets her, Margot, apart, what keeps her confidence in John precariously afloat, is, oddly enough, the way in which he and his father behave towards each other: if not with affection, that would be saying too much, then at least with respect.

  The pair used to be the worst of enemies. The bad blood between Jack and his elder son was the subject of much head-shaking. When the son disappeared overseas, the parents put on the best front they could. He had gone to pursue a career in science, his mother claimed. For years she put forward a story that John was working as a scientist in England, even as it became clear that she had no idea for whom he worked or what sort of work he did. You know how John is, his father would say: always very independent. Independent: what did that mean? Not without reason, the Coetzees took it to mean he had disowned his country, his family, his very parents.

  Then Jack and Vera started putting out a new story: John was not in England after all but in America, pursuing ever higher qualifications. Time passed; in the absence of hard news, interest in John and his doings waned. He and his younger brother became just two among thousands of young white men who had run away to escape military service, leaving an embarrassed family behind. He had almost vanished from their collective memory when the scandal of his expulsion from the United States burst upon them.

  That terrible war, said his father: it was all the fault of a war in which American boys were sacrificing their lives for the sake of Asians who seemed to feel no gratitude at all. No wonder ordinary Americans were revolting. No wonder they took to the streets. John had been caught up willy-nilly in a street protest, the story proceeded; what ensued had just been a bad misunderstanding.

  Was it his son’s disgrace, and the untruths he had to tell as a consequence, that had turned Jack into a shaky, prematurely aged man? How can she even ask?

  ‘You must be glad to see the Karoo again,’ she says to John. ‘Aren’t you relieved you decided not to stay in America?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replies. ‘Of course, in the midst of this’ – he does not gesture, but she knows what he means: this sky, this space, the vast silence enclosing them – ‘I feel blessed, one of a lucky few. But practically speaking, what future do I have in this country, where I have never fitted in? Perhaps a clean break would have been better after all. Cut yourself free of what you love and hope that the wound heals.’

  A frank answer. Thank heaven for that.

  ‘I had a chat with your father yesterday, John, while you and Michiel were away. Seriously, I don’t think he fully grasps what you are planning. I am talking about Merweville. Your father is not young any more, and he is not well. You can’t dump him in a strange town and expect him to fend for himself. And you can’t expect the rest of the family to step in and take care of him if things go wrong. That’s all. That’s what I wanted to say.’

  He does not respond. In his hand is a length of old fencing-wire that he has picked up. Swinging the wire petulantly left and right, flicking off the heads of the waving grass, he descends the slope of the eroded dam wall.

  ‘Don’t behave like this!’ she calls out, trotting after him. ‘Speak to me, for God’s sake! Tell me I am wrong! Tell me I am making a mistake!’

  He halts and turns upon her a look of cold hostility. ‘Let me fill you in on my father’s situation,’ he says. ‘My father has no savings, not a cent, and no insurance. He has only a state pension to look forward to: forty-three rand a month when I last checked. So despite his age, despite his poor health, he has to go on working. Together the two of us earn in a month what a car salesman earns in a week. My father can give up his job only if he moves to a place where living expenses are lower than in the city.’

  ‘But why does he have to move at all? And why to Merweville, to some rundown old ruin?’

  ‘My father and I can’t live together indefinitely, Margie. It makes us too miserable, both of us. It’s unnatural. Fathers and sons were never meant to share a home.’

  ‘Your father doesn’t strike me as a difficult person to live with.’

  ‘Perhaps; but I am a difficult person to live with. My difficulty consists in not wanting to share space with other people.’

  ‘So is that what this Merweville business is all about – about you wanting to live by yourself?’

  ‘Yes. Yes and no. I want to be able to be alone when I choose.’

  THEY ARE CONGREGATED ON the stoep, all the Coetzees, having their morning tea, chatting, idly watching Michiel’s three young sons play cricket on the open werf.

  On the far horizon a cloud of dust materializes and hangs in the air.

  ‘That must be Lukas,’ says Michiel, who has the keenest eyes. ‘Margie, it’s Lukas!’

  Lukas, as it turns out, has been on the road since dawn. He is tired but in good spirits nonetheless, full of vim. Barely has he greeted his wife and her family before he lets himself be roped into the boys’ game. He may not be competent at cricket, but he loves being with children, and children adore him. He would be the best of fathers: it breaks her heart that he must be childless.

  John joins in the game too. He is better at cricket than Lukas, more practised, one can see that at a glance, but children don’t warm to him. Nor do dogs, she has noticed. Unlike Lukas, not a father by nature. An alleenloper, as some male animals are: a loner. Perhaps it is as well
he has not married.

  Unlike Lukas; yet there are things she shares with John that she can never share with Lukas. Why? Because of the childhood times they spent together, the most precious of times, when they opened their hearts to each other as one can never do later, even to a husband, even to a husband whom one loves more than all the treasure in the world.

  Best to cut yourself free of what you love, he had said during their walk – cut yourself free and hope the wound heals. She understands him exactly. That is what they share above all: not just a love of this farm, this kontrei, this Karoo, but an understanding that goes with the love, an understanding that love can be too much. To him and to her it was granted to spend their childhood summers in a sacred space. That glory can never be regained; best not to haunt old sites and come away from them mourning what is for ever gone.

  Being wary of loving too much is not something that makes sense to Lukas. For Lukas, love is simple, wholehearted. Lukas gives himself over to her with all his heart, and in return she gives him all of herself. With this body I thee worship. Through his love her husband brings out what is best in her: even now, sitting here drinking tea, watching him at play, she can feel her body warming to him. From Lukas she has learned what love can be. Whereas her cousin…She cannot imagine her cousin giving himself wholeheartedly to anyone. Always a quantum held back, held in reserve. One does not need to be a dog to see that.

  It would be nice if Lukas could take a break, if she and he could spend a night or two here on Voëlfontein. But no, tomorrow is Monday, they must be back at Middelpos by nightfall. So after lunch they say their goodbyes to the aunts and uncles. When John’s turn comes she hugs him tight, feeling his body against her tense, resistant. ‘Totsiens’, she says: Goodbye. ‘I’m going to write you a letter and I want you to write back.’ ‘Goodbye,’ he says. ‘Drive safely.’

  She begins the promised letter that same night, sitting in her dressing gown and slippers at the table in her own kitchen, the kitchen she married into and has come to love, with its huge old fireplace and its ever-cool, windowless larder whose shelves still groan with jars of jam and preserves she laid in last autumn.

  Dear John, she writes, I was so cross with you when we broke down on the Merweville road – I hope it didn’t show too much, I hope you will forgive me. All that bad temper has now blown away, there is no trace left. They say you don’t know a person properly until you have spent a night with him (or her). I am glad I had a chance to spend a night with you. In sleep our masks slip off and we are seen as we truly are.

  The Bible looks forward to the day when the lion shall lie down with the lamb, when we will no longer need to be on our guard since we will have no more cause for fear. (Rest assured, you are not the lion, nor am I the lamb.)

  I want to raise one last time the subject of Merweville.

  We all grow old one day, and in the way we treat our parents we will surely be treated too. What goes around comes around, as they say. I am sure it is hard for you to live with your father when you have been used to living alone, but Merweville is not the right solution.

  You are not alone in your difficulties, John. Carol and I face the same problem with our mother. When Klaus and Carol go off to America, the burden will fall squarely on Lukas and me.

  I know you are not a believer, so I won’t suggest that you pray for guidance. I am not much of a believer either, but prayer is a good thing. Even if there is no one above to listen, one at least brings out the words, which is better than bottling things up.

  I wish we had had more time to talk. Do you remember how we used to talk when we were children? It is so precious to me, the memory of those times. How sad that when our turn comes to die our story, the story of you and me, will die too.

  I cannot tell you what tenderness I feel for you at this moment. You were always my favourite cousin, but it is more than that. I long to protect you from the world, even though you probably don’t need protecting (I am guessing). It is hard to know what to do with feelings like these. It has become such an old-fashioned relationship, hasn’t it, cousinship. Soon all the rules we had to memorize about who is allowed to marry whom, first cousins and second cousins and third cousins, will just be anthropology.

  Still, I am glad we did not act on our childhood vows (do you remember?) and marry each other. You are probably glad too. We would have made a hopeless couple.

  John, you need someone in your life, someone to look after you. Even if you choose someone who is not necessarily the love of your life, married life will be better than what you have now, with just your father and yourself. It is not good to sleep alone night after night. Excuse me for saying this, but I speak from bitter experience.

  I should tear up this letter, it’s so embarrassing, but I won’t. I say to myself, we have known each other a long time, you will surely forgive me if I tread where I should not tread.

  Lukas and I are happy together in every possible way. I go down on my knees every night (so to speak) to give thanks that his path crossed mine. How I wish you could have the same!

  As if summoned, Lukas comes into the kitchen, bends down over her, presses his lips to her head, slips his hands under the dressing gown, cups her breasts. ‘My skat,’ he says: my treasure.

  You can’t write that. You can’t. You are just making things up.

  I’ll cut it out. Presses his lips to her head. ‘My skat,’ he says, ‘when are you coming to bed?’ ‘Now,’ she says, and lays down the pen. ‘Now.’

  Skat: an endearment she disliked until the day she heard it from his lips. Now, when he whispers the word, she melts. This man’s treasure, into which he may dip whenever it pleases him.

  They lie in each other’s arms. The bed creaks, but she could not care less, they are at home, they can make the bed creak as much as they like.

  Again!

  I promise, when I have finished I will hand over the text to you, the entire text, and let you cut out whatever you wish.

  ‘Was that a letter to John you were writing?’ says Lukas.

  ‘Yes. He is so unhappy.’

  ‘Maybe that’s just his nature. A melancholy type.’

  ‘But he used not to be. He used to be such a happy soul in the old days. If he could only find someone to take him out of himself!’

  But Lukas is asleep. That is his nature, his type: he falls asleep at once, like an innocent child.

  She would like to be able to join him, but sleep is slow in coming. It is as if the ghost of her cousin still lurks, calling her back to the dark kitchen to complete what she was writing to him. Have faith in me, she whispers. I promise I will return.

  But when she wakes it is Monday, there is no time for writing, no time for intimacies, they have to set off at once on the drive to Calvinia, she to the hotel, Lukas to the transport depot. In the windowless little office behind the reception desk she labours over the backlog of invoices; by evening she is too exhausted to pursue the letter she was writing, and anyhow she has lost touch with the feeling. Am thinking of you, she writes at the foot of the page. Even that is not true, she has not given John a thought all day, she has had no time. Much love, she writes. Margie. She addresses the envelope and seals it. So. It is done.

  Much love, but exactly how much? Enough to save John, in a pinch? Enough to raise him out of himself, out of the melancholy of his type? She doubts it. And what if he does not want to be raised? If his grand plan is to spend weekends on the stoep of the house in Merweville writing poems with the sun beating down on the tin roof and his father coughing in a back room, he may need all the melancholy he can summon up.

  That is her first moment of misgiving. The second moment comes as she is mailing the letter, as the envelope is trembling on the very lip of the slot. Is what she has written, what her cousin will be fated to read if she lets the letter go, truly the best she can offer him? You need someone in your life. What kind of help is it to be told that? Much love.

  But then she thinks, He is a grown man, w
hy should it be up to me to save him? and she gives the envelope a final nudge.

  She has to wait ten days, until the Friday of the next week, for a reply.

  Dear Margot,

  Thank you for your letter, which was waiting for us when we got back from Voëlfontein, and thank you for the good if impracticable advice re marriage.

  The drive back from Voëlfontein was incident-free. Michiel’s mechanic friend did a first-class job. I apologize again for the night I made you spend in the open.

  You write about Merweville. I agree, our plans were not properly thought through, and now that we are back in Cape Town begin to seem a bit crazy. It is one thing to buy a weekend shack on the coast, but who in his right mind would want to spend summer vacations in a hot Karoo town?

  I trust that all is well on the farm. My father sends his love to you and Lukas, as do I.

  John

  Is that all? The cold formality of his response shocks her, brings an angry flush to her cheeks.

  ‘What is it?’ asks Lukas.

  She shrugs, ‘It’s nothing,’ she says, and passes the letter over. ‘A letter from John.’

  He reads it through swiftly. ‘So they are dropping their plans for Merweville,’ he says. ‘That’s a relief. Why are you so upset?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she says. ‘Just the tone.’

  They are parked, the two of them, in front of the post office. This is what they do on Friday afternoons, it is part of the routine they have created for themselves: last thing, after they have done the shopping and before driving back to the farm, they fetch the week’s mail and scan it sitting side by side in the pickup. Though she could fetch the mail herself any day of the week, she does not. She and Lukas do it together, as they do together whatever else they can.

  For the moment Lukas is absorbed in a letter from the Land Bank, with a long attachment, pages of figures, more important by far than mere family matters. ‘Don’t hurry, I’ll go for a stroll,’ she says, and gets out and crosses the street.

  The post office is newly built, squat and heavy, with glass bricks instead of windows and a heavy steel grille over the door. She dislikes it. It looks, to her eye, like a police station. She thinks back with fondness to the old post office that was demolished to make way for it, the building that had once upon a time been the Truter house.