The Death of Jesus

by J. M. Coetzee

  Inés begrudged the loss of freedom that was the price of motherhood, yet she was unquestioningly devoted to her son. If this was a contradiction, she seemed to have no difficulty in living with it.

  In an ideal world he and Inés, as parents of David, would have loved each other as much as they loved their son. In the less than ideal world in which they found themselves, the anger that simmered beneath the surface in Inés found an outlet in bouts of coldness or irritability directed at him, to which he responded by absenting himself. With the child gone, how much longer can they hope to stay together?

  As the days go by, Inés reminisces more and more openly about the old days at La Residencia. She misses the tennis, she says, she misses the swimming, she misses her brothers, particularly the younger, Diego, whose girlfriend is expecting a second child.

  ‘If that is how you feel, maybe you should go back,’ he tells her. ‘What is there to keep you in Estrella, after all, besides the shop? You are still young. You have your life before you.’

  Inés smiles mysteriously, seems on the point of saying something, then does not.

  ‘Have you thought what we should do with David’s clothes?’ he says during one of their silent evenings together.

  ‘Are you proposing that I give them to that orphanage? Absolutely not. I would rather burn them.’

  ‘That is not what I am suggesting. If we gave them to the orphanage they would in all likelihood put them in a showcase as relics. No, I was thinking of giving the clothes to a charity.’

  ‘Do as you wish, just do not talk to me about it.’

  She does not want to discuss the future of the boy’s clothes, but he cannot help noticing that Bolívar’s feeding dish has disappeared from the kitchen, together with his cushion.

  While Inés is out he packs David’s clothes into two suitcases, from the frilled shirt and the shoes with straps that Inés bought when she adopted him to the white shirt with the number 9 on the back that he wore on the hopeful day when he went to play football at Las Manos.

  He buries his nose in the number 9 shirt. Does he imagine it, or does the fabric still carry the faint cinnamon odour of the boy’s skin?

  He knocks on the door of the caretaker’s apartment. It is opened by the caretaker’s wife. ‘Good day,’ he says. ‘We haven’t met. I am Simón, I am in A-13, across the yard. My son used to play football with your son. My son David. Please do not take it amiss, but I know you have small children, and my wife and I wonder whether you would not like David’s clothes. Otherwise they will just go to waste.’ He opens the first of the suitcases. ‘As you can see, they are in good condition. David was careful with his clothes.’

  The woman seems flustered. ‘I am so sorry,’ she says. ‘I mean, I am so sorry for your loss.’

  He closes the suitcase. ‘My apologies,’ he says. ‘I should not have asked. It was stupid of me.’

  ‘There is a charity shop on Calle Rosa, next door to the post office. I am sure they will be glad to take them.’

  There are nights when Inés does not come home until past midnight. He waits up, listening for her car, for the sound of her footsteps as she climbs the stairs.

  On one of these late evenings the footsteps pause at his door. She knocks. She is distraught, he sees at once, has perhaps had too much to drink.

  ‘I can’t take it anymore, Simón,’ she says, and begins to cry.

  He folds her in his arms. Her handbag falls to the floor. She wriggles free and recovers it. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she says. ‘I can’t go on like this.’

  ‘Sit down, Inés,’ he says. ‘I will make some tea.’

  She throws herself on the sofa. A moment later she is up again. ‘Don’t make tea, I am leaving,’ she says.

  He catches her at the door, leads her back to the sofa, sits down beside her. ‘Inés, Inés,’ he says, ‘you have suffered a terrible loss, we have both suffered a terrible loss, you are not yourself, how could it be otherwise? We are mutilated beings. I have no words that can take away your pain, but if you need to cry, cry on my shoulder.’ Then he holds her while she sobs and sobs.

  This is the first of three nights they spend together, sleeping in his bed. There is no question of sex; but on the third night, given courage by the dark, Inés begins, at first hesitantly, then more and more freely, to tell her story, a story that goes back to the day when the idyll of La Residencia came to its abrupt end with the arrival, uninvited, unwelcome, of a strange man with a boy-child clutching his hand.

  ‘He looked so lonely, so helpless in those clothes you made him wear that did not fit—my heart went out to him. Never until that day had I thought of myself as a mother. What other women spoke about—the craving, the yearning, whatever they called it—was simply not in me. But there was such entreaty in those big eyes of his—I could not resist. If I had been able to see into the future, if I had known how much pain I was letting myself in for, I would have refused. But at that moment there was nothing I could say but: You have chosen me, little one. I am yours, take me.’

  That is not how he, Simón, remembers the day. As he remembers, it had required a great deal of pleading and persuasion to bring Inés around. David did not exactly choose you, Inés, he would like to say (but does not because experience has taught him it is unwise to contradict her)—no, he recognized you. He recognized you as his mother, he recognized his mother in you. And in return (he would like to go on, but does not) he wanted you—he wanted both of us—to recognize him. That was what he demanded again and again: to be recognized. Though (he would like to add in conclusion) how an ordinary person can be expected to recognize someone he has never seen before is beyond me.

  ‘It was (Inés presses on with her monologue) as if, all at once, my future grew clear to me. Until then, living in La Residencia, I had always felt a bit extraneous, a bit isolated, as if I were floating. Suddenly I was brought down to earth. There was work to do. I had someone to take care of. I had a purpose. And now…’ She breaks off; in the dark he can hear her fighting back tears. ‘And now, what is left?’

  ‘We have been lucky, Inés,’ he says, trying to console her. ‘We could have lived our ordinary lives, you in your sphere, I in mine, and no doubt we would each have found contentment of a kind. But what would it have added up to, in the end, that ordinary contentment? Instead we had the privilege of being visited by a comet. I remember something Juan Sebastián said to me just recently: David arrived, the world changed, David departed, and the world has gone back to being as it was before. That is what you and I cannot bear: the thought that he has been erased, that nothing is left behind, that he may as well not have existed. Yet it is not true. It is not true! The world may be as it was before, but it is also different. We must hold tight to that difference, you and I, even if for the present we cannot see it.’

  ‘It was like finding myself in a fairy story, those first months,’ Inés continues. Her voice is low, dreamy; he doubts she has heard a word of what he has just said. ‘Una luna de miel, that was how it was for me, if one is allowed to have a honeymoon with a child. Never had I felt so complete, so satisfied. He was my caballerito, my little man. For hours on end I used to stand over him while he slept, drinking in the sight of him, aching with love. You don’t understand it, do you—a mother’s love? How could you?’

  ‘No indeed—how could I? But it was clear to me from the first how much you loved him. You are not a demonstrative person, but anyone could see it, even a stranger.’

  ‘Those were the best days of my life. Later, when he started going to school, things became more difficult. He began to pull away from me, to resist. But I don’t want to go into that.’

  She does not need to. He remembers those days all too well, remembers the taunt: You can’t tell me what to do, you are not my real mother!

  Across the yawning space between his side of the bed and hers, through the curtain of darkness, he speaks: ‘He loved you, Inés, whatever he may have said in his impulsive way. He was your
child, yours and no one else’s.’

  ‘He was not my child, Simón. You know that as well as I do. Even less was he yours. He was a wild creature, a creature out of the forest. He did not belong to anyone. Certainly not to us.’

  A wild creature: her words give him a jolt. He would not have thought her capable of such insight. Inés, full of surprises.

  That marks the close of Inés’s long confession. Without touching, maintaining a wary distance, they consign themselves to sleep, first she, then he. When he wakes she is gone, and does not return.

  Days later he finds a slip of paper under his door. The handwriting is hers. ‘A message to call Alyosha at the Academy. Please do not involve me in any arrangements.’

  CHAPTER 22

  ‘I HAVE a proposal to put before you,’ says Alyosha. ‘It comes from the boys, from David’s friends, with the blessing of Juan Sebastián. It is that we stage a fresh event, un espectáculo in memory of David. Something fitting but not too sombre, not too sad. Restricted to children from the Academy and their parents. So that we can celebrate him properly, without interference from outsiders. Will you give your permission?’

  The plan was dreamed up, it emerges, by Juan Sebastián’s sons Joaquín and Damián.

  At first they had simply proposed to perform dances in which David would be evoked; now they want the dances to be supplemented with comic sketches, episodes from David’s life. ‘They would like it to be a children’s affair, something lighthearted,’ says Alyosha. ‘They want us to remember David as he was in real life, not to make us cry. We have cried enough, they say.’

  ‘David as he was in real life,’ he says. ‘How much do the children at the Academy know about David’s real life?’

  ‘Enough,’ says Alyosha. ‘It is an end-of-term entertainment, not a history project.’

  ‘If Juan Sebastián is serious about his espectáculo, I have an alternative proposal to make. He and I could buy a donkey and tour the land giving performances. He could play the violin, I could dance. We could call ourselves the Gypsy Brothers and call our show “The Deeds of David”.’

  Alyosha is dubious. ‘I don’t think Juan Sebastián would like the idea. I don’t think he has time to go touring.’

  ‘Just a joke, Alyosha. Don’t bother to repeat it to Juan Sebastián. He won’t find it funny. So he wants to hold a second event. Let me put the idea to Inés and see what she says.’

  Once upon a time he had had high hopes for Alyosha. But the handsome young teacher has been a bit of a disappointment: too earthbound in his thinking, too literally minded. He claims to be an admirer of David, but how much of the real, the mercurial David could have been visible to him?

  At first Inés refuses permission. From the beginning she has had reservations about the Academy—about the education it offers (frivolous, insubstantial), about Arroyo himself (remote, arrogant), about the scandal—not for a moment forgotten—of señora Arroyo’s liaison with the school janitor. He does his best to change her mind. ‘The show comes as an offering from the children themselves,’ he urges. ‘You cannot punish them for the shortcomings of the Academy. They loved David. They want to do something in memory of him.’ Grudgingly Inés comes around.

  The event, held in the afternoon and at short notice, brings in a surprisingly large number of parents. Arroyo does not address the gathering himself, or appear onstage. Instead the show is introduced by Joaquín, his elder son, who has turned into a serious, even scholarly fourteen-year-old. Joaquín speaks to the audience with no sign of nervousness. ‘We all know David, so I don’t need to explain him,’ he says. ‘The first half of our program is called The Acts and Sayings of David. The second half will be dance and music. That is all. We hope you will enjoy it.’

  Two boys march out onto the stage. One has a chaplet on his head with a big letter D inked on it. The other wears an academic gown and mortarboard; a cushion is tied around his waist under the gown to give him a bulging belly.

  ‘Boy, what is two and two?’ demands the teacher figure in a booming voice.

  ‘Two what and two what?’ replies the David figure.

  ‘What a stupid boy he is!’ says the teacher in a loud, exasperated aside. ‘Two apples and two apples, boy. Or two oranges and two oranges. Two units and two units. Two and two.’

  ‘What is a unit?’ asks David.

  ‘A unit is anything, it can be an apple, it can be an orange, it can be anything in the universe. Do not test my patience, boy! Two and two!’

  ‘Can it be snot?’ says David.

  There is an eruption of laughter from the audience. The boy playing the teacher starts giggling too. The cushion slips out and falls with a plop on the stage. More laughter. The two boys take a bow and exit.

  Two new actors take the stage. The boy who had played David comes running back and hands over the chaplet, which one of the newcomers dons.

  ‘What is that behind your back?’ says the David figure.

  The other reveals what he has been hiding: a bowl full of toffees.

  ‘I will wager with you,’ says David. ‘I will toss a coin and if it comes up heads you must give me a toffee and if it comes up tails I will give you everything.’

  ‘Everything?’ says the second boy. ‘What do you mean by everything?’

  ‘Everything in the universe,’ says David. ‘Are you ready?’

  He tosses his coin. ‘Heads,’ he announces. The second boy hands over a toffee. ‘Again?’ says the David boy. The second boy nods. He tosses his coin. ‘Heads,’ he announces. He holds out a hand for a toffee.

  ‘That is not fair,’ says the second boy. ‘It is a trick coin.’

  ‘It is not a trick coin,’ says David. ‘Give me another coin.’

  With elaborate show the second boy fishes a coin from his pocket. David tosses the new coin. ‘Heads,’ he announces, and holds out his hand.

  The routine accelerates: the toss, the announcement (‘Heads’), the held-out hand, the handover of the toffee. Soon the bowl is empty. ‘What are you going to wager now?’ says David. ‘I’ll wager my shirt,’ says the second boy. He loses his shirt, then a shoe, then the other shoe. At last he stands clad only in his underpants. David tosses the coin, but this time says no word, neither ‘Heads’ nor ‘Tails’, but gives a meaningful smile. The second boy breaks down in tears: ‘Boo-hoo-hoo!’ The two take a bow, to a storm of applause.

  An iron bedstead is dragged onto the stage, with a sheet draped over it. The younger Arroyo boy, wearing mustachios and a pointed beard and a nightshirt down to his ankles, lies on the bed, crosses his arms on his chest, closes his eyes.

  Alyosha enters, dressed in a dark overcoat. ‘So, Don Quixote,’ says Alyosha, ‘here you lie on your deathbed. The time has come for you to make your peace with the world. No more dragons to kill, no more damsels to rescue. Will you acknowledge that it was all una tontería, a load of rubbish, the life you led as a knight errant?’

  Don Quixote does not stir.

  ‘The giant whom you charged so valiantly, you and Rocinante—in truth it was no giant but a mere windmill. None of it was real, this life of adventure that you led. It was all a show put on to entertain us. You knew that, did you not? You were an actor, playing a part, and we were your audience. But now the show is coming to an end. Time to hang up your sword. Time to confess. Speak, Don Quixote!’

  Damián Arroyo, with his beard somewhat askew, sits up in bed with an elaborate show of creakiness. In a quavering voice he speaks: ‘Bring me Rocinante!’

  A horse emerges from the wings: two children crouching beneath a red carpet, only their legs visible, bearing a papier-mâché horse’s head before them.

  ‘Bring me my sword!’ commands Damián.

  A child clad in black comes onstage bearing a painted wooden sword, which he hands over.

  Descending from his bed, Damián faces the audience, raises his sword on high. ‘Forth, Rocinante!’ he cries out. ‘While there are damsels to save, we shall not cease!’ He tries
to clamber onto the back of Rocinante. The boys under the carpet stagger and fall. The horse-head clatters to the floor. Damián waves the sword above his head. His beard falls off but the mustachios remain in place. ‘Forth, Rocinante!’ he cries again. There is a great cheer. Alyosha embraces him, lifts him bodily, shows him off to the audience.

  He, Simón, turns to Inés. Tears pour down her cheeks but she is smiling. He clasps her hand. ‘Our boy!’ he whispers in her ear.

  Two helpers push a capacious cardboard box onto the stage, one side of it cut away. Wearing a long black robe, a green wig, and stark white face-paint, a boy actor emerges from the wings, steps into the box, and stands there in silence, hanging his head.

  There is a rattle of drumbeats and Joaquín, wearing the chaplet with the letter D, bearing a heavy staff, looking regal, marches onstage. He seats himself on a chair facing the box.

  He speaks. ‘Your name is El Lobo, the wolf.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ replies the figure in black, still hanging his head.

  ‘Your name is El Lobo and you are charged with devouring an innocent puppy who did you no harm, who wanted only to play. How do you plead?’

  ‘Guilty, my lord. I ask for your forgiveness. It is my nature to eat little animals, lambs and puppies and kittens and so forth. The more innocent they are, the more appetizing I find them. I cannot help myself.’

  ‘If it is your nature to eat puppies then it is my nature to pronounce judgment. Are you ready to be judged, El Lobo?’

  ‘I am, my lord. Judge me harshly. Let me be beaten with whips. Let me suffer for my bad nature. I beg only that after I have suffered my punishment you will forgive me.’