J. Coetzee - The Childhood of Jesus

‘It’s not for you to doubt my goodwill,’ says Diego.

‘Then prove it! Come back with me and prove to the child how much goodwill you are capable of. Come!’ And he rises and takes Diego’s arm.

A strange spectacle greets them. Diego’s sister is kneeling on the bed with her back to them, straddling the boy — who lies flat on his back beneath her — her dress hoisted up to allow a glimpse of solid, rather heavy thighs. ‘Where is the spider, where is the spider. .?’ she croons in a high, thin voice. Her fingers drift down his chest to his belt buckle; she tickles him, convulsing him in helpless laughter.

‘We are back,’ he announces in a loud voice. She scrambles off the bed, her face flushed.

‘Inés and I are playing a game,’ says the boy.

Inés! So that is the name! And in the name the essence!

‘Inés!’ says the brother, and beckons to her curtly. Smoothing her dress down, she hurries after him. From the corridor come furious whisperings.

Inés comes marching back, her brother trailing behind. ‘We want you to go through all of it again,’ she says.

‘You want me to repeat my proposal?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very well. I propose that you become David’s mother. I give up all claim to him (he has a claim on me, but that is a different matter). I will sign any paper you put before me to confirm it. You and he can live together as mother and child. It can happen as soon as you like.’

Diego gives an exasperated snort. ‘This is all nonsense!’ he exclaims. ‘You can’t be this child’s mother, he already has a mother, the mother he was born to! Without his mother’s permission you can’t adopt him. Listen to me!’

He exchanges a silent glance with Inés. ‘I want him,’ she says, addressing not him but her brother. ‘I want him,’ she repeats. ‘But we can’t stay at La Residencia.’

‘As I told your brother, you are welcome to move in here. It can happen today. I will move out at once. This will be your new home.’

‘I don’t want you to go,’ says the boy.

‘I won’t go far, my boy. I will go and stay with Elena and Fidel. You and your mother can come visiting whenever you like.’

‘I want you to stay here,’ says the boy.

‘That is sweet of you, but I can’t come between you and your mother. From now on, you and she are going to be together. You will be a family. I can’t be part of that family. But I will be a helper, a servant and a helper. I promise.’ He turns to Inés. ‘Are we agreed?’

‘Yes.’ Now that she has made up her mind, Inés has become quite imperious. ‘We will come back tomorrow. We will bring our dog. Will your neighbours object to a dog?’

‘They would not dare.’

By the time Inés and her brother return the next morning, he has swept the floors, scrubbed the tiles, changed the sheets; his own belongings are bundled up and ready to go.

Diego heads the incoming procession, bearing a large suitcase on his shoulder. He drops it on the bed. ‘There’s more to come,’ he announces ominously. And indeed there is: a trunk, even larger, and a stack of bedclothes that include a vast eiderdown bedcover.

He, Simón, does not linger over his leavetaking. ‘Be good,’ he tells the boy. ‘He doesn’t eat cucumber,’ he tells Inés. ‘And leave a light on when he goes to bed, he doesn’t like to sleep in the dark.’

She gives no sign of having heard him. ‘It’s cold in here,’ she says, rubbing her hands together. ‘Is it always so cold?’

‘I’ll buy an electric fire. I’ll bring it in the next day or two.’ To Diego he offers his hand, which Diego reluctantly takes. Then he picks up his bundle and without a backward glance strides off.

He had announced he would be staying with Elena, but in fact he has no such plan. He makes his way to the docks, deserted over the weekend, and stows his belongings in the little hut off Wharf Two where the men keep their gear. Then he walks back to the Blocks and knocks at Elena’s door. ‘Hello,’ he calls, ‘can you and I have a chat?’

Over tea he outlines to her the new dispensation. ‘I am sure David will flourish now that he has a mother to look after him. It wasn’t good for him to be brought up just by me. He was under too much pressure to become a little man himself. A child needs his childhood, don’t you think?’

‘I can’t believe my ears,’ replies Elena. ‘A child is not like a chick that you can stuff under the wing of some strange hen to raise. How could you hand David over to someone you have never laid eyes on before, some woman who is probably acting on a whim and will lose interest before the week is over and want to give him back?’

‘Please, Elena, don’t pass judgment on this Inés before you have met her. She is not acting on a whim; on the contrary, I believe she is acting under a force stronger than herself. I am counting on you to help us, to help her. She is in unknown territory; she has no experience of motherhood.’

‘I am not passing judgment on this Inés of yours. If she asks for help, I will give it. But she is not your boy’s mother and you should stop calling her that.’

‘Elena, she is his mother. I arrived in this land bare of everything save one rock-solid conviction: that I would know the boy’s mother when I saw her. And the moment I beheld Inés I knew it was she.’

‘You followed an intuition?’

‘More than that. A conviction.’

‘A conviction, an intuition, a delusion — what is the difference when it cannot be questioned? Has it occurred to you that if we all lived by our intuitions the world would fall into chaos?’

‘I don’t see why that follows. And what is wrong with a little chaos now and again if good follows from it?’

Elena shrugs. ‘I don’t want to get into an argument. Your son missed his lesson today. It is not the first lesson he has missed. If he is going to give up his music, please let me know.’

‘That is no longer for me to decide. And once again, he is not my son, I am not his father.’

‘Really? You keep denying it, but sometimes I wonder. I say no more. Where are you going to spend tonight? In the bosom of your new-found family?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want to sleep here?’

He rises from the table. ‘Thank you, but I have made other arrangements.’

Considering that the doves nesting in the gutter scratch and rustle and coo without cease, he sleeps quite well that night, on his bed of sacks in his little hideout. He goes without breakfast, yet is able to work a full day and feel fine at the end of it, if a little ethereal, a little ghostly.

Álvaro asks after the boy, and so touched is he by Álvaro’s concern that for a moment he considers telling him the good news, the news that the boy’s mother has been found. But then, mindful of Elena’s reaction to the very same news, he checks himself and tells a lie: David has been taken by his teacher to a big music concourse.

A music concourse, says Álvaro, looking dubious: what is that, and where is it being held?

No idea, he replies, and changes the subject.

It would be a pity, it seems to him, if the boy were to lose touch with Álvaro and never again see his friend El Rey the draft horse. He hopes that, once she has strengthened her bond with him, Inés will allow the boy to visit the docks. The past is so shrouded in clouds of forgetting that he cannot be sure his memories are true memories rather than mere stories he makes up; but he does know that he would have loved it if, as a child, he had been allowed to set off of a morning in the company of grown men and spend the day helping them load and unload great ships. A dose of the real cannot but be good for the child, it seems to him, so long as the dose is not too sudden or too large.