J. Coetzee - The Childhood of Jesus

He catches up with them in the wildest part of the parklands, where a wooden footbridge crosses a stream choked with rushes. ‘Inés!’ he calls out.

Inés stops and turns. The dog turns too, cocking its ears, tugging at its leash.

He puts on a smile as he approaches. ‘What a coincidence! I was on my way to the shops when I saw you. How are you getting on?’ And then, without waiting for her reply, ‘Hello,’ he says to the child, ‘I see you are going for a ride. Like a young prince.’

The child’s eyes fix on his and lock. A sense of peace invades him. All is well. The link between them is not broken. But the thumb is in the mouth again. Not a promising sign. The thumb in the mouth means insecurity, means a troubled heart.

‘We’re taking a walk,’ says Inés. ‘We need some air. It is so stuffy in that apartment.’

‘I know,’ he says. ‘It is badly designed. I keep the window open day and night to air it. I mean, I used to keep the window open.’

‘I can’t do that. I don’t want David catching cold.’

‘Oh, he doesn’t catch cold easily. He’s a tough fellow — aren’t you?’

The boy nods. The coat is buttoned all the way up to his chin, no doubt so that wind-borne germs won’t get in.

A long silence. He would like to come closer, but the dog has not relaxed its vigilant glare.

‘Where did you get that’ — he gestures — ‘that vehicle?’

‘At the family depot.’

‘The family depot?’

‘There is a depot in the city where you can get things for children. We got him a cot too.’

‘A cot?’

‘A cot with sides. So that he doesn’t fall out.’

‘That’s strange. He has been sleeping in a bed ever since I can remember, and he has never fallen out.’

Even before he has finished, he knows it was the wrong thing to say. Inés’s lips clamp tight, she swings the vehicle around, she would march off but for the fact that the dog’s leash has become tangled in the wheels and has to be unwound.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘I don’t mean to interfere.’

She does not deign to reply.

Going back over the episode afterwards, he wonders why it is that he has no feeling for Inés as a woman, not the slightest flicker, even though there is nothing wrong with her looks. Is it because she is so hostile to him and has been from the start; or is she unattractive simply because she refuses to be attractive, refuses to open herself up? May she indeed be, as Elena asserts, a virgin, or at least the virginal type? What he knew of virgins is lost in clouds of forgetting. Does the aura of the virginal stifle a man’s desire or on the contrary sharpen it? He thinks of Ana, from the Relocation Centre, who strikes him as a virgin of a rather fierce kind. Ana he certainly found attractive. What does Ana have that Inés does not? Or should the question be phrased contrariwise: What does Inés have that Ana does not?

‘I bumped into Inés and young David yesterday,’ he tells Elena. ‘Do you see much of them?’

‘I see her around the Blocks. We haven’t spoken. I don’t think she wants much to do with the residents.’

‘I suppose, if one is used to life in La Residencia, it must be hard to find oneself living in the Blocks.’

‘Living in La Residencia doesn’t make her better than us. We all started from nowhere, from nothing. It’s just a matter of luck that she landed up there.’

‘How do you think she is coping with motherhood?’

‘She’s very protective of the child. Over-protective, in my opinion. She watches him like a hawk, won’t let him play with other children. You know that. Fidel can’t understand. He feels hurt.’

‘I’m sorry. What else have you seen?’

‘Her brothers spend a lot of time visiting. They have a car — one of those little four-seaters with a roof that you can roll back, a cabriolet I think it is called. They all go off in the car and come back after dark.’

‘The dog too?’

‘The dog too. Everywhere Inés goes, the dog goes. It gives me the shivers. It is like a coiled spring. One of these days it is going to attack someone. I just pray it isn’t a child. Can’t she be persuaded to muzzle it?’

‘No chance of that.’

‘Well, I think it is madness to keep a vicious dog when you have a young child.’

‘It’s not a vicious dog, Elena, just a bit unpredictable. Unpredictable but faithful. That is what seems to matter most to Inés. Fidelity, queen of the virtues.’

‘Really? I wouldn’t call it that. I would call it a middle-ranking virtue, like temperance. The sort of virtue you look for in a soldier. Inés strikes me as a bit of a watchdog herself, hovering around David, warding off harm. Why on earth did you choose a woman like that? You were a better father to him than she is a mother.’

‘That’s not true. A child can’t grow up without a mother. Didn’t you say so yourself: to the mother the child owes his substance, whereas the father merely provides the idea? Once the idea has been transmitted, the father is dispensable. And in this case I am not even the father.’

‘A child needs a mother’s womb to come into the world. After he has left the womb the mother as life-giver is as much a spent force as the father. What the child needs from then on is love and care, which a man can provide as well as a woman. Your Inés knows nothing about love and care. She is like a little girl with a doll — an unusually jealous and selfish little girl who won’t let anyone else touch her toy.’

‘Nonsense. You are ready to condemn Inés, yet you barely know her.’

‘And you? How well did you know her before you handed over your precious charge? Investigating her qualifications as a mother was not necessary, you said: you could rely on intuition. You would know the true mother in a flash, the moment you laid eyes on her. Intuition: what sort of basis is that for deciding a child’s future?’

‘We have been through this before, Elena. What is wrong with native intuition? What else is there we can trust, finally?’

‘Common sense. Reason. Any reasonable person would have warned you that a thirty-year-old virgin used to a life of idleness, insulated from the real world, guarded by two thuggish brothers, would not make a reliable mother. Also, any reasonable person would have made inquiries about this Inés, explored her past, assessed her character. Any reasonable person would have imposed a trial period, to make sure they got on together, the child and his nurse.’

He shakes his head. ‘You still misunderstand. My task was to bring the boy to his mother. It was not to bring him to a mother, to a woman who passed some or other motherhood test. It does not matter if by your standards or mine Inés is not a particularly good mother. The fact is, she is his mother. He is with his mother.’

‘But Inés is not his mother! She did not conceive him! She did not carry him in her womb! She did not bring him into the world in blood and pain! She is just someone you picked out on a whim, for all I know because she reminded you of your own mother.’

He shakes his head again. ‘The moment I saw Inés, I knew. If we don’t trust the voice that speaks inside us, saying, This is the one! then there is nothing left to trust.’

‘Don’t make me laugh! Inner voices! People lose their savings at the horse races obeying inner voices. People plunge into calamitous love affairs obeying inner voices. It —’

‘I am not in love with Inés, if that is what you imply. Far from it.’

‘You may not be in love with her but you are unreasonably fixated on her, which is worse. You are convinced she is your child’s destiny. Whereas the truth is Inés has no relation, mystical or otherwise, to you or your boy. She is just a random woman on whom you have projected some private obsession of yours. If the child was predestined, as you say, to be united with his mother, why could you not leave it to destiny to bring them together? Why did you have to inject yourself into the act?’