John Coetzee: Scenes from Provincial Life

All of his intercourse with the world seems to take place through a membrane. Because the membrane is there, fertilization (of himself, by the world) will not take place. It is an interesting metaphor, full of potential, but it does not take him anywhere that he can see.

Undated fragment

His father grew up on a farm in the Karoo drinking artesian water high in fluoride. The fluoride turned the enamel of his teeth brown and hard as stone. His boast used to be that he never needed to see a dentist. Then in mid-life his teeth began to go rotten, one after another, and he had to have them all extracted.

Now, in his mid-sixties, his gums are giving him trouble. Abscesses are forming that will not heal. His throat becomes infected. He finds it painful to swallow, to speak.

He goes first to a dentist, then to an ear, nose and throat specialist, who sends him for X-rays. The X-rays reveal a cancerous tumour on the larynx. He is advised to submit to surgery urgently.

He visits his father in the male ward at Groote Schuur Hospital. He is wearing general-issue pyjamas and his eyes are frightened. Inside the too-large jacket he is like a bird, all skin and bone.

‘It is a routine operation,’ he reassures his father. ‘You will be out in a few days.’

‘Will you explain to the brothers?’ his father whispers with painful slowness.

‘I will phone them.’

‘Mrs Noerdien is very capable.’

‘I am sure Mrs Noerdien is very capable. I am sure she will manage until you come back.’

There is nothing more to say. He could stretch out and take his father’s hand and hold it, to comfort him, to convey to him that he is not alone, that he is loved and cherished. But he does no such thing. Save in the case of small children, children not yet old enough to be formed, it is not the practice in their family for one person to reach out and touch another. Nor is that the worst. If on this one extreme occasion he were to ignore family practice and grasp his father’s hand, would what that gesture implied be true? Is his father truly loved and cherished? Is his father truly not alone?

He takes a long walk, from the hospital to the Main Road, then along the Main Road as far as Newlands. The south-easter is howling, whipping up trash from the gutters. He walks fast, conscious of the vigour of his limbs, the steadiness of his heartbeat. The air of the hospital is still in his lungs; he must expel it, get rid of it.

When he arrives in the ward the next day, his father is flat on his back, his chest and throat swathed in a dressing with tubes running out of it. He looks like a corpse, the corpse of an old man.

He has been prepared for the spectacle. The larynx, which was tumorous, had to be excised, says the surgeon, there was no avoiding that. His father will no longer be able to speak in the normal way. However, in due course, after the wound has healed, he will be fitted with a prosthesis that will permit vocal communication of a kind. A more urgent task is to ensure the cancer has not spread, which will mean further tests, plus radiotherapy.

‘Does my father know that?’ he asks the surgeon. ‘Does he know what he is in for?’

‘I tried to fill him in,’ says the surgeon, ‘but I am not sure how much he absorbed. He is in a state of shock. Which is to be expected, of course.’

He stands over the figure in the bed. ‘I phoned Acme,’ he says. ‘I spoke to the brothers and explained the situation.’

His father opens his eyes. Generally he is sceptical about the capacity of the ocular orbs to express complex feelings, but this time he is shaken. The look his father gives him speaks of utter indifference: indifference to him, indifference to Acme Auto, indifference to everything but the fate of his own soul in the prospect of eternity.

‘The brothers send their best wishes,’ he continues. ‘For a speedy recovery. They say not to worry, Mrs Noerdien will hold the fort until you are ready to come back.’

It is true. The brothers, or whichever of the brothers he spoke to, could not be more solicitous. Their bookkeeper may not be of the faith, but the brothers are not cold people. ‘A jewel’ — that is what the brother in question called his father. ‘Your father is a jewel, his job will always be open for him.’

It is of course a fiction, all of it. His father will never go back to work. In a week or two or three he will be sent home, cured or part cured, to commence the next and final phase of his life, during which he will depend for his daily bread on the charity of the Automotive Industry Benefit Fund, of the South African state through its Department of Pensions, and of his surviving family.

‘Is there anything I can bring you?’ he inquires.

His father makes tiny scrabbling motions with his left hand, whose fingernails, he notes, are not clean. ‘Do you want to write?’ he says. He brings out his pocket diary, opens it to the page headed Telephone Numbers , and proffers it together with a pen.

The fingers cease moving, the eyes lose focus.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he says. ‘Try again to tell me what you mean.’

Slowly his father shakes his head, left to right.

On the stands beside the other beds in the ward there are vases of flowers, magazines, in some cases framed photographs. The stand beside his father’s bed is bare save for a glass of water.

‘I must go now,’ he says. ‘I have a class to teach.’

At a kiosk near the front entrance he buys a packet of sucking sweets and returns to his father’s bedside. ‘I got these for you,’ he says. ‘To hold in your mouth if your mouth gets dry.’

Two weeks later his father comes home in an ambulance. He is able to walk in a shuffling way with the aid of a stick. He makes his way from the front door to his bedroom and shuts himself in.

One of the ambulancemen hands him a cyclostyled sheet of instructions titled Laryngectomy — Care of Patients , and a card with a schedule of times when the clinic is open. He glances over the sheet. There is an outline sketch of a human head with a dark circle low in the throat. Care of Wound , it says.

He draws back. ‘I can’t do this,’ he says. The ambulancemen exchange glances, shrug. It is not their business, taking care of the wound, taking care of the patient. Their business is to convey the patient to his or her place of residence. After that it is the patient’s business, or the patient’s family’s business, or else no one’s business.

It used to be that he, John, had too little employment. Now that is about to change. Now he will have as much employment as he can handle, as much and more. He is going to have to abandon some of his personal projects and be a nurse. Alternatively, if he will not be a nurse, he must announce to his father: I cannot face the prospect of ministering to you day and night. I am going to abandon you. Goodbye. One or the other: there is no third way.