John Coetzee - Scenes from Provincial Life

His parents shake their heads over Miss Oosthuizen. They regard her as excitable, unstable; they disapprove of her hennaed hair. Under Smuts, his father says, something would have been done about a teacher who brought politics into school. His father is also United Party. In fact his father lost his job in Cape Town, the job with the title his mother was so proud of — Controller of Letting — when Malan beat Smuts in 1948. It was because of Malan that they had to leave the house in Rosebank that he looks back on with such longing, the house with the big overgrown garden and the observatory with the domed roof and the two cellars, had to leave Rosebank Junior School and his Rosebank friends, and come here to Worcester. In Cape Town his father used to set off to work in the mornings wearing a dapper double-breasted suit, carrying a leather attaché case. When other children asked what his father did, he could reply, ‘He is Controller of Letting,’ and they would fall respectfully silent. In Worcester his father’s work has no name. ‘My father works for Standard Canners,’ he has to say. ‘But what does he do?’ ‘He is in the office, he keeps the books,’ he has to say, lamely. He has no idea what ‘keeping books’ means.

Standard Canners produces canned Alberta peaches, canned Bartlett pears and canned apricots. Standard Canners cans more peaches than any other canner in the country: that is all it is famous for.

Despite the defeat of 1948 and the death of General Smuts, his father remains loyal to the United Party: loyal but gloomy. Advocate Strauss, the new leader of the United Party, is only a pale shadow of Smuts; under Strauss the UP has no hope of winning the next election. Furthermore, the Nats are assuring themselves of victory by redrawing the boundaries of constituencies to favour their supporters in the platteland , the countryside.

‘Why don’t they do something about it?’ he asks his father.

‘Who?’ says his father. ‘Who can stop them? They can do what they like, now that they are in power.’

He does not see the point of having elections if the party that wins can change the rules. It is like the batsman deciding who may and who may not bowl.

His father switches on the radio at news-time but really only to listen to the scores, cricket scores in the summer, rugby scores in the winter.

The news bulletin used once to come from England, before the Nats took over. First there would be ‘God Save the King,’ then there would be the six pips from Greenwich, then the announcer would say, ‘This is London, here is the news,’ and would read news from all over the world. Now all that is finished. ‘This is the South African Broadcasting Corporation,’ says the announcer, and plunges into a long recital of what Dr Malan said in Parliament.

What he hates most about Worcester, what most makes him want to escape, is the rage and resentment that he senses crackling through the Afrikaans boys. He fears and loathes the hulking, barefoot Afrikaans boys in their tight short trousers, particularly the older boys, who, given half a chance, will take you off to some quiet place in the veld and violate you in ways he has heard leeringly alluded to — borsel you, for instance, which as far as he can work out means pulling down your pants and brushing shoe polish into your balls (but why your balls? why shoe polish?) and sending you home through the streets half-naked and blubbering.

There is a lore that all Afrikaans boys seem to share, spread by the student teachers who visit the school, to do with initiation and what happens to you during initiation. The Afrikaans boys whisper about it in the same excited way that they talk of being caned. What he overhears repels him: walking around in a baby’s nappy, for instance, or drinking urine. If that is what you have to go through before you can become a teacher, he refuses to become a teacher.

There are rumours that the Government is going to order all schoolchildren with Afrikaans surnames to be transferred to Afrikaans classes. His parents talk about it in low voices; they are clearly worried. As for him, he is filled with panic at the thought of having to move to an Afrikaans class. He tells his parents he will not obey. He will refuse to go to school. They try to calm him. ‘Nothing will happen,’ they say. ‘It is just talk. It will be years before they do anything.’ He is not reassured.

It will be up to the school inspectors, he learns, to remove false English boys from the English classes. He lives in dread of the day when the inspector will come, run his finger down the register, call out his name, and tell him to pack his books. He has a plan for that day, carefully worked out. He will pack his books and leave the room without protest. But he will not go to the Afrikaans class. Instead, calmly, so as not to attract attention, he will walk over to the bicycle shed, take his bicycle, and ride home so fast that no one can catch him. Then he will close and lock the front door and tell his mother that he is not going back to school, that if she betrays him he will kill himself.

An image of Dr Malan is engraved in his mind. Dr Malan’s round, bald face is without understanding or mercy. His gullet pulses like a frog’s. His lips are pursed.

He has not forgotten Dr Malan’s first act in 1948: to ban all Captain Marvel and Superman comics, allowing only comics with animal characters, comics intended to keep one a baby, to pass through the Customs.

He thinks of the Afrikaans songs they are made to sing at school. He has come to hate them so much that he wants to scream and shout and make farting noises during the singing, particularly during ‘ Kom ons gaan blomme pluk, ’ with its children gambolling in the fields among chirping birds and jolly insects.

One Saturday morning he and two friends cycle out of Worcester along the De Doorns road. Within half an hour they are out of sight of human habitation. They leave their bicycles at the roadside and strike off into the hills. They find a cave, make a fire, and eat the sandwiches they have brought. Suddenly a huge, truculent Afrikaans boy in khaki shorts appears. ‘ Wie het julle toestemming gegee? ’ — Who gave you permission?

They are struck dumb. A cave: do they need permission to be in a cave? They try to make up lies, but it is no use. ‘ Julle sal hier moet bly totdat my pa kom, ’ the boy announces: You will have to wait here till my father comes. He mentions a lat , a strop : a cane, a strap; they are going to be taught a lesson.

He grows light-headed with fear. Here, out in the veld where there is no one to call to, they are going to be beaten. There is no appeal they can make. For the fact is they are guilty, he most of all. He was the one who assured the others, when they climbed through the fence, that it could not be a farm, it was just veld. He is the ringleader, it was his idea from the beginning, there is no one else on to whom the blame can be shifted.

The farmer arrives with his dog, a sly-looking, yellow-eyed Alsatian. Again the questions, this time in English, questions without answers. By what right are they here? Why did they not ask permission? Again the pathetic, stupid defence must be gone through: they did not know, they thought it was just veld. To himself he swears he will never make the same mistake again. Never again will he be so stupid as to climb through a fence and think he can get away with it. Stupid ! he thinks to himself: stupid, stupid, stupid!

The farmer does not happen to have a lat or a strap or a whip with him. ‘Your lucky day,’ he says. They stand rooted to the spot, not understanding. ‘Go.’

Stupidly they clamber down the hillside, careful not to run for fear the dog will come after them growling and slavering, to where their bicycles wait at the roadside. There is nothing they can say to redeem the experience. The Afrikaners have not even behaved badly. It is they who have lost.