John Coetzee - Scenes from Provincial Life

In the early mornings there are Coloured children trotting along the National Road with pencil-cases and exercise books, some even with satchels on their backs, on their way to school. But they are young children, very young: by the time they have reached his age, ten or eleven, they will have left school behind and be out in the world earning their daily bread.

On his birthday, instead of a party, he is given ten shillings to take his friends for a treat. He invites his three best friends to the Globe Café; they sit at a marble-topped table and order banana splits or chocolate fudge sundaes. He feels princely, dispensing pleasure like this; the occasion would be a marvellous success, were it not spoiled by the ragged Coloured children standing at the window looking in at them.

On the faces of these children he sees none of the hatred which, he is prepared to acknowledge, he and his friends deserve for having so much money while they are penniless. On the contrary, they are like children at a circus, drinking in the sight, utterly absorbed, missing nothing.

If he were someone else, he would ask the Portuguese with the brilliantined hair who owns the Globe to chase them away. It is quite normal to chase beggar children away. You have only to contort your face into a scowl and wave your arms and shout, ‘ Voetsek, hotnot! Loop! Loop! ’ and then turn to whoever is watching, friend or stranger, and explain: ‘ Hulle soek net iets om te steel. Hull is almal skelms .’ — They are just looking for something to steal. They are all thieves. But if he were to get up and go to the Portuguese, what would he say? ‘They are spoiling my birthday, it is not fair, it hurts my heart to see them’? Whatever happens, whether they are chased away or not, it is too late, his heart is already hurt.

He thinks of Afrikaners as people in a rage all the time because their hearts are hurt. He thinks of the English as people who have not fallen into a rage because they live behind walls and guard their hearts well.

This is only one of his theories about the English and the Afrikaners. The fly in the ointment, unfortunately, is Trevelyan.

Trevelyan was one of the lodgers who boarded with them in the house in Liesbeeck Road, Rosebank, the house with the great oak tree in the front garden where he was happy. Trevelyan had the best room, the one with French windows opening on to the stoep. He was young, he was tall, he was friendly, he could not speak a word of Afrikaans, he was English through and through. In the mornings Trevelyan had breakfast in the kitchen before going off to work; in the evenings he came back and had supper with them. He kept his room, which was anyhow out of bounds, locked; but there was nothing interesting in it except an electric shaver made in America.

His father, though older than Trevelyan, became Trevelyan’s friend. On Saturdays they listened to the radio together, to C K Friedlander broadcasting rugby matches from Newlands.

Then Eddie arrived. Eddie was a seven-year-old Coloured boy from Ida’s Valley near Stellenbosch. He came to work for them: the arrangement was made between Eddie’s mother and Aunt Winnie, who lived in Stellenbosch. In return for washing dishes and sweeping and polishing, Eddie would live with them in Rosebank and be given his meals, while on the first of every month his mother would be sent a postal order for two pounds ten shillings.

After two months of living and working in Rosebank, Eddie ran away. He disappeared during the night; his absence was discovered in the morning. The police were called in; Eddie was found not far away, hiding in the bushes along the Liesbeeck River. He was found not by the police but by Trevelyan, who dragged him back, crying and kicking shamelessly, and locked him up in the old observatory in the back garden.

Obviously Eddie would have to be sent back to Ida’s Valley. Now that he had dropped the pretence of being content, he would run away at every opportunity. Apprenticeship had not worked.

But before Aunt Winnie in Stellenbosch could be telephoned there was the question of punishment for the trouble Eddie had caused: for the calling in of the police, for the ruined Saturday morning. It was Trevelyan who offered to carry out the punishment.

He peered into the observatory once while the punishment was going on. Trevelyan was holding Eddie by the two wrists and flogging him on the bare legs with a leather strap. His father was also there, standing to one side, watching. Eddie howled and danced; there were tears and snot everywhere. ‘ Asseblief, asseblief, my baas, ’ he howled, ‘ ek sal nie weer nie! ’ — I won’t do it again! Then the two of them noticed him and waved him out.

The next day his aunt and uncle came from Stellenbosch in their black DKW to take Eddie back to his mother in Ida’s Valley. There were no goodbyes.

So Trevelyan, who was English, was the one to beat Eddie. In fact, Trevelyan, who was ruddy of complexion and already a little fat, went even ruddier while he was applying the strap, and snorted with every blow, working himself into as much of a rage as any Afrikaner. How does Trevelyan, then, fit into his theory that the English are good?

There is a debt he still owes Eddie, which he has told no one about. After he had bought the Smiths bicycle with the money for his eighth birthday and then found he did not know how to ride, it was Eddie who pushed him on Rosebank Common, shouting commands, till all of a sudden he mastered the art of balancing.

He rode in a wide loop that first time, thrusting hard on the pedals to get through the sandy soil, till he came back to where Eddie was waiting. Eddie was excited, jumping up and down. ‘ Kan ek ’n kans kry? ’ he clamoured — Can I have a turn? He passed the bicycle over to Eddie. Eddie didn’t need to be pushed: he set off as fast as the wind, standing on the pedals, his old navy-blue blazer streaming behind him, riding a lot better than he did.

He remembers wrestling with Eddie on the lawn. Though Eddie was only seven months older than he, and no bigger, he had a wiry strength and a singleness of purpose that always made him the victor. The victor, but cautious in victory. Only for a moment, when he had his opponent pinned on his back, helpless, did Eddie allow himself a grin of triumph; then he rolled off and stood at a crouch, ready for the next round.

The smell of Eddie’s body stays with him from those bouts, and the feel of his head, the high bullet-shaped skull and the close, coarse hair.

They have harder heads than white people, his father says. That is why they are so good at boxing. For the same reason, his father says, they will never be good at rugby. In rugby you have to think fast, you can’t be a bonehead.

There is a moment as the two of them wrestle when his lips and nose are pressed against Eddie’s hair. He breathes in the smell, the taste: the smell, the taste of smoke.

Every weekend Eddie gave himself a bath, standing in a footbath in the servant’s lavatory and washing himself with a soapy rag. He and his brother hauled a dustbin below the tiny window and climbed up to peek. Eddie was naked but for his leather belt, which he still wore around his waist. Seeing the two faces at the window, he gave a big smile and shouted ‘ Hê! ’ and danced in the footbath, splashing the water, not covering himself.

Later he told his mother: ‘Eddie didn’t take off his belt in the bath.’

‘Let him do what he wants,’ said his mother.

He has never been to Ida’s Valley, where Eddie comes from. He thinks of it as a cold, sodden place. In Eddie’s mother’s house there is no electric light. The roof leaks, everyone is always coughing. When you go outside you have to hop from stone to stone to avoid the puddles. What hope is there for Eddie now that he is back in Ida’s Valley, in disgrace?