John Coetzee - Scenes from Provincial Life

What is it that keeps him in existence? Is it fear of his mother’s grief, grief so great that he cannot bear to think of it for more than a flash? (He sees her in a bare room, standing silent, her hands covering her eyes; then he draws the blind on her, on the image.) Or is there something else in him that refuses to die?

He remembers the other time he was cornered, when the two Afrikaans boys pinned his hands behind his back and marched him behind the earth-wall at the far end of the rugby field. He remembers the bigger boy in particular, so fat that the fat flowed over his tight clothes — one of those idiots or near-idiots who can break your fingers or crush your windpipe as easily as they wring a bird’s neck and smile placidly while they are doing it. He had been afraid, there was no doubt of that, his heart had been hammering. Yet how true was that fear? As he stumbled across the field with his captors, was there not something deeper inside him, something quite jaunty, that said, ‘Never mind, nothing can touch you, this is just another adventure’?

Nothing can touch you, there is nothing you are not capable of . Those are the two things about him, two things that are really one thing, the thing that is right about him and the thing that is wrong about him at the same time. This thing that is two things means that he will not die, no matter what; but does it not also mean that he will not live?

He is a baby. His mother picks him up, face forward, gripping him under the arms. His legs hang, his head sags, he is naked; but his mother holds him up before her, advancing into the world. She has no need to see where she is going, she need only follow. Before him, as she advances, everything turns to stone and shatters. He is just a baby with a big belly and a lolling head, but he possesses this power.

Then he is asleep.

There is a telephone call from Cape Town. Aunt Annie has had a fall on the steps of her flat in Rosebank. She has been taken to hospital with a broken hip; someone must come and make arrangements for her.

It is July, mid-winter. Over the whole of the Western Cape there is a blanket of cold and rain. They catch the morning train to Cape Town, he and his mother and his brother, then a bus up Kloof Street to the Volkshospitaal. Aunt Annie, tiny as a baby in her flowered nightdress, is in the female ward. The ward is full: old women with cross, pinched faces shuffling about in their dressing gowns, hissing to themselves; fat, blowsy women with vacant faces sitting on the edges of their beds, their breasts carelessly spilling out. A loudspeaker in a corner plays Springbok Radio. Three o’clock, the afternoon request programme: ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’ with Nelson Riddle and his orchestra.

Aunt Annie takes his mother’s arm in a wizened grip. ‘I want to leave this place, Vera,’ she says in her hoarse whisper. ‘It is not the place for me.’

His mother pats her hand, tries to soothe her. On the bedside table, a glass of water for her teeth and a Bible.

The ward sister tells them that the broken hip has been set. Aunt Annie will have to spend another month in bed while the bone knits. ‘She’s not young any more, it takes time.’ After that she will have to use a stick.

As an afterthought the sister adds that when Aunt Annie was brought in her toenails were as long and black as bird claws.

His brother, bored, has begun to whine, complaining he is thirsty. His mother stops a nurse and persuades her to fetch a glass of water. Embarrassed, he looks away.

They are sent down the corridor to the social worker’s office. ‘Are you the relatives?’ says the social worker. ‘Can you offer her a home?’

His mother’s lips tighten. She shakes her head.

‘Why can’t she go back to her flat?’ he says to his mother afterwards.

‘She can’t climb the stairs. She can’t get to the shops.’

‘I don’t want her to live with us.’

‘She is not coming to live with us.’

The visiting hour is over, it is time to say goodbye. Tears well up in Aunt Annie’s eyes. She clutches his mother’s arm so tightly that her fingers have to be prised loose.

‘ Ek wil huistoe gaan, Vera ,’ she whispers — I want to go home.

‘Just a few days more, Aunt Annie, till you can walk again,’ says his mother in her most soothing voice.

He has never seen this side of her before: this treacherousness.

Then it is his turn. Aunt Annie reaches out a hand. Aunt Annie is both his great-aunt and his godmother. In the album there is a photograph of her with a baby in her arms said to be him. She is wearing a black dress down to her ankles and an old-fashioned black hat; in the background is a church. Because she is his godmother Aunt Annie believes she has a special relationship with him. She does not seem to be aware of the disgust he feels for her, wrinkled and ugly in her hospital bed, the disgust he feels for this whole ward full of ugly women. He tries to keep his disgust from showing; his heart burns with shame. He endures the hand on his arm, but he wants to be gone, to be out of this place and never to come back.

‘You are so clever,’ says Aunt Annie in the low, hoarse voice she has had ever since he can remember. ‘You are a big man, your mother depends on you. You must love her and be a support for her and for your little brother too.’

A support for his mother? What nonsense. His mother is like a rock, like a stone column. It is not he who must be a support for her, it is she who must be a support for him! Why is Aunt Annie saying these things anyhow? She is pretending she is going to die when all she has is a broken hip.

He nods, tries to look serious and attentive and obedient while secretly he is only waiting for her to let go of him. She smiles the meaningful smile that is meant to be a sign of the special bond between her and Vera’s firstborn, a bond he does not feel at all, does not acknowledge. Her eyes are flat, pale blue, washed out. She is eighty years old and nearly blind. Even with glasses she cannot read the Bible properly, only hold it on her lap and murmur the words to herself.

She relaxes her grip; he mumbles something and retreats.

His brother’s turn. His brother submits to being kissed. ‘Goodbye, dear Vera,’ croaks Aunt Annie. ‘Mag die Here jou seën, jou en die kinders ’ — May the Lord bless you and the children.

It is five o’clock and beginning to get dark. In the unfamiliar bustle of the city rush-hour they catch a train to Rosebank. They are going to spend the night in Aunt Annie’s flat: the prospect fills him with gloom.

Aunt Annie has no fridge. Her larder contains nothing but a few withered apples, a mouldy half-loaf of bread, a jar of fishpaste that his mother does not trust. She sends him out to the Indian shop; they have bread and jam and tea for supper.

The toilet bowl is brown with dirt. His stomach turns when he thinks of the old woman with the long black toenails squatting over it. He does not want to use it.

‘Why have we got to stay here?’ he asks. ‘Why have we got to stay here?’ echoes his brother. ‘Because,’ says his mother grimly.

Aunt Annie uses forty-watt bulbs to save electricity. In the dim yellow light of the bedroom his mother begins to pack Aunt Annie’s clothes into cardboard boxes. He has never been into Aunt Annie’s bedroom before. There are pictures on the walls, framed photographs of men and women with stiff, forbidding looks: Brechers, du Biels, his ancestors.

‘Why can’t she go and live with Uncle Albert?’

‘Because Kitty can’t look after two sick old people.’

‘I don’t want her to live with us.’

‘She is not going to live with us.’

‘Then where is she going to live?’