John Coetzee - Scenes from Provincial Life

Brother Gabriel pricks up his ears. ‘What are you doing, Stavropoulos?’ he demands.

‘I’m teaching him Greek, Brother,’ says Theo in his bland, confident way.

‘Go and sit in your own desk.’

Theo smiles and strolls back to his own desk.

The Brothers do not like Theo. His arrogance annoys them; like the boys, they think he is spoiled, has too much money. The injustice of it angers him. He would like to do battle for Theo.

To tide them over until his father’s new law practice begins to bring in money, his mother returns to teaching. To do the housework she hires a maid, a scrawny woman with hardly any teeth in her mouth named Celia. Sometimes Celia brings along her younger sister for company. Coming home one afternoon, he finds the two of them sitting in the kitchen drinking tea. The younger sister, who is more attractive than Celia, gives him a smile. There is something in her smile that confuses him; he does not know where to look and retires to his room. He can hear them laughing and knows they are laughing at him.

Something is changing. He seems to be embarrassed all the time. He does not know where to direct his eyes, what to do with his hands, how to hold his body, what expression to wear on his face. Everyone is staring at him, judging him, finding him wanting. He feels like a crab pulled out of its shell, pink and wounded and obscene.

Once upon a time he used to be full of ideas, ideas for places to go to, things to talk about, things to do. He was always a step ahead of everyone: he was the leader, the others followed. Now the energy that he used to feel streaming out of him is gone. At the age of thirteen he is becoming surly, scowling, dark. He does not like this new, ugly self, he wants to be drawn out of it, but that is something he cannot do by himself.

They visit his father’s new office to see what it is like. The office is in Goodwood, which belongs to the string of Afrikaans suburbs Goodwood-Parow-Bellville. Its windows are painted dark green; over the green in gold lettering are the words PROKUREUR — Z COETZEE — ATTORNEY. The interior is gloomy, with heavy furniture upholstered in horsehair and red leather. The law books that have travelled around South Africa with them since his father last practised in 1937 have emerged from their boxes and are on the shelf. Idly he looks up Rape. Natives sometimes insert the male organ between the thighs of the woman without penetration, says a footnote. The practice falls under customary law. It does not constitute rape.

Is this the kind of thing they do in law courts, he wonders: argue about where the penis went?

His father’s practice appears to be flourishing. He employs not only a typist but an articled clerk named Eksteen. To Eksteen his father leaves the routine business of conveyancing and wills; his own efforts are devoted to the exciting court work of getting people off . Each day he comes home with new stories of people whom he has got off, and of how grateful they are to him.

His mother is less interested in the people he has got off than in the mounting list of monies owed. One name in particular keeps cropping up: Le Roux the car salesman. She badgers his father: he is a lawyer, surely he can get Le Roux to pay up. Le Roux will settle his debt for sure at the end of the month, replies his father, he has promised. But at the end of the month, once again, Le Roux does not settle.

Le Roux does not settle, nor does he make himself scarce. On the contrary, he invites his father for drinks, promises him more work, paints rosy pictures of the money to be made from repossessing cars.

The arguments at home become angrier but at the same time more guarded. He asks his mother what is going on. Bitterly she says, Jack has been lending Le Roux money.

He does not need to hear more. He knows his father, knows what is going on. His father craves approval, will do anything to be liked. In the circles in which his father moves there are two ways of getting to be liked: buying people drinks and lending them money.

Children are not supposed to go into bars. But in the bar of the Fraserburg Road hotel he and his brother used often to sit at a corner table, drinking orange squash, watching their father buy rounds of brandy and water for strangers, getting to know this other side of him. So he knows the mood of expansive bonhomie that brandy creates in him, the boasting, the large spendthrift gestures.

Avidly, gloomily, he listens to his mother’s monologues of complaint. Though his father’s wiles no longer take him in, he does not trust her to see through them: he has watched his father wheedle his way past her too often in the past. ‘Don’t listen to him,’ he warns her. ‘He lies to you all the time.’

The trouble with Le Roux deepens. There are long telephone calls. A new name starts cropping up: Bensusan. Bensusan is dependable, says his mother. Bensusan is a Jew, he doesn’t drink. Bensusan is going to rescue Jack, put him back on the right track.

But there is not only Le Roux, it turns out. There are other men, other drinking companions, to whom his father has been lending money. He cannot believe it, cannot understand it. Where does all this money come from, when his father has only one suit and one pair of shoes and has to catch the train to work? Does one really make so much money so quickly getting people off?

He has never seen Le Roux but can picture him easily enough. Le Roux will be a ruddy Afrikaner with a blond moustache; he will wear a blue suit and a black tie; he will be slightly fat and sweat a lot and tell dirty jokes in a loud voice.

Le Roux sits with his father in the bar in Goodwood. When his father isn’t looking Le Roux winks behind his back to the other men in the bar. Le Roux has picked out his father as a sucker. He burns with shame that his father should be so stupid.

The money his father has been lending, as it turns out, is not actually his to lend. That is why Bensusan has involved himself. Bensusan is acting for the Law Society. The matter is serious: the money has been taken from the trust account.

‘What is a trust account?’ he asks his mother.

‘It’s money he holds in trust.’

‘Why do people give him their money in trust?’ he says. ‘They must be mad.’

His mother shakes her head. All attorneys have trust accounts, she says, God only knows why. ‘Jack is like a child when it comes to money.’

Bensusan and the Law Society have entered the picture because there are people who want to save his father, people from the old days when he was Controller of Letting. They are well disposed towards him, they don’t want him to go to jail. For old times’ sake, and because he has a wife and children, they will close their eyes to certain things, make certain arrangements. He can make repayments over five years; once that is done, the book will be closed, the matter forgotten.

His mother takes legal advice herself. She would like her own possessions to be separated from her husband’s before some new disaster strikes: the dining-room table, for instance; the chest of drawers with the mirror; the stinkwood coffee table that Aunt Annie gave her. She would like their marriage contract, which makes the two of them responsible for each other’s debts, to be amended. But marriage contracts, it turns out, are immutable. If his father goes down, his mother goes down too, she and her children.

Eksteen and the typist are given notice, the practice in Goodwood is closed. He never gets to see what happens to the green window with the gold lettering. His mother continues to teach. His father starts looking for a job. Every morning, punctually at seven, he sets off for the city. But an hour or two later — this is his secret — when everyone else has left the house, he comes back. He puts on his pyjamas and gets back into bed with the Cape Times crossword and a quarter-litre of brandy. Then at about two in the afternoon, before his wife and children return, he dresses and goes to his club.