John Coetzee: Scenes from Provincial Life

From his shirt pocket the fat boy produces something, something that begins to explain why he has been dragged to this quiet corner: a wriggling green caterpillar. The friend pins his arms behind his back; the fat boy pinches the hinges of his jaws till his mouth opens, then forces the caterpillar in. He spits it out, already torn, already exuding its juices. The fat boy crushes it, smears it over his lips. ‘ Jood! ’ he says, wiping his hand clean on the grass.

He chose to be a Roman Catholic, that fateful morning, because of Rome, because of Horatius and his two comrades, swords in their hands, crested helmets on their heads, indomitable courage in their glance, defending the bridge over the Tiber against the Etruscan hordes. Now, step by step, he discovers from the other Catholic boys what a Roman Catholic really is. A Roman Catholic has nothing to do with Rome. Roman Catholics have not even heard of Horatius. Roman Catholics go to catechism on Friday afternoons; they go to confession; they take communion. That is what Roman Catholics do.

The older Catholic boys corner him and quiz him: has he been to catechism, has he been to confession, has he taken communion? Catechism? Confession? Communion? He does not even know what the words mean. ‘I used to go in Cape Town,’ he says evasively. ‘Where?’ they say. He does not know the names of any churches in Cape Town, but nor do they. ‘Come to catechism on Friday,’ they order him. When he does not come, they inform the priest that there is an apostate in Standard Three. The priest sends a message, which they relay: he must come to catechism. He suspects they have fabricated the message, but the next Friday he stays at home, lying low.

The older Catholic boys begin to make it clear they do not believe his stories about being a Catholic in Cape Town. But he has gone too far now, there is no going back. If he says, ‘I made a mistake, I am actually a Christian,’ he will be disgraced. Besides, even if he has to bear the taunts of the Afrikaners and the interrogations of the real Catholics, are the two free periods a week not worth it, free periods to walk around the empty playing fields talking to the Jews?

One Saturday afternoon when the whole of Worcester, stunned by the heat, has gone to sleep, he takes out his bicycle and cycles to Dorp Street.

Usually he gives Dorp Street a wide berth, since that is where the Catholic church is. But today the street is empty, there is no sound but the rustle of water in the furrows. Nonchalantly he cycles past, pretending not to look.

The church is not as big as he thought it would be. It is a low, blank building with a little statue over the portico: the Virgin, hooded, holding her baby.

He reaches the bottom of the street. He would like to turn and come back for a second look, but he is afraid of stretching his luck, afraid that a priest in black will emerge and wave to him to stop.

The Catholic boys nag him and make sneering remarks, the Christians persecute him, but the Jews do not judge. The Jews pretend not to notice. The Jews wear shoes too. In a minor way he feels comfortable with the Jews. The Jews are not so bad.

Nevertheless, with Jews one has to tread carefully. For the Jews are everywhere, the Jews are taking over the country. He hears this on all sides, but particularly from his uncles, his mother’s two bachelor brothers, when they visit. Norman and Lance come every summer, like migrating birds, though rarely at the same time. They sleep on the sofa, get up at eleven in the morning, moon around the house for hours, half-dressed, tousled. Both have cars; sometimes they can be persuaded to take their sister and her boys for an afternoon drive, but they seem to prefer passing their time smoking and drinking tea and talking about the old days. Then they have supper, and after supper, play poker or rummy until midnight with whoever can be persuaded to stay up.

He loves to listen to his mother and his uncles going for the thousandth time over the events of their childhood on the farm. He is never happier than when listening to these stories, to the teasing and the laughter that go with them. His friends in Worcester do not come from families with stories like these. That is what sets him apart: the two farms behind him, his mother’s farm, his father’s farm, and the stories of those farms. Through the farms he is rooted in the past; through the farms he has substance.

There is a third farm too: Skipperskloof, near Williston. His family has no roots there, it is a farm they have married into. Nevertheless, Skipperskloof is important too. All farms are important. Farms are places of freedom, of life.

In among the stories that Norman and Lance and his mother tell flit the figures of Jews, comic, sly, but also cunning and heartless, like jackals. Jews from Oudtshoorn came to the farm every year to buy ostrich feathers from their father, his grandfather. They persuaded him to give up wool and farm only with ostriches. Ostriches would make him rich, they said. Then one day the bottom fell out of the ostrich-feather market. The Jews refused to buy any more feathers and his grandfather went bankrupt. Everyone in the district went bankrupt and the Jews took over their farms. That is how the Jews operate, says Norman: you must never trust a Jew.

His father demurs. His father cannot afford to decry the Jews, since he is employed by a Jew. Standard Canners, where he works as a bookkeeper, belongs to Wolf Heller. In fact it was Wolf Heller who brought him from Cape Town to Worcester when he lost his job in the civil service. The future of their family is bound up with the future of Standard Canners, which, in the few years since he took it over, Wolf Heller has built up into a giant of the canning world. There are wonderful prospects in Standard Canners, says his father, for someone like himself, with legal qualifications.

So Wolf Heller is exempted from the strictures on Jews. Wolf Heller takes care of his employees. At Christmas he even buys them presents, though Christmas means nothing to Jews.

There are no Heller children at school in Worcester. If there are Heller children at all, they have presumably been sent to SACS in Cape Town, which is a Jewish school in all but name. Nor are there Jewish families in Reunion Park. The Jews of Worcester live in the older, greener, shadier part of the town. Though there are Jewish boys in his class, he is never invited into their homes. He sees them only at school, brought closer to them during assembly periods, when Jews and Catholics are isolated and subjected to the ire of the Christians.

Every now and again, however, for reasons that are not clear, the dispensation that allows them freedom during assembly is withdrawn and they are summoned to the hall.

The hall is always packed. Senior boys occupy the seats, while boys from the junior school crowd the floor. The Jews and Catholics — perhaps twenty in all — thread their way among them, looking for space. Hands surreptitiously snatch at their ankles, trying to trip them.

The dominee is already on the stage, a pale young man in a black suit and white tie. He preaches in a high, sing-song voice, drawing out the long vowels, pronouncing every letter of every word punctiliously. When the preaching is over, they have to stand for the prayer. What is it proper for a Catholic to do during a Christian prayer? Does he close his eyes and move his lips, or does he pretend not to be there? He cannot see any of the real Catholics; he puts on a blank look and allows his eyes to go out of focus.

The dominee sits down. The songbooks are handed out; it is time for the singing. One of the women teachers steps forward to conduct. ‘ Al die veld is vrolik, al die voëltjies sing ,’ sing the juniors. Then the seniors stand up. ‘ Uit die blou van onse hemel ,’ they sing in their deep voices, standing to attention, gazing sternly ahead: the national anthem, their national anthem. Tentatively, nervously, the younger boys join in. Leaning over them, waving with her arms as though scooping feathers, the teacher tries to uplift them, encourage them. ‘ Ons sal antwoord op jou roepstem, ons sal offer wat jy vra ,’ they sing: we will answer your call.