John Coetzee - Scenes from Provincial Life

The next day Ganapathy is at his desk as usual. For the missed appointment he offers no word of explanation. At lunchtime, in the canteen, he is in good spirits, even excited. He has entered a raffle for a Morris Mini, he says. He has bought a hundred tickets — what else should he do with the big salary International Computers pays him? If he wins, they can drive to Cambridge together to do their program testing, instead of catching trains. Or they can drive to London for the day.

Is there something about the whole business that he has failed to understand, something Indian? Does Ganapathy belong to a caste to which it is taboo to eat at the table of a Westerner? If so, what is he doing with a plate of cod and chips in the Manor House canteen? Should the invitation to lunch have been made more formally and confirmed in writing? By not arriving, was Ganapathy graciously saving him the embarrassment of finding a guest at his front door whom he had invited on an impulse but did not really want? Did he somehow give the impression, when he invited Ganapathy, that it was not a real, substantial invitation he was extending, merely a gesture towards an invitation, and that true politeness on Ganapathy’s part would consist in acknowledging the gesture without putting his host to the trouble of providing a repast? Does the notional meal (cold meats and boiled frozen peas with butter) that they would have eaten together have the same value, in the transaction between himself and Ganapathy, as cold meats and boiled frozen peas actually offered and consumed? Is everything between himself and Ganapathy as before, or better than before, or worse?

Ganapathy has heard about Satyajit Ray but does not think he has seen any of his films. Only a tiny sector of the Indian public, he says, would be interested in such films. In general, he says, Indians prefer to watch American films. Indian films are still very primitive.

Ganapathy is the first Indian he has known more than casually, if this can be called knowing — chess games and conversations comparing England unfavourably with America, plus the one surprise visit to Ganapathy’s flat. Conversation would no doubt improve if Ganapathy were an intellectual instead of being just clever. It continues to astound him that people can be as clever as people are in the computer industry, yet have no outside interests beyond cars and house prices. He had thought it was just the notorious philistinism of the English middle class manifesting itself, but Ganapathy is no better.

Is this indifference to the world a consequence of too much intercourse with machines that give the appearance of thinking? How would he fare if one day he were to quit the computer industry and rejoin civilized society? After spending his best energies for so long on games with machines, would he be able to hold his own in conversation? Is there anything he would have gained from years with computers? Would he not at least have learned to think logically? Would logic not by then have become his second nature?

He would like to believe so, but he cannot. Finally he has no respect for any version of thinking that can be embodied in a computer’s circuitry. The more he has to do with computing, the more it seems to him like chess: a tight little world defined by made-up rules, one that sucks in boys of a certain susceptible temperament and turns them half-crazy, as he is half-crazy, so that all the time they deludedly think they are playing the game, the game is in fact playing them.

It is a world he can escape — it is not too late for that. Alternatively he can make his peace with it, as he sees the young men around him do, one by one: settle for marriage and a house and car, settle for what life realistically has to offer, sink their energies in their work. He is chagrined to see how well the reality principle operates, how, under the prod of loneliness, the boy with spots settles for the girl with the dull hair and the heavy legs, how everyone, no matter how unlikely, finds, in the end, a partner. Is that his problem, and is it as simple as that: that all the time he has been overestimating his worth on the market, fooling himself into believing he belongs with sculptresses and actresses when he really belongs with the kindergarten teacher on the housing estate or the apprentice manageress of the shoe store?

Marriage: who would have imagined he would be feeling the tug, however faint, of marriage! He is not going to give in, not yet. But it is an option he plays with on the long winter evenings, eating his bread and sausages in front of Major Arkwright’s gas fire, listening to the radio, while the rain patters in the background against the window.

It is raining. He and Ganapathy are alone in the canteen, playing lightning chess on Ganapathy’s pocket set. Ganapathy is beating him, as usual.

‘You should go to America,’ says Ganapathy. ‘You are wasting your time here. We are all wasting our time.’

He shakes his head. ‘That’s not realistic,’ he replies.

He has thought more than once of trying for a job in America, and decided against it. A prudent decision, but a correct one. As a programmer he has no particular gifts. His colleagues on the Atlas team may not have advanced degrees, but their minds are clearer than his, their grasp of computational problems is quicker and keener than his will ever be. In discussion he can barely hold his own; he is always having to pretend to understand when he does not really understand, and then work things out for himself afterwards. Why should businesses in America want someone like him? America is not England. America is hard and merciless: if by some miracle he bluffed his way into a job there, he would soon be found out. Besides, he has read Allen Ginsberg, read William Burroughs. He knows what America does to artists: sends them mad, locks them up, drives them out.

‘You could get a fellowship at a university,’ says Ganapathy. ‘I got one, you would have no trouble.’

He stares hard. Is Ganapathy really such an innocent? There is a Cold War on the go. America and Russia are competing for the hearts and minds of Indians, Iraquis, Nigerians; scholarships to universities are among the inducements they offer. The hearts and minds of whites are of no interest to them, certainly not the hearts and minds of a few out-of-place whites in Africa.

‘I’ll think about it,’ he says, and changes the subject. He has no intention of thinking about it.

In a photograph on the front page of the Guardian a Vietnamese soldier in American-style uniform stares helplessly into a sea of flames. ‘RAIDERS WREAK HAVOC AT U.S. BASE,’ reads the headline. A band of Viet Cong sappers have cut their way through the barbed wire around the American air base at Pleiku, blown up twenty-four aircraft, and set fire to the fuel storage tanks. They have given up their lives in the action.

Ganapathy, who shows him the newspaper, is exultant; he himself feels a surge of vindication. Ever since he arrived in England the British newspapers and BBC have carried stories of American feats of arms in which Viet Cong are killed by the thousand while the Americans get away unscathed. If there is ever a word of criticism of America, it is of the most muted kind. He can barely bring himself to read the war reports, so much do they sicken him. Now the Viet Cong have given their undeniable, heroic reply.

He and Ganapathy have never discussed Vietnam. Because Ganapathy studied in America, he has assumed that Ganapathy either supports the Americans or is as indifferent to the war as everyone else at International Computers. Now, suddenly, in his smile, the glint in his eye, he is seeing Ganapathy’s secret face. Despite his admiration for American efficiency and his longing for American hamburgers, Ganapathy is on the side of the Vietnamese because they are his Asian brothers.