John Coetzee - Scenes from Provincial Life

We ate at the kitchen table, the two of us, with Chrissie on my lap. ‘Say hello to the uncle,’ I said to Chrissie. But Chrissie would have nothing to do with the strange man. A child knows when something is up. Feels it in the air.

In fact Christina never took to John, then or later. As a young child she was fair and blue-eyed, like her father and quite unlike me. I’ll show you a picture. Sometimes I used to feel that, because she did not take after me in looks, she would never take to me. Strange. I was the one who did all the caring and caring-for in the household, yet compared with Mark I was the intruder, the dark one, the odd one out.

The uncle. That was what I called John in front of her. Afterwards I regretted it. Something sordid in passing off a lover as one of the family.

Anyway, we ate, we chatted, but the zest, the excitement was beginning to go out of me, leaving me flat. Aside from the wrapping paper incident in the supermarket, which I might or might not have misread, I was the one who had made all the overtures, issued the invitation. Enough, no more, I said to myself. It is up to him now to push the button through the hole or else not push the button through the hole. So to speak.

The truth is, I was not cut out to be a seductress. I did not even approve of the word, with its overtones of lacy underwear and French perfume. It was precisely in order not to fall into the role of seductress that I had not dressed up for the present occasion. I wore the same white cotton blouse and green Terylene slacks (yes, Terylene) that I had worn to the supermarket that morning. What you see is what you get.

Don’t smile. I am perfectly aware how much I was behaving like a character in a book — like one of those high-minded young women in Henry James, say, determined, despite her better instincts, to do the difficult, the modern thing. Particularly when my peers, the wives of Mark’s colleagues at the firm, were turning for guidance not to Henry James or George Eliot but to Vogue or Marie Claire or Fair Lady . But then, what are books for if not to change our lives? Would you have come all the way to far Ontario to hear what I have to say if you did not believe books are important?

No. No, I wouldn’t.

Exactly. And John wasn’t exactly a snappy dresser himself. One pair of good trousers, three plain white shirts, one pair of shoes: a real child of the Depression. But let me get back to my story.

For supper that night I made a simple lasagne. Pea soup, lasagne, ice cream: that was the menu, bland enough for a two-year-old. The lasagne was sloppier than it should have been because it was made with cottage cheese instead of ricotta. I could have made a second dash to the shops for ricotta, but on principle I did not, just as on principle I did not change my outfit.

What did we talk about over supper? Nothing much. I concentrated on feeding Chrissie — I didn’t want her to feel neglected. And John was not a great talker, as you must know.

I don’t know. I never met him in the flesh.

You never met him? I’m surprised to hear that.

I never sought him out. I never even corresponded with him. I thought it would be better if I had no sense of obligation towards him. It would leave me free to write what I wished.

But you sought me out. Your book is going to be about him yet you chose not to meet him. Your book is not going to be about me yet you asked to meet me. How do you explain that?

Because you were a figure in his life. You were important to him.

How do you know that?

I am just repeating what he said. Not to me, but to lots of people.

He said that I was an important figure in his life? I am surprised. I am gratified. Gratified not that he should have thought so — I agree, I did have an impact on his life — but that he should have said so to other people.

Let me make a confession. When you first contacted me, I nearly decided to turn you down, not to speak to you. I thought you would be some busybody, some academic newshound who had come upon a list of John’s women, his conquests, and would now be going down the list, ticking off the names, hoping to get some dirt on him.

You don’t have a high opinion of academic researchers.

No, I don’t. Which is why I have tried to make it clear to you that I was not one of his conquests. If anything, he was one of mine. But tell me — I’m curious — to whom did he say that I was important?

To various people. In letters. He doesn’t name you, but you are easy enough to identify. Also, he kept a photograph of you. I came across it among his papers.

A photograph! Can I see it? Do you have it with you?

I’ll make a copy and send it.

Yes, of course I was important to him. He was in love with me, in his way. But there is an important way of being important, and an unimportant way, and I have my doubts that I made it to the important important level. I mean, he never wrote about me. I never entered his books. Which to me suggests that I never quite flowered within him, never quite came to life.

[Silence.]

No comment? You have read his books. Where in his books do you find traces of me?

I can’t answer that. I don’t know you well enough to say. Don’t you recognize yourself in any of his characters?

No.

Perhaps you are in his books in a more diffuse way, not immediately detectable.

Perhaps. But I would have to be convinced of that. Shall we go on? Where was I?

Supper. Lasagne.

Yes. Lasagne. Conquests. I fed him lasagne and then I completed my conquest of him. How explicit do I need to be? Since he is dead, it can make no difference to him, any indiscreetness on my part. We used the marital bed. If I am going to desecrate my marriage, I thought, I may as well do so thoroughly. And a bed is more comfortable than the sofa or the floor.

As for the experience itself — I mean the experience of infidelity, which is what the experience was, predominantly, for me — it was stranger than I expected, and then over before I could get accustomed to the strangeness. Yet it was exciting, no doubt about that, from start to finish. My heart did not stop hammering. Not something I will forget, ever. I mentioned Henry James. There are plenty of betrayals in James, but I recall nothing about the sense of excitement, of heightened self-awareness, during the act itself — by which I mean the act of betrayal. James liked to present himself as a great betrayer, but I ask myself: Did he have any experience of the real thing, of real, bodily infidelity?

My first impressions? I found this new lover of mine bonier than my husband, and lighter. Doesn’t get enough to eat , I remember thinking. He and his father together in that mean little cottage on Tokai Road, a widower and his celibate son, two incompetents, two of life’s failures, supping on polony sausage and biscuits and tea. Since he didn’t want to bring his father to me, would I have to start dropping in on them with baskets of nourishing goodies?

The image that has stayed with me is of him leaning over me with his eyes shut, stroking my body, frowning with concentration as if trying to memorize me through touch alone. Up and down his hand roamed, back and forth. I was, at the time, quite proud of my figure. The jogging, the callisthenics, the dieting: if there is no payoff when you undress for a man, when is there ever going to be a payoff? I may not have been a beauty, but at least I must have been a pleasure to handle: nice and trim, a good piece of woman-flesh.

If you find this kind of talk embarrassing, say so and I will restrain myself. I am in one of the intimate professions, so plain talk doesn’t trouble me as long as it doesn’t trouble you. No? No problem? Shall I go on?