John Coetzee - Scenes from Provincial Life

Believe me, over the course of the years I have given plenty of thought to John and his type. What I am going to tell you now I offer with due consideration, and I hope without animus. Because, as I said, John was important to me. He taught me a lot. He was a friend who remained a friend even after I broke up with him. When I felt low I could always rely on him to joke with me and lift my spirits. He raised me once to unexpected erotic heights — once only, alas! But the fact is, John wasn’t made for love, wasn’t constructed that way — wasn’t constructed to fit into or be fitted into. Like a sphere. Like a glass ball. There was no way to connect with him. That is my conclusion, my mature conclusion.

Which may not come as a surprise to you. You probably think it holds true for artists in general, male artists: that they aren’t built for what I am calling love; that they can’t or won’t give themselves fully for the simple reason that there is a secret essence of themselves they need to preserve for the sake of their art. Am I right? Is that what you believe? Do I believe that artists aren’t built for love? No. Not necessarily. I try to keep an open mind on the subject.

Well, you can’t keep your mind open indefinitely, not if you mean to get your book written. Consider. Here we have a man who, in the most intimate of human relations, cannot connect, or can connect only briefly, intermittently. Yet how did he make a living? He made a living writing reports, expert reports, on intimate human experience. Because that is what novels are about — isn’t it? — intimate experience. Novels as opposed to poetry or painting. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?

[Silence.]

I have been very open with you, Mr Vincent. For instance, the Schubert business: I never told anyone about that before you. Why not? Because I thought it would cast John in too ridiculous a light. Because who but a total dummy would order the woman he is supposed to be in love with to take lessons in lovemaking from some dead composer, some Viennese Bagatellenmeister ? When a man and a woman are in love they create their own music, it comes instinctively, they don’t need lessons. But what does our friend John do? He drags a third presence into the bedroom. Franz Schubert becomes number one, the master of love; John becomes number two, the master’s disciple and executant; and I become number three, the instrument on whom the sex-music is going to be played. That — it seems to me — tells you all you need to know about John Coetzee. The man who mistook his mistress for a violin. Who probably did the same with every other woman in his life: mistook her for some instrument or other, violin, bassoon, timpani. Who was so dumb, so cut off from reality, that he could not distinguish between playing on a woman and loving a woman. A man who loved by numbers. One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry!

That is why he was never my Prince Charming. That is why I never let him bear me off on his white steed. Because he was not a prince but a frog. Because he was not human, not in the fullest sense.

I said I would be frank with you, and I have kept my promise. I will tell you one more frank thing, just one more, then I will stop, and that will be the end of it. It is about the night I tried to describe to you, the night at the Canterbury Hotel, when, after all our experimenting, the two of us finally hit on the right chemistry, the right combination. How could we have achieved that, you may ask — as I ask too — if John was a frog and not a prince?

Let me tell you how I now see that pivotal night. I was hurt and confused, as I said, and beside myself with worry. John saw or guessed what was going on in me and for once opened his heart, the heart he normally kept wrapped in armour. With open hearts, his and mine, we came together. For him that first opening of the heart could and should have marked a sea-change, the beginning of a new life for the two of us together. Yet what happened? In the middle of the night John woke up and saw me sleeping beside him with no doubt a look of peace on my face, even of bliss, bliss is not unattainable in this world. He saw me — saw me as I was at that moment — took fright, hurriedly strapped the armour back over his heart, with chains and a double padlock, and stole out into the darkness.

Do you think I find it easy to forgive him for that? Do you?

You are being a little hard on him, if I may say so.

No, I am not. I am just telling the truth. Without the truth, no matter how hard, there can be no healing. That’s all. That’s the end of my offering for your book. Look, it’s nearly eight o’clock. Time for you to go. You have a plane to catch in the morning.

Just one question more, one brief question.

No, absolutely not, no more questions. You have had time enough. End. Fin . Go.

Interview conducted in Kingston, Ontario, May 2008.

LET ME BRING YOU up to date, Mrs Jonker, with what I have been doing since we met last December. After I got back to England I transcribed the tapes of our conversations. I asked a colleague who was originally from South Africa to check that I had all the Afrikaans words right. Then I did something fairly radical, which I am hoping you will approve of. I cut out my own interjections, my prompts and questions, and fixed up the prose to read as if it were an uninterrupted narrative spoken in your voice.

What I would like to do now is to read through the new text with you and give you a chance to comment. How does that sound?

All right.

One further point. Because the story you told was quite lengthy, longer than I expected, I decided to dramatize it here and there, for the sake of variety, letting the various people speak in their own voices. You will see what I mean once we get going.

All right.

Here goes then.

In the old days, at Christmas-time, there would be huge gatherings on the family farm. From far and wide the sons and daughters of Gerrit and Lenie Coetzee would converge on Voëlfontein, bringing with them their spouses and offspring, more and more offspring each year, for a week of laughing and joking and reminiscing and, above all, eating. For the menfolk it was a time for hunting too: game birds, antelope.

But by now, in the 1970s, those family gatherings are sadly diminished. Gerrit Coetzee is long in the grave, Lenie shuffles around a nursing home in The Strand. Of their twelve sons and daughters, the firstborn has already joined the multitudinous shades; in private moments –

Multitudinous shades?

Too grand-sounding? I’ll change it. The firstborn has already departed this life. In private moments the survivors have intimations of their own end, and shudder.

No, I don’t like that.

You mean the shuddering? No problem. I’ll cut it out. Has already departed this life. Among the survivors the joking has grown more subdued, the reminiscing sadder, the eating more temperate. As for hunting parties, there are no more of those: old bones are weary, and anyway, after year upon year of drought, there is nothing left in the veld worth shooting.

Of the third generation, the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters, most are by now too absorbed in their own affairs to attend, or too indifferent to the larger family. This year only four of that generation are present: her cousin Michiel, who has inherited the farm; her cousin John from Cape Town; her sister Carol; and herself, Margot. And of the four, she alone, she suspects, looks back to the old days with anything like nostalgia.

I don’t understand. Why do you call me she?

Of the four, Margot alone, she — Margot — suspects, looks back with anything like nostalgia … You can hear how clumsy it sounds. It just won’t work that way. The she I have introduced is like I but is not I . Do you really dislike it so much?