John Coetzee - Scenes from Provincial Life

Dear John, she writes, I was so cross with you when we broke down on the Merweville road — I hope it didn’t show too much, I hope you will forgive me. All that bad temper has now blown away, there is no trace left. They say you don’t know a person properly until you have spent a night with him (or her). I am glad I had a chance to spend a night with you. In sleep our masks slip off and we are seen as we truly are.

The Bible looks forward to the day when the lion shall lie down with the lamb, when we will no longer need to be on our guard since we will have no more cause for fear. (Rest assured, you are not the lion, nor am I the lamb.)

I want to raise one last time the subject of Merweville.

We all grow old one day, and in the way we treat our parents we will surely be treated too. What goes around comes around, as they say. I am sure it is hard for you to live with your father when you have been used to living alone, but Merweville is not the right solution.

You are not alone in your difficulties, John. Carol and I face the same problem with our mother. When Klaus and Carol go off to America, the burden will fall squarely on Lukas and me.

I know you are not a believer, so I won’t suggest that you pray for guidance. I am not much of a believer either, but prayer is a good thing. Even if there is no one above to listen, one at least brings out the words, which is better than bottling things up.

I wish we had had more time to talk. Do you remember how we used to talk when we were children? It is so precious to me, the memory of those times. How sad that when our turn comes to die our story, the story of you and me, will die too.

I cannot tell you what tenderness I feel for you at this moment. You were always my favourite cousin, but it is more than that. I long to protect you from the world, even though you probably don’t need protecting (I am guessing). It is hard to know what to do with feelings like these. It has become such an old-fashioned relationship, hasn’t it, cousinship. Soon all the rules we had to memorize about who is allowed to marry whom, first cousins and second cousins and third cousins, will just be anthropology.

Still, I am glad we did not act on our childhood vows (do you remember?) and marry each other. You are probably glad too. We would have made a hopeless couple.

John, you need someone in your life, someone to look after you. Even if you choose someone who is not necessarily the love of your life, married life will be better than what you have now, with just your father and yourself. It is not good to sleep alone night after night. Excuse me for saying this, but I speak from bitter experience.

I should tear up this letter, it’s so embarrassing, but I won’t. I say to myself, we have known each other a long time, you will surely forgive me if I tread where I should not tread.

Lukas and I are happy together in every possible way. I go down on my knees every night (so to speak) to give thanks that his path crossed mine. How I wish you could have the same!

As if summoned, Lukas comes into the kitchen, bends down over her, presses his lips to her head, slips his hands under the dressing gown, cups her breasts. ‘ My skat ,’ he says: my treasure.

You can’t write that. You can’t. You are just making things up.

I’ll cut it out. Presses his lips to her head. ‘ My skat ,’ he says, ‘when are you coming to bed?’ ‘Now,’ she says, and lays down the pen. ‘Now.’

Skat: an endearment she disliked until the day she heard it from his lips. Now, when he whispers the word, she melts. This man’s treasure, into which he may dip whenever it pleases him.

They lie in each other’s arms. The bed creaks, but she could not care less, they are at home, they can make the bed creak as much as they like.

Again!

I promise, when I have finished I will hand over the text to you, the entire text, and let you cut out whatever you wish.

‘Was that a letter to John you were writing?’ says Lukas.

‘Yes. He is so unhappy.’

‘Maybe that’s just his nature. A melancholy type.’

‘But he used not to be. He used to be such a happy soul in the old days. If he could only find someone to take him out of himself!’

But Lukas is asleep. That is his nature, his type: he falls asleep at once, like an innocent child.

She would like to be able to join him, but sleep is slow in coming. It is as if the ghost of her cousin still lurks, calling her back to the dark kitchen to complete what she was writing to him. Have faith in me , she whispers. I promise I will return .

But when she wakes it is Monday, there is no time for writing, no time for intimacies, they have to set off at once on the drive to Calvinia, she to the hotel, Lukas to the transport depot. In the windowless little office behind the reception desk she labours over the backlog of invoices; by evening she is too exhausted to pursue the letter she was writing, and anyhow she has lost touch with the feeling. Am thinking of you, she writes at the foot of the page. Even that is not true, she has not given John a thought all day, she has had no time. Much love, she writes. Margie . She addresses the envelope and seals it. So. It is done.

Much love, but exactly how much? Enough to save John, in a pinch? Enough to raise him out of himself, out of the melancholy of his type? She doubts it. And what if he does not want to be raised? If his grand plan is to spend weekends on the stoep of the house in Merweville writing poems with the sun beating down on the tin roof and his father coughing in a back room, he may need all the melancholy he can summon up.

That is her first moment of misgiving. The second moment comes as she is mailing the letter, as the envelope is trembling on the very lip of the slot. Is what she has written, what her cousin will be fated to read if she lets the letter go, truly the best she can offer him? You need someone in your life . What kind of help is it to be told that? Much love .

But then she thinks, He is a grown man, why should it be up to me to save him? and she gives the envelope a final nudge.

She has to wait ten days, until the Friday of the next week, for a reply.

Dear Margot,

Thank you for your letter, which was waiting for us when we got back from Voëlfontein, and thank you for the good if impracticable advice re marriage.

The drive back from Voëlfontein was incident-free. Michiel’s mechanic friend did a first-class job. I apologize again for the night I made you spend in the open.

You write about Merweville. I agree, our plans were not properly thought through, and now that we are back in Cape Town begin to seem a bit crazy. It is one thing to buy a weekend shack on the coast, but who in his right mind would want to spend summer vacations in a hot Karoo town?

I trust that all is well on the farm. My father sends his love to you and Lukas, as do I.

John

Is that all? The cold formality of his response shocks her, brings an angry flush to her cheeks.

‘What is it?’ asks Lukas.

She shrugs, ‘It’s nothing,’ she says, and passes the letter over. ‘A letter from John.’

He reads it through swiftly. ‘So they are dropping their plans for Merweville,’ he says. ‘That’s a relief. Why are you so upset?’

‘It’s nothing,’ she says. ‘Just the tone.’

They are parked, the two of them, in front of the post office. This is what they do on Friday afternoons, it is part of the routine they have created for themselves: last thing, after they have done the shopping and before driving back to the farm, they fetch the week’s mail and scan it sitting side by side in the pickup. Though she could fetch the mail herself any day of the week, she does not. She and Lukas do it together, as they do together whatever else they can.