J. Coetzee - Life & Times Of Michael K

In the next bed was a young boy with a bandaged stump of an arm. 'What happened?' said K. The boy turned away and did not reply.

If I could find my clothes, K thought, I would leave. But the cupboard beside his bed was empty.

He ate again at midday. 'Eat while you can,' said the orderly who brought his food, 'the great hunger is still to come.' Then he moved on, pushing the trolley of food before him. It seemed a strange thing to say. K kept an eye on him as he went his round. From the far end of the ward the orderly felt K's gaze, and gave him a mysterious smile; but when he returned to fetch the tray he would say nothing more.

The sun beating down on the iron roof turned the ward into an oven. K lay with his legs spread, dozing. From one of his spells he awoke to see the same policeman and nurse standing over him. He shut his eyes; when he opened them they were gone. Night fell.

In the morning a nurse fetched him and led him to a bench in the main building, where he waited an hour till it was his turn. 'How are you feeling today?' asked the doctor. K hesitated, not knowing what to say, and the doctor stopped listening. He told K to breathe and listened to his chest. He examined him for venereal infection. In two minutes it was over. He wrote something in the brown folder on his desk. 'Have you ever seen a doctor about your mouth?' he asked while he wrote. 'No,' said K. 'You could get it corrected, you know,' said the doctor, but did not offer to correct it.

K returned to his bed and waited with his hands under his head till the nurse brought him clothes: underpants and a khaki shirt and shorts, neatly ironed. 'Put these on,' she said, and busied herself elsewhere. Sitting up in bed, K put them on. The shorts were too big. When he stood up he had to hold the waist-band to stop them from slipping down. Then he saw the policeman at the door. 'These are too big, ' he said to the nurse. 'Can't I have my own clothes?' 'You will get your own clothes back at the desk,' she told him. The policeman led him down the corridor to the reception desk and there took charge of a brown paper parcel. No words passed. There was a blue van in the parking lot. K waited for the back to be unlocked; the tarmac was so hot under his bare soles that he had to dance where he stood.

He expected to be taken back to the police station, but instead they drove all the way through the town and then five kilometres down a dirt road to a camp in the bare veld. K had seen the ochre rectangle of Jakkalsdrif from his perch in the mountains but had thought it was a construction site. Not for a moment had he guessed that it might be one of the resettlement camps, that the tents and unpainted wood-and-iron buildings might house people, that its perimeter might be a three-metre fence surmounted with a strand of barbed wire. When he climbed out of the van holding up his pants, he did so under the eyes of a hundred curious inmates, adults and children, lining the fence on either side of the gate.

By the gate stood a little hut with a covered porch on which identical grey-green succulents grew out of two tubs of earth. On the porch waited a stout man in military uniform. K recognized the blue beret of the Free Corps. The policeman greeted him and they retired together into the hut. With his parcel under his arm K was left to endure the inspection of the crowd. He stared first into the distance, then at his feet; he did not know what expression to wear. 'Where did you steal those pants?' called out someone. 'Off Sarge's line!' came another voice, and there was a ripple of laughter.

Then a second Free Corps man emerged from the hut. He unlocked the camp gate and conducted K through the crowd, crossing the bare earth of the assembly square to one of the wood-and-iron buildings. It was dark inside, there were no windows. He indicated an empty bunk. 'That's your home from now on,' he said. 'It's the only home you've got, keep it clean. ' K clambered up and stretched out on the bare foam rubber no more than an armslength from the iron roof. In the dim light, in the stifling heat he waited for the guard to leave.

All afternoon he lay on his bunk listening to the sounds of camp life outside. Once a troop of children rushed in and chased one another noisily over and under the bunks; when they left they slammed the door shut. He tried to sleep but could not. His throat was parched. He thought of the cool of his cave up in the mountains, of the streams that never stopped running. This is like Huis Norenius, he thought: I am back in Huis Norenius a second time, only now I am too old to bear it. He took off the khaki shirt and shorts and opened the package; but the clothes whose smell used to be simply his own smell had in the space of a few days grown stale and frowzy and alien. Spreadeagled on the hot mattress in his undershorts, he waited for the afternoon to pass.

Someone opened the door and tiptoed across the floor. K pretended to be asleep. Fingers touched his bare arm. He flinched at the touch. 'Are you all right?' said a man's voice. Against the dazzle of light from the doorway he could not make out the face. 'I'm fine,' he said: the words seemed to come from far away. The stranger tiptoed off again. K thought: I needed more warning, I should have been told I was going to be sent back amongst people.

Later he put on the khaki clothes and went outside. The sun baked down, there was no breath of wind. Two women lay together on a blanket in the shade of a tent. One was asleep, the other had a sleeping child at her breast. She gave K a smile; he nodded and passed. He found the cistern and drank copiously. On his return he addressed her. 'Is there anywhere I can wash some clothes?' he asked. She pointed out the washhouse. 'Have you got soap?' she said. 'Yes,' he lied.

In the washhouse were two basins and two showers. He wanted to have a shower, but when he tried the shower tap there was no water. He washed the white St. John's jacket, the black trousers, the yellow shirt and underpants with the sagging elastic; he found pleasure in soaking and wringing, in standing with his eyes shut and his arms plunged to the elbows in cold water. He put on his own shoes. Afterwards, when he went to drape his clothes over the washline, he saw the painted sign against the wall: jakkalsdrif

RELOCATION CAMP / BATH TIMES / MALES 6-7 AM / FEMALES 7-30-8.30 am / by order / save water / be sparing. Following the line of the waterpipe from the cistern, he saw it run under the camp fence and then on to a pump on high ground some distance away.

The woman with the baby stopped him as he passed. 'You leave your clothes there,' she warned, 'they'll be gone in the morning.' So he fetched the damp clothing back and spread it over his bunk.

The sun was setting; there were more people about now, and children everywhere. Three old men were playing cards outside the next hut. For a while he stood and watched.

He counted thirty tents evenly spaced over the camp terrain, and seven huts besides the bathhouse and latrines. Foundations for a second row of huts had been laid, and rusty bolts jutted from the concrete.

He walked over to the gate. On the guardhouse porch one of the two Free Corps sentries sat in a deckchair dozing, his shirt open to the waist. K leaned his head against the mesh, willing the guard to wake. 'Why have I been sent here?' he wanted to say. 'How long do I have to stay?' But the guard went on sleeping, and K lacked the courage to shout.

He wandered back to the hut, and from the hut to the cistern. He did not know what to do with himself. A young girl came with a bucket to fill, but stopped when she saw him and went away. He retreated to the back fence of the camp and stared out over the empty veld.

In one or two of the stone fireplaces amongst the tents there were now fires burning; there was a bustle of people coming and going; the camp was coming to life.