J. Coetzee - Age of Iron

It was like Arcady. No wonder Vercueil and his friends lived out of doors. What is a roof good for but to keep off the rain?

Vercueil and his comrades.

I lay down beside him again, my feet cold and muddy. It was quite light now. On our flattened-out box in the vacant lot we must have been visible to every passer-by. That is how we must be in the eyes of the angels: people living in houses of glass, our every act naked. Our hearts naked too, beating in chests of glass. Birdsong poured down like rain.

'I feel so much better this morning,' I said. 'But perhaps we should go back now. Feeling better is usually a warning that I am going to feel worse.'

Vercueil sat up, took off his hat, scratched his scalp with long, dirty nails. The dog came trotting up from somewhere and fussed around us. Vercueil folded the cardboard and hid it in the bushes.

'Do you know I have had a breast removed?' I said out of the blue.

He fidgeted, looked uncomfortable.

'1 regret it now, of course. Regret that I am marked. It becomes like trying to sell, a piece of furniture with a scratch or a burn mark. It's still a perfectly good chair, you say, but people aren't interested. People don't like marked objects. I am talking about my life. It may not be perfectly good, but it is still a life, not a half-life. I thought I would sell it or spend it to save my honour. But who will accept it in its present state? It is like trying to spend a drachma. A perfectly good coin somewhere else, but not here. Suspiciously marked,

'But I haven't quite given up yet. I am still casting around for something to do with it. Do you have any suggestions?'

Vercueil put on his hat, tugging it down firmly fore and aft.

'I would love to buy you a new hat,' I said.

He smiled. I took his arm; slowly we set off along Vrede Street.

'Let me tell you the dream I had,' I said. 'The man in my dream didn't have a hat, but I think it was you. He had long oily hair brushed straight back from his forehead.' Long and oily; dirty too, hanging down at the back in ugly rat's-tails; but I did not mention that.

'We were at the seaside. He was teaching me to swim. He held me by the hands and drew me out while I lay flat and kicked. I was wearing a knitted costume, the kind we had in the old days, navy blue. I was a child. But then in dreams we are always children.

'He was drawing me out, backing into the sea, fixing me with his eyes. He had eyes like yours. There were no waves, just a ripple of water coming in, glinting with light. In fact the water was oily too. Where his body broke the surface the oil clung to him with the heavy sheen oil has. I thought to myself: sardine oil: I am the little sardine: he is taking me out into the oil. I wanted to say Turn back, but dared not open my mouth for fear the oil would flood in and fill my lungs. Drowning in oil: I had not the courage for that.'

I paused to let him speak, but he was silent. We turned the corner into Schoonder Street.

'Of course I am not telling you this dream innocently,' I said. 'Retailing a dream is always meant to achieve something. The question is, what?'

'The day I first saw you behind the garage was the day I had the bad news about myself, about my case. It was too much of a coincidence. I wondered whether you were not, if you will excuse the word, an angel come to show me the way. Of course you were not, are not, cannot be – I see that. But that is only half the story, isn't it? We half perceive but we also half create.

'So I have continued to tell myself stories in which you lead, I follow. And if you say not a word, that is, I tell myself, because the angel is wordless. The angel goes before, the woman, follows. His eyes are open, he sees; hers are shut, she is still sunk in the sleep of worldliness. That is why I keep turning to you for guidance, for help.'

The front door was locked but the gate to the courtyard swung open. The broken glass had not been, swept up, the door to Florence 's room hung askew. I cast my gaze down, treading carefully, not ready yet to look into the room, not strong enough.

The kitchen door was unlocked. They had not found the key.

'Come in,' I said to Vercueil.

The house was and was not as it had been. Things in the kitchen were out of place. My umbrella hung where it had never hung before. The sofa had been shifted, exposing an old stain on the carpet. And over all a strange smell: not only cigarette smoke and sweat but something sharp and penetrating that I could not place. They have left their mark on everything, I thought: thorough workers. Then I remembered the file on my desk, the letter, all the pages thus far. That too! I thought: they will have been through that tool Soiled fingers turning the pages, eyes without love going aver the naked words. 'Help me upstairs,' I said to Vercueil.

The file, left open when I last wrote, was closed. The lock of the filing-cabinet was broken. There were gaps in the bookshelves.

The two unused rooms had had their locks forced.

They had been through the cupboard, the chest of drawers.

Nothing left untouched. Like the last visit the burglars paid. The search a mere pretext. The true purpose the touching, the fingering. The spirit malevolent. Like rape: a way of filthying a woman.

I turned to Vercueil, wordless, sick to the stomach.

'There's someone downstairs,' he said.

From the landing we could hear someone talking on the telephone.

The voice stopped. A young man in uniform emerged into the hallway and nodded to us.

'What are you doing in my house?' I called down.

'just checking,' he replied quite cheerfully. 'We didn't want strangers coming in.' He gathered up a cap, a coat, a rifle. Was it the rifle 1 had smelled? 'The detectives will be here at eight,' he said. 'I'll wait outside.' He smiled; he seemed to think he had dome me a service; he seemed to be expecting thanks.

'I must have a bath,' I said to Vercueil.

But I did not have a bath. I closed the bedroom door, took two of the red pills and lay down trembling all over. The trembling got worse till I was shaking like a leaf in a storm. I was cold but the trembling was not from the cold.

A minute at a time, I told myself: do not fall to pieces now: think only of the next minute.

The trembling began to subside.

Man, I thought: the only creature with a part of his existence in the unknown, in the future, like a shadow cast before him. Trying continually to catch up with that moving shadow, to inhabit: the image of his hope. But I, I cannot afford to be man. Must be something smaller, blinder, closer to the ground.

There was a knock and Vercueil came in, followed by the policeman who yesterday had worn the reindeer jersey and now wore a jacket and tie. The trembling began again. He motioned for Vercueil to leave the room. I sat up. 'Don't go, Mr Vercueil,' I said; and to him: 'What right have you to come into my house?'

'We have been worried about you.' He did not seem worried at all. 'Where were you last night?' And then, when I did not reply: 'Are you sure you are all right by yourself, Mrs Curren?'

Though I clenched my fists, the trembling grew worse till it convulsed me. T am not by myself!' I screamed at him: 'You are the one who is by himself!'

He was not taken aback. On the contrary, he seemed to be encouraging me to go on.

Hold yourself together, I thought! They will commit you, they will call you mad and take you away!

'What do you want here?' I asked more quietly.

'I just want to ask a few questions. How did you come across this boy Johannes?'

Johannes: was that his true name? Surely not.

'He was a friend of my domestic's son. A school-friend.'

Out of his pocket he brought a little cassette recorder and set it on the bed beside me.