J.M. Coetzee - The Master of Petersburg

Her hand lies lifeless between his.

'You have it in your power,' he continues, still following the words like beacons, seeing where they will take him. 'You can bring him back. For one minute. For just one minute.'

He remembers how dry she seemed when he first met her. Like a mummy: dry bones wrapped in cerements that will fall to dust at a touch. When she speaks, the voice creaks from her throat. 'You love him so much,' she says: 'you will certainly see him again.'

He lets go her hand. Like a chain of bones, she withdraws it. Don't humour me! he wants to say.

'You are an artist, a master,' she says. 'It is for you, not for me, to bring him back to life.'

Master. It is a word he associates with metal – with the tempering of swords, the casting of bells. A master blacksmith, a foundry-master. Master of life: strange term. But he is prepared to reflect on it. He will give a home to any word, no matter how strange, no matter how stray, if there is a chance it is an anagram for Pavel.

'I am far from being a master,' he says. 'There is a crack running through me. What can one do with a cracked bell? A cracked bell cannot be mended.'

What he says is true. Yet at the same time he recalls that one of the bells of the Cathedral of the Trinity in Sergiyev is cracked, and has been from before Catherine's time. It has never been removed and melted down. It sounds over the town every day. The people call it St Sergius's wooden leg.

Now there is exasperation in her voice. 'I feel for you, Fyodor Mikhailovich,' she says, 'but you must remember you are not the first parent to lose a child. Pavel had twenty-two years of life. Think of all the children who are taken in infancy.'

'So -?'

'So recognize that it is the rule, not the exception, to suffer loss. And ask yourself: are you in mourning for Pavel or for yourself?'

Loss. An icy distance instals itself between him and her. 'I have not lost him, he is not lost,' he says through clenched teeth.

She shrugs. 'If he is not lost then you must know where he is. He is certainly not in this room.'

He glances around the room. That bunching of shadows in the corner – might it not be the trace of the breath of the shadow of the ghost of him? 'One does not live in a place and leave nothing of oneself behind,' he whispers.

'No, of course one does not leave nothing behind. That is what I told you this afternoon. But what he left is not in this room. He has gone from here, this is not where you will find him. Speak to Matryona. Make your peace with her before you leave. She and your son were very close. If he has left a mark behind, it is on her.'

'And on you?'

'I was very fond of him, Fyodor Mikhailovich. He was a good and generous young man. As your son, he did not have an easy life. He was lonely, he was unsure of himself, he had to struggle to find his way. I could see all of that. But I am not of his generation. He could not speak to me as he could to Matryona. He and she could be children together.' She pauses. 'I used to get the feeling – let me mention it now, since we are being frank with each other – that the child in Pavel was put down too early, before he had had enough time to play. I don't know whether it occurred to you. Perhaps not. But I am still surprised at your anger against him for something as trivial as sleeping late.'

'Why surprised?'

'Because I expected more sympathy from you – from an artist. Some children dream at night, others wait for the morning to do their dreaming. You should think twice about waking a dreaming child. When Pavel was with Matryona the child in him had a chance to come out. I am glad now that it could happen – glad he did not miss it.'

An image of Pavel comes back to him as he was at seven, in his grey checked coat and ear-muffs and boots too large for him, galloping about in the snow, shouting crazily. There is something else looming too in the corner of the picture, something he thrusts away.

'Pavel and I first laid eyes on each other in Semi-palatinsk when he was already seven years old,' he says. 'He did not take to me. I was the stranger he and his mother were coming to live with. I was the man who was taking his mother away from him.'

His mother the widow. A widow's son. Widowson.

What he has been thrusting away, what comes back insistently as he talks, is what he can only call a troll, a misshapen little creature, red-haired, red-bearded, no taller than a child of three or four. Pavel is still running and shouting in the snow, his knees knocking together coltishly. As for the troll, he stands to one side looking on. He is wearing a rust-coloured jerkin open at the neck; he (or it) does not seem to feel the cold.

'… difficult for a child…' She is saying something he can only half attend to. Who is this troll-creature? He peers more closely into the face. With a shock it comes home to him. The cratered skin, the scars swelling hard and livid in the cold, the thin beard growing out of the pock-marks – it is Nechaev again, Nechaev grown small, Nechaev in Siberia haunting the beginnings of his son! What does the vision mean? He groans softly to himself, and at once Anna Sergeyevna cuts herself short. 'I am sorry,' he apologizes. But he has offended her. 'I am sure you have packing to do,' she says, and, over his apologies, departs.

He is conducted into the same office as before. But the official behind the desk is not Maximov. Without introducing himself this man gestures towards a chair. 'Your name?' he says.

He gives his name. 'I thought I was going to see Councillor Maximov.'

'We will come to that. Occupation?'

'Writer.'

'Writer? What kind of writer?'

'I write books.'

'What kind of books?'

'Stories. Story-books.'

'For children?'

'No, not particularly for children. But I would hope that children can read them.'

'Nothing indecent?'

Nothing indecent? He ponders. 'Nothing that could offend a child,' he responds at last.

'Good.'

'But the heart has its dark places,' he adds reluctantly. 'One does not always know.'

For the first time the man raises his eyes from his papers. 'What do you mean by that?' He is younger than Maximov. Maximov's assistant?

'Nothing. Nothing.'

The man lays down his pen. 'Let us get to the subject of the deceased Ivanov. You were acquainted with Ivanov?'

'I don't understand. I thought I was summoned here in connection with my son's papers.'

'All in good time. Ivanov. When did you first have contact with him?'

'I first spoke to him about a week ago. He was loitering at the door of the house where I am at present staying.'

' Sixty-three Svechnoi Street.'

' Sixty-three Svechnoi Street. It was particularly cold, and I offered him shelter. He spent the night in my room. The next day I heard there had been a murder and he was suspected. Only later – '

'Ivanov was suspected? Suspected of murder? Do I understand you thought Ivanov was a murderer? Why did you think so?'

'Please allow me to finish! There was a rumour to that effect going around the building, or else the child who repeated the rumour to me misunderstood everything, I don't know which. Does it matter, when the fact is the man is dead? I was surprised and appalled that someone like that should have been killed. He was quite harmless.'

'But he was not what he seemed to be, was he?'

'Do you mean a beggar?'

'He was not a beggar, was he?'

'In a manner of speaking, no, he wasn't, but in another manner of speaking, yes, he was.'

'You are not being clear. Are you claiming that you were unaware of Ivanov's responsibilities? Is that why you were surprised?'

'I was surprised that anyone should have put his immortal soul in peril by killing a harmless nonentity.'