J. Coetzee - Elizabeth Costello

We think of them as omniscient, these gods, but the truth is they know very little, and what they know know only in the most general of ways. No body of learning they can call their own, no philosophy, properly speaking. Their cosmology an assortment of commonplaces. Their sole expertise in astral flight, their sole homegrown science anthropology They specialize in humankind because of what we have and they lack; they study us because they are envious.

As for us, do they guess (what irony!) that what makes our embraces so intense, so unforgettable, is the glimpse they give us of a life we imagine as theirs, a life we call (since our language has no word for it) the beyond? I do not like that other world, writes Martha Clifford to her pen pal Leopold Bloom, but she lies: why would she write at all if she did not want to be swept off to another world by a demon lover?

Leopold, meanwhile, strolls around the Dublin Public Library peeking, when no one is looking, between the legs of the statues of goddesses. If Apollo has a marble cock and balls, does Artemis, he wonders, have an orifice to match? Investigations in aesthetics, that is what he likes to tell himself he is engaged in: how far does the artist's duty to nature extend? What he really wants to know, however, had he only the words for it, is whether congress is possible with the divine.

And she herself? How much has she learned about gods in her wanderings around Dublin with that irremediably ordinary man? Almost like being married to him. Elizabeth Bloom, second and ghostly wife of.

What she knows for certain about the gods is that they peek at us all the time, peek even between our legs, full of curiosity, full of envy; sometimes go so far as to rattle our earthly cage. But how deep, she asks herself today, does that curiosity really run? Aside from our erotic gifts, are they curious about us, their anthropological specimens, to the degree that we in turn are curious about chimps, or about birds, or about flies? Despite some evidence to the contrary, she would like to think, chimps. She would like to think the gods admire, however grudgingly, our energy, the endless ingenuity with which we try to elude our fate. Fascinating creatures, she would like to think they remark to each other over their ambrosia; so like us in many respects; their eyes in particular so expressive; what a pity they lack that je ne sais quoi without which they can never ascend to sit beside us!

But perhaps she is wrong about their interest in us. Or rather, perhaps she used to be right, but now is wrong. In her heyday, she would like to think, she could have given winged Eros himself cause to pay earth a visit. Not because she was so much of a beauty but because she longed for the god's touch, longed until she ached; because in her longings, so unrequitable and therefore so comical when acted on, she might have promised a genuine taste of what was missing back home on Olympus. But everything seems now to have changed. Where in the world today does one find such immortal longings as hers used to be? Not in the personal columns, for sure. 'SWF, 5' 8", thirties, brunette, into astrology, biking, seeks SWM, 35-45 for friendship, fun, adventure.' Nowhere: 'DWF, 5' 8", sixties, runs to death and death meets her as fast, seeks G, immortal, earthly form immaterial, for ends to which no words suffice.' In the editorial office they would frown. Indecent desires, they would say, and toss her in the same basket as the pederasts.

We do not call on the gods because we no longer believe in them. She hates sentences that hinge on because. The jaws of the trap snap shut, but the mouse, every time, has escaped. And what an irrelevancy anyway! How misguided! Worse than Hölderlin! Who cares what we believe? The sole question is whether the gods will continue to believe in us, whether we can keep alive the last flicker of the flame that once used to burn in them. 'Friendship, fun, adventure': what kind of appeal is that, to a god? More than enough fun where they come from. More than enough beauty too.

Strange how, as desire relaxes its grip on her body, she sees more and more clearly a universe ruled by desire. Haven't you read your Newton, she would like to say to the people in the dating agency (would like to say to Nietzsche too if she could get in touch with him)? Desire runs both ways: A pulls B because B pulls A, and vice versa: that is how you go about building a universe. Or if desire is still too rude a word, then what of appetency? Appetency and chance: a powerful duo, more than powerful enough to build a cosmology on, from the atoms and the little things with nonsense names that make up atoms to Alpha Centauri and Cassiopeia and the great dark back of beyond. The gods and ourselves, whirled helplessly around by the winds of chance, yet pulled equally towards each other, towards not only B and C and D but towards X and Y and Z and Omega too. Not the least thing, not the last thing but is called to by love.

A vision, an opening up, as the heavens are opened up by a rainbow when the rain stops falling. Does it suffice, for old folk, to have these visions now and again, these rainbows, as a comfort, before the rain starts pelting down again? Must one be too creaky to join the dance before one can see the pattern?

It is A hot afternoon. The square is packed with visitors. Few spare a glance for the white-haired woman who, suitcase in hand, descends from the bus. She wears a blue cotton frock; her neck, in the sun, is burned red and beaded with sweat.

Past the pavement tables, past the young folk, the wheels of the suitcase rattling over the cobbles, she makes her way to the gate where a uniformed man stands drowsily on guard, propped on the rifle he holds butt down before him.

'Is this the gate?' she asks.

Beneath the peaked cap he blinks once in confirmation.

'Can I pass through?'

With a movement of the eyes he indicates the lodge to one side.

The lodge, put together of prefabricated wooden panels, is stiflingly hot. Inside, behind a small trestle table, sits a man in shirtsleeves, writing. A tiny electric fan blows a stream of air into his face.

'Excuse me,' she says. He pays her no attention. 'Excuse me. Can someone open the gate for me?'

He is filling in some kind of form. Without ceasing to write, he speaks. 'First you must make a statement.'

'Make a statement? To whom? To you?'

With his left hand he pushes a sheet of paper across to her. She lets go of the suitcase and picks up the paper. It is blank.

'Before I can pass through I must make a statement,' she repeats. 'A statement of what?'

'Belief. What you believe.'

'Belief. Is that all? Not a statement of faith? What if I do not believe? What if I am not a believer?'

The man shrugs. For the first time he looks directly at her. 'We all believe. We are not cattle. For each of us there is something we believe. Write it down, what you believe. Put it in the statement.'

There is no more doubt in her mind about where she is, who she is. She is a petitioner before the gate. The journey that brought her here, to this country, to this town, that seemed to reach its end when the bus halted and its door opened on to the crowded square, was not the end of it all. Now commences a trial of a different kind. Some act is required of her, some prescribed yet undefined affirmation, before she will be found good and can pass through. But is this the one who will judge her, this ruddy, heavy-set man on whose rather sketchy uniform (military? civil guard?) she can detect no mark of rank but on whom the fan, swinging neither left nor right, pours a coolness that she wishes were being poured on her?

'I am a writer,' she says. 'You have probably not heard of me here, but I write, or have written, under the name Elizabeth Costello. It is not my profession to believe, just to write. Not my business. I do imitations, as Aristotle would have said.'