J. Coetzee - Elizabeth Costello

'It depends,' she says, playing for time, trying to think (Come on, corne on! she tells herself: Your life depends on this!). 'You ask if I have changed my plea. But who am I, who is this I , this you? We change from day to day, and we also stay the same. No I , no you is more fundamental than any other. You might as well ask which is the true Elizabeth Costello: the one who made the first statement or the one who made the second. My answer is, both are true. Both. And neither. I am an other. Pardon me for resorting to words that are not my own, but I cannot improve on them. You have the wrong person before you. If you think you have the right person you have the wrong person. The wrong Elizabeth Costello.'

Is this true? It may not be true but it is certainly not false. She has never felt more like the wrong person in her life.

Her interrogator waves impatiently. 'I am not asking to see your passport. Passports have no force here, as I am sure you are aware. The question I ask is: you, by whom I mean this person before our eyes, this person petitioning for passage, this person here and nowhere else – do you speak for yourself?'

Yes. No, emphatically no. Yes and no. Both.'

Her judge glances left and right at his colleagues. Is she imagining it, or does the flicker of a smile pass among them, and a whispered word? What is the word? Confused 7.

He turns back to her. 'Thank you. That is all.You will hear from us in due course.'

'That is all?'

'That is all, for today.'

'I am not confused.'

'Yes, you are not confused. But who is it who is not confused?'

They cannot contain themselves, her panel of judges, her board. First they titter like children, then abandon all dignity and howl with laughter.

• * *

She wanders across the square. It is, she would guess, early afternoon. There is less bustle than usual. The locals must be at their siesta. The young in one another's arms. If I had my life again, she tells herself, not without bitterness, I would spend it otherwise. Have more fun. What good has it done me, this life of writing, now that it comes to the final proving?

The sun is fierce. She ought to be wearing a hat. But her hat is in the bunkhouse, and the thought of re-entering that airless space repels her.

The courthouse scene has not left her, the ignominy of it, the shame. Yet beneath it all she remains, strangely, under the spell of the frogs. Today, it would appear, she is disposed to believe in frogs. What will it be tomorrow? Midges? Grasshoppers? The objects of her belief appear to be quite random. They come up without warning, surprising and even, despite her dark mood, delighting her.

She gives the frogs a tap with her fingernail. The tone that comes back is clear, clear as a bell.

She gives the word belief a tap. How does belief measure up? Will her test work with abstractions too?

The sound that belief returns is not as clear, but clear enough nevertheless. Today, at this time, in this place, she is evidently not without belief. In fact, now that she thinks of it, she lives, in a certain sense, by belief. Her mind, when she is truly herself, appears to pass from one belief to the next, pausing, balancing, then moving on. A picture comes to her of a girl crossing a stream; it comes together with a line from Keats: Keeping steady her laden head across a brook. She lives by belief, she works by belief, she is a creature of belief. What a relief! Should she run back and tell them, her judges, before they disrobe (and before she changes her mind)?

Astonishing that a court which sets itself up as an interrogatory of belief should refuse to pass her. They must have heard other writers before, other disbelieving believers or believing disbelievers. Writers are not lawyers, surely they must allow for that, allow for eccentricities of presentation. But of course this is not a court of law. Not even a court of logic. Her first impression was right: a court out of Kafka or Alice in Wonderland, a court of paradox. The first shall be last and the last first. Or contrariwise. If it were guaranteed in advance that one could breeze through one's hearing with anecdotes from one's childhood, skipping with laden head from one belief to another, from frogs to stones to flying machines, as often as a woman changes her hat (now where does that line come from?), then every petitioner would take up autobiography, and the court stenographer would be washed away in streams of free association.

She is before the gate again, before what is evidently her gate and hers alone, though it must be visible to anyone who cares to give it a glance. It is, as ever, closed, but the door to the lodge is open, and inside she can see the gatekeeper, the custodian, busy as usual with his papers, which ripple lightly in the air from the fan.

'Another hot day,' she remarks.

'Mm,' he mumbles, not interrupting his work.

'Every time I pass by I see you writing,' she continues, trying not to be deterred. 'You are a writer too, in a sense. What are you writing?'

'Records. Keeping the records up to date.'

'I've just had my second hearing.'

'That's good.'

'I sang for my judges. I was today's singing-bird. Do you use that expression: singing-bird?'

He shakes his head abstractedly: no.

'It did not go well, I'm afraid, my song.'

'Mm.'

'I know you are not a judge,' she says. 'Nevertheless, in your judgement, do I stand any chance of passing through? And if I do not pass through, if I am deemed not good enough to pass, will I stop here for ever, in this place?'

He shrugs. 'We all stand a chance.' He has not looked up, not once. Does that mean something? Does it mean that he has not the courage to look her in the eye?

'But as a writer,' she persists – 'what chance do I stand as a writer, with the special problems of a writer, the special fidelities?'

Fidelities. Now that she has brought it out, she recognizes it as the word on which all hinges.

He shrugs again. 'Who can say,' he says. 'It is a matter for the boards.'

'But you keep the records – who passes through, who does not. You must, in a sense, know.'

He does not answer.

'Do you see many people like me, people in my situation?' she continues urgently, out of control now, hearing herself out of control, disliking herself for it. In my situation: what does that mean? What is her situation? The situation of someone who does not know her own mind?

She has a vision of the gate, the far side of the gate, the side she is denied. At the foot of the gate, blocking the way, lies stretched out a dog, an old dog, his lion-coloured hide scarred from innumerable manglings. His eyes are closed, he is resting, snoozing. Beyond him is nothing but a desert of sand and stone, to infinity. It is her first vision in a long while, and she does not trust it, does not trust in particular the anagram GOD-DOG. Too literary, she thinks again. A curse on literature!

The man behind the desk has evidently had enough of questions. He lays down his pen, folds his hands, regards her levelly. 'All the time,' he says. 'We see people like you all the time.'

At such moments even a negligible creature, a dog, a rat, a beetle, a stunted apple tree, a cart track winding over a hill, a mossy stone, counts more for me than a night of bliss with the most beautiful, most devoted mistress. These dumb and in some cases inanimate creatures press toward me with such fullness, such presence of love, that there is nothing in range of my rapturous eye that does not have life. It is as if everything, everything that exists, everything I can recall, everything my confused thinking touches on, means something.