J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

He has grown to like the sisters. To them he feels he can pour out his heart.

‘I have always thought the Academy of Singing a rather pretentious institution,’ says Valentina. ‘But they have high standards, there is no doubt about that.’

‘If by some miracle Davíd were to be admitted, would you be prepared to assist with his fees?’ He repeats the figure he has been given.

‘Of course,’ says Valentina without hesitation. Consuelo and Alma nod in agreement. ‘We are fond of Davíd. He is an exceptional child. He has a great future ahead of him. Though not necessarily on the operatic stage.’

‘How is he coping with the shock, Simón?’ asks Consuelo. ‘He must have found it terribly distressing.’

‘He has dreams about señora Arroyo. He had grown very close to her, which surprised me, because I found her rather cold, cold and forbidding. But he took to her from the beginning. There must have been some quality he found in her that I missed.’

‘She was very beautiful. Very classical. Didn’t you find her beautiful?’

‘Yes, she was beautiful. But to a small boy beauty is hardly a consideration.’

‘I suppose not. Tell me: do you think she was blameless in the whole sad affair?’

‘Not wholly. There had been a long history between her and Dmitri. Dmitri was obsessed with her, he worshipped the ground she trod on. So he told me, so he told everyone who would listen to him. Yet she treated him without consideration. She treated him like dirt, in fact. I saw it myself. Is it any wonder that he went berserk in the end? Of course I am not trying to excuse him. .’

Davíd comes back from his tour. ‘Where is Rufo?’ he demands.

‘He was ill, we had him put to sleep,’ answers Valentina. ‘Where are your shoes?’

‘Roberta made me take them off. Can I see Rufo?’

‘Putting someone to sleep is a euphemism, my boy. Rufo is dead. Roberta is going to find us a puppy who will grow up to be a watchdog in his place.’

‘But where is he?’

‘I can’t say. I don’t know. We left that to Roberta to take care of.’

‘She didn’t treat him like dirt.’

‘I’m sorry — who didn’t treat whom like dirt?’

‘Ana Magdalena. She didn’t treat Dmitri like dirt.’

‘Have you been eavesdropping? That’s not nice, Davíd. You shouldn’t eavesdrop.’

‘She didn’t treat him like dirt. She was just pretending.’

‘Well, you know better than I do, I am sure. How is your mother?’

He, Simón, intervenes. ‘I am sorry Inés can’t be here, but she has a brother visiting from Novilla. He is staying in our apartment. I have moved out for the time being.’

‘His name is Diego,’ says the boy. ‘He hates Simón. He says Simón is una manzana podrida . He says Inés should run away from Simón and come back to Novilla. What does it mean, una manzana podrida ?’

‘A rotten apple.’

‘I know, but what does it mean ?’

‘I don’t know. Do you want to tell him, Simón, what una manzana podrida is, since you are the manzana in question?’

The three sisters dissolve in laughter.

‘Diego has been cross with me for a long time for taking his sister away from him. In his view of things, he and Inés and their younger brother were living happily together until I appeared on the scene and stole Inés. Which is entirely false, of course, a complete misrepresentation of the facts.’

‘Oh? And what is the truth?’ says Consuelo.

‘I didn’t steal Inés. Inés has no feelings for me. She is Davíd’s mother. She watches over him, and I watch over the two of them. That is all.’

‘Very strange,’ says Consuelo. ‘Very unusual. But we believe you. We know you and we believe you. We don’t think you are una manzana podrida at all.’ Her sisters nod in agreement. ‘Therefore you, young man, should go back to this brother of Inés and inform him that he has made a big mistake about Simón. Will you do that?’

‘Ana Magdalena had a passion for Dmitri,’ says the boy.

‘I don’t think so,’ says he, Simón. ‘It was the other way around. It was Dmitri who had the passion. It was his passion for Ana Magdalena that led him to do bad things.’

‘You always say that passion is bad,’ says the boy. ‘Inés too. You both hate passion.’

‘Not at all. I don’t hate passion, that is a complete untruth. Nevertheless, one can’t ignore the bad consequences of passion. What do you think, Valentina, Consuelo, Alma: is passion good or bad?’

‘I think passion is good,’ says Alma. ‘Without passion the world would stop going round. It would be a dull and empty place. In fact’ — she looks to her sisters — ‘without passion we wouldn’t be here at all, not one of us. Nor the pigs nor the cows nor the chickens. We are all here because of passion, someone’s passion for someone else. You hear it in the springtime, when the air is thick with bird calls, each bird searching for a mate. If that isn’t passion, what is? Even the molecules. We wouldn’t have water if oxygen didn’t have a passion for hydrogen.’

Of the three sisters it is Alma he likes best, though not with a passion. She has no trace of her sisters’ good looks. She is short, even dumpy; her face is round and pleasant but without character; she wears little wire-rimmed glasses that do not suit her. Is she a full sister to the other two or only a half-sister? He does not know them well enough to ask.

‘You don’t think there are two kinds of passion, Alma, good passion and bad passion?’ says Valentina.

‘No, I think there is just one kind of passion, the same everywhere. What are your thoughts, Davíd?’

‘Simón says I am not allowed to have thoughts,’ says the boy. ‘Simón says I am too young. He says I have to be old like him before I can have thoughts.’

‘Simón is full of nonsense,’ says Alma. ‘Simón is turning into a shrivelled old manzana .’ Again the sisters dissolve in laughter. ‘Pay no attention to Simón. Tell us what you think.’

The boy steps to the middle of the floor and without preamble, in his socks, begins to dance. At once he, Simón, recognizes the dance. It is the same dance that the elder Arroyo boy performed at the concert; but Davíd is doing it better, with more grace and authority and conviction, even though the other boy was the son of the master of the dance. The sisters watch in silence, absorbed, as the boy traces his complex hieroglyph, avoiding with ease the fussy little tables and stools of the parlour.

You dance for these women yet you won’t dance for me , he thinks. You dance for Inés. What do they have that I do not?

The dance comes to its end. Davíd does not take a bow — that is not the way of the Academy — but for a moment he does stand erect and still before them with his eyes closed and a rapt little smile on his lips.

‘Bravo!’ says Valentina. ‘Was that a dance of passion?’

‘It is a dance to call down Three,’ says the boy.

‘And passion?’ says Valentina. ‘Where does passion come into the picture?’

The boy does not answer but, in a gesture that he, Simón, has not seen before, places three fingers of his right hand over his mouth.

‘Is this a charade?’ asks Consuelo. ‘Must we guess?’

The boy does not stir, but his eyes sparkle mischievously.

‘I understand,’ says Alma.

‘Then perhaps you can explain it to us,’ says Consuelo.

‘There is nothing to explain,’ says Alma.

When he told the sisters the boy was having dreams of Ana Magdalena, it was less than the whole truth. In all their time together, first with him, then with Inés, the boy had been able to fall asleep at night without a fuss, to sleep deeply and wake up bright and full of energy. But since the discovery in the basement of the museum there has been a change. Now he regularly appears at Inés’ bedside during the night, or at his bedside when he is visiting him, whimpering, complaining of bad dreams. In his dreams Ana Magdalena appears to him, blue from head to foot and carrying a baby which is ‘tiny, tiny, tiny, as tiny as a pea’; or else she opens her hand and the baby is revealed in her palm, curled up like a little blue slug.