J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

Inés releases the boy. ‘Go with your friend,’ he, Simón, tells him. ‘Help him bury the bird. Make sure he does it properly.’

Later the boy seeks him and Inés out where they are working among the vines.

‘So: have you buried the poor duck?’ he asks.

The boy shakes his head. ‘We couldn’t dig a hole for him. We didn’t have a spade. Bengi hid him in the bushes.’

‘That’s not nice. When I have finished for the day I will go and bury him. You can show me where.’

‘Why did he do it?’

‘Why did that young man put him out of his misery? I told you. Because he would have been helpless with a broken wing. He would have refused to eat. He would have pined away.’

‘No, I mean why did Bengi do it?’

‘I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm. He was just throwing stones, and one thing led to another.’

‘Will the babies die too?’

‘Of course not. They have a mother to take care of them.’

‘But who is going to give them milk?’

‘Birds are not like us. They don’t drink milk. Anyhow, it is mothers who give milk, not fathers.’

‘Will they find a padrino ?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t think there are padrinos among birds, just as there is no milk. Padrinos are a human institution.’

‘He is not sorry. Bengi. He says he is sorry but he isn’t really sorry.’

‘Why do you think so?’

‘Because he wanted to kill the duck.’

‘I don’t agree, my boy. I don’t believe he knew what he was doing, not fully. He was just throwing stones the way boys throw stones. He didn’t in his heart intend to kill anyone. Then afterwards, when he saw what a beautiful creature the bird was, when he saw what a terrible thing he had done, he repented and was sorry.’

‘He wasn’t really sorry. He told me.’

‘If he is not sorry now, he will be sorry soon. His conscience will not let him rest. That is how we human beings are. If we do a bad deed, we get no joy out of it. Our conscience sees to that.’

‘But he was shining! I saw it! He was shining and throwing stones as hard as he could! He wanted to kill them all!’

‘I don’t know what you mean by shining, but even if he was shining, even if he was throwing stones, that doesn’t prove that in his heart he was trying to kill them. We can’t always foresee the consequences of our actions — particularly when we are young. Don’t forget that he offered to nurse the bird with the broken wing, to shelter him in his bunk. What more could he do? Un-throw the stone he had thrown? You can’t do that. You can’t unmake the past. What is done is done.’

‘He didn’t bury him. He just threw him in the bushes.’

‘I’m sorry about that, but the duck is dead. We can’t bring him back. You and I will go and bury him as soon as the day’s work is over.’

‘I wanted to kiss him but Bengi wouldn’t let me. He said he was dirty. But I kissed him anyway. I went into the bushes and kissed him.’

‘That’s good, I’m glad to hear it. It will mean a lot to him to know that someone loved him and kissed him after he died. It will also mean a lot to him to know he had a proper burial.’

‘You can bury him. I don’t want to bury him.’

‘Very well, I will do so. And if we come back tomorrow morning and the grave is empty and the whole duck family is swimming in the dam, father and mother and babies, with no one missing, then we will know that kissing works, that kissing can raise one from the dead. But if we don’t see him, if we don’t see the duck family —’

‘I don’t want them to come back. If they come back Bengi will just throw stones at them again. He is not sorry. He is just pretending. I know he is pretending but you won’t believe me. You never believe me.’

There is no spade or pickaxe to be found, so he borrows a tyre lever from the truck. The boy leads him to where the carcass lies among the bushes. The feathers have already lost their gloss and ants have got to the eyes. With the lever he chops a hole in the flinty soil. It is not deep enough, he cannot pretend this is a decent burial, but he drops the dead bird in nevertheless and covers it. A webbed foot sticks out stiffly. He collects stones and lays them over the grave. ‘There,’ he says to the boy. ‘It’s the best I can do.’

When they visit the spot the next morning the stones are scattered and the duck is gone. There are feathers everywhere. They search but find nothing save the head with its empty eye sockets and one foot. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and tramps off to rejoin the work crew.

Two more days, and the grape-picking is over; the truck has borne the last binfuls away.

‘Who is going to eat all those grapes?’ demands Davíd.

‘They are not going to be eaten. They are going to be pressed in a wine press and the juice is going to be turned into wine.’

‘I don’t like wine,’ says Davíd. ‘It’s sour.’

‘Wine is an acquired taste. When we are young we don’t like it, then when we are older we acquire a taste for it.’

‘I am never going to acquire a taste for it.’

‘That’s what you say. Let’s wait and see.’

Having stripped the vineyards bare, they move on to the olive groves, where they spread nets and use long hooks to bring down the olives. The work is more taxing than grape-picking. He looks forward to the midday breaks; he finds the heat of the long afternoons hard to support, and pauses often to drink or just recover his strength. He can hardly believe that only months ago he was working on the docks as a stevedore, carrying heavy loads, barely breaking into a sweat. His back and arms have lost their old strength, his heart beats sluggishly, he is nagged by pain from the rib that was broken.

From Inés, unused as she is to physical labour, he has been expecting complaints and grumbling. But no: she works by his side all day, joylessly but without a murmur. She does not need to be reminded that it was she who decided they should flee Novilla and take up the lives of gypsies. Well, now she has found out how gypsies live: by toiling in other men’s fields from sunrise to sunset, all for a day’s bread and a few reales in their pockets.

But at least the boy is having a good time, the boy for whose sake they fled the city. After a brief, haughty estrangement, he has rejoined Bengi and his tribe — even, it would seem, taken over their leadership. For it is he, not Bengi, who now gives the orders, and Bengi and the others who meekly obey.

Bengi has three younger sisters. They dress in identical calico smocks and wear their hair in identical pigtails tied with identical red ribbons; they join in all the boys’ games. At his school in Novilla Davíd had refused to have anything to do with girls. ‘They are always whispering and giggling,’ he said to Inés. ‘They are silly.’ Now for the first time he is playing with girls, not seeming to find them silly at all. There is a game he has invented that consists in clambering onto the roof of a shed beside the olive grove and leaping down onto a convenient heap of sand. Sometimes he and the youngest of the sisters take the leap hand in hand, rolling over in a tangle of legs and arms, rising to their feet chortling with laughter.

The little girl, whose name is Florita, follows Davíd like a shadow wherever he goes; he does nothing to discourage her.

During the midday break one of the olive-pickers teases her. ‘I see you have a novio ,’ she says. Florita gazes back at her solemnly. Perhaps she does not know the word. ‘What is his name? What is the name of your novio ?’ Florita blushes and runs away.

When the girls leap from the roof their smocks open up like the petals of flowers, revealing identical rose-coloured panties.