J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

‘No, no, they are not that kind of picture. They are photographs of women cut out of pornographic magazines. I can show you. I know exactly where to find them — Dmitri told me.’

The director brings out a bunch of keys, leads the way down to the basement, and unlocks the cabinet described by Dmitri. The bottom drawer holds a little cardboard case, which he opens.

The first picture is of a blonde woman with garishly red lips sitting naked on a sofa with her legs apart, gripping her rather large breasts and thrusting them forward.

With an exclamation of distaste the director shuts the case. ‘Take them away!’ he says. ‘I don’t want to hear any more about this.’

There are another half-dozen pictures of the same kind, as he, Simón, discovers when he opens the case in the privacy of his room. But in addition, underneath the pictures, there is an envelope which contains a pair of women’s panties, black; a single silver earring of simple design; a photograph of a young girl, recognizably Ana Magdalena, holding a cat and smiling for the camera; and finally, held together with a rubber band, letters to Mi amor from AM. There is no date on any of them, nor any return address, but he gathers they were posted from the seaside resort of Aguaviva. They describe various holiday activities (swimming, gathering shells, walking on the dunes) and mention Joaquín and Damian by name. ‘I long to be in your arms again,’ says one letter. ‘I long for you passionately ( apasionadamente ),’ says another.

He reads them through, slowly, from beginning to end, reads them a second time, getting used to the handwriting, which is rather childish, not what he would have expected at all, each i surmounted with a careful little circle, then puts them back in the envelope together with the photograph, the earring and the panties, puts the envelope back in the case, and puts the case under his bed.

His first thought is that Dmitri wanted him to read the letters — wanted him to know that he, Dmitri, was loved by a woman whom he, Simón, might have desired from afar but whom he was not man enough to possess. But the more he thinks about it, the less plausible this explanation seems. If Dmitri had in fact been having an affair with Ana Magdalena, if his talk of worshipping the ground on which she trod and her disdainful treatment of him in return had been nothing but a cover for clandestine couplings in the basement of the museum, why did he in his various confessions claim to have forced himself on her? Further, why would Dmitri want him, Simón, to learn the truth about the two of them when in all likelihood he, Simón, would promptly inform the authorities, who would just as promptly order a new trial? Is the simplest explanation not after all the best one: that Dmitri trusted him to burn the case and its contents without examining them?

But the greater puzzle remains: if Ana Magdalena was not the woman she seemed to all the world to be, and her death not the kind of death it seemed to be, why had Dmitri lied to the police and to the court? To protect her name? To save her husband from humiliation? Was Dmitri, out of nobility of spirit, taking all the guilt upon himself so that the name of the Arroyos should not be dragged through the mud?

Yet what could Ana Magdalena have said or done, on the night of the fourth of March, to get herself killed by a man whom she longed — longed apasionadamente — to be in the arms of?

On the other hand, what if Ana Magdalena never wrote the letters at all? What if they are forgeries, and what if he, Simón, is being used as a tool in a plot to blacken her name?

He shivers. He is truly a madman! he says to himself. The judge was right after all! He belongs in a madhouse, in chains, behind a door with a sevenfold lock!

He curses himself. He should never have involved himself in Dmitri’s affairs. He should never have answered his summons, never have spoken to the museum director, never have looked inside the case. Now the genie is out of the bottle and he has no idea what to do. If he turns the letters over to the police, he becomes an accomplice in a plot whose purpose is dark to him; similarly if he hands them back to the museum director; while if he burns them or conceals them he becomes an accomplice in another plot, a plot to present Ana Magdalena as a spotless martyr.

In the middle of the night he gets up, removes the case from under his bed, wraps it in a spare counterpane, and puts it on top of the wardrobe.

Then in the morning, as he is about to set off for the depot to collect the pamphlets he will be distributing that day, Inés’ car draws up and Diego gets out, the boy with him.

Diego is clearly in a bad mood. ‘All day yesterday and again today this child has been nagging us,’ he says. ‘He has worn us down, both Inés and me. Now here we are. Tell him, Davíd — tell Simón what you want.’

‘I want to see Dmitri. I want to go to the salt mine. But Inés won’t let me.’

‘Of course she won’t. I thought you understood. Dmitri isn’t in the salt mine. He has been sent to a hospital.’

‘Yes, but Dmitri doesn’t want to go to a hospital, he wants to go to the salt mine!’

‘I am not sure what you think goes on in a salt mine, Davíd, but first of all the salt mine is hundreds of kilometres away and second of all a salt mine is not a holiday resort. That is why the judge sent Dmitri to a hospital: to save him from the salt mine. A salt mine is a place where you go to suffer.’

‘But Dmitri doesn’t want to be saved! He wants to suffer! Can we go to the hospital?’

‘Certainly not. The hospital where they have sent Dmitri is not a normal hospital. It is a hospital for dangerous people. The public isn’t allowed in.’

‘Dmitri isn’t dangerous.’

‘On the contrary, Dmitri is extremely dangerous, as he has proved. Anyhow, I am not going to take you to the hospital, nor is Diego. I want nothing more to do with Dmitri.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t have to tell you why.’

‘It’s because you hate Dmitri! You hate everybody!’

‘You use that word far too sweepingly. I don’t hate anybody. I just want nothing more to do with Dmitri. He is not a good person.’

‘He is a good person! He loves me! He recognizes me! You don’t love me!’

‘That is not true. I do love you. I love you a great deal more than Dmitri does. Dmitri doesn’t know the meaning of love.’

‘Dmitri loves lots of people. He loves them because he has a big heart. He told me. Stop laughing, Diego! Why are you laughing?’

Diego cannot stop laughing. ‘Did he really say that — that if you have a big heart you can love lots of people? Maybe he meant lots of girls.’

Diego’s laughter fires the boy even further. His voice rises. ‘It’s true! Dmitri has a big heart and Simón has a tiny heart — that’s what Dmitri says. He says Simón has a tiny little heart like a bedbug, so he can’t love anybody. Simón, is it true that Dmitri did sexual intercourse to Ana Magdalena to make her die?’

‘I am not going to answer that question. It’s stupid. It’s ridiculous. You don’t know what sexual intercourse is.’

‘I do! Inés told me. She has done sexual intercourse lots of times and she hates it. She says it’s horrible.’

‘Be that as it may, I am not going to answer any more questions about Dmitri. I don’t want to hear his name again. I am finished with him.’

‘But why did he do sexual intercourse to her? Why won’t you tell me? Did he want to make her heart stop?’

‘That’s enough, Davíd. Calm down.’ And to Diego: ‘You can see the child is upset. He has been having nightmares ever since. . ever since the event. You should be helping him, not laughing at him.’