J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

‘Tell me!’ the boy shouts. ‘Why won’t you tell me? Did he want to make a baby inside her? Did he want to make her heart stop? Can she have a baby even if her heart stops?’

‘No, she can’t. When the mother dies the child inside her dies too. That is the rule. But Ana Magdalena wasn’t going to have a baby.’

‘How do you know? You don’t know anything. Did Dmitri make her baby turn blue? Can we make her heart start again?’

‘Ana Magdalena was not going to have a baby and no, we can’t make her heart beat again because that is not the way the heart works. Once the heart stops, it stops forever.’

‘But when she has a new life her heart will beat again, won’t it?’

‘In a sense, yes. In the life to come Ana Magdalena will have a new heart. Not only will she have a new life and a new heart, she will remember nothing of this sorry mess. She won’t remember the Academy and she won’t remember Dmitri, which will be a blessing. She will be able to start afresh, just as you and I did, washed clean of the past, without bad memories to weigh her down.’

‘Did you forgive Dmitri, Simón?’

‘I am not the one whom Dmitri injured, so it is not for me to forgive him. It is Ana Magdalena’s forgiveness that he should be seeking. And señor Arroyo’s.’

‘I didn’t forgive him. He doesn’t want anyone to forgive him.’

‘That is just boasting on his part, perverse boasting. He wants us to think of him as a wild person who does things that normal people are afraid to do. Davíd, I am sick and tired of talking about that man. As far as I am concerned he is dead and buried. Now I have to go off on my rounds. Next time you have bad dreams, remember that you have only to wave your arms and they will evaporate like smoke. Wave your arms and shout Begone! like Don Quixote. Give me a kiss. I will see you on Friday. Goodbye, Diego.’

‘I want to go to Dmitri! If Diego won’t take me I’ll go by myself!’

‘You can go, but they won’t let you in. The place where he is kept is not a normal hospital. It is a hospital for criminals, with walls around it, and guards with guard dogs.’

‘I’ll take Bolívar along. He will kill the guard dogs.’

Diego holds open the door of the car. The boy gets in and sits with his arms folded, a pout on his face.

‘If you want my opinion,’ says Diego quietly, ‘he is out of control, this one. You and Inés should do something about it. Send him to school, to begin with.’

He was wrong about the hospital, as it turns out, completely wrong. The psychiatric hospital he had pictured, the hospital in the remote countryside with the high walls and the guard dogs, does not exist. All that exists is the city hospital with its rather modest psychiatric wing — the same hospital where Dmitri used to work before he joined the museum staff. Among the orderlies there are some who remember him with affection from the old days. Ignoring the fact that he is a self-confessed murderer, they pamper him, bringing him snacks from the staff kitchen, keeping him supplied with cigarettes. He has a room to himself in the part of the wing marked Restricted Access, with a shower cubicle and a desk with a lamp.

All of this — the snacks, the cigarettes, the shower cubicle — he learns about when, the day after Diego’s visit, he comes home from his bicycle rounds and finds the self-confessed murderer stretched out on the bed, asleep, while the boy sits cross-legged on the floor playing a game of cards. So surprised is he that he lets out a cry, to which the boy, raising a finger to his lips, whispers ‘ Shh !’

He strides over and gives Dmitri an angry shake. ‘You! What are you doing here?’

Dmitri sits up. ‘Calm yourself, Simón,’ he says. ‘I’ll be gone shortly. I just want to be sure that. . you know. . Did you do as I told you?’

He brushes the question aside. ‘Davíd, how does this man come to be here?’

Dmitri himself responds. ‘We came by bus, Simón, like normal people. Calm yourself. Young Davíd came to visit me like the good friend he is. We had a chat. Then I put on an orderly’s uniform, as in the old days, and the youngster took me by the hand and we walked out, the pair of us, just like that. He’s my son , I said. What a sweet boy , they said. Of course the uniform helped. People trust a uniform — that’s one of the things you learn about life. We walked out of the hospital and came straight here. And when you and I have settled our business I will catch the bus back. No one will even notice I was gone.’

‘Davíd, is it true? A hospital for the criminally insane, and they let this man walk out?’

‘He wanted bread,’ says the boy. ‘He said there was no bread for him in the hospital.’

‘That’s nonsense. He gets three meals a day there, with as much bread as he wants.’

‘He said there was no bread so I took him bread.’

‘Sit down, Simón,’ says Dmitri. ‘And will you do me a favour?’ He takes out a pack of cigarettes and lights one. ‘Don’t insult me, please, not in front of the boy. Don’t call me criminally insane. Because it is not true. A criminal perhaps, but not insane, not in the slightest.

‘Do you want to hear what the doctors say, the ones who were told to find out what is wrong with me? No? All right, I’ll skip the doctors. Let us talk about the Arroyos instead. I hear they had to close down the Academy. That’s a pity. I liked the Academy. I liked to be with the young ones, the little dancers, all so happy, so full of life. I wish I had gone to an academy like that when I was a child. Who knows, I might have turned out differently. Still, it’s no use crying over spilt milk, is it? What’s done is done.’

Spilt milk . The phrase outrages him. ‘There have been a lot of people crying over the milk you spilled,’ he bursts out. ‘You have left some broken hearts behind you and a lot of anger.’

‘Which I can understand,’ says Dmitri, puffing leisurely on his cigarette. ‘You think I am not aware of the enormity of my crime, Simón? Why else do you think I volunteered for the salt mines? The salt mines are not for crybabies. You have to be a man to cope with the salt mines. If they would only give me my marching papers from the hospital I would be off to the salt mines tomorrow. Dmitri here , I would say to the mine captain, fit and well and reporting for duty! But they won’t let me out, the psychologists and the psychiatrists, the specialists in deviant this and deviant that. Tell me about your mother , they say . Did your mother love you? When you were a baby did she give you her breast? What was it like, sucking on her breast? What am I supposed to say? What do I remember of my mother and her breasts when I can barely remember yesterday? So I just say whatever comes into my head. It was like sucking a lemon , I say. Or It was like pork, it was like sucking a pork rib . Because that’s how it works, psychiatry, isn’t it? — you say the first thing that comes into your head and then they go away and analyse it and come up with what is wrong with you.

‘They are all so interested in me, Simón! It amazes me. I’m not interested in me but they are. To me I’m just a common criminal, as common as weed. But to them I am something special. I have no conscience, or else I have too much conscience, they can’t decide which. If you have too much conscience, I want to tell them, your conscience eats you up and there is nothing left of you, like a spider eating a wasp or a wasp eating a spider, I can never remember which, nothing left but the shell. What do you think, young man? Do you know what conscience is?’

The boy nods.

‘Of course you do! You understand old Dmitri better than anyone — better than all the psychologists in the world. What do you dream about? they say. Maybe you dream about falling down dark holes and being swallowed by dragons. — Yes, I say , yes, that’s exactly it! Whereas you never needed to ask me about my dreams. You took one look and understood me at once. I understand you and I don’t forgive you. I’ll never forget that. He is really special, Simón, this boy of yours. A special case. Wise beyond his years. You could learn from him.’