J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

‘But you mustn’t do sexual intercourse to her again.’

‘No sexual intercourse! This youngster of yours is very strict, Simón, very absolute. But he’ll come round as he grows older. Sexual intercourse — it’s part of human nature, my boy, there’s no escaping it. Even Simón will agree. There is no escaping it, is there, Simón? No escaping the thunderbolt.’

He, Simón, is mute. When was he last hit by a thunderbolt? Not in this life.

Then suddenly Dmitri seems to lose interest in them. Restlessly his eyes flicker around the room. ‘Time to go. Time to return to my lonely cell. Do you mind if I hold on to the biscuits? I like to nibble on a biscuit now and then. Come and see me again, young man. We can go for a ride on the bus, or visit the zoo. I’d enjoy that. I always enjoy chatting to you. You are the only one who really understands old Dmitri. The psychologists and the psychiatrists with their questions, they just can’t work out what I am, man or beast. But you see right through me, into my heart. Now give Dmitri a hug.’

He lifts the boy off the ground in a tight embrace, whispers words in his ear that he, Simón, cannot hear. The boy nods vigorously.

‘Goodbye, Simón. Don’t believe everything I say. It is just air, air that blows where it listeth.’

The door closes behind him.

From the roster of Spanish courses on offer at the Institute he chooses Spanish Composition (Elementary). ‘Students registering for this course should have a command of spoken Spanish. We will learn to write clearly, logically, and with good style.’

He is the oldest in the class. Even the teacher is young: an attractive young woman with dark hair and dark eyes who tells them to call her simply Martina. ‘We will go around the room and each of you will tell me who you are and what you hope to gain from the course,’ says Martina. When his turn comes, he says: ‘My name is Simón, and I am in the advertising business, though at a lowly level. I have been speaking Spanish for well over a year and have become fairly fluent. The time has come for me to learn to write clearly, logically, and with good style.’

‘Thank you, Simón,’ says Martina. ‘Next?’

Of course he wants to write well. Who would not? But that is not why he is here, not exactly. Why he is here he will discover in the process of being here.

Martina hands out copies of the course reader. ‘Please treat your reader with consideration, as you would treat a friend,’ says Martina. ‘At the end of the course I will ask you to hand it back, so that it can become a friend to another student.’ His own copy is well thumbed, with many underlinings in ink and pencil.

They read two specimens of the business letter: a letter from Juan applying for a job as a salesman; and a letter from Luisa to her landlord terminating the lease on her apartment. They take note of the form of salutation and the form of closure. They examine the paragraphing and the form of the paragraph. ‘A paragraph is a unit of thought,’ says Martina. ‘It lays out a thought and links it to the preceding and succeeding thoughts.’

For their first assignment they are to practise composing in paragraphs. ‘Tell me something about yourselves,’ says Martina. ‘Not everything but something. Tell it to me in the space of three paragraphs, linked each to the next.’

He approves of Martina’s philosophy of composition and does his best with his assignment. ‘I arrived in this land with one overriding purpose in mind,’ he writes: ‘to protect from harm a certain small boy who had fallen under my care and to conduct him to his mother. In due course I found his mother and united him with her.’

That is his first paragraph.

‘However, my duties did not end there,’ he writes. However : the linking word. ‘I continued to watch over the mother and child and see to their welfare. When their welfare was threatened I brought them to Estrella, where we have been made welcome and where the boy, who goes by the name Davíd and who lives at present with his mother Inés and his uncle Diego (Inés and I no longer share a residence), has flourished.’

End of second paragraph. Commencement of third and final paragraph, introduced by the linking word now .

‘Now, reluctantly, I must accept that my duty is done, that the boy may have no further need of me. It is time for me to close a certain chapter of my life and open a new one. Opening that new chapter is linked to the project of learning to write — linked in a way that is not yet clear to me.’

That is enough. Those are the required three paragraphs, fittingly linked. The fourth paragraph, the paragraph that, were he to write it, would be superfluous to the assignment, would be about Dmitri. He does not have the linking word yet, the word that would make the fourth paragraph follow clearly and logically from the third; but after the linking word he would write: ‘Here in Estrella I met a man named Dmitri who later gained notoriety as a rapist and murderer. Dmitri has on several occasions ridiculed the way I speak, which strikes him as overly cool and rational.’ He reflects, then replaces the word cool with the word cold . ‘Dmitri believes that the style reveals the man. Dmitri would not write as I write now, in paragraphs linked one to the other. Dmitri would call that passionless writing, as he would call me a passionless man. A man of passion, Dmitri would say, pours himself out without paragraphing.

‘Though I have no respect for this man Dmitri,’ he would continue, in what would be a fifth paragraph, ‘I am troubled by his criticism. Why am I troubled? Because he says (and here I may well agree with him) that a coldly rational person is not the best guide for a boy who is impulsive and passionate by nature.

‘Therefore (sixth paragraph), I want to become a different person.’ That is where he comes to a halt, in mid-paragraph. It is enough, more than enough.

In the second meeting of the class Martina discusses further the genre of the business letter, in particular the letter of application. ‘The letter of application can be thought of as an act of seduction,’ she says. ‘In it we present ourselves in the most favourable light. This is who I am, we say — am I not attractive? Hire me and I will be yours .’ There is a ripple of amusement around the room. ‘But of course our letter must at the same time be businesslike. There must be a balance. A certain art is thus required to compose a good letter of application: the art of self-presentation. Today we will be studying that art with a view to mastering it and making it our own.’

He is intrigued by Martina: so young yet so confident.

There is a ten-minute break halfway through the class. While the students drift out into the corridor or to the washroom, Martina reads through their assignments. When they reconvene she hands them back. On his assignment she has written: ‘Good paragraphing. Unusual content.’

Their second assignment is to write a letter of application for what Martina calls ‘your dream job, the job you most want to land’. ‘Remember to sound attractive,’ she adds. ‘Make yourself wanted.’

‘ Estimado señor Director ,’ he writes, ‘I am responding to the notice in today’s Star inviting applications for the position of museum attendant. While I have no experience in the field, I do have several qualities which make me desirable. In the first place, I am a mature and dependable person. In the second place, I have a love or at least a respect for the arts, including the visual arts. In the third place, I have no great expectations. If I were to be appointed at the rank of Attendant, I would not expect to be promoted to Principal Attendant the next day, much less Director.’