J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

There are still grapes aplenty from the harvest, whole baskets of them. The children stuff their mouths; their hands and faces are sticky with the sweet juice. All save Davíd, who eats one grape at a time, spits out the seeds, and rinses his hands fastidiously afterwards.

‘The others could certainly learn manners from him,’ remarks Inés. My boy , she wants to add — he, Simón, can see it — my clever, well-mannered boy. So unlike these other ragamuffins.

‘He is growing up quickly,’ he concedes. ‘Perhaps too quickly. There are times when I find his behaviour a little too’ — he hesitates over the word — ‘too magistral , too masterful. Or so it seems to me.’

‘He is a boy. He has a strong character.’

The gypsy life may not suit Inés, and it does not suit him, but it certainly suits the boy. He has never seen him so active, so full of energy. He wakes up early, eats voraciously, runs around with his friends all day. Inés tries to get him to wear a cap, but the cap is soon lost, never to be found again. Where before he was somewhat pale, he is now as brown as a berry.

It is not little Florita to whom he is closest but Maite, her sister. Maite is seven, a few months older than he. She is the prettiest of the three sisters and the most thoughtful in disposition.

One evening the boy confides in Inés: ‘Maite asked me to show her my penis.’

‘And?’ says Inés.

‘She says if I show her my penis she will show me her thing.’

‘You should play more with Bengi,’ says Inés. ‘You shouldn’t be playing with girls all the time.’

‘We weren’t playing, we were talking. She says if I put my penis in her thing she will get a baby. Is it true?’

‘No, it’s not true,’ says Inés. ‘Someone should wash that girl’s mouth out with soap.’

‘She says that Roberto comes to the women’s room when they are asleep and puts his penis in her mother’s thing.’

Inés casts him, Simón, a helpless glance.

‘What grown-up people do may sometimes seem strange,’ he intervenes. ‘When you are older you will understand better.’

‘Maite says her mother makes him put a balloon on his penis so that she won’t get a baby.’

‘Yes, that is correct, some people do that.’

‘Do you put a balloon on your penis, Simón?’

Inés gets up and leaves.

‘I? A balloon? No, of course not.’

‘So if you don’t, can Inés get a baby?’

‘My boy, you are talking about sexual intercourse, and sexual intercourse is for married people. Inés and I aren’t married.’

‘But you can do sexual intercourse even if you aren’t married.’

‘It is true, you can have sexual intercourse if you are not married. But having babies when you are not married is not a good idea. On the whole.’

‘Why? Is it because the babies are huérfano babies?’

‘No, a baby born to an unmarried mother is not a huérfano . A huérfano is something quite different. Where did you come across that word?’

‘In Punta Arenas. Lots of boys in Punta Arenas are huérfanos . Am I a huérfano ?’

‘No, of course not. You have a mother. Inés is your mother. A huérfano is a child with no parents at all.’

‘Where do huérfanos come from if they don’t have parents?’

‘A huérfano is a child whose parents have died and left him alone in the world. Or sometimes the mother has no money to buy food and gives him away to other people to look after. Him or her. Those are the ways you get to be a huérfano . You are not a huérfano . You have Inés. You have me.’

‘But you and Inés are not my real parents, so I am a huérfano .’

‘Davíd, you arrived on a boat, just as I did, just as the people around us did, the ones who didn’t have the luck to be born here. Very likely Bengi and his brother and his sisters arrived on boats too. When you travel across the ocean on a boat, all your memories are washed away and you start a completely new life. That is how it is. There is no before. There is no history. The boat docks at the harbour and we climb down the gangplank and we are plunged into the here and now. Time begins. The clock starts running. You are not a huérfano . Bengi is not a huérfano .’

‘Bengi was born in Novilla. He told me. He has never been on a boat.’

‘Very well, if Bengi and his brother and sisters were born here then their history begins here and they are not huérfanos .’

‘I can remember the time before I was on the boat.’

‘So you have told me already. There are lots of people who say they can remember the life they had before they crossed the ocean. But there is a problem with such memories, and because you are clever I think you can see what the problem is. The problem is that we have no way of telling whether what these people remember are true memories or made-up memories. Because sometimes a made-up memory can feel just as true as a true memory, particularly when we want the memory to be true. So, for example, someone may wish to have been a king or a lord before he crossed the ocean, and he may wish it so much that he convinces himself he truly was a king or a lord. Yet the memory is probably not a true memory. Why not? Because being a king is quite a rare thing. Only one person in a million becomes a king. So the chances are that someone who remembers being a king is just making up a story and then forgetting he made it up. And similarly with other memories. We just have no way of telling for sure whether a memory is true or false.’

‘But was I born out of Inés’ tummy?’

‘You are forcing me to repeat myself. Either I can reply, “Yes, you were born out of Inés’ tummy,” or I can reply, “No, you weren’t born out of Inés’ tummy.” But neither reply will bring us any closer to the truth. Why not? Because, like everyone else who came on the boats, you can’t remember and nor can Inés. Unable to remember, all you can do, all she can do, all any of us can do is to make up stories. So, for instance, I can tell you that on my last day in the other life I was among a huge crowd waiting to embark, so huge that they had to telephone the retired pilots and ships’ masters and tell them to come to the docks and help out. And in that crowd, I could say, I saw you and your mother — saw you with my own eyes. Your mother was clutching your hand, looking worried, unsure of where to go. Then, I could say, I lost sight of the pair of you in the crowd. When at last it was my turn to step on board, whom did I see but you, all by yourself, clinging to a rail, calling, “Mummy, Mummy, where are you?” So I went over and took you by the hand and said, “Come, little friend, I will help you find your mother.” And that was how you and I met.

‘That is a story I could tell, about my first vision of you and your mother, as I remember it.’

‘But is it true ? Is it a true story?’

‘Is it true? I don’t know. It feels true to me. The more often I tell it to myself, the truer it feels. You feel true, clutching the rail so tightly that I had to loosen your fingers; the crowd at the docks feels true — hundreds of thousands of people, all lost, like you, like me, with empty hands and anxious eyes. The bus feels true — the bus that delivered the superannuated pilots and ships’ masters at the docks, wearing the navy-blue uniforms they had brought down from trunks in the attic, still smelling of naphtha. It all feels true from beginning to end. But maybe it feels so true because I have repeated it to myself so often. Does it feel true to you? Do you remember how you were separated from your mother?’