J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

Mercedes reaches across the table and pats his arm. ‘There, there,’ she says. ‘You have been through a trying time, all of you. Perhaps it would be best if your son put the Academy behind him, with its bad memories, and went to a normal school with normal teachers.’

A second great wave of exhaustion sweeps over him. What is he doing, exchanging words with this stranger who understands nothing? ‘My son is not a normal child,’ he says. ‘I am sorry, I am not feeling well, I cannot continue.’ He signals to the waiter.

‘You are distressed, Simón. I will not detain you. Let me just say, I am here in Estrella not for the sake of my brother-in-law, who barely tolerates me, but for my sister’s children, two lost little boys to whom no one gives a second thought. Your son will move on, but what is their future? Having lost first their mother then their stepmother, they are left behind in this hard world of men and men’s ideas. I weep for them, Simón. They need softness as all children need softness, even boy children. They need to be caressed and cuddled, to inhale the soft odours of women and feel the softness of a woman’s touch. Where are they going to get that? They will grow up incomplete, unable to flower.’

Softness. Mercedes hardly strikes him as soft, with her sharp beak of a nose and her bony, arthritic hands. He pays, rises. ‘I must go,’ he says. ‘It is Davíd’s birthday tomorrow. He will be seven. There are preparations to be made.’

Inés is determined that the boy’s birthday will be celebrated fittingly. To the party have been invited as many of his classmates from the old Academy as she has been able to track down, as well as the boys from the apartment block with whom he plays football. From the pastelería she has ordered a cake shaped like a football; she has brought home a gaily painted piñata in the form of a donkey and from her friend Claudia borrowed the paddles with which the children will beat it to pieces; she has engaged a conjuror to put on a magic show. She has not revealed to him, Simón, what her birthday gift will be, but he knows she has spent a lot of money on it.

His first impulse is to match Inés in munificence, but he checks that impulse: as he is the minor parent, so his gift should be the minor gift. In the back room of an antiques store he finds exactly the right thing: a model ship much like the ship they came on, with a smokestack and a propeller and a captain’s bridge and tiny passengers carved in wood leaning on the rails or promenading on the upper deck.

While he is exploring the shops of the old quarter of Estrella he looks out for the book Mercedes mentioned, Arroyo’s book on music. He fails to find it. None of the booksellers have heard of it. ‘I have been to some of his recitals,’ says one of them. ‘He is an amazing pianist, a true virtuoso. I had no idea he wrote books too. Are you sure of it?’

By arrangement with Inés, the boy spends the night before the party with him in his rented room so that she can ready the apartment.

‘Your last night as a small boy,’ he remarks to the boy. ‘As of tomorrow you will be a seven-year-old, and a seven-year-old is a big boy.’

‘Seven is a noble number,’ says the boy. ‘I know all the noble numbers. Do you want me to recite them?’

‘Not tonight, thank you. What other branches of numerology have you studied besides the noble numbers? Have you studied fractions, or are fractions off limits? Don’t you know the term numerology ? Numerology is the science that señor Arroyo practises in his Academy. Numerologists are people who believe that numbers exist independently of us. They believe that even if a great flood came and drowned all living creatures, the numbers would survive.’

‘If the flood was really big, up to the sky, the numbers would be drowned too. Then there would be nothing left, only the dark stars and the dark numbers.’

‘The dark stars? What are they?’

‘The stars between the bright stars. You can’t see them because they are dark.’

‘Dark stars must be one of your discoveries. There is no mention of dark stars or dark numbers in numerology as I understand it. Furthermore, according to the numerologists, numbers cannot drown, no matter how high the floodwaters rise. They cannot drown because they neither breathe nor eat nor drink. They just exist. We human beings come and we go, we voyage from this life to the next, but the numbers stay the same forever and ever. That is what people like señor Arroyo write in their books.’

‘I found out a way of coming back from the new life. Shall I tell you? It’s brilliant. You tie a rope to a tree, a long, long rope, then when you get to the next life you tie the other end of the rope to a tree, another tree. Then when you want to come back from the next life you just hold on to the rope. Like the man in the larebinto .’

‘ Laberinto . That’s a very clever plan, very ingenious. Unfortunately I see a flaw in it. The flaw is that while you are swimming back to this life, holding on to the rope, the waves will reach up and wash you clean of your memories. So when you reach this side you will remember nothing of what you saw on the other side. It will be as if you had never visited the other side at all. It will be as if you had slept without dreaming.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, as I said, you will have been immersed in the waters of forgetting.’

‘But why? Why do I have to forget?’

‘Because that is the rule. You cannot come back from the next life and report what you saw there.’

‘Why is it the rule?’

‘A rule is just a rule. Rules don’t have to justify themselves. They just are. Like numbers. There is no why for numbers. This universe is a universe of rules. There is no why for the universe.’

‘Why?’

‘Now you are being silly.’

Later, when Davíd has fallen asleep on the sofa and he himself is lying in bed listening to the scurrying of mice in the ceiling, he wonders how the boy will look back on these conversations of theirs. He, Simón, thinks of himself as a sane, rational person who offers the boy a sane, rational elucidation of why things are the way they are. But are the needs of a child’s soul better served by his dry little homilies than by the fantastic fare offered at the Academy? Why not let him spend these precious years dancing the numbers and communing with the stars in the company of Alyosha and señor Arroyo, and wait for sanity and reason to arrive in their own good time?

A rope from land to land: he should tell Arroyo about that, send him a note. ‘My son, the one who says you know his true name, has come up with a plan for our general salvation: a rope bridge from shore to shore; souls pulling themselves hand over hand across the ocean, some toward the new life, some back toward the old one. If there were such a bridge, says my son, it would mean the end of forgetfulness. We would all know who we are, and rejoice.’

He ought really to write to Arroyo. Not just a note but something longer and fuller that would say what he might have said had he not stormed out of their meeting. If he were not so sleepy, so lethargic, he would switch on the light and do it. ‘Esteemed Juan Sebastián, forgive my show of petulance this morning. I am going through a troubled time, though of course the burden under which I labour is far lighter than yours. Specifically, I find myself at sea (I use a common metaphor), drifting further and further from solid land. How so? Allow me to be candid. Despite strenuous efforts of the intellect, I cannot believe in the numbers, the higher numbers, the numbers on high, as you do and as everyone connected with your Academy seems to do, including my son Davíd. I understand nothing about the numbers, neither a jot nor a tittle, from beginning to end. Your faith in them has helped you (I surmise) to get through these difficult times, whereas I, who do not share that faith, am touchy, irascible, prone to outbursts (you beheld one this morning) — am in fact becoming hard to bear, not only to those around me but to myself.