J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

Claudia and Inés are planning an event at Modas Modernas: a show to promote the new spring fashions. Modas Modernas has never hosted a show before: while the two women are occupied with overseeing seamstresses and hiring models and commissioning advertisements, Diego is charged with taking care of the boy. But Diego is not up to it. He has made new friends in Estrella; he is out with them most of the time. Sometimes he stays out all night, returns at first light, sleeps until noon. Inés berates him but he pays no heed. ‘I’m not a nursemaid,’ he says. ‘If you want a nursemaid, hire one.’

All of this Davíd reports to him, Simón. Bored with being alone in the apartment, the boy has joined him on his bicycle rounds. They work well together. The boy’s energy seems boundless. He races from house to house, stuffing into the letter boxes pamphlets that open up a new world of wonders: not only of the key ring that glows in the dark and the Wonderbelt that melts fat away while you sleep and the Electrodog that barks whenever the doorbell rings, but also of señora Victrix, astral consultations, by appointment only; of Brandy, lingerie model, also by appointment only; and of Ferdi the Clown, guaranteed to bring your next party to life; to say nothing of cooking classes, meditation classes, classes in anger management, and two pizzas for the price of one.

‘What does this mean, Simón?’ asks the boy, holding out a flyer printed on cheap brown paper.

Man the Measurer of All Things , reads the pamphlet. A lecture by the eminent scholar Dr Javier Moreno. Institute of Further Studies, Thursday series, 8 p.m. Entrance free, donations welcome.

‘I’m not sure. I expect it is about land surveying. A land surveyor is someone who divides land into parcels so that it can be bought and sold. You won’t find it interesting.’

‘And this?’ says the boy.

‘ Walkie-talkie . That is a nonsense name for a telephone without wires. You carry it around with you and talk to friends at a distance.’

‘Can I get one?’

‘They come in pairs, one for you and one for your friend. Nineteen reales ninety-five. That’s a lot of money for a toy.’

‘It says Rush Rush Rush While Stocks Last.’

‘You can ignore that. The world is not going to run out of walkie-talkies, I assure you.’

The boy is full of questions about Dmitri. ‘Do you think he is at the salt mines yet? Are they really going to whip him? When can we go and visit him?’

He responds as truthfully as he can, given that he knows nothing whatever about salt mines. ‘I am sure the prisoners don’t spend every day mining salt,’ he says. ‘They will have recreation periods when they can play football or read books. Dmitri will write to us once he has settled down, telling us about his new life. We just have to be patient.’

More difficult to answer are questions about the crime for which Dmitri has gone to the salt mines, questions that come back again and again: ‘When he made Ana Magdalena’s heart stop, was it sore? Why did she turn blue? Am I going to turn blue when I die?’ Most difficult of all is the question, ‘Why did he kill her? Why, Simón?’

He does not want to evade the boy’s questions. Unanswered, they may well fester. So he makes up the easiest, most bearable story he can. ‘For the space of a few minutes Dmitri went crazy,’ he says. ‘It happens to certain people. Something snaps inside their head. Dmitri went crazy in his head, and in his craziness he killed the person he most loved. Soon afterwards he came to himself. The craziness went away and he was full of regret. He tried desperately to bring Ana Magdalena back to life but did not know how. So he decided to do the honourable thing. He confessed to his crime and asked to be punished. Now he has gone to the salt mines to work off his debt — the debt he owes to Ana Magdalena and señor Arroyo and all the boys and girls of the Academy who lost the teacher they loved so much. Every time we sprinkle salt on our food we can remind ourselves that we are helping Dmitri to work off his debt. And one day in the future, when his debt is fully paid, he can come back from the salt mines and we can all be reunited.’

‘But not Ana Magdalena.’

‘No, not Ana Magdalena. To see her we will have to wait for the next life.’

‘The doctors wanted to give Dmitri a new head, one that wouldn’t go crazy.’

‘That is correct. They wanted to make sure he never went crazy again. Unfortunately it takes time to replace a person’s head, and Dmitri was in a hurry. He left the hospital before the doctors had a chance to cure his old head or give him a new one. He was in a hurry to pay his debt. He felt that paying his debt was more important than having his head cured.’

‘But he can go crazy again, can’t he, if he still has his old head.’

‘It was love that drove Dmitri crazy. In the salt mines there will be no women to fall in love with. So the chance that Dmitri will go crazy again is very slight.’

‘You won’t go crazy, will you, Simón.’

‘No, I won’t. I don’t have that kind of head, the kind that goes crazy. Nor do you. Which is fortunate for us.’

‘But Don Quixote did. He had the kind of head that goes crazy.’

‘That is true. But Don Quixote and Dmitri are very different kinds of people. Don Quixote was a good person, so his craziness led him to do good deeds like saving maidens from dragons. Don Quixote is a good model to follow in your life. But not Dmitri. From Dmitri there is nothing good to be learned.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, quite aside from the craziness in his head, Dmitri is not a good person with a good heart. At first he seems friendly and generous, but that is just an outward appearance meant to deceive you. You heard him say that the urge to kill Ana Magdalena came out of nowhere. That is not true. It did not come from nowhere. It came from his heart, where it had been lurking for a long time, waiting to strike like a snake.

‘There is nothing you or I can do to help Dmitri, Davíd. As long as he refuses to look into his heart and confront what he sees there, he will not change. He says he wants to be saved, but the only way to be saved is to save oneself, and Dmitri is too lazy, too satisfied with the way he is, to do that. Do you understand?’

‘And ants?’ says the boy. ‘Do ants have bad hearts too?’

‘Ants are insects. They don’t have blood, therefore they don’t have hearts.’

‘And bears?’

‘Bears are animals, so their hearts are neither good nor bad, they are just hearts. Why do you ask about ants and bears?’

‘Maybe the doctors should take a bear’s heart and put it in Dmitri.’

‘That’s an interesting idea. Unfortunately doctors have not yet worked out a way of putting a bear’s heart in a human being. Until that can be done, Dmitri will have to take responsibility for his actions.’

The boy gives him a look that he finds hard to interpret: merriment? derision?

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he says.

‘Because,’ says the boy.

The day comes to an end. He returns the boy to Inés and makes his way back to his room, where the dreaded fog soon settles over him. He pours himself a glass of wine, then a second glass. The only way to be saved is to save oneself. The child turns to him for guidance, and what does he offer but glib, pernicious nonsense. Self-reliance. If he, Simón, had to rely on himself, what hope would he have of salvation? Salvation from what? From idleness, from aimlessness, from a bullet in the head.

From the wardrobe he takes down the little case, opens the envelope, stares at the girl with the cat in her arms, the girl who two decades later would choose this image of herself to give to her lover. He rereads her letters, from beginning to end.