J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

‘Look, it’s Jeremiah! He used to be so big that I couldn’t lift him, but Alyosha forgot to give him milk to drink and now he has grown small!’

He strokes the lamb. It tries to suck his finger. ‘No one in this world grows small, Davíd. If he has turned small, it is not because Alyosha hasn’t been feeding him, it is because he is not the real Jeremiah. He is a new Jeremiah who has taken the place of the old Jeremiah because the old Jeremiah has grown up and turned into a sheep. People find young Jeremiahs endearing, but not old Jeremiahs. No one wants to cuddle old Jeremiahs. That is their misfortune.’

‘Where is the old Jeremiah? Can I see him?’

‘The old Jeremiah is back in the meadows with the other sheep. One day when we have time we can go and search for him. But right now we have a lecture to attend.’

Out on Calle Hugo it has begun to rain more heavily. As he and the boy hesitate in the doorway there is a hoarse whisper: ‘Simón!’ A figure wrapped in a cloak or blanket looms before them, a hand beckons. Dmitri! The boy dashes forward and clasps him around the thighs.

‘What on earth are you doing here, Dmitri?’ he, Simón, demands.

‘ Shh !’ says Dmitri; and, in an exaggerated whisper: ‘Is there somewhere we can go?’

‘We are not going anywhere,’ he says, not lowering his voice. ‘What are you doing here?’

Without replying Dmitri grasps his arm and propels him across the empty street — he is astonished at the man’s strength — into the doorway of the tobacconist’s.

‘Did you escape, Dmitri?’ says the boy. He is excited; his eyes sparkle in the moonlight.

‘Yes, I escaped,’ says Dmitri. ‘I had unfinished business, I had to escape, I had no choice.’

‘And are they searching for you with bloodhounds?’

‘This weather is no good for bloodhounds,’ says Dmitri. ‘Too wet for their noses. The bloodhounds are back in their kennels, waiting for the rain to stop.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ says he, Simón. ‘What do you want with us?’

‘We need to talk, Simón. You were always a decent fellow, I always felt I could talk to you. Can we go to your place? You have no idea what it is like, having no home, nowhere to lay one’s head. Do you recognize the coat? It’s the one you gave me. It made quite an impression on me, the gift of your coat. When I was universally excoriated, for what I did, you gave me a coat and a bed to sleep in. That’s something only a genuinely decent fellow would do.’

‘I gave it to you to be rid of you. Now let go of us. We are in a hurry.’

‘No!’ says the boy. ‘Tell us about the salt mines, Dmitri. Do they really whip you in the salt mines?’

‘There is a lot I could say about the salt mines,’ says Dmitri, ‘but it will have to wait. There is something more pressing on my mind, namely repentance. I need your help, Simón. I never repented, you know. Now I want to repent.’

‘I thought that was why we have salt mines: as a place of penitence. What are you doing here when you should be there?’

‘It’s not as simple as that, Simón. I can explain it all, but it will take time. Do we have to huddle here in the cold and the wet?’

‘I could not care less if you are cold and wet. Davíd and I have an appointment to keep. The last time I saw you you said you were off to the salt mines to surrender yourself for punishment. Did you ever go to the salt mines, or was that another lie?’

‘When I left you, Simón, I fully intended to go to the salt mines. That was what my heart told me. Accept your punishment like a man , said my heart. But other factors supervened. Supervened : nice word. Other factors made themselves felt. Therefore no. I have not actually been to the salt mines, not yet. I’m sorry, Davíd. I let you down. I told you I was going but I didn’t go.

‘The truth is, I’ve been brooding, Simón. This has been a dark time for me, brooding on my fate. It was quite a shock to discover that I didn’t have it in me after all to accept what was due to me, namely a spell in the salt mines. Quite a shock. My manhood was involved. If I had been a man, a real man, I would have gone, no doubt about that. But I wasn’t a man, I discovered. I was less than a man. I was a coward. That was the fact I had to face. A murderer and on top of that a coward. Can you blame me for feeling upset?’

He, Simón, has had enough. ‘Come, Davíd,’ he says. And to Dmitri: ‘Be warned, I am going to telephone the police.’

He half expects the boy to protest. But no: with a backward glance at Dmitri the boy follows him.

‘The pot calling the kettle black,’ Dmitri calls out after them. ‘I saw the way you looked at Ana Magdalena, Simón! You lusted after her too, only you were not man enough for her!’

In the middle of the rain-beaten street, exhausted, he turns to face Dmitri’s tirade.

‘Go on! Call your precious police! And you, Davíd: I expected better of you, I really did. I thought you were a stout little soldier. But no, it turns out you are under their thumb — that cold bitch Inés and this man of paper. They have mothered you and fathered you until there is nothing left of you but a shadow. Go! Do your worst!’

As if gathering strength from their silence, Dmitri emerges from the shelter of the doorway and, holding the coat on high above his head like a sail, strides across the street back to the Academy.

‘What is he going to do, Simón?’ whispers the boy. ‘Is he going to kill señor Arroyo?’

‘I have no idea. The man is mad. Fortunately there is no one at home, they have all gone to the Institute.’

Though he pedals as hard as he can, they arrive late for the lecture. Making as little noise as possible, he and the boy sit down in their wet clothes in the back row.

‘A shadowy figure, Metros,’ Moreno is saying. ‘And like his comrade Prometheus, bringer of fire, perhaps only a figure of legend. Nevertheless, the arrival of Metros marks a turning point in human history: the moment when we collectively gave up the old way of apprehending the world, the unthinking, animal way, when we abandoned as futile the quest to know things in themselves, and began instead to see the world through its metra. By concentrating our gaze upon fluctuations in the metra we enabled ourselves to discover new laws, laws that even the heavenly bodies have to obey.

‘Similarly on earth, where in the spirit of the new metric science we measured mankind and, finding that all men are equal, concluded that men should fall equally under the law. No more slaves, no more kings, no more exceptions.

‘Was Metros the measurer a bad man? Were he and his heirs guilty of abolishing reality and putting a simulacrum in its place, as some critics claim? Would we be better off if Metros had never been born? As we look around us at this splendid Institute, designed by architects and built by engineers schooled in the metra of statics and dynamics, that position seems hard to maintain.

‘Thank you for your attention.’

The applause from the audience, which nearly fills the theatre, is long and loud. Moreno shuffles his notes together and descends the dais. Arroyo takes the microphone. ‘Thank you, Javier, for that fascinating and masterly overview of Metros and his legacy, an overview which you offer to us, appropriately, on the eve of the census, that orgy of measurement.

‘With your consent, I will briefly respond. After my response, the floor will be open to debate.’

He gives a signal. The two Arroyo boys rise from their seats in the front row, strip off their outer clothes, and, wearing singlets and shorts and golden slippers, join their father on the stage.