J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

‘Juan Sebastián,’ he shouts — he needs no microphone — ‘I am here to beg your forgiveness.’ He turns to the audience. ‘Yes, I beg this man’s forgiveness. I know you are occupied with other matters, important matters, but I am Dmitri, Dmitri the outcast, and Dmitri has no shame, he is beyond shame as he is beyond many other things.’ He turns back to Arroyo. ‘I must tell you, Juan Sebastián,’ he continues without pause, as if his speech has been long rehearsed, ‘I have been through dark times of late. I have even thought of doing away with myself. Why? Because I have grown to realize — and it has been a bitter realization — that never will I be free until the burden of guilt is lifted from my shoulders.’

If Arroyo is disconcerted, he gives no sign of it. With shoulders squared he confronts Dmitri.

‘Where shall I turn for relief?’ demands Dmitri. ‘To the law? You heard what the man said about the law. The law takes no reckoning of the state of a man’s soul. All it does is make up an equation, fit a sentence to a crime. Take the case of Ana Magdalena, your wife, whose life was cut off just like that. What gives some stranger, some man who never laid eyes on her, the right to put on a scarlet robe and say, A lifetime in the lock-up, that’s what her life is worth ? Or Twenty-five years in the salt mines ? It makes no sense! Some crimes are not measurable! They are off the scale!

‘And what would it achieve anyway, twenty-five years in the salt mines? An outward torment, that’s all. Does the outward torment cancel the inner torment, like a plus and a minus? No. The inner torment rages on.’

Without warning he sinks to his knees before Arroyo.

‘I am guilty, Juan Sebastián. You know it and I know it. I have never pretended otherwise. I am guilty and in great need of your forgiveness. Only when I have your forgiveness will I be healed. Lay your hand on my head. Say, Dmitri, you did me a terrible wrong, but I forgive you . Say it.’

Arroyo is silent, his features frozen in disgust.

‘What I did was bad, Juan Sebastián. I don’t deny it and don’t want it to be forgotten. Let it always be remembered that Dmitri did a bad thing, a terrible thing. But surely that doesn’t mean I should be damned and cast into the outer darkness. Surely I can have a little grace extended to me. Surely someone can say, Dmitri? I remember Dmitri. He did a bad thing but at heart he wasn’t a bad fellow, old Dmitri . That will be enough for me — that one drop of saving water. Not to absolve me, just to recognize me as man, to say, He is still ours, he is still one of us .’

There is a minor commotion at the back of the auditorium. Two uniformed police officers march purposefully down the aisle toward the stage.

With his arms above his head Dmitri rises to his feet. ‘So this is how you answer me,’ he cries out. ‘ Take him away and lock him up, this troublesome spirit. Who is responsible for this? Who called the police? Where are you skulking, Simón? Show your face! After all I have been through, do you think a prison cell frightens me? There is nothing you can do that is equal to what I do to myself. Do I look to you like a happy man? No, I don’t. I look like a man sunk in the depths of misery, because that is where I am, night and day. It is only you, Juan Sebastián, who can draw me up from the deep well of my misery, because you are the one I wronged.’

The police officers have halted at the foot of the stage. They are young, mere boys, and in the glare of the lights suddenly unsure of themselves.

‘I wronged you, Juan Sebastián, I wronged you profoundly. Why did I do it? I have no idea. Not only do I have no idea why I did it, I cannot believe I did it. That is the truth, the naked truth. I swear to it. It’s incomprehensible — incomprehensible from the outside and incomprehensible from the inside too. If the facts were not staring me in the face, I would be tempted to agree with the judge — you remember the judge at the trial? — of course not, you weren’t there — I would be tempted to say, It wasn’t I who did it, it was someone else . But of course that isn’t true. It is not as if I am a schizophrenic or a hebephrenic or any of the other things they say I could be. I am not divorced from reality. My feet are on the ground and have always been. No: it was me. It was me. A mystery yet not a mystery. A mystery that it is not a mystery. How did it come to be I who did the deed — I of all people? Can you help me answer that question, Juan Sebastián? Can anyone help me?’

Of course the man is a fake through and through. Of course his remorse is confected, part of a scheme to save himself from the salt mines. Nevertheless, when he, Simón, tries to imagine how this man, who every day visited the kiosk on the square to fill his pockets with lollipops for the children, could have closed his hands around Ana Magdalena’s alabaster throat and crushed the life out of her, his imagination fails him. It fails or it quails. What the man did may not be a true mystery but it is a mystery nonetheless.

From the back of the stage the boy’s voice rings out. ‘Why don’t you ask me? You ask everyone else but you never ask me!’

‘Quite right,’ says Dmitri. ‘My fault, I should have asked you too. Tell me, my pretty young dancer, what shall I do with myself?’

Gathering their resolve, the two young police officers make to ascend the stage. Brusquely Arroyo waves them back.

‘No!’ the boy shouts. ‘You have got to really ask me!’

‘All right,’ says Dmitri, ‘I’ll really ask you.’ He kneels down again, clasps his hands, composes his face. ‘Davíd, please tell me — no, it’s no good, I can’t do it. You are too young, my boy. You have to be a grown-up to understand love and death and things like that.’

‘You are always saying it, Simón is always saying it — You don’t understand, you are too young. I can understand! Ask me, Dmitri! Ask me !’

Dmitri repeats the rigmarole of unfolding and folding his hands, closing his eyes, letting his face go blank.

‘Dmitri, ask me!’ Now the boy is positively screaming.

There is a stir among the audience. People are getting up and leaving. He catches the eye of Mercedes sitting in the front row. She raises a hand in a gesture he cannot read. The three sisters, beside her, are stony-faced.

He, Simón, signals to the police officers. ‘That’s enough, Dmitri, enough of a show. Time for you to go.’

While one officer holds Dmitri still, the other handcuffs him.

‘So,’ says Dmitri in his normal voice. ‘Back to the madhouse. Back to my lonely cell. Why don’t you tell your youngster, Simón, what is going on at the back of your mind? Your father or uncle or whatever he calls himself is too delicate to tell you, young Davíd, but in secret he hopes I am going to cut my throat, let my blood flow down the drains. Then they can hold an inquest and conclude that the tragedy occurred while the balance of the deceased’s mind was disturbed and that will be the end of Dmitri. Shut the file on him. Well, let me tell you, I am not going to do away with myself. I am going to go on living, and I am going to go on plaguing you, Juan Sebastián, until you relent.’ Laboriously he tries to prostrate himself again, holding his handcuffed hands above his head. ‘Forgive me, Juan Sebastián, forgive me!’

‘Take him away,’ says he, Simón.

‘No!’ cries the boy. His face is flushed, he is breathing fast. He raises a hand, points dramatically. ‘You must bring her back, Dmitri! Bring her back !’

Dmitri struggles into a sitting position, rubs his bristly chin. ‘Bring whom back, young Davíd?’