Age of Iron Read online

  Age of Iron

  J. M. Coetzee

  From Publishers Weekly

  Harsh, unflinching and powerful, Coetzee's (Waiting for the Barbarians) new novel is a cry of moral outrage at the legacy that apartheid has created in South Africa. In scenes of stunning ferocity, he depicts the unequal warfare waging between the two races, a conflict in which the balance of power is slowly shifting. An elderly woman's letters to her daughter in America make up the narrative. Near death from rapidly advancing cancer, Cape Town resident Mrs. Curren is a retired university professor and political liberal who has always considered herself a "good person" in deploring the government's obfuscatory and brutal policies, though she has been insulated from the barbarism they produce. When the teenage son of her housekeeper is murdered by the police and his activist friend is also shot by security forces, Mrs. Curren realizes that "now my eyes are open and I can never close them again." The only person to whom she can communicate her anguished feelings of futility and waste is an alcoholic derelict whom she prevails on to be her messenger after her death, by mailing the packet of her letters to her daughter. In them she records the rising tide of militancy among young blacks; brave, defiant and vengeful, they are a generation whose hearts have turned to iron. His metaphors in service to a story that moves with the implacability of a nightmare, Coetzee's own urgent message has never been so cogently delivered.

  From Library Journal

  This is the South African novelist's most direct indictment of apartheid yet. It takes the form of a letter-diary from Mrs. Curren, a former classics professor dying of cancer, to her daughter in America. She details a series of strange events that turn her protected middle-class life upside down. A homeless alcoholic appears at her door, eventually becoming her companion and confessor. Her liberal sentiments and her very humanity are tested as she experiences directly the horrors of apartheid. She comes to recognize South Africa as a country in which the rigidity of both sides has led to barbarism and to acknowledge her complicity in upholding the system. Less allegorical than Coetzee's previous novels, this is still richly metaphoric. A brilliant, chilling look at the spiritual costs of apartheid. Recommended.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Age of Iron

  For V.H.M.C. (1904-I985)

  z.c. (1912-1988)

  N.G.C. (1966-I989)

  I

  There is an alley down the side of the garage, you may remember it, you and your friends would sometimes play there. Now it is a dead place, waste, without use, where windblown leaves pile up and rot. Yesterday, at the end of this alley, I came upon a house of carton boxes and plastic sheeting and a man curled up inside, a man I recognized from the streets: tall, thin, with a weathered skin and long, carious fangs, wearing a baggy grey suit and a hat with a sagging brim. He had the hat on now, sleeping; with the brim folded under his ear. A derelict, one of the derelicts who hang around the parking lots on Mill Street, cadging money from shoppers, drinking under the flyover, eating out of refuse cans. One of the homeless for whom August, month of rains, is the worst month. Asleep in his box, his legs stretched out like a marionette's, his jaw agape. An unsavoury smell about him – urine, sweet wine, mouldy clothing, and something else too. Unclean.

  For a while I stood staring down on him, staring and smelling. A visitor, visiting himself on me on this of all days.

  This was the day when I had the news from Dr Syfret. The news was not good, but it was mine, for me, mine only, not to be refused. It was for me to take in my arms and fold to my chest and take home, without headshaking, without tears.

  'Thank you, doctor,' I said: 'thank you for being frank.' 'We will do everything we can,' he said, 'we will tackle this together.' But already, behind the comradely front, I could see he was withdrawing. Sauve qui peut. His allegiance to the living, not the dying,

  The trembling began only when. I got out of the car, By the time I had closed the garage door I was shaking all over: to still it I had to clench my teeth, grip my handbag. It was then that I saw the boxes, saw him.

  'What are you doing here?' I demanded, hearing the irritation in my voice, not checking it. 'You can't stay, you must go.'

  He did not stir, lying in his shelter, looking up, inspecting; the winter stockings, the blue coat, the skirt with whose hang there has always been something wrong, the grey hair cut by a strip of scalp, old woman's scalp, pink, babyish.

  Then he drew in his legs and leisurely got up. Without a word, he turned his back on me, shook out the black plastic, folded, it in half, in quarters, in eighths. He produced a bag (Air Canada, it said) and zipped it shut. I stood aside. Leaving behind the boxes, an empty bottle and a smell of urine, he passed me. His trousers sagged; he hitched them up. I waited to be sure he had gone, and heard him stow the plastic in the hedge from the other side.

  Two things, then, in the space of an hour: the news, long dreaded, and this reconnaissance, this other annunciation. The first of the carrion-birds, prompt, unerring. How long can I fend them off? The scavengers of Cape Town, whose number never dwindles. Who go bare and feel no cold. Who sleep outdoors and do not sicken. Who starve and do not waste. Warmed from within by alcohol. The contagions and i infections in their blood consumed in liquid flame. Cleaners-up after the feast. Flies, dry-winged, glazen-eyed, pitiless. My heirs.

  With what slow steps did I enter this empty house, from which every echo has faded, where the very tread of footsole on board is flat and dull! How I longed for you to be here, to hold me, comfort me! I begin to understand the true meaning of the embrace. We embrace to be embraced. We embrace our children to be folded in the arms of the future, to pass ourselves on beyond death, to be transported. That is how it was when I embraced you, always. We bear children in order to be mothered by them. Home truths, a mother's truth: from now to the end that is all you will hear from me. So: how I longed for you! How I longed to be able to go upstairs to you, to sit on your bed, run my fingers through your hair, whisper in your ear as I did on school mornings, 'Time to get up!' And then, when you turned over, your body blood-warm, your breath milky, to take you in my arms in what we called 'giving Mommy a big hug, the secret meaning of which, the meaning never spoken, was that Mommy should not be sad, for she would not die but live on in you.

  To live! You are my life; I love you as I love life itself. In the mornings I come out of the house and wet my finger and hold it up to the wind. When, the chill is from the north-west, from your quarter, I stand a long time sniffing, concentrating my attention in the hope that across ten thousand miles of land and sea some breath will reach me of the milkiness you still carry with you behind your ears, in the fold of your neck.

  The first task laid on me, from today: to resist the craving to share my death. Loving you, loving life, to forgive the living and take my leave without bitterness. To embrace death as my own, mine alone.

  To whom this writing then? The answer: to you but not to you; to me; to you in me.

  All afternoon I tried to keep myself busy, cleaning out drawers, sorting and discarding papers. At dusk I came out again. Behind the garage the shelter was set up as before with the black plastic neatly spanned over it. Inside lay the man, his legs curled up, and a dog beside him that cocked its ears and wagged its tail. A collie, young, little more than a pup, black, with white points.

  'No fires,' I said. 'Do you understand? I want no fires, I want no mess.'

  He sat up, rubbing his bare ankles, staring around as if not knowing where he was, A horsy, weatherbeaten face with the puffiness around the eyes of an alcoholic. Strange green eyes: unhealthy.

  'Do you want something to eat?' I said.

  He followed me to the kitchen, the dog at his heels, and waited while I cut him a sandwich. He took a bite but then seemed to forget to chew,
standing against the door-jamb with his mouth full, the light shining into his vacant green eyes, while the dog whined softly. 'I have to clean up,' I said impatiently, and made to close the door on him. He went off without a murmur; but before he turned the corner I was sure I saw him toss the sandwich away, and the dog dive after it.

  There were not so many of these homeless people in your time. But now they are part of life here. Do they frighten me? On the whole, no. A little begging, a little thieving; dirt, noise, drunkenness; no worse. It is the roaming gangs I fear, the sullen-mouthed boys, rapacious as sharks, on whom the first shade of the prison-house is already beginning to close. Children scorning childhood, the time of wonder, the growing-time of the soul. Their souls, their organs of wonder, stunted, petrified. And on the other side of the great divide their white cousins soul-stunted too, spinning themselves tighter and tighter into their sleepy cocoons. Swimming lessons, riding lessons, ballet lessons; cricket on the lawn; lives passed within walled gardens guarded by bulldogs; children of paradise, blond, innocent, shining with angelic light, soft as putti. Their residence the limbo of the unborn, their innocence the innocence of bee-grubs, plump and white, drenched in honey, absorbing sweetness through their soft skins. Slumbrous their souls, bliss-filled, abstracted.

  Why do I give this man food? For the same reason I would feed his dog (stolen, I am sure) if it came begging. For the same reason I gave you my breast. To be full enough to give and to give from one's fullness: what deeper urge is there? Out of their withered bodies even the old try to squeeze one last drop. A stubborn will to give, to nourish. Shrewd was death's aim when he chose my breast for his first shaft.

  This morning, bringing him coffee, I found him urinating into the drain, which he did without any appearance of shame.

  'Do you want a job of work?' I said. 'There are plenty of jobs I can give you.'

  He said nothing, but drank the coffee, holding the mug in both hands.

  'You are wasting your life,' I said. 'You are not a child any more. How can you live like this? How can you lie around and do nothing all day? I don't understand it. '

  It is true: I do not understand it. Something in me revolts at the lassitude, the letting go, the welcoming of dissolution. He did something that shocked me. With a straight look, the first direct look he has given me, he spat a gob of spit, thick, yellow, streaked with brown from the coffee, on to the concrete beside my foot. Then he thrust the mug at me and sauntered off.

  The thing itself, I thought, shaken: the thing itself brought out between us. Spat not upon me but before me where I could see it, inspect it, think about it. His word, his kind of word, from his own mouth, warm at the instant when it left him. A word, undeniable, from a language before language. First the look and then the spitting. What kind of look? A look without respect, from a man to a woman old enough to be his mother. Here: take your coffee.

  He did not sleep in the alley last night. The boxes are gone too. But, poking around, I came upon the Air Canada bag in the woodshed, and a place that he must have scratched for himself amid the jumble of lumber and faggots. So I know he means to come back.

  Six pages already, and all about a man you have never met and never will. Why do I write about him? Because he is and is not. Because in the look he gives me I see myself in a way that can be written. Otherwise what would this writing be but a kind of moaning, now high, now low? When I write about him I write about myself. When 1 write about his dog I write about myself; when I write about the house I write about myself. Man, house, dog: no matter what the word, through it I stretch out a hand to you. In another world I would not need words. I would appear on your doorstep. 'I have come for a visit,' I would say, and that would be the end of words: I would embrace you and be embraced. But in this world, in this time, I must reach out to you in words. So day by day I render myself into words and pack the words into the page like sweets: like sweets for my daughter, for her birthday, for the day of her birth. Words out of my body, drops of myself, for her to unpack in her own time, to take in, to suck, to absorb. As they say on the bottle: old-fashioned drops, drops fashioned by the old, fashioned and packed with love, the love we have no alternative but to feel toward those to whom we give ourselves to devour or discard.

  Though it rained steadily all afternoon, it was not till dark that I heard the creak of the gate and, a minute later, the click of the dog's claws on the veranda.

  I was watching television. One of the tribe of Ministers and Onderministers was making an announcement to the nation. 1 was standing, as I always do when they speak, as a way of keeping what I can of my self-respect (who would choose to face a firing-squad sitting down?). Ons buig nie voor dreigemente nie, he was saying:' we do not bow to threats: one of those speeches.

  The curtains behind me were open. At a certain moment I became aware of him, the man whose name I do not know, watching over my shoulder through the glass. So I turned up the sound, enough for, if not the words, then the cadences, to reach him, the slow, truculent Afrikaans rhythms with their deadening closes, like a hammer beating a post into the ground. Together, blow after blow, we listened. The disgrace of the life one lives under them: to open a newspaper, to switch on the television, like kneeling and being urinated on. Under them: under their meaty bellies, their full bladders. 'Your days are numbered,' I used to whisper once upon a time, to them who will now outlast me.

  I was on my way out to the shops, in the act of opening the garage door, when I had a sudden attack. An attack: it was just that: the pain hurling itself upon me like a dog, sinking its teeth into my back. I cried out, unable to stir. Then he, this man, appeared from somewhere and helped me into the house.

  I lay down on the sofa, on my left side, In the only comfortable posture left to me. He waited. 'Sit down,' I said. He sat. The pain began to subside. 'I have cancer,' I said, it has made its way into the bone. That is what hurts.'

  I was not at all sure he understood.

  A long silence. Then: 'This is a big house,' he said. 'You could turn it into a boarding-house.'

  I made a tired gesture.

  'You could let rooms to students,' he went on relentlessly.

  I yawned, and, feeling my teeth sag, covered my mouth. Once upon a time I would have blushed. But no longer.

  'I have a woman who helps with the housework,' I said. 'She is away till the end of the month, visiting her people. Do you have people?'

  A curious expression: to have people. Do I have people? Are you my people? I think not. Perhaps only Florence qualifies to have people.

  He made no reply. There is an air of childlessness about him. Of having no children in the world but also of having no childhood in his past. His face all bone and weathered-skin. As one cannot imagine a snake's head that does not look old, so one cannot see behind his face the face of a child. Green eyes, animal eyes: can one picture an infant with eyes like that?

  'My husband and I parted a long time ago, ' I said. 'He is dead now. I have a daughter in America. She left in 1976 and hasn't come back. She is married to an American. They have two children of their own.'

  A daughter. Flesh of my flesh. You.

  He took out a packet of cigarettes. 'Don't smoke in the house, please,' I said.

  'What is your disability?' I said. 'You say you get a disability pension.'

  He held out his right hand. Thumb and forefinger stood out; the other three fingers curled into the palm. 'I can't move them,' he said.

  We gazed at his hand, at the three crooked fingers with their dirty nails. Not what I would call a work-calloused hand.

  'Was it an accident?'

  He nodded; the kind of nod that committed him to nothing.

  'I'll pay you to cut the lawn,' I said.

  For an hour, using the hedge clippers, he hacked listlessly at the grass, knee-high by now in places. In the end he had cleared a patch a few yards square. Then he quit. 'It's not my kind of work,' he said. I paid him for the hour. As he left he bumped against the cat-tray, sp
illing litter all over the veranda.

  All in all, more trouble than he is worth. But I did not choose him. He chose me. Or perhaps he merely chose the one house without: a dog. A house of cats.

  The cats are unsettled by these newcomers. When they show their noses outside the dog makes playful dashes at them, so they skulk indoors, peevish. Today they would not eat. Thinking they spurned the food because it had been in the refrigerator, I stirred a little hot water into the smelly mess (what is it? seal-flesh? whale-flesh?). Still, they disdained it, circling the dish, flicking the tips of their tails. 'Eat!' I said, pushing the dish at them. The big one lifted a finicky paw to avoid being touched, At which I lost control. 'Go to hell, then!' I screamed, and flung the fork wildly in their direction – 'I am sick to death of feeding you!' In my voice there was a new, mad edge; and, hearing it, I exulted. Enough of being nice to people, enough of being nice to cats! 'Go to hell!' I screamed again, at the top of my voice. Their claws scrabbled on the linoleum as they fled.

  Who cares? When I am in a mood like this I am capable of putting a hand on the bread-board and chopping it off without a second thought. What do I care for this body that has betrayed me? I look at my hand and see only a tool, a hook, a thing for gripping other things. And these legs, these clumsy, ugly stilts: why should I have to carry them with me everywhere? Why should I take them to bed with me night after night and pack them in under the sheets, and pack the arms in too, higher up near the face, and lie there sleepless amid the clutter? The abdomen too, with its dead gurglings, and the heart beating, beating: why? What have they to do with me?

  We sicken before we die so that we will be weaned from our body. The milk that nourished us grows thin and sour; turning away from the breast, we begin to be restless for a separate life. Yet this first life, this life on earth, on the body of earth – will there, can there ever be a better? Despite all the glooms and despairs and rages, I have not let go of my love of it.