Scenes from Provincial Life Read online

  It hit him on the neck and bounced to the floor without breaking. He hunched his shoulders and turned to me with a puzzled stare. Never before, I am sure, had he had a plate thrown at him. ‘Go!’ I shouted or perhaps even screamed, and waved him away. Chrissie woke up and began crying.

  Strange to say, I felt no regret afterwards. On the contrary, I was aroused and excited and proud of myself. Straight from the heart! I said to myself. My first plate!

  [Silence.]

  Have there been others?

  Other plates? Plenty.

  [Silence.]

  Was that how it ended, then, between you and him?

  Not quite. There was a coda. I’ll tell you the coda, then that will be that.

  It was a condom that spelled the real end, a condom tied at the neck, full of dead sperm. Mark fished it out from under the bed. I was flabbergasted. How could I have missed it? It was as if I wanted it to be found, wanted to shout my infidelity from the rooftops.

  Mark and I never used condoms, so there was no point in lying. ‘How long has this been going on?’ he demanded. ‘Since last December,’ I said. ‘You bitch,’ he said, ‘you filthy, lying bitch! And I trusted you!’

  He was about to storm out of the room, but then as if on afterthought he turned and – I am sorry, I am going to draw a veil over what happened next, it is too shameful to repeat, too shaming. I will simply say it left me surprised, shocked, but above all furious. ‘For that, Mark, I will never forgive you,’ I said when I recovered myself. ‘There is a line, and you’ve just crossed it. I’m going. You look after Chrissie for a change.’

  At the moment I uttered the words I’m going, you look after Chrissie, I swear I meant no more than that I was leaving the house and he could look after the child for the afternoon. But in the five paces it took to reach the front door it came to me in a blinding flash that this could actually be the moment of liberation, the moment when I walked out of an unfulfilling marriage and never came back. The clouds over my head, the clouds in my head, lightened, evaporated. Don’t think! I told myself. Just do it! Without missing a step I turned, strode upstairs, stuffed some underwear into a carry-bag, and raced downstairs again.

  Mark was barring the way. ‘Where do you think you are going?’ he demanded. ‘Are you going to him?’

  ‘Go to hell,’ I said. I tried to push past, but he grabbed my arm.

  ‘Let me go!’ I said.

  No screams, no snarls, just a simple, curt command, but it was as though out of the skies a crown and regal robes had descended upon me. Without a word he let go. When I drove off he was still standing in the doorway, dumbstruck.

  So easy! I exulted. So easy! Why didn’t I do it before?

  What puzzles me about that moment – which was in fact one of the key moments of my life – what puzzled me then and continues to puzzle me to the present day, is the following. Even if some force within me – let us call it the unconscious, to make things easier, though I have my reservations about the classical unconscious – had held me back from checking under the bed – had held me back precisely in order to precipitate this marital crisis – why on earth did Maria leave the incriminating item lying there – Maria who was definitely not part of my unconscious, Maria whose job it was to clean, to clean up, to clean things away? Did Maria deliberately overlook the condom? Did she draw herself up, when she saw it, and say to herself, This is going too far! Either I defend the sanctity of the marriage bed or I become complicit in an outrageous affair!

  Sometimes I imagine flying back to South Africa, the new, longed-for, democratic South Africa, with the sole purpose of seeking out Maria, if she is still alive, and having it out with her, getting an answer to that vexing question.

  Well, I was certainly not running off to join the him of Mark’s jealous rage, but where exactly was I heading? For I had no friends in Cape Town, none who were not Mark’s in the first place and mine only in the second.

  There was an establishment I had spotted while driving through Wynberg, a rambling old mansion with a sign outside: Canterbury Hotel / Residential / Full or part board / Weekly and monthly rates. I decided to try the Canterbury.

  Yes, said the woman at the desk, there happened to be a room available, would I want it for a week or for a longer term? A week, I said, in the first place.

  The room in question – be patient, this is not irrelevant – was on the ground floor. It was spacious, with a neat little bathroom en suite and a compact refrigerator and French doors giving onto a shady, vine-covered veranda. ‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘I’ll take it.’

  ‘And your baggage?’ said the woman.

  ‘My baggage will be coming,’ I said, and she understood. I am sure I was not the first runaway wife to pitch up on the doorstep of the Canterbury. I am sure they enjoyed quite a traffic in pissed-off spouses. And a nice little bonus to be made from the ones who paid for a week, spent a night, then, repentant or exhausted or homesick, checked out the next morning.

  Well, I was not repentant and I was certainly not homesick. I was quite ready to make the Canterbury my home until the burden of childcare led Mark to sue for peace.

  There was a rigmarole about security that I barely followed – keys for doors, keys for gates – plus rules for parking, rules for visitors, rules for this, rules for that. I would not be having visitors, I informed the woman.

  That evening I dined in the lugubrious salle à manger of the Canterbury and had a first glimpse of my fellow residents, who seemed to come straight out of William Trevor or Muriel Spark. But no doubt I appeared much the same to them: another flushed escapee from a sour marriage. I went to bed early and slept well.

  I had thought I would enjoy my newfound solitude. I drove in to the city, did some shopping, saw an exhibition at the National Gallery, had lunch in the Gardens. But the second evening, alone in my room after a wretched meal of wilted salad and poached sole with béchamel sauce, I was suddenly overcome with loneliness and, worse than loneliness, self-pity. From the public telephone in the lobby I called John and, in murmurs (the receptionist was eavesdropping), told him of my situation.

  ‘Would you like me to come by?’ he said. ‘We could go to a late movie.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said; ‘yes, yes, yes.’

  I repeat as emphatically as I can, I did not run away from my husband and child in order to be with John. It was not that kind of affair. In fact, it was hardly an affair at all, more of a friendship, an extramarital friendship with a sexual component whose importance, at least on my side, was symbolic rather than substantial. Sleeping with John was my way of retaining my self-respect. I hope you understand that.

  Nevertheless, nevertheless, within minutes of his arrival at the Canterbury he and I were in bed, and – what is more – our lovemaking was, for once, something truly to write home about. I even shed tears at its conclusion. ‘I don’t know why I am crying,’ I sobbed, ‘I am so happy.’

  ‘It is because you didn’t get any sleep last night,’ he said, thinking he needed to console me. ‘It is because you are overwrought.’

  I stared at him. Because you are overwrought: he really seemed to believe that. It quite took my breath away, how stupid he could be, how insensitive. Yet in his wrongheaded way perhaps he was right. For my day of freedom had been coloured by a memory that kept creeping back, the memory of that humiliating face-off with Mark, which had left me feeling more like a spanked child than an erring spouse. Save for that, I would probably not have telephoned John, and would therefore not be in bed with him. So yes: I was upset, and why not? My world had been turned upside down.

  There was another source too for my uneasiness, even harder to confront: shame at having been found out. Because really, if you regarded the situation with a cold eye, I, with my sordid little tit-for-tat affair in Constantiaberg, was behaving no better than Mark, with his sordid little liaison in Durban.

  The fact was, I had come to some kind of moral limit. The fit of euphoria at leaving home had evaporated; my
sense of outrage was seeping away; as for the solitary life, its allure was fading fast. Yet how could I repair the damage other than by returning to Mark with my tail between my legs, suing for peace, and resuming my duties as chastened wife and mother? And in the midst of all that confusion of spirit, this piercingly sweet lovemaking! What was my body trying to tell me? That when one’s defences are down, the gateways to pleasure open up? That the marital bed is a bad place to commit adultery, hotels are better? What John felt I had no idea, he was never a forthcoming person; but for myself I knew without a doubt that the half hour I had just been through would endure as a landmark in my erotic life. Which it has. To this day. Why else would I still be talking about it?

  [Silence.]

  I’m glad I told you that story. Now I feel less guilty about the Schubert business.

  [Silence.]

  Anyway, I fell asleep in John’s arms. When I awoke it was dark and I hadn’t the faintest idea where I was. Chrissie, I thought – I have completely forgotten to feed Chrissie! I even groped for the light switch – in the wrong place – before it all came back to me. I was alone (no trace of John); it was six in the morning.

  From the lobby I called Mark. ‘Hello, it’s me,’ I said in my most neutral, most pacific voice. ‘Sorry to call so early, but how is Chrissie?’

  For his part, Mark was in no mood for conciliation. ‘Where are you?’ he demanded.

  ‘I’m phoning from Wynberg,’ I said. ‘I have moved into a hotel. I thought we should take a break from each other until things cool down. How is Chrissie? What are your plans for the week? Are you going to be in Durban?’

  ‘What I do with my time is none of your business,’ he said. ‘If you want to stay away, stay away.’

  Even on the telephone I could hear he was still in a rage. When Mark was cross he would explode his plosives: none of your business, with a puff of infuriated air on the b that would make your eyeballs shrivel. Memories of everything I disliked about him came flooding back. ‘Don’t be silly, Mark,’ I said, ‘you don’t know how to look after a child.’

  ‘Nor do you, you filthy bitch!’ he said, and slammed down the receiver.

  Later that morning, when I went to the shops, I found my bank account had been blocked.

  I drove out to Constantiaberg. My latchkey turned the latch, but the door was double-locked. I knocked and knocked. No reply. No sign of Maria either. I circled the house. Mark’s car was gone, the windows were closed.

  I telephoned his office. ‘He’s away at our Durban office,’ said the girl at the switchboard.

  ‘There’s an emergency at his home,’ I said. ‘Could you contact Durban and leave a message? Ask him to give his wife a call as soon as he can, at the following number. Say it’s urgent.’ And I gave the hotel number.

  For hours I waited. No call.

  Where was Chrissie? That was what I needed to know most of all. It seemed beyond belief that Mark could have taken the child with him to Durban. But if he hadn’t, what had he done with her?

  I telephoned Durban direct. No, said the secretary, Mark was not in Durban, was not expected this week. Had I tried the firm’s Cape Town office?

  Distraught by now, I telephoned John. ‘My husband has taken the child and decamped, vanished into thin air,’ I said. ‘I have no money. I don’t know what to do. Do you have any suggestions?’

  There was an elderly couple in the lobby, guests, openly listening to me. But I had ceased to care who knew of my troubles. I wanted to cry, but I think I laughed instead. ‘He has absconded with my child, and because of what?’ I said. ‘Is this’ – I gestured towards my surroundings, that is, towards the interior of the Canterbury Hotel (Residential) – ‘is this what I am being punished for?’ Then I really began to cry.

  Being miles away, John could not have seen my gesture, therefore (it occurred to me afterwards) must have attached a quite different meaning to the word this. I must have seemed to be referring to my affair with him – to have been dismissing it as unworthy of such a fuss.

  ‘Do you want to go to the police?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. ‘You can’t run away from your husband and then turn around and accuse him of stealing your child.’

  ‘Would you like me to come over and fetch you?’ I could hear the caution in his voice. And I could sympathize. I too would have been cautious in his position, with an hysterical female on the line. But I didn’t want caution, I wanted my child back. ‘No, I would not like to be fetched,’ I snapped.

  ‘Have you at least had something to eat?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want anything to eat,’ I said. ‘That’s enough of this stupid conversation. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I called. Goodbye.’ And I put down the phone.

  I didn’t want anything to eat, though I wouldn’t have minded something to drink: a stiff whisky, for instance, followed by a dead, dreamless sleep.

  I had just slumped down in my room and covered my head with a pillow when there was a tapping at the French door. It was John. Words between us, which I won’t repeat. To be brief, he took me back to Tokai and bedded me down in his room. He himself slept on the sofa in the living room. I was half expecting him to come to me during the night, but he didn’t.

  I was woken by murmured talk. The sun was up. I heard the front door close. A long silence. I was alone in this strange house.

  The bathroom was primitive, the toilet not clean. An unpleasant smell of male sweat and damp towels hung in the air. Where John had gone, when he would be back, I had no idea. I made myself coffee and did some exploring. From room to room the ceilings were so low I felt I would suffocate. It was only a farm cottage, I understood that, but why had it been built for midgets?

  I peered into the elder Coetzee’s room. The light had been left on, a single dim bulb without a shade in the centre of the ceiling. The bed was unmade. On a table by the bedside, a newspaper folded open to the crossword puzzle. On the wall a painting, amateurish, of a whitewashed Cape Dutch farmhouse, and a framed photograph of a severe-looking woman. The window, which was small and covered with a lattice of steel bars, looked out onto a stoep empty but for a pair of canvas deckchairs and a row of withered ferns in pots.

  John’s room, where I had slept, was larger and better lit. A bookshelf: dictionaries, phrasebooks, teach yourself this, teach yourself that. Beckett. Kafka. On the table, a mess of papers. A filing cabinet. Idly I searched through the drawers. In the bottom drawer, a box of photographs, which I burrowed amongst. What was I looking for? I didn’t know. For something I would recognize only when I found it. But it was not there. Most of the photographs were from his school years: sports teams, class portraits.

  From the front I heard noises, and went outdoors. A beautiful day, the sky a brilliant blue. John was unloading sheets of galvanized iron roofing from his truck. ‘I’m sorry if I forsook you,’ he said. ‘I needed to pick these up, and I didn’t want to wake you.’

  I drew up a deckchair in a sunny spot, closed my eyes, and indulged in a little day-dreaming. I wasn’t about to abandon my child. I wasn’t about to walk out on my marriage. Nevertheless, what if I did? What if I forgot about Mark and Chrissie, settled down in this ugly little house, became the third member of the Coetzee family, the adjunct, Snow White to the two dwarves, doing the cooking, the cleaning, the laundering, maybe even helping with roof repairs? How long before my wounds healed? And then how long before my true prince rode by, the prince of my dreams, who would recognize me for who I was, lift me onto his white stallion, and bear me off into the sunset?

  Because John Coetzee was not my prince. Finally I come to the point. If that was the question at the back of your mind when you came to Kingston – Is this going to be another of those women who mistook John Coetzee for their secret prince? – then you have your answer now. John was not my prince. Not only that: if you have been listening carefully you will have understood by now how very unlikely it was that he could have been a prince, a satisfactory pri
nce, to any maiden on earth.

  You don’t agree? You think otherwise? You think the fault lay with me, not with him – the fault, the deficiency? Well, cast your mind back to the books he wrote. What is the one theme that keeps recurring from book to book? It is that the woman doesn’t fall in love with the man. The man may or may not love the woman; but the woman never loves the man. What do you think that theme reflects? My guess, my highly informed guess, is that it reflects his life experience. Women didn’t fall for him – not women in their right senses. They inspected him, they sniffed him, maybe they even tried him out. Then they moved on.

  They moved on as I did. I could have remained in Tokai, as I said, in the Snow White role. As an idea it was not without its seductions. But in the end I did not. John was a friend to me during a rough patch in my life, he was a crutch I sometimes leant on, but he was never going to be my lover, not in the real sense of the word. For real love you need two full human beings, and the two need to fit together, to fit into each other. Like Yin and Yang. Like an electrical plug and an electrical socket. Like male and female. He and I didn’t fit.

  Believe me, over the course of the years I have given plenty of thought to John and his type. What I am going to tell you now I offer with due consideration, and I hope without animus. Because, as I said, John was important to me. He taught me a lot. He was a friend who remained a friend even after I broke up with him. When I felt low I could always rely on him to joke with me and lift my spirits. He raised me once to unexpected erotic heights – once only, alas! But the fact is, John wasn’t made for love, wasn’t constructed that way – wasn’t constructed to fit into or be fitted into. Like a sphere. Like a glass ball. There was no way to connect with him. That is my conclusion, my mature conclusion.