Scenes from Provincial Life Read online

  Not half her lifespan gone, and already she is hankering for the past!

  It was never just a question of Merweville, of John and his father, of who was going to be living where, in the city or in the country. What are we doing here?: that had been the unspoken question all the time. He had known it and she had known it. Her own letter, however cowardly, had at least hinted at the question: What are we doing in this barren part of the world? Why are we spending our lives in dreary toil if it was never meant that people should live here, if the whole project of humanizing the place was misconceived from the start?

  This part of the world. The part she means is not Merweville or Calvinia but the whole Karoo, perhaps the whole country. Whose idea was it to lay down roads and railway lines, build towns, bring in people and then bind them to this place, bind them with rivets through the heart, so that they cannot get away? Better to cut yourself free and hope the wound heals, he said when they were out walking in the veld. But how do you cut through rivets like that?

  It is long past closing time. The post office is closed, the shops are closed, the street is deserted. Meyerowitz Jeweller. Babes in the Wood – Laybyes Accepted. Cosmos Café. Foschini Modes.

  Meyerowitz (‘Diamonds are Forever’) has been here longer than she can remember. Babes in the Wood used to be Jan Harmse Slagter. Cosmos Café used to be Cosmos Milk Bar. Foschini Modes used to be Winterberg Algemene Handelaars. All this change, all this busyness! O droewige land! O sorrowful land! Foschini Modes is confident enough to open a new branch in Calvinia. What can her cousin the failed emigrant, the poet of melancholy, claim to know about the future of this land that Foschini does not? Her cousin who believes that even baboons, as they stare out over the veld, are overcome with weemoed.

  Lukas is convinced there will be a political accommodation. John may claim to be a liberal, but Lukas is a more practical liberal than John will ever be, and a more courageous one too. If they chose to, Lukas and she, boer and boervrou, man and wife, could scrape together a living on their farm. They might have to tighten their belt a notch or two or three, but they would survive. If Lukas chooses instead to drive trucks for the Coop, if she keeps the books for the hotel, it is not because the farm is a doomed enterprise but because she and Lukas made up their minds long ago they would house their workers properly and pay them a decent wage and make sure their children went to school and support those same workers later when they grew old and infirm; and because all that decency and support costs money, more money than the farm as a farm brings in or ever will bring in, in the foreseeable future.

  A farm is not a business: such was the premise she and Lukas agreed on long ago. The Middelpos farm is home not only to the two of them with the ghosts of their unborn children but to thirteen other souls as well. To bring in the money to maintain the whole little community, Lukas has to spend days at a time on the road and she to pass her nights alone in Calvinia. That is what she means when she calls Lukas a liberal: he has a generous heart, a liberal heart; and through him she has learned to have a liberal heart too.

  And what is wrong with that, as a way of life? That is the question she would like to ask her clever cousin, the one who first ran away from South Africa and now talks of cutting himself free. From what does he mean to free himself? From love? From duty? My father sends his love, as do I. What kind of lukewarm love is that? No, she and John may share the same blood but, whatever it is he feels for her, it is not love. Nor does he love his father, not really. Does not even love himself. And what is the point, anyway, of cutting oneself free of everyone and everything? What is he going to do with his freedom? Love begins at home – isn’t that an English saying? Instead of forever running away, he should find himself a decent woman and look her straight in the eye and say: Will you wed me? Will you wed me and welcome my aged parent into our home and care for him faithfully until he dies? If you will take on that burden, I will undertake to love you and be faithful to you and find a proper job and work hard and bring home my money and be cheerful and stop kvetching about the droewige vlaktes, the mournful plains. She wishes he were here this moment, in Kerkstraat, Calvinia, so that she could raas with him, give him an earful as the English say: she is in the mood.

  A whistle. She turns. It is Lukas, leaning out of the car window. Skattie, hoe mompel jy dan nou? he calls out, laughing. How come you are mumbling to yourself?

  NO FURTHER LETTERS PASS between herself and her cousin. Before long he and his problems have ceased to have any place in her thoughts. More pressing concerns have arisen. The visas have come through that Klaus and Carol have been waiting for, the visas for the Promised Land. With swift efficiency they are readying themselves for the move. One of their first steps is to bring her mother, who has been staying with them and whom Klaus too calls Ma though he has a perfectly good mother of his own in Düsseldorf, back to the farm.

  They drive the sixteen hundred kilometres from Johannesburg in twelve hours, taking turns at the wheel of the BMW. This feat affords Klaus much satisfaction. He and Carol have completed advanced driving courses and have certificates to show for it; they are looking forward to driving in America, where the roads are so much better than in South Africa, though not of course as good as the German Autobahnen.

  Ma is not at all well: she, Margot, can see that as soon as she is helped out of the back seat. Her face is puffy, she is not breathing easily, she complains that her legs are sore. Ultimately, Carol explains, the problem lies with her heart: she has been seeing a specialist in Johannesburg and has a new sequence of pills to take three times a day without fail.

  Klaus and Carol stay overnight on the farm, then set off back to the city. ‘As soon as Ma improves, you and Lukas must bring her to America for a visit,’ says Carol. ‘We will help with the air fares.’ Klaus embraces her, kissing her on both cheeks (‘It is warmer that way’). With Lukas he shakes hands.

  Lukas detests his brother-in-law. There is not the faintest chance that Lukas will go and visit them in America. As for Klaus, he has never been shy of expressing his verdict on South Africa. ‘Beautiful country,’ he says, ‘beautiful landscapes, rich resources, but, many, many problems. How you will solve them I cannot see. In my opinion things will get worse before they will get better. But that is just my opinion.’

  She would like to spit in his eye, but does not.

  Her mother cannot stay alone on the farm while she and Lukas are away, there is no question of that. So she arranges for a second bed to be moved into her room at the hotel. It is inconvenient, it means the end of all privacy for her, but there is no alternative. She is billed full board for her mother, though in fact her mother eats like a bird.

  They are into the second week of this new regime when a member of the cleaning staff comes upon her mother slumped on a couch in the empty hotel lounge, unconscious and blue in the face. She is rushed to the district hospital and resuscitated. The doctor on duty shakes his head. Her heartbeat is very weak, he says, she needs more urgent and more expert care than she can get in Calvinia; Upington is an option, there is a decent hospital there, but it would be preferable if she went to Cape Town.

  Within an hour she, Margot, has shut her office and is on the way to Cape Town, sitting in the cramped back of the ambulance, holding her mother’s hand. With them is a young Coloured nurse named Aletta, whose crisp, starched uniform and cheerful air soon set her at ease.

  Aletta, it turns out, was born not far away, in Wuppertal in the Cederberg, where her parents still live. She has made the trip to Cape Town more times than she can count. She tells of how, only last week, they had to rush a man from Loeriesfontein to Groote Schuur Hospital along with three fingers packed in ice in a cool box, fingers he had lost in a mishap with a bandsaw.

  ‘Your mother will be fine,’ says Aletta. ‘Groote Schuur – only the best.’

  At Clanwilliam they stop for petrol. The ambulance driver, who is even younger than Aletta, has brought along a thermos flask of coffee. He offers her, Margot, a
cup, but she declines. ‘I’m cutting down on coffee,’ she says (a lie), ‘it keeps me awake.’

  She would have liked to buy the two of them a cup of coffee at the café, would have liked to sit down with them in a normal, friendly way, but of course one could not do that without causing a fuss. Let the time come soon, O Lord, she prays to herself, when all this apartheid nonsense will be buried and forgotten.

  They resume their places in the ambulance. Her mother is sleeping. Her colour is better, she is breathing evenly beneath the oxygen mask.

  ‘I must tell you how much I appreciate what you and Johannes are doing for us,’ she says to Aletta. Aletta smiles back in the friendliest of ways, with not the faintest trace of irony. She hopes for her words to be understood in their widest sense, with all the meaning that for very shame she cannot express: I must tell you how grateful I am for what you and your colleague are doing for an old white woman and her daughter, two strangers who have never done anything for you but on the contrary have participated in your humiliation in the land of your birth, day after day after day. I am grateful for the lesson you teach me through your actions, in which I see only human kindness, and above all through that lovely smile of yours.

  They reach the city of Cape Town at the height of the afternoon rush hour. Though theirs is not, strictly speaking, an emergency, Johannes nevertheless sounds his siren as he coolly threads his way through the traffic. At the hospital she trails behind as her mother is wheeled into the emergency unit. By the time she returns to thank Aletta and Johannes, they have left, taken the long road back to the Northern Cape.

  When I get back! she promises herself, meaning When I get back to Calvinia I will make sure I thank them personally! but also When I get back I will become a better person, that I swear! She also thinks: Who was the man from Loeriesfontein who lost the three fingers? Is it only we whites who are rushed by ambulance to a hospital – only the best! – where well-trained surgeons will sew our fingers back on or give us a new heart as the case may be, and all at no cost? Let it not be so, O Lord, let it not be so!

  When she sees her again, her mother is in a room by herself, awake, in a clean white bed, wearing the nightdress that she, Margot, had the good sense to pack for her. She has lost her hectic colouring, is even able to push aside the mask and mumble a few words: ‘Such a fuss!’

  She raises her mother’s delicate, in fact rather babyish hand to her lips. ‘Nonsense,’ she says. ‘Now Ma must rest. I’ll be right here if Ma needs me.’

  Her plan is to spend the night at her mother’s bedside, but the doctor in charge dissuades her. Her mother is not in danger, he says; her condition is being monitored by the nursing staff; she will be given a sleeping pill and will sleep until morning. She, Margot, the dutiful daughter, has been through enough, best if she gets a good night’s sleep herself. Does she have somewhere to stay?

  She has a cousin in Cape Town, she replies, she can stay with him.

  The doctor is older than her, unshaven, with dark, hooded eyes. She has been told his name but did not catch it. He may be Jewish, but there are many other things he may be too. He smells of cigarette smoke; there is a blue cigarette pack peeking out of his breast pocket. Does she believe him when he says that her mother is not in danger? Yes, she does; but she has always had a tendency to trust doctors, to believe what they say even when she knows they are just guessing; therefore she mistrusts her trust.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure there is no danger, doctor?’ she says.

  He gives her a tired nod. Absolutely indeed! What is absolutely in human affairs? ‘In order to take care of your mother you must take care of yourself,’ he says.

  She feels a welling-up of tears, a welling-up of self-pity too. Take care of both of us! she wants to plead. She would like to fall into the arms of this stranger, to be held and comforted. ‘Thank you, doctor,’ she says.

  Lukas is on the road somewhere in the Northern Cape, uncontactable. She calls her cousin John from a public telephone. ‘I’ll come and fetch you at once,’ says John. ‘Stay with us as long as you like.’

  Years have passed since she was last in Cape Town. She has never been to Tokai, the suburb where he and his father live. Their house sits behind a high wooden fence smelling strongly of damp-rot and engine oil. The night is dark, the pathway from the gate unlit; he takes her arm to guide her. ‘Be warned,’ he says, ‘it is all a bit of a mess.’

  At the front door her uncle awaits her. He greets her distractedly; he is agitated in a way that she is familiar with among the Coetzees, talking rapidly, running his fingers through his hair. ‘Ma is fine,’ she reassures him, ‘it was just an episode.’ But he prefers not to be reassured, he is in the mood for drama.

  John leads her on a tour of the premises. The house is small, ill-lit, stuffy; it smells of wet newspaper and fried bacon. If she were in charge she would tear down the dreary curtains and replace them with something lighter and brighter; but of course in this men’s world she is not in charge.

  He shows her into the room that is to be hers. Her heart sinks. The carpet is mottled with what look like oil stains. Against the wall is a low single bed, and beside it a desk on which books and papers lie piled higgledy-piggledy. Glaring down from the ceiling is the same kind of neon lamp they used to have in the office in the hotel before she had it removed.

  Everything here seems to be of the same hue: a brown verging in one direction on dull yellow and in the other on dingy grey. She doubts very much that the house has been cleaned, properly cleaned, in years.

  Normally this is his bedroom, John explains. He has changed the sheets on the bed; he will empty two drawers for her use. Across the passage are the necessary facilities.

  She explores the necessary facilities. The bathroom is grimy, the toilet stained, smelling of old urine.

  Since leaving Calvinia she has had nothing to eat but a chocolate bar. She is famished. John offers her what he calls French toast, white bread soaked in egg and fried, of which she eats three slices. He also gives her tea with milk that turns out to be sour (she drinks it anyway).

  Her uncle sidles into the kitchen, wearing a pyjama top over his trousers. ‘I’ll say goodnight, Margie,’ he says. ‘Sleep tight. Don’t let the fleas bite.’ He does not say goodnight to his son. Around his son he seems distinctly tentative. Have they been having a fight?

  ‘I’m restless,’ she says to John. ‘Shall we go for a walk? I’ve been cooped up in the back of an ambulance all day.’

  He takes her on a ramble through the well-lit streets of suburban Tokai. The houses they pass are all bigger and better than his. ‘This used to be farmland not long ago,’ he explains. ‘Then it was subdivided and sold in lots. Our house used to be a farm-labourer’s cottage. That’s why it is so shoddily built. Everything leaks: roof, walls. I spend all my free time doing repairs. I’m like the boy with his finger in the dyke.’

  ‘Yes, I begin to see the attraction of Merweville. At least in Merweville it doesn’t rain. But why not buy a better house here in the Cape? Write a book. Write a best-seller. Make lots of money.’

  It is only a joke, but he chooses to take it seriously. ‘I wouldn’t know how to write a best-seller,’ he says. ‘I don’t know enough about people and their fantasy lives. Anyway, I wasn’t destined for that fate.’

  ‘What fate?’

  ‘The fate of being a rich and successful writer.’

  ‘Then what is the fate you are destined for?’

  ‘For exactly the present one. For living with an ageing parent in a house in the white suburbs with a leaky roof.’

  ‘That’s just silly, slap talk. That’s the Coetzee in you speaking. You could change your fate tomorrow if you would just put your mind to it.’

  The dogs of the neighbourhood do not take kindly to strangers roaming their streets by night, arguing. The chorus of barking grows clamorous.

  ‘I wish you could hear yourself, John,’ she plunges on. ‘You are so full of nonsense! If you don’t
take hold of yourself you are going to turn into a sour old prune of a man who wants only to be left alone in his corner. Let’s go back. I have to get up early.’

  SHE SLEEPS BADLY ON the uncomfortable, hard mattress. Before first light she is up, making coffee and toast for the three of them. By seven o’clock they are on their way to Groote Schuur Hospital, crammed together in the cab of the Datsun.

  She leaves Jack and his son in the waiting room, but then cannot locate her mother. Her mother had an episode during the night, she is informed at the nurses’ station, and is back in intensive care. She, Margot, should return to the waiting room, where a doctor will speak to her.

  She rejoins Jack and John. The waiting room is already filling up. A woman, a stranger, is slumped in a chair opposite them. Over her head, covering one eye, she has knotted a woollen pullover caked with blood. She wears a tiny skirt and rubber sandals; she smells of mouldy linen and sweet wine; she is moaning softly to herself.

  She does her best not to stare, but the woman is itching for a fight. ‘Waarna loer jy?’ she glares: What are you staring at? ‘Jou moer!’

  She casts her eyes down, withdraws into silence.

  Her mother, if she lives, will be sixty-eight next month. Sixty-eight blameless years, blameless and contented. A good woman, all in all: a good mother, a good wife of the distracted, fluttering variety. The kind of woman men find it easy to love because she so clearly needs to be protected. And now cast into this hell-hole! Jou moer! – filthy talk. She must get her mother out as soon as she can, and into a private hospital, no matter what the cost.

  My little bird, that is what her father used to call her: my tortelduifie, my little turtledove. The kind of little bird that prefers not to leave its cage. Growing up she, Margot, had felt big and ungainly beside her mother. Who will ever love me? she had asked herself. Who will ever call me his little dove?