Scenes from Provincial Life Read online

  I sealed up the letter in an envelope and wrote his name on it, Mr Coetzee / Saint Bonaventure, and on the Monday morning I put it in Maria Regina’s bag. ‘Give it to Mr Coetzee,’ I said, ‘put it in his hand.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Maria Regina.

  ‘It is a note from a parent to her daughter’s teacher, it is not for your eyes. Now go, or you will miss your bus.’

  Of course I made a mistake, I should not have said, It is not for your eyes. Maria Regina was beyond the age where, if your mother gives you a command, you obey. She was beyond that age but I did not know it yet. I was living in the past.

  ‘Did you give the note to Mr Coetzee?’ I asked when she came home.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and nothing more. I did not think I needed to ask, Did you open it in secret and read it before you gave it to him?

  The next day, to my surprise, Maria Regina brought back a note from this teacher of hers, not an answer to mine but an invitation: would we all like to come on a picnic with him and his father? At first I was going to refuse. ‘Think,’ I said to Maria Regina: ‘Do you really want your friends at school to get the impression you are the teacher’s favourite? Do you really want them to gossip behind your back?’ But that weighed nothing with her, she wanted to be the teacher’s favourite. She pressed me and pressed me to accept, and Joana backed her up, so in the end I said yes.

  There was lots of excitement at home, and lots of baking, and Joana brought things from the shop too, so when Mr Coetzee came to fetch us on the Sunday morning we had a whole basket of cakes and biscuits and sweets with us, enough to feed an army.

  He did not fetch us in a car, he did not have a car, no, he came in a truck, the kind that is open at the back, that in Brazil we call a caminhonete. So the girls, in their nice clothes, had to sit in the back with the firewood while I sat in the front with him and his father.

  That was the only time I met his father. His father was quite old already, and unsteady, with hands that trembled. I thought he might be trembling because he found himself sitting next to a strange woman, but later I saw his hands trembled all the time. When he was introduced to us he said ‘How do you do?’ very nicely, very courteously, but after that he shut up. All the time we drove he did not speak, not to me, not to his son either. A very quiet man, very humble, or perhaps just frightened of everything.

  We drove up into the mountains – we had to stop to let the girls put on their coats, they were getting cold – to a park, I don’t remember the name now, where there were pine trees and places where people could have picnics, white people only, of course – a nice place, almost empty because it was winter. As soon as we chose our place Mr Coetzee made himself busy unloading the truck and building a fire. I expected Maria Regina to help him, but she slipped away, she said she wanted to explore. That was not a good sign. Because if relations had been comme il faut between them, just a teacher and a student, she would not have been embarrassed to help. But it was Joana who came forward instead, Joana was very good that way, very practical and efficient.

  So there I was, left behind with his father as if we were the two old people, the grandparents! I found it hard talking to him, as I said, he could not understand my English and was shy too, with a woman; or maybe he just didn’t understand who I was.

  And then, even before the fire was burning properly, clouds came over and it grew dark and started to rain. ‘It is just a shower, it will soon pass,’ said Mr Coetzee. ‘Why don’t the three of you get into the truck.’ So the girls and I took shelter in the truck, and he and his father huddled under a tree, and we waited for the rain to pass. But of course it did not, it went on raining and gradually the girls lost their good spirits. ‘Why does it have to rain today of all days?’ whined Maria Regina, just like a baby. ‘Because it is winter,’ I told her: ‘because it is winter and intelligent people, people with their feet on the ground, don’t go out on picnics in the middle of winter.’

  The fire that Mr Coetzee and Joana had built went out. All the wood was wet by now, so we would never be able to cook our meat. ‘Why don’t you offer them some of the biscuits you baked?’ I said to Maria Regina. Because I had never seen a more miserable sight than those two Dutchmen, the father and the son, sitting together side by side under a tree trying to pretend they were not cold and wet. A miserable sight, but funny too. ‘Offer them some biscuits and ask them what we are going to do next. Ask them if they would like to take us to the beach for a swim.’

  I said this to make Maria Regina smile, but all I did was make her more cross; so in the end it was Joana who went out in the rain and talked to them and came back with the message that we would leave as soon as it stopped raining, we would go back to their house and they would make tea for us. ‘No,’ I said to Joana. ‘Go back and tell Mr Coetzee no, we cannot come to tea, he must take us straight back to the flat, tomorrow is Monday and Maria Regina has homework that she hasn’t even started on.’

  Of course it was an unhappy day for Mr Coetzee. He had hoped to make a good impression on me; maybe he also wanted to show off to his father the three attractive Brazilian ladies who were his friends; and instead all he got was a truck full of wet people driving through the rain. But to me it was good that Maria Regina should see what her hero was like in real life, this poet who could not even make a fire.

  So that is the story of our expedition into the mountains with Mr Coetzee. When at last we got back in Wynberg, I said to him, in front of his father, in front of the girls, what I had been waiting to say all day. ‘It was very kind of you to invite us out, Mr Coetzee, very gentlemanly,’ I said, ‘but maybe it is not a good idea for a teacher to be favouring one girl in his class above all others just because she is pretty. I am not admonishing you, just asking you to reflect.’

  Those were the words I used: just because she is pretty. Maria Regina was furious with me for speaking like that, but as for me, I did not care as long as I was understood.

  Later that night, when Maria Regina had already gone to bed, Joana came to my room. ‘Mamãe, must you be so hard on Maria?’ she said. ‘Truly, there is nothing bad going on.’

  ‘Nothing bad?’ I said. ‘What do you know of the world? What do you know of badness? What do you know of what men will do?’

  ‘He is not a bad man, mamãe,’ she said. ‘Surely you can see that.’

  ‘He is a weak man,’ I said. ‘A weak man is worse than a bad man. A weak man does not know where to stop. A weak man is helpless before his impulses, he follows wherever they lead.’

  ‘Mamãe, we are all weak,’ said Joana.

  ‘No, you are wrong, I am not weak,’ I said. ‘Where would we be, you and Maria Regina and I, if I allowed myself to be weak? Now go to bed. And don’t repeat any of this to Maria Regina. Not a word. She will not understand.’

  I hoped that would be the end of Mr Coetzee. But no, a day or two later there arrived a letter from him, not via Maria Regina this time but through the mail, a formal letter, typed, the envelope typed too. In it he first apologized for the picnic that had been a failure. He had hoped to speak to me in private, he said, but had had no chance. Could he come and see me? Could he come to the flat, or would I prefer to meet him elsewhere, perhaps have lunch with him? The matter that weighed on him was not Maria Regina, he wanted to stress. Maria was an intelligent young woman, with a good heart; it was a privilege to teach her; I could be assured he would never, never betray the trust I had put in him. Intelligent and beautiful too – he hoped I would not mind if he said that. For beauty, true beauty, was more than skin-deep, it was the soul showing through the flesh; and where could Maria Regina have got her beauty but from me?

  [Silence.]

  And?

  That was all. That was the substance. Could he meet me alone.

  Of course I asked myself where he had got the idea that I would want to meet him, even want to receive a letter from him. Because I never said a word to encourage him.

  So what did you do? Did you meet him?<
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  What did I do? I did nothing and hoped he would leave me alone. I was a woman in mourning, though my husband was not dead, I did not want the attentions of other men, particularly of a man who was my daughter’s teacher.

  Do you still have that letter?

  I don’t have any of his letters. I did not keep them. When we left South Africa I did a clean-out of the flat and threw away all the old letters and bills.

  And you did not reply?

  No.

  You did not reply and you did not allow relations to develop any further – relations between yourself and Coetzee?

  What is this? Why these questions? You come all the way from England to talk to me, you tell me you are writing a biography of a man who happened many years ago to be my daughter’s English teacher, and now suddenly you feel you are permitted to interrogate me about my ‘relations’? What kind of biography are you writing? Is it like Hollywood gossip, like secrets of the rich and famous? If I refuse to discuss my so-called relations with this man, will you say I am keeping them secret? No, I did not have, to use your word, relations with Mr Coetzee. I will say more. For me it was not natural to have feelings for a man like that, a man who was so soft. Yes, soft.

  Are you suggesting he was homosexual?

  I am not suggesting anything. But there was a quality he lacked that a woman looks for in a man, a quality of strength, of manliness. My husband had that quality. He always had it, but his time in prison here in Brazil, under the militares, brought it out more clearly, even though he was not in prison a long time, only six months. After those six months, he used to say, nothing that human beings did to other human beings could come as a surprise to him. Coetzee had no such experience behind him to test his manhood and teach him about life. That is why I say he was soft. He was not a man, he was still a boy.

  [Silence.]

  As for homosexual, no, I do not say he was homosexual, but he was, as I told you, célibataire – I don’t know the word for that in English.

  A bachelor type? Sexless? Asexual?

  No, not sexless. Solitary. Not made for conjugal life. Not made for the company of women.

  [Silence.]

  You mentioned that there were further letters.

  Yes, when I did not reply he wrote again. He wrote many times. Perhaps he thought that if he wrote enough words they would eventually wear me down, like the waves of the sea wear down a rock. I put his letters away in the bureau; some I did not even read. But I thought to myself, Among the many things this man lacks, the many many things, one is a tutor to give him lessons in love. Because if you have fallen in love with a woman you do not sit down and type her one long letter after another, pages and pages, each one ending ‘Yours sincerely’. No, you write a letter in your own hand, a proper love-letter, and have it delivered to her with a bouquet of red roses. But then I thought, perhaps this is how these Dutch Protestants behave when they fall in love: prudently, long-windedly, without fire, without grace. And no doubt that is how his lovemaking would be too, if he ever got a chance.

  I put his letters away and said nothing of them to the children. That was a mistake. I could easily have said to Maria Regina, That Mr Coetzee of yours has written me a note to apologize for Sunday. He mentions that he is pleased with your progress in English. But I was silent, which in the end led to much trouble. Even today, I think, Maria Regina has not forgotten or forgiven.

  Do you understand such things, Mr Vincent? Are you married? Do you have children?

  Yes, I am married. We have one child, a boy. He will be four next month.

  Boys are different. I don’t know about boys. But I will tell you one thing, entre nous, which you must not repeat in your book. I love both my daughters, but I loved Maria in a different way from Joana. I loved her but I was also very critical of her as she grew up. Joana I was never critical of. Joana was always very simple, very straightforward. But Maria was a charmer. She could – do you use the expression? – twist a man around her finger. If you could have seen her, you would know what I mean.

  What has become of her?

  She is in her second marriage now. She is living in North America, in Chicago, with her American husband. He is a lawyer in a law firm. I think she is happy with him. I think she has made her peace with the world. Before that she had personal problems, which I will not go into.

  Do you have a picture of her that I could perhaps use in the book?

  I don’t know. I will look. I will see. But it is getting late. Your colleague must be exhausted. Yes, I know how it is, being a translator. It looks easy from the outside, but the truth is you have to pay attention all the time, you cannot relax, the brain gets fatigued. So we stop here. Switch off your machine.

  Can we speak again tomorrow?

  Tomorrow is not convenient. Wednesday, yes. It is not such a long story, the story of myself and Mr Coetzee. I am sorry if it is a disappointment to you. You come all this way, and now you find there was no grand love affair with a dancer, just a brief infatuation, that is the word I would use, a brief, one-sided infatuation that never grew into anything. Come again on Wednesday at the same hour. I will give you tea.

  You asked, last time, about pictures. I searched, but it is as I thought, I have none from those years in Cape Town. However, let me show you this one. It was taken at the airport the day we arrived back in São Paulo, by my sister, who came to meet us. See, there we are, the three of us. That is Maria Regina. The date was 1977, she was eighteen, getting on for nineteen. As you can see, a very pretty girl with a nice figure. And that is Joana, and that is me.

  They are quite tall, your daughters. Was their father tall?

  Yes, Mario was a big man. The girls are not so tall, it is just that they look tall when they are standing next to me.

  Well, thank you for showing me. Can I take it away and have a copy made?

  For your book? No, I cannot allow that. If you want Maria Regina in your book you must ask her yourself, I cannot speak for her.

  I would like to include it as a picture of the three of you together.

  No. If you want pictures of the girls you must ask them. As for me, no, I have decided no. It will be taken the wrong way. People will assume I was one of the women in his life, and it was never so.

  Yet you were important to him. He was in love with you.

  That is what you say. But the truth is, if he was in love, it was not with me, it was with some fantasy that he dreamed up in his own brain and gave my name to. You think I should feel flattered that you want to put me in your book as his lover? You are wrong. To me this man was not a famous writer, he was just a schoolteacher, a schoolteacher who didn’t even have a diploma. Therefore no. No picture. What else? What else do you want me to tell you?

  You were telling me last time about the letters he wrote you. I know you said you did not always read them; nevertheless, do you by any chance recall more of what he said in them?

  One letter was about Franz Schubert – you know Schubert, the musician. He said that listening to Schubert had taught him one of the great secrets of love: how we can sublime love as chemists in the old days sublimed base substances. I remember the letter because of the word sublime. Sublime base substances: it made no sense to me. I looked up sublime in the big English dictionary I bought for the girls. To sublime: to heat something and extract its essence. We have the same word in Portuguese, sublimar, though it is not common. But what did it all mean? That he sat with his eyes closed listening to the music of Schubert while in his mind he heated his love for me, his base substance, into something higher, something more spiritual? It was nonsense, worse than nonsense. It did not make me love him, on the contrary it made me recoil.

  It was from Schubert that he had learned to sublime love, he said. Not until he met me did he understand why in music movements are called movements. Movement in stillness, stillness in movement. That was another phrase I puzzled my head over. What did he mean, and why was he writing these things to me?

 
; You have a good memory.

  Yes, there is nothing wrong with my memory. My body is another story. I have arthritis of the hips, that is why I use a stick. The dancer’s curse, they call it. And the pain – you will not believe the pain! But I remember South Africa very well. I remember the flat where we lived in Wynberg, where Mr Coetzee came to drink tea. I remember the mountain, Table Mountain. The flat was right under the mountain, so it got no sun in the afternoons. I hated Wynberg. I hated the whole time we spent there, first when my husband was in hospital and then after he died. It was very lonely for me, I cannot tell you how lonely. Worse than Luanda, because of the loneliness. If your Mr Coetzee had offered us his friendship I would not have been so hard on him, so cold. But I was not interested in love, I was still too close to my husband, still grieving for him. And he was just a boy, this Mr Coetzee. I was a woman and he was a boy. He was a boy as a priest is always a boy until suddenly one day he is an old man. The sublimation of love! He was offering to teach me about love, yet what could a boy like him teach me, a boy who knew nothing about life? I could have taught him, perhaps, but I was not interested in him. I just wanted him to keep his hands off Maria Regina.

  You say, if he had offered you friendship it would have been different. What kind of friendship did you have in mind?

  What kind of friendship? I will tell you. For a long time after the disaster that came over us, the disaster I told you about, I had to struggle with the bureaucracy, first over compensation, then over Joana’s papers – Joana was born before we were married, so legally she was not my husband’s daughter, she was not even his step-daughter, I will not bore you with the details. I know, in every country the bureaucracy is a labyrinth, I am not saying South Africa was the worst in the world, but whole days I would spend waiting in a line to get a rubber stamp – a rubber stamp for this, a rubber stamp for that – and always, always it would be the wrong office or the wrong department or the wrong line.

  If we had been Portuguese it would have been different. There were many Portuguese who came to South Africa in those days, from Moçambique and Angola and even Madeira, there were organizations to help the Portuguese. But we were from Brazil, and there were no regulations for Brazilians, no precedents, to the bureaucrats it was as if we arrived in their country from Mars.