Scenes from Provincial Life Read online

  For weeks and months, ever since Mr Coetzee made his appearance, relations had been strained between Maria Regina and myself. But never before had my daughter used such words to me. I tried to calm her. We are not like other families, I told her. Other girls do not have a father in hospital and a mother who has to humiliate herself to earn a few pennies so that a child who never lifts a finger in the home, or says thank you, can have extra classes in this and extra classes in that.

  It was not true, of course. I could not have wished for better daughters than Joana and Maria Regina, serious, hard-working girls. But sometimes it is necessary to be a little harsh, even with those we love.

  Maria Regina heard nothing that I said, she was in such a fury. ‘I hate you!’ she shouted. ‘You think I don’t know why you are doing this! It is because you are jealous, because you don’t want me to see Mr Coetzee, because you want him for yourself!’

  ‘I am jealous of you? What nonsense! Why should I want this man for myself, this man who is not even a real man? Yes, I say he is not a real man! What do you know about men, you, a child? Why do you think this man wants to be among young girls? Do you think that is normal? Why do you think he encourages your dreaming, your fantasies? Men like that should not be allowed near a school. And you – you should be thankful I am saving you. But instead you shout abuse and make accusations against me, your mother!’

  I saw her lips move soundlessly, as though there were no words bitter enough for what was in her heart. Then she turned and ran out of the room. A moment later she was back, waving the letters that this man, this teacher of hers, had sent me, that I had put away in the bureau for no special reason, I certainly did not treasure them. ‘He writes love-letters to you!’ she screamed. ‘And you write love-letters back to him! It’s disgusting! If he is not normal why are you writing love-letters to him?’

  Of course what she was saying was untrue. I wrote him no love-letters, not one. But how could I make the poor child believe that? ‘How dare you!’ I said. ‘How dare you pry into my private papers!’

  How I wished, at that moment, that I had burnt those letters of his, letters I never asked for!

  Maria Regina was crying now. ‘I wish I had never listened to you,’ she sobbed. ‘I wish I had never let you invite him here. You just spoil everything.’

  ‘My poor child!’ I said, and took her in my arms. ‘I never wrote letters to Mr Coetzee, you must believe me. Yes, he wrote letters to me, I don’t know why, but I never wrote back. I am not interested in him in that way, not in the slightest. Don’t let him come between us, my darling. I am just trying to protect you. He is not right for you. He is a grown man, you are still a child. I will get you another teacher. I will get you a private teacher who will come here to the flat and help you. We will manage. A teacher is not expensive. We will get someone who has proper qualifications and knows how to prepare you for the examinations. Then we can put this whole unhappy business behind us.’

  So that is the story, the full story, of his letters and the trouble his letters caused me.

  There were no more letters?

  There was one more, but I did not open it. I wrote RETURN TO SENDER on the envelope and left it in the foyer for the postman to pick up. ‘See?’ I said to Maria Regina. ‘See what I think of his letters?’

  And what of the dance classes?

  He stopped coming. Mr Anderson spoke to him and he stopped coming. Maybe he even gave back his money, I don’t know.

  Did you find another teacher for Maria Regina?

  Yes, I found another teacher, a lady, a retired teacher. It cost money, but what is money when your child’s future is at stake?

  Was that the end, then, of your dealings with John Coetzee?

  Yes. Absolutely.

  You never saw him again, never heard from him?

  I never saw him. I made sure Maria Regina never saw him. He may have been full of romantic nonsense, but he was too Dutch to be reckless. When he realized I was serious, not playing some love-game with him, he gave up his pursuit. He left us alone. His grand passion turned out to be not so grand after all. Or maybe he found someone else to be in love with.

  Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he kept you alive in his heart. Or the idea of you.

  Why do you say that?

  [Silence.]

  Well, perhaps he did. You are the one who has studied his life, you will know better. With some people it does not matter who they are in love with as long as they are in love. Perhaps he was like that.

  [Silence.]

  In retrospect, how do you see the whole episode? Do you still feel anger towards him?

  Anger? No. I can see how a lonely and eccentric young man like Mr Coetzee, who spent his days reading old philosophers and making up poems, could fall for Maria Regina, who was a real beauty and would break many hearts. It is not so easy to see what Maria Regina saw in him; but then, she was young and impressionable, and he flattered her, made her think she was different from the other girls and had a great future.

  Then when she brought him home and he laid eyes on me, I can see he might change his mind and decide to make me his true love instead. I am not claiming I was a great beauty, and of course I was not young any more, but Maria Regina and I were the same type: same bones, same hair, same dark eyes. And it is more practical – is it not? – to love a woman than to love a child. More practical, less dangerous.

  What did he want from me, from a woman who did not respond to him and gave him no encouragement? Did he hope to sleep with me? What pleasure can there be for a man in sleeping with a woman who does not want him? Because, truly, I did not want this man, for whom I had not the slightest flicker of feeling. And what would it have been like anyway if I had taken up with my daughter’s teacher? Could I have kept it secret? Certainly not from Maria Regina. I would have brought shame on myself before my children. Even when I was alone with him I would have been thinking, It is not me he desires, it is Maria Regina, who is young and beautiful but is forbidden to him.

  But perhaps what he really wanted was both of us, Maria Regina and me, mother and daughter – perhaps that was his fantasy, I can’t say, I can’t look into his mind.

  I remember, in the days when I was a student, existentialism was the fashion, we all had to be existentialists. But to be accepted as an existentialist you had first to prove you were a libertine, an extremist. Obey no restraints! Be free! – that was what we were told. But how can I be free, I asked myself, if I am obeying someone else’s order to be free?

  Coetzee was like that, I think. He had made up his mind to be an existentialist and a romantic and a libertine. The trouble was, it did not come from inside him, therefore he did not know how. Freedom, sensuality, erotic love – it was all just an idea in his head, not an urge rooted in his body. He had no gift for it. He was not a sensual being. And anyway, I suspect he secretly liked it when a woman was cold and distant.

  You say you decided not to read his last letter. Do you ever regret that decision?

  Why? Why should I regret it?

  Because Coetzee was a writer, who knew how to use words. What if the letter you did not read contained words that would have moved you or even changed your feelings about him?

  Mr Vincent, in your eyes John Coetzee is a great writer and a hero, I accept that, why else would you be here, why else would you be writing this book? To me, on the other hand – pardon me for saying this, but he is dead, so I cannot hurt his feelings – to me he is nothing. He is nothing, was nothing, just an irritation, an embarrassment. He was nothing and his words were nothing. I can see you are cross because I make him look like a fool. Nevertheless, to me he really was a fool.

  As for his letters, writing letters to a woman does not prove you love her. This man was not in love with me, he was in love with some idea of me, some fantasy of a Latin mistress that he made up in his own mind. I wish, instead of me, he had found some other writer, some other fantasist, to fall in love with. Then the two of them could have been happ
y, making love all day to their ideas of each other.

  You think I am cruel when I talk like this, but I am not, I am just a practical person. When my daughter’s language teacher, a complete stranger, sends me letters full of his ideas about this and his ideas about that, about music and chemistry and philosophy and angels and gods and I don’t know what else, page after page, poems too, I don’t read it and memorize it for future generations, all I want to know is one simple, practical thing, which is, What is going on between this man and my daughter who is only a child? Because – forgive me for saying this – beneath all the fine words what a man wants from a woman is usually very basic and very simple.

  You say there were poems too?

  I did not understand them. Maria Regina was the one who liked poetry.

  You recall nothing about them?

  They were very modernistic, very intellectual, very obscure. That is why I say it was all a big mistake. He thought I was the kind of woman you lie in bed with in the dark, discussing poetry; but I was not like that at all. I was a wife and mother, the wife of a man locked up in a hospital that might as well have been a prison or a graveyard and the mother of two girls whom I had somehow to keep safe in a world where when people want to steal your money they bring along an axe. I had no time to take pity on this ignorant young man who was throwing himself at my feet and humiliating himself in front of me. And, frankly, if I had wanted a man, it would not be a man like him.

  Because, let me assure you – I am keeping you late, I apologize – let me assure you, I was not without feeling, far from it. You must not go away with a false impression of me. I was not dead to the world. In the mornings, when Joana was at work and Maria Regina was at school and the sun shone its rays into that little flat of ours, which was usually so dark and gloomy, I would sometimes stand in the sunlight by the open window listening to the birds and feeling the warmth on my face and my breast; and at times like that I would long to be a woman again. I was not too old, I was just waiting. So. Enough. Thank you for listening.

  You said last time that you had a question for me.

  Yes, I forgot, I have a question. It is this. I am not usually wrong about people; so tell me, am I wrong about John Coetzee? Because to me, frankly, he was not anybody. He was not a man of substance. Maybe he could write well, maybe had a certain talent for words, I don’t know, I never read his books, I was never curious to read them. I know he won a big reputation later; but was he really a great writer? Because to my mind, a talent for words is not enough if you want to be a great writer. You have also to be a great man. And he was not a great man. He was a little man, an unimportant little man. I can’t give you a list of reasons A-B-C-D why I say so, but that was my impression from the beginning, from the moment I set eyes on him, and nothing that happened afterwards changed it. So I turn to you. You have studied him deeply, you are writing a book about him. Tell me: What is your estimation of him? Was I wrong?

  My estimation of him as a writer or my estimation of him as a human being?

  As a human being.

  I can’t say. I would be reluctant to pronounce a judgment on anyone without ever meeting him face to face. Him or her. But I think that, at the time he met you, Coetzee was lonely, unnaturally lonely. Perhaps that explains certain – what shall I say? – certain extravagances of behaviour.

  How do you know that?

  From the record he left behind. From putting two and two together. He was a little lonely and a little desperate.

  Yes, but we are all a little desperate, that is life. If you are strong you conquer the despair. That is why I ask: how can you be a great writer if you are just an ordinary little man? Surely you must have a certain flame in you that sets you apart from the man in the street. Maybe in his books, if you read them, you can see that flame. But for me, in the times I was with him I never felt any fire. On the contrary, he seemed to me – how shall I express it? – tepid.

  To an extent I would agree with you. Fire is not the first word that comes to mind when one thinks of his writings. But he had other virtues, other strengths. For instance, I would say he was steady. He had a steady gaze. He was not easily fooled by appearances.

  For a man who was not fooled by appearances, he fell in love rather easily, don’t you think?

  [Laughter.]

  But maybe, when he fell in love, he was not fooled. Maybe he saw things that other people do not see.

  In the woman?

  Yes, in the woman.

  [Silence.]

  You tell me he was in love with me even after I sent him away, even after I forgot he even existed. Is that what you mean by steadiness? Because to me it just seems stupid.

  I think he was dogged. A very English word. Whether there is an equivalent in Portuguese I don’t know. Like a bulldog that grips you with his teeth and does not let go.

  If you say so, then I must believe you. But being like a dog – is that admirable, in English?

  [Laughter.]

  You know, in my profession, rather than just listen to what people say, we prefer to watch the way they move, the way they carry themselves. That is our way to get to the truth, and it is not a bad way. Your Mr Coetzee may have had a talent for words but, as I told you, he could not dance. He could not dance – here is one of the phrases I remember from South Africa, Maria Regina taught it to me – he could not dance to save his life.

  [Laughter.]

  But seriously, Senhora Nascimento, there have been many great men who were not good dancers. If you must be a good dancer before you can be a great man, then Gandhi was not a great man, Tolstoy was not a great man.

  No, you are not listening to what I say. I too am serious. You know the word disembodied? This man was disembodied. He was divorced from his body. To him, the body was like one of those wooden puppets that you move with strings. You pull this string and the left arm moves, you pull that string and the right leg moves. And the real self sits up above, where you cannot see him, like the puppet-master pulling the strings.

  Now this man comes to me, to the mistress of the dance. Show me how to dance! he implores. So I show him, show him how we move in the dance. So, I say to him – move your feet so and then so. And he listens and tells himself, Aha, she means pull the red string followed by the blue string! – Turn your shoulder so, I say to him, and he tells himself, Aha, she means pull the green string!

  But that is not how you dance! That is not how you dance! Dance is incarnation. In dance it is not the puppet-master in the head that leads and the body that follows, it is the body itself that leads, the body with its soul, its body-soul. Because the body knows! It knows! When the body feels the rhythm inside it, it does not need to think. That is how we are if we are human. That is why the wooden puppet cannot dance. The wood has no soul. The wood cannot feel the rhythm.

  So I ask: How could this man of yours be a great man when he was not human? It is a serious question, not a joke any more. Why do you think I, as a woman, could not respond to him? Why do you think I did everything I could to keep my daughter away from him while she was still young, with no experience to guide her? Because from such a man no good can come. Love: how can you be a great writer when you know nothing about love? Do you think I can be a woman and not know in my bones what kind of lover a man will be? I tell you, I shiver with cold when I think of, you know, intimacy with a man like that. I don’t know if he ever married, but if he did I shiver for the woman who married him.

  Yes. It is getting late, it has been a long afternoon, my colleague and I must be on our way. Thank you, Senhora Nascimento, for the time you have so generously given us. It has been most gracious of you. Senhora Gross will transcribe our conversation and tidy up the translation, after which I will send it to you to see if there is anything you would like to change or add or cut out.

  I understand. Of course you offer to me that I can change the record, I can add or cut out. But how much can I change? Can I change the label I wear around my neck that says I was one
of Coetzee’s women? Will you let me take off that label? Will you let me tear it up? I think not. Because it would destroy your book, and you would not allow that.

  But I will be patient. I will wait to see what you send me. Perhaps – who knows? – you will take seriously what I have told you. Also – let me confess – I am curious to see what the other women in this man’s life have told you, the other women with labels around their necks – whether they too found this lover of theirs to be made of wood. Because, you know, that is what I think you should call your book: The Wooden Man.

  [Laughter.]

  But tell me, seriously again, did this man who knew nothing about women ever write about women, or did he just write about dogged men like himself? I ask because, as I say, I have not read him.

  He wrote about men and he wrote about women too. For example – this may interest you – there is a book named Foe in which the heroine spends a year ship-wrecked on an island off the coast of Brazil. In the final version she is an Englishwoman, but in the first draft he made her a Brasileira.

  And what kind of woman is this Brasileira of his?

  What shall I say? She has many good qualities. She is attractive, she is resourceful, she has a will of steel. She hunts all over the world to find her young daughter, who has disappeared. That is the substance of the novel: her quest to recover her daughter, which overrides all other concerns. To me she seems an admirable heroine. If I were the original of a character like that, I would feel proud.

  I will read this book and see for myself. What is the title again?

  Foe, spelled F-O-E. It was translated into Portuguese, but the translation is probably out of print by now. I can send you a copy in English if you like.

  Yes, send it. It is a long time since I read an English book, but I am interested to see what this man of wood made of me.

  [Laughter.]