In the Heart of the Country by J. M. Coetzee
149. A day must have intervened here. Where there is a blank there must have been a day during which my father sickened irrecoverably, and during which Hendrik and Klein-Anna made their peace, for thenceforth they were as before, or if not as before then changed toward the wiser and sadder in ways I could not discern. It must have been a day which I passed somehow. Perhaps I spent it asleep. Perhaps, having killed all the flies, I fetched a wet sponge and cooled my father’s brow until I could no longer tolerate the stench. Perhaps I went and stood in the passage waiting for his call, and there fell asleep and dreamed of rain and the veld covered in flowers, white and violet and orange, rippling in the wind, till at nightfall I awoke and arose to feed the chickens. Perhaps then, in the gloom, with the feed-bowl under my arm, I stood listening to the night breeze rustle the leaves, and watched the bats flicker against the last light, and felt the sweeping melancholy of those who pass their days in the midst of insupportable beauty in the knowledge that one day they will die. Perhaps I prayed then, not for the first time, that I would die tranquil and not begrudge myself to the earth, but look forward to life as a flower or as the merest speck in the gut of a worm, unknowing. I think it is possible that such a day did intervene, and that I did spend it like that, helpless in the face of my father’s pain, wishing it away, dozing, wandering about in the yard in the cool of the evening thinking how it would be when we were all gone. There are, however, other ways in which I could have spent the day and which I cannot ignore. I could have been the one who tried to help him out of bed and failed, he being heavy, I being slight. This would explain how he came to die so hideously draped over the edge of the bed, his face purple, his eyes bulging, his tongue hanging out. Perhaps I wanted to move him out of the morass he lay in. Perhaps I wanted to take him to another room. Perhaps, dismayed and sickened, I abandoned him. Perhaps I cradled his head in my arms and sobbed, saying, “Daddy, please help me, I can’t do it by myself.” Perhaps when it grew clear that he could not help, that he had no strength, that he was preoccupied above all else with what was happening inside him, perhaps then I said, “Daddy, forgive me, I didn’t mean it, I loved you, that was why I did it.”
150. But, to tell the truth, I am wary of all these suppositions. I suspect that the day the day was missing I was not there; and if that is so I shall never know how the day was filled. For I seem to exist more and more intermittently. Whole hours, whole afternoons go missing. I seem to have grown impatient with the sluggish flow of time. Once I would have been content to fill my days with musings; but now, having been through a carnival of incident, I am quite seduced. Like the daughters in the boarding-houses I sit tapping my fingernails on the furniture, listening to the tick of the clock, waiting for the next thing to happen. Once I lived in time as a fish in water, breathing it, drinking it, sustained by it. Now I kill time and time kills me. Country ways! How I long for country ways.
151. I sit at the kitchen table waiting for my coffee to cool. Hendrik and Klein-Anna stand over me. They say that they are waiting to hear what to do, but I cannot help them. There is nothing to do in the kitchen since no one eats meals any more. What there is to be done on the farm Hendrik knows better than I. He must preserve the sheep from jackals and wildcats. He must annihilate the ticks and the blowfly grubs. He must help the ewes to lamb. He must make the garden grow and save it from the army worm. Therefore it is not true that Hendrik and Klein-Anna are here waiting for orders: they are waiting to see what I will do next.
152. I sit at the kitchen table waiting for my coffee to cool. Over me stand Hendrik and Klein-Anna.
“The smell is getting bad,” says Hendrik.
“Yes, we will have to make a fire,” I reply.
I am thankful, in times of trouble, to have a trusty helper. Hendrik’s eyes meet mine. We see the same purpose. I smile, and he smiles too, a sudden unambiguous smile that shows his stained teeth and his pink gums.
153. Hendrik explains to me how the entire windowframe can be lifted from the wall. He shows me first how the plaster can be chipped away to reveal the bolts securing the frame to the wall. He shows me how these bolts can be sawn through with a hacksaw blade. He saws through the four bolts, dust and filings falling in pyramids at our feet. He forces out the frame, the sashes still latched together within it, and puts it aside. He explains how the windowledge is levelled before the first bricks are laid. He lays eighteen courses of bricks and plasters them over. I wash the trowel and the hod for him. I scrub the lime from under his fingernails with vinegar. All night and all day we wait for the plaster to dry. Anna brings us coffee. We whitewash the new plaster. We burn the windowframe. The glass cracks in the flames. We grind it to powder under our heels.
154. Hendrik and I climb the stairs to the loft. In the close heat he shows me how to paint the floor with tar so that the cracks between the boards are sealed. I tend the fire under the tarbucket while he paints. On hands and knees we back out of the loft.
155. Hendrik removes the doorknob and shows me how to stuff caulking into the cracks with a blunt chisel. He lays sixteen courses of bricks to seal the doorway. I mix the mortar, I wash the tools, I scrub his fingernails. We strip off the old wallpaper and re-cover the passage with paper we have found in the loft. The old doorframe bulges, but we ignore it.
156. Hendrik shows me how to saw through bricks and mortar. We use the ripsaw that hangs in the stable. The teeth of this saw never grow blunt. We saw through the walls that hold the bedroom to the house. Our arms grow tired but we do not pause. I learn to spit on my hands before I grip the saw. Our labour brings us together. No longer is labour Hendrik’s prerogative. I am his equal though I am the weaker. Klein-Anna climbs the ladder to bring us mugs of coffee and slices of bread and jam. We crawl under the house to saw through the foundations. Our honest sweat flows together in the dark warmth. We are like two termites. In perseverance lies our strength. We saw through the roof and through the floor. We shove the room off. Slowly it rises into the air, a ship of odd angles sailing black against the stars. Into the night, into empty space it floats, clumsily, since it has no keel. We stand in the dust and mice droppings, on ground where no sun has shone, watching it.
157. We pick up the body and carry it to the bathroom, Hendrik taking the shoulders, I the legs. We strip off the nightshirt and unwind the bandages. We seat the body in the bath and pour bucket after bucket of water over it. The water discolours and strings of excrement begin to float to the surface. The arms hang over the sides of the bath, the mouth gapes, the eyes stare. After half an hour’s soaking we clean the clotted hindparts. We bind the jaw and sew the eyes to.
158. On the hillside behind the house Hendrik piles brushwood and sets fire to it. We throw the nightclothes, the bandages, the bedclothes, and the mattress on to the flames. They smoulder through the afternoon, filling the air with the smell of burnt coir and feathers.
159. I sweep out all the dead flies and scrub with sand and soap until the bloodstains are only pale rose patches on the brown of the floorboards.
160. We carry the great bed to the stable, all three of us, and hoist it, one corner at a time, to the rafters, where we chain it fast against the day when it may again be needed.
161. From the loft we bring down an empty kist and into it pack the deceased’s belongings, the Sunday suit, the black boots, the starched shirts, the wedding ring, the daguerreotypes, the diaries, the ledgers, the bundle of letters tied with a red ribbon. I read one of the letters aloud to Hendrik: “How I long for you these days . . .” Hendrik follows my finger as I point out the words. He scrutinizes the family groups and picks me out unerringly among the other children, the brothers and sisters and half-brothers and half-sisters who perished in the various epidemics or went to the city to make their fortune and were never heard of again. The pictures show me tight-lipped and surly, but Hendrik does not mind. When we have finished we pack the papers away and padlock the chest and carry it up to the loft to awai
162. We fold the green curtains away in a drawer and make new curtains of a gay floral material we have chanced on in the loft. Hendrik sits watching while my busy feet work the treadle and my nimble fingers guide the seams. We hang our new curtains, which make the room cool yet light. We smile at our enterprise. Klein-Anna brings coffee.
163. Hendrik and Klein-Anna stand over me waiting for instructions. I swirl the grounds in my coffee-cup. It is going to be a difficult day, I tell them, a day for waiting. Words come reluctantly to me, they clatter in my mouth and tumble out heavily like stones. Hendrik and Klein-Anna wait patiently. There are clouds massing to the north, I tell them, perhaps it is going to rain, perhaps in a few days the veld will be tipped with new green, the withered bushes shooting, the locusts, dormant all winter, now nosing their way out of the soil and hopping off in search of food attended by swarms of birds. We must beware in general, I tell them, of the revival of insect life that attends the rains and the efflorescence of the veld. I mention plagues of caterpillars. The birds are our allies, I tell them, the birds and the wasps, for wasps are predators too. Hendrik listens to me hat in hand, watching not my eyes but these lips of mine which I must wrestle into place over every syllable. The lips are tired, I explain to him, they want to rest, they are tired of all the articulating they have had to do since they were babies, since it was revealed to them that there was a law, that they could no longer simply part themselves to make way for the long aaaa which has, if truth be told, always been enough for them, enough of an expression of whatever this is that needs to be expressed, or clench themselves over the long satisfying silence into which I shall still, I promise, one day retire. I am exhausted by obedience to this law, I try to say, whose mark lies on me in the spaces between the words, the spaces or the pauses, and in the articulations that set up the war of sounds, the b against the d, the m against the n, and so forth, as well as in other places which I would be too weary to set out for you even if I felt that you understood, which I doubt, since you do not so much as know the alphabet. The law has gripped my throat, I say and do not say, it invades my larynx, its one hand on my tongue, its other hand on my lips. How can I say, I say, that these are not the eyes of the law that stare from behind my eyes, or that the mind of the law does not occupy my skull, leaving me only enough intellection to utter these doubting words, if it is I uttering them, and see their fallaciousness? How can I say that the law does not stand fullgrown inside my shell, its feet in my feet, its hands in my hands, its sex drooping through my hole; or that when I have had my chance to make this utterance, the lips and teeth of the law will not begin to gnaw their way out of this shell, until there it stands before you, the law grinning and triumphant again, its soft skin hardening in the air, while I lie sloughed, crumpled, abandoned on the floor?
164. We stand in the dim passage before the one door that, as far back in time as I can remember, has always stood locked. What do you keep in the locked room? I used to ask my father. There is nothing in it, he used to reply, it is a junkroom, there is nothing but broken furniture, and besides, the key is lost. Now I tell Hendrik to open the door. With a chisel he prises the socket of the lock loose. Then he batters the door with his four-pound hammer until the jamb splinters and it springs open. From the floor rises a cloud of fine dust. There is a smell of cold tired bricks. Klein-Anna brings a lamp. In the far corner we see twelve cane-bottomed chairs piled neatly. We see a wardrobe, a narrow bed, a wash-stand with a pitcher and basin on it. The bed is neatly made up. I pat it and dust rises from the grey pillows, the grey sheets. Everywhere are cobwebs. They have made a room without a window, I say to Hendrik.
165. The wardrobe is locked. Hendrik springs the lock with his knife. It is full of clothes, the sad noble clothes of bygone times that I would love to wear. I lift out a dress, white, with full sleeves and high collar, and hold it up against Klein-Anna. She puts the lamp down on the floor and smooths the dress against her body. I help her to undress. I take her old clothes from her and fold them on the bed. She lowers her eyes. The light glows on her bronze flanks and breasts for which I find again I have no words. My heart quickens as I settle the dress over her head and fasten the buttons against her spine. She wears no underclothes.
166. Though the shoes are all too narrow for her, Klein-Anna insists on a pair. I slip them on, leaving the straps unbuttoned. Unsteadily she rises and totters. She leads us out of the room of surprises to the stoep. The sun is setting, the sky is a tumult of oranges and reds and violets. Up and down the stoep struts Klein-Anna mastering the shoes. If only we could eat our sunsets, I say, we would all be full. I stand side by side with Hendrik, watching. Hendrik has lost his old stiffness. His arm brushes my side. I do not flinch. It is not beyond reason that I should want to whisper something to him, something kindly and affectionate and amusing about Anna, that I should turn towards him, and he bend towards me, that I should for a brief moment find myself in the pocket of air that is his own private space, the space that, when he stands still, as now, he fills with his own breathing and his own smells, that I should find myself breathing in once, twice, as often as it takes to say what I have to say, Hendrik’s own air, and find myself for the first time breathing it in with receptive nostrils, alive to the musk, the sweat, the smoke that once repelled me. This, after all, is how people smell in the country who have laboured honestly, sweating under the hot sun, cooking the food they have tilled or killed over fire they have made with their own hands. Perhaps, I tell myself, I too will come to smell like that if I can change my ways. I blush for my own thin smell, the smell of an unused woman, sharp with hysteria, like onions, like urine. How can he ever wish to burrow his nose in my armpit, as I mine in his!
167. Klein-Anna turns at the end of her promenade and smiles at us. I see no trace of jealousy. She knows how tight she holds Hendrik. They sleep together as man and wife. They have connubial secrets. In the warm dark they lie in each other’s arms and talk about me. Hendrik says amusing things and Anna giggles. He tells her about my lonely life, my solitary walks, the things that I do when I think no one is looking, the way I talk to myself, the way my arms jerk. He parodies my cross gabble. Then he tells her of my fear of him, the harsh words I speak to keep him at a distance, the odour of fright he can smell floating off me. He tells her what I do by myself in bed. He tells her how I roam the house by night. He tells her what I dream. He tells her what I need. He tells her that I need a man, that I need to be covered, to be turned into a woman. I am a child, he tells her, despite my years, I am an old child, a sinister old child full of stale juices. Someone should make a woman of me, he tells her, someone should make a hole in me to let the old juices run out. Should I be the one to do it, he asks her, to climb through the window one night and lie with her and make a woman of her and slip away before dawn? Do you think she would let me? Would she pretend it was a dream and let it happen, or would it be necessary to force her? Would I be able to fight my way in between those scraggy knees? Would she lose her head and scream? Would I have to hold her mouth shut? Would she not be as tight and dry and unrelenting to the last as leather? Would I force my way into that dusty hole only to be crushed to jelly in a vise of bone? Or is it possible that after all she would be soft, as a woman is soft, as you are soft, here? And Anna pants in the dark, cleaving to her man.
168. Klein-Anna turns at the end of her promenade and smiles at us. She is blithe, she knows all that I long for and she does not mind. I would like to stroll arm in arm with her of a Saturday night dressed in my gayest clothes, whispering and giggling like a girl, showing myself off to the country beaux. I would like to hear from her, in a quiet corner, the great secrets of life, how to be beautiful, how to win a husband, how to please a man. I would like to be her little sister, I have had a late start in life, the years behind me are as if passed in slumber, I am still only an ignorant child. I would like to share a bed with her, and when she tiptoes in at midnight peep with one eye at h
169. “I can’t sleep alone tonight,” I tell them. “The two of you must come and sleep in the house tonight.”
The words have come out without premeditation. I feel joy. That must be how other people speak, from their hearts.
“Come on, there is nothing to be afraid of, I assure you there are no ghosts.”
They search each other’s eyes, weighing my motives, sending messages to each other through the dusk that I cannot detect. Hendrik has drawn away from me, I am out of his pocket of warmth. Does he feel out of his depth?