Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [130]
So this is what, unbeknown to myself, I was preparing for, he thinks! So this is where mathematics leads one!
Autumn turns to winter; he is barely aware of it. He is no longer reading poetry. Instead he reads books on chess, follows grandmaster games, does the chess problems in the Observer. He sleeps badly; sometimes he dreams about programming. It is a development within himself that he watches with detached interest. Will he become like those scientists whose brains solve problems while they sleep?
There is another thing he notices. He has stopped yearning. The quest for the mysterious, beautiful stranger who will set free the passion within him no longer preoccupies him. In part, no doubt, that is because Bracknell offers nothing to match the parade of girls in London. But he cannot help seeing a connection between the end of yearning and the end of poetry. Does it mean he is growing up? Is that what growing up amounts to: growing out of yearning, of passion, of all intensities of the soul?
The people among whom he works – men, without exception – are more interesting than the people at IBM: more lively, and perhaps cleverer too, in a way he can understand, a way that is much like being clever at school. They have lunch together in the canteen of the Manor House. There is no nonsense about the food they are served: fish and chips, bangers and mash, toad in the hole, bubble and squeak, rhubarb tart with ice cream. He likes the food, has two helpings if he can, makes it the main meal of the day. In the evenings, at home (if that is what they are now, his rooms at the Arkwrights’), he does not bother to cook, simply eats bread and cheese over the chessboard.
Among his co-workers is an Indian named Ganapathy. Ganapathy often arrives late to work; on some days he does not come at all. When he does come, he does not appear to be working very hard: he sits in his cubicle with his feet on the desk, apparently dreaming. For his absences he has only the most cursory of excuses (‘I was not well’). Nevertheless, he is not chided. Ganapathy, it emerges, is a particularly valuable acquisition for International Computers. He has studied in America, holds an American degree in computer science.
He and Ganapathy are the two foreigners in the group. Together, when the weather allows, they go for after-lunch strolls in the manor grounds. Ganapathy is disparaging about International Computers and the whole Atlas project. Coming back to England was a mistake on his part, he says. The English do not know how to think big. He should have stayed in America. What is life like in South Africa? Would there be prospects for him in South Africa?
He dissuades Ganapathy from trying South Africa. South Africa is very backward, he tells him, there are no computers there. He does not tell him that outsiders are not welcome unless they are white.
A bad spell sets in, day after day of rain and blustery wind. Ganapathy does not come to work at all. Since no one else asks why, he takes it upon himself to investigate. Like him, Ganapathy has evaded the home-ownership option. He lives in a flat on the third floor of a council block. For a long while there is no answer to his knocking. Then Ganapathy opens the door. He is wearing a dressing gown over pyjamas and sandals; from the interior comes a gush of steamy warmth and a smell of rottenness. ‘Come in, come in!’ says Ganapathy. ‘Come out of the cold!’
There is no furniture in the living room except for a television set with an armchair before it, and two blazing electric heaters. Behind the door is a pile of black rubbish