Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [14]
As for him, he will probably become a teacher. That will be his life when he grows up. It seems a dull kind of life, but what else is there? For a long time he was going to become an engine-driver. ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ his aunts and uncles used to ask. ‘An engine-driver!’ he would pipe up, and everyone would nod and smile. Now he understands that ‘Engine-driver’ is what all small boys are expected to say, just as small girls are expected to say ‘Nurse’. He is no longer small now, he belongs to the big world; he will have to put aside the fantasy of driving a great iron horse and do the realistic thing. He is good at school, there is nothing else he knows of that he is good at, therefore he will stay on at school, moving up through the ranks. One day, perhaps, he will even become an inspector. But he will not take an office job. How can one work from morning to night with only two weeks’ holiday a year?
What sort of teacher will he make? He can picture himself only dimly. He sees a figure in sports jacket and grey flannels (that is what men teachers seem to wear) walking down a corridor with books under its arm. It is only a glimpse, and in a moment it vanishes. He does not see the face.
He hopes that, when the day comes, he will not be sent to teach in a place like Worcester. But perhaps Worcester is a purgatory one must pass through. Perhaps Worcester is where people are sent to be tested.
One day they are assigned an essay to write in class: ‘What I do in the mornings.’ They are supposed to write about the things they do before setting off for school. He knows the kind of thing he is expected to say: that he makes his own bed, that he washes the breakfast dishes, that he cuts his own sandwiches for lunch. Though in fact he does none of these things – his mother does them for him – he lies well enough not to be found out. But he goes too far when he describes how he brushes his shoes. He has never brushed his own shoes in his life. In his essay he says you use the brush to brush the dirt off, after which you use a rag to coat the shoe with polish. Miss Oosthuizen puts a big blue exclamation mark in the margin next to the shoe-brushing. He is mortified, prays that she will not call him out in front of the class to read his essay. That evening he watches carefully as his mother brushes his shoes, so that he will not get it wrong again.
He lets his mother brush his shoes as he lets her do everything for him that she wants to. The only thing that he will not let her do any more is to come into the bathroom when he is naked.
He knows he is a liar, knows he is bad, but he refuses to change. He does not change because he does not want to change. His difference from other boys may be bound up with his mother and his unnatural family, but is bound up with his lying too. If he stopped lying he would have to polish his shoes and talk politely and do everything that normal boys do. In that case he would no longer be himself. If he were no longer himself, what point would there be in living?
He is a liar and he is cold-hearted too: a liar to the world in general, cold-hearted towards his mother. It pains his mother, he can see, that he is steadily growing away from her. Nevertheless he hardens his heart and will not relent. His only excuse is that he is merciless to himself too. He lies but he does not lie to himself.
‘When are you going to die?’ he asks his mother one day, challenging her, surprised at his own daring.
‘I am not going to die,’ she replies. Her voice is gay, but there is something false in it.
‘What if you get cancer?’
‘You only get cancer if you are hit on the breast. I won’t get cancer. I’ll live forever. I won’t die.’
He knows why she is saying this. She is saying it for him and his brother, so that they will not worry. It is a silly thing to say, but he is grateful to her for it.
He cannot imagine his mother dying. She