Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [155]
I asked him what he did. (Did: such an inane word; but he knew what I meant.) He told me he was a bookkeeper, that he worked in the city. ‘It must be quite a schlep, getting from here to the city,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t it suit you better if you lived closer in?’
He mumbled some reply that I did not catch. Silence fell. Evidently I had touched on a sore spot. I changed the subject, but it did not help.
I had not expected much from the evening, but the flatness of the conversation, the long silences, and something else in the air too, discord or bad temper between the two of them – these were more than I was prepared to stomach. The food had been dreary, the coals were turning grey, I was feeling chilly, darkness had begun to fall, Chrissie was being attacked by mosquitoes. Nothing obliged me to go on sitting in this weed-infested backyard, nothing obliged me to participate in the family tensions of people I barely knew, even if in a technical sense one of them was or had been my lover. So I picked Chrissie up and put her back in her cart.
‘Don’t leave yet,’ said John. ‘I’ll make coffee.’
‘I must go,’ I said. ‘It’s well past the child’s bedtime.’
At the gate he tried to kiss me, but I wasn’t in the mood for it.
The story I told myself after that evening, the story I settled on, was that my husband’s infidelities had provoked me to such an extent that to punish him and salvage my own amour propre I had gone out and had a brief infidelity of my own. Now that it was evident what a mistake that infidelity had been, at least in the choice of accomplice, my husband’s infidelity appeared in a new light, as probably a mistake too, and thus not worth getting upset about.
Over the weekends when my husband was at home I think I will at this point draw a modest veil. I have told you enough. Let me simply remind you that it was against the background of those weekends that my weekday relations with John played themselves out. If John became more than a little intrigued and even infatuated with me, it was because in me he encountered a woman at the peak of her womanly powers, living a heightened sexual life – a life that in truth had little to do with him.
Mr Vincent, I am perfectly aware it is John you want to hear about, not me. But the only story involving John that I can tell, or the only one I am prepared to tell, is this one, namely the story of my life and his part in it, which is quite different, quite another matter, from the story of his life and my part in that. My story, the story of me, began years before John arrived on the scene and went on for years after he made his exit. In the phase I am telling you about today, Mark and I were, properly speaking, the protagonists, John and the woman in Durban members of the supporting cast. So you have to choose. Will you accept what I have to offer you? Shall I go on with my recital, or shall I call it off here and now?
Go on.
You are sure? Because there is a further point I wish to make. It is this. You commit a grave error if you think to yourself that the difference between the two stories, the story you wanted to hear and the story you are getting from me, will be nothing more than a matter of perspective – that while from my point of view the story of John may have been just one episode among many in the long narrative of my marriage, nevertheless, by dint of a quick flip, a quick manipulation of perspective, followed by some clever editing, you can transform it into a story about John and one of the women who passed through his life. Not so. Not so. I warn you most earnestly: if you start playing around with your text, cutting out words here and adding in words there, the whole thing will turn to ash in your hands. I really was the main character. John really was a minor player. I am sorry if I seem to be lecturing you on your profession, but you will thank me in the end. Do you understand?
I hear