Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [172]
But by now, in the 1970s, those family gatherings are sadly diminished. Gerrit Coetzee is long in the grave, Lenie shuffles around a nursing home in The Strand. Of their twelve sons and daughters, the firstborn has already joined the multitudinous shades; in private moments –
Multitudinous shades?
Too grand-sounding? I’ll change it. The firstborn has already departed this life. In private moments the survivors have intimations of their own end, and shudder.
No, I don’t like that.
You mean the shuddering? No problem. I’ll cut it out. Has already departed this life. Among the survivors the joking has grown more subdued, the reminiscing sadder, the eating more temperate. As for hunting parties, there are no more of those: old bones are weary, and anyway, after year upon year of drought, there is nothing left in the veld worth shooting.
Of the third generation, the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters, most are by now too absorbed in their own affairs to attend, or too indifferent to the larger family. This year only four of that generation are present: her cousin Michiel, who has inherited the farm; her cousin John from Cape Town; her sister Carol; and herself, Margot. And of the four, she alone, she suspects, looks back to the old days with anything like nostalgia.
I don’t understand. Why do you call me she?
Of the four, Margot alone, she – Margot – suspects, looks back with anything like nostalgia … You can hear how clumsy it sounds. It just won’t work that way. The she I have introduced is like I but is not I. Do you really dislike it so much?
I find it confusing. But you know better than I. Go on.
John’s presence on the farm is a source of unease. After years spent overseas – so many years it was concluded he was gone for good – he has suddenly reappeared among them under some cloud or other, some disgrace. One story being whispered about is that he has spent time in an American jail.
The family simply does not know how to behave towards him. Never yet have they had a criminal – if that is what he is, a criminal – in their midst. A bankrupt, yes: the man who married her aunt Marie, a braggart and heavy drinker of whom the family had disapproved from the start, declared himself bankrupt to avoid paying his debts and thereafter did not a stitch of work, loafing at home, living off his wife’s earnings. But bankruptcy, while it may leave a bad taste in the mouth, is not a crime; whereas going to jail is going to jail.
Her own feeling is that the Coetzees ought to try harder to make the lost sheep feel welcome. She has a lingering soft spot for John. As young children they used to talk quite openly of marrying each other when they grew up. They assumed it would be allowed – why should it not be? They did not understand why the adults smiled, smiled and would not say why.
Did I really tell you that?
You did. Do you want me to cut it out? I like it. It’s sweet.
All right, leave it in. [Laughs.] Go on.
Her sister Carol is of quite another mind. Carol is married to a German, an engineer, who has for years been trying to get the two of them out of South Africa and into the United States. Carol has made it plain she does not want it to appear in her American dossier that she is related to a man who, whether or not he is technically a criminal, has in some way fallen foul of the law, their law. But Carol’s hostility to John goes deeper than that. She finds him affected and supercilious. From the heights of his engelse [English] education, says Carol, John looks down on the Coetzees, one and all. Why he has decided to favour them with his presence at Christmastide she cannot imagine.
She, Margot, is distressed by her sister’s attitude. Her sister, she believes,