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Later that night, when Maria Regina had already gone to bed, Joana came to my room. ‘Mamãe, must you be so hard on Maria?’ she said. ‘Truly, there is nothing bad going on.’

‘Nothing bad?’ I said. ‘What do you know of the world? What do you know of badness? What do you know of what men will do?’

‘He is not a bad man, mamãe,’ she said. ‘Surely you can see that.’

‘He is a weak man,’ I said. ‘A weak man is worse than a bad man. A weak man does not know where to stop. A weak man is helpless before his impulses, he follows wherever they lead.’

‘Mamãe, we are all weak,’ said Joana.

‘No, you are wrong, I am not weak,’ I said. ‘Where would we be, you and Maria Regina and I, if I allowed myself to be weak? Now go to bed. And don’t repeat any of this to Maria Regina. Not a word. She will not understand.’

I hoped that would be the end of Mr Coetzee. But no, a day or two later there arrived a letter from him, not via Maria Regina this time but through the mail, a formal letter, typed, the envelope typed too. In it he first apologized for the picnic that had been a failure. He had hoped to speak to me in private, he said, but had had no chance. Could he come and see me? Could he come to the flat, or would I prefer to meet him elsewhere, perhaps have lunch with him? The matter that weighed on him was not Maria Regina, he wanted to stress. Maria was an intelligent young woman, with a good heart; it was a privilege to teach her; I could be assured he would never, never betray the trust I had put in him. Intelligent and beautiful too – he hoped I would not mind if he said that. For beauty, true beauty, was more than skin-deep, it was the soul showing through the flesh; and where could Maria Regina have got her beauty but from me?

[Silence.]

And?

That was all. That was the substance. Could he meet me alone.

Of course I asked myself where he had got the idea that I would want to meet him, even want to receive a letter from him. Because I never said a word to encourage him.

So what did you do? Did you meet him?

What did I do? I did nothing and hoped he would leave me alone. I was a woman in mourning, though my husband was not dead, I did not want the attentions of other men, particularly of a man who was my daughter’s teacher.

Do you still have that letter?

I don’t have any of his letters. I did not keep them. When we left South Africa I did a clean-out of the flat and threw away all the old letters and bills.

And you did not reply?

No.

You did not reply and you did not allow relations to develop any further – relations between yourself and Coetzee?

What is this? Why these questions? You come all the way from England to talk to me, you tell me you are writing a biography of a man who happened many years ago to be my daughter’s English teacher, and now suddenly you feel you are permitted to interrogate me about my ‘relations’? What kind of biography are you writing? Is it like Hollywood gossip, like secrets of the rich and famous? If I refuse to discuss my so-called relations with this man, will you say I am keeping them secret? No, I did not have, to use your word, relations with Mr Coetzee. I will say more. For me it was not natural to have feelings for a man like that, a man who was so soft. Yes, soft.

Are you suggesting he was homosexual?

I am not suggesting anything. But there was a quality he lacked that a woman looks for in a man, a quality of strength, of manliness. My husband had that quality. He always had it, but his time in prison here in Brazil, under the militares, brought it out more clearly, even though he was not in prison a long time, only six months. After those six months, he used to say, nothing that human beings did to other human beings could come as a surprise to him. Coetzee had no such experience behind him to test his manhood and teach him about life. That is why I say he was soft. He was not a man, he was still a boy.

[Silence.]

As for homosexual, no, I do not say he was homosexual, but he was, as I told you, célibataire – I don’t know