Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [60]
Oliver Matter is a gentle, smiling, moon-faced boy who does not seem to mind coming second. Every day he and Oliver vie with each other in the quick-answer contest that Brother Gabriel runs, lining the boys up, going up and down the line asking questions that have to be answered within five seconds, sending whoever misses an answer to the bottom of the line. By the end of the round it is always either he or Oliver who is at the top.
Then Oliver stops coming to school. After a month without explanation, Brother Gabriel makes an announcement. Oliver is in hospital, he has leukemia, everyone must pray for him. With bowed heads the boys pray. Since he does not believe in God, he does not pray, just moves his lips. He thinks: Everyone will think I want Oliver to die so that I can be first.
Oliver never comes back to school. He dies in hospital. The Catholic boys attend a special mass for the repose of his soul.
The threat has receded. He breathes more easily; but the old pleasure in coming first is spoiled.
Seventeen
Life in Cape Town is less varied than life in Worcester used to be. During weekends, in particular, there is nothing to do but read the Reader’s Digest or listen to the radio or knock a cricket ball around. He no longer rides his bicycle: there is nowhere interesting to go in Plumstead, which is just miles of houses in every direction, and anyhow he has outgrown the Smiths, which is beginning to look like a child’s bicycle.
Riding a bicycle around the streets has in fact begun to seem silly. Other things that used once to absorb him have lost their charm too: building Meccano models, collecting stamps. He can no longer understand why he wasted his time on them. He spends hours in the bathroom, examining himself in the mirror, not liking what he sees. He stops smiling, practises a scowl.
The only passion that has not abated is his passion for cricket. He knows no one who is as consumed by cricket as he is. He plays cricket at school, but that is never enough. The house in Plumstead has a slate-floored front stoep. Here he plays by himself, holding the bat in his left hand, throwing the ball against the wall with his right, striking it on the rebound, pretending he is on a cricket field. Hour after hour he drives the ball against the wall. The neighbours complain to his mother about the noise, but he pays no heed.
He has pored over coaching books, knows the various shots by heart, can execute them with the correct footwork. But the truth is, he has begun to prefer the solitary game on the stoep to real cricket. The prospect of batting on a real pitch thrills him but fills him with fear too. He is particularly afraid of fast bowlers: afraid of being struck, afraid of the pain. On the occasions when he plays real cricket he has to concentrate all his energies on not flinching, not showing he is a coward.
He hardly ever scores runs. If he is not bowled out at once he can sometimes bat for half an hour without scoring, irritating everyone, including his teammates. He seems to go into a trance of passivity in which it is enough, quite enough, to merely parry the ball. Looking back on these failures, he consoles himself with stories of test matches played on sticky wickets during which a solitary figure, usually a Yorkshireman, dogged, stoic, tight-lipped, bats through the innings, keeping his end up while all around him wickets are tumbling.
Opening the batting against Pinelands Under-13 one Friday afternoon, he finds himself facing a tall, gangly boy who, urged on by his team, bowls as fast and furiously as he can. The ball flies all over the place, missing the wickets, missing him, evading the wicketkeeper: he barely needs to use his bat.
During the third over a ball pitches on the clay outside the mat, rears up, and hits him on the temple. ‘This is really too much!’ he thinks to himself crossly: ‘He has gone too far!’ He is aware of the fielders looking at him oddly. He can still hear