Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [62]
He makes friends with Theo Stavropoulos. There are rumours that Theo is a moffie, a queer, but he is not prepared to believe them. He likes the look of Theo, likes his fine skin and his high colouring and his impeccable haircuts and the suave way he wears his clothes. Even the school blazer, with its silly vertical stripes, looks good on him.
Theo’s father owns a factory. What exactly the factory makes no one quite knows, but it has something to do with fish. The family lives in a big house in the richest part of Rondebosch. They have so much money that the boys would undoubtedly go to Diocesan College were it not for the fact that they are Greek. Because they are Greek and have a foreign name they have to go to St Joseph’s, which, he now sees, is a kind of basket to catch boys who fit nowhere else.
He glimpses Theo’s father only once: a tall, elegantly dressed man with dark glasses. He sees his mother more often. She is small and slim and dark; she smokes cigarettes and drives a blue Buick which is reputed to be the only car in Cape Town – perhaps in South Africa – with automatic gears. There is also an older sister so beautiful, so expensively educated, so marriageable, that she is not allowed to be exposed to the gaze of Theo’s friends.
The Stavropoulos boys are brought to school in the mornings in the blue Buick, driven sometimes by their mother but more often by a chauffeur in black uniform and peaked cap. The Buick sweeps grandly into the school quadrangle, Theo and his brother descend, the Buick sweeps off. He cannot understand why Theo allows this. If he were in Theo’s place he would ask to be dropped off a block away. But Theo takes the jokes and jeers with equanimity.
One day after school Theo invites him to his house. When they get there he finds they are expected to have lunch. So at three in the afternoon they sit down at the dining table with silver cutlery and clean napkins and are served steak and chips by a steward in a white uniform who stands behind Theo’s chair while they eat, waiting for orders.
He does his best to conceal his astonishment. He knows there are people who are waited on by servants; he did not realize that children could have servants too.
Then Theo’s parents and sister go overseas – the sister, rumour has it, to be married off to an English baronet – and Theo and his brother become boarders. He expects Theo to be crushed by the experience: by the envy and malice of the other boarders, by the poor food, by the indignities of a life without privacy. He also expects Theo to have to submit to the same kind of haircut as everyone else. Yet somehow Theo manages to keep his hair elegantly styled; somehow, despite his name, despite being clumsy at sport, despite being thought to be a moffie, he maintains his suave smile, never complains, never allows himself to be humiliated.
Theo sits squashed against him in his desk beneath the picture of Jesus opening his chest to reveal a glowing ruby heart. They are supposed to be revising the history lesson; in fact they have a little grammar book in front of them from which Theo is teaching him Ancient Greek. Ancient Greek with Modern Greek pronunciation: he loves the eccentricity of it. Aftós, whispers Theo; evdhemonía. Evdhemonía, he whispers back.
Brother Gabriel pricks up his ears. ‘What are you doing, Stavropoulos?’ he demands.
‘I’m teaching him Greek, Brother,’ says Theo in his bland, confident way.
‘Go and sit in your own desk.’
Theo smiles and strolls back to his own desk.
The Brothers do not like Theo. His arrogance annoys them; like the boys, they think he is spoiled, has too much money. The injustice of it angers him. He would like to do battle for Theo.
Eighteen
To tide them over until his father’s new law practice begins to bring in money, his mother returns to teaching. To do the housework she hires a maid, a scrawny woman with hardly any teeth in her mouth named Celia. Sometimes Celia brings along her younger sister