Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [67]
He returns to his room, closes the door.
Sometimes, in the days that follow, the gloom lifts. The sky, that usually sits tight and closed over his head, not so near that it can be touched but not much further either, opens a slit, and for an interval he can see the world as it really is. He sees himself in his white shirt with rolled-up sleeves and the grey short trousers that he is on the point of outgrowing: not a child, not what a passer-by would call a child, too big for that now, too big to use that excuse, yet still as stupid and self-enclosed as a child: childish; dumb; ignorant; retarded. In a moment like this he can see his father and his mother too, from above, without anger: not as two grey and formless weights seating themselves on his shoulders, plotting his misery day and night, but as a man and a woman living dull and trouble-filled lives of their own. The sky opens, he sees the world as it is, then the sky closes and he is himself again, living the only story he will admit, the story of himself.
His mother stands at the sink, in the dimmest corner of the kitchen. She stands with her back to him, her arms flecked with soapsuds, scouring a pot, in no great hurry. As for him, he is roaming around, talking about something, he does not know what, talking with his usual vehemence, complaining.
His mother turns from her chore; her gaze flickers over him. It is a considered look, without any fondness. She is not seeing him for the first time. Rather, she is seeing him as he has always been and as she has always known him to be when she is not wrapped up in illusion. She sees him, sums him up, and is not pleased. She is even bored with him.
This is what he fears from her, from the person in all the world who knows him best, who has the huge, unfair advantage over him of knowing all about his first, most helpless, most intimate years, years of which, despite every effort, he himself can remember nothing; who probably knows as well, since she is inquisitive and has sources of her own, the paltry secrets of his school life. He fears his mother’s judgment. He fears the cool thoughts that must be passing through her mind at moments like this, when there is no passion to colour them, no reason for her faculties to be anything but clear; above all he fears the moment, a moment that has not yet arrived, when she will pronounce her judgment. It will be like a stroke of lightning; he will not be able to withstand it. He does not want to hear it. So much does he not want to hear it that he can feel a hand go up inside his own head to block his ears, block his sight. He would rather be blind and deaf than know what his mother thinks of him. He would rather live like a tortoise inside its shell.
For it is not true that, as he likes to think, this woman was brought into the world for the sole purpose of loving him and protecting him and satisfying his wants. On the contrary, she had a life before he came into being, a life in which she gave him not the slightest thought. Then at a certain moment in history she gave birth to him. She bore him and she decided to love him; perhaps she chose to love him even before she bore him; nevertheless, she chose to love him, and therefore she can choose to stop loving him.
‘Wait until you have children of your own,’ she says to him in one of her bitter moods. ‘Then you will know.’ What will he know? It is a formula she uses, a formula that sounds as if it comes from the old days. Perhaps it is what each generation says to the next, as a warning, as a threat. But he does not want to hear it. Wait until you have children. What nonsense, what a contradiction! How can a child have children? Anyway, what he would know if he were a father, if he were his own father, is precisely what he does not want to know. He will not accept the vision of the world that she wants to force upon