Summertime_ Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [48]
As soon as their ease is threatened, the Coetzees rush in with jokes. A family drawn up in a tight little laager to keep the world and its woes at bay. But how long will the jokes go on doing their magic? One of these days the great foe himself will come knocking at the door, the Grim Reaper, whetting his scythe-blade, calling them out one by one. What power will their jokes have then?
'According to John, you are going to move to Merweville while he stays on in Cape Town,' she persists. 'Are you sure you will be able to cope by yourself, Uncle Jack, without a car?'
A serious question. The Coetzees don't like serious questions. 'Margie word 'n bietjie grim,' they will say among themselves: Margie is becoming a bit grim. Is your son planning to shunt you off to the Karoo and abandon you, she is asking, and if that is what is afoot, how come you don't raise your voice in protest?
'No, no,' replies Jack. 'It won't be like you say. Merweville will just be somewhere quiet to take a break. If it goes through. It's just an idea, you know, an idea of John's. It's nothing definite.'
'IT'S A SCHEME to get rid of his father,' says her sister Carol. 'He wants to dump him in the middle of the Karoo and wash his hands of him. Then it will be up to Michiel to take care of him. Because Michiel will be closest.'
'Poor old John!' she replies. 'You always believe the worst of him. What if he is telling the truth? He promises he will visit his father in Merweville every weekend, and spend the school holidays there as well. Why not give him the benefit of the doubt?'
'Because I don't believe a word he says. The whole plan sounds fishy to me. He has never got on with his father.'
'He looks after his father in Cape Town.'
'He lives with his father, but only because he has no money. He is thirty-something years old with no prospects. He ran away from South Africa to escape the army. Then he was thrown out of America because he broke the law. Now he can't find a proper job because he is too stuck-up. The two of them live on the pathetic salary his father gets from the scrapyard where he works.'
'But that's not true!' she protests. Carol is younger than she. Once Carol used to be the follower and she, Margot, the leader. Now it is Carol who strides ahead, she who tails anxiously behind. How did it happen? 'John teaches in a high school,' she says. 'He earns his own money.'
'That's not what I hear. What I hear is that he coaches dropouts for their matric exams and is paid by the hour. It's part-time work, the sort of thing students do to earn pocket money. Ask him straight out. Ask him what school he teaches at. Ask him what he earns.'
'A big salary isn't all that counts.'
'It isn't just a matter of salary. It's a matter of telling the truth. Let him tell you the truth about why he wants to buy this house in Merweville. Let him tell you who is going to pay for it, he or his father. Let him tell you his plans for the future.' And then, when she looks blank: 'Hasn't he told you? Hasn't he told you his plans?'
'He doesn't have plans. He is a Coetzee, Coetzees don't have plans, they don't have ambitions, they only have idle longings. He has an idle longing to live in the Karoo.'
'His ambition is to be a poet, a full-time poet. This Merweville scheme has nothing to do with his father's welfare. He wants a place in the Karoo where he can come when it suits him, where he can sit with his chin on his hands and contemplate the sunset and write poems.'
John and his poems again! She can't help it, she snorts with laughter. John sitting on the stoep of that dreary little house making up poems! With a beret on his head, no doubt, and a glass of wine at his elbow. And the little Coloured children clustered around him, pestering him with questions. Wat maak oom? – Nee, oom maak gedigte. Op sy