Summertime_ Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [57]
John leads her on a tour of the premises. The house is small, ill lit, stuffy; it smells of wet newspaper and fried bacon. If she were in charge she would tear down the dreary curtains and replace them with something lighter and brighter; but of course in this men's world she is not in charge.
He shows her into the room that is to be hers. Her heart sinks. The carpet is mottled with what look like oil stains. Against the wall is a low single bed, and beside it a desk on which books and papers lie piled higgledy-piggledy. Glaring down from the ceiling is the same kind of neon lamp they used to have in the office in the hotel before she had it removed.
Everything here seems to be of the same hue: a brown verging in one direction on dull yellow and in the other on dingy grey. She wonders whether the house has been cleaned, properly cleaned, in years.
Normally this is his bedroom, John explains. He has changed the sheets on the bed; he will empty two drawers for her use. Across the passage are the necessary facilities.
She explores the necessary facilities. The bathroom is grimy, the toilet stained, smelling of old urine.
Since leaving Calvinia she has had nothing to eat but a chocolate bar. She is famished. John offers her what he calls French toast, white bread soaked in egg and fried, of which she eats three slices. He also gives her tea with milk that turns out to be sour (she drinks it anyway).
Her uncle sidles into the kitchen, wearing a pyjama top over his trousers. 'I'll say good night, Margie,' he says. 'Sleep tight. Don't let the fleas bite.' He does not say good night to his son. Around his son he seems distinctly tentative. Have they been having a fight?
'I'm restless,' she says to John. 'Shall we go for a walk? I've been cooped up in the back of an ambulance all day.'
He takes her on a ramble through the well-lit streets of suburban Tokai. The houses they pass are all bigger and better than his. 'This used to be farmland not long ago,' he explains. 'Then it was subdivided and sold in lots. Our house used to be a farm-labourer's cottage. That's why it is so shoddily built. Everything leaks: roof, walls. I spend all my free time doing repairs. I'm like the boy with his finger in the dyke.'
'Yes, I begin to see the attraction of Merweville. At least in Merweville it doesn't rain. But why not buy a better house here in the Cape? Write a book. Write a best-seller. Make lots of money.'
It is only a joke, but he chooses to take it seriously. 'I wouldn't know how to write a best-seller,' he says. 'I don't know enough about people and their fantasy lives. Anyway, I wasn't destined for that fate.'
'What fate?'
'The fate of being a rich and successful writer.'
'Then what is the fate you are destined for?'
'For exactly the present one. For living with an ageing parent in a house in the white suburbs with a leaky roof.'
'That's just silly, slap talk. That's the Coetzee in you speaking. You could change your fate tomorrow if you would just put your mind to it.'
The dogs of the neighbourhood do not take kindly to strangers roaming their streets by night, arguing. The chorus of barking grows clamorous.
'I wish you could hear yourself, John,' she plunges on. 'You are so full of nonsense! If you don't take hold of yourself you are going to turn into a sour old prune of a man who wants only to be left alone in his corner. Let's go back. I have to get up early.'
SHE SLEEPS BADLY on the uncomfortable, hard mattress. Before first light she is up, making coffee and toast for the three of them. By seven o'clock they are on their way to Groote Schuur Hospital, crammed together in the cab of the Datsun.
She leaves Jack and his son in the waiting room, but then cannot