Summertime_ Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [64]
I said this to make Maria Regina smile, but all I did was make her more cross; so in the end it was Joana who went out in the rain and talked to them and came back with the message that we would leave as soon as it stopped raining, we would go back to their house and they would make tea for us. 'No,' I said to Joana. 'Go back and tell Mr Coetzee no, we cannot come to tea, he must take us straight back to the flat, tomorrow is Monday and Maria Regina has homework that she hasn't even started on.'
Of course it was an unhappy day for Mr Coetzee. He had hoped to make a good impression on me; maybe he also wanted to show off to his father the three attractive Brazilian ladies who were his friends; and instead all he got was a truck full of wet people driving through the rain. But to me it was good that Maria Regina should see what her hero was like in real life, this poet who could not even make a fire.
So that is the story of our expedition into the mountains with Mr Coetzee. When at last we got back in Wynberg, I said to him, in front of his father, in front of the girls, what I had been waiting to say all day. 'It was very kind of you to invite us out, Mr Coetzee, very gentlemanly,' I said, 'but maybe it is not a good idea for a teacher to be favouring one girl in his class above all others just because she is pretty. I am not admonishing you, just asking you to reflect.'
Those were the words I used: just because she is pretty. Maria Regina was furious with me for speaking like that, but as for me, I did not care as long as I was understood.
Later that night, when Maria Regina had already gone to bed, Joana came to my room. 'Mamãe, must you be so hard on Maria?' she said. 'Truly, there is nothing bad going on.'
'Nothing bad?' I said. 'What do you know of the world? What do you know of badness? What do you know of what men will do?'
'He is not a bad man, mamãe,' she said. 'Surely you can see that.'
'He is a weak man,' I said. 'A weak man is worse than a bad man. A weak man does not know where to stop. A weak man is helpless before his impulses, he follows wherever they lead.'
'Mamãe, we are all weak,' said Joana.
'No, you are wrong, I am not weak,' I said. 'Where would we be, you and Maria Regina and I, if I allowed myself to be weak? Now go to bed. And don't repeat any of this to Maria Regina. Not a word. She will not understand.'
I hoped that would be the end of Mr Coetzee. But no, a day or two later there arrived a letter from him, not via Maria Regina this time but through the mail, a formal letter, typed, the envelope typed too. In it he first apologized for the picnic that had been a failure. He had hoped to speak to me in private, he said, but had had no chance. Could he come and see me? Could he come to the flat, or would I prefer to meet him elsewhere, perhaps have lunch with him? The matter that weighed on him was not Maria Regina, he wanted to stress. Maria was an intelligent young woman, with a good heart; it was a privilege to teach her; I could be assured he would never, never betray the trust I had put in him. Intelligent and beautiful too – he hoped I would not mind if he said that. For beauty, true beauty, was more than skin-deep, it was the soul showing through the flesh; and where could Maria Regina have got her beauty but from me?
[Silence.]
And?
That was all. That was the substance. Could he meet me alone.
Of course I asked myself where he had got the idea that I would want to meet him, even want to receive a letter from him. Because I never said a word to encourage him.
So what did you do? Did you meet him?
What did I do? I did nothing and hoped he would leave me alone. I was a woman in mourning, though my husband was not dead, I did not want the attentions of other men, particularly