Summertime_ Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [73]
So that is the story, the full story, of his letters and the trouble his letters caused me.
There were no more letters?
There was one more, but I did not open it. I wrote RETURN TO SENDER on the envelope and left it in the foyer for the postman to pick up. 'See?' I said to Maria Regina. 'See what I think of his letters?'
And what of the dance classes?
He stopped coming. Mr Anderson spoke to him and he stopped coming. Maybe he even gave back his money, I don't know.
Did you find another teacher for Maria Regina?
Yes, I found another teacher, a lady, a retired teacher. It cost money, but what is money when your child's future is at stake?
Was that the end, then, of your dealings with John Coetzee?
Yes. Absolutely.
You never saw him again, never heard from him?
I never saw him. I made sure Maria Regina never saw him. He may have been full of romantic nonsense, but he was too Dutch to be reckless. When he realized I was serious, not playing some love-game with him, he gave up his pursuit. He left us alone. His grand passion turned out to be not so grand after all. Or maybe he found someone else to be in love with.
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he kept you alive in his heart. Or the idea of you.
Why do you say that?
[Silence.]
Well, perhaps he did. You are the one who has studied him, you will know better. With some people it does not matter who they are in love with as long as they are in love. Perhaps he was like that.
[Silence.]
In retrospect, how do you see the whole episode? Do you still feel anger toward him?
Anger? No. I can see how a lonely and eccentric young man like Mr Coetzee, who spent his days reading old philosophers and making up poems, could fall for Maria Regina, who was a real beauty and would break many hearts. It is not so easy to see what Maria Regina saw in him; but then, she was young and impressionable, and he flattered her, made her think she was different from the other girls and had a great future.
Then when she brought him home and he laid eyes on me, I can see he might change his mind and decide to make me his true love instead. I am not claiming I was a great beauty, and of course I was not young any more, but Maria Regina and I were the same type: same bones, same hair, same dark eyes. And it is more practical – is it not? – to love a woman than to love a child. More practical, less dangerous.
What did he want from me, from a woman who did not respond to him and gave him no encouragement? Did he hope to sleep with me? What pleasure can there be for a man in sleeping with a woman who does not want him? Because, truly, I did not want this man, for whom I had not the slightest flicker of feeling. And what would it have been like anyway if I had taken up with my daughter's teacher? Could I have kept it secret? Certainly not from Maria Regina. I would have brought shame on myself before my children. Even when I was alone with him I would have been thinking, It is not me he desires, it is Maria Regina, who is young and beautiful but is forbidden to him.
But perhaps what he really wanted was both of us, Maria Regina and me, mother and daughter – perhaps that was his fantasy, I can't say, I can't look into his mind.
I remember, in the days when I was a student, existentialism was the fashion, we all had to be existentialists. But to be accepted as an existentialist you had first to prove you were a libertine, an extremist. Obey no restraints! Be free! – that was what we were told. But how can I be free, I asked myself, if I am obeying someone else's order to be free?
Coetzee was like that, I think. He had made up his mind to be an existentialist and a romantic and a libertine. The trouble was, it did not come from inside him, therefore he did not know how. Freedom, sensuality, erotic love – it was all just