In the Heart of the Country

by J. M. Coetzee

  “No, miss,” he murmurs, “I think we had better go home now.”

  I grow stronger as he grows weaker.

  “No: I want you to sleep here, just for the one night. Otherwise I am all alone in the house. We can make up a bed on a mat in the kitchen, it will be quite comfortable. Come along, Anna, come and help.”

  170. Hendrik and Anna stand by their bed waiting for me to retire.

  “Remember to blow out the light before you go to sleep,” I say, “and, Anna, please see to it that the fire is lit tomorrow morning. Goodnight, Hendrik, goodnight, Anna.” I am briskness itself.

  “Goodnight, miss.”

  171. When they have had time to settle I return and listen outside the closed door. I am barefoot: if the prowling scorpions want me let them have me. I hear nothing at all, not a stir, not a whisper. If I am holding my breath then they are holding theirs. How can I hope to deceive them, countryfolk who can hear a hooffall a mile away through their soles and fingertips?

  172. I lie on my bed and wait. The clock ticks, time passes, no one comes. I fall asleep and do not dream. The sun rises. I wake and dress. The kitchen is empty, the bedclothes are folded, the fire is lit.

  173. I stride up the dust road past the three thorn-trees, across a corner of the lands, to the graveyard. One half of the graveyard, set off by low white-painted railings, is for the dynasties who have farmed this land, buried now in the shale under their engraved slabs and scrolls. The other half is more densely packed with the tumuli of their shepherds and housemaids and the children of these. I walk among the stones until I come to the grave I have marked out, the grave of someone of whose coming and going I know nothing, to whom I owe no pious duty. By the weathered granite slab is the mouth of a tunnel going at an angle into the earth. In this dead man’s bed a porcupine, perhaps by now also generations gone, hollowed out a home for itself and slept and raised its young.

  174. Hendrik sits with his young wife on the bench in the shade of his cottage. It is Sunday.

  “Hendrik, fetch a pick and spade and come with me to the graveyard, please. Anna, you had better stay here.”

  175. Hendrik cannot budge the gravestone by himself. It is work for four men, he says. He chops the earth away around the three embedded edges but the stone sits fast.

  “Chop the whole of this side loose. Make the hole wider, as wide as the entire length of the stone.”

  “Miss, this is a porcupine hole, there’s nothing in it.”

  “Do as I tell you, Hendrik.”

  Hendrik toils while I circle him. The grave has been filled in with stone chips and soil, the strata are broken, it is not hard to dig, that is why the porcupine chose to live here, close to the lucerne fields.

  Once Hendrik has widened the entrance tunnel we see, as I expected, the lair, a considerable rounded chamber, beyond. Though I lie on my belly and shade my eyes, the glare is too bright for me to see its back wall.

  “How deep is the hole, Hendrik? Feel with the spade. I don’t want to disturb the coffin.”

  “No, miss, it’s big but it doesn’t go deep, porcupines don’t burrow deep, they make a big chamber like this, just the one.”

  “And what about a person, Hendrik – is that hole big enough to hold a person?”

  “Yes, miss, it’s big, a person can easily get into it.”

  “Just to make sure, show me how a person gets in.”

  “Me? No, miss, it’s not yet time for me to climb into the grave!” He laughs but stands firm, tilting his hat back on his head.

  176. I bundle my skirt around my knees and lower my legs into the hole. I push myself backward into the dark. Hendrik leans on his spade watching.

  I am wholly inside. I try to stretch but cannot extend my legs.

  I curl up in the cool earth and turn away from the light. My hair is full of dirt. I close my eyes the better to relish the dark. I search my heart and can find no reason to leave. I could make this my second home. I could get Hendrik to bring me food. I would not need much. At night I could crawl out to stretch my legs. Perhaps in time I would even learn to howl to the moon, to prowl around the sleeping farmhouse looking for scraps. I can find no reason to open my eyes again.

  “Yes,” I tell Hendrik. My voice is thick, my words boom in my head. “It’s big enough. Help me out.” He leans down, watching the mouth of his mistress move in the shadow of the hole.

  177. The body lies ready on the bathroom floor sewn into a grey tarpaulin. I have heard that seamen put the last stitch through the nose, to make sure, but I cannot bring myself to do so. I have not wept at my task. It is not that my heart is hard. There must be someone to wash the corpse, there must be someone to dig the grave.

  178. I emerge on to the stoep and call in a strong steady voice: “Hendrik!”

  Hendrik rises from his spot of shade and crosses the yard.

  “Hendrik, please fetch the wheelbarrow and put it at the kitchen door.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  When he comes to the back door I am waiting for him.

  “Come and help me carry the body.”

  He looks dubiously at me. This is the moment at which he baulks. I am ready for it.

  “Hendrik, I want to speak frankly. We can’t wait any longer. It is hot, the baas must be buried. There are only you and I who can do it. I can’t do it by myself, and I don’t want strangers interfering. This is a family matter, something private. Do you understand what I am saying?”

  “What about a minister?” He is mumbling, he is uncertain, he will give no trouble.

  “Come on, Hendrik, we have no time to waste. Help me carry it.”

  I turn, he follows.

  179. We lift the parcel, he at the head, I at the feet, and carry it through the house into the sunlight. There is no one to see us. There has never been anyone to see what goes on here. We are outside the law, therefore live only by the law we recognize in ourselves, going by our inner voice. My father reclines in his wheelbarrow, making a last tour of his domain. We trudge up the track to the graveyard, Hendrik pushing, I keeping the bundled legs from slipping sideways.

  180. Hendrik will have nothing to do with the burying. “No, miss,” he says again and again, backing away and shaking his head.

  I push and pull until the barrow stands close to the hole. Given time I can do whatever a man can do. Gripping the ankles under my arm I strain to haul the bundle off. The barrow tips sideways, I jump back, and the body slides face-down to the ground. “Don’t just stand there, help me!” I scream. “You damned hotnot, it’s all your fault, you and your whore!” I am dizzy with rage. He turns, clamps his hat down on his head, and begins to march away. “Filth! Coward!” I scream after him. With the gawky movements of a woman I throw a stone at him. It falls far short. He pays no heed.

  181. The hips are too wide for the hole, the body will not slide in on its side and the bent knees cannot be straightened inside the tarpaulin. I must either widen the hole or break open the parcel. I hate destroying good handiwork. I have neither knife nor spade with me. I chop at the earth with a stone but it barely makes an impression. I should have tied up the tarpaulin with rope, this way I have no grip on it, my fingers are tired from clutching and pulling.

  182. When I come back with the spade the flies are already here, rising in a cloud from the grey bundle and buzzing in the air, impatient for me to go away. I wave my arms about. It is late in the afternoon. How time passes when one is busy. The spade is of the wrong shape, it is meant for shovelling while I need something that will bite into the earth. I use the side of the blade to chop, every now and then striking sparks off the gravestone, showering myself with dirt, but finally widening the hole an inch or two.

  Again the body slides in as far as the hips and sticks. I kneel and push at it with all my force. I sit beside it and kick with both heels together. It turns slightly and the hips
slip through. I heave at the torso, rotating it further till the shoulders lie flat. Now shoulders and head will pass through, but feet and knees refuse to slide further, for the floor of the burrow drops and then slopes upward again. The fault is not in the knees, I see, but in the spine, which will not flex. I struggle on and on in the crimson glory of the declining sun, kicking at the shoulders first from the right, then from the left, achieving nothing. I will have to haul it all out again, cut open the sailcloth, and tie the ankles against the thighs so as to shorten it. But will there be enough flexure at the knees? Will I have to cut the tendons in the knees? Burial is all a mistake. I should have burned the body with the mattress and the bed and gone for a long walk in the veld to escape the smell. I should have dug a new grave in the riverbed or in the garden where the soil is soft. I should have excavated one of the humbler tumuli, what difference does it make where he lies? If I intend to settle him in this grave there is no way to do so but to pull him in, to climb in first and pull him in after me. And I am exhausted. I do not see how I can finish before nightfall. All my life there has been enough time, more than enough time, too much time, I have panted for the breath of life in the thin medium of our time. Haste is foreign to me, I am repelled by the odour of panic I detect in my sweat. I am neither god nor beast, why do I have to do everything by myself, down to the very last things, why have I had to live this life without aid? I cannot find it in me to open the graveclothes and confront again the darkening cheesy flesh that sired me. But if I do not bury it now will I ever bury it? Perhaps I should simply go to bed and wait there day in, day out, with a pillow over my head, singing to myself, while the bag lies in the sun, the flies buzzing around it and the ants crawling in and out, until it bloats and bursts and runs in black fluids; and then wait on until its passion is complete, until it is simple bones and hair, the ants having taken everything worthwhile and gone elsewhere; and then, if the stitching has held, get out of bed at last and pick it up and sling it into the porcupine hole and be free of it.

  183. The bundle, hauled out again, lies like a great grey larva at the graveside, and I, its tireless mother, instinct-driven, set again about stowing it in the safe place I have chosen, though for what hibernation, with what cell-food, toward what metamorphosis I do not know, unless it be as a great grey moth creaking through the dusk toward the lamplit farmhouse, blundering through the fleeing bats, sawing the air with its pinions, the death’s-head burning bright in the fur between its shoulders, its mandibles, if moths have mandibles, opened wide for its prey. I send the head down first into the hole, but again, because the spine will not flex, the thighs cannot pass through. The hounds of logic are running me down.

  184. Light thickens, the birds are settling to roost. If I stand still for a moment I can hear the clank of Hendrik’s milk-pail. The cow lows for him. His wife waits by the hearth. In all this wide world there are only two creatures with no place to lay their heads.

  185. I slip into the dark of the hole. The first stars are out. I grip the foot of the parcel, brace myself, and haul. The body slides in easily as far as the thighs. I lift the feet up off the ground and haul again. It slides in as far as the shoulders. The mouth of the hole is blocked, I am in pitch blackness. I lift the feet over my knee, embrace the parcel about the shoulders, and haul a third time. The head thuds in, the stars reappear, it is finished. I creep over the body and out into the free air. What a pity I have learned to name no more than the Southern Cross. I must rest, I cannot yet fill the hole in tonight, Hendrik will have to do it in the morning. He will have to wheel sand from the riverbed, there is no easier way, and pack the mouth with stones, and recompose the surface decently. I have done my part. Trembling with exhaustion I pick my way home.

  186. All at once it is morning. It seems to lie in my power to skip over whole days or nights as if they did not happen. In the empty kitchen I stretch and yawn.

  Hendrik appears in the doorway. We greet each other decorously.

  “Miss, I have come to ask — we haven’t yet been paid.”

  “Not yet paid?”

  “No, miss, not yet paid.” He gives me his good smile, as though he has suddenly found a source of blinding joy in what we are saying. What has he to be happy about? Does he think I can return this friendliness? “Look, miss, it’s like this.” He approaches, he is going to explain, he does not see how I draw back. “On Friday it was the first of the month. So on Monday we were supposed to get our money, all the people on the farm. But the baas didn’t pay us. So we are still waiting, miss.”

  “Didn’t the baas give you anything at all?”

  “No, miss, nothing, he gave us nothing of our money.”

  “Yes, I know, but it isn’t only money we are talking about. What about the brandy the baas gave you? And what about Klein-Anna? What about all those presents he gave her? They cost money, didn’t they? The baas gave you all kinds of things, and yet on top of that you come and ask for money. Oh no! – for people like you I have no money.”

  Trouble, always trouble! What do I know about money? Not in all my life have I had to touch a coin larger than a sixpence. Where am I going to lay my hands on money? Where did my father keep it? In a hole in his mattress, soaked in blood, burned by now to ashes? In a tobacco-tin under the floor? Under lock and key in the post office? How am I ever going to get hold of it? Did he make a will? Did he leave it to me or did he leave it to brothers and sisters and cousins I have never heard of? How will I ever find out? But do I want his money? Do I need money when I can live happily all my life on boiled pumpkin? And if I am too simple to need money, why does Hendrik need it? Why has he always to disappoint me?

  “We did our work, miss.” The smile is quite gone, he is rigid with anger. “Now we must get our money. The baas always paid us. Always.”

  “Don’t you stand there bandying words with me!” I have my own sources of anger. “What work did you two really do? What work did that Anna of yours do? What work did you do yesterday afternoon when I had to bury the baas all by myself? Don’t talk to me about work – I am the only one here who does any work! Go away, I haven’t any money for you!”

  “Right: if the miss says we must go then I suppose we must go!”

  He is actually threatening me in sober daylight. He must have come, with his smile, to test me, to see what could be wrung from me, thinking that because I am alone and ridiculous I must also be weak and afraid. And now he is threatening me, thinking that I will be flustered.

  “Listen carefully, Hendrik, and don’t misunderstand me. I am not giving you money because I have no money. If you want to leave you can leave. But if you wait, I promise you will get your money, every penny you have earned. Now make up your mind.”

  “No, miss, I understand. If miss says we must wait then we must wait, if miss promises us our money. Then we’ll go ahead and take our slaughter-sheep.”

  “Yes, take your sheep. But don’t slaughter anything for the house until I tell you.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  187. The floor shines as it never shone when it was left to the care of servants. The doorknobs gleam, the windows sparkle, the furniture glows. Every last ray of light that enters the house is thrown from bright surface to bright surface endlessly. Every item of linen has been washed with my own hands, hung, ironed, folded, and packed away. My knees are tender from kneeling at the bathside, my hands raw from the scrubbing-board. My back aches, my head reels when I stand up. A smell of beeswax and linseed oil hangs in the air. The dust of ages, the dust from on top of the wardrobes, the dust from the bedsprings, has been swept out of doors. The loft is spick and span. The chests stand in rows, packed tight with things I no longer need, their hasps and locks gleaming. My house has been set in order down to the last pin, and I have done it myself. Next comes the farm. One of these days, if they are not to stifle, the sheep must be shorn. If Hendrik refuses to do that task I will, my energies are boundless; I will put o
n my sunbonnet and go out with my sewing-scissors and catch the sheep by their hind legs and trap them between my knees and shear them one by one, day after day, until it is all done – let the wind take the wool, what good is it to me? Or perhaps I shall keep some of it to stuff a mattress with, so that I can lie on it at night, on all that oily warmth. If I cannot succeed in catching the sheep, which is not unlikely (I have no sheepdog, dogs snarl and cower when I call them, they do not like me, it is the smell), then there is nothing for it, the sheep must perish, they must lie heaving and panting about the veld like filthy brown powderpuffs till their creator finds it in his heart to take them to himself. As for the windmills, the windmills will go on pumping day and night, they are faithful, they do not think, they do not mind the heat. The dams are overflowing. Hendrik still irrigates the lands, I see him in the evenings. When he ceases, out of boredom, out of pique, I will carry on. I need the fruit-trees and the vegetable garden. For the rest, the rye can die, the lucerne can die. The cow is drying up, the cow can die.

  188. Between myself and them lies the dry river. They no longer come to the house, having no occasion. I have not paid them. Hendrik still milks the failing cow and irrigates the lands. Anna stays at home. Sometimes, from the stoep or from a window, I catch a glimpse of her scarlet kerchief bobbing about in the riverbed. On Friday evenings Hendrik comes to help himself to his coffee and sugar and meal and beans from the store. I watch him cross and re-cross the yard.

  189. The fowls have gone wild, roosting in the trees. One by one they are being killed off by wildcats. A brood of chicks was lost last night. The feed is running out. I have not discovered any money. If it is in the post office then it is lost to me. But perhaps it really was burned up. Or perhaps there never was any money. Perhaps there will be no money unless I shear the sheep and sell their wool. In that case there will be no money.

  190. This is no way to live.