Age of Iron

by J. M. Coetzee

  'So I have continued to tell myself stories in which you lead, I follow. And if you say not a word, that is, I tell myself, because the angel is wordless. The angel goes before, the woman, follows. His eyes are open, he sees; hers are shut, she is still sunk in the sleep of worldliness. That is why I keep turning to you for guidance, for help.'

  The front door was locked but the gate to the courtyard swung open. The broken glass had not been, swept up, the door to Florence 's room hung askew. I cast my gaze down, treading carefully, not ready yet to look into the room, not strong enough.

  The kitchen door was unlocked. They had not found the key.

  'Come in,' I said to Vercueil.

  The house was and was not as it had been. Things in the kitchen were out of place. My umbrella hung where it had never hung before. The sofa had been shifted, exposing an old stain on the carpet. And over all a strange smell: not only cigarette smoke and sweat but something sharp and penetrating that I could not place. They have left their mark on everything, I thought: thorough workers. Then I remembered the file on my desk, the letter, all the pages thus far. That too! I thought: they will have been through that tool Soiled fingers turning the pages, eyes without love going aver the naked words. 'Help me upstairs,' I said to Vercueil.

  The file, left open when I last wrote, was closed. The lock of the filing-cabinet was broken. There were gaps in the bookshelves.

  The two unused rooms had had their locks forced.

  They had been through the cupboard, the chest of drawers.

  Nothing left untouched. Like the last visit the burglars paid. The search a mere pretext. The true purpose the touching, the fingering. The spirit malevolent. Like rape: a way of filthying a woman.

  I turned to Vercueil, wordless, sick to the stomach.

  'There's someone downstairs,' he said.

  From the landing we could hear someone talking on the telephone.

  The voice stopped. A young man in uniform emerged into the hallway and nodded to us.

  'What are you doing in my house?' I called down.

  'just checking,' he replied quite cheerfully. 'We didn't want strangers coming in.' He gathered up a cap, a coat, a rifle. Was it the rifle 1 had smelled? 'The detectives will be here at eight,' he said. 'I'll wait outside.' He smiled; he seemed to think he had dome me a service; he seemed to be expecting thanks.

  'I must have a bath,' I said to Vercueil.

  But I did not have a bath. I closed the bedroom door, took two of the red pills and lay down trembling all over. The trembling got worse till I was shaking like a leaf in a storm. I was cold but the trembling was not from the cold.

  A minute at a time, I told myself: do not fall to pieces now: think only of the next minute.

  The trembling began to subside.

  Man, I thought: the only creature with a part of his existence in the unknown, in the future, like a shadow cast before him. Trying continually to catch up with that moving shadow, to inhabit: the image of his hope. But I, I cannot afford to be man. Must be something smaller, blinder, closer to the ground.

  There was a knock and Vercueil came in, followed by the policeman who yesterday had worn the reindeer jersey and now wore a jacket and tie. The trembling began again. He motioned for Vercueil to leave the room. I sat up. 'Don't go, Mr Vercueil,' I said; and to him: 'What right have you to come into my house?'

  'We have been worried about you.' He did not seem worried at all. 'Where were you last night?' And then, when I did not reply: 'Are you sure you are all right by yourself, Mrs Curren?'

  Though I clenched my fists, the trembling grew worse till it convulsed me. T am not by myself!' I screamed at him: 'You are the one who is by himself!'

  He was not taken aback. On the contrary, he seemed to be encouraging me to go on.

  Hold yourself together, I thought! They will commit you, they will call you mad and take you away!

  'What do you want here?' I asked more quietly.

  'I just want to ask a few questions. How did you come across this boy Johannes?'

  Johannes: was that his true name? Surely not.

  'He was a friend of my domestic's son. A school-friend.'

  Out of his pocket he brought a little cassette recorder and set it on the bed beside me.

  'And where is your domestic's son?'

  'He is dead and buried. Surely you know these things. '

  'What happened to him?'

  'He was shot out on the Flats.'

  'And are there any more of them that you know of?'

  'More of whom?'

  'More friends. '

  'Thousands. Millions, More than, you can count.'

  'I mean, more from that cell. Are there any others who have used your premises?'

  'No.'

  'And do you know how these arms came into their hands?'

  'What arms?'

  'A pistol. Three detonators.'

  'I know nothing about detonators. I don't know what a detonator is. The pistol was mine. '

  'Did they take it from you?'

  'I lent it to them. Not to them. To the boy, John.'

  'You lent him the pistol? Was the pistol yours?'

  'Yes.'

  'Why did you lend him, the pistol?'

  'To defend himself.'

  'To defend himself against who, Mrs Curren?'

  'To defend himself against attack.'

  'And what kind of pistol was it, Mrs Curren? Can you show me the licence for it?'

  'I know nothing about kinds of pistol. I have had it for a long time, from before all this fuss about licences.'

  'Are you sure you gave it to him.? You know this is a chargeable offence we are talking about.'

  The pills were beginning to take effect. The pain in my back grew more distant, my limbs relaxed, the horizon began to expand again.

  'Do you really want to go on with this nonsense?' I said. I lay back on the pillow and closed my eyes. My head was spinning. 'These are dead people we are talking about. There is nothing more you can do to them. They are safe. You have had the execution. Why bother with a trial? Why not just close the case?'

  He picked up the recorder, fiddled with it, put it back on the pillow. 'Just checking,' he said.

  With a languorous arm I brushed the recorder away. He caught It before it hit the floor.

  'You have been through my private papers,' I said. 'You have taken books that belong to me. I want them back. I want everything back. All my things. They are no business of yours.'

  'We are not going to eat your books, Mrs Curren. You will get everything back in the end.'

  'I don't want things back In the end. I want them, back now. They are mine. They are private. '

  He shook his head. 'This is not private, Mrs Curren. You know that. Nothing is private any more.'

  The languor was getting to my tongue now. 'Leave me,' I said thickly.

  'just a few more questions. Where were you last night?'

  'With Mr Vercueil.'

  'Is this Mr Vercueil?'

  It took too much of an effort to open my eyes. 'Yes,' I murmured.

  'Who Is Mr Vercueil?' And then. In quite a different tone: 'Wie is jy?'

  'Mr Vercueil takes care of me. Mr Vercueil is my right-hand man. Come here, Mr Vercueil.'

  I reached out and found Vercueil's trouser-leg, then his hand, the bad hand with the curled fingers. With the numb, clawlike grip of the old I clung to it.

  'In Godsnaam,' said the detective somewhere far away. In God's name: mere fulmination, or a curse on the pair of us? My grip broke, I began to slide away.

  A word appeared before me: Thabanchu, Thaba Nchu. I tried to concentrate. Nine letters, anagram for what? With a great effort I placed the b first. Then I was gone.

  I awoke thirsty, groggy, full of pain. The clockface stared at me but I could make no sense of the hands. The house was silent with the silence of deserted houses.

  Thabanchu: banch? bath? With stupid hands I unwrapped the sheet from around me. Must I have
a bath?

  But my feet did not take me to the bathroom. Holding to the rail, bent over, groaning, I went: downstairs and dialled the Guguletu number. On and on the phone rang. Then at last someone answered, a child, a girl. 'Is Mr Thabane there?' I asked. 'No.' 'Then can I speak to Mrs Mkubuleki – no, not Mrs Mkubuleki, Mrs Mkubukeli?' 'Mrs Mkubukeli does not live here.' 'But do you know Mrs Mkubukeli?' 'Yes, I know him.' 'Mrs Mkubukeli?' 'Yes,' 'Who are you?' 'I am Lily.' Lee-lee. 'Are you the only one at home?' 'There is my sister too.' 'How old is your sister?' 'She is six.' 'And you – how old are you?' 'Ten.' 'Can you take a message to Mrs Mkubukeli, Lily?' 'Yes.' 'It is about her brother Mr Thabane. She must tell Mr Thabane to be careful. Say it is very important. Mr Thabane must be careful. My name is Mrs Curren. Can you write that down? And this is my number. ' I read out the number, spelled my name. Mrs Curren: nine letters, anagram for what?

  Vercueil knocked and came in. 'Do you want something to eat?' he said.

  'I am not hungry. But help yourself to anything you can find.'

  I wanted to be left alone. But he lingered, eyeing me curiously. I was sitting up in bed, gloves on my hands, the writing-pad on my knees. For half an hour I had sat with the page blank before me.

  'I am just: waiting for my hands to warm up,' I said.

  But it was not cold fingers that kept me from writing. It was the pills, which I take more of now, and more often.

  They are like smoke-flares. I swallow them and they release a fog inside me, a fog of extinction. I cannot take the pills and go on with the writing. So without pain no writing: a new and terrible rule. Except that, when I have taken the pills, nothing is terrible any more, everything is indifferent, everything is the same.

  Nevertheless I do write. In the dead of night, with Vercueil asleep downstairs, I take up this letter to tell you one more thing about that 'John,' that sullen boy I never took to. I want to tell you that, despite my dislike of him, he is with me more clearly, more piercingly than Bheki has ever been. He is with me or I am with him: him or the trace of him. It is the middle of the night but it is the grey of his last morning too. I am here in my bed but I am there in Florence 's room too, with its one window and one door and no other way out. Outside the door men are waiting, crouched like hunters, to present the boy with bis death. In his lap he holds the pistol that, for this interval, keeps the hunters at bay, that was his and Bheki's great secret, that was going to make men of them; and beside him I stand or hover. The barrel of the pistol is between his knees; he strokes it up and down. He is listening to the murmur of voices outside, and I listen with him. He is readying himself for the smoke that will, choke his lungs, the kick that will burst the door open, the torrent of fire that will sweep him away. He is readying himself to raise the pistol in that instant: and fire the one shot he will have time to fire into the heart of the light.

  His eyes are unblinking, fixed on the door through which he is going to leave the world. His mouth is dry but he is not afraid. His heart: beats steadily like a fist in his chest clenching and unclenching.

  His eyes are open and mine, though I write, are shut. My eyes are shut in order to see.

  Within this interval there is no time, though his heart beats time. I am here in my room in the night but I am also with him, all the time, as I am with you across the seas, hovering. A hovering time, but not eternity. A time being, a suspension, before the return of the time in which the door bursts open and we face, first he, then I, the great white glare.

  IV

  I have had a dream, of Florence, a dream or vision. In the dream I see her striding again down Government Avenue holding Hope by the hand and carrying Beauty on her back. All three of them wear masks.

  I am there too, with a crowd of people of all kinds and conditions gathered around me. The air is festive. I am to provide a show.

  But Florence does not stop to watch. Gaze fixed ahead, she passes as if through a congregation of wraiths.

  The eyes of her mask are like eyes in pictures from the ancient Mediterranean: large, oval, with the pupil in the centre: the almond eyes of a goddess.

  I stand in the middle of the avenue opposite the Parliament buildings, circled by people, doing my tricks with fire. Over me tower great oaks. But my mind is not on my tricks. I am intent on Florence. Her dark coat, her dull dress have fallen away. In a white slip ruffled by the wind, her feet bare, her head bare, her right breast bare, she strides past, the one child, masked, naked, trotting quickly beside her, the other stretching an arm out over her shoulder, pointing.

  Who is this goddess who comes in a vision with uncovered breast cutting the air? It is Aphrodite, but not smile-loving Aphrodite, patroness of pleasures: an older figure, a figure of urgency, of cries in the dark, short and sharp, of blood and earth, emerging for an instant, showing herself, passing.

  From the goddess conies no call, no signal. Her eye is open and is blank. She sees and does not see.

  Burning, doing my show, I stand transfixed. The flames flowing from me are blue as ice. I feel no pain.

  It is a vision from last night's dream-time but also from outside time. Forever the goddess is passing, forever, caught in a posture of surprise and regret, I do not follow. Though I peer and peer into the vortex from which visions come, the wake of the goddess and her god-children remains empty, the woman who should follow behind not there, the woman with serpents of name in her hair who beats her arms and cries and dances.

  I related the dream to Vercueil.

  'Is it real?' he asked,

  'Real? Of course not. It isn't even authentic. Florence has nothing to do with Greece. Figures in dreams have another kind of import. They are signs, signs of other things.'

  'Were they real? Was she real?' he repeated, bringing me up short, refusing to be deflected. 'What else did you see?'

  'What else? Is there more? Do you know?' I said more softly, feeling my way after him now.

  He shook his head, baffled.

  'All the days you have known me,' I said, 'I have been standing on the river-bank awaiting my turn. I am waiting for someone to show me the way across. Every minute of every day I am here, waiting. That is what else I see. Do you see it too?'

  He said nothing.

  'The reason I fight against going back to hospital is that in hospital they will put me to sleep. That is the expression they use for animals, as a kindness, but they may as well use it for people. They will put me into a sleep without dreams. They will feed me mandragora till I grow drowsy and fall, into the river and am drowned and washed away. That way I will never cross. I cannot allow it to happen. I have come too far. I cannot have my eyes closed.'

  'What do you want to see?' said Vercueil. 'I want to see you as you really are.' Diffidently he shrugged. 'Who am I?'

  'Just a man. A man who came without being invited. More I can't say yet. Can you?' He shook his head. 'No.'

  'If you want to do something for me,' I said, 'you can fix the aerial for the radio.'

  'Don't you want me to bring the television up instead?'

  'I haven't the stomach to watch television. It will make me sick.'

  'Television can't make you sick. It's just pictures.'

  'There is no such thing as just pictures. There are men behind the pictures. They send out their pictures to make people sick. You know what I am talking about.'

  'Pictures can't make you sick.'

  Sometimes he does this: contradicts me, provokes me, chips away at me, watching for signs of irritation. It is his way of teasing, so clumsy, so unappealing that my heart quite goes out to him.

  'Fix the aerial, please, that's all I ask.'

  He went downstairs. Minutes later he came stamping up with the television set in his arms. He plugged it in facing the bed, switched it on, fiddled with the aerial, stood aside. It was mid-afternoon. Against blue sky a flag waved. A brass band played the anthem of the Republic.

  'Switch it off,' I said.

  He turned the sound louder.

  'Swit
ch it off!' I screamed.

  He wheeled, took in my angry glare. Then, to my surprise, he began to do a little shuffle. Swaying his hips, holding his hands out, clicking his fingers, he danced, unmistakably danced, to music I never thought could be danced to. He was mouthing words too. What were they? Not, certainly, the words I knew.

  'Off!' I screamed again.

  An old woman, toothless, in a rage: 1 must have looked a sight. He turned the sound down.

  'Off!'

  He switched it off. 'Don't get so upset,' he murmured.

  'Then don't be silly, Vercueil. And don't make fun of me. Don't trivialize me.'

  'Still, why get in a state?'

  'Because I am afraid of going to hell and having to listen to Die stem for all eternity.'

  He shook his head. 'Don't worry,' he said: 'it's all going to end. Have patience.'

  'I haven't: got time for patience. You may have time but I haven't got time.'

  Again he shook his head. 'Maybe you've also got time,' he whispered, and gave me his toothed leer.

  For an instant it was as if the heavens opened and light blazed down. Hungry for good news after a lifetime of bad news, unable to help myself, I smiled back. 'Really?' I said. He nodded. Like two fools we grinned each at the other. He clicked his fingers suggestively; awkward as a gannet, all feathers and bone, he repeated a step of his dance. Then he went out, climbed the ladder and joined the broken wire, and I had the radio again.

  But what was there to listen to? The airwaves so bulge nowadays with the nations peddling their wares that music is all but squeezed out. I fell asleep to An American in Paris and awoke to a steady patter of morse. Where did it come from? From a ship at sea? From some old-fashioned steamship plying the waves between Walvis Bay and Ascension Island?

  The dots and dashes followed on without haste, without falter, in a stream that promised to flow till the cows came home. What was their message? Did it matter? Their patter, like rain, a rain of meaning, comforted me, made the night bearable as I lay waiting for the hour to roll round for the next pill.

  I say I do not want to be put to sleep. The truth is, without sleep I cannot endure. Whatever else it brings, the Diconal at least brings sleep or a simulacrum of sleep. As the pain recedes, as time quickens, as the horizon lifts, my attention, concentrated like a burning-glass on the pain, can slacken for a while; I can draw breath, unclench my hailed hands, straighten my legs. Give thanks for this mercy, I say to myself: for the sick body stunned, for the soul drowsy, half out of its casing, beginning; to float.