Waiting for the Barbarians

by J. M. Coetzee

  * *

  I am woken by a clatter of footsteps on the stairway. It is daylight: confused, thick-headed, I cower back in my den. Someone opens the kitchen door. From all corners chickens come scurrying. It is only a matter of time before I am discovered.

  As boldly as I can, but wincing despite myself, I mount the stairs. How must I look to the world with my dingy shirt and trousers, my bare feet, my unkempt beard? Like a domestic, I pray, an ostler come home after a night’s carousing.

  The passageway is empty, the door to the girl’s room open. The room is neat and tidy as ever: the fleecy skin on the floor beside the bed, the red chequered curtain drawn over the window, the kist pushed against the far wall with a rack of clothes above it. I bury my face in the fragrance of her clothes and think of the little boy who brought my food, of how when my hand rested on his shoulder I would feel the healing power of the touch run through a body grown stiff with unnatural solitude.

  The bed is made up. When I slip my hand between the sheets I imagine I can feel the faint afterglow of her warmth. Nothing would please me more than to curl up in her bed, lay my head on her pillow, forget my aches and pains, ignore the hunt that must by now have been launched for me, and like the little girl in the story tumble into oblivion. How voluptuously I feel the attraction of the soft, the warm, the odorous this morning! With a sigh I kneel and coax my body in under the bed. Face down, pressed so tightly between the floor and the slats of the bed that when I move my shoulders the bed lifts, I try to compose myself for a day in hiding.

  I doze and wake, drifting from one formless dream to another. By mid-morning it has become too hot to sleep. As long as I can, I lie sweating in my close dusty retreat. Then, though I postpone it, the time comes when I have to relieve myself. Groaning I inch my way out and squat over the chamberpot. Again the pain, the tearing. I dab myself with a filched white handkerchief, which comes away bloody. The room stinks: even I, who have been living for weeks with a slop pail in the corner, am disgusted. I open the door and hobble down the passageway. The balcony looks over rows of roofs, then beyond them over the south wall and the desert stretching into the blue distance. There is no one to be seen except a woman on the other side of the alleyway sweeping her step. A child crawls on hands and knees behind her pushing something in the dust, I cannot see what. Its neat little bottom points up in the air. As the woman turns her back I step out of the shadows and hurl the contents of the pot out on to the refuse-heap below. She notices nothing.

  A torpor is already beginning to settle over the town. The morning’s work is over: anticipating the heat of midday, people are retiring to their shaded courtyards or to the cool green of inner rooms. The babble of water in the street-furrows dies down and stops. All I can hear is the clink of the farrier’s hammer, the cooing of turtledoves, and somewhere far away the wail of a baby.

  Sighing I lay myself down on the bed in the sweet remembered scent of flowers. How inviting to join the rest of the town in its siesta! These days, these hot spring days already becoming summer—how easy I find it to slip into their languorous mood! How can I accept that disaster has overtaken my life when the world continues to move so tranquilly through its cycles? It takes no effort to believe that when the shadows begin to lengthen and the first breath of wind stirs the leaves, I will wake up and yawn and dress and descend the stairs and cross the square to my office, nodding to the friends and neighbours I pass, that I will spend an hour or two there, tidy my desk, lock up, that everything will go on being as it has always been. I must actually shake my head and blink my eyes to realize that as I lie here I am a hunted man, that in the course of their duty soldiers are going to come here and haul me away and lock me up again out of the sight of the sky and of other human beings. “Why?” I groan into the pillow: “Why me?” Never has there been anyone so confused and innocent of the world as I. A veritable baby! Yet if they can they will shut me away to moulder, subject my body to their intermittent vile attentions, then one day without warning fetch me out and rush me through one of the closed trials they conduct under the emergency powers, with the stiff little colonel presiding and his henchman reading the charges and two junior officers as assessors to lend the proceedings an air of legality in an otherwise empty courtroom; and then, particularly if they have suffered reverses, particularly if the barbarians have humiliated them, they will find me guilty of treason—need I doubt that? From the courtroom to the executioner they will drag me kicking and weeping, bewildered as the day I was born, clinging to the end to the faith that no harm can come to the guiltless. “You are living in a dream!” I say to myself: I pronounce the words aloud, stare at them, try to grasp their significance: “You must wake up!” Deliberately I bring to mind images of innocents I have known: the boy lying naked in the lamplight with his hands pressed to his groins, the barbarian prisoners squatting in the dust, shading their eyes, waiting for whatever is to come next. Why should it be inconceivable that the behemoth that trampled them will trample me too? I truly believe I am not afraid of death. What I shrink from, I believe, is the shame of dying as stupid and befuddled as I am.

  There is a flurry of voices, men’s and women’s, from the yard below. As I scuttle into my hiding-place I hear the tramp of footsteps on the stairs. They recede to the far end of the balcony, then come slowly back, pausing at each door. The walls separating the cubicles on this upper floor where the servants sleep and where a soldier of the garrison can buy a night’s privacy are mere slats papered over: I can hear clearly as my hunter throws open each door in turn. I press myself against the wall. I hope he does not smell me.

  The footsteps round the corner and come down the passage. My door is opened, held open for a few seconds, closed again. So I have passed one test.

  There is a quicker, lighter tread: someone runs down the passage and enters the room. My head is turned the wrong way, I cannot even see her feet, but I know it is the girl. This is the moment at which I ought to come into the open, beg her to hide me till night falls and I can find my way out of the town and down to the lakeside. But how can I do it? By the time the bed has stopped heaving and I have emerged she will have fled screaming for help. And who is to say that she would offer refuge to one of the many men who have spent time in this room, one of many passing men from whom she earns a livelihood, a man in disgrace, a fugitive? Would she even recognize me as I am? Her feet flutter about the room, stopping here, stopping there. I can make out no pattern in their movements. I lie still, breathing softly, sweat dripping off me. All at once she is gone: the stairs creak, there is silence.

  A lull falls over me too, a spell of lucidity in which I see how ridiculous it is, all this running and hiding, what a silly thing it is to be lying under a bed on a hot afternoon waiting for a chance to sneak away to the reed-brakes, there to live no doubt on birds’ eggs and fish that I catch with my hands, sleeping in a hole in the earth, biding my time till this phase of history grinds past and the frontier returns to its old somnolence. The truth is that I am not myself, I have been terror-stricken, I perceive, since the moment in my cell when I saw the guard’s fingers clamp over the shoulder of the little boy to remind him not to speak to me, and knew that, whatever it was that had happened that day, I was to bear the blame for it. I walked into that cell a sane man sure of the rightness of my cause, however incompetent I continue to find myself to describe what that cause may be; but after two months among the cockroaches with nothing to see but four walls and an enigmatic soot-mark, nothing to smell but the stench of my own body, no one to talk to but a ghost in a dream whose lips seem to be sealed, I am much less sure of myself. The craving to touch and be touched by another human body sometimes comes over me with such force that I groan; how I looked forward to the single brief contact which was all I could have with the boy, morning and evening! To lie in a woman’s arms in a proper bed, to have good food to eat, to walk in the sun—how much more important these seem than the right to decide without
advice from the police who should be my friends and who my enemies! How can I be in the right when there is not a soul in the town who approves of my escapade with the barbarian girl or who would not feel bitter against me if young men from here were killed by my barbarian protégés? And what is the point of suffering at the hands of the men in blue if I am not iron-hard in my certainty? No matter if I told my interrogators the truth, recounted every word I uttered on my visit to the barbarians, no matter even if they were tempted to believe me, they would press on with their grim business, for it is an article of faith with them that the last truth is told only in the last extremity. I am running away from pain and death. I have no plan of escape. Hiding away in the reeds I would starve within a week, or be smoked out. I am simply seeking ease, if the truth be told, fleeing to the only soft bed and friendly arms I have left to me.

  Again footsteps. I recognize the girl’s quick tread, this time not alone but with a man. They enter the room. By his voice he cannot be more than a boy. “You shouldn’t let them treat you like that! You’re not their slave!” he says with vehemence.

  “You don’t understand,” she replies. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it now.” There is silence, then more intimate sounds.

  I flush. It is intolerable that I should stay for this. Yet like the cuckold in the farce I hold my breath, sinking further and further into disgrace.

  One of them sits down on the bed. Boots thud to the floor, clothes rustle, two bodies stretch themselves out an inch above me. The slats bow, pressing into my back. I stop my ears, ashamed to listen to the words they say to each other, but cannot prevent myself from hearing the fluttering and moaning I remember so well from the girl in the grip of pleasure, the girl I used to have my own endearments for.

  The slats press harder upon me, I flatten myself as far as I can, the bed begins to creak. Sweating, flushed, sickened to feel how aroused I am despite myself, I actually groan: the long low groan curls from my throat and mingles unnoticed with the sounds of their panting breath.

  Then it is over. They sigh and subside, the twitchings and stirrings cease, they lie at rest side by side drifting off into sleep, while unhappy, rigid, wide awake, I wait my chance to escape. It is the hour when even the chickens doze, the hour when there is only one emperor, the sun. The heat in this tiny room under the flat roof has grown stifling. I have not eaten or drunk all day.

  Pushing with my feet against the wall, I edge out till I can gingerly sit up. The pain in my back, an old man’s pain, announces itself again. “I am sorry,” I whisper. They are truly asleep, like children, a boy and a girl, naked, hand in hand, beaded with sweat, their faces relaxed and oblivious. The tide of shame sweeps over me with redoubled force. Her beauty awakes no desire in me: instead it seems more obscene than ever that this heavy slack foul-smelling old body (how could they not have noticed the smell?) should ever have held her in its arms. What have I been doing all this time, pressing myself upon such flowerlike soft-petalled children—not only on her, on the other one too? I should have stayed among the gross and decaying where I belong: fat women with acrid armpits and bad tempers, whores with big slack cunts. I tiptoe out, hobble down the stairs in the blinding glare of the sun.

  The upper flap of the kitchen door stands open. An old woman, bent and toothless, stands eating out of a cast-iron pot. Our eyes meet; she stops, the spoon in mid-air, her mouth open. She recognizes me. I raise a hand and smile—I am surprised at how easily the smile comes. The spoon moves, the lips close over it, her gaze shifts, I pass on.

  The north gate is closed and barred. I climb the stairway to the watchtower over the angle of the wall and stare out hungrily over the beloved landscape: the belt of green stretching along the river, blackened now in patches; the lighter green of the marshes where the new reeds are shooting; the dazzling surface of the lake.

  But there is something wrong. How long have I been locked away from the world, two months or ten years? The young wheat in the acres below the wall ought by now to be a vigorous eighteen inches high. It is not: except at the western limit of the irrigated area the young plants are a stunted sickly yellow. There are great bare patches nearer the lake, and a line of grey stooks by the irrigation wall.

  Before my eyes the neglected fields, the sunstruck square, the empty streets shift into a new and sinister configuration. The town is being abandoned—what else is there to suppose?—and the noises I heard two nights ago must have been noises not of arrival but of departure! My heart lurches (with horror? with gratitude?) at the thought. Yet I must be mistaken: when I look down more carefully at the square I can see two boys quietly playing marbles under the mulberry trees; and from what I have seen of the inn, life is going on as usual.

  In the south-west tower a sentry sits on his high stool staring vacantly into the desert. I am within a pace of him before he notices me and starts.

  “Get down,” he says in a flat voice, “you are not allowed up here.” I have never seen him before. Since I left my cell, I realize, I have not seen one of the soldiers who made up the old garrison. Why are there only strangers around?

  “Don’t you know me?” I say.

  “Get down.”

  “I will, but first I have a very important question to ask you. You see, there is no one to ask but you—everyone else seems to be asleep or away. What I want to ask is: Who are you? Where is everyone I used to know? What has happened out there in the fields? It looks as though there has been a washaway. But why should there be a washaway?” His eyes narrow as I gabble on. “I am sorry to ask such stupid questions, but I have had a fever, I have been confined to bed”—the quaint phrase comes unbidden—“and today is the first day I have been allowed to get up. That is why . . .”

  “You must be careful of the midday sun, father,” he says. His ears stick out under a cap that is too large for him. “You would be better off resting at this time of day.”

  “Yes . . . Do you mind if I have some water?” He passes me his flask and I drink the lukewarm water, trying not to betray how savage my thirst is. “But tell me, what has happened?”

  “Barbarians. They cut away part of the embankment over there and flooded the fields. No one saw them. They came in the night. The next morning it was like a second lake.” He has stuffed his pipe, now he offers it to me. Courteously I decline (“I will only begin coughing, and that is bad for me”). “Yes, the farmers are very unhappy. They say the crop is ruined and it is too late to plant again.”

  “That’s bad. It means a hard winter ahead. We will have to draw our belts very tight.”

  “Yes, I don’t envy you people. They could do it again, couldn’t they, the barbarians. They could flood these fields any time they chose to.”

  We discuss the barbarians and their treachery. They never stand up and fight, he says: their way is to creep up behind you and stick a knife in your back. “Why can’t they leave us alone? They have their own territories, haven’t they?” I turn the conversation to the old days when everything used to be quiet on the frontier. He calls me “father”, which is his peasant’s way of showing respect, and listens to me as one listens to mad old folk, anything being better, I suppose, than staring out into emptiness all day.

  “Tell me,” I say: “two nights ago I heard horsemen and thought the big expedition had returned.”

  “No,” he laughs, “those were just a few men they sent back. They sent them in one of the big carts. That must have been what you heard. They fell sick from the water—bad water out there, I hear—so they sent them back.”

  “I see! I couldn’t understand what it was. But when do you expect the main force back?”

  “Soon, it must be soon. You can’t live on the fruit of the land out here, can you? I’ve never seen such dead country.”

  I climb down the steps. Our conversation has left me feeling almost venerable. Strange that no one warned him to watch out for a fat old man in ragged
clothes! Or has he perhaps been perched up there since last night with no one to speak to? Who would have thought I could lie so blandly! It is mid-afternoon. My shadow glides beside me like a pool of ink. I seem to be the only creature within these four walls that moves. I am so elated that I want to sing. Even my sore back has ceased to matter.

  I open the small side gate and pass out. My friend in the watchtower looks down at me. I wave, and he waves back. “You will need a hat!” he calls. I pat my bare skull, shrug, smile. The sun beats down.

  The spring wheat is indeed ruined. Warm ochre mud squelches between my toes. In places there are still puddles. Many of the young plants have been washed right out of the ground. All show a yellowish discoloration of leaf. The area nearest the lake is the worst hit. Nothing is left standing, indeed the farmers have already begun to stack the dead plants for burning. In the far fields a rise of a few inches in elevation has made all the difference. So perhaps a quarter of the planting can be saved.

  The earthwork itself, the low mud wall that runs for nearly two miles and keeps the lake-water in check when it rises to its summer limit, has been repaired, but almost the whole of the intricate system of channels and gates that distributes the water around the fields has been washed away. The dam and waterwheel by the lakeshore are unharmed, though there is no sign of the horse that usually turns the wheel. I can see that weeks of hard work await the farmers. And at any moment their work can be brought to nothing by a few men armed with spades! How can we win such a war? What is the use of textbook military operations, sweeps and punitive raids into the enemy’s heartland, when we can be bled to death at home?

  I take the old road that curves behind the west wall before petering out into a track that leads nowhere but to the sand-filled ruins. Are the children still allowed to play there, I wonder, or do their parents keep them at home with stories of barbarians lurking in the hollows? I glance up at the wall; but my friend in the tower seems to have gone to sleep.