The Death of Jesus

by J. M. Coetzee

  ‘Can I see him in the hospital?’

  ‘The hospital is a long way away. You have to catch a bus to get there. I promise you David will be back soon. Next week, or the week after that.’

  He tries to put the encounter with young Artemio out of his mind, but it disturbs him nonetheless. Where could the children have got the idea that David is mortally ill?

  Arriving at the children’s ward the next morning, he pauses at the door. A man in the white uniform of a hospital orderly is seated on David’s bed, his head almost touching the boy’s as they peer at something on the bedcover between them. It is only when the man raises his head that he recognizes, with a shock, who it is. It is Dmitri, the man who killed David’s teacher, strangled her, who was sentenced by a court of law to be incarcerated for the rest of his natural life—come back now like a malign spirit to haunt the child—and the two of them are playing at dice!

  He strides forward. ‘Get away from my child!’ he cries out.

  Smiling pacifically, pocketing the dice, Dmitri takes a step back. The other children in the ward seem stunned; one begins to wail, and a nurse comes running.

  ‘What is this man doing here?’ he, Simón, demands. ‘Don’t you realize who he is?’

  ‘Calm yourself, señor!’ says the nurse. ‘This man is an orderly. He cleans the rooms.’

  ‘An orderly! He is a convicted murderer! He belongs in the psychiatric wing! How does he come to be here, unattended, among children?’

  The young nurse recoils in alarm. ‘Is that true?’ she whispers, while the child wails even louder.

  Dmitri himself speaks. ‘Every word this gentleman says is true, young lady, every word. But consider, before you rush to judgment. Why do you think that the court of law, in its wisdom, consigned me not to one of its many prisons but to this hospital? The answer is obvious. It stares us in the face. So that I could be fixed up. So that I could be cured. Because that is what hospitals are for. And I am cured. I am a new man. Do you want proof?’ He reaches into his pocket and proffers a card. ‘Dmitri. That is my name.’

  The nurse inspects the card, passes it to him. City of Estrella, Department of Public Health, he reads. Employee number 15726 M. With a photograph of Dmitri, head and shoulders, gazing frankly into the camera.

  ‘I do not believe it,’ he whispers. ‘Is there someone I can speak to, someone in charge?’

  ‘You can speak to whomever you wish,’ says Dmitri, ‘but I am who I am. How do you think a man gets rid of the imp that has sat on his shoulder for years whispering bad advice in his ear? By sitting in a solitary cell day and night, being gloomy? No. The answer is, by volunteering for the most menial work, the work that decent folk scorn. That is why I am here. I sweep floors. I scour toilets. And thereby I reform myself. I become a new man. I pay my debt to society. I earn my pardon.’

  The old Dmitri, the Dmitri he remembers, was heavily built, overweight. His hair was lank, his clothes smelled of cigarette smoke. The new Dmitri is slimmer, stands erect, smells if anything of hospital disinfectant. His hair, cut short, clings to his scalp in curls. The whites of his eyes, which used to be sallow, gleam with good health. Is it true that Dmitri has become a new man, a reformed man? Evidently so. Yet he doubts it, doubts it profoundly.

  The nurse picks up the crying child and tries to comfort her.

  He turns on Dmitri. ‘Above all keep away from David,’ he hisses. ‘If I find you with him again I will not be responsible for my actions.’

  With a sweet, even submissive, duck of the head, Dmitri picks up his pail and departs.

  From his bed David has gazed on the spectacle with an abstracted smile—the spectacle of two grown men fighting over him.

  ‘Why are you unhappy, Simón? Aren’t you glad Dmitri found me? Do you know how he did it? He heard me calling. He said he heard me like a radio in his head, telling him to come.’

  ‘That is just the kind of thing a madman says—that he hears voices in his head.’

  ‘He has promised to visit me every day. He says he is cured of his madness, he won’t kill people anymore.’

  Now the young nurse breaks in. ‘I am sorry to interrupt, señor,’ she says, ‘but are you David’s father?’

  ‘Yes, I perform those duties as far as I can.’

  ‘In that case,’ says the nurse (the nameplate on her breast says Sister Rita), ‘could you go to Administración? It is urgent.’

  ‘I will go in a minute, be assured’; and then, when she is out of earshot: ‘Do you like Sister Rita? Is she good to you?’

  ‘Everyone is good to me. They want me to be happy. They think I am going to die.’

  ‘That is nonsense,’ he says firmly. ‘No one dies of a sore knee. Let me go and see what the people in Administración want. I will be back.’

  Of the two counters at Administración he chooses the one served by the older, kindlier-looking woman.

  ‘I have come about a boy named David,’ he says, crouching to speak through the hole in the glass. ‘I am told there is an urgent matter to be settled.’

  The woman hunts through the papers on her desk. ‘Yes, I have his forms somewhere…Here they are. There is a consent form to be signed, and an admission form. Are you the father?’

  ‘No, but I act in the father’s place. The father is not known. It is a long and complicated story. If it is a signature you need, I will sign anything you put before me.’

  ‘I need the child’s identity number.’

  ‘His identity number, if I remember correctly, is 125711N.’

  ‘That is a Novilla number. I need his Estrella number.’

  ‘Can we not use the Novilla number? Surely you don’t intend to refuse treatment to a child just because he comes from Novilla.’

  ‘It is for the records,’ says the woman. ‘When you come again, please bring his Estrella card with his Estrella number.’

  ‘I will do so. You said there was a second form.’

  ‘The consent form. It needs to be signed by the parent or the legal guardian.’

  ‘I will sign as guardian. I have been guarding David most of his life.’

  She watches as he signs the form. ‘That is all,’ she says. ‘Don’t forget to bring the card.’

  Returning to the ward, he finds such a press of bodies around the bed that David himself is hidden: not only Sister Rita and the teacher with the golden curls and the long earrings, señora Devito, but half a dozen boys from the apartment block as well as two children he recognizes from the orphanage: Maria Prudencia and a very tall, thin lad whose name he does not know. Dmitri is there too, leaning against the far wall, eyeing him sardonically.

  David speaks: ‘The white horse Ivory had a secret power: he could grow wings whenever he wanted. As the cart was about to enter the river, Ivory opened his wings, which were wider than the wings of two eagles, and the cart flew over the water without even getting wet.

  ‘The dark horse Shadow had no wings but he too had a secret power. He could change his substance and become as heavy as stone. Shadow hated Ivory. Everything that Ivory was, Shadow was the opposite. So when he felt the cart flying through the air, he turned to stone, so heavy that the cart soon had to descend back to earth.

  ‘Thus Don Quixote was drawn further and further into the desert by the two galloping horses, the black and the white, until a great wind arose, and clouds of dust covered them, and they could no longer be seen.’

  A long pause. Little Artemio, the one they call El Perrito, speaks up: ‘And then?’

  ‘They could no longer be seen,’ David repeats.

  ‘Did the white horse and the black horse fight?’ persists the boy.

  ‘They could no longer be seen,’ Maria Prudencia hisses to him. ‘Don’t you understand?’

  ‘But he comes back,’ says the tall boy from the orphanage. ‘He has to come back from the desert, otherwise we will never hear the end of his story. We will never hear how he got old and died.’

  Maria is silent.


  ‘He did not die,’ says Dmitri.

  Everyone turns to stare. Dmitri leans easily on his mop, enjoying the attention.

  ‘It is just a story that he died,’ he says, ‘a story that someone wrote down in a book. It is not true. He disappeared into the storm, on his chariot, drawn by two horses, as David said.’

  ‘But if,’ the tall boy struggles, ‘if it is not true that he died, if it is just a story, then how do we know there was a storm, how do we know the storm is not a made-up story too?’

  ‘Because David just told us. The chariot, the desert, the storm—all of that comes from David. As for growing old and dying, that comes from a book. Anyone could have made it up. Is that not so, David?’

  To his question David gives no reply. He wears the smile that he, Simón, is all too familiar with, the knowing little smile that has always irritated him.

  ‘Will it help if I tell you the full story of Don Quixote?’ he hears himself saying. ‘Don Quixote is the name of a book that I found on the shelves of a library in Novilla where we—David and his mother and I—happened to be living at the time. I borrowed the book and gave it to David to read. Instead of returning it to the library as a good citizen would have done, David kept it for himself. He used it to practise his Spanish reading, because, like all of us, he had to master his Spanish ABC. He read the book so many times that it sank into his memory. Don Quixote became part of him. Through his voice the book began to speak itself.’

  Dmitri interrupts. ‘Why are you giving us this recital, Simón? It is of no interest. We want to hear David’s story, not yours.’

  There is a murmur of agreement from the children.

  ‘Very well,’ he says, ‘I withdraw. I will shut up.’

  David resumes his story. ‘There was darkness all around. Then in the distance Don Quixote saw a light. As he drew near he saw it was a burning bush. A voice spoke out of the bush. “The time has come to choose, Don Quixote,” said the voice. “You must give yourself either to the white horse Ivory or to the dark horse Shadow.”

  ‘“I will go where the dark horse takes me,” said Don Quixote boldly.

  ‘At once the bars of the cage that had confined him fell away. The white horse Ivory shook himself free of his traces, unfurled his wings, and flew off into the heavens, never to be seen again, while the dark horse Shadow remained to draw the chariot.’

  Again the boy falls silent, a frown on his face.

  ‘What is wrong, David?’ asks little Artemio, who seems quite fearless in his questioning.

  David pays him no attention.

  ‘Hush,’ says Sister Rita. ‘David is tired. Come away, children, let David rest.’

  The children ignore her. David stares into the distance, still frowning.

  ‘Glory!’ says Dmitri. ‘Glory, glory, glory!’

  ‘What does that mean, glory?’ says Artemio.

  Dmitri rests his chin on the handle of his mop, devouring David with his gaze.

  Something is going on—that is clear to him, Simón—something between Dmitri and David. But what? Is Dmitri reimposing the grip he had on the boy years ago?

  With a firmness that takes him by surprise, Sister Rita pushes the children bodily away from the bedside and draws the curtain to. ‘That is the end of storytelling for the day,’ she says briskly. ‘If you want more stories, come back tomorrow. You too, señor Simón.’

  CHAPTER 12

  WHEN INÉS comes home he has no recourse but to give her the news of Dmitri’s re-emergence. ‘Like a genie from a bottle,’ he tells her. ‘A bad genie. The worst.’

  Inés picks up her keys. ‘Come, Bolívar,’ she says.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘If you are too much of a weakling to preserve David from that madman, I certainly am not.’

  ‘Let me come with you.’

  ‘No.’

  Though he waits up for her past midnight, she does not return. In the morning he catches the first bus to the hospital. The boy’s bed stands empty. A nurse directs him down the corridor to where David has been moved to a room of his own (‘Just as a precaution,’ she says). Beside the boy’s bed, slumped in an armchair, he finds Inés fast asleep, her arms folded on her breast. The boy is sleeping too. Only Bolívar takes note of his arrival.

  The boy lies on his side, his knees drawn up to his chin. The frown of concentration has not left his face; or perhaps it is a frown of pain.

  He lays a hand on Inés’s shoulder. ‘Inés, it is me. I will take over now.’

  When he first set eyes on Inés, four years ago, she could still pass for a young woman. Her skin was smooth, her eyes luminous, there was a lightness to her step. But the bright morning light exposes cruelly how time has overtaken her. At the corners of her mouth there are drooping lines, in her hair the first streaks of grey. He has never loved Inés as a man loves a woman, but now for the first time he feels pity for her, for a woman to whom motherhood has brought more bitterness than joy.

  ‘¿Por qué estoy aquí?’ Why am I here? The boy is suddenly awake, staring at him with motionless intensity, whispering.

  ‘You are ill, my boy,’ he whispers back. ‘You are ill and a hospital is the best place for ill people to get better. You must be patient and do what the doctors and nurses tell you.’

  ‘¿Pero por qué estoy aquí?’ But why am I here?

  Despite the whispering, Inés has woken.

  ‘I do not understand what you are asking. You are here to be cured. Once you are cured you can go back to living a normal life. They just have to find the right medicine for your illness. You will see.’

  ‘¿Pero por qué estoy yo aquí?’

  ‘Why are you here? Because you have been unlucky. There were germs floating in the air, and unluckily you were the one they chose to attack. That is all I can say. In every life there are ups and downs. You had good luck in the past, now for a change you have had bad luck. When you recover, when you are well again, you will be the stronger for it.’

  The boy stares impassively, waiting for the moralizing to come to an end. ‘¿Pero por qué estoy aquí?’ he repeats, as if addressing a dull child, a child who will not learn.

  ‘I don’t understand. Here is here.’ He waves a hand to encompass not only the room, with its blank white walls and the pot plant on the windowsill, but the hospital and the hospital grounds and beyond them the whole wide world. ‘Here is where we are. Here is where we find ourselves. Wherever I am is my here, here for me. Wherever you are is your here, here for you. I cannot explain better than that. Inés, help me. What is he asking me?’

  ‘He is not asking you. He learned long ago that you don’t have answers to anything. He is asking all of us. He is making an appeal.’

  The voice is not that of Inés. It comes from behind, from Dmitri. Dmitri, in his neat orderly’s uniform, stands framed in the doorway, and beside him señora Devito, sparkling with good health, bearing a sheaf of papers.

  ‘Come one step closer and I will call the police,’ says Inés. ‘I mean it.’

  ‘To hear is to obey, señora,’ says Dmitri. ‘I have great respect for the police. But your son is not asking you to parse sentences. He is asking why he is here. For what purpose. To what end. He is demanding an answer to the great mystery that confronts us all, down to the humblest microbe.’

  He, Simón, speaks. ‘I may have no answers, Dmitri, but I am not as stupid as you think. Here is where I find myself. I find myself here, not elsewhere. There is no mystery to it. And there is no why.’

  ‘I had a teacher who used to say that. If we asked her why, and she did not know the answer, she would wave the question away. There is no why, she would say. We had no respect for her. A good teacher knows why. Why are we here, David? Tell us.’

  The boy struggles to sit up in bed. For the first time it strikes him, Simón, that the illness may actually be serious. Under the blue hospital pyjamas the boy seems pitifully skinny—he who only months ago strode the football field like a young god.
His face wears an inward, preoccupied look; he seems hardly to hear them.

  ‘I want to go to the toilet,’ he says. ‘Inés, can you help me?’

  The two are gone a long time.

  He addresses the teacher. ‘It does not surprise me to find this fellow Dmitri haunting my son, señora. He is like a parasite that attached itself to him long ago and won’t loosen its grip. But what are you doing here at this hour?’

  ‘We commence our lessons today, David and I,’ she replies. ‘We are going to start early so that he can have a rest before his friends arrive.’

  ‘And what will today’s lesson be?’

  ‘Certainly not a lesson on how to tell stories, since David is already such an accomplished storyteller. No, today we will revisit the numbers.’

  ‘The numbers? If you mean arithmetic, you are wasting your time. David has a blind spot for arithmetic. For subtraction in particular.’

  ‘Be assured, señor, we will not be doing subtraction. Subtraction, addition, arithmetic in general, are not relevant to someone facing so profound a crisis in his life. Arithmetic is for people who plan to go out into the world to buy and sell. No, we will be studying the integral numbers, one and two and three and so forth. That is what David and I have settled on. The theory of numbers, things you can do with numbers, and what happens when the numbers come to an end.’

  ‘When the numbers come to an end? I thought it was one of the properties of numbers that there is no end to them.’

  ‘True, but also not true. That is one of the paradoxes we will be confronting: how something can be true but also not true.’

  ‘She is a clever one, isn’t she!’ says Dmitri. ‘So pretty yet so clever.’ And he does a surprising thing: he folds the diminutive teacher in his arms and gives her a hug, which she bears with a grimace but without protest. ‘True but also not true!’

  Is there something going on between the two of them: señora Devito the hospital teacher and Dmitri the mop-bearer?

  ‘You say that David is facing a crisis, señora. How so? David has suffered one or two episodes of neuropathy, but as far as I understand it neuropathy is not a serious disease, in fact not a disease at all but a physical condition. Why use the word crisis?’