Summertime

by J. M. Coetzee

  In the Sandton set in which she and Klaus move, she confides, quite advanced things go on. She does not spell out what these advanced things may be, and she, Margot, does not want to ask, but they seem to have to do with sex.

  I won't let you write that. You can't write that about Carol.

  It's what you told me.

  Yes, but you can't write down every word I say and broadcast it to the world. I never agreed to that. Carol will never speak to me again.

  All right, I'll cut it out or tone it down, I promise. Just hear me to the end. Can I go on?

  Go on.

  Carol has broken completely from her roots. She bears no resemblance to the plattelandse meisie, the country girl, she once used to be. She looks, if anything, German, with her bronzed skin and coiffeured blonde hair and emphatic eyeliner. Stately, big-busted, and barely thirty. Frau Dr Müller. If Frau Dr Müller decided to flirt in the Sandton manner with cousin John, how long would it be before cousin John succumbed? Love means being able to open your heart to the beloved, says John. What would Carol say to that? About love Carol could teach her cousin a thing or two, she is sure – at least about love in its advanced version.

  John is not a moffie: she knows enough about men to know that. But there is something cool or cold about him, something that if not neuter is at least neutral, as a young child is neutral in matters of sex. There must have been women in his life, if not in South Africa then in America, though he has said not a word about them. Did his American women get to see his heart? If he makes a practice of it, of opening his heart, then he is unusual: men, in her experience, find nothing harder.

  She herself has been married for ten years. Ten years ago she said goodbye to Carnarvon, where she had a job as a secretary in a lawyer's office, and moved to her bridegroom's farm east of Middelpos in the Roggeveld where, if she is lucky, if God smiles on her, she will live out the rest of her days.

  The farm is home to the two of them, home and Heim, but she cannot be at home as much as she wishes. There is no money in sheep-farming any more, not in the barren, drought-ridden Roggeveld. To help make ends meet she has had to go back to work, as a bookkeeper this time, at the one hotel in Calvinia. Four nights of the week, Monday through Thursday, she spends at the hotel; on Fridays her husband drives in from the farm to fetch her, delivering her back in Calvinia at the crack of dawn the next Monday.

  Despite this weekly separation – it makes her heart ache, she hates her dreary hotel room, sometimes she cannot hold back her tears, but lays her head on her arms and sobs – she and Lukas have what she would call a happy marriage. More than happy: fortunate, blessed. A good husband, a happy marriage, but no children. Not by design but by fate: her fate, her fault. Of the two sisters, one barren, the other not yet settled.

  A good husband but close with his feelings. Is a guarded heart an affliction of men in general or just of South African men? Are Germans – Carol's husband, for instance – any better? At this moment Klaus is seated on the stoep with the troop of Coetzee kinsfolk he has acquired by marriage, smoking a cheroot (he freely offers his cheroots around, but his rookgoed is too strange, too foreign for the Coetzees), regaling them in his loud baby-Afrikaans, of which he is not in the slightest ashamed, with stories of the times he and Carol have gone skiing in Zermatt. Does Klaus, in the privacy of their Sandton home, now and then open up his heart to Carol in his slick, easy, confident European manner? She doubts it. She doubts that Klaus has much of a heart to show. She has seen little evidence of one. Whereas of the Coetzees it can at least be said that they have hearts, to a man and to a woman. Too much heart, in fact, sometimes, some of them.

  'No, he's not a moffie,' she says. 'Talk to him and you will see for yourself.'

  'WOULD YOU LIKE to go for a drive this afternoon?' John offers.

  'We could do a grand tour of the farm, just you and I.'

  'In what?' she says. 'In your Datsun?'

  'Yes, in my Datsun. It's fixed.'

  'Fixed so that it won't break down in the middle of nowhere?'

  It is of course a joke. Voëlfontein is already the middle of nowhere. But it is not just a joke. She has no idea how big the farm is, measured in square miles, but she does know you cannot walk from one end of it to the other in a single day, not unless you take your walking seriously.

  'It won't break down,' he says. 'But I'll bring spare water along just in case.'

  Voëlfontein lies in the Koup region, and in the Koup it has rained not a drop in the past two years. What on earth inspired Grandpa Coetzee to buy land here, where every single farmer is struggling to keep his stock alive?

  'What sort of word is Koup?' she says. 'Is it English? The place where no one can cope?'

  'It's Khoi,' he says. 'Hottentot. Koup: dry place. It's a noun, not a verb. You can tell by the final –p.'

  'Where did you learn that?'

  'From books. From grammars put together by missionaries in the old days. There are no speakers of Khoi languages left, not in South Africa. The languages are, for all practical purposes, dead. In South-West Africa there are still a handful of old people speaking Nama. That's the sum of it. The sum of what is left.'

  'And Xhosa? Do you speak Xhosa?'

  He shakes his head. 'I am interested in the things we have lost, not the things we have kept. Why should I speak Xhosa? There are millions of people who can do that already. They don't need me.'

  'I thought languages exist so that we can communicate with each other,' she says. 'What is the point of speaking Hottentot if no one else does?'

  He presents her with what she is coming to think of as his secret little smile, betokening that he has an answer to her question, but since she will be too stupid to understand, he will not waste his breath revealing it to her. It is this Mister Know-All smile, above all, that sends Carol into a rage.

  'Once you have learned Hottentot out of your old grammar books, who can you speak to?' she repeats.

  'Do you want me to tell you?' he says. The little smile has turned into something else, something tight and not very nice.

  'Yes, tell me. Answer me.'

  'The dead. You can speak with the dead. Who otherwise' – he hesitates, as if the words might be too much for her and even for him – 'who otherwise are cast out into everlasting silence.'

  She wanted an answer and now she has one. It is more than enough to shut her up.

  They drive for half an hour, to the westernmost boundary of the farm. There, to her surprise, he opens the gate, drives through, closes the gate behind them, and without a word drives on along the rough dirt road. By four-thirty they have arrived at the town of Merweville, where she has not set foot in years.

  Outside the Apollo Café he draws to a halt. 'Would you like a cup of coffee?' he says.

  They enter the café with half a dozen barefoot children tagging along behind them, the youngest a mere toddler. Mevrou the proprietess has the radio on, playing Afrikaans pop tunes. They sit down, wave the flies away. The children cluster around their table, staring with unabashed curiosity. 'Middag, jongens,' says John. 'Middag, meneer,' says the eldest.

  They order coffee and get a version of coffee: pale Nescafé with long-life milk. She takes a sip of hers and pushes it aside. He drinks his abstractedly.

  A tiny hand reaches up and filches the cube of sugar from her saucer. 'Toe, loop!' she says: Run off! The child smiles merrily at her, unwraps the sugar, licks it.

  It is by no means the first hint she has had of how far the old barriers between white and Coloured have come down. The signs are more obvious here than in Calvinia. Merweville is a smaller town and in decline, in such decline that it must be in danger of falling off the map. There can be no more than a few hundred people left. Half the houses they drove past seemed unoccupied. The building with the legend Volkskas [People's Bank] in white pebbles studded in the mortar over the door houses not a bank but a welding works. Though the worst of the afternoon heat is past, the sole living presence on the main stree
t is provided by two men and a woman stretched out, along with a scrawny dog, in the shade of a flowering jacaranda.

  Did I say all that? I don't remember.

  I added a detail or two to bring the scene to life. I didn't tell you, but since Merweville figures so largely in your story, I actually visited the town to check it out.

  You went to Merweville? How did it seem to you?

  Much as you described it. But there is no Apollo Café any more. No café at all. Shall I go on?

  John speaks. 'Are you aware that, among his other accomplishments, our grandfather used to be mayor of Merweville?'

  'Yes, I am aware of that.' Their mutual grandfather had his finger in all too many pies. He was – the English word occurs to her – a go-getter in a land with few go-getters, a man with plenty of – another English word – spunk, more spunk probably than all his children put together. But perhaps that is the fate of the children of strong fathers: to be left with less than a full share of spunk. As with the sons, so with the daughters too: a little too self-effacing, the Coetzee women, blessed with too little of whatever the female equivalent of spunk might be.

  She has only tenuous memories of their grandfather, who died when she was still a child: of a stooped, grouchy old man with a bristly chin. After the midday meal, she remembers, the whole house would freeze into silence: Grandpa was having his nap. Even at that age she was surprised to see how fear of the old man could make grown people creep about like mice. Yet without that old man she would not be here, nor would John: not just here on earth but here in the Karoo, on Voëlfontein or in Merweville. If her own life, from cradle to grave, has been and is still being determined by the ups and downs of the market in wool and mutton, then that is her grandfather's doing: a man who started out as a smous, a hawker peddling cotton prints and pots and pans and patent medicines to countryfolk, then when he had saved up enough money bought a share in a hotel, then sold the hotel and bought land and settled down as of all things a gentleman horse-breeder and sheep-farmer.

  'You haven't asked what we are doing here in Merweville,' says John.

  'Very well: what are we doing in Merweville?'

  'I want to show you something. I am thinking of buying property here.'

  She cannot believe her ears. 'You want to buy property? You want to live in Merweville? In Merweville? Do you want to be mayor too?'

  'No, not live here, just spend time here. Live in Cape Town, come here for weekends and holidays. It's not impossible. Merweville is seven hours from Cape Town if you drive without stopping. You can buy a house for a thousand rand – a four-room house and half a morgen of land with peach trees and apricot trees and orange trees. Where else in the world will you get such a bargain?'

  'And your father? What does your father think of this plan of yours?'

  'It's better than an old-age home.'

  'I don't understand. What is better than an old-age home?'

  'Living in Merweville. My father can stay here, take up residence; I will be based in Cape Town but I will come up regularly to see that he is okay.'

  'And what will your father do during the time he is here all by himself? Sit on the stoep and wait for the one car a day to drive past? There is a simple reason why you can buy a house in Merweville for peanuts, John: because no one wants to live here. I don't understand you. Why this sudden enthusiasm for Merweville?'

  'It's in the Karoo.'

  Die Karoo is vir skape geskape! The Karoo was made for sheep! She has to bite back the words. He means it! He speaks of the Karoo as if it were paradise! And all of a sudden memories of those Christmastides of yore come flooding back, when they were children roaming the veld as free as wild animals. 'Where do you want to be buried?' he asked her one day, then without waiting for her answer whispered: 'I want to be buried here.' 'For ever?' she said, she, her child self – 'Do you want to be buried for ever?' 'Just till I come out again,' he replied.

  Till I come out again. She remembers it all, remembers the very words.

  As a child one can do without explanations. One does not demand that everything make sense. But would she be recalling those words of his if they had not puzzled her then and, deep down, continued to puzzle her all these years? Come out again: did her cousin really believe, does he really believe, that one comes back from the grave? Who does he think he is: Jesus? And what does he think this place is, this Karoo: the Holy Land?

  'If you mean to take up residence in Merweville you will need to get a haircut first,' she says. 'The good folk of the town won't allow a wild man to settle in their midst and corrupt their sons and daughters.'

  From Mevrou behind the counter come unmistakable hints that she would like to close up shop. He pays, and they drive off. On the way out of the town he slows down before a house with a TE KOOP sign at the gate: For Sale. 'That's the house I had in mind,' he says. 'A thousand rand plus the legal paperwork. Can you believe it?'

  The house is a nondescript cube with a corrugated-iron roof, a shaded veranda running the length of the front, and a steep wooden staircase up the side leading to a loft. The paintwork is in a sorry state. In front of the house, in a bedraggled rockery, a couple of aloes struggle to stay alive. Does he really mean to dump his father here, in this dull house in this exhausted hamlet? An old man, trembly, eating out of tins, sleeping between dirty sheets?

  'Would you like to take a look?' he says. 'The house is locked, but we can walk around the back.'

  She shivers. 'Another time,' she says. 'I'm not in the mood today.'

  What she is in the mood for today she does not know. But her mood ceases to matter twenty kilometres out of Merweville, when the engine begins to cough and John frowns and switches it off and coasts to a stop. A smell of burning rubber invades the cab. 'It's overheating again,' he says. 'I won't be a minute.'

  From the back he fetches a jerrycan of water. He unscrews the radiator cap, dodging a whoosh of steam, and refills the radiator. 'That should be enough to get us home,' he says. He tries to restart the engine. It turns over dryly without catching.

  She knows enough about men never to question their competence with machines. She offers no advice, is careful not to seem impatient, not even to sigh. For an hour, while he fiddles with hoses and clamps and filthies his clothes and tries again and again to get the engine going, she maintains a strict, benign silence.

  The sun begins to dip below the horizon; he continues to toil in what might as well be darkness.

  'Do you have a torch?' she asks. 'Perhaps I can hold a torch for you.'

  But no, he has not brought a torch. Furthermore, since he does not smoke, he does not even have matches. Not a Boy Scout, just a city boy, an unprepared city boy.

  'I'll walk back to Merweville and get help,' he says at last. 'Or we can both walk.'

  She is wearing light sandals. She is not going to stumble in sandals twenty kilometres across the veld in the dark.

  'By the time you get to Merweville it will be midnight,' she says. 'You know no one there. There isn't even a service station. Who are you going to persuade to come out and fix your truck?'

  'Then what do you suggest we do?'

  'We wait here. If we are lucky, someone will drive past. Otherwise Michiel will come looking for us in the morning.'

  'Michiel doesn't know we went to Merweville. I didn't tell him.'

  He tries one last time to start the engine. When he turns the key there is a dull click. The battery is flat.