The Childhood of Jesus

by J. M. Coetzee

  The boy has befriended one of the carthorses, to whom he has given the name El Rey. Though he is tiny compared with El Rey, he is quite unafraid. Standing on tiptoe, he proffers handfuls of hay, which the huge beast bends down lazily to accept.

  Álvaro cuts a hole in one of the bags they have unloaded, allowing grain to trickle out. ‘Here, feed this to El Rey and his friend,’ he tells the boy. ‘But be careful not to feed them too much, otherwise their tummies will blow up like balloons and we will have to prick them with a pin.’

  El Rey and his friend are in fact mares, but Álvaro, he notes, does not correct the boy.

  His fellow stevedores are friendly enough but strangely incurious. No one asks where they come from or where they are staying. He guesses that they take him to be the boy’s father—or perhaps, like Ana at the Centre, his grandfather. El viejo. No one asks where the boy’s mother is or why he has to spend all day hanging around the docks.

  There is a small wooden shed at the quayside which the men use as a dressing room. Though the door has no lock, they seem happy to store their overalls and boots there. He asks one of the men where he can buy overalls and boots of his own. The man writes an address on a scrap of paper.

  What can one expect to pay for a pair of boots? he asks.

  ‘Two, maybe three reals,’ says the man.

  ‘That seems very little,’ he says. ‘By the way, my name is Simón.’

  ‘Eugenio,’ says the man.

  ‘May I ask, Eugenio, are you married? Do you have children?’

  Eugenio shakes his head.

  ‘Well, you are still young,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ says Eugenio non-committally.

  He waits to be asked about the boy—the boy who may seem to be his son or grandson but in fact is not. He waits to be asked the boy’s name, his age, why he is not at school. He waits in vain.

  ‘David, the child I am looking after, is still too young to go to school,’ he says. ‘Do you know anything about schools around here? Is there’—he hunts for the term—‘un jardin para los niños?’

  ‘Do you mean a playground?’

  ‘No, a school for the younger children. A school before proper school.’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t help you.’ Eugenio rises. ‘Time to get back to work.’

  The next day, just as the whistle blows for the lunch break, a stranger comes riding up on a bicycle. With his hat, black suit and tie he looks out of place on the quayside. He dismounts, greets Álvaro familiarly. His trouser-cuffs are pinned back with bicycle clips, which he neglects to remove.

  ‘That’s the paymaster,’ says a voice beside him. It is Eugenio.

  The paymaster slackens the straps on his bicycle rack and removes an oilcloth, revealing a green-painted metal cashbox, which he sets down on an upended drum. Álvaro beckons the men over. One by one they step forward, speak their names, and are given their wages. He joins the end of the line, waits his turn. ‘Simón is the name,’ he says to the paymaster. ‘I am new, I may not be on your list yet.’

  ‘Yes, here you are,’ says the paymaster, and ticks off his name. He counts out the money in coins, so many that they weigh down his pockets.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says.

  ‘You’re welcome. It’s your due.’

  Álvaro rolls the drum away. The paymaster straps the cashbox back on his bicycle, shakes hands with Álvaro, dons his hat, and pedals off down the quay.

  ‘What are your plans for the afternoon?’ asks Álvaro.

  ‘I have no plans. I might take the boy for a walk; or if there is a zoo, I might take him there, to see the animals.’

  It is Saturday, noon, the end of the working week.

  ‘Would you like to come along to the football?’ asks Álvaro. ‘Does your young man like football?’

  ‘He is still a bit young for football.’

  ‘He has to start sometime. The game starts at three. Meet me at the gate at, say, two forty-five.’

  ‘All right, but which gate, and where?’

  ‘The gate to the football ground. There is only one gate.’

  ‘And where is the football ground?’

  ‘Follow the footpath along the riverfront and you can’t miss it. About twenty minutes from here, I would guess. Or if you don’t feel like walking you can catch the number 7 bus.’

  The football ground is further away than Álvaro said; the boy gets tired and dawdles; they arrive late. Álvaro is at the gate, waiting for them. ‘Hurry,’ he says, ‘they will be kicking off at any moment.’

  They pass through the gate into the ground.

  ‘Don’t we need to buy tickets?’ he asks.

  Álvaro regards him oddly. ‘It’s football,’ he says. ‘It’s a game. You don’t need to pay to watch a game.’

  The ground is more modest than he had expected. The playing field is marked off with rope; the covered stand holds at most a thousand spectators. They find seats without difficulty. The players are already on the pitch, kicking the ball around, warming up.

  ‘Who is playing?’ he asks.

  ‘That’s Docklands in blue, and in red are North Hills. It is a league game. Championship games are played on Sunday mornings. If you hear the hooters sounding on a Sunday morning, that means there is a championship game being played.’

  ‘Which team do you support?’

  ‘Docklands, of course. Who else?’

  Álvaro seems in a good mood, excited, even ebullient. He is glad of that, grateful too for being singled out to accompany him. Álvaro strikes him as a good man. In fact, all of his fellow stevedores strike him as good men: hard-working, friendly, helpful.

  In the very first minute of the game the team in red makes a simple defensive error and Docklands scores. Álvaro throws up his arms and lets out a cry of triumph, then turns to the boy. ‘Did you see that, young fellow? Did you see?’

  The young fellow has not seen. Ignorant of football, the young fellow does not grasp that he should be attending to the men running back and forth on the pitch rather than to the sea of strangers around them.

  He lifts the boy onto his lap. ‘See,’ he says, pointing, ‘what they are trying to do is to kick the ball into the net. And the man over there, wearing the gloves, is the goalkeeper. He has to stop the ball. There is a goalkeeper at each end. When they kick the ball into the net, it is called a goal. The team in blue has just scored a goal.’

  The boy nods, but his mind seems to be elsewhere.

  He lowers his voice. ‘Do you need to go to the toilet?’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ the boy whispers back.

  ‘I know. I’m hungry too. We must just get used to it. I’ll see if I can get us some potato crisps at half-time, or some peanuts. Would you like peanuts?’

  The boy nods. ‘When is half-time?’ he asks.

  ‘Soon. First the footballers must play some more, and try to score more goals. Watch.’

  CHAPTER 4

  RETURNING TO their room that evening, he finds a note pushed under the door. It is from Ana: Would you and David like to come to a picnic for new arrivals? Meet at noon tomorrow, in the park, by the fountain. A.

  They are at the fountain at noon. It is already hot—even the birds seem lethargic. Away from the noise of traffic they settle beneath a spreading tree. After a while Ana arrives, bearing a basket. ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘something came up.’

  ‘How many of us are you expecting?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps half a dozen. Let us wait and see.’

  They wait. No one comes. ‘Looks like it is just us,’ says Ana at last. ‘Shall we start?’

  The basket turns out to contain no more than a packet of crackers, a pot of saltless bean paste, and a bottle of water. But the child wolfs down his share without complaint.

  Ana yawns, stretches out on the grass, closes her eyes.

  ‘What did you mean, the other day, when you used the words washed clean?’ he asks her. ‘You said David and I should wash ourselves clean of old attac
hments.’

  Lazily Ana shakes her head. ‘Another time,’ she says. ‘Not now.’

  In her tone, in the hooded glance she casts him, he senses an invitation. The half-dozen guests who have failed to turn up—were they just a fiction? If the child were not here he would lie down on the grass beside her and then perhaps let his hand rest ever so lightly on hers.

  ‘No,’ she murmurs, as if reading his mind. The ghost of a frown crosses her brow. ‘Not that.’

  Not that. What is he to make of this young woman, now warm, now cool? Is there something in the etiquette of the sexes or the generations in this new land that he is failing to understand?

  The boy nudges him and points to the nearly empty packet of crackers. He spreads paste on a cracker and passes it across.

  ‘He has a healthy appetite,’ says the girl without opening her eyes.

  ‘He is hungry all the time.’

  ‘Don’t worry, he will adapt. Children adapt quickly.’

  ‘Adapt to being hungry? Why should he adapt to being hungry when there is no shortage of food?’

  ‘Adapt to a moderate diet, I mean. Hunger is like a dog in your belly: the more you feed it, the more it demands.’ She sits up abruptly, addresses the child. ‘I hear you are looking for your mama,’ she says. ‘Do you miss your mama?’

  The boy nods.

  ‘And what is your mama’s name?’

  The boy casts him an interrogative glance.

  ‘He doesn’t know her by name,’ he says. ‘He had a letter with him when he boarded the boat, but it was lost.’

  ‘The string broke,’ says the boy.

  ‘The letter was in a pouch,’ he explains, ‘which was hanging around his neck on a string. The string broke and the letter was lost. There was a hunt for it all over the ship. That was how David and I met. But the letter was never found.’

  ‘It fell in the sea,’ says the boy. ‘The fishes ate it.’

  Ana frowns. ‘If you don’t remember your mama’s name, can you tell us what she looks like? Can you draw a picture of her?’

  The boy shakes his head.

  ‘So your mama is lost and you don’t know where to look for her.’ Ana pauses to reflect. ‘Then how would you feel if your padrino began looking for another mama for you, to love and take care of you?’

  ‘What is a padrino?’ asks the boy.

  ‘You keep slotting me into roles.’ he interrupts. ‘I am not David’s father, nor am I his padrino. I am simply helping him to be reunited with his mother.’

  She ignores the rebuke. ‘If you found yourself a wife,’ she says, ‘she could be a mother to him.’

  He bursts out laughing. ‘What woman would want to marry a man like me, a stranger without even a change of clothing to his name?’ He waits for the girl to disagree, but she does not. ‘Besides, even if I did find myself a wife, who is to say she would want—you know—a foster child? Or that our young friend here would accept her?’

  ‘You never know. Children adapt.’

  ‘As you keep saying.’ Anger flares up in him. What does this cocksure young woman know about children? And what entitles her to preach to him? Then suddenly the elements of the picture come together. The unbecoming clothes, the baffling severity, the talk of godfathers—‘Are you a nun, Ana, by any chance?’ he asks.

  She smiles. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Are you one of those nuns who have left the convent behind to live in the world? To take on jobs that no one else wants to do—in jails and orphanages and asylums? In refugee reception centres?’

  ‘That is ridiculous. Of course not. The Centre isn’t a jail. It isn’t a charity. It is part of Social Welfare.’

  ‘Even so, how could anyone put up with a never-ending stream of people like us, helpless and ignorant and needy, without faith of some kind to give her strength?’

  ‘Faith? Faith has nothing to do with it. Faith means believing in what you do even when it does not bear visible fruit. The Centre is not like that. People arrive needing help, and we help them. We help them and their lives improve. None of that is invisible. None of it requires blind faith. We do our job, and everything turns out well. It is as simple as that.’

  ‘Nothing is invisible?’

  ‘Nothing is invisible. Two weeks ago you were in Belstar. Last week we found you a job at the docks. Today you are having a picnic in the park. What is invisible about that? It is progress, visible progress. Anyway, to come back to your question, no, I am not a nun.’

  ‘Then why the asceticism that you preach? You tell us to subdue our hunger, to starve the dog inside us. Why? What is wrong with hunger? What are our appetites for if not to tell us what we need? If we had no appetites, no desires, how would we live?’

  It seems to him a good question, a serious question, one that might trouble the best-schooled young nun.

  Her answer comes easily, so easily and in so low a voice, as if the child were not meant to hear, that for a moment he misunderstands her: ‘And where, in your case, do your desires lead you?’

  ‘My own desires? May I be frank?’

  ‘You may.’

  ‘With no disrespect to you or to your hospitality, they lead me to more than crackers and bean paste. They lead, for instance, to beefsteak with mashed potatoes and gravy. And I am sure this young man’—he reaches out and grips the boy’s arm—‘feels the same way. Don’t you?’

  The boy nods vigorously.

  ‘Beefsteak dripping with meat juices,’ he goes on. ‘Do you know what surprises me most about this country?’ A reckless tone is creeping into his voice; it would be wiser to stop, but he does not. ‘That it is so bloodless. Everyone I meet is so decent, so kindly, so well intentioned. No one swears or gets angry. No one gets drunk. No one even raises his voice. You live on a diet of bread and water and bean paste and you claim to be filled. How can that be, humanly speaking? Are you lying, even to yourselves?’

  Hugging her knees, the girl stares at him wordlessly, waiting for the tirade to end.

  ‘We are hungry, this child and I.’ Forcefully he draws the boy to him. ‘We are hungry all the time. You tell me our hunger is something outlandish that we have brought with us, that it doesn’t belong here, that we must starve it into submission. When we have annihilated our hunger, you say, we will have proved we can adapt, and we can then be happy for ever after. But I don’t want to starve the dog of hunger! I want to feed it! Don’t you agree?’ He shakes the boy. The boy burrows in under his armpit, smiling, nodding. ‘Don’t you agree, my boy?’

  A silence falls.

  ‘You really are angry,’ says Ana.

  ‘I am not angry, I am hungry! Tell me: What is wrong with satisfying an ordinary appetite? Why must our ordinary impulses and hungers and desires be beaten down?’

  ‘Are you sure you want to carry on like this in front of the child?’

  ‘I am not ashamed of what I am saying. There is nothing in it that a child needs to be protected from. If a child can sleep outdoors on the bare earth, then surely he can hear a robust exchange between adults.’

  ‘Very well, I will give you robust exchange back. What you want from me is something I don’t do.’

  He stares in puzzlement. ‘What I want from you?’

  ‘Yes. You want me to let you embrace me. We both know what that means: embrace. And I don’t permit it.’

  ‘I said nothing about embracing you. And what is wrong with embraces anyway, if you are not a nun?’

  ‘Refusing desires has nothing to do with being or not being a nun. I just don’t do that. I don’t permit it. I don’t like it. I don’t have an appetite for it. I don’t have an appetite for it in itself and I don’t wish to see what it does to human beings. What it does to a man.’

  ‘What do you mean, what it does to a man?’

  She glances pointedly at the child. ‘You are sure you want me to go on?’

  ‘Go on. It is never too early to learn about life.’

  ‘Very well. You find
me attractive, I can see that. Perhaps you even find me beautiful. And because you find me beautiful, your appetite, your impulse, is to embrace me. Do I read the signs correctly, the signs you give me? Whereas if you did not find me beautiful you would feel no such impulse.’

  He is silent.

  ‘The more beautiful you find me, the more urgent becomes your appetite. That is how these appetites work which you take as your lodestar and blindly follow. Now reflect. What—pray tell me—has beauty to do with the embrace you want me to submit to? What is the connection between the one and the other? Explain.’

  He is silent, more than silent. He is dumbfounded.

  ‘Go on. You said you would not mind if your godson heard. You said you wanted him to learn about life.’

  ‘Between a man and a woman,’ he says at last, ‘there sometimes springs up a natural attraction, unforeseen, unpremeditated. The two find each other attractive or even, to use the other word, beautiful. The woman more beautiful than the man, usually. Why the one should follow from the other, the attraction and the desire to embrace from the beauty, is a mystery which I cannot explain except to say that being drawn to a woman is the only tribute that I, my physical self, know how to pay to the woman’s beauty. I call it a tribute because I feel it to be an offering, not an insult.’

  He pauses. ‘Go on,’ she says.

  ‘That is all I want to say.’

  ‘That is all. And as a tribute to me—an offering, not an insult—you want to grip me tight and push part of your body into me. As a tribute, you claim. I am baffled. To me the whole business seems absurd—absurd for you to want to perform, and absurd for me to permit.’

  ‘It is only when you put it that way that it seems absurd. In itself it is not absurd. It cannot be absurd, since it is a natural desire of the natural body. It is nature speaking in us. It is the way things are. The way things are cannot be absurd.’

  ‘Really? What if I were to say that to me it seems not just absurd but ugly too?’