Where There's Smoke (6 page)

My brother bent down at the path's edge. The new silence rendered the brothers' moments-ago breathing clotted and monstrous in its memory. Thuan took off his shoes, dipped them into the slow-moving river, then took them out and wrung the blood and water out of them. He dipped them in, took them out, and wrung them again. Our shoulders touched and pushed off each other as we ran back to the car.

*

‘What else do you say?'

‘I talk about revenge. Honour. Loyalty and betrayal.'

‘That's all bullshit too.'

‘Not to me it isn't.'

‘Wouldn't you rather just forget everything?'

‘I wouldn't change a thing.'

‘More bullshit. This is what you want? This life?'

‘I'd do it again.'

‘Why?'

‘For you. Because you couldn't. Because you wanted to.'

‘I didn't know what I wanted. It was stupid. Jesus, it's easy for you to say.'

‘No it's not.'

‘You didn't cop the twelve years.'

‘That's why you came back?'

‘No.'

‘To rub that in my face?'

‘No.'

‘Sorry.'

‘Actually.'

‘I would've done that, I would've copped it.'

‘Actually, I came back to ask for your forgiveness.'

‘What?'

‘You heard me.'

‘You don't have to. I told you I'd do it again.'

‘That's what I mean. I'm sorry I made you that way.'

*

The next morning he was gone. In hot February my brother came back to me, and stayed for only two nights and one day. I haven't seen him since. My life, such as it is, I owe to him. If guilt is for what you've done and shame for who you are, then how could I feel shame? I was a brother, and my brother's brother. Forget, he tells me, but does he taste them in his tap water, the savour of their hair and skin in his herbs? They too were brothers. Melbourne's in drought. The city a plain of dust and fire. The river hasn't water enough to wash the foreign matter out.

I have my work, and my garden, my mother in her glassy loneliness to attend. I have my mornings. Who knows if he'll come back? I have my dreams, too, which have come to seem coextensive with my memories. My sleep is shallow, and my dreams never seem to go all the way down. I step out of my night window and the river wipes the field before me, a smear of silver noise, the great fishes climbing the water by the plate-glass glint of their eyes, in their indigo and orange glows, mastering the dark. I am underneath, plunging as the grey scrim of surface blackens above me. Breathe, lungs, and let me time. We live our lives atop the body of emotion of which we're capable. I follow my dim thought-embryos, I see by my feeling, I sink with my words, for words are shadow, and shadow cannot explain light.

Where've you been.

You started a thought and you could end up anywhere. Like watching a fire: its false grabs and reachings, its licks and twists, you stared into the guts of it and came out in the nightlight glow of a shared childhood room, the cheap groan of a bunk bed, you're awake and listening to the breath snagging in your brother's nostrils, the low whistle of his open-mouthed sleep, the insideness of his life and its promise of protection from the harmful world outside.

Where've you been. You're late.

He's dragging a suitcase into the street. He makes it all the way out of the driveway, to the cherry tree, before I stop him. The air is full of pollen and sunscreen. He emerges from the concrete tunnel with a rueful smile on his face. He's bent over me on the couch – he rooted in his terrible motion and I in him.

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.

I bite the red cushion. I feel his ribs on my ribs. My body an anvil and he's beating something upon it, shaping it into a truer shape, seeking to prove it, the strength, the ductility, the temper of his love.

SILENCE 1945

RODNEY HALL

A man jumped up on the horizon. Quite suddenly he jumped up where nobody had been before. A soldier, with nothing on his head to protect it. In the afternoon. Behind him mushrooming clouds gathered. And above the clouds three parachutes seemed fixed in the sky. The big guns had already fallen silent and every last aircraft had long since flown away. It was on a ridge above some straight shadows that were the enemy trenches. And up he jumped.

And there was one who asked: Do we shoot him, Sergeant Potts?

But Sergeant Potts just spat. On the ground. Because this was something no one could account for; a soldier making a target of himself in full view of the platoon of hidden men in helmets, each one of us with his finger on the trigger and a question in his eyes. Each homesick from too much bitterness and loss. And too much fear felt too soon. Boy soldiers, rookies, with no idea what to do next.

Someone whispered: It must be a trick.

Or else a lunatic, another whispered back and opened the wound of a grin in his face.

Another asked: What will they chuck at us next?

But Sergeant Potts poked around under the rim of his helmet and scratched his skull.

All because a man jumped up where nobody had been before. Quite suddenly, dark and small in the afternoon, with nothing to protect his head and only clouds beyond. And three parachutists fixed in the sky while we hid, watching him, a platoon of boys in baggy uniforms, with no idea what to do. And this man, who was our enemy, lifted wooden arms. Slow as a broken windmill he started signalling. One letter at a time he spelt a message in semaphore: ICH HABE HUNGER.

AS A WOMAN GROWS OLDER

J. M. COETZEE

She is visiting her daughter in Nice, her first visit there in years. Her son will fly out from the United States to spend a few days with them, on the way to some conference or other. It interests her, this confluence of dates. She wonders whether there has not been some collusion, whether the two of them do not have some plan, some proposal to put to her of the kind that children put to a parent when they feel she can no longer look after herself. So obstinate, they will have said to each other: so obstinate, so stubborn, so self-willed – how will we get past that obstinacy of hers except by working together?

They love her, of course, else they would not be cooking up plans for her. Nevertheless, she does feel like one of those Roman aristocrats waiting to be handed the fatal draft, waiting to be told in the most confiding, the most sympathetic of ways that for the general good one should drink it down without a fuss.

Her children are and always have been good, dutiful, as children go. Whether as a mother she has been equally good and dutiful is another matter. But in this life we do not always get what we deserve. Her children will have to wait for another life, another incarnation, if they want the score to be evened.

Her daughter runs an art gallery in Nice. Her daughter is, by now, for all practical purposes French. Her son, with his American wife and American children, will soon, for all practical purposes, be American. So, having flown the nest, they have flown far. One might even think, did one not know better, that they have flown far to get away from her.

Whatever proposal it is they have to put to her, it is sure to be full of ambivalence: love and solicitude on the one hand, brisk heartlessness on the other, and a wish to see the end of her. Well, ambivalence should not disconcert her. She has made a living out of ambivalence. Where would the art of fiction be if there were no double meanings? What would life itself be if there were only heads or tails and nothing in between?

*

‘What I find eerie, as I grow older,' she tells her son, ‘is that I hear issuing from my lips words I once upon a time used to hear old people say and swore I would never say myself.
What-is-the-world-coming-to
things. For example: no one seems any longer to be aware that the verb “may” has a past tense – what is the world coming to? People walk down the street eating pizza and talking into a telephone – what is the world coming to?'

It is his first day in Nice, her third: a clear, warm June day, the kind of day that brought idle, well-to-do people from England to this stretch of coast in the first place. And behold, here they are, the two of them, strolling down the Promenade des Anglais just as the English did a hundred years ago with their parasols and their boaters, deploring Mr Hardy's latest effort, deploring the Boers.

‘
Deplore
,' she says: ‘a word one does not hear much nowadays. No one with any sense
deplores
, not unless they want to be a figure of fun. An interdicted word, an interdicted activity. So what is one to do? Does one keep them all pent up, one's deplorations, until one is alone with other old folk and free to spill them?'

‘You can deplore to me as much as you like, Mother,' says John, her good and dutiful son. ‘I will nod sympathetically and not make fun of you. What else would you like to deplore today besides pizza?'

‘It is not pizza that I deplore, pizza is well and good in its place, it is walking and eating and talking all at the same time that I find so rude.'

‘I agree, it is rude or at least unrefined. What else?'

‘That's enough. What I deplore is in itself of no interest. What is of interest is that I vowed years ago I would never do it, and here I am doing it. Why have I succumbed? I deplore what the world is coming to. I deplore the course of history. From my heart I deplore it. Yet when I listen to myself, what do I hear? I hear my mother deploring the miniskirt, deploring the electric guitar. And I remember my exasperation. “Yes, Mother,” I would say, and grind my teeth and pray for her to shut up. And so …'

‘And so you think I am grinding my teeth and praying for you to shut up.'

‘Yes.'

‘I am not. It is perfectly acceptable to deplore what the world is coming to. I deplore it myself, in private.'

‘But the detail, John, the detail! It is not just the grand sweep of history that I deplore, it is the detail – bad manners, bad grammar, loudness! It is details like that that exasperate me, and it is the kind of detail that exasperates me that drives me to despair. So unimportant! Do you understand? But of course you do not. You think I am making fun of myself when I am not making fun of myself. It is all serious! Do you understand that it could all be serious?'

‘Of course I understand. You express yourself with great clarity.'

‘But I do not! I do not! These are just words, and we are all sick of words by now. The only way left to prove you are serious is to do away with yourself. Fall on your sword. Blow your brains out. Yet as soon as I say the words you want to smile. I know. Because I am not serious, not fully serious – I am too old to be serious. Kill yourself at twenty and it is a tragic loss. Kill yourself at forty and it is a sobering comment on the times. But kill yourself at seventy and people say, “What a shame, she must have had cancer.”‘

‘But you have never cared what people say.'

‘I have never cared what people say because I have always believed in the word of the future. History will vindicate me – that is what I have told myself. But I am losing faith in history, as history has become today – losing faith in its power to come up with the truth.'

‘And what has history become today, Mother? And, while we are about it, may I remark that you have once again manoeuvred me into the position of the straight man or straight boy, a position I do not particularly enjoy.'

‘I am sorry, I am sorry. It is from living alone. Most of the time I have to conduct these conversations in my head; it is such a relief to have persons I can play them out with.'

‘Interlocutors. Not persons. Interlocutors.'

‘Interlocutors I can play them out with.'

‘Play them out on.'

‘Interlocutors I can play them out on. I am sorry, I will stop. How is Norma?'

‘Norma is well. She sends her love. The children are well. What has history become?'

‘History has lost her voice. Clio, the one who once upon a time used to strike her lyre and sing of the doings of great men, has become infirm, infirm and frivolous, like the silliest sort of old women. At least that is what I think part of the time. The rest of the time I think she has been taken prisoner by a gang of thugs who torture her and make her say things she does not mean to say. I can't tell you all the dark thoughts I have about history. It has become an obsession.'

‘An obsession. Does that mean you are writing about it?'

‘No, not writing. If I could write about history I would be on my way to mastering it. No, all I can do is fume about it, fume and deplore. And deplore myself too. I have become trapped in a cliché, and I no longer believe that history will be able to budge that cliché.'

‘What cliché?'

‘I do not want to go into it, it is too depressing. The cliché of the stuck record, that has no meaning anymore because there are no gramophone needles or gramophones. The word that echoes back to me from all quarters is “bleak”. Her message to the world is unremittingly bleak. What does it mean, bleak? A word that belongs to a winter landscape yet has somehow become attached to me. It is like a little mongrel that trails behind, yapping, and won't be shaken off. I am dogged by it. It will follow me to the grave. It will stand at the lip of the grave, peering in and yapping
bleak, bleak, bleak
!'

‘If you are not the bleak one, then who are you, Mother?'

‘You know who I am, John.'

‘Of course I know. Nevertheless, say it. Say the words.'

‘I am the one who used to laugh and no longer does. I am the one who cries.'

*

Her daughter Helen runs an art gallery in the old city. The gallery is, by all accounts, highly successful. Helen does not own it. She is employed by two Swiss who descend from their lair in Bern twice a year to check the accounts and pocket the takings.

Helen, or Hélène, is younger than John but looks older. Even as a student she had a middle-aged air, with her pencil skirts and owlish glasses and chignon. A type that the French make space for and even respect: the severe, celibate intellectual. Whereas in England Helen would be cast at once as a librarian and a figure of fun.

In fact she has no grounds for thinking Helen celibate. Helen does not speak about her private life, but from John she hears of an affair that has been going on for years with a businessman from Lyon who takes her away for weekends. Who knows, perhaps on her weekends away she blossoms.

It is not particularly seemly to speculate on the sex lives of one's children. Nevertheless she cannot believe that someone who devotes her life to art, be it only the sale of paintings, can be without fire of her own.

What she had expected was a combined assault: Helen and John sitting her down and putting to her the scheme they had worked out for her salvation. But no, their first evening together passes perfectly pleasantly. The subject is only broached the next day, in Helen's car, as the two of them drive north into the Basses-Alpes en route to a luncheon spot Helen has chosen, leaving John behind to work on his paper for the conference.

‘How would you like to live here, Mother?' says Helen, out of the blue.

‘You mean in the mountains?'

‘No, in France. In Nice. There is an apartment in my building that falls vacant in October. You could buy it, or we could buy it together. On the ground floor.'

‘You want us to live together, you and I? This is very sudden, my dear. Are you sure you mean it?'

‘We would not be living together. You would be perfectly independent. But in an emergency you would have someone to call on.'

‘Thank you, dear, but we have perfectly good people in Melbourne trained to deal with old folk and their little emergencies.'

‘Please, Mother, let us not play games. You are seventy-two. You have had problems with your heart. You are not always going to be able to look after yourself. If you – ‘

‘Say no more, my dear. I am sure you find the euphemisms as distasteful as I do. I could break a hip, I could become gaga; I could linger on, bedridden, for years: that is the sort of thing we are talking about. Granted such possibilities, the question for me is: Why should I impose on my daughter the burden of caring for me? And the question for you, I presume, is: Will you be able to live with yourself if you do not at least once, in all sincerity, offer me care and protection? Do I put it fairly, our problem, our joint problem?'

‘Yes. My proposal is sincere. It is also practicable. I have discussed it with John.'

‘Then let us not spoil this beautiful day by getting into a wrangle. You have made your proposal, I have heard it and I promise to think about it. Let us leave it at that. It is very unlikely that I will accept, as you must have guessed. My thoughts are running in quite another direction. There is one thing the old are better at than the young, and that is dying. It behoves the old (what a quaint word!) to die well, to show those who follow what a good death can be. That is the direction of my thinking. I would like to concentrate on making a good death.'

‘You could make just as good a death in Nice as in Melbourne.'

‘But that is not true, Helen. Think it through and you will see it is not true. Ask me what I mean by a good death.'

‘What do you mean by a good death, Mother.'

‘A good death is one that takes place far away, where the mortal residue is disposed of by strangers, by people in the death business. A good death is one that you learn of by telegram:
I regret to inform you
, et cetera. What a pity telegrams have gone out of fashion.'

Helen gives an exasperated snort. They drive on in silence. Nice is far behind: down an empty road they swoop into a long valley. Though it is nominally summer the air is cold, as if the sun never touched these depths. She shivers, winds up the window. Like driving into an allegory!

‘It is not right to die alone,' says Helen at last, ‘with no one to hold your hand. It is antisocial. It is inhuman. It is unloving. Excuse the words, but I mean them. I am offering to hold your hand. To be with you.'

Of the children, Helen has always been the more reserved, the one who kept her mother at more of a distance. Never before has Helen spoken like this. Perhaps the car makes it easier, allowing the driver not to look straight at the person she is addressing. She must remember that about cars.

‘That's very kind of you, my dear,' she says. The voice that comes from her throat is unexpectedly low. ‘I will not forget it. But would it not feel odd, coming back to France after all these years to die? What will I say to the man at the border when he asks the purpose of my visit, business or pleasure? Or, worse, when he asks how long I plan to stay?
Forever? To the end? Just a brief while?
'

‘Say
réunir la famille
. He will understand that. To reunite the family. It happens every day. He won't demand more.'

They eat at an
auberge
called Les Deux Ermites. There must be a story behind the name, but she would prefer not to be told it. If it is a good story it is probably made up anyway. A cold, knifing wind is blowing; they sit behind the protection of glass, looking out on snow-capped peaks. It is early in the season: besides theirs, only two tables are occupied.

‘Pretty? Yes, of course it is pretty. A pretty country, a beautiful country, that goes without saying.
La belle France
. But do not forget, Helen, how lucky I have been, what a privileged vocation I have followed. I have been able to move about as I wished most of my life. I have lived, when I have chosen, in the lap of beauty. The question I find myself asking now is, What good has it done me, all this beauty? Is beauty not just another consumable, like wine? One drinks it in, one drinks it down, it gives one a brief, pleasing, heady feeling, but what does it leave behind? The residue of wine is, excuse the word, piss; what is the residue of beauty? What is the good of it? Does beauty make us better people?'