They follow the path that runs eastward from the farmstead along the bank of the overgrown riverbed towards the dam whose wall burst in the floods of 1943 and has never been repaired. In the shallow waters of the dam a trio of white geese float peacefully. It is still cool, there is no haze, they can see as far as the Nieuweveld Mountains.
‘God,’ she says, ‘dis darem mooi. Dit raak jou siel aan, nè, dié ou wêreld.’ Isn’t it beautiful. It touches one’s soul, this landscape.
They are in a minority, a tiny minority, the two of them, of souls that are stirred by these great, desolate expanses. If anything has held them together over the years, it is that. This landscape, this kontrei — it has taken over her heart. When she dies and is buried, she will dissolve into this earth so naturally it will be as if she never had a human life.
‘Carol says you are still writing poems,’ she says. ‘Is that true? Will you show me?’
‘I am sorry to disappoint Carol,’ he replies stiffly, ‘but I haven’t written a poem since I was a teenager.’
She bites her tongue. She forgot: you do not ask a man to show you his poems, not in South Africa, not without reassuring him beforehand that it will be all right, he is not going to be mocked. What a country, where poetry is not a manly activity but a hobby for children and oujongnooiens [spinsters] — oujongnooiens of both sexes! How Totius or Louis Leipoldt got by she cannot guess. No wonder Carol chooses John’s poem-writing to attack, Carol with her nose for other people’s weaknesses.
‘If you gave up so long ago, why does Carol think you still write?’
‘I have no idea. Perhaps she saw me marking student essays and jumped to the wrong conclusion.’
She does not believe him, but she is not going to press him further. If he wants to evade her, let him. If poetry is a part of his life he is too shy or too ashamed to talk about, then so be it.
She does not think of John as a moffie, but it continues to puzzle her that he has no woman. A man alone, particularly one of the Coetzee men, seems to her like a boat without oar or rudder or sail. And now two of them, two Coetzee men, living as a couple! While Jack still had the redoubtable Vera behind him he steered a more or less straight course; but now that she is gone he seems quite lost. As for Jack and Vera’s son, he could certainly do with some level-headed guidance. But what woman with any sense would want to devote herself to the hapless John?
Carol is convinced John is a bad bet; and the rest of the Coetzee family, despite their good hearts, would probably agree. What sets her, Margot, apart, what keeps her confidence in John precariously afloat, is, oddly enough, the way in which he and his father behave towards each other: if not with affection, that would be saying too much, then at least with respect.
The pair used to be the worst of enemies. The bad blood between Jack and his elder son was the subject of much head-shaking. When the son disappeared overseas, the parents put on the best front they could. He had gone to pursue a career in science, his mother claimed. For years she put forward a story that John was working as a scientist in England, even as it became clear that she had no idea for whom he worked or what sort of work he did. You know how John is, his father would say: always very independent. Independent: what did that mean? Not without reason, the Coetzees took it to mean he had disowned his country, his family, his very parents.
Then Jack and Vera started putting out a new story: John was not in England after all but in America, pursuing ever higher qualifications. Time passed; in the absence of hard news, interest in John and his doings waned. He and his younger brother became just two among thousands of young white men who had run away to escape military service, leaving an embarrassed family behind. He had almost vanished from their collective memory when the scandal of his expulsion from the United States burst upon them.
That terrible war, said his father: it was all the fault of a war in which American boys were sacrificing their lives for the sake of Asians who seemed to feel no gratitude at all. No wonder ordinary Americans were revolting. No wonder they took to the streets. John had been caught up willy-nilly in a street protest, the story proceeded; what ensued had just been a bad misunderstanding.
Was it his son’s disgrace, and the untruths he had to tell as a consequence, that had turned Jack into a shaky, prematurely aged man? How can she even ask?
‘You must be glad to see the Karoo again,’ she says to John. ‘Aren’t you relieved you decided not to stay in America?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replies. ‘Of course, in the midst of this’ — he does not gesture, but she knows what he means: this sky, this space, the vast silence enclosing them — ‘I feel blessed, one of a lucky few. But practically speaking, what future do I have in this country, where I have never fitted in? Perhaps a clean break would have been better after all. Cut yourself free of what you love and hope that the wound heals.’
A frank answer. Thank heaven for that.
‘I had a chat with your father yesterday, John, while you and Michiel were away. Seriously, I don’t think he fully grasps what you are planning. I am talking about Merweville. Your father is not young any more, and he is not well. You can’t dump him in a strange town and expect him to fend for himself. And you can’t expect the rest of the family to step in and take care of him if things go wrong. That’s all. That’s what I wanted to say.’
He does not respond. In his hand is a length of old fencing-wire that he has picked up. Swinging the wire petulantly left and right, flicking off the heads of the waving grass, he descends the slope of the eroded dam wall.
‘Don’t behave like this!’ she calls out, trotting after him. ‘Speak to me, for God’s sake! Tell me I am wrong! Tell me I am making a mistake!’
He halts and turns upon her a look of cold hostility. ‘Let me fill you in on my father’s situation,’ he says. ‘My father has no savings, not a cent, and no insurance. He has only a state pension to look forward to: forty-three rand a month when I last checked. So despite his age, despite his poor health, he has to go on working. Together the two of us earn in a month what a car salesman earns in a week. My father can give up his job only if he moves to a place where living expenses are lower than in the city.’
‘But why does he have to move at all? And why to Merweville, to some rundown old ruin?’
‘My father and I can’t live together indefinitely, Margie. It makes us too miserable, both of us. It’s unnatural. Fathers and sons were never meant to share a home.’
‘Your father doesn’t strike me as a difficult person to live with.’
‘Perhaps; but I am a difficult person to live with. My difficulty consists in not wanting to share space with other people.’
‘So is that what this Merweville business is all about — about you wanting to live by yourself?’
‘Yes. Yes and no. I want to be able to be alone when I choose.’
THEY ARE CONGREGATED ON the stoep, all the Coetzees, having their morning tea, chatting, idly watching Michiel’s three young sons play cricket on the open werf.
On the far horizon a cloud of dust materializes and hangs in the air.
‘That must be Lukas,’ says Michiel, who has the keenest eyes. ‘Margie, it’s Lukas!’
Lukas, as it turns out, has been on the road since dawn. He is tired but in good spirits nonetheless, full of vim. Barely has he greeted his wife and her family before he lets himself be roped into the boys’ game. He may not be competent at cricket, but he loves being with children, and children adore him. He would be the best of fathers: it breaks her heart that he must be childless.