He did not answer, but reached out a hand and touched my cheek. That was the one and only time he ever touched me. The anger inside me boiled over. I knocked his hand aside. 'This is not a love-game!' I hissed. 'Don't you see I detest you? Leave me alone and leave my child alone too or I will report you to the school!'
It was true: if he had not been filling my daughter's head with dangerous nonsense I would never have summoned him to our flat, and his miserable pursuit of me would never have begun. What was a grown man doing in a girls' school anyway, Saint Bonaventure, that was supposed to be a nuns' school, only there were no nuns?
And it was true too that I detested him. I was not afraid to say so. He forced me to detest him.
When I pronounced that word, detest, he just stared back at me in bewilderment, as if he could not believe his ears – that the woman to whom he was offering himself could refuse him. It gave me no pleasure to see such bewilderment, such helplessness. I did not even like to see him on the dance floor. It was as if he was naked: a man dancing naked, who did not know how to dance. I wanted to shout at him. I wanted to beat him. I wanted to cry.
[Silence.]
This is not the story you wanted to hear, is it? You wanted a different kind of story for your book. You wanted to hear of the romance between your hero and the beautiful foreign ballerina. Well, I am not giving you romance, I am giving you the truth. Maybe too much truth. Maybe so much truth that there will be no place for it in your book. I don't know. I don't care.
Go on. It is not a very dignified picture of Coetzee that emerges from your story, I won't deny that, but I will change nothing, I promise.
Not dignified, you say. Well, that is what you risk when you fall in love. You risk losing your dignity.
[Silence.]
Anyway, I went back to Mr Anderson. Get this man out of my class or I will resign, I said. I will see what I can do, said Mr Anderson. We all have difficult students to cope with, you are not the only one. He is not difficult, I said, he is mad.
Was he mad? I don't know. But he certainly had an idée fixe about me.
The next day I went to my daughter's school, as I had warned him I would, and asked to see the principal. The principal was busy, I was told. I will wait, I said. For an hour I waited in the secretary's office. Not one friendly word. No Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs Nascimento? Then at last, when it became plain I would not go away, they capitulated and let me see the principal.
'I have come to speak to you about my daughter's English lessons,' I said to her. 'I would like my daughter to go on with her lessons, but I want to her to have a proper English teacher with a proper qualification. If I must pay more I will pay.'
The principal fetched a folder out of a filing cabinet. 'According to Mr Coetzee, Maria Regina is making good progress in English,' she said. 'That is confirmed by her other teachers. So what exactly is the problem?'
'I cannot tell you what is the problem,' I said. 'I just want her to have another teacher.'
This principal was not a fool. When I said I could not tell her what was the problem, she knew at once what was the problem. 'Mrs Nascimento,' she said, 'if I understand what you are saying, you are making a very serious complaint. But I can't act on such a complaint unless you are prepared to be more specific. Are you complaining about Mr Coetzee's actions toward your daughter? Are you telling me there has been something untoward in his behaviour?'
She was not a fool, but I am not a fool either. Untoward: what does that mean? Did I want to make an accusation against Mr Coetzee and sign my name to it, and then find myself in a court of law being interrogated by a judge? No. 'I am not making a complaint against Mr Coetzee,' I said, 'I am only asking you, if there is a proper English teacher, can Maria Regina take lessons from her instead.'
The principal did not like that. She shook her head. 'That is not possible,' she said. 'Mr Coetzee is the only teacher, the only person on our staff, who teaches extra English. There is no other class into which Maria Regina can move. We don't have the luxury, Mrs Nascimento, of offering our girls a range of teachers to choose among. And furthermore, with all respect, may I ask you to reflect, are you in the best position to judge Mr Coetzee's teaching, if it is simply the standard of his teaching we are discussing today?'
I know you are an Englishman, Mr Vincent, so don't take this personally, but there is a certain English manner that infuriates me, that infuriates many people, where the insult comes coated in pretty words, like sugar on a pill. Dago: you think I don't know that word, Mr Vincent? You Portugoose dago! she was saying – How dare you come here and criticize my school! Go back to the slums where you came from!
'I am Maria Regina's mother,' I said, 'I alone will say what is good for my daughter and what is not. I do not come to make trouble for you or Mr Coetzee or anyone else, but I tell you now, Maria Regina will not continue in that man's class, that is my word and it is final. I pay for my daughter to attend a good school, a school for girls, I do not want her in a class where the teacher is not a proper teacher, he has no qualification, he is not even English, he is a Boer.'
Maybe I should not have used that word, it was like dago, but I was angry, I was provoked. Boer: in that little office of hers it was like a bomb. A bomb-word. But not as bad as mad. If I had said Maria Regina's teacher, with his incomprehensible poems and his talk of making students burn with an intenser light, was mad, then the room would truly have exploded.
The woman's face grew stiff. 'It is up to me and to the school committee, Mrs Nascimento,' she said, 'to decide who is and who is not qualified to teach in this school. In my judgment and in the judgment of the committee Mr Coetzee, who holds a university degree in English, is adequately qualified for the work he does. You may remove your daughter from his class if you so wish, indeed you may remove her from the school, that is your right. But bear it in mind, it will be your daughter who will suffer in the end.'
'I will remove her from that man's class, I will not remove her from the school,' I replied. 'I want her to have a good education. I will myself find an English teacher for her. Thank you for seeing me. You think I am just some poor refugee woman who doesn't understand anything. You are wrong. If I were to tell you the whole story you would see how wrong you are. Goodbye.'
Refugee. They kept calling me a refugee in that country of theirs, when all I desired was to escape from it.
When Maria Regina came home from school the next day a veritable storm burst over my head. 'How could you do it, mãe?' she shouted at me. 'How could you do this behind my back? Why do you always have to interfere in my life?'
For weeks and months, ever since Mr Coetzee made his appearance, relations had been strained between Maria Regina and myself. But never before had my daughter used such words to me. I tried to calm her. We are not like other families, I told her. Other girls do not have a father in hospital and a mother who has to humiliate herself to earn a few pennies so that a child who never lifts a finger in the home, or says thank you, can have extra classes in this and extra classes in that.
It was not true, of course. I could not have wished for better daughters than Joana and Maria Regina, serious, hard-working girls. But sometimes it is necessary to be a little harsh, even with those we love.
Maria Regina heard nothing that I said, she was in such a fury. 'I hate you!' she shouted. 'You think I don't know why you are doing this! It is because you are jealous, because you don't want me to see Mr Coetzee, because you want him for yourself!'
'I am jealous of you? What nonsense! Why should I want this man for myself, this man who is not even a real man? Yes, I say he is not a real man! What do you know about men, you, a child? Why do you think this man wants to be among young girls? Do you think that is normal? Why do you think he encourages your dreaming, your fantasies? Men like that should not be allowed near a school. And you – you should be thankful I am saving you. But instead you shout abuse and make accusations against me, your mother!'
I saw her lips move s
oundlessly, as though there were no words bitter enough for what was in her heart. Then she turned and ran out of the room. A moment later she was back, waving the letters that this man, this teacher of hers, had sent me, that I had put away in the bureau for no special reason, I certainly did not treasure them. 'He writes love-letters to you!' she screamed. 'And you write love-letters back to him! It's disgusting! If he is not normal why are you writing love-letters to him?'
Of course what she was saying was untrue. I wrote him no love-letters, not one. But how could I make the poor child believe that? 'How dare you!' I said. 'How dare you pry into my private papers!'
How I wished, at that moment, that I had burnt those letters of his, letters I never asked for!
Maria Regina was crying now. 'I wish I had never listened to you,' she sobbed. 'I wish I had never let you invite him here. You just spoil everything.'
'My poor child!' I said, and took her in my arms. 'I never wrote letters to Mr Coetzee, you must believe me. Yes, he wrote letters to me, I don't know why, but I never wrote back. I am not interested in him in that way, not in the slightest. Don't let him come between us, my darling. I am just trying to protect you. He is not right for you. He is a grown man, you are still a child. I will get you another teacher. I will get you a private teacher who will come here to the flat and help you. We will manage. A teacher is not expensive. We will get someone who has proper qualifications and knows how to prepare you for the examinations. Then we can put this whole unhappy business behind us.'
So that is the story, the full story, of his letters and the trouble his letters caused me.
There were no more letters?
There was one more, but I did not open it. I wrote RETURN TO SENDER on the envelope and left it in the foyer for the postman to pick up. 'See?' I said to Maria Regina. 'See what I think of his letters?'
And what of the dance classes?
He stopped coming. Mr Anderson spoke to him and he stopped coming. Maybe he even gave back his money, I don't know.
Did you find another teacher for Maria Regina?
Yes, I found another teacher, a lady, a retired teacher. It cost money, but what is money when your child's future is at stake?
Was that the end, then, of your dealings with John Coetzee?
Yes. Absolutely.
You never saw him again, never heard from him?
I never saw him. I made sure Maria Regina never saw him. He may have been full of romantic nonsense, but he was too Dutch to be reckless. When he realized I was serious, not playing some love-game with him, he gave up his pursuit. He left us alone. His grand passion turned out to be not so grand after all. Or maybe he found someone else to be in love with.
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he kept you alive in his heart. Or the idea of you.
Why do you say that?
[Silence.]
Well, perhaps he did. You are the one who has studied him, you will know better. With some people it does not matter who they are in love with as long as they are in love. Perhaps he was like that.
[Silence.]
In retrospect, how do you see the whole episode? Do you still feel anger toward him?
Anger? No. I can see how a lonely and eccentric young man like Mr Coetzee, who spent his days reading old philosophers and making up poems, could fall for Maria Regina, who was a real beauty and would break many hearts. It is not so easy to see what Maria Regina saw in him; but then, she was young and impressionable, and he flattered her, made her think she was different from the other girls and had a great future.
Then when she brought him home and he laid eyes on me, I can see he might change his mind and decide to make me his true love instead. I am not claiming I was a great beauty, and of course I was not young any more, but Maria Regina and I were the same type: same bones, same hair, same dark eyes. And it is more practical – is it not? – to love a woman than to love a child. More practical, less dangerous.
What did he want from me, from a woman who did not respond to him and gave him no encouragement? Did he hope to sleep with me? What pleasure can there be for a man in sleeping with a woman who does not want him? Because, truly, I did not want this man, for whom I had not the slightest flicker of feeling. And what would it have been like anyway if I had taken up with my daughter's teacher? Could I have kept it secret? Certainly not from Maria Regina. I would have brought shame on myself before my children. Even when I was alone with him I would have been thinking, It is not me he desires, it is Maria Regina, who is young and beautiful but is forbidden to him.
But perhaps what he really wanted was both of us, Maria Regina and me, mother and daughter – perhaps that was his fantasy, I can't say, I can't look into his mind.
I remember, in the days when I was a student, existentialism was the fashion, we all had to be existentialists. But to be accepted as an existentialist you had first to prove you were a libertine, an extremist. Obey no restraints! Be free! – that was what we were told. But how can I be free, I asked myself, if I am obeying someone else's order to be free?
Coetzee was like that, I think. He had made up his mind to be an existentialist and a romantic and a libertine. The trouble was, it did not come from inside him, therefore he did not know how. Freedom, sensuality, erotic love – it was all just an idea in his head, not an urge rooted in his body. He had no gift for it. He was not a sensual being. And anyway, I suspect he secretly liked it when a woman was cold and distant.
You say you decided not to read his last letter. Do you ever regret that decision?
Why? Why should I regret it?
Because Coetzee was a writer, who knew how to use words. What if the letter you did not read contained words that would have moved you or even changed your feelings about him?
Mr Vincent, to you John Coetzee is a great writer and a hero, I accept that, why else would you be here, why else would you be writing this book? To me, on the other hand – pardon me for saying this, but he is dead, so I cannot hurt his feelings – to me he is nothing. He is nothing, was nothing, just an irritation, an embarrassment. He was nothing and his words were nothing. I can see you are cross because I make him look like a fool. Nevertheless, to me he really was a fool.
As for his letters, writing letters to a woman does not prove you love her. This man was not in love with me, he was in love with some idea of me, some fantasy of a Latin mistress that he made up in his own mind. I wish, instead of me, he had found some other writer, some other fantasist, to fall in love with. Then the two of them could have been happy, making love all day to their ideas of each other.
You think I am cruel when I talk like this, but I am not, I am just a practical person. When my daughter's language teacher, a complete stranger, sends me letters full of his ideas about this and his ideas about that, about music and chemistry and philosophy and angels and gods and I don't know what else, page after page, poems too, I don't read it all and memorize it for future generations, all I want to know is one simple, practical thing, which is, What is going on between this man and my daughter who is only a child? Because – forgive me for saying this – beneath all the fine words what a man wants from a woman is usually very basic and very simple.
You say there were poems too?
I did not understand them. Maria Regina was the one who liked poetry.
You recall nothing about them?
They were very modernistic, very intellectual, very obscure. That is why I say it was all a big mistake. He thought I was the kind of woman you lie in bed with in the dark, discussing poetry; but I was not like that at all. I was a wife and mother, the wife of a man locked up in a hospital that might as well have been a prison or a graveyard and the mother of two girls whom I had somehow to keep safe in a world where when people want to steal your money they bring along an axe. I had no time to take pity on this ignorant young man who was throwing himself at my feet and humiliating himself in front of me. And, frankly, if I had wanted a man, it would not be a man like him.
Because, let me a
ssure you – I am keeping you late, I apologize – let me assure you, I was not without feeling, far from it. Do not go away with a false impression of me. I was not dead to the world. In the mornings, when Joana was at work and Maria Regina was at school and the sun shone its rays into that little flat of ours, which was usually so dark and gloomy, I would sometimes stand in the sunlight by the open window listening to the birds and feeling the warmth on my face and my breast; and at times like that I would long to be a woman again. I was not too old, I was just waiting. So. Enough. Thank you for listening.