You said last time that you had a question for me.
Yes, I forgot, I have a question. It is this. I am not usually wrong about people; so tell me, am I wrong about John Coetzee? Because to me, frankly, he was not anybody. He was not a man of substance. Maybe he could write well, maybe had a certain talent for words, I don't know, I never read his books, I was never curious to read them. I know he won a big reputation later; but was he really a great writer? Because to my mind, a talent for words is not enough if you want to be a great writer. You have also to be a great man. And he was not a great man. He was a little man, an unimportant little man. I can't give you a list of reasons A-B-C-D why I say so, but that was my impression from the beginning, from the moment I set eyes on him, and nothing that happened afterwards changed it. So I turn to you. You have studied him deeply, you are writing a book about him. Tell me: What is your estimation of him? Was I wrong?
My estimation of him as a writer or my estimation of him as a human being?
As a human being.
I can't say. I would be reluctant to pronounce a judgment on anyone without ever meeting him face to face. Him or her. But I think that, at the time he met you, Coetzee was lonely, unnaturally lonely. Perhaps that explains certain – what shall I say? – certain extravagances of behaviour.
How do you know that?
From the record he left behind. From putting two and two together. He was a little lonely and a little desperate.
Yes, but we are all a little desperate, that is life. If you are strong you conquer the despair. That is why I ask: how can you be a great writer if you are just an ordinary little man? Surely you must have a certain flame in you that sets you apart from the people in the street. Maybe in his books, if you read them, you can see that flame. But for me, in the times I was with him I never felt any fire. On the contrary, he seemed to me – how shall I express it? – tepid.
To an extent I would agree with you. Fire is not the first word that comes to mind when one thinks of his books. But he had other virtues, other strengths. For instance, I would say he was steady. He had a steady gaze. He was not easily fooled by appearances.
For a man who was not fooled by appearances, he fell in love rather easily, don't you think?
[Laughter.]
But maybe, when he fell in love, he was not fooled. Maybe he saw things that other people do not see.
In the woman?
Yes, in the woman.
[Silence.]
You tell me he was in love with me even after I sent him away, even after I forgot he even existed. Is that what you mean by steadiness? Because to me it just seems stupid.
I think he was dogged. A very English word. Whether there is an equivalent in Portuguese I don't know. Like a bulldog that grips you with his teeth and does not let go.
If you say so, then I must believe you. But being like a dog – is that admirable, in English?
[Laughter.]
You know, in my profession, rather than just listen to words, we like to watch the way people move, the way they carry themselves. That is our way to get to the truth, and it is not a bad way. Your Mr Coetzee may have had a talent for words but, as I told you, he could not dance. He could not dance – here is one of the phrases I remember from South Africa, Maria Regina taught it to me – he could not dance to save his life.
[Laughter.]
But seriously, Senhora Nascimento, there have been many great men who were not good dancers. If you must be a good dancer before you can be a great man, then Gandhi was not a great man, Tolstoy was not a great man.
No, you are not listening to what I say. I too am serious. You know the word disembodied? This man was disembodied. He was divorced from his body. To him, the body was like one of those wooden puppets that you move with strings. You pull this string and the left arm moves, you pull that string and the right leg moves. And the real self sits up above, where you cannot see him, like the puppet-master pulling the strings.
Now this man comes to me, to the mistress of the dance. Show me how to dance! he implores. So I show him, show him how we move in the dance. So, I say to him – move your feet so and then so. And he listens and tells himself, Aha, she means pull the red string followed by the blue string! – Turn your shoulder so, I say to him, and he tells himself, Aha, she means pull the green string!
But that is not how you dance! That is not how you dance! Dance is incarnation. In dance it is not the puppet-master in the head that leads and the body that follows, it is the body itself that leads, the body with its soul, its body-soul. Because the body knows! It knows! When the body feels the rhythm inside it, it does not need to think. That is how we are if we are human. That is why the wooden puppet cannot dance. The wood has no soul. The wood cannot feel the rhythm.
So I ask: How could this man of yours be a great man when he was not human? It is a serious question, not a joke any more. Why do you think I, as a woman, could not respond to him? Why do you think I did everything I could to keep my daughter away from him while she was still young, with no experience to guide her? Because from such a man no good can come. Love: how can you be a great writer when you know nothing about love? Do you think I can be a woman and not know in my bones what kind of lover a man will be? I tell you, I shiver with cold when I think of, you know, intimacy with a man like that. I don't know if he ever married, but if he did I shiver for the woman who married him.
Yes. It is getting late, it has been a long afternoon, my colleague and I must be on our way. Thank you, Senhora Nascimento, for the time you have so generously given us. It has been most gracious of you. Senhora Gross will transcribe our conversation and tidy up the translation, after which I will send it to you to see if there is anything you would like to change or add or cut out.
I understand. Of course you offer to me that I can change the record, I can add or cut out. But how much can I change? Can I change the label I wear around my neck that says I was one of Coetzee's women? Will you let me take off that label? Will you let me tear it up? I think not. Because it would destroy your book, and you would not allow that.
But I will be patient. I will wait to see what you send me. Perhaps – who knows? – you will take seriously what I have told you. Also – let me confess – I am curious to see what the other women in this man's life have told you, the other women with labels around their necks – whether they too found this lover of theirs to be made of wood. Because, you know, that is what I think you should call your book: The Wooden Man.
[Laughter.]
But tell me, seriously again, did this man who knew nothing about women ever write about women, or did he just write about dogged men like himself? I ask because, as I say, I have not read him.
He wrote about men and he wrote about women too. For example – this may interest you – there is a book named Foe in which the heroine spends a year shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Brazil. In the final version she is an Englishwoman, but in the first draft he made her a Brasileira.
And what kind of woman is this Brasileira of his?
What shall I say? She has many good qualities. She is attractive, she is resourceful, she has a will of steel. She hunts all over the world to find her young daughter, who has disappeared. That is the substance of the novel: her quest to recover her daughter, which overrides all other concerns. To me she seems an admirable heroine. If I were the original of a character like that, I would feel proud.
I will read this book and see for myself. What is the title again?
Foe, spelled F-O-E. It was translated into Portuguese, but the translation is probably out of print by now. I can send you a copy in English if you like.
Yes, send it. It is a long time since I read an English book, but I am interested to see what this man of wood made of me.
[Laughter.]
Interview conducted in São Paulo,
Brazil, in December 2007.
Martin
IN ONE OF his late notebooks Coetzee writes an account of his first
meeting with you, on the day in 1972 when you were both being interviewed for a job at the University of Cape Town. The account is only a few pages long – I'll read it to you if you like. I suspect it was intended to fit into the third memoir, the one that never saw the light of day. As you will hear, he follows the same convention as in Boyhood and Youth, where the subject is called 'he' rather than 'I'.
This is what he writes.
'He has had his hair cut for the interview. He has trimmed his beard. He has put on a jacket and tie. If he is not yet Mr Sobersides, at least he no longer looks like the Wild Man of Borneo.
'In the waiting room are the two other candidates for the job. They stand side by side at the window overlooking the gardens, conversing softly. They seem to know each other, or at least to have struck up an acquaintance.'
You don't recall who this third person was, do you?
He was from the University of Stellenbosch, but I don't remember his name.
He goes on: 'This is the British way: to drop the contestants into the pit and wait to see what will happen. He will have to reaccustom himself to British ways of doing things, in all their brutality. A tight little ship, Britain, crammed to the gunwales. Dog eat dog. Dogs snarling and snapping at one another, each guarding its little territory. The American way, by comparison, decorous, even gentle. But then there is more space in America, more room for urbanity.
'The Cape may not be Britain, may be drifting further from Britain every day, yet what is left of British ways it clutches tight to its chest. Without that saving connection, what would the Cape be? A minor landing on the way to nowhere; a place of savage idleness.
'In the order paper pinned to the door, he is Number Two to appear before the committee. Number One, when summoned, rises calmly, taps out his pipe, stores it away in what must be a pipe-case, and passes through the portal. After twenty minutes he re-emerges, his face inscrutable.
'It is his turn. He enters and is waved to a seat at the foot of a long table. At the far end are his inquisitors, five in number, all men. Because the windows are open, because the room is above a street where cars are continually passing by, he has to strain to hear them, and raise his own voice to make himself heard.
'Some polite feints, then the first thrust: If appointed, what authors would he like to teach?
'"I can teach pretty much across the board," he replies. "I am not a specialist. I think of myself as a generalist."
'As an answer it is at least defensible. A small department in a small university might be happy to recruit a jack of all trades. But from the silence that falls he gathers he has not answered well. He has taken the question too literally. That has always been a fault of his: taking questions too literally, responding too briefly. These people don't want brief answers. They want something more leisurely, more expansive, something that will allow them to work out what kind of fellow they have before them, what kind of junior colleague he would make, whether he would fit in in a provincial university that is doing its best to maintain standards in difficult times, to keep the flame of civilization burning.
'In America, where they take job-hunting seriously, people like him, people who don't know how to read the agenda behind a question, can't speak in rounded paragraphs, don't put themselves over with conviction – in short, people deficient in people skills – attend training sessions where they learn to look the interrogator in the eye, smile, respond to questions fully and with every appearance of sincerity. Presentation of the self: that is what they call it in America, without irony.
'What authors would he prefer to teach? What research is he currently engaged in? Would he feel competent to offer tutorials in Middle English? His answers sound more and more hollow. The truth is, he does not really want this job. He does not want it because in his heart he knows he is not cut out to be a teacher. Lacks the temperament. Lacks zeal.
'He emerges from the interview in a state of black dejection. He wants to get away from this place at once, without delay. But no, first there are forms to be filled in, travel expenses to be collected.
'"How did it go?"
'The speaker is the candidate who was interviewed first, the pipesmoker.' That is you, if I am not mistaken.
Yes. But I have given up the pipe.
'He shrugs. "Who knows?" he says. "Not well."
'"Shall we get a cup of tea?"
'He is taken aback. Are the two of them not supposed to be rivals? Is it permitted for rivals to fraternize?
'It is late afternoon, the campus is deserted. They make for the Student Union in quest of their cup of tea. The Union is closed. MJ ' – that is what he calls you – 'takes out his pipe. "Ah well," he says. "Do you smoke?"
'How surprising: he is beginning to like this MJ, with his easy, straightforward manner! His gloom is fading fast. He likes MJ and, unless it is all just an exercise in self-presentation, MJ seems inclined to like him too. And this mutual liking has grown up in a flash!
'Yet should he be surprised? Why have the two of them (or the three of them, if the shadowy third is included) been selected to be interviewed for a lectureship in English literature, if not because they are the same kind of person, with the same formation behind them (formation: not the customary English word, he must remember that); and because both, finally and most obviously, are South Africans, white South Africans.'
That is where the fragment ends. It is undated, but I am pretty sure he wrote it in 1999 or 2000. So . . . a couple of questions relating to it. First question: You were the successful candidate, the one who was awarded the lectureship, while Coetzee was passed over. Why do you think he was passed over? Did you detect any resentment on his part?
None at all. I was from inside the system – the colonial university system as it was in those days – while he was from outside, insofar as he had gone off to America for his graduate education. Given the nature of all systems, namely to reproduce themselves, I was always going to have the edge over him. He understood that, in theory and in practice. He certainly didn't put the blame on me.
Very well. My second question: He suggests that in you he has found a new friend, and goes on to list traits that you and he have in common. But when he gets to your white South Africanness he stops and writes no more. Have you any idea why he should have stopped just there?
Why he raised the topic of white South African identity and then dropped it? There are two explanations I can offer. One is that it might have seemed too complex a topic to be explored in a memoir or diary – too complex or too close to the bone. The other is simpler: that the story of his adventures in the academy was too boring to go on with.
And which explanation do you incline toward?
Probably the first, with an admixture of the second. John left South Africa in the 1960s, came back in the 1970s, for decades hovered between South Africa and the United States, then finally decamped to Australia and died there. I left South Africa in the 1970s and never returned. Broadly speaking, he and I shared an attitude toward South Africa and our continued presence there. Our attitude was that, to put it briefly, our presence there was legal but illegitimate. We had an abstract right to be there, a birthright, but the basis of that right was fraudulent. Our presence was grounded in a crime, namely colonial conquest, perpetuated by apartheid. Whatever the opposite is of native or rooted, that was what we felt ourselves to be. We thought of ourselves as sojourners, temporary residents, and to that extent without a home, without a homeland. I don't think I am misrepresenting John. It was something he and I talked about a great deal. I am certainly not misrepresenting myself.