The history-mining reader in J.M. Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus.

The fallabilities of recording and understanding history are not new field of J.M. Coetzee’s writings; “the Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee,” the latter story of his debut Dusklands presents us with a fractured yet whole history; fractured in the different reports and pieces of the narrative as a whole left out, but whole in its presentation; a first person narrative, an appendix from a fictitious descendant of Jacobus, and other add-ons (the use of J.M. Coetzee’s surname for the main character may also be seen as a conscious anchoring of the fictitious history in real history, forcing the reader to judge for themselves.) Later, in Waiting for the Barbarians, we are presented with an unlodged and nebulous environment, in an unnamed land populated by the denizens of ‘the Empire’ and also the mysterious ‘barbarians.’ Here history is a straining force; the barbarians alien approach to time and the importance of history can be unsettling.

            Coetzee’s 2013 novel The Childhood of Jesus has a similar unlodged setting, but on a much more drastic scale. I have read some reviews that glance over this, claiming that it is Coetzee simply moving aside the humdrum lynchings of story, setting and other extrapalative description to make room for philosophical waxing in the novel, and space for the reader’s interpretations to blossom upon unanswered and often unspoken questions presented throughout. I believe that this unlodging of history and environment, being unusual in texts, forces the reader, through their discomfort, to mine for histories that are not there.

            The Childhood of Jesus feels very open in terms of space, yet is populated with many characters. The space in question is an unnamed land, where Spanish is spoken, (a similar confusion created as when Coetzee used his own surname for Jacobus?) or, more accurately, the populace has to speak Spanish, as we learn that Simón and David had to learn Spanish on the boat to Novilla, the main city. We know that Simón and David came by boat, from a camp called ‘Belstar,’ and that is about as far back for either of them that we are given. We are allowed some insights into these journeys; David loses a document on the boat supposedly detailing who his parents are, which is how he meets Simón, and Simón comments that the portmaster at Belstar will only allow boats out, not back to Belstar.

            The main characters are the only two we ever really get even a shallow insight into. The other Stevedores that Simón works with at the docks at Novilla engage only in the present, to the extent that they are dubious of ‘moving with the times’ and using a crane to save their heavy lifting, or to acknowledge the accumulation of the days upon days of shipping grain to a store that is overflowing and infested with rats. The epitome of such misplacement of past or future thought is Senór Daga, who acts with no understanding of consequence; he robs and engages in violence, and generally seems to float through his life.

            As such, the reader latches onto the small details we are afforded. David’s history, at least for the most part, we get to witness being built, but Simón’s we have not witnessed. We know small details; he had to learn Spanish, he can drive, his father pushed him high on the swing but he never fell off as a child, we know his hands were soft before becoming a stevedore and we know he is middle aged. This is the most we ever really get to know about any character; Coetzee offers us a line into Inés’ past when Simón says of her past at the luxurious ‘La Residencia; “I have no idea what it was like. I have never understood La Residencia or how you landed up there.” Alas, Inés “does not hear the question, or does not think it worthy of reply.” (Coetzee, p.312) Although it is mainly stressed with Simón and David, it is suggested that every character met is not native to this land, that they too had a history elsewhere, but are now fixed into the present, somehow landing up wherever they landed up, Inés in La Residencia, and Simón and David in the blocks.

            The novel ends with a group of characters breaking free of Novilla and the small and barren satellite towns it grows, onward to the town of ‘Estrillata el Norte.’ (Even the place names appear unlodged from a past or hint at environment; “They strike a town name Laguna Verde (why?- there is no lagoon)”) (Coetzee, p.310) Where they will cut off the short history the reader has been allowed an insight to, namely the histories of the characters in Novilla, thus denying the reader even the relevance of this short record. However, Coetzee’s latest book is a sequel entitled The Schooldays of Jesus, and so we shall have to see what residue of history we can drag across the gap.

Cited:

Coetzee, J.M. The Childhood of Jesus. (London: Vintage, 2014)

Isle

        

  "I will leave behind my terraces and my walls... They will be enough. 

              They will be more than enough."   - Cruso in Foe by J.M. Coetzee.

           It’s Narda. It just won’t get better, the cancer has really charred a hole through his jaw. Probably shouldn’t eat his meat. Good job I don’t have to milk him either. Still, I let him continue grazing with the others on the slopes. Can’t see the benefit in killing him. Maybe it’d leave more grass for the others, but not very likely. I feel the rest of his warm, short coat for ticks and lumps before sending him on his way for whoever I grasp out of the herd next. I often find wounds from play and tease among themselves, or from when they’ve gotten too far into the woods, among thorns and denser brush, or maybe something jagged washes ashore. Ten. I always make sure there are just ten of them. I don’t need any others.

            There wasn’t much more when old da was about. Back then counting the goats was his job. He did it with rough hands and force; the goats would bleat and spring away in confusion renewed daily. It was to feel the meat he said. To feel the bones. There were even more goats when mother was there too, and even more back when the old terraces and the old huts were just the huts and the terraces and people skittered and roamed the Isle completing constant tasks in smiling groups. The goats would skip and tumble about the terraces and be found in the huts. They shrunk the woods with their trampling and munching and browsing. It’s grown back now. It’s even spread.

            The goats have complete free roam of the terraces, no longer filled with rich dirt and crops, but grass and stubble. Gale’s pregnant, so soon I’ll choose an old one to bleed out. Still unsure if Narda’s flesh, hide and bones will be consumable or usable. I don’t like putting out the goat’s sparky little lives, as I find myself openly chattering away to them, treating them as my brothers and equals. It’s not often I have to kill one, though. Just to keep the even ten. There’s the fish of the sea and beach, the birds and their eggs which they lay in crevices in the Northern cliff face, and the leaves and roots and berries and mushrooms of the woods. A good crop to top it off, mainly hardy root vegetables and perpetual greens. I collect the rainwater when it comes, and there’s the stream that comes through the woods around the old huts. There’s a well, too, but I don’t always trust it. Too old. Too underused. I’d go down and clear the tunnel, but I don’t like the thought of the dark, small space. That was old da’s job too.

            I can still talk mother’s language. On stormy nights when the wind and rain roar at the hut an I can hear the sea blast the shore, I whisper some of the things she might say to me, out in the air as it goes from humid to a crisp coolness in the eye of the storm. After storms, the beach is filled with some small an large treasures, and a decent stock of driftwood. I hear my mother’s language in the lapping of the waves of the post-storm morning, a calm swash forever up the bay.

            Old da tried to beat the language out of us. Re and throbbing, he’d scream that on the Isle we talk the same tongue, we have to be part of the same group, we must all be the same. The others would go silent and sad. I remember their voices warbling old un-understandable songs out in the fishing boats coming back in to the bay. Mother would sing her own tongue’s songs when working the terraces, and everyone admired them. Slowly, after old da’s first explosion, the Isle became emptier and emptier, until we had to slaughter more than half the goats and burn their corpses before they rotted. The woods swallowed the huts, once populous, and the terraces got riddle with weeds. Soon, the well started to become untrustworthy. It was just old da, mother, me and the goats. The goats knew nothing. Gleefully, they explored the territories opened up to them. I’ve seen the stories and histories painted on the walls of the old huts. Their colours and patterns once soothed me but now they make me sad, as they are written in some other language that some of the other Islanders brought with them. Somehow I felt their language and writing was much more ancient than I’ll ever truly grasp.

            The goats congregate around old da’s grave, as it makes a sudden and unnatural change in the otherwise naturally sloping topography. When he died, with just me and him on the Isle, he smiled, weak and feverish, rook my hands, and whispered “It’s all yours. I leave it all for you, my lad. The Isle is your inheritance.”

I do not count the seasons as I should. I understand the changes that happen over a year, but no longer have anyone to share the significance of time with. I wait for them. Mother told me about them, the groups, and their many names; “coast guard,” “army,” “police,” “government.” Strange, nonsensical names. They will come, and they will be people, as I am people, and we will finally share the Isle, just like before. Just as it should be.

On National Animals

(image via http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/files/2013/11/Julie-Larsen-Maher-5816-American-Bison-in-wild-YELL-05-05-06.jpg)

Bison will wake up everyday from now on across the U.S., they will take the hard hits from sun, snow, wind, rain, they will duel with wolves and hunters, because finally, fine-al-lee, they’ve done that thing that they were born for, they were made for, their ancestors took knocks from tusks and spears and fangs for; they’re now the national mammal of the U.S. of A, my friends; they’re the proud hairy beasts of God’s own freedom country.

            But they won’t. They’ll snuffle mounds of each other’s faeces, they’ll bray strangely at slight sounds among the woods. If they saw a flag, maybe they’d try and eat it, but more likely it’d be an annoyance, a brightly coloured occurrence in a day’s plan of eating, crapping, roaming territories and, at some point, shagging.

            Glancing over the fine people’s at wikipedia’s list of ‘national animals’ I see a bit of a weird trend; migratory birds and sea creatures are ‘claimed’ as some nation or another’s animal. The animal’s feelings asides (sorry about that, Hawksbill Turtle through to peregrine falcon.) How can these animals represent a nation when they’re busy thinking of the next place they need to get to? Some countries have gone with safe bets; Australia’s national bird is the emu, which can’t fly, so it has no choice but to stay in Australia and be the Australian national bird for all the Australians.

            I’m choosing to look at this globally because Britain is a bit embarrassing. A lion. England’s national animal is a lion. Your friendly neighbourhood lion, spotted waiting for the bus on Lewes road, having a pint at the harbour in Falmouth, humming to itself on the Victoria line. Yes. Lions. The English kind. At least Wales and Scotland have got this thing right; the Welsh dragon and the Scottish Unicorn, both as equally real and palpable as a national identity should be.

            What I really want to talk about is what making an animal the representative of a nation means. What does it mean to the animal? This is obvious enough; nothing. An animal sees none of the borders or details of cartography that we have coded out over the centuries. They have no way of understanding or appreciating any facet of a nation’s unifying identities. The bison will join the bald eagle in having no feelings either way on the Iraq war, on George Washington, even on Donald Trump.

            The creation of a national animal reverberates with the same distraction that a zoo or mass conservation effort holds; some animals are allowed to live. People will congratulate the bison while fellow bovines are churned through the slaughterhouse. The bison, if killed, will join Cecil the lion in the list of animals that we’re going to get upset about, that we’re going to fight for. Chicken no.4587’s neck is broken, and the sound is unnoticed, while everyone screams at markets for dog meat for being inhumane.

            The national animal can be filed away; it is safe. Another corner of nature is made clean and shiny, part of the booming mirror we like to see; a world of humans, and symbols for humans to appreciate. The bison is no longer a bison; it is an aspect of human patriotic thought, feeling & national identity. Yet again, animal silence is not translated, not appreciated; it isn’t even interpreted, just conflated, painted over. The national animal now speaks, and its voice trills with the vibrant colours of the flag of the human nation it now symbolizes.

The Same Scene 6 Times

For some reason, I have many pictures of this one scene. These are just the few I managed to find on file; I used to see this field every day, any time I stepped outside my front door. Maybe I took the pictures forgetting I had already taken the predecessing ones, or maybe everytime I saw it from a different angle, under different weather conditions, the trees at a different stage of growth, it appeared a whole new setting.