Read Online Master of Petersburg by J. M. Coetzee - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: J. M. Coetzee
Ads: Link
has no gloves; he uses the blanket, rolled into a ball, as a muff.
Anna Sergeyevna and her daughter emerge. It is a long walk to the park, along Voznesensky Prospekt and across the foot of Vasilevsky Island. Even before they get to the park he knows he has made a mistake, a stupid mistake. The bandstand is empty, the fields around the skatersâ pond bare save for strutting gulls.
He apologizes to Anna Sergeyevna. âThereâs lots of time, itâs not yet noon,â she replies cheerfully. âShall we go for a walk?â
Her good humour surprises him; he is even more surprised when she takes his arm. With Matryona at her other side they stride across the fields. A family, he thinks: only a fourth required and we will be complete. As if reading his thoughts, Anna Sergeyevna presses his arm.
They pass a flock of sheep huddled in a reed thicket. Matryona approaches them with a handful of grass; they break and scatter. A peasant boy with a stick emerges from the thicket and scowls at her. For an instant it seems that words will pass. Then the boy thinks better of it and Matryona slips back to them.
The exercise is bringing a glow to her cheeks. She will be a beauty yet, he thinks: she will break hearts.
He wonders what his wife would think. His indiscretions hitherto have been followed by remorse and, on the heels of remorse, a voluptuous urge to confess. These confessions, tortured in expression yet vague in point of detail, have confused and infuriated his wife, bedevilling their marriage far more than the infidelities themselves.
But in the present case he feels no guilt. On the contrary, he has an invincible sense of his own rightness. He wonders what this sense of rightness conceals; but he does not really want to know. For the present there is something like joy in his heart. Forgive me, Pavel , he whispers to himself. But again he does not really mean it.
If only I had my life over again, he thinks; if only I were young! And perhaps also: If only I had the use of the life, the youth that Pavel threw away!
And what of the woman at his side? Does she regret the impulse by which she gave herself to him? Had that never happened, todayâs outing might mark the opening of a proper courtship. For that is surely what a woman wants: to be courted, wooed, persuaded, won! Even when she surrenders, she wants to give herself up not frankly but in a delicious haze of confusion, resisting yet unresisting. Falling, but never an irrevocable falling. No: to fall and then come back from the fall new, remade, virginal, ready to be wooed again and to fall again. A playing with death, a play of resurrection.
What would she do if she knew what he was thinking? Draw back in outrage? And would that be part of the play too?
He steals a glance at her, and in that instant it comes home to him: I could love this woman . More than the tug of the body, he feels what he can only call kinship with her. He and she are of the same kind, the same generation. And all of a sudden the generations fall into place: Pavel and Matryona and his wife Anna ranked on the one side, he and Anna Sergeyevna on the other. The children against those who are not children, those old enough to recognize in their lovemaking the first foretaste of death. Hence the urgency that night, hence the heat. She in his arms like Jeanne dâArc in the flames: the spirit wrestling against its bonds while the body burns away. A struggle with time. Something a child would never understand.
âPavel said you were in Siberia.â
Her words startle him out of his reverie.
âFor ten years. That is where I met Pavelâs mother. In Semipalatinsk. Her husband was in the customs service. He died when Pavel was seven. She died too, a few years ago â Pavel must have told you.â
âAnd then you married again.â
âYes. What did Pavel have to say about that?â
âOnly that your wife is young.â
âMy wife and Pavel are
Anna Sergeyevna and her daughter emerge. It is a long walk to the park, along Voznesensky Prospekt and across the foot of Vasilevsky Island. Even before they get to the park he knows he has made a mistake, a stupid mistake. The bandstand is empty, the fields around the skatersâ pond bare save for strutting gulls.
He apologizes to Anna Sergeyevna. âThereâs lots of time, itâs not yet noon,â she replies cheerfully. âShall we go for a walk?â
Her good humour surprises him; he is even more surprised when she takes his arm. With Matryona at her other side they stride across the fields. A family, he thinks: only a fourth required and we will be complete. As if reading his thoughts, Anna Sergeyevna presses his arm.
They pass a flock of sheep huddled in a reed thicket. Matryona approaches them with a handful of grass; they break and scatter. A peasant boy with a stick emerges from the thicket and scowls at her. For an instant it seems that words will pass. Then the boy thinks better of it and Matryona slips back to them.
The exercise is bringing a glow to her cheeks. She will be a beauty yet, he thinks: she will break hearts.
He wonders what his wife would think. His indiscretions hitherto have been followed by remorse and, on the heels of remorse, a voluptuous urge to confess. These confessions, tortured in expression yet vague in point of detail, have confused and infuriated his wife, bedevilling their marriage far more than the infidelities themselves.
But in the present case he feels no guilt. On the contrary, he has an invincible sense of his own rightness. He wonders what this sense of rightness conceals; but he does not really want to know. For the present there is something like joy in his heart. Forgive me, Pavel , he whispers to himself. But again he does not really mean it.
If only I had my life over again, he thinks; if only I were young! And perhaps also: If only I had the use of the life, the youth that Pavel threw away!
And what of the woman at his side? Does she regret the impulse by which she gave herself to him? Had that never happened, todayâs outing might mark the opening of a proper courtship. For that is surely what a woman wants: to be courted, wooed, persuaded, won! Even when she surrenders, she wants to give herself up not frankly but in a delicious haze of confusion, resisting yet unresisting. Falling, but never an irrevocable falling. No: to fall and then come back from the fall new, remade, virginal, ready to be wooed again and to fall again. A playing with death, a play of resurrection.
What would she do if she knew what he was thinking? Draw back in outrage? And would that be part of the play too?
He steals a glance at her, and in that instant it comes home to him: I could love this woman . More than the tug of the body, he feels what he can only call kinship with her. He and she are of the same kind, the same generation. And all of a sudden the generations fall into place: Pavel and Matryona and his wife Anna ranked on the one side, he and Anna Sergeyevna on the other. The children against those who are not children, those old enough to recognize in their lovemaking the first foretaste of death. Hence the urgency that night, hence the heat. She in his arms like Jeanne dâArc in the flames: the spirit wrestling against its bonds while the body burns away. A struggle with time. Something a child would never understand.
âPavel said you were in Siberia.â
Her words startle him out of his reverie.
âFor ten years. That is where I met Pavelâs mother. In Semipalatinsk. Her husband was in the customs service. He died when Pavel was seven. She died too, a few years ago â Pavel must have told you.â
âAnd then you married again.â
âYes. What did Pavel have to say about that?â
âOnly that your wife is young.â
âMy wife and Pavel are
Similar Books
