Waiting for the Barbarians
J. M. Coetzee
PENGUIN BOOKS
WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS
J. M. COETZEE was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. His work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Boyhood, Disgrace, Youth, Summertime, and The Childhood of Jesus. He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice. He lives in Australia.
BY J. M. COETZEE
FICTION
Dusklands
In the Heart of the Country
Waiting for the Barbarians
Life & Times of Michael K
Foe
Age of Iron
The Master of Petersburg
Boyhood
The Lives of Animals
Disgrace
Youth
Elizabeth Costello
Slow Man
Diary of a Bad Year
Summertime
The Childhood of Jesus
NONFICTION
White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa
Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews
Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship
Stranger Shores: Literary Essays 1986–1999
The Nobel Lecture in Literature, 2003
Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000–2005
Here and Now: Letters 2008–2011 (with Paul Auster)
The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction and Psychotherapy (with Arabella Kurtz)
PENGUIN BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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New York, New York 10014
penguin.com
First published in Great Britain by Martin Secker & Warburg Limited 1980
First published in the United States of America by Penguin Books 1982
Copyright © 1980 by J. M. Coetzee
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eBook ISBN 9781524705473
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Coetzee, J. M., 1940–
Waiting for the barbarians.
I. Title.
PR9369.3.C58W3 1982
823 81-19188 AACR2
ISBN 9780140061109
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Gabriele Wilson
Cover photograph: Petros Koublis
Version_1
Contents
About the Author
By J. M. Coetzee
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
For Nicolas and Gisela
I
I have never seen anything like it: two little discs of glass su- pended in front of his eyes in loops of wire. Is he blind? I could understand it if he wanted to hide blind eyes. But he is not blind. The discs are dark, they look opaque from the outside, but he can see through them. He tells me they are a new invention. “They protect one’s eyes against the glare of the sun,” he says. “You would find them useful out here in the desert. They save one from squinting all the time. One has fewer headaches. Look.” He touches the corners of his eyes lightly. “No wrinkles.” He replaces the glasses. It is true. He has the skin of a younger man. “At home everyone wears them.”
We sit in the best room of the inn with a flask between us and a bowl of nuts. We do not discuss the reason for his being here. He is here under the emergency powers, that is enough. Instead we talk about hunting. He tells me about the last great drive he rode in, when thousands of deer, pigs, bears were slain, so many that a mountain of carcases had to be left to rot (“Which was a pity”). I tell him about the great flocks of geese and ducks that descend on the lake every year in their migrations and about native ways of trapping them. I suggest that I take him out fishing by night in a native boat. “That is an experience not to be missed,” I say; “the fishermen carry flaming torches and beat drums over the water to drive the fish towards the nets they have laid.” He nods. He tells me about a visit he paid elsewhere on the frontier where people eat certain snakes as a delicacy, and about a huge antelope he shot.
He picks his way uncertainly among the strange furniture but does not remove the dark glasses. He retires early. He is quartered here at the inn because this is the best accommodation the town provides. I have impressed it on the staff that he is an important visitor. “Colonel Joll is from the Third Bureau,” I tell them. “The Third Bureau is the most important division of the Civil Guard nowadays.” That is what we hear, anyhow, in gossip that reaches us long out of date from the capital. The proprietor nods, the maids duck their heads. “We must make a good impression on him.”
I carry my sleeping-mat out on to the ramparts where the night breeze gives some relief from the heat. On the flat roofs of the town I can make out by moonlight the shapes of other sleepers. From under the walnut trees on the square I still hear the murmur of conversation. In the darkness a pipe glows like a firefly, wanes, glows again. Summer is wheeling slowly towards its end. The orchards groan under their burden. I have not seen the capital since I was a young man.
I awake before dawn and tiptoe past the sleeping soldiers, who are stirring and sighing, dreaming of mothers and sweethearts, down the steps. From the sky thousands of stars look down on us. Truly we are here on the roof of the world. Waking in the night, in the open, one is dazzled.
The sentry at the gate sits cross-legged, fast asleep, cradling his musket. The porter’s alcove is closed, his trolley stands outside. I pass.
* *
“We do not have facilities for prisoners,” I explain. “There is not much crime here and the penalty is usually a fine or compulsory labour. This hut is simply a storeroom attached to the granary, as you can see.” Inside it is close and smelly. There are no windows. The two prisoners lie bound on the floor. The smell comes from them, a smell of old urine. I call the guard in: “Get these men to clean themselves, and please hurry.”
I show my visitor into the cool gloom of the granary itself. “We hope for three thousand bushels from the communal land this year. We plant only once. The weather has been very kind to us.” We talk about rats and ways of controlling their numbers. When we return to the hut it smells of wet ash and the prisoners are ready, kneeling in a corner. One is an old man, the other a boy. “They were taken a few days ago,” I say. “There was a raid not twenty miles from here. That is unusual. Normally they keep well away from the fort. These two were picked up afterwards. They say they had nothing to do with the raid. I do not know. Perhaps they are telling the truth. If you want to speak to them I will of course help with the language.”
The boy’s face is puffy and bruised, one eye is swollen shut. I squat down before him and pat his cheek. “Listen, boy,” I say in the patois of the frontier, “we want to talk to you.”
He gives no response.
“He is pretending,” says the guard. “He
understands.”
“Who beat him?” I ask.
“It wasn’t me,” he says. “He was like that when he came.”
“Who beat you?” I ask the boy.
He is not listening to me. He stares over my shoulder, not at the guard but at Colonel Joll beside him.
I turn to Joll. “He has probably never seen anything like it before.” I gesture. “I mean the eyeglasses. He must think you are a blind man.” But Joll does not smile back. Before prisoners, it appears, one maintains a certain front.
I squat in front of the old man. “Father, listen to me. We have brought you here because we caught you after a stock-raid. You know that is a serious matter. You know you can be punished for it.”
His tongue comes out to moisten his lips. His face is grey and exhausted.
“Father, do you see this gentleman? This gentleman is visiting us from the capital. He visits all the forts along the frontier. His work is to find out the truth. That is all he does. He finds out the truth. If you do not speak to me you will have to speak to him. Do you understand?”
“Excellency,” he says. His voice croaks; he clears his throat. “Excellency, we know nothing about thieving. The soldiers stopped us and tied us up. For nothing. We were on the road, coming here to see the doctor. This is my sister’s boy. He has a sore that does not get better. We are not thieves. Show the Excellencies your sore.”
Nimbly, with hand and teeth, the boy begins unwrapping the rags that bandage his forearm. The last rounds, caked with blood and matter, stick to his flesh, but he lifts their edge to show me the red angry rim of the sore.
“You see,” the old man says, “nothing will heal it. I was bringing him to the doctor when the soldiers stopped us. That is all.”
I walk back with my visitor across the square. Three women pass us, coming back from the irrigation dam with washbaskets on their heads. They eye us curiously, keeping their necks stiff. The sun beats down.
“These are the only prisoners we have taken for a long time,” I say. “A coincidence: normally we would not have any barbarians at all to show you. This so-called banditry does not amount to much. They steal a few sheep or cut out a pack-animal from a train. Sometimes we raid them in return. They are mainly destitute tribespeople with tiny flocks of their own living along the river. It becomes a way of life. The old man says they were coming to see the doctor. Perhaps that is the truth. No one would have brought an old man and a sick boy along on a raiding party.”
I grow conscious that I am pleading for them.
“Of course one cannot be sure. But even if they are lying, how can they be of use to you, simple people like that?”
I try to subdue my irritation at his cryptic silences, at the paltry theatrical mystery of dark shields hiding healthy eyes. He walks with his hands clasped before him like a woman.
“Nevertheless,” he says, “I ought to question them. This evening, if it is convenient. I will take my assistant along. Also I will need someone to help me with the language. The guard, perhaps. Does he speak it?”
“We can all make ourselves understood. You would prefer me not to be there?”
“You would find it tedious. We have set procedures we go through.”
* *
Of the screaming which people afterwards claim to have heard from the granary, I hear nothing. At every moment that evening as I go about my business I am aware of what might be happening, and my ear is even tuned to the pitch of human pain. But the granary is a massive building with heavy doors and tiny windows; it lies beyond the abattoir and the mill in the south quarter. Also what was once an outpost and then a fort on the frontier has grown into an agricultural settlement, a town of three thousand souls in which the noise of life, the noise that all these souls make on a warm summer evening, does not cease because somewhere someone is crying. (At a certain point I begin to plead my own cause.)
When I see Colonel Joll again, when he has the leisure, I bring the conversation around to torture. “What if your prisoner is telling the truth,” I ask, “yet finds he is not believed? Is that not a terrible position? Imagine: to be prepared to yield, to yield, to have nothing more to yield, to be broken, yet to be pressed to yield more! And what a responsibility for the interrogator! How do you ever know when a man has told you the truth?”
“There is a certain tone,” Joll says. “A certain tone enters the voice of a man who is telling the truth. Training and experience teach us to recognize that tone.”
“The tone of truth! Can you pick up this tone in everyday speech? Can you hear whether I am telling the truth?”
This is the most intimate moment we have yet had, which he brushes off with a little wave of the hand. “No, you misunderstand me. I am speaking only of a special situation now, I am speaking of a situation in which I am probing for the truth, in which I have to exert pressure to find it. First I get lies, you see—this is what happens—first lies, then pressure, then more lies, then more pressure, then the break, then more pressure, then the truth. That is how you get the truth.”
Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt. That is what I bear away from my conversation with Colonel Joll, whom with his tapering fingernails, his mauve handkerchiefs, his slender feet in soft shoes I keep imagining back in the capital he is so obviously impatient for, murmuring to his friends in theatre corridors between the acts.
(On the other hand, who am I to assert my distance from him? I drink with him, I eat with him, I show him the sights, I afford him every assistance as his letter of commission requests, and more. The Empire does not require that its servants love each other, merely that they perform their duty.)
* *
The report he makes to me in my capacity as magistrate is brief.
“During the course of the interrogation contradictions became apparent in the prisoner’s testimony. Confronted with these contradictions, the prisoner became enraged and attacked the investigating officer. A scuffle ensued during which the prisoner fell heavily against the wall. Efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.”
For the sake of completeness, as required by the letter of the law, I summon the guard and ask him to make a statement. He recites, and I take down his words: “The prisoner became uncontrollable and attacked the visiting officer. I was called in to help subdue him. By the time I came in the struggle had ended. The prisoner was unconscious and bleeding from the nose.” I point to the place where he should make his mark. He takes the pen from me reverently.
“Did the officer tell you what to say to me?” I ask him softly.
“Yes, sir,” he says.
“Were the prisoner’s hands tied?”
“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.”
I dismiss him and fill out the burial warrant.
But before I go to bed I take a lantern, cross the square, and circle through the back streets to the granary. There is a new guard at the door of the hut, another peasant boy wrapped in his blanket asleep. A cricket stops its singing at my approach. The pulling of the bolt does not waken the guard. I enter the hut holding the lantern high, trespassing, I realize, on what has become holy or unholy ground, if there is any difference, preserve of the mysteries of the State.
The boy lies on a bed of straw in a corner, alive, well. He seems to be sleeping, but the tension of his posture betrays him. His hands are tied in front of him. In the other corner is a long white bundle.
I wake the guard. “Who told you to leave the body there? Who sewed it up?”
He hears the anger in my voice. “It was the man who came with the other Excellency, sir. He was here when I came on duty. He said to the boy, I heard him, ‘Sleep with your grandfather, keep him warm.’ He pretended he was going to sew the boy into the shroud too, the same shroud, but he did not.”
While the boy still lies rigidly asleep, his eyes pinched shut, we carry the corpse out. In the yard, with the guard hold
ing the lantern, I find the stitching with the point of my knife, tear the shroud open, and fold it back from the head of the old man.
The grey beard is caked with blood. The lips are crushed and drawn back, the teeth are broken. One eye is rolled back, the other eye-socket is a bloody hole. “Close it up,” I say. The guard bunches the opening together. It falls open. “They say that he hit his head on the wall. What do you think?” He looks at me warily. “Fetch some twine and tie it shut.”
I hold the lantern over the boy. He has not stirred; but when I bend to touch his cheek he flinches and begins to tremble in long ripples that run up and down his body. “Listen to me, boy,” I say, “I am not going to harm you.” He rolls on his back and brings his bound hands up before his face. They are puffy and purple. I fumble at the bonds. All my gestures in relation to this boy are awkward. “Listen: you must tell the officer the truth. That is all he wants to hear from you—the truth. Once he is sure you are telling the truth he will not hurt you. But you must tell him everything you know. You must answer every question he asks you truthfully. If there is pain, do not lose heart.” Picking at the knot I have at last loosened the rope. “Rub your hands together till the blood begins to flow.” I chafe his hands between mine. He flexes his fingers painfully. I cannot pretend to be any better than a mother comforting a child between his father’s spells of wrath. It has not escaped me that an interrogator can wear two masks, speak with two voices, one harsh, one seductive.
“Has he had anything to eat this evening?” I ask the guard.
“I do not know.”
“Have you had anything to eat?” I ask the boy. He shakes his head. I feel my heart grow heavy. I never wished to be drawn into this. Where it will end I do not know. I turn to the guard. “I am leaving now, but there are three things I want you to do. First, when the boy’s hands are better I want you to tie them again, but not so tightly that they swell. Second, I want you to leave the body where it is in the yard. Do not bring it back in. Early in the morning I will send a burial party to fetch it, and you will hand it over to them. If there are any questions, say I gave the orders. Third, I want you to lock the hut now and come with me. I will get you something from the kitchen for the boy to eat, which you will bring back. Come.”
