Free The Childhood of Jesus by J. M. Coetzee Page B

like the music on the radio. Anodina : is that a Spanish word?
    He remembers asking Álvaro once why there was never any news on the radio. ‘News of what?’ inquired Álvaro. ‘News of what is going on in the world,’ he replied. ‘Oh,’ said Álvaro, ‘is something going on?’ As before, he was ready to suspect irony. But no, there was none.
    Ãlvaro does not trade in irony. Nor does Elena. Elena is an intelligent woman but she does not see any doubleness in the world, any difference between the way things seem and the way things are. An intelligent woman and an admirable woman too, who out of the most exiguous of materials—seamstressing, music lessons, household chores—has put together a new life, a life from which she claims—with justice?—that nothing is missing. It is the same with Álvaro and the stevedores: they have no secret yearnings he can detect, no hankerings after another kind of life. Only he is the exception, the dissatisfied one, the misfit. What is wrong with him? Is it, as Elena says, just the old way of thinking and feeling that has not yet died in him, but kicks and shudders in its last throes?
    Things do not have their due weight here: that is what he would like, in the end, to say to Elena. The music we hear lacks weight. Our lovemaking lacks weight. The food we eat, our dreary diet of bread, lacks substance—lacks the substantiality of animal flesh, with all the gravity of bloodletting and sacrifice behind it. Our very words lack weight, these Spanish words that do not come from our heart.
    The music reaches its graceful end. He gets up. ‘I must be going,’ he says. ‘Do you remember how the other day you told me you didn’t suffer from memories?’
    â€˜Did I?’
    â€˜Yes, you did. While we were watching football in the park. Well, I am not like you. I suffer from memories, or the shadows of memories. I know we are all supposed to be washed clean by the passage here, and it is true, I don’t have a great repertoire to call on. But the shadows linger nevertheless. That is what I suffer from. Except that I don’t use the word suffer . I hold onto them, those shadows.’
    â€˜That’s good,’ says Elena. ‘It takes all kinds to make a world.’
    Fidel and David rush into the room, flushed, sweaty, bursting with life. ‘Are there any biscuits?’ demands Fidel.
    â€˜In the jar in the cupboard,’ says Elena.
    The two boys disappear into the kitchen. ‘Are you having a good time?’ Elena calls out.
    â€˜Mm,’ says Fidel.
    â€˜That’s good,’ says Elena.

CHAPTER 9
    â€˜HOW ARE the music lessons going?’ he asks the boy. ‘Are you enjoying them?’
    â€˜Mm. Do you know what? When Fidel grows up he is going to buy himself a tiny, tiny violin’—he shows how tiny the violin will be: a mere two handbreadths—‘and he is going to wear a clown suit and play the violin in the circus. Can we go to the circus?’
    â€˜When the circus next comes to town we can go, all of us. We can invite Álvaro along, and maybe Eugenio too.’
    The boy pouts. ‘I don’t want Eugenio to come. He says things about me.’
    â€˜He said only one thing, that you had a devil in you, and that was just a manner of speaking. He meant you have a spark inside you that makes you good at chess. An imp.’
    â€˜I don’t like him.’
    â€˜All right, we won’t invite Eugenio. What are you learning in your music lessons besides scales?’
    â€˜Singing. Do you want to hear me sing?’
    â€˜I would love to. I didn’t know Elena taught singing. She is full of surprises.’
    They are on the bus, heading out of the city into the countryside. Though there are several other passengers, the boy is not shy to sing. In his clear young voice he chants:
    Wer reitet so spät durch Dampf und Wind?
    Er ist der Vater mit