Free Master of Petersburg by J. M. Coetzee Page A

godlike strength and beauty. When her playmates ask about the funereal visitor who refuses to pack his belongings and leave, what, he wonders, does she reply?
    You were pleading: when he thinks of Anna Sergeyevna’s words he flinches. To have been an object of pity all the time! He goes down on his knees, rests his forehead against the bed, tries to find his way to Yelagin Island and to Pavel in his cold grave. Pavel, at least, will not turn on him. On Pavel he can rely, on Pavel and Pavel’s icy love.
    The father, faded copy of the son. How can he expect a woman who beheld the son in the pride of his days to look with favour on the father?
    He remembers the words of a fellow-prisoner in Siberia: ‘Why are we given old age, brothers? So that we can grow small again, small enough to crawl through the eye of a needle.’ Peasant wisdom.
    He kneels and kneels, but Pavel does not come. Sighing, he clambers at last into bed.
    He awakes full of surprise. Though it is still dark, he feels as if he has rested enough for seven nights. He is fresh and invincible; the very tissues of his brain seem washed clean. He can barely contain himself. He is like a child at Easter, on fire for the household to wake up so that he can share his joy with them. He wants to wake her, the woman, he wants the two of them to dance through the apartment: ‘Christ is risen!’ he wants to call out, and hear her respond ‘Christ is risen!’ and clash her egg against his. The two of them dancing in a circle with their painted eggs, and Matryosha as well, in her nightdress, stumbling sleepy-eyed and happy amid their legs; and the ghost of the fourth one too, weaving between them, clumsy, big-footed, smiling: children together, newborn, released from the tomb. And over the city dawn breaking, and the roosters in the yards crowing their welcome of the new day.
    Joy breaking like a dawn! But only for an instant. It is not merely that clouds begin to cross this new, radiant sky. It is as if, at the moment when the sun comes forth in its glory, another sun appears too, a shadow sun, an anti-sun sliding across its face. The word omen crosses his mind in all its dark, ominous weight. The dawning sun is there not for itself but to undergo eclipse; joy shines out only to reveal what the annihilation of joy will be like.
    In a single hasty movement he is out of bed. The next few minutes stretch before him like a dark passage down which he must scurry. He must dress and get out of the apartment before the shame of the fit descends; he must find a place out of sight, out of the hearing of decent people, where he can manage the episode as best he can.
    He lets himself out. The corridor is in pitch darkness. Stretching out his arms like a blind man, he gropes his way to the head of the stairs and, holding to the banister, taking one step at a time, begins to descend. On the second-floor landing a wave of terror overtakes him, terror without object. He sits down in a corner and holds his head. His hands are smelly from something he has touched, but he does not wipe them. Let it come, he thinks in despair; I have done all I can.
    There is a cry that echoes down the stairwell, so loud and so frightful that sleepers are woken by it. As for him, he hears nothing, he is gone, there is no longer time.
    When he wakes it is into darkness so dense that he can feel it pressing upon his eyeballs. He has no idea where he is, no idea who he is. He is a wakefulness, a consciousness, that is all. It is as if he has been born a minute ago, born into a world of unrelieved night.
    Be calm, says this consciousness, addressing itself, trying to quell its own panic: you have been here before – wait, something will come back.
    A body falls vertically through space inside him. He is that body. There is a rush of air: he is the one who feels the rush. There is a throat choked with terror: it is his throat.
    Let it die, he thinks: let it die!
    He tries to move an