Free Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee

missing. Far out in the veld the vanes of a second pump glinted.
    Front and back doors were locked. He yanked at a shutter andthe restraining hook came loose. Cupping his eyes he peered through the window but could make out nothing.
    As he entered the shed a pair of startled swallows flew out. A harrow covered in dust and cobwebs occupied most of the floor. Barely able to see in the gloom, breathing an odour of paraffin and wool and tar, he scratched along the walls among picks and spades, odds and ends of piping, loops of wire, cartons of empty bottles, till he came upon a pile of empty feed-sacks, which he dragged into the open, shook clean, and laid out as a bed for himself on the stoep.
    He ate the last of the biscuits he had bought. He still had half of his money left but no more use for it. The light faded. There was a flutter of bats under the eaves. He lay on his bed listening to the noises on the night air, air denser than the air of day. Now I am here, he thought. Or at least I am somewhere. He went to sleep.
    The first thing he discovered in the morning was that there were goats running on the farm. A flock of twelve or fourteen appeared from behind the house and crossed the yard at an amble, led by an old male with curling horns. K stood up in his bed to look, whereupon the goats started and clattered down the track to the river-bed. In a moment they had vanished from sight. He had sat down and was idly tying his shoelaces before it came home to him that these snorting long-haired beasts, or creatures like them, would have to be caught, killed, cut up and eaten if he hoped to live. Armed with nothing but his penknife he plunged off after the goats. He spent all day hunting them down. Wild at first, they later grew used to the human being trotting after them; as the sun became hotter they sometimes stopped all together and allowed him to approach to within a few paces before casually showing him their heels. At such moments, closing stealthily in on them, K felt his whole body begin to tremble. It was hard to believe that he had become this savage with the bared knife; nor could he shake off a fear that when he stabbed into the dappledbrown and white neck of the ram the blade of the penknife would fold back and cut his hand. Then the goats would trot off again, and to keep up his spirits he would have to say to himself: They have many thoughts, I have only one thought, my one thought will in the end be stronger than their many. He tried to herd the goats against a fence, but always they slipped away.
    They were leading him in a great circle, he found, round the pump and dam he had observed from the farmhouse the previous day. From closer by he could see that the square concrete dam was in fact full to overflowing; for yards around it there was muddy water and lush marshgrass, and as he approached he could hear the plop of frogs. Only after he had drunk did it occur to him to be puzzled at this luxuriance and to ask himself who saw to it that the dam was full. Later in the afternoon, as he pursued his dogged chase, the goats now ambling ahead of him from one patch of shade to the next, he had his answer: a light wind rose, the wheel creaked and began to turn, from the pump came a dry clanking, and an intermittent trickle of water ran from the pipe.
    Famished and exhausted, too deeply committed to the hunt now to give it up, fearful of losing his quarry during the night in these miles of unknown veld, he fetched his bags, made his bed on the bare earth under the full moon as near to the goats as he dared, and fell into a fitful sleep. He was woken in the middle of the night by splashing and snorting as the goats drank. Still dizzy with exhaustion, he rose and stumbled towards them. For an instant they bunched together, turning to face him, in water up to their hocks; then, as he plunged into the water after them, they scattered in all directions in an explosion of alarm. Almost under his feet one slipped and slid,