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

kicking like a fish in the mud to regain its footing. K hurled the whole weight of his body upon it. I must be hard, the thought came to him, I must press through to the end, I must not relent. He could feel the goat’s hindquarters heaving beneath him; it bleated again and again in terror; its body jerked in spasms. K straddled it, clenched his hands around itsneck, and bore down with all his strength, pressing the head under the surface of the water and into the thick ooze below. The hindquarters thrashed, but his knees were gripping the body like a vice. There was a moment when the kicking began to weaken and he almost let up. But the impulse passed. Long after the last snort and tremor he continued to press the goat’s head under the mud. Only when the cold of the water had begun to numb his limbs did he rise and drag himself out.
    For the rest of the night he did not sleep but stamped about in his wet clothes, his teeth chattering, while the moon traversed the sky. When dawn came and it was light enough to see, he returned to the farmhouse and without a second thought put an elbow through a windowpane. The last tinkle of the last shard died away and silence closed in as deep as ever before. He loosened the catch and opened the window wide. From room to room he wandered. But for some larger pieces of furniture—cupboards, beds, wardrobes—there was nothing. His feet left prints on the dusty floor. When he entered the kitchen there was a flurry of wings as birds flew out through the hole in the roof. Droppings lay everywhere; there was a pile of masonry against the far wall where the gable had crumbled, out of which there was even a tiny veld-plant growing.
    Off the kitchen led a small pantry. K opened the window and threw back the shutters. Along one wall stood a row of wooden bins, all empty save one that contained what looked like sand and mouse droppings. On one rack were items of kitchenware, odd members of sets, plastic cups, glass jars, all covered in dust and cobwebs. On another were half-empty bottles of oil and vinegar, jars of icing-sugar and powdered milk, and three bottles of preserves. K opened one, dug away the candlewax seal, and wolfed down what tasted like apricots. The sweetness of the fruit in his mouth mingled with the smell of old slime rising from his wet clothes and made him retch. He took the bottle outside and, standing in the sunlight, ate the rest of it more slowly.
    He crossed the mile of veld back to the dam. Though the air was warm he was still shivering.
    The mud-brown hump of the goat’s flank stuck out of the water. He waded in and, using all his strength, hauled the corpse out by the hind legs. Its teeth were bared, its yellow eyes stood wide; a trickle of water ran out of its mouth. It was a ewe. The urgency of the hunger that had possessed him yesterday was gone. The thought of cutting up and devouring this ugly thing with its wet, matted hair repelled him. The rest of the goats stood on a rise some distance away, their ears pricked towards him. He found it hard to believe that he had spent a day chasing after them like a madman with a knife. He had a vision of himself riding the ewe to death under the mud by the light of the moon, and shuddered. He would have liked to bury the ewe somewhere and forget the episode; or else, best of all, to slap the creature on its haunch and see it scramble to its feet and trot off. It took him hours to drag it back across the veld to the house. There was no way of unlocking the doors: he had to lift it through a window to get it into the kitchen. Then it occurred to him that it would be stupid to butcher it indoors, if the kitchen with its plants and birds could be counted as part of the indoors. So he hauled it out again. He had a feeling that he was losing his grip on why he had come all these hundreds of miles, and had to pace about with his hands over his face before he felt better again.
    He had never cleaned an animal before. There was