Life & Times Of Michael K

J. M. Coetzee

Life Times Of Michael K

War is the father of all and king of all. Some he shows as gods, others as men. Some he makes slaves, and others free.

ONE

THE FIRST THING THE MIDWIFE NOTICED ABOUT MICHAEL K when she helped him out of his mother into the world was that he had a hare lip. The lip curled like a snail's foot, the left nostril gaped. Obscuring the child for a moment from its mother, she prodded open the tiny bud of a mouth and was thankful to find the palate whole.

To the mother she said: 'You should be happy, they bring luck to the household.' But from the first A

'It will close up as he grows older,' the midwife promised. However, the lip did not close, or did not close enough, nor did the nose come straight.

She took the child with her to work and continued to take it when it was no longer a baby. Because their smiles and whispers hurt her, she kept it away from other children. Year after year Michael K sat on a blanket watching his mother polish other people's floors, learning to be quiet.

Because of his disfigurement and because his mind was not quick, Michael was taken out of school after a short trial and committed to the protection of Huis Norenius in Faure, where at the expense of the state he spent the rest of his childhood in the company of other variously afflicted and unfortunate children learning the elements of reading, writing, counting, sweeping, scrubbing, bedmaking, dishwashing, basketweaving, woodwork and digging. At the age of fifteen he passed out of Huis Norenius and joined the Parks and Gardens division of the municipal services of the City of Cape Town as Gardener, grade 3(b). Three years later he left Parks and Gardens and, after a spell of unemployment which he spent lying on his bed looking at his hands, took a job as night attendant at the public lavatories on Green-market Square. On his way home from work late one Friday he was set upon in a subway by two men who beat him, took his watch, his money and his shoes, and left him lying stu

Because of his face K did not have women friends. He was easiest when he was by himself. Both his jobs had given him a measure of solitariness, though down in the lavatories he had been oppressed by the brilliant neon light that shone off the white tiles and created a space without shadows. The parks he preferred were those with tall pine trees and dim agapanthus walks. Sometimes on Saturdays he failed to hear the boom of the noon gun and went on working by himself all through the afternoon. On Sunday mornings he slept late; on Sunday afternoons he visited his mother.

Late one morning in June, in the thirty-first year of his life, a message was brought to Michael K as he raked leaves in De Waal Park. The message, at third hand, was from his mother: she had been discharged from hospital and wanted him to come and fetch her. K put away his tools and made his way by bus to Somerset Hospital, where he found his mother seated on a bench in a patch of sunlight outside the entrance. She was fully dressed, save that her street shoes stood beside her. When she saw her son she began to weep, holding a hand before her eyes so that other patients and visitors should not see.

For months A

At the desk Michael K asked for the use of a wheelchair and was refused it. Carrying her handbag and shoes for her, he supported his mother the fifty paces to the bus stop. There was a long queue. The timetable pasted on the pole promised a bus every fifteen minutes. They waited for an hour while the shadows lengthened and the wind grew chilly. Unable to stand, A

For eight years A

Her room under the stairs of the Côte d'Azur had been intended for air-conditioning equipment, which had never been installed. On the door was a sign: a skull and crossed bones painted in red, and underneath the legend danger-gevaar-ingozi. There was no electric light and no ventilation; the air was always musty. Michael opened the door for his mother, lit a candle, and stepped outside while she prepared for bed. He spent this, the first evening of her return, and every evening for the next week, with her: he warmed soup for her on the paraffin stove, saw to her comfort as far as he was able, carried out necessary tasks, and consoled her by stroking her arms when she fell into one of her fits of tears. One evening the buses from Sea Point did not run at all and he had to spend the night in her room sleeping on the mat with his coat on. In the middle of the night he woke chilled to the bone. Unable to sleep, unable to leave because of the curfew, he sat shivering on the chair till daylight while his mother groaned and snored.