J.M. Coetzee - The Master of Petersburg

The Master of PetersburgbyJ.M. Coetzee(First published in 1994)I_Petersburg_October, 1869. A droshky passes slowly down a street in the Haymarket district ofSt Petersburg. Before a tall tenement building the driver reins in his horse.His passenger regards the building dubiously. 'Are you sure this is theplace?' he asks.'Sixty-three Svechnoi Street, that's what you said.'The passenger steps out. He is a man in late middle age, bearded andstooped, with a high forehead and heavy eyebrows that lend him an air of soberself-absorption. He wears a dark suit of somewhat dmod cut.

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'Wait for me,' he tells the driver.Beneath scarred and peeling exteriors the older houses of the Haymarketstill retain some of their original elegance, though most have by now becomerooming-houses for clerks and students and working-folk. In the spaces betweenthem, sometimes sharing walls with them, have been erected rickety woodenstructures _of _two or even three storeys, warrens of rooms and cubicles, thehomes of the very poorest.No .63, one of the older dwellings, is flanked on both sides by structuresof this kind. Indeed, a web of beams and struts crosses its face at mid-level,giving it a hemmed-in look.Birds have nested in the crooks of the reinforcing, and their droppingsstain the faade.

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A band of children who have been climbing the struts to lob stones intopuddles in the street, then leaping down to retrieve them, pause in their game toinspect the stranger. The three youngest are boys; the fourth, who seems to betheir leader, is a girl with fair hair and striking dark eyes.'Good afternoon,' he calls out. 'Do any of you know where Anna SergeyevnaKolenkina lives?'The boys make no response, staring at him unyieldingly. But the girl, aftera moment, lets fall her stones. 'Come,' she says.The third floor of No .63 is a warren of interconnecting rooms giving offfrom a landing at the head of the stairs. He follows the girl down a dark, hook-shaped passageway that smells of cabbage and boiled beef, past an open washroom,to a grey-painted door which she pushes open.They are in a long, low room lit by a single window at head-height. Itsgloom is intensified by a heavy brocade on me longest wall. A woman dressed inblack rises to face him. She is in her middle thirties; she has the same dark eyesand sculpted eyebrows as the child, but her hair is black.'Forgive me for coming unannounced,' he says. 'My name...' He hesitates. 'Ibelieve my son has been a lodger of yours.'From his valise he takes an object and unwraps the white napkin around it.It is a picture of a boy, a daguerreotype in a silvered frame.'Perhaps you recog- nize him,' he says. He does not give the picture intoher hands.

'It is Pavel Alexandrovich, Mama,' whispers the child.'Yes, he stayed with us,' says the woman. 'I am very sorry.' There is anawkward silence. 'He was a lodger here since April,' she resumes. 'His room is ashe left it, and all his belongings, except for some things that the police took.Do you want to see?''Yes,' he says hoarsely. 'If there is rent owed, I am of courseresponsible.'His son's room, though really only a cubicle partitioned off from the restof the apartment, has its own entrance as well as a window on to the street. Thebed is neatly made up; for the rest, there is a chest of drawers, a small tablewith a lamp, a chair. At the foot of the bed is a suitcase with the initials P. A.I. embossed on it. He recognizes it: a gift of his to Pavel.He crosses to the window and looks out. On the street the droshky is stillwaiting. 'Will you do something for me?' he asks the girl. 'Will you tell thedriver he can go now, and will you pay him?'The child takes the money he gives her and leaves.'I would like to be by myself for a while, if you don't mind,' he tells thewoman.The first thing he does when she has left is to turn back the covers of thebed. The sheets are fresh. He kneels and puts his nose to the pillow; but he cansmell nothing but soap and sun. He opens the drawers.They have been emptied.He lifts the suitcase on to the bed. Neatly folded on top is a white cottonsuit. He presses his forehead to it.Faintly the smell of his son comes to him. He breathes in deeply, again andagain, thinking: his ghost, entering me.He draws the chair to the window and sits gazing out. Dusk is falling,deepening. The street is empty. Time passes; his thoughts do not move._Pondering_, he thinks--that is the word. This heavy head, these heavy eyes:lead settling into the soul.The woman, Anna Sergeyevna, and her daughter are having supper, sittingacross the table from each other with the lamp between them. They fall silent whenhe enters.'You know who I am?' he says.She looks steadily at him, waiting.'You know, I mean, that I am not Isaev?''Yes, we know. We know Pavel's story.''Don't let me interrupt your meal. Do you mind if I leave the suitcasebehind for the time being? I will pay to the end of the month. In fact, let me payfor November too. I would like to keep the room, if it isn't promised.'He gives her the money, twenty roubles.'You don't mind if I come now and then in the afternoons? Is there someoneat home during the day?'She hesitates. A look passes between her and the child. Already, hesuspects, she is having second thoughts. Better if he would take the suitcase awayand never come back, so that the story of the dead lodger could be closed and theroom freed. She does not want this mournful man in her home, casting darkness allabout him. But it is too late, the money has been offered and accepted.'Matryosha is at home in the afternoons,' she says quiedy. 'I will give youa key. Could I ask you to use your own entrance? The door between the lodger'sroom and this one doesn't lock, but we don't normally use it.''I am sorry. I didn't realize.'Matryona.For an hour he wanders around the familiar streets of the Haymarket quarter.Then he makes his way back across Kokushkin Bridge to the inn where, under thename Isaev, he took a room earlier in the day.He is not hungry. Fully dressed, he lies down, folds his arms, and tries tosleep. But his mind goes back to No .63, to his son's room. The curtains are open.

Moonlight falls on the bed. He is there: he stands by the door, hardly breathing,concentrating his gaze on the chair in the corner, waiting for the darkness tothicken, to turn into another kind of darkness, a darkness of presence. Silentlyhe forms his lips over his son's name, three times, four times.He is trying to cast a spell. But over whom: over a ghost or over himself?He thinks of Orpheus walking backwards step by step, whispering the dead woman'sname, coaxing her out of the entrails of hell; of the wife in graveclothes withthe blind, dead eyes following him, holding out limp hands before her like asleepwalker. No flute, no lyre, just the word, the one word, over and over. Whendeath cuts all other links, there remains still the name. Baptism: the union of asoul with a name, the name it will carry into eternity. Barely breathing, he formsthe syllables again_: Pavel_. His head begins to swim. 'I must go now,' hewhispers or thinks he whispers; 'I will come back.'_I will come back_: the same promise he made when he took the boy to schoolfor his first term_. You will not be abandoned_. And abandoned him.He is falling asleep. He imagines himself plunging down a long waterfallinto a pool, and gives himself over to the plunge._2__The cemetery_They meet at the ferry. When he sees the flowers Matryona is carrying, he isannoyed. They are small and white and modest. Whether Pavel has a favourite amongflowers he does not know, but roses, whatever roses cost in October, roses scarletas blood, are the least he deserves.'I thought we could plant it,' says the woman, reading his thoughts. 'Ibrought a trowel. Bird's-foot: it flowers late.' And now he sees: the roots areindeed wrapped in a damp cloth.They take the little ferryboat to Yelagin Island, which he has not visitedin years. But for two old women in black, they are the only passengers. It is acold, misty day. As they approach, a dog, grey and emaciated, begins to lope upand down the jetty, whining eagerly. The ferryman swings a boathook at it; itretreats to a safe distance. Isle of dogs, he thinks: are there packs of themskulking among the trees, waiting for the mourners to leave before they begintheir digging?At the gatekeeper's lodge it is Anna Sergeyevna, whom he still thinks of as_the landlady_, who goes to ask direc- tions, while he waits outside. Then thereis the walk through the avenues of the dead. He has begun to cry_. Why now? _hethinks, irritated with himself. Yet the tears are welcome in their way, a softveil of blindness between himself and the world.'Here, Mama!' calls Matryona.They are before one mound of earth among many mounds with cross-shapedstakes plunged into them bearing shingles with painted numbers. He tries to closehis mind to this one number_, his _number, but not before he has seen the 7s andthe 4s and has thought: Never can I bet on the seven again.This is the moment at which he ought to fall on the grave. But it is all toosudden, this particular bed of earth is too strange, he cannot find any feelingfor it in his heart. He mistrusts, too, the chain of indifferent hands throughwhich his son's limbs must have passed while he was still in Dresden, ignorant asa sheep. From the boy who still lives in his memory to the name on the deathcertificate to the number on the stake he is not yet prepared to accept the trainof fatality._Provisional_, he thinks: there are no final numbers, all are provisional,otherwise the play would come to an end. In a while the wheel will roll, the