Boyhood by Coetzee J.M

Author:Coetzee, J.M. [Coetzee, J.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-17T23:32:45+00:00

TWELVE

IN WORCESTER the wind is always blowing, thin and cold in the winter, hot and dry in summer. After an hour outdoors there is a fine red dust in one's hair, in one's ears, on one's tongue.

He is healthy, full of life and energy, yet seems always to have a cold. In the mornings he wakes up tight-throated, red-eyed, sneezing uncontrollably, his body-temperature soaring and plunging. 'I'm sick,' he croaks to his mother. She rests the back of her hand against his forehead. 'Then you must surely stay in bed,' she sighs.

There is one more difficult moment to get through, the moment when his father says, 'Where's John?' and his mother says, 'He's sick,' and his father snorts and says, 'Pretending again.' Through this he lies as quiet as he can, till his father is gone and his brother is gone and he can at last settle down to a day of reading.

He reads at great speed and with total absorption. During his sick spells his mother has to visit the library twice a week to take out books for him: two on her cards, another two on his own. He avoids the library himself in case the librarian asks questions when he brings his books to be stamped.

He knows that if he wants to be a great man he ought to be reading serious books. He ought to be like Abraham Lincoln or James Watt, studying by candlelight while everyone else is sleeping, teaching himself Latin and Greek and astronomy. He has not abandoned the idea of being a great man; he promises himself he will soon begin serious reading; but for the present all he wants to read are stories.

He reads all the Enid Blyton mystery stories, all the Hardy Boys stories, all the Biggies stories. But the books he likes best are the French Foreign Legion stories of P C Wren. 'Who is the greatest writer in the world?' he asks his father. His father says Shakespeare. 'Why not P C Wren?' he says. His father has not read P C Wren and, despite his soldiering background, does not seem interested in doing so. 'P C Wren wrote forty-six books. How many books did Shakespeare write?' he challenges, and starts reciting titles. His father says 'Aah!' in an irritated, dismissive way but has no reply.

If his father likes Shakespeare then Shakespeare must be bad, he decides. Nevertheless, he begins to read Shakespeare, in the yellowing edition with the tattered edges that his father inherited and that may be worth lots of money because it is old, trying to discover why people say Shakespeare is great. He reads Titus Andronicus because of its Roman name, then Coriolanus, skipping the long speeches as he skips the nature descriptions in his library books.

Besides Shakespeare, his father owns the poems of Wordsworth and the poems of Keats. His mother owns the poems of Rupert Brooke. These poetry books have pride of place on the mantelshelf in the living-room, along with Shakespeare, The Story of San Michèle in a leather slip-case, and a book by A J Cronin about a doctor.

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