Life & Times Of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee

Author:J. M. Coetzee [Coetzee, J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: prose_contemporary

It was not a horse but a donkey, a donkey so tiny that its rider's feet almost touched the ground. Further back there was a second donkey, riderless but with two bulky grey packs strapped to its sides; and between the two donkeys he counted eight men, with a ninth at the tail of the train. All of them had guns; some seemed to carry packs as well. One wore blue trousers, another yellow, but otherwise they were in camouflage uniform.

As quietly as he could K slid backwards into the hole. From the doorway he could no longer see anything of them, but on the windless air he heard them dismount at the dam, heard the rattle of the chain as they released the brake on the pump, even heard a murmur of words. Someone climbed the ladder to the platform high above the ground, then climbed down again.

It grew darker, till it was only the snorting of the donkeys that revealed how nearby the strangers were. K heard the thud of an axe down in the river-bed; later the contour of the ridge above him began to be visible against the faint orange glow of their fire. There was a puff of wind; the rudder swung, metal groaned, the wheel of the pump turned once and stopped. 'Why no water?'- he heard the words clearly. There were more words he could not make out, followed by a burst of laughter. Then the wind stirred again, the pump groaned and turned, and through the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet K heard the first boom of the piston deep in the earth. There was a muted cheer. On the wind came the smell of roasting meat.

K closed his eyes and rested his face on his hands. It was clear to him now that it was not soldiers who were camping at the dam, who had earlier camped in the house, but men from the mountains, men who blew up railway tracks and mined roads and attacked farmhouses and drove off stock and cut one town off from another, whom the radio reported exterminated in scores and the newspapers published pictures of sprawling gape-mouthed in pools of their own blood. That was who his visitors were. Yet they seemed to him like nothing so much as a football team: eleven young men come off the field after a hard game, tired, happy, hungry.

His heart was pounding. When they leave in the morning, he thought to himself, I could come out of hiding and trot along behind them like a child following a brass band. After a while they would notice me and stop to ask what I wanted. And I could say: Give me a pack to carry; let me chop wood and build the fire at the end of the day. Or I could say: Be sure to come back to the dam next time, and I will feed you. I will have pumpkins and squashes and melons by then, I will have peaches and figs and prickly pears, you will lack nothing.

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