The Schooldays of Jesus by J. M. Coetzee

Author:J. M. Coetzee [Coetzee, J. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vintage Digital
Published: 2016-03-14T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The courts of justice in Estrella have as their mandate the recovery, rehabilitation and salvation (recuperación, rehabilitación y salvación) of offenders: so much he has learned from his fellow bicycle messengers. From this it follows that there are two kinds of trial at law: the long kind, in which the accused contests the charge and the court must determine his guilt or innocence; and the short kind, in which the accused admits his guilt and the task of the court is to prescribe the appropriate remedial penalty.

Dmitri has, from the first, admitted his guilt. He has signed his name to not one but three confessions, each more copious than the previous, relating in detail how he violated and then strangled Ana Magdalena Arroyo. He has been given every opportunity to minimize his transgression (Had he been drinking on the fatal night? Had the victim died by misadventure in the course of erotic play?) but has refused them all. What he did was inexcusable, he says, unforgivable. Whether what he did is forgivable or unforgivable is not for him to decide, reply his interrogators; what he must say is why he did what he did. This is the point at which the third confession comes to an abrupt stop. ‘The accused refused to cooperate further,’ report his interrogators. ‘The accused became foul-mouthed and violent.’

Proceedings are set for the last day of the month, when Dmitri will appear before a judge and two assessors for sentencing.

Two days before the trial a pair of uniformed officers knock at the door of his, Simón’s, rented room and deliver a message: Dmitri has requested to see him.

‘Me?’ he says. ‘Why should he want to see me? He barely knows me.’

‘No idea,’ say the officers. ‘Please come with us.’

They drive him to the police cells. It is six in the evening; a change of shift is taking place, prisoners in the cells are about to receive their supper; he has to kick his heels for quite a while before he is led into an airless room with a vacuum cleaner in one corner and two mismatched chairs, where Dmitri — his hair neatly cut, wearing sharply ironed khaki trousers and a khaki shirt and sandals, looking considerably smarter than in his old days as a museum attendant — awaits him.

‘How are you, Simón?’ Dmitri greets him. ‘How is the fair Inés, and how is that youngster of yours? I think of him often. I loved him, you know. I loved them all, the little dancers from the Academy. And they loved me. But it is gone now, all gone.’

He, Simón, is irritated enough at being called out to visit the man; being treated to this sentimental patter brings him to a boil. ‘You bought their affection with sweets,’ he says. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘You are cross, and I can see why. I have done a terrible thing. I have brought grief to many hearts. My behaviour has been inexcusable, inexcusable. You are right to turn your back on me.

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