Summertime Read Free Page B

not what most people would call attractive. He was scrawny, he had a beard, he wore horn-rimmed glasses and sandals. He looked out of place, like a bird, one of those flightless birds; or like an abstracted scientist who had wandered by mistake out of his laboratory. There was an air of seediness about him too, an air of failure. I guessed there was no woman in his life, and it turned out I was right. What he plainly needed was someone to take care of him, some no-longer-young hippie with beads and hairy armpits and no makeup who would do the shopping and the cooking and cleaning and maybe supply him with dope too. I didn't get close enough to check out his feet, but I was ready to bet the toenails weren't trimmed.
     
I was always conscious, in those days, of when a man was looking at me. I could feel a pressure on my limbs, on my breasts, the pressure of the male gaze, sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle. You won't understand what I am talking about, but any woman will. With this man there was no pressure detectable. None.
     
Then one day that changed. I was standing in front of the stationery rack. Christmas was around the corner, and I was selecting wrapping paper – you know, paper with jolly Christmas motifs, candles, fir-trees, reindeer. By accident I let a roll slip, and as I bent to pick it up I dropped a second roll. Behind me I heard a man's voice: 'I'll get them.' It was of course your man, John Coetzee. He picked up both rolls, which were quite long, a metre maybe, and returned them to me, and as he did so, whether intentionally or not I still can't say, pressed them into my breast. For a second or two, through the length of the rolls, he could actually be said to have been prodding my breast.
     
It was outrageous, of course. At the same time it was not important. I tried to show no reaction: did not drop my eyes, did not blush, certainly did not smile. 'Thank you,' I said in a neutral voice, and turned away and went on with my business.
     
Nevertheless it was a personal act, no use pretending it wasn't. Whether it was going to fade away and be lost among all the other personal moments only time would tell. But not easily ignored, that intimate, unexpected nudge. In fact when I got home I went so far as to lift my bra and examine the breast in question. It was unmarked, of course. Just a breast, a young woman's innocent breast.
     
Then a couple of days later, driving home along Tokai Road, I spotted him on foot, Mister Prod, carrying his shopping bags. Without thinking twice I stopped and offered him a lift (you are too young to know, but in those days one still offered lifts).
     
Tokai of the 1970s was what you would call an upwardly mobile suburb. Though land was not cheap, there was a lot of new building going on. But the house where John lived was from an earlier era. It was one of the cottages that had housed farm-workers when Tokai was still farmland. Electricity and plumbing had been added, but as a home it was still fairly basic. I dropped him at the front gate; he did not ask me in.
     
Time passed. Then, happening one day to drive past the house, which was on Tokai Road, a big road, I caught sight of him. He was standing in the back of a pickup truck, shovelling sand into a wheelbarrow. He wore shorts; he looked pale and not particularly strong, but he seemed to be managing.
     
What was odd was that it was not customary in those days for a white man to do manual labour, unskilled labour. Kaffir work, it was generally called, work you paid someone else to do. If it was not exactly shameful to be seen shovelling sand, it certainly let the side down, if you know what I mean.
     
You asked me to give an idea of John as he was in those days, but I can't give you a picture of him alone without any background, otherwise there are things you will fail to understand.
     
I understand. I mean, I accept that.
     
I drove past him, as I said, did not slow down, did not wave. The whole story could have