labour

"In her angrier moods she denounces all book-learning. Children should be sent to trade school, she says, then put to work. Studying is just nonsense. Learning to be a cabinet-maker or a carpenter, learning to work with wood, is best. She is disenchanted with farming: now that farmers have suddenly become wealthy there is too much idleness among them, too much ostentation." (Boyhood: Scenes from a Provincial Life, 32)

Just this glimpse, whether it is true or not, into Coetzee's own mother's thoughts explains something further of the isolation I spoke of yesterday (see here). The children do not understand the parents or grandparents (see Daphne Rooke's Mittee), the servant does not understand the master, the friends do not understand each other, the lovers become isolated. But the child finds meaning in something besides work, something besides the labour in the fields. "While they labour the children are free to do as they please," (6) Schooldays points out. The pleasure of children can lead, as many of Coetzee's novels point out, to the pain and suffering of others. In this scene, something shocking happens. Throwing stones, Davíd's 'friend', Bengi, hits one of the ducks, "the more gorgeously colored male. He rises half out of the water, falls back, and splashes around trailing a shattered wing. Bengi gives a cry of triumph." This sentimental scene, on the first pages of Schooldays, already affirms the guileless 'evil' of children: what causes one boy to throw a stone labouriously at a duck just for fun?

The scene is dramatic. It sets the stage for what becomes a boyhood, a childhood, a schooling of "book-learning" over against the mother's common sense. Don Quixote or dancing with the stars, Davíd is unusual, uncommon, extraordinary. In this scene he "plunges into the water,  shoes and all, and begins splashing in the direction of the birds." What causes him to do this? Is he protecting them? Is he free to do as he pleases, while Simón and Inés labour? Of course, they hear the commotion and run to help.  "Not since he watched her playing tennis a year ago has he seen her exert herself." A film version of this would almost be comedic, if not tragic. The lethargy of this utopia comes to a crescendo of excitement as Inés runs after her "son" who has jumped into the water after a wounded duck. We are left breathless...