Mind Picker: The Schooldays of Jesus

To his and Inés' enquiries about his schooldays the boy responds briefly and reluctantly. Yes, he likes señor Arroyo. Yes, they are learning songs. No, they have not had reading lessons. No, they do not do sums. About the mysterious arc that señora Arroyo sounds at the end of the day he will say nothing.

The Schooldays of Jesus picks up where The Childhood of Jesus left off (and as a result, I can't imagine understanding much of this book without having read the earlier): In this new land where refugees arrive with erased memories and assigned identities, the formerly unacquainted Simón, Inés, and six-year-old David have formed a type of family, and after the authorities in Novilla had threatened to remove the headstrong David and send him to a reformatory school, the trio fled to the faraway city of Estrella. As this book begins, the family arrives at a farm where they are hired on as fruitpickers, and as David runs wild with the local children, Simón and Inés attempt to solve the problem of the boy's education: having proven himself incapable of conforming to the demands of a public school setting, just how will the precocious and stubborn little boy be prepared for life? After the family suffers through an unsatisfactory meeting with a local tutor, the women who own the farm – a trio of aging spinsters known as The Three Sisters – offer to pay the tuition for David to attend the Academy of Dance in downtown Estrella. With gratitude, the family decamps to the city where young David commences his schooldays. Filled with odd situations and nonstop philosophical debates, I was intrigued by The Schooldays of Jesus, but as with Childhood, I can't say that I completely understand author J. M. Coetzee's intentions here (perhaps it will all be resolved in a third volume?); yet, I'm glad to have had had the experience.

Having been assured that the Academy of Dance would give David the most well-rounded education possible, Simón and Inés don't understand when David explains that the students spend their days dancing, “calling the numbers down from the stars”. This process is never made clearer to the reader than it is to the baffled parents:

'Inés showed me your dance chart,' he says. 'What are the numbers for? Are they positions for your feet?'

'It's the stars,' says the boy. 'It's astrology. You close your eyes while you dance and you can see the stars in your head.'

'What about counting beats? Doesn't señor Arroyo count the beats for you while you dance?'

'No. You just dance. Dancing is the same as counting.'

'So señor Arroyo just plays and you just dance. It doesn't sound like any dance lesson I am familiar with. I am going to ask señor Arroyo whether I can sit in on one of his lessons.'

'You can't. You are not allowed. Señor Arroyo says no one is allowed.'

'Then when will I ever see you dancing?'

'You can see me now.'

He glances at the boy. The boy is sitting still, his eyes closed, a slight smile on his lips.

'That is not dancing. You can't dance while you are sitting in a car.'

'I can. Look I am dancing again.'

David is so attracted to the Dance Academy's philosophy, and his parents are so reluctant to oppose his demands, that he eventually insists on becoming a boarder at the school and the family essentially breaks up. As the book is told from Simón's point-of-view, it's easy to identify with the despair he feels as the guardianship of the boy – Simón's entire raison d'être in this new land – is removed. And especially because Simón doesn't understand what is attracting David to the odd education, the ice cold dance teacher Ana Magdalena (finally a Biblical tie-in), and Dmitri; the grungy museum worker who hangs around the dance studio. After a violent crime is committed, the book begins to debate ideas like passion and mercy and justice, and throughout it all, Simón understands that people are laughing at him behind his back; calling him a passionless pedant.

Much of The Schooldays of Jesus debates the essential nature of things (Is everything quantifiable? How many times can you ask the question “why” before the answer becomes “because”? Do numbers exist in nature or just the human mind?); and as I was reminded that in Childhood Simón impatiently exited a philosophy course that was dwelling on this same topic, it seems significant enough to note some examples.

While still on the farm, the tutor hired by Simón and Inés attempted to teach David the foundations of mathematics by going over the meaning of numbers with him; explaining why objects can be quantified as existing in groups of one, or two, or three, the tutor says, “Every object in the world is subject to arithmetic. In fact every object in the universe.” David reasonably responds, “But not water. Or vomit.” Despite the solid logic of not being able to count water or vomit as discreet units, the tutor leaves, declaring the boy unteachable. In another instance, after patiently answering a string of “why” questions from David, Simón is forced to eventually answer:

A rule is just a rule. Rules don't have to justify themselves. They just are. Like numbers. There is no why for numbers. This universe is a universe of rules. There is no why for the universe.

(To which, of course, David asks, “Why?” and in frustration Simón declares him “silly”). It is also frustrating for Simón when others won't provide him with straightforward answers, as when he tries to get señor Arroyo to explain what David means when he says only the music teacher really understands who he is:

If I were a philosopher I would reply by saying: It depends on what you mean by who, it depends on what you mean by he, it depends on what you mean by is. Who is he? Who are you? Indeed, who am I?

(This is also frustrating for the reader.) And in my final examples, at one point Simón attends a free lecture on Astrology for want of something better to do after David moves out:

Discussion turns to the Spheres: whether the stars belong to the Spheres or on the contrary follow trajectories of their own; whether the Spheres are finite or infinite. The lecturer believes the number of Spheres is finite – finite but unknown and unknowable, as she puts it.

And in a contrasting scene near the end of the book, Simón attends another lecture, this time on the philosophy of measurement; including a debate on whether everything should be measured:

According to one strand of the legend, Metros said there's nothing in the universe that cannot be measured. According to another strand, he said that there can be no absolute measurement – that measurement is always relative to the measurer.

And in a scene that seems intended to tie it all up, some boys from the Dance Academy do their dance to call down the numbers, which some in the audience seem to understand, but which is still all arcane to Simón. And by extension, arcane to me as well. As I opened with, I was interested in this reading experience, but I was pretty sure I wasn't understanding it; so I went to the experts, wondering what the official reviews said. According to The Telegraph:

Is it possible for a novel to be a series of boring conversations punctuated by silly dancing, but still be good? In The Schooldays of Jesus, J M Coetzee pulls it off. This is another opaque book from an ascetic author who finds a way of denying you everything you want while somehow giving you what you need.

As an example of a positive review, that's pretty faint praise. More damning is The Guardian:

On the evidence of this austere, barely realised mise-en-scène, it is difficult not to feel that Coetzee, like Plato, is no longer much interested in the accidents of our quotidian human world, the shadows on the cave wall. He is after essence alone, the pure, ungraspable fire. In his fidelity to ideas, to telling rather than showing, to instructing rather than seducing us, he does not actually write fiction any more. The Schooldays of Jesus, philosophically dense as it is, is parched, relentlessly adult fare – rather like eating endless bread and bean paste.

I used an unusually high number of quotes in this review in order to give the best sense what The Schooldays of Jesus is like, and even still, you'd have to read the whole thing to really experience it. What I know for sure: if there is a third book in this series, I will happily pick it up; Coetzee has me hooked if confused.