Keridwyn Dovey

It's sort of these disembodied black legs that are jagged at the ankles as if they've been sawn off.

And then there's a white man washing the feet.

And it's the scene from the novel where the magistrate is

is washing the feet of the barbarian girl who's been tortured in this kind of bizarre, pleasurable form of penance.

And all the other books, you know, the covers are really imprinted on my memory.

And then as I got older and I could sense that these were very significant, almost magical objects in the life of my mother's mind,

I would peek into them and, you know, read bits and pieces.

And I mean, again, quite disturbing stuff as a 10-year-old, you know, but I remember where I was when I read there was a scene at the end of Waiting for the Barbarians where the magistrate's sleeping with the prostitute and her tiny baby is in the corner of the room.

And you found that sort of horrifying?

horrifying, intriguing, mysterious, you know, and I guess that's the thing that, you know, our parents are mysterious and intriguing to us, all of us, whatever they're doing with their lives.

And then there was this other level where I could sense that, you know, I could see when my mum would fall through that trap door into this other world.

And it wasn't that she was abandoning us.

She was a very, very present, engaged, loving mother who somehow made space for both those realities in her life.

So she would sort of wake up really early in the mornings and do her scholarly work from four to eight.

And then she'd be kind of home with us as a mother and sort of toggling between those two identities.

And I saw that it was really a joy for her.

It was a struggle and it was tough at times, but I really do feel grateful that she gave that model to us.

And I have an older sister who had the same kind of intense experience with Coetzee and his work and has written on him in other forms.

Yeah, she had the same treatment, I think.

She did.