J.M. Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians

It is truly incredible how Coetzee made this story so timeless that, even though written 30 years ago, you can see it repeating in the world around us over and over again.

The story is settled in a nameless town on the borders of some Empire and the main character who leads us through its history is the Magistrate whose name we never learn either. He reigns the town in piece and symbiosis with the surrounding tribes of native people – fishers, hunters who come to the town occasionally to exchange their worthless goods.

That is until the Empire starts its actions to find and defeat their enemies. The Magistrate has to face the arrival of Colonel Joll whose aim is to find those “barbarians” who are a threat to the Empire’s safety, especially when it comes to its frontier towns. The cruelty of the interrogations to the “barbarians” that are caught causes a mixture of feelings in Magistrate’s mind – a great disgust and hatred to people who can so cruelly hurt other innocent people and a determination to stay out of it and let the Empire do its work without saying a word to stop it. And that’s what starts bothering Magistrate’s mind when Joll finally leaves. Should he have done something to stop this instead of looking in the other direction?

He later engages in a pseudo-erotic relationship with one of the “barbarian” girls left behind by Joll’s army. Her father died during the interrogations, she was blinded and her ankles broken. The Magistrate lets her move into his room, massages her body every evening, tries to heal her broken ankles but never engages into anything more sexual, even though we learn about his liaisons with other young women from the garrison. The scary thought that comes to his mind at some point was whether this girl will one day remember his touch, his care and the time spent with him as vividly as she will always remember the soldiers interrogating her, blinding her eyes with fire and God knows what else. He does for a split moment consider hurting her just to leave his mark on her. Is the cruelty entrenched so hard in our nature or does witnessing it make us feel the power of it too? I think, despite all the scenes of cruelty shown by Joll and his supporters, this was the moment of the book that touched me most.

The power of Coetzee’s story is that it shows people on all sides of the conflict, shows the questions and doubts they have. It shows how incredibly easily human can find a reason for a war against so called “barbarians” and in effect quickly become a barbarian himself. How love can take different forms and how it can be distorted by our feeling of belonging to a different race. And how terribly easy it is to convince the crowds that the cruelty they are seeing is right. Doesn’t it all sound like the world that surrounds us now?

There were many little things in this book that I found fascinating, many characters that Coetzee doesn’t try to stereotype or caricature; they all have their good and weak sides. And the most eye opening moment is when in the end you find out how the “barbarians” finally defeat the Empire army…

It may be a bit hard to read the scenes of cruelty at times or cringe at the romantic liaisons of the old Magistrate, nevertheless, this is a book well worth reading and definitely worth being on the 1001 best books list.

My rating: YYYYY