J M Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians"

Not sure why I waited so long to read it. Have it buried somewhere in softcover; now I've got it on Kindle. From Coetzee's late essays I paddled around a bit: Beckett's philosopher, Sebald's poetry, Holderlin's letters, a short story by Wilhelm Raabe.

Anyway, I guess I'm ready to tackle the Barbarians.

***

“I ask,” I continue, “only because if you get lost it becomes our task here to find you and bring you back to civilization.” We pause, savouring from our different positions the ironies of the word.

* 

 

What they have undergone in these five days I do not know. Now herded by their guards they stand in a hopeless little knot in the corner of the yard, nomads and fisherfolk together, sick, famished, damaged, terrified. It would be best if this obscure chapter in the history of the world were terminated at once, if these ugly people were obliterated from the face of the earth and we swore to make a new start, to run an empire in which there would be no more injustice, no more pain. It would cost little to march them out into the desert (having put a meal in them first, perhaps, to make the march possible), to have them dig, with their last strength, a pit large enough for all of them to lie in (or even to dig it for them!), and, leaving them buried there forever and forever, to come back to the walled town full of new intentions, new resolutions. But that will not be my way. The new men of Empire are the ones who believe in fresh starts, new chapters, clean pages; I struggle on with the old story, hoping that before it is finished it will reveal to me why it was that I thought it worth the trouble. Thus it is that, administration of law and order in these parts having today passed back to me, I order that the prisoners be fed, that the doctor be called in to do what he can, that the barracks return to being a barracks, that arrangements be made to restore the prisoners to their former lives as soon as possible, as far as possible.