A strong whiff of goodbyes: The Pole and Other Stories, by J.M. Coetzee, reviewed

New books by, articles about or Sasquatch-like sightings of J.M. Coetzee routinely send me back to that infamous YouTube clip of Geoff Dyer face-planting while being introduced by Coetzee at the Adelaide Book Festival – an episode often cited as evidence that the Nobel Laureate has no sense of humour. The garlanded ex-South African’s work is famously as dry as the Karoo, and Coetzee himself has been accused of having only ever laughed once. But a smile is visible in ‘The Pole’, the longest story in this collection.

Beatriz, in her late forties, is an educated Spanish woman, ‘a good person’ in a ‘civilised’ (read dormant) marriage, involved in organising things like highbrow concerts but otherwise not taken seriously. Unexceptional, she calls herself ‘not sexy, and certainly not seductive’. She finds herself in charge of hosting a visiting pianist, aged 72, a white-haired Pole called Witold Walczykiewicz with ‘lugubrious’ face and ‘faded’ eyes, who has a love-hate relationship with his homeland and a surname that is often mispronounced.