I have always been a sucker for a good love story, so when I was told that J. M. Coetzee — who has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature — had a new novel and that it was a love story (“The Pole,” W. Norton & Co., 2023), I was all in.
From the very beginning, the book is written in sparse, straightforward prose with six chapters and numbered short sections that is an intentional mirror of the format of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and works wonders for this particular storyline as a post-modern literary technique. Inside a great cover featuring the keys of a piano, Coetzee tells the story of an aging, internationally renowned concert pianist, who at a post-performance party in Barcelona spies a younger woman, is immediately smitten, and off we go on what seems for the majority of the book like a wild goose chase with Witold (the 72-year-old Polish pianist and hence the book’s title “the Pole”) pursuing Beatriz (who is beautiful, in her 40s and married) from all corners of the planet in letters and emails, gifts and poems.
From the beginning, Beatriz is having none of it and keeps him at arms-length, seemingly disinterested in his designs and tactics. “Dear Witold, I trust that your concert in Berlin went well. I have been reflecting on our last conversation, wondering how on earth you came to the conclusion that I am the embodiment of peace. I embody neither peace nor anything else. The fact is, you know nothing of who or what I am. Your path crossed mine by the purest of chance. There was no design behind it. I was not meant for you, as you seem to think. I was not ‘meant’ for anyone. None of us is ‘meant,’ whatever the word means. Yours, Beatriz.” But Witold is relentless in his pursuit, and soon we begin to see her starting to appreciate his attention — which she isn’t getting from her philandering husband.
For the better part of the book, the back and forth between Beatriz and Witold becomes a kind of emotional battle, with Beatriz limiting any passion by paralyzing her emotions, while Witold bombards her with messages pronouncing his affection for her as a form of “higher love.” To do this, he draws on Dante’s semi-autobiographical book “La Vita Nuova” and Dante’s love for his own real life Beatrice, portrayed as a main character and used here in Coetzee’s book as a metaphor for Witold’s love for Beatriz, which is in some ways reminiscent of a teenage crush and, at the same time, an exalted spiritual love. He sends her his celebrated recordings of the music of Chopin, thinking that maybe his music will speak louder than his words of longing and seeming desperation. She continues to resist, including an invitation to come with him to Brazil for a concert and short vacation.
Finally, something in her gives way and she invites him to join her for a week in her husband’s former family home in Mallorca, Spain, and with the husband’s permission. “When he comes to Soller he can share her domestic routines. He can accompany her to the supermarket and help carry the groceries. He can dredge leaves out of the swimming pool. There is a piano in one of the spare rooms, an old upright: he can fix it up and play for her. By the end of the week his romantic fantasies will have gone up in smoke. He will have seen her as she truly is. He can then return to his native land a sadder and a wiser man.”
It is from the Mallorcan triste that the story takes its upward turn with the two of them relating face to face rather than via virtual conversation. Witold and Beatriz spend a week together in formal and sometimes intimate company and then Witold returns to Poland and Beatriz to Barcelona. After what was to be their forever and final goodbyes, time passes and eventually Beatriz gets a phone call from Witold’s daughter telling her that Witold has died and that he has left a box in his apartment for her in conjunction with his will. Here, our story takes another turn as Beatriz tries to reconsider Witold’s love as Coetzee takes us delicately through her process of re-evaluation and acceptance. In the end, Beatriz travels to Poland. There is an 82-page poem that Witold has written to Beatriz in the aforementioned box. “As for me, I had no luck,/came too late, lived too far away/had only her image to close my eyes on/poor fluttering little thing in the chambers of memory.” Coetzee finishes his captivating love story with what can only be called a wonderful literary conclusion, and what I have always referred to as a “French ending” — generously allowing the reader to provide their own personally-preferred denouement.
(Thomas Crowe is the author of the award-winning memoir “Zoro’s Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods” and publisher of New Native Press. He lives in Jackson County.)