The Pole

Nobel laureate Coetzee returns (after the Jesus trilogy) to the brevity of his earlier works in this rich and engrossing story of a brief love affair between a Polish pianist and a wealthy Spanish woman. Witold is in his 70s, “a relic of history,” and has made a name for himself as a “controversial” interpreter of the works of his countryman Chopin. Beatriz is a banker’s wife and a casual patron of the arts. The pair meet when Witold is invited to play for Beatriz’s “Concert Circle” in Barcelona. What follows is a strange, lopsided entanglement: Witold is the pursuer, apparently consumed by an epic passion that makes sense only to him. Beatriz is initially bemused, later offended, and then suddenly amenable, a change of heart that leads to the lovers’ only tryst: a few days spent together in Beatriz’s husband’s family vacation home in Mallorca. After Beatriz puts an end to the affair, she looks into her heart and finds “no dark residue: no regrets, no sorrow, no longing.” Much is made of Witold’s age and “deficiencies”; he’s much more of a cipher than Beatriz, whose interior monologue readers are privy to. The prose is unornamented but nevertheless consistently incisive. Coetzee’s ability to render the human condition in all its vagaries is as masterful as ever. (Sept.)