Summary
Chapter five opens with a long description of the paranoia that has swept through the town. Everyone is afraid of the barbarians. “The barbarians,” it is said, “come out at night” (122). When food is stolen from peoples' store rooms, it gets blamed on the barbarians. A girl is raped in a field and it gets blamed on the barbarians. There are rumors that the entire frontier has erupted in conflict. Other rumors hold that the army is forging deep into barbarian territory. Nobody knows what is true. The magistrate, broken and filthy, limps around the town like a dog. People kick at him and shoo him away. He seeks out scraps; and he listens for rumors. He sleeps in the barracks yard.
Refugees arrive in town. They are the fisher folk, the simple people who Joll first took as captives. At first, the people in the town have sympathy for them and offer them clothes. But when they settle in, people start to resent them. They’re pushed to the outside of the town wall. They set up their tents there and fish during the day. They are afraid of the barbarians.
The more that the magistrate roams around, the more familiar people become with him. He ceases to unsettle them and he begins to realize that some even sympathize with him, particularly women. Women feed him. He sings for his keep. He learns more rumors. A woman takes him in and stuffs him with biscuits and tea and tells him everything she knows. Some people fry chops for him. He quest for food meets with great success. A woman named Mai, the cook at the inn, tells him how many people have been leaving the town. She tells him that the young “birdlike” girl left recently with her fiancé.
It’s been a month since Joll’s expeditionary force left and there’s still no news. People begin to leave in droves. They bring livestock and food. When they leave the soldiers break into their houses and loot. Soldiers begin to tyrannize the town. They have a torchlight meeting in the town square and denounce those who leave as traitors. They paint the words We Stay over buildings. Mandel hides away. His soldiers demand a weekly feast from the town. People roast whole animals for them. Everyone's terrified of the soldiers. Everyone's waiting.
The magistrate is growing fat. He wades out in the river. He meditates on the nomad girl and on violence and rape. He thinks about the fact that she will never be accepted as a whole woman. She is maimed. Her people know what happened to her.
One day an ominous sign arrives as a horse returns with the corpse of one of the soldiers crucified on its back. The corpse is bloated and stinking. It’s followed by another soldier—alive—who rides into the town panicked. He goes straight to Mandel. Mandel comes out and begins to pack to leave. He orders a small caravan be loaded. His men raid food and livestock. The townspeople watch, but say nothing until they begin to roll out. Then people begin to heckle them and throw stones. Mandel takes all but three soldiers as he abandons the town.
The magistrate goes into his old apartment. He finds another man’s clothes there, a shirt with sweat stained armpits. He finds his collections of artifacts under the bed. He meditates on the idea that the imperial army has been beaten and that the nomads are winning. He lies down sleeps on his old bed.
Analysis
As with other parts of the narrative, Coetzee has arguably stretched the parameters of realism to make way for the magistrate’s observations. Abandoned by Mandel, the magistrate is made free to roam through the town to witness and comment on its changes and deterioration. The narrative in the chapter feels more omniscient or objective, as the magistrate roams freely and observes historical transformation, like an all-seeing eye. In this chapter, we see a definitive shift in the history of the Empire’s small outpost, as it goes from being a thriving community to an abandoned place on the cusp of becoming a ruin of history, swallowed by the sands of the desert. The nearby archeological site that the magistrate has dug around in throughout the novel now stands as a model for the outpost. The magistrate has wondered what happened to the people who once lived at the ancient site. What ever caused them to leave in such a hurry? When we see the families leave in droves and finally Mandel pack up and flee, we glimpse an answer to the mystery of the other ruins in the desert; and through those ruins we glimpse the future of the magistrate’s outpost.
The old archeological site has the appearance of being a part of nature—a place that once lived and now lies buried in sand, becoming sand, a natural part of the desert. It has a precious quality. Yet perhaps it was beset with the same kind of violence and fear that has swept the magistrate’s Empire. Perhaps its mystery is one of hatred, paranoia and violence. Perhaps the terror sweeping the Empire is indeed part of a cycle, as the magistrate earlier observed—but a cycle that goes way back.
The paranoia that has come over the town has caused the people to shut their doors, to fail to tend to crops, to lose touch with the surrounding land, to cease to be able to survive on that land. Fear is shown to create a discord between those who dwell in nature and their environment. It’s not only the relations with the nomads that have been ruined by fear, it’s the connection to the earth itself. It’s impossible to survive in a desert place without living in harmony with the earth, not to mention with the neighbors.
We see the way that the fear works its way through the community. People leave in droves, but not clearly because of the encroaching barbarians. The soldiers and Mandel have become the main cause of the town’s ruin. As we see them wreak havoc on the town, we see the town disintegrate. Those who incite the fear of the “barbarian” are the ones who tear the community apart. If barbarian denotes a savage, someone violent and bloodthirsty, then the barbarian is indeed revealed to be the man of so-called civilization. Joll, with his black modern sunglasses and Mandel, with his blue eyes, are the sadists at the heart of the town’s demise.
When the horse rides in with the crucified corpse of the soldier, we finally see, first hand, a signal from an enemy outside the gates. As soon as this omen arrives, Mandel and his men abandon the post. Fear is palpable in the urgency with which they leave, snatching up livestock, tying goods down to their carts. Despite jeers from those they’ve taunted into staying, they flee—the picture of panic. As we see the magistrate standing in his old room, we see him come full-circle. But instead of lording over a thriving outpost in the desert, he is now the guardian of his own ruin.
