EMPTY HANDS

His grandparents Rayment had six children. His parents had two. He had none. Six, two, one or none: all around him he sees the miserable sequence repeated. He used to think it made sense: in an overpopulated world, childlessness was surely a virtue, like peaceableness, like forbearance. Now, on the contrary, childlessness looks to him like madness, a herd madness, even a sin. What great good can there be than more life, more souls? How will heaven be filled if the earth ceases to send its cargoes?
When he arrives at the gate, St Paul (for other new souls it may be Peter but for him it ill be Paul) will be waiting. ‘Bless me father for I have sinned’, he will say. ‘And how have you sinned, my child?’ Then he will have no words to say, save to show his empty hands. ‘You sorry fellow,’ Paul will say, ‘you sorry, sorry fellow. Did you not understand why you were given life, the greatest gift of all?’ ‘When I was living I did not understand, father, but now I understand, now that it is too late; and believe me, father, I repent, I repent me, je me repens, and bitterly too.’ ‘Then pass,, Paul will say, and stand aside: ‘in the house of your Father there is room for all, even for the stupid lonely sheep.’

J.M. Coetzee em “Slow Man”