Slow Man - Coetzee J. M. - Страница 25

Is the whole notebook like that: a provocation, an affront to decency? He pages cautiously through it from the beginning. For long stretches he cannot stitch the entries together. She writes as if she were hurrying through some story she had overheard, compressing the narrative, cutting the dialogue short, jumping impatiently from one scene to the next. But then a phrase catches his eye: One leg blue, one red. Ljuba? It can only be Ljuba. Harlequin, crazy-coloured. In Germany, brindle cows are the crazy ones, the moonstruck, the ones that jump over the moon. And the little dog laughs. Bring in a dog, a little mutt that wags its tail to all and sundry, yapping, eager to please? PR's reaction: 'I may be doggy, but not to that extent, surely!' Mutt and Jeff.

He snaps the book shut. If his ears are not burning they might as well be. It is as he feared: she knows everything, every jot and tittle. Damn her! All the time he thought he was his own master he has been in a cage like a rat, darting this way and that, yammering to himself, with the infernal woman standing over him, observing, listening, taking notes, recording his progress.

Or is it worse than that, incomparably worse, so much worse that the mind threatens to buckle? Is this what it is like to be translated to what at present he can only call the other side? Is that what has happened to him; is that what happens to everyone?

Gingerly he settles into an armchair. If this does not amount to a big moment, a Copernican moment, then what does? The greatest of all secrets may just have unveiled itself to him. There is a second world that exists side by side with the first, unsuspected. One chugs along in the first for a certain length of time; then the angel of death arrives in the person of Wayne Blight or someone like him. For an instant, for an aeon, time stops; one tumbles down a dark hole. Then, hey presto, one emerges into a second world identical with the first, where time resumes and the action proceeds – flying through the air like a cat, the throng of curious onlookers, the ambulance, the hospital, Dr Hansen, et cetera – except that one now has Elizabeth Costello around one's neck, or someone like her.

Quite a leap to make, from the word D-O-G in a notebook to life after death. A wild surmise. He could be wrong. More than likely he is wrong. But whether he is wrong or right, whether what in the most hesitant of spirits he calls the other side is truth or delusion, the first epithet that occurs to him, typed out letter by letter behind his eyelids by the celestial typewriter, is puny. If dying turns out to be nothing but a trick that might as well be a trick with words, if death is a mere hiccup in time after which life goes on as before, why all the fuss? Is one allowed to refuse it – refuse this deathlessness, this puny fate? I want my old life back, the one that came to an end on Magill Road.

He is exhausted, his mind is reeling, he has merely to close his eyes and he will sink into sleep. But he does not want to be lying here inert and exposed when the Costello woman comes back. He has begun to be aware of a certain quality about her, vulpine rather than canine, that has nothing to do with her appearance but that makes him nervous and that he does not trust at all. He can all too easily imagine her prowling from room to room in the dark, sniffing, on the hunt.

He is still sitting in the armchair when he is lightly shaken. Before him stands not the vulpine Mrs Costello but Marijana Jokic, the woman with the red head-scarf who is in some way (he cannot for the moment remember how, his mind is too befuddled) the root or source or font of all these complications.

'Mr Rayment, you OK?'

'Marijana! Yes, of course. Of course I am OK.' But that is not the truth. He is not OK. His mouth tastes foul, his back is stiff, and he hates being surprised. 'What time is it?'

Marijana ignores the question. She sets down an envelope on the coffee table beside him. 'Your cheque,' she says. 'He say give it back, we don't accept money. My husband. He say he don't accept other man's money.'

Money. Drago. Another universe of discourse. He must collect his wits. 'And what about Drago himself?' he says. 'What about Drago's education?'

'Drago can go to school like before, he don't need boarding school, my husband say.'

The child Ljuba fingers her mother's skirt absent-mindedly, sucking on her thumb. Behind her the Costello woman glides discreetly into the room. Was she here in the flat while he was sleeping?

'Would you like me to speak to your husband?' he says.

Vigorously Marijana shakes her head. She could not imagine anything worse, more stupid.

'Well, let's give some thought to what to do next. Perhaps Mrs Costello has a word of advice to offer.'

'Hello Ljuba,' says Elizabeth Costello, 'I'm a friend of your mother's, you can call me Elizabeth or Aunt Elizabeth. Sorry to hear of your problem, Marijana, but I am new on the scene, I don't think I should interfere.'

You interfere all the time, he thinks venomously. Why are you here if not to interfere?

With a sigh that is almost a cry, Marijana throws herself down on the sofa. She shields her eyes; the tears are coming now. The child takes up her post beside her.

'Such good boy,' she says. 'Such good boy.' Sobs overtake her. 'He want to go so much!'

In another world, a world in which he was young and whole and his breath sweet, he would gather Marijana in his arms, kiss away her tears. Forgive me, forgive me, he would say. I have been unfaithful to you, I don't know why! It happened only once and will never happen again! Admit me to your heart and I will take care of you, I swear, until the day I die!

The child's dark eyes bore into him. What have you done to my mother? she seems to say. It's all your fault!

And indeed it is his fault. Those dark eyes see into his heart, see his secret desire, see that in his innermost this first glimpse of a rift between man and wife makes him exult, not grieve. Forgive me too! he says mutely, looking straight into the child's eyes. I mean no harm, I am in the grip of a force beyond me!

'We have plenty of time,' he says in his most sober voice. 'There is still a week before applications close for next year. I will guarantee the school fees; I will get my solicitor to write a letter guaranteeing them, then it will not seem so personal. Speak to your husband again, once he has calmed down. I am sure you will be able to bring him around, you and Drago together.'

Marijana shrugs hopelessly. She says something to the child that he does not understand; the child trots out of the room and comes back with a handful of tissues. Noisily Marijana blows her nose. Tears, mucus, snot: the less romantic side of sorrow, the underside. Like the underside of sex: stains, smells.

Is she aware of what happened here, on the very sofa where she sits? Can she sense it?

'Or,' he continues, 'if it has become a matter of honour, if your husband finds it impossible to accept a loan from another man, perhaps Mrs Costello can be persuaded to write the cheque, acting as an intermediary in this good cause.'

It is the first time he has put the Costello woman on the spot. He feels a surge of mean triumph.

Mrs Costello shakes her head. 'I do not believe I can interfere,' she says. 'In addition there are certain practical difficulties, which I prefer not to go into.'

'Such as?' he says.

'Which I prefer not to go into,' she repeats.

'I don't see any practical difficulties at all,' he says. 'I write a cheque to you and you write a cheque to the school. Nothing could be simpler. If you will not do that, if you refuse to, as you put it, interfere, then just go away. Go away and leave us alone.'