Slow Man - Coetzee J. M. - Страница 32

Mrs Costello reaches into the plastic bag on her lap, crumbles a bread roll, and tosses it towards the ducks. There is huge commotion as they converge on their blessing.

'We would all like to be simpler, Paul,' she says, 'every one of us. Particularly as we near the end. But we are complicated creatures, we human beings. That is our nature. You want me to be simpler. You want to be simpler yourself, more naked. Well, I gaze in wonderment, believe me, upon your efforts to strip yourself down. But it comes at a cost, the simple heart you so desire, the simple way of seeing the world. Look at me. What do you see?'

He is silent.

'Let me tell you what you see, or what you tell yourself you are seeing. An old woman by the side of the River Torrens feeding the ducks. An old woman who happens to be running out of clean underwear. An old woman who irritates you with what you think of as her sly innuendoes.

'But the reality is more complicated than that, Paul. In reality you see a great deal more – see it and then block it out. Light of a certain stridency, for instance. A figure trapped by that light beside the softly fluent water. Lances of light that stab at her, threaten to pierce her through.

'Unnecessary complication? I don't think so. An expansion. Like breathing. Breathe in, breathe out. Expand, contract. The rhythm of life. You have it in you to be a fuller person, Paul, larger and more expansive, but you won't allow it. I urge you: don't cut short these thought-trains of yours. Follow them through to their end. Your thoughts and your feelings. Follow them through and you will grow with them. What was it that the American poet fellow said? There weaves always a fictive covering from something to something. My memory is going. I become vaguer with each passing day. A pity. Hence this little lesson I am trying to teach you. He finds her by the riverside, sitting on a bench, clustered around by ducks that she seems to be feeding – it may be simple, as an account, its simplicity may even beguile one, but it is not good enough. It does not bring me to life. Bringing me to life may not be important to you, but it has the drawback of not bringing you to life either. Or the ducks, for that matter, if you prefer not to have me at the centre of the picture. Bring these humble ducks to life and they will bring you to life, I promise. Bring Marijana to life, if it must be Marijana, and she will bring you to life. It is as elementary as that. But please, as a favour to me, please stop dithering. I do not know how much longer I can support my present mode of existence.'

'What mode of existence are you referring to?'

'Life in public. Life on the public squares, relying on public amenities. Life in the company of drunks and homeless people, what we used to call hoboes. Do you not recall? I warned you I had nowhere to go.'

'You are talking nonsense. You can take a room in a hotel. You can catch a plane back to Melbourne or wherever else you want to go. I will lend you the money.'

'Yes, you could do that. Just as you could get rid of the troublesome, volatile Jokics and sell your flat and move into a well-regulated retreat for old people. But you don't. We are who we are, Paul. This, for the time being, is the life we are given to live, and we must live it. When I am with you I am at home; when I am not with you I am homeless. That is how the dice have fallen. Are you surprised to hear me say so? You should not be. But do not castigate yourself. I have become surprisingly good at this new life. Looking at me, you would not say that I live out of a suitcase, would you? Or that I have not eaten in days. Aside from a grape or two.'

He is silent.

'Anyway, that is enough about me. As I keep telling myself, Have patience, Paul Rayment did not ask you to descend upon his shoulders. Nevertheless, it would be a great help if Paul Rayment would hurry up. As I mentioned, I may be nearing my limit. I can't begin to tell you how tired I am. And not with the kind of tiredness that can be fixed by a good night's sleep in a proper bed. The tiredness I refer to has become part of my being. It is like a dye that has begun to seep into everything I do, everything I say. I feel, to use Homer's word, unstrung. A word with which you are familiar, I seem to remember. No more tensile strength. The bowstring that used to be taut has gone as slack and dry as a strand of cotton. And not just the bodily self. The mind too: slack, ready for easeful sleep.'

He has not looked at Elizabeth Costello in a long while, not properly. In part that is because she comes to him through a haze of irritation, in part because he finds her so colourless, so featureless, just as he finds her clothes so utterly without distinction. But now he gives her his full, deliberate attention, and indeed it is as she says: she has lost weight, the flesh on her arms hangs, her face is pallid, her nose peaked.

'If you had only asked,' he says, 'I would have helped, in practical respects. I am ready to help you now. But for the rest' – he shrugs – 'I am not dithering, at least not in my own eyes. I am acting at a pace that comes naturally to me. I am not an exceptional person, Mrs Costello, and I cannot make myself exceptional just for your sake. I am sorry.'

He will help her. He means it. He will buy her a meal. He will buy her the ticket, go with her to the airport, wave her goodbye.

'You cold man,' she says. She speaks the condemnatory word with lightness, with a smile. 'You poor, cold man. I have tried my best to explain, but you understand nothing. You were sent to me, I was sent to you. Why that should be, God alone knows. Now you must cure yourself as best you can. I will try not to hurry you on any more.'

She gets to her feet, not without difficulty, folds the empty bag. 'Goodbye,' she says.

For a long time after she has left he stays on, squinting out over the river, shaken. The ducks, used to being fed, encouraged by his stillness, come almost to his feet, but he pays them no attention.

Cold: is that really how he seems to outsiders? He wants to protest. He wishes well. His friends will attest to it – people who know him far better than the Costello woman does. Even the woman who used to be his wife will concede it: he wishes well, he wishes the best. How can someone be called cold who from his heart wishes well, who when he acts acts from the heart?

Cold was not a word his wife used. What she said was quite different: I thought you were French, she said, I thought you would have some idea. Some idea of what? For years after she left him he puzzled over her words. What were the French, even if only the French of legend, supposed to have an idea of? Of what will make a woman happy? What will make a woman happy is a riddle as old as the Sphinx. Why should a Frenchman have the power to unknot it, much less such a notional Frenchman as he?

Cold, blind. Breathe in, breathe out. He does not accept the charge; he does not believe in its truth. Truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love. The gaze of love is not deluded. Love sees what is best in the beloved, even when what is best in the beloved finds it hard to emerge into the light. Who is Marijana? A nurse from Dubrovnik with a short waist and yellow teeth and not bad legs. Who except he, with the gaze of love, sees the shy, sloe-eyed gazelle hiding within?

That is what Elizabeth Costello does not understand. Elizabeth Costello thinks of him as a punishment brought down to blight the last days of her life, an incomprehensible penance she is sentenced to speak, to recite, to repeat. She looks on him with distaste, with dismay, with exasperation, with a sinking heart, with everything but love. Well, when he next catches up with her he will give her a lesson. Not cold, he will say, and not French either. A man who sees the world in his own way and who loves in his own way. And a man who not too long ago lost part of his own body: do not forget that. Have a little charity, he will say. Then perhaps you may find it in you to write.