Slow Man - Coetzee J. M. - Страница 33

TWENTY-ONE

DRAGO. IT CONTINUES to intrigue him, how little aware Drago seems to be of his own good looks. Not a narcissist; not reflective. On the other hand, if he were more self-aware he might lose some of that air of fearless candour, that warrior gaze.

Is there a feminine equivalent to Dragonian candour? Amazonian purity? Blanka, the sister, the unknown quantity: what is she like? Will he ever get to meet her?

Narcissus discovered a twin in the pool from whom he could not tear himself. Every time he smiled, the twin smiled back. Yet every time he bent to kiss those inviting lips, the twin would dissolve in ghostly ripples.

No narcissism in Drago: not yet, perhaps never. No narcissism in Marijana either. An admirable trait, in its way. Curious that he has fallen for Marijana, seeing that in the past he fell always for women who loved themselves.

He himself has never been at ease with mirrors. Long ago he draped a cloth over the mirror in the bathroom and taught himself to shave blind. One of the more irritating things the Costello woman did during her stay was to take down the drape. When she left he at once put it back.

He covers the bathroom mirror not just to save himself from the image of an ageing, ugly self. No: the twin imprisoned behind the glass he finds above all boring. Thank God the day will come, he thinks to himself, when I will not have to see that one again!

Four months have passed since he was released from hospital and allowed to return to his former life. Most of that time he has spent cloistered in this flat, barely seeing the sun. Since Marijana stopped coming he has not eaten properly. He has no appetite, does not bother to take care of himself. The face that threatens to confront him in the mirror is that of a gaunt, unshaven old tramp. In fact, worse than that. At a bookstall on the Seine he once picked up a medical text with photographs of patients from the Salpetriere: cases of mania, dementia, melancholia, Huntingdon's chorea. Despite the untidy beards, despite the hospital nightshirts, he at once recognised in them soul mates, cousins who had gone ahead down a road he would one day follow.

He is thinking of Drago because, after the one night spent in his flat, Drago has not returned nor sent any word. And he is thinking of mirrors because of Mrs Costello's story of the old man who turned Sinbad into his slave. Mrs Costello wants to subject him to some fiction or other she has in her head. He would like to believe that, since the Marianna episode, he has resisted her schemes, held her at bay. But is he right? He shivers to think what the merest passing glimpse in a mirror might reveal: grinning over his shoulder, gripping his throat, the shape of a wild-haired, bare-breasted hag brandishing a whip.

He ought to write Marijana a letter, at her sister-in-law's or at home or wherever she is. Please do not cut yourself off from me. Whatever I said, I promise never to repeat it. It was a mistake. I will not try to draw you into further intimacy. Even though you have done more for me, a great deal more, than duty requires, I have never been foolish enough to confuse your kindness with love, with the real thing. What I offer to Drago, and to you through Drago, is a token of gratitude, nothing more. Please accept it as such. You have taken care of me; now I want to give something back, if you will let me. I offer to take care of you, or at least to relieve you of some of your burden. I offer to do so because in my heart, in my core, I care for you. You and yours.

Care: he can set the word down on paper but he would be too diffident to mouth it, make it his own speech. Too much an English word, an insider's word. Perhaps Marijana of the Balkans, giver of care, compelled even more than he to conduct her life in a foreign tongue, will share his diffidence. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she has accepted without afterthought what she was told by the accreditation board: that the profession into which she was being initiated was in the English-speaking world known as a caring profession; that her business would henceforth be taking care of people or caring for people; and that such caring should not be assumed to have anything to do with the heart, except of course in heart cases.

Yet is that not precisely what over the past four months he has mutated into – a heart case, un cardiaque? Once upon a time his heart was his strongest organ. Any one of its brother organs might let him down – bowels, spleen, brain – but his heart, tried and tested first on Magill Road and then in the operating theatre, would serve him faithfully to the end.

Then he met Marijana, and his heart suffered a change. No longer is his heart what it used to be. Now it aches to serve Marijana, Marijana and all who belong to her. As she gave to him, so his heart wants to give back. To give back is not the same as to pay back, he should add in a footnote. Excuse the language lesson, I too am feeling my way, I too am on foreign soil.

Dear Marijana, he writes, this time with a real pen on real paper, Do you, or does your husband, truly think that in return for Drago's school fees I would try to inflict myself upon you? I would not dream of it; and anyway, Mrs Costello is always hovering around, making sure I stay in line. 'No woman with two eyes in her head would have a fellow like you,' says Mrs Costello. I could not agree more.

You have had to see a great deal of me in the line of duty, too much perhaps. Let me simply say these words: for the impartial care you have given me I will be thankful to my dying day. If I offer to take care of Drago's education, it is solely as a way of repaying that debt.

Miroslav and I have discussed the matter of a trust fund. If a trust fund is what it takes to make Miroslav feel easy, I will see about setting one up – for Drago, indeed for all three of your children.

I get your address from Mrs Costello, who seems to know everything. Will you and Miroslav please reconsider, and do me the honour of accepting a gift that comes, as they say in English, with no strings attached.

Yours ever,

Paul Rayment

TWENTY-TWO

THE LETTER TO Marijana is addressed care of Mrs Lidija Karadzic, Elizabeth North. He hopes there is only one Karadzic in Elizabeth North; he hopes he has the diacritics right.

Marijana's reply comes two days later, in the form not of a letter – he never expected one, he can guess what a trial it would be for her to write in English – but of a telephone call.

'Sorry I don't come see you, Mr Rayment,' she says, 'but we got all kind of problems. Blanka – you know Blanka? – she get in trouble.' And a long story emerges about a silver chain, a chain that is not even real silver, that you can buy for one dollar fifty in the Chinese market, that some shopkeeper, some Jew, accuses Blanka of taking, though Blanka did not take it, a friend of hers took it and slipped it to her and she wanted to put it back but didn't have time; and the Jew says that the chain that is not real silver costs forty-nine ninety-five and he wants to take her to court for it, to youth court. So now Blanka is refusing to eat, is refusing to go to school, though exams are just a week away, is staying in her room all day except yesterday evening she dressed up and went out she won't say where. And Mel doesn't know what to do and she doesn't know what to do. So does he, Paul Rayment, know someone he can talk to about Blanka, someone who can in turn talk to the Jew and make the charge go away?

'How do you know he is a Jew, Marijana?' he asks.

'OK, he is Jew, he is not Jew, is not important.'