J. Coetzee - Life & Times Of Michael K

Next morning, instead of waiting for a bus that might never come, he jogged from Sea Point to the city along the main road, taking pleasure in the soundness of his heart, the strength of his limbs. There were already scores of people queueing under the sign hervestiging-relocation; it was an hour before he found himself at the counter facing a policewoman with wary eyes.

He held out the two train tickets. 'I just want to ask if the permit has come through.'

She pushed the familiar forms towards him. 'Fill in the forms and take them to E-5. Have your tickets and reservation slips with you.' She glanced over K's shoulder to the man behind him. 'Yes?'

'No,' said K, struggling to regain her attention, 'I already applied for the permit. All I want to know is, has the permit come?'

'Before you can have a permit you must have a reservation! Have you got a reservation? When is it for?'

'August eighteenth. But my mother-'

'August eighteenth is a month away! If you applied for a permit and the permit is granted, the permit will come, the permit will be sent to your address! Next!'

'But that is what I want to know! Because if the permit isn't going to come I must make other plans. My mother is sick-'

The policewoman slapped the counter to still him. 'Don't waste my time. I am telling you for the last time, if the permit is granted the permit will come! Don't you see all these people waiting? Don't you understand? Are you an idiot? Next!' She braced herself against the counter and glared pointedly over K's shoulder: 'Yes, you, next!'

But K did not budge. He was breathing fast, his eyes stared. Reluctantly the policewoman turned back to him, to the thin moustache and the naked lip-flesh it did not hide. 'Next!' she said.

An hour before dawn the next day K roused his mother and, while she dressed, packed the cart, padding the box with blankets and cushions and lashing the suitcase across the shafts. The cart now had a hood of black plastic sheeting that made it look like a tall perambulator. When his mother saw it she stopped and shook her head. 'I don't know, I don't know, I don't know,' she said. He had to coax her to get in; it took a long time. The cart was not really big enough, he realized: it bore her weight, but she had to sit hunched under the canopy, unable to move her limbs. Over her legs he spread a blanket, then piled on that a packet of food, the paraffin stove and a bottle of fuel packed in a box, odds and ends of clothing. A light winked on in the flats next door. They could hear the waves breaking on the rocks. 'Just a day or two,' he whispered, 'then we'll be there. Don't move too much from side to side if you can help it. ' She nodded but continued to hide her face in her woollen gloves. He bent towards her. 'Do you want to stay, Ma?' he said. 'If you want to stay we can stay.' She shook her head. So he put on his cap, lifted the handles, and wheeled the cart out on to the misty road.

He took the shortest route, past the devastated area around the old fuel-storage tanks where the demolition of burnt-out buildings had only just begun, past the dock quarter and the blackened shells of the warehouses that had in the past year been taken over by the city's street bands. They were not stopped. Indeed, few of the people they passed at this early hour spared them a glance. Stranger and stranger conveyances were emerging on the streets: shopping trolleys fitted with steering bars; tricycles with boxes over the rear axle; baskets mounted on pushcart undercarriages; crates on castors; barrows of all sizes. A donkey fetched eighty rands in new currency, a cart with tyres over a hundred.

K kept up a steady pace, stopping every half-hour to rub his cold hands and flex his aching shoulders. The moment he settled his mother in the cart in Sea Point he realized that, with all the luggage packed in the front, the axle was off centre, too far back. Now, the more his mother slid down the box trying to make herself comfortable, the greater the deadweight he found himself lifting. He kept a smiling face to hide the strain he felt. 'We just have to get on to the open road,' he panted, 'then someone is bound to stop for us. '

By noon they were passing through the ghostly industrial quarter of Paarden Eiland. A couple of workmen sitting on a wall eating their sandwiches watched them roll past in silence, crash-flash said the faded black lettering beneath their feet. K felt his arms going numb but plodded on another half-mile. Where the road passed under the Black River Parkway he helped his mother out and settled her on the grass verge beneath the bridge. They ate their lunch. He was struck by the emptiness of the roads. There was such stillness that he could hear birdsong. He lay back in the thick grass and closed his eyes.

He was roused by a rumbling in the air. At first he thought it was faroff thunder. The noise grew louder, however, beating in waves off the base of the bridge above them. From their right, from the direction of the city, at deliberate speed, came two pairs of uniformed motorcyclists, rifles strapped across their backs, and behind them an armoured car with a gunner standing in the turret.

Then followed a long and miscellaneous procession of heavy vehicles, most of them trucks empty of cargo. K crept up the verge to his mother; side by side they sat and watched in a roar of noise that seemed to turn the air solid. The convoy took minutes to pass. The rear was brought up by scores of automobiles, vans and light trucks, followed by an olive-green army truck with a canvas hood under which they glimpsed two rows of seated helmeted soldiers, and then another pair of motorcyclists.

One of the lead motorcyclists had turned a pointed stare on K and his mother as he went past. Now the last two motorcyclists peeled off from the convoy. One waited at the roadside, the other climbed the verge. Raising his visor he addressed them: 'No stopping along the expressway,' he said. He glanced into the barrow. 'Is this your vehicle?' K nodded. 'Where are you going?' K whispered, cleared his throat, spoke a second time: 'To Prince Albert. In the Karoo.' The motorcyclist whistled, rocked the barrow lightly, called down something to his companion. He turned back to K. 'Along the road, just around the bend, there is a checkpoint. You stop at the checkpoint and show your permit. You got a permit to leave the Peninsula?'

'Yes.'

'You can't travel outside the Peninsula without a permit. Go to the checkpoint and show them your permit and your papers. And listen to me: you want to stop on the expressway, you pull fifty metres off the roadside. That's the regulation: fifty metres either side. Anything nearer, you can get shot, no warning, no questions asked. Understand?'

K nodded. The motorcyclists remounted and roared off after the convoy. K could not meet his mother's eye. 'We should have picked a quieter road,' he said.

He could have turned back at once; but at the risk of a second humiliation he helped his mother back into the barrow and pushed her as far as the old hangars, where, indeed, there was a jeep parked by the roadside and three soldiers brewing tea over a camp stove. His pleas were in vain. 'Have you got a permit, yes or no?' demanded the corporal in command. 'I don't care who you are, who your mother is, if you haven't got a permit you can't leave the area, finished.' K turned to his mother. From under the black canopy she gazed out expressionlessly at the young soldier. The soldier threw up his hands. 'Don't give me a hard time!' he shouted. 'Just get the permit, then I'll let you through!' He watched while K hoisted the shafts and wheeled the cart through an arc. One of the wheels had begun to wobble.

Night had already fallen when they passed the traffic lights marking the start of Beach Road. The hulks that had blocked the road during the siege of the apartment blocks had been pushed on to the lawns. The key was still in the door under the stairway. The room was as they had left it, neatly swept for the next occupant. Anna K laid herself down in her coat and slippers on the bare mattress; Michael brought in their belongings. A shower of rain had soaked the cushions. 'We'll try again in a day or two, Ma,' he whispered. She shook her head. 'Ma, the permit isn't going to come!' he said. 'We'll try again, but next time we'll go by the back roads. They can't block every road out.' He sat down beside her on the mattress and remained there, his hand on her arm, till she fell asleep; then he went upstairs to sleep on the Buhrmanns' floor.