J. Coetzee - Slow Man

All in all, not a man of passion. He is not sure he has ever liked passion, or approved of it. Passion: foreign territory; a comical but unavoidable affliction like mumps, that one hopes to undergo while still young, in one of its milder, less ruinous varieties, so as not to catch it more seriously later on. Dogs in the grip of passion coupling, hapless grins on their faces, their tongues hanging out.

'YOU WANT I dust your books?'

Eleven in the morning, and Marijana would seem to have run out of tasks.

'All right, if you like. You can run the vacuum cleaner over them with that nozzle attachment.'

She shakes her head, 'No, I clean them good. You are book saver, don't want dust on books. You are book saver, yes?'

A book saver: is that what they call people like him in Croatia? What could it mean, book saver? A man who saves books from oblivion? A man who clings to books that he never reads? His study is lined from floor to ceiling with books he will never open again, not because they are not worth reading but because he is going to run out of days.

'A book collector, that's what we say here. Just those three shelves, from there to there, are a collection properly speaking. Those are my books on photography. The rest are just common or garden books. No, if I have saved anything it has been photographs, not books. I keep them in those cabinets. Would you like to see?'

In two old-fashioned cedarwood cabinets he has hundreds of photographs and postcards of life in the early mining camps of Victoria and New South Wales. There is a handful from South Australia too. Since the field is not a popular or even a properly defined one, his collection may be the best in the country, even in the world.

'I began saving them in the 1970s, when first-generation photographs were still affordable. And when I still had the heart to go to auctions. Deceased estates. It would depress me too much now.'

For her eyes he takes out the group photographs that are the core of his collection. For the photographer's visit some of the miners have put on their Sunday best. Others are content with a clean shirt, the sleeves rolled high to show off their brawny arms, and perhaps a clean neckerchief. They confront the camera with the look of grave confidence that came naturally to men in Victoria 's day, but seems now to have vanished from the face of the earth.

He lays out two of his Faucherys. 'Look at these,' he says. 'They are by Antoine Fauchery. He died young, otherwise he might have become one of the great photographers.' By their side he lays out a few of the naughty postcards: Lil displaying a length of thigh as she snaps a garter; Flora, in deshabille, smiling coyly over a plump naked shoulder. Girls whom Tom and Jack, fresh from the diggings, flush with cash, would visit on Saturday nights for a bit of you-know-what.

'So this is what you do,' says Marijana when the show is over. 'Is good, is good. Is good you save history. So people don't think Australia is country without history, just bush and then mob of immigrants. Like me. Like us.' She has taken off the head-scarf: she shakes her hair free, smoothes it back, gives him a smile.

Like us. Who are these us? Marijana and the Jokic family; or Marijana and he?

'It was not just bush, Marijana,' he says cautiously.

'No, of course, is not bush, is Aboriginal people. But I talk about Europe, what they say in Europe. Bush, then Captain Cook, then immigrants – where is history, they say?'

'You mean, where are the castles and cathedrals? Don't immigrants have a history of their own? Do you cease to have a history when you move from one point on the globe to another?'

She brushes aside the rebuke, if that is what it is. 'In Europe people say Australia have no history because in Australia everybody is new. Don't mind if you come with this history or that history, in Australia you start zero. Zero history, you understand? That's what people say in my country, in Germany too, in all Europe. Why you want to go to Australia, they say? Is like you go to desert, to Qatar, to Arab countries, oil countries. You only do it for money, they say. So is good somebody save old photographs, show Australia has history, too. But they worth lots of money, these photographs, eh?'

'Yes, they are worth money.'

'So who gets them, you know, after you?'

'After my decease, do you mean? They are going to the State Library. It is all arranged. The State Library here in Adelaide.'

'You don't sell them?'

'No, I won't sell them, it will be a bequest.'

'But they put your name on, eh?'

'They will put my name on the collection indeed. The Rayment Bequest. So that in future days children will whisper to each other, "Who was he, Rayment of the Rayment Bequest? Was he someone famous?"'

'But photograph too, maybe, eh, not just name? Photograph of Mr Rayment. Photograph is not the same as just name, is more living. Otherwise why save photographs?'

No doubt about it, she has a point. If names are as good as images, why bother to save images? Why save the light-images of these dead miners, why not just type out their names and display the list in a glass case?

'I'll ask the people at the library,' he says, 'I'll see how they feel about the idea. But not a picture of me as I am now, God spare us that. As I used to be.'

The dusting of the books, a chore that cleaning women in the past disposed of by running a feather duster over the spines, is attacked by Marijana as a major operation. Desk and cabinets are covered with newspaper; then, half a shelf at a time, the books are carried out to the balcony and individually dusted, and the emptied shelves wiped immaculately clean.

'Just be sure,' he intervenes nervously, 'that the books go back in the same order.'

She treats him to a look of such scorn that he quails.

Where does the woman get the energy? Does she run her home on the same lines? How does Mr J cope with it? Or is it for his eyes alone, her Australian boss's: to show how much of herself she is prepared to give to her new country?

It is on the day of the book-dusting that what had been a mild interest in Marijana, an interest that had not amounted to more than curiosity, turns into something else. In her he begins to see if not beauty then at least the perfection of a certain feminine type. Strong as a horse, he thinks, eyeing the sturdy calves and well-knit haunches that ripple as she reaches for the upper shelves. Strong as a mare.

Has whatever it is that had been floating in the air these past weeks begun to settle, faute de mieux, on Marijana? And what is its name, this sediment, this sentiment? It does not feel like desire. If he had to pick a word for it, he would say it was admiration. Can desire grow out of admiration, or are the two quite distinct species? What would it be like to lie side by side, naked, breast to breast, with a woman one principally admires?

Not just a woman: a married woman too, he must not forget that. Not too far away there lives and breathes a Mr Marijana Jokic. Would Mr Jokic or Pan Jokic or Gospodin Jokic or whatever he calls himself fly into a rage if he found out that his wife's employer indulged in daytime reveries about lying breast to breast with her – fly into one of those elemental Balkan rages that give birth to clan feuds and epic poems? Would Mr Jokic come after him with a knife?

He makes jokes about Jokic because he envies him. When the chips are down, Jokic has this admirable woman and he does not. Not only does Jokic have her, he also has the children who come with her, come out of her: Ljubica the love-child; the distracted but no doubt equally pretty middle daughter whose name he cannot recall; and the dashing boy with the motorcycle. Jokic has them all and he has – what? A flat full of books and furniture. A collection of photographs, images of the dead, which after his own death will gather dust in the basement of a library along with other minor bequests more trouble to the cataloguers than they are worth.