J. Coetzee - Slow Man

He remembers the story. It was in a book called Légendes dorées, Golden Legends, in his book-chest in Lourdes. Vividly he remembers the illustration: the skinny old man naked but for a loincloth, his wiry legs hooked around the hero's neck while the hero strides through the waist-deep torrent. What has happened to the book? What has happened to the book-chest and the other remnants of a French childhood that crossed the oceans with them to the new country? If he went back to the Dutchman's house in Ballarat, would he find them in the cellar, Sinbad and the fox and the crow and Jeanne d'Arc and the rest of his story-companions, closed up in cardboard boxes, patiently waiting for their little master to return and rescue them; or did the Dutchman cast them out long ago, after he became a widower?

'Yes, I remember,' he says. 'Am I to understand that I am Sinbad in the story and you the old man? In that case you face a certain difficulty. You have no means of – how shall I put this delicately – no means of getting onto my shoulders. And I am not going to help you up.'

Costello smiles a secretive smile. 'Perhaps I am already there,' she says, 'and you do not know it.'

'No, you are not, Mrs Costello. I am not under your control, not in any sense of the word, and I am going to prove it. I request you to kindly return my key – a key you took without my permission – and leave my flat and not come back.'

'That's a hard word to be speaking to an old woman, Mr Rayment. Are you sure you mean it?'

'This is not a comedy, Mrs Costello. I am asking you to leave.'

She sighs. 'Very well then. But I'm sure I don't know what will become of me, with the rain pelting down and the dark coming fast and all.'

There is no rain, no dark. It is a pleasant afternoon, warm and still, the kind of afternoon that ought to make one glad to be alive.

'Here,' she says: 'your key.' With exaggerated care she sets down the latchkey on the coffee table. 'I will need a brief grace to collect my belongings and put on my face. Then I will be off, and you will be alone again. I am sure you are looking forward to that.'

Impatiently he turns away. In a few minutes she is back.

'Goodbye.' She transfers a plastic shopping bag from right hand to left, offers him the right hand. 'I am leaving a small suitcase. I will send for it in a day or two, when I have found alternative quarters.'

'I would prefer it if you took your suitcase with you.'

'That is not possible.'

'It is possible, and I would prefer it if you did so.'

No more words pass between them. From the front door he watches her descend the stairs lingeringly, step by step, bearing the suitcase. If he were a gentleman he would offer to help, bad leg or no. But in this case he is not a gentleman. He just wants her out of his life.

IT IS TRUE: he is indeed looking forward to being alone. In fact he hungers for solitude. But no sooner has Elizabeth Costello taken her leave than Drago Jokic, with a bulging rucksack on his shoulder, is at the door.

'Hi,' Drago greets him. 'How's the pushbike?'

'I have not done anything about the pushbike, I'm afraid. I have had other matters to attend to. What can I do for you? Would you like to come in?'

Drago comes in, drops the rucksack on the floor. The self-assured air is no longer so marked; he seems, in fact, embarrassed.

'Have you come about Wellington College?' he asks. 'Do you want to talk about that?'

The boy nods.

'Well, fire away. What is the problem?'

'My mum says you will pay my fees.'

'That's right. I will guarantee the fees for two years. You can think of it as a loan if you prefer, a long-term loan. It is not important to me how you think of it.'

'Mum told me how much it adds up to. I didn't know it was that much.'

'I have no use for the money, Drago. If we did not spend it on your education it would just sit in the bank doing nothing.'

'Yes,' says the boy doggedly, 'but why me?'

Why me? – a question on everyone's lips, it seems. He could fob Drago off with some polite form of words, but no, the boy has come in person to inquire, so he will give him an answer, the true answer or part of the true answer.

'In the time your mother has worked here I have developed a soft spot for her, Drago. She has made a huge difference to my life. She does not have an easy time of it, we both know that. I want to help where I can.'

Now the evasive air is gone. The boy is looking him straight in the eye, challenging him: Is that all you can say? Is that as far as you will go? And his answer? Yes, that is as far as I will go, for the present.

'My dad won't allow it,' says Drago.

'So I hear. To your dad it is probably a matter of pride. I can understand that. But you should remind him there is no shame in taking a loan from a friend. Because that is how I would like to be thought of: as a friend.'

Drago is shaking his head. 'It's not that. They had a fight about it, my mum and my dad.' His lip begins to quiver. Sixteen years old: still a child. 'They had a fight last night,' he goes on softly. 'Mum has walked out. She has gone to stay with Aunt Lidie.'

'And where is that? Where is Aunt Lidie?'

'Just down the road, in Elizabeth. Elizabeth North.'

'Drago,' he says, 'let us be frank with each other. You would not have come here today, I know, if you had not had troubling thoughts about your mother and myself. So let me set your mind at rest. There is nothing dishonourable going on between your mother and me. There is nothing dishonourable in my feelings for her. I honour her as much as any woman on earth.'

Nothing dishonourable. What a funny old form of words! Are they not just a fig-leaf to cover something a great deal coarser, something unsayable: I haven't been fucking your mother? If fucking is what it is all about, if fucking is what sends Miroslav Jokic into a jealous rage and brings his son to the edge of tears, why is he making speeches about honour? I haven't been fucking your mother, I haven't even solicited her: go and tell that to your father. Yet if he does not plan to solicit Marijana, if he does not aspire to fuck her, what in God's name does he plan or aspire to do, in words that make sense to a youth born in the 1980s?

'I am sorry to be a source of trouble between your parents. It is the last thing I want. Your father has quite the wrong idea about me. If he met me in person he would know better.'

'He hit her,' says Drago, and now control is starting to go – control over his voice, control over his tears, perhaps control over the motions of his heart. 'I hate him. He hit my sister too.'

'He hit Blanka?'

'No, my little sister. Blanka sides with him. She says Mum has affairs. She says Mum is having an affair with you.'

Mum has affairs. The Costello woman called her a faithful spouse. He should not waste his time trying his luck with Marijana Jokic, she said, because Marijana Jokic is a faithful spouse. Who is right, the spiteful daughter or the crazy old woman? And what an appalling picture! Miroslav, no doubt a great bear of a man, enraged and drunk, laying into Marijana with his fists, laying into his porcelain-featured daughter too, while the son stands by seething! Balkan passions! How on earth did he get involved with a Balkan, a Balkan mechanic and his mechanical duck!

'Your mother and I are not having an affair,' he repeats doggedly. 'She would not dream of it, I would not dream of it.' What a lie! I dream of it daily. 'If you don't believe me, that is the end of it, I am not going to try to persuade you. What are your plans now, your immediate plans? Will you be staying at home or with your mother?'

Drago shakes his head. 'I'm not going back. I'll crash at a mate's.' He gives the rucksack a kick. 'I brought my things.'