J. Coetzee - Slow Man

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

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.'

'Perhaps I am a Jew. Are you sure I am not a Jew?'

'OK, forget it. It slip from my tongue. Is nothing. You don't want to talk to me, say so, is finished.'

'Of course I want to talk. Of course I want to help. Why am I on this earth but to help? Give me the particulars. Tell me when and where it happened, this business of the silver chain. And tell me more about Blanka's friend, the one who was with her in the shop.'

'I got it here. Shop is Happenstance' – she spells the word – 'on Rundle Mall, and Mr Matthews is manager.'

'And when did it happen, the business with Happenstance?'

'Friday. Friday afternoon.'

'And her friend?'

'Blanka won't say her friend's name. Maybe Tracy. I don't know.'

'Let me see what I can do, Marijana. I am not the best person for this kind of thing, but I will see what I can do. Where can I reach you?'

'You can phone, you got my number.'

'Phone you at home? I thought you were staying with your sister-in-law. I wrote to you care of your sister-in-law. Didn't you get my letter?'

There is a long silence. 'Is all finished,' says Marijana at last. 'You can phone me.'

What Marijana wants is a man of influence, and he is not a man of influence, he is not even sure he approves of the phenomenon of the man of influence. But this must be how things are done in Croatia, so for Marijana's sake and the sake of her unhappy daughter, who must surely have learned her lesson by now – namely, to be more careful when she steals things – he is prepared to try. Is Marijana wrong, after all, to believe that a man with a smooth name like Rayment and a comfortable home in an eminently comfortable part of the city and money to give away can make things happen in a way that an auto mechanic with a funny name like Jokic cannot?

'Mr Matthews?' he says.

'Yes.'

'May I have a word with you in private?'

Happenstance – which sells what it calls gear – is not, however, the kind of establishment where one can have a word in private. It is, at most, five metres square. There are tightly packed racks of clothing, there is a counter and a till, there is music rattling from somewhere above them, and that is all. So what he has to say to Mr Matthews has to be said in the open.

'A girl was detained here for shoplifting,' he says. 'Last Friday. Blanka Jokic. Do you recall the case?'

Mr Matthews, who either is or is not a Jew, and who has been all affability thus far, stiffens visibly. Mr Matthews is in his twenties; he is tall and slim; he has wide, dark eyebrows and bleached hair that stands up in spikes.

'My name is Paul Rayment,' he presses on. 'I am a friend of the Jokic family. May I tell you something about Blanka?'

The boy – what else is he but a boy? – nods guardedly.

'Blanka has never done anything like this before. Since last Friday she has been through a great deal of torment, self-torment. She is ashamed of what she did. She is reluctant to show her face in public. She has, I would venture to say, learned her lesson. She is just a child; I don't believe any good will be achieved by prosecuting her. So I have come to make a proposal. I want to pay for the item she took, which I understand was a silver chain retailing for fifty dollars.'