J. Coetzee - Slow Man

He halts. What a torrent of words! How unlike him! Marijana must be surprised. Is there indeed at this moment some stranger speaking through a mirror, taking over his voice (but which mirror?), or is the present outpouring just another bout of lability, the aftershock of the latest accident – the bump on the head, the strained back, the aching stump, the icy shower, and so forth – rising in his throat like bile, like vomit? In fact, might it simply be an effect of the pill Marijana gave him (what could the pill have been?), or even of the coffee? He should not have taken the coffee. He is not used to coffee in the evenings.

Speaks love. He cannot be sure, he is not wearing his glasses, but a flush seems to be creeping up from Marijana's throat. Marijana says she wants him to curb himself, but that is nonsense, she cannot really mean it. What woman would not want a torrent of love-words poured out on her every now and again, however questionable their origin? Marijana is blushing, and for the simple reason that she too is labile. And therefore? What comes next? And therefore it does indeed all cohere! Therefore behind the chaos of appearance a divine logic is indeed at work! Wayne Blight comes out of nowhere to smash his leg to a pulp, therefore months later he collapses in the shower, therefore this scene becomes possible: a man of sixty caught more or less rigid in bed, shivering intermittently, spouting philosophy to his nurse, spouting love. And the blood moves in her, responding!

Exulting, he stretches out (Ignore the pain, who cares for pain!) and places his large and (he notices) rather unattractively livid hand over Marijana's smaller, warmer hand with the tapering fingers that, according to his grandmother in Toulouse, signify a sensual temperament.

For a moment Marijana lets her hand rest under his. Then she frees herself, stubs out the cigarette, rises, and begins to button her coat again.

'Marijana,' he says, 'I make no demands, neither now nor in the future.'

'Yes?' She cocks her head, gives him a quizzical look. 'No demand? You think I know nothing about men? Men is always demand. I want, I want, I want. Me, I want to do my job, that is my demand. My job in Australia is nurse.'

She pauses. Never before has she addressed him with such force, such (it seems to him) fury.

'You telephone, and is good you telephone, I don't say you must not telephone. Emergency, you telephone, OK. But this' – she waves a hand – 'this shower business is not emergency, not medical emergency. You fall in bathroom, you call some friend. "I get scared, please come," that is what you say.' She takes out a fresh cigarette, changes her mind, puts it back in the pack. ' Elizabeth,' she says. 'You call Elizabeth, or you call other lady friend, I don't know your friends. "I get scared, please come hold my hand. No medical emergency, just please come hold my hand."'

'I was not just scared. I have injured myself. I cannot move. You can see that.'

'Spasm. Is just spasm. I leave you pills for it. Back spasm is not emergency.' She pauses. 'Or else you want more, not just hold hand, you want, like you call it, the real thing, then maybe you join club for lonely hearts. If you got lonely heart.'

She draws a breath, eyes him reflectively. 'You think you know how it is to be nurse, Mr Rayment? Every day I nurse old ladies, old men, clean them, clean their dirt, I don't need to say it, change sheets, change clothes. Always I am hearing Do this, do that, bring this, bring that, not feeling good, bring pills, bring glass of water, bring cup of tea, bring blanket, take off blanket, open window, close window, don't like this, don't like that. I come home tired in my bone, telephone rings, any time, mornings, nights: Is emergency, can you come… '

Minutes ago she was blushing. Now he is the one who ought to blush. An emergency… can you come? Of course, in the language of the caring professions, this would not count as an emergency. One does not perish of cold in an air-conditioned flat on Coniston Terrace, North Adelaide. Even in the act of dialling the Jokic number he knew that. Yet he called anyhow. Come, save me! he called across the South Australian space.

'You were the first I thought of,' he says. 'Your name came to me first. Your name, your face. Do you think that is of no account – being first?'

She shrugs. There is silence between them. Of course it is a big word, an overbearing word to have hurled at one: first. But that is not the word that gives him pause. Your name. Your name came to me. You came to me. Words that rose in him without thought, came to him. Is this how it is when one is labile: words just come?

'I always thought,' he presses on, 'that nursing was a vocation. I thought that was what set it apart, what justified the long hours and the poor pay and the ingratitude and the indignities too, such as those you mentioned: that you were following a calling. Well, when a nurse is called, a proper nurse, she doesn't ask questions, she comes. Even if it is not a real emergency. Even if it is just distress, human distress, what you call a scare.' He has not lectured Marijana before, but perhaps the lecture is the mode in which, on this particular night, the truth will choose to reveal itself. 'Even if it is just love.'

Love: biggest of the big words. Nevertheless, let him sock her with it.

She takes the blow well this time, hardly blinking. The buttons of her coat are all done now, from bottom to top.

'Just love,' he repeats with some bitterness.

'Time to go,' she says. 'Long drive to Munno Para. See you.'

With considerable effort he quells a new bout of shivers. 'Not yet, Marijana,' he says. 'Five minutes. Three minutes. Please. Let's have a drink together and simmer down and be ordinary. I don't want to feel I can never call you again, for shame. Yes?'

'OK. Three minutes. But no drink for me, I must drive, and no drink for you, alcohol and pills is not good.'

Somewhat stiffly she resumes her seat. One of the three minutes passes.

'What exactly does your husband know?' he asks out of the blue.

She gets up. 'Now I go,' she says.

Distressed, remorseful, aching, uncomfortable, he lies awake all night. The pills that Marijana said she would leave are nowhere to be seen.

Dawn comes. Needing to go to the toilet, he gingerly tries to crawl out of the bed. Halfway to the floor the pain strikes again, immobilising him.

A sore back is not an emergency, says Marijana, whom he hired to save him from degradations of precisely this kind. Does being unable to control one's bladder count as an emergency? No, clearly not. It is just part of life, part of growing old. Miserably he surrenders and urinates on the floor.

That is the posture in which Drago – who ought to be at school but for reasons of his own seems not to be – finds him when he arrives to pick up his bag of stuff: half in bed, half out, his leg caught in the twisted bedclothes, stalled, frozen.

If he no longer hides anything from Marijana, it is because he cannot be more abject before her than he has already been. With Drago it is a different story. Thus far he has done his best not to make a spectacle of himself before Drago. Now here he is, a helpless old man in urinous pyjamas trailing an obscene pink stump behind him from which the sodden bandages are slipping. If he were not so cold he would blush.

And Drago does not waver! Does it run in the family, this matter-of-factness about the body? As Drago's mother had helped him into bed, so now Drago helps him out; and when he tries to explain himself, to excuse his weakness, it is Drago who shushes him – 'No worries, Mr Rayment, just relax and we'll have you fixed up in a minute' – and then strips the bed and turns the mattress and (somewhat clumsily, he is after all just a boy) spreads fresh sheets; it is Drago who finds a fresh pair of pyjamas and patiently, averting his eyes as decency requires, helps him on with them.