J. Coetzee - Slow Man

'Ever since you reminded me of your French past, you know, I have been listening with pricked ears. And yes, you are right: you speak English, you probably think in English, you may even dream in English, yet English is not your true language. I would even say that English is a disguise for you, or a mask, part of your tortoiseshell armour. As you speak I swear I can hear words being selected, one after the other, from the word-box you carry around with you, and slotted into place. That is not how a true native speaks, one who is born into the language.'

'How does a native speak?'

'From the heart. Words well up within and he sings them, sings along with them. So to speak.'

'I see. Are you suggesting I return to French? Are you suggesting I sing Frère Jacques?'

'Don't mock me, Paul. I said nothing about returning to French. You lost touch with French long ago. All I say is, you speak English like a foreigner.'

'I speak English like a foreigner because I am a foreigner. I am a foreigner by nature and have been a foreigner all my life. And I don't see why I should apologise. If there were no foreigners there would be no natives.'

'A foreigner by nature? No, that is not it, don't put the blame on your nature. You have a perfectly good nature, if a little underdeveloped. No, the more I listen the more convinced I am that the key to your character lies in your speech. You speak like a book. Once upon a time you were a pale, well-behaved little boy – I can just see you – who took books too seriously. And you still are.'

'I still am what? Pale? Well-behaved? Underdeveloped?'

'A little boy afraid of sounding funny when you open your mouth. Let me make a proposal, Paul. Lock up this flat and bid farewell to Adelaide. Adelaide is too much like a graveyard. There is no more life for you here. Come and live with me in Carlton instead. I will give you language lessons. I will teach you how to speak from the heart. One two-hour lesson a day, six days a week; on the seventh day we can rest. I will even cook for you. Not as expertly as Marijana, but serviceably enough. Then after dinner, should the spirit move you, you can tell me more stories from your treasure-hoard, which I will afterwards tell back to you in a form so accelerated and improved that you will hardly recognise them. What else? No rough pleasures – you will be relieved to hear that. As clean as the blessed angels we will be. In all other respects I will take care of you; and perhaps in return you will learn to take care of me. When the appointed day arrives, you can be the one to close my eyelids and stuff cotton wool up my nostrils and recite a brief prayer over me. Or vice versa, if I am the one left behind. How does that sound to you?'

'It sounds like marriage.'

'Yes it is, marriage of a kind. Companionate marriage. Paul and Elizabeth. Elizabeth and Paul. Companions on the way. Or if Carlton doesn't appeal to you, we could buy a camper van and tour the continent taking in the sights. We could even catch a plane to France. How about that? You could show me your old haunts, the Galeries Lafayette, Tarascon, the Pyrenees. No end of options. Come on, what do you say?'

She may be Irish, but she sounds sincere, or half sincere. Now his turn.

He rises and stands propped against the table before her. Can he, for once, make his voice sing? He closes his eyes, empties his mind, waits for words to come.

'Why me, Elizabeth?' come the words. 'Why, of all the many people in the world, me?'

The same old words, the same disappointing old song. He cannot get beyond it. Yet until he has an answer to his question, whatever in the heart does the singing will be clogged.

Elizabeth Costello is silent.

'I am dross, Elizabeth, base metal. I am not redeemable. I am of no use to you, to anyone, of no value. Too pale, too cold, too frightened. What made you choose me? What gave you the idea you could make anything of me? Why do you stay with me? Speak!'

She speaks.

'You were made for me, Paul, as I was made for you. Will that do for the present, or do you want me to give it to you plenu voce, in full voice?'

'Speak it in so full a voice that even a poor dullard like me can understand.'

She clears her throat. 'For me alone Paul Rayment was born and I for him. His is the power of leading, mine of following; his of acting, mine of writing. More?'

'No, that is enough. Now let me ask you straight out, Mrs Costello: Are you real?'

'Am I real? I eat, I sleep, I suffer, I go to the bathroom. I catch cold. Of course I am real. As real as you.'

'Please be serious for once. Please answer me: Am I alive or am I dead? Did something happen to me on Magill Road that I have failed to grasp?'

'And am I the shade assigned to welcome you to the afterlife – is that what you are asking? No, rest assured, a poor forked creature, that is all I am, no different from yourself. An old woman who scribbles away, page after page, day after day, damned if she knows why. If there is a presiding spirit – and I don't think there is – then it is me he stands over, with his lash, not you. No slacking, young Elizabeth Costello! he says, and gives me a lick of the whip. Get on with the job now! No, this is a very ordinary story, very ordinary indeed, with just three dimensions, length, breadth and height, the same as ordinary life, and it is a very ordinary proposal I am making to you. Come back with me to Melbourne, to my nice old house in Carlton. You will like it, it has many mansions. Forget about Mrs Jokic, you don't stand a dog's chance with her. Take a chance on me. I'll be your best copine, the copine of your last days. We will share our crusts while we still have teeth. What do you say?'

'What do I say from the word-box I carry around with me or from the heart?'

'Ah, you've got me there, what a quick fellow you are! From the heart, Paul, just for once.'

He has been watching her mouth as she speaks, it is a habit of his: other people watch the eyes, he watches the mouth. No rough pleasures, she said. But right now he cannot help imagining what it would be like to kiss that mouth, with its dry, perhaps even withered lips and the trace of down above. Does companionate marriage include kissing? He drops his eyes; if he were less polite he would shudder.

And she sees it. She is not a higher being, but she sees it. 'I bet that as a little boy you didn't like it when your mother kissed you,' she says softly. 'Am I right? Ducked your head, let her peck you on the forehead, nothing more? And your Dutch stepfather not at all? Wanted to be a little man from the beginning, your own little man, owing nothing to anyone; self-made. Did they disgust you, your mother and her new husband – their breath, their smell, their pawing and fondling? How on earth could you expect someone like Marijana Jokic to love a man with such an aversion to the physical?'

'I have no aversion to the physical,' he protests coldly. What he wants to add, but does not, is: My aversion is to the ugly. 'What do you think life has consisted in ever since Magill Road but being rammed into the physical day after day? It is a testament to my faith in the physical that I have not done away with myself, that I am still here.'

Yet even as he speaks it is clear to him what the woman meant about the box of words. Done away with myself! he thinks. How artificial! How insincere! Like all the confessions she leads me into! And at the very same moment he is thinking: If we had had but five minutes more, that afternoon, if Ljuba had not come prowling like a little watchdog, Marijana would have kissed me. It was coming, I am sure, I felt it in my bones. Would have bent down and ever so lightly touched her lips to my shoulder. Then all would have been well. I would have taken her to me; she and I would have known what it was to lie side by side, breast to breast, in each other's arms, breathing each other's breath. Home country.