J. Coetzee - Slow Man

She gestures towards the computer, which is humming softly.

'Please not,' he says. 'I don't understand computers. Drago can make all the copies he likes, I couldn't care less. I just want the originals back. The original prints. The ones touched by Fauchery's hand.'

'Originals.' All of a sudden she smiles, and not without kindliness, as if it has dawned on her that if he does not understand computers or the concept of the original or anything else, it is not out of wilfulness but because he is a fool. 'OK. When Drago come home I ask him about originals.' She pauses. 'Elizabeth,' she says – 'she come live with you now?'

'No, we have no such plan.'

She is still smiling. 'But is good idea maybe. Then you not alone when it comes, you know, emergency.'

Again she pauses, and in that pause he senses that her purpose in bringing him upstairs may not just have been to show him Drago's pictures.

'You a good man, Mr Rayment.'

'Paul.'

'You a good man, Paul. But you get too lonely in your flat – you know what I mean? I get lonely too, in Coober Pedy, before we come to Adelaide, so I know, I know. Sit at home all day, kids at school, just baby and me – Ljuba was baby then – you get, you know, negative. So maybe you get negative too in your flat. No children, nobody. Very…'

'Very gloomy?'

She shakes her head. 'No, I don't know how you say it. You grab. Anything come, you grab.' With one hand she shows him how one grabs.

'Clutch at straws,' he suggests. It is the first intimation she has given that the makeshift English she employs is not enough for her. If only he could speak Croatian! In Croatian, perhaps, he would be able to sing from the heart. Is it too late to learn? Can he find a teacher here in Adelaide? Lesson one: the verb to love, ljub or whatever.

'Anyway,' she says, ' Elizabeth come live with you, then you forget Marijana. Forget godfather too. Is no-good idea, godfather, is not realistic like. Because where he lives, this godfather? You want godfather come live in Narrapinga Close? Is not realistic – you see?'

'I never asked to come and live with you.'

'You come live here, where you sleep? You sleep in Drago's bed, where is Drago sleeping? Or you want to sleep with me and Mel, two man, one woman?' She is bubbling over with laughter now. 'You want that?'

He cannot laugh. His throat is dry. 'I could live in your back yard,' he whispers. 'I could have a shed put up. I could live in a shed in your back yard and watch over you. Over all of you.'

'OK,' she says briskly, 'is enough talking. Elizabeth come live with you, she fix up everything, no more gloomy.'

'Gloom.'

'No more gloom. Is funny word. In Croatia we say ovaj glumi, doesn't mean he is gloomy, no, means he is pretending, he is not real. But you not pretending, eh?'

'No.'

'Yeah, I know that.' And, to his surprise, perhaps to her own surprise too, she rises on tiptoe and gives him a kiss, two kisses, one on each cheek. 'Come, we go down now.'

ELIZABETH COSTELLO IS not by herself. Standing over her is a strange figure: a man in baggy white overalls, his head hidden under what looks like a canvas bucket. The man seems to be speaking, but his words are irretrievably muffled by the mask.

Swiftly Marijana crosses the floor. 'Zaboga, zar opet!' she exclaims, laughing. 'His hair is catched! Every time he put it on' – she gestures towards the strange headgear – 'his hair catch, then I must…' She makes twisting motions with her fingers.

She grasps the man by the shoulders – it is Miroslav – turns him around, and begins to disengage the mask from his long hair. Miroslav stretches backward with his hands, groping for her hips. She sways out of the way, frees the mask. He lifts it up: his face is ruddy from the heat; he seems to be in a good humour.

'It's the bees,' he explains. 'I've been moving hives.'

'My husband is beekeeper,' says Marijana. 'You meet my husband? Is Mrs Costello, she is friend to Mr Rayment. Mel.'

'How do you do, Mel,' says Elizabeth Costello. 'Elizabeth. I have heard about you but we have never met in the flesh, so to speak. You keep bees?'

'It's just a hobby like,' says Mel or Miroslav.

'My husband, his family always keeping bees,' says Marijana. 'His father, and before him his greatfather. So he is keeping bees too, here in Australia.'

'Just a few hives,' says Mel. 'But it's good honey, from the gum trees mainly. Got the eucalyptus tang, you know.'

The ease between the two of them tells all – that and Marijana's laughter and the freedom of her fingers in his hair. Not an estranged couple at all. On the contrary, intimate. An intimate relationship with a row every now and again, Balkan style, to add a dash of spice: accusations, recriminations, plates smashed, doors slammed. Followed by remorse and tears, followed by heated lovemaking. Unless the whole story of the fight and the flight to Aunt Lidie was a lie, a fabrication. But why? Can he be the object of an extended plot, a plot he does not begin to understand?

'Pretty hot in overalls,' says Mel. 'I'll go change.' He pauses. 'You come to inspect the bike?'

'The bike?' he says. 'No. What bike?'

'We would love to see the bike,' says Elizabeth. 'Where is it?'

'It's not finished,' says Mel. 'Drago hasn't worked on it for a while. There's a couple things still needs to be done. But you can take a look, seeing as you have come all the way. He won't mind.'

'We would love that,' says Elizabeth. 'Paul has been looking forward to it so much.'

'Go on then. I'll meet you outside.'

They troop out of the house. Miroslav rejoins them, wearing shorts and sandals and a T-shirt that says Team Valvoline. He rolls up the garage door. There stands the familiar red Commodore, and beside it what Miroslav calls the bike.

'My, my!' exclaims Elizabeth. 'What a strange contraption! How does it work?'

Miroslav wheels the machine out of the garage; then, with a smile, turns to him. 'Maybe you can explain.'

'It's what they call a recumbent bicycle,' he says. 'On this model you don't pedal, you turn the cranks with your hands instead.'

'And Drago built it?' says Elizabeth. 'All by himself?'

'Yeah,' says Miroslav. 'Only the brazing I did. Over in the workshop. Brazing is specialist like.'

'Well, what a splendid gift,' says Elizabeth. 'Don't you think so, Paul? It will set you free again. Free to go wandering.'

'Drago want to say thank you,' says Marijana. 'Thank you to Mr Rayment for everything.'

All eyes are on him, Mr Rayment. Out of nowhere Ljuba has appeared. Even Blanka, who disapproved of him from the first, has joined the group. Slim body. A supple mover. Her father's daughter. No beauty, but then, some women develop late. Is Blanka going to have a turn to thank him too? Has she been busy as a bee, working on a gift? What will it be? An embroidered wallet? A hand-dyed tie?

He can feel a blush creeping over him, a blush of shame, starting at his ears and creeping forward over his face. He has no wish to stop it. It is what he deserves. 'It's magnificent,' he says. And, since it is expected of him, and since it is the right thing to do, he takes a step forward on his crutches and inspects his prize more closely. 'Magnificent,' he repeats. 'A magnificent gift.' Munificent too, he might add, but does not. He knows what he pays Marijana; he can guess what Miroslav earns. Much more than I deserve.

The wheel at the front is of standard bicycle size, with a set of cogs and a chain; the smaller wheels at the back merely roll. Spraypainted a vivid red, the bicycle – in fact a tricycle – stands less than a metre high. On the street the rider will be near to invisible, beneath a car driver's line of sight. So behind the seat Drago has mounted a fibreglass wand with an orange-coloured pennant at its tip. Fluttering above the rider's head, the brave little pennant is meant to warn off the Wayne Blights of the world.