J. Coetzee - Slow Man

A recumbent. He has never ridden one before, but he dislikes recumbents instinctively, as he dislikes prostheses, as he dislikes all fakes.

'Magnificent,' he says again. 'I am running out of words. May I take it for a spin?'

Miroslav shakes his head. 'No cables,' he says. 'No gear cables, no brake cables. Drago hasn't put them in yet. But while we got you here we can adjust the seat. You see, we mounted the seat on a rail, so you can adjust it backward or forward.'

He lays his crutches down, takes off his jacket, allows Miroslav to help him aboard. The seat feels odd.

'Marijana help with the seat,' says Miroslav. 'You know – for your leg. She design it, then we mould it in fibreglass.'

Not just hours. Days, weeks. They must have spent weeks on it, father, son; mother too. The blush has not left his face, and he does not want it to.

'You can't get this kind of thing in bike shops, so we thought we make it like one-off, custom made. I'll give you a push, so you get the feel. OK? I'll give you a push but I'll keep a hold because, remember, there's no brakes.'

The onlookers stand aside. Miroslav trundles him out onto the paved driveway.

'How do I steer?' he asks.

'With your left foot. There's a bar here – see? – with a spring. Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it.'

No cars on Narrapinga Close. Miroslav gives a gentle push. He leans forward, grips the crank handles, gives them an experimental turn, hoping the contraption will steer itself.

Of course he will never put it to use. It will go into the store room at Coniston Terrace and there gather dust. All the time and trouble the Jokics have put into it will be for nothing. Do they know that? Did they know all along, while they were building it? Is this driving lesson just part of a ritual they are all performing, he for their sake, they for his?

The breeze is in his face. For a moment he allows himself to imagine he is rolling down Magill Road, the pennant fluttering brightly overhead to remind the world to have mercy on him. A perambulator, that is what it is most like: a perambulator with a grizzled old baby in it, out for a ride. How the bystanders will smile! Smile and laugh and whistle: Good on you, grandpa!

But perhaps, in a larger perspective, that is exactly what the Jokics mean to teach him: that he should give up his solemn airs and become what he rightly is, a figure of fun, an old gent with one leg who when he is not hopping around on his crutches roams the streets on his home-made tricycle. One of the local sights, one of the quaint types who lend colour to the social fabric. Till the day Wayne Blight guns his engine and comes after him again.

Miroslav has not left his side. Now Miroslav turns the machine in a wide arc that allows them to return to the driveway.

Elizabeth claps her hands; the others follow suit. 'Bravo, my knight,' she says. 'My knight of the doleful countenance.'

He ignores her. 'What do you think, Marijana?' he says. 'Should I take up riding again?'

For Marijana has not so far uttered a word. Marijana knows him better than her husband does, better than Elizabeth Costello. She has seen from the beginning how he has striven to save his manly dignity, and has never jeered at him for it. What does Marijana think? Should he go on battling for dignity or is it time to capitulate?

'Yeah,' says Marijana slowly. 'It suits you. I think you should give it a whirl.'

With her left hand Marijana holds her chin; with her right hand she props up her left elbow. It is the classic posture of thought, of mature reflection. She has given his question its full due, and she has answered. The woman the touch of whose lips he still feels on his cheek, the woman who, for reasons that have never been fully clear to him, though now and then he has a flicker of illumination, holds his heart, has spoken.

'Well then,' he says (he was going to say Well then, my love, but forbears because he does not want to hurt Miroslav, though Miroslav must know, Ljuba must know, Blanka certainly knows, it is written all over his face), 'well then, I'll give it a whirl. Thank you. In all sincerity, all heartfelt sincerity, thank you, each one of you. Thank you most of all to the absent Drago.' Whom I have misjudged and wronged, he would like to say. 'Whom I have misjudged and wronged,' he says.

'No worries,' replies Miroslav. 'We'll put it on the trailer and bring it over next weekend maybe. Just a couple more things to fix, the cables and suchlike.'

He turns to Elizabeth. 'And now we must take our leave, must we not?' he says; and to Miroslav: 'Can you give me a hand?'

Miroslav helps him up.

'PR Express,' says Ljuba. 'What does PR Express mean?'

And indeed, that is what is painted on the tubing of the tricycle, in lettering that artfully suggests the rush of wind. PR Express.

'It means I can go very fast,' he says. 'PR the rocket man.'

'Rocket Man,' says Ljuba. She gives him a smile, the first she has ever given. 'You aren't Rocket Man, you're Slow Man!' Then she breaks into giggles, and embraces her mother's thighs, and hides her face.

'A debacle,' he says to Elizabeth. They are in a taxi, heading south, heading home. 'A rout, a moral rout, nothing less. I have never felt so ashamed of myself.'

'Yes, you did not come out well. All that fury! All that self-righteousness!'

Fury? What is she talking about?

'Just think,' she continues: 'you were on the point of losing a godson, and for what? I could not believe my ears. For an old photograph! A photograph of a bunch of strangers who could not care less about you. About a little French boy who hasn't even been born yet.'

'Please,' he says, 'please let there not be another argument, I have not the stomach for it. What entitles Drago to take over my photographs I still don't see, but let it pass. Marijana tells me that the photographs are now on Drago's website. I am such an ignoramus. What does it mean, to be on a website?'

'It means that anyone in the world who feels curious about the life and times of Drago Jokic can inspect the photographs in question, in their original form or perhaps in their new, revised and augmented form, from the privacy of his or her home. As for why Drago chooses to publish them in this way, I am not the right one to ask. He will be coming next Sunday to deliver your conveyance. You can quiz him then.'

'Marijana claims that the whole forgery business is just a joke.'

'It is not even a forgery. A forger is out to make money. Drago could not care less about money. Of course it is just a joke. What else should it be?'

'Jokes have a relation to the unconscious.'

'Jokes may indeed have a relation to the unconscious. But also: sometimes a joke is just a joke.'

'Directed against-'

'Directed against you. Whom else? The man who doesn't laugh. The man who can't take a joke.'

'But what if I had never found out? What if I went to the grave in total ignorance of this so-called joke? What if the joke were to go unnoticed at the State Library too? What if it were to go unnoticed to the end of time? Take a look at these pictures, kids. The Ballarat diggers. Look at that bloke with the fierce moustaches! What then?'

'Then it will become part of our folklore that brigand moustaches were in fashion in 1850s Victoria. That's all. This is really not a matter worth going on about, Paul. What counts is that you have left your flat and visited Munno Para, where you have had words in private with your beloved Marijana and got to see her husband's beekeeping outfit and the bicycle her son is building for you. That is the only outcome of the so-called forgery that matters. Otherwise the episode is of the utmost insignificance.'

'You forget the missing print. Whatever opinion you may hold on photographs and their relation to the real, the fact is that one of my Faucherys, a genuine national treasure, worth more than mere money, has disappeared.'