Slow Man

FOURTEEN

IT IS INDEED true, Elizabeth Costello is a model guest. Bent over the coffee table in the corner of the living-room that she has annexed as her own, she spends the weekend absorbed in a hefty typescript, which she seems to be annotating. He does not offer her meals, and she does not ask. Now and again, without a word, she disappears from the flat. What she does with herself he can only guess: perhaps wander the streets of North Adelaide, perhaps sit in a cafe and nibble a croissant and watch the traffic.

During one of her absences he hunts for the typescript, merely to see what it is, but cannot find it.

'Am I to infer,' he says to her on the Sunday evening, 'that you have come knocking on my door in order to study me so that you can use me in a book?'

She smiles. 'Would that it were so simple, Mr Rayment.'

'Why is it not simple? It sounds simple enough to me. Are you writing a book and putting me in it? Is that what you are doing? If so, what sort of book is it, and don't you think you need my consent first?'

She sighs. 'If I were going to put you in a book, as you phrase it, I would simply do so. I would change your name and one or two of the circumstances of your life, to get around the law of libel, and that would be that. I would certainly not need to take up residence with you. No, you came to me, as I told you: the man with the bad leg.'

He is getting tired of being told he came to this woman. 'Wouldn't you find it easier to use someone who came to you more willingly?' he remarks as dryly as he can. 'Give up on me. I am not an amenable subject, as you will discover before long. Walk away. I won't detain you. You will find it a relief to be rid of me. And vice versa.'

'And your unsuitable passion? Where would I find another such?'

'My passion, as you call it, is none of your business, Mrs Costello.'

She gives a wintry smile, shakes her head. 'It is not for you to tell me my business,' she replies softly.

His hand tightens on his crutch. If it were a proper, old-fashioned crutch of ash or jarrah, with some weight to it, instead of aluminium, he would bring it down on the old hag's skull, again and again, as often as might be necessary, till she lay dead at his feet and her blood soaked the carpet, let them do with him afterwards what they will.

The telephone rings. 'Mr Rayment? This is Marijana. How are you? Sorry I missed my days. I was crook. I come tomorrow, OK?'

So that is to be the fiction between them: she was crook. 'Yes, of course it is OK, Marijana. I hope you are feeling better. I will see you as usual tomorrow.'

'Marijana will be back on the job tomorrow,' he informs his guest as matter-of-factly as he can. Time for you to bugger off: he hopes she gets the message.

'That's all right. I'll keep out of her way.' And when he glares at her angrily: 'Are you worried she will think I am one of your lady friends from the old days?' She gives him a smile that is nothing less than merry. 'Don't take everything so seriously, Paul.'

Why Marijana has decided to come back emerges as soon as she steps through the front door. Before even taking off her coat – it is raining, a warm steamy rain that carries a tang of eucalyptus – she slaps down on the table a glossy brochure. On the cover, mock-Gothic buildings against acres of greensward; in a panel, a well-scrubbed boy in shirtsleeves and tie at a computer keyboard, with an equally well-scrubbed chum peering over his shoulder. Wellington College : Five Decades of Excellence. He has never heard of Wellington College.

'Drago say he will go here,' says Marijana. 'Look like good school, don't you think?'

He pages through the brochure. 'Sister institution to Wellington College in Pembrokeshire,' he reads aloud. 'Preparing young men for the challenges of a new century… Careers in business, science and technology, the armed forces. Where is this place? How did you find out about it?'

'In Canberra. In Canberra he find new friends. His friends in Adelaide no good, just pull him down.' She pronounces Adelaide in the Italian way, rhyming with spider. From Dubrovnik, just a stone's throw from Venice.

'And where did you hear about Wellington College?'

'Drago know all about it. Is food school for Defence Force Academy.'

'Feeder school.'

'Feeder school. They get, you know, preference.'

He returns to the brochure. Application form. Schedule of fees. He knew that boarding school fees were high; nevertheless, in black and white the figures give him a jolt.

'How many years would he be there?'

'If he start January, two years. In two years he can get year twelve, then he can get bursary. Is just fee for two years he need.'

'And Drago is enthusiastic about the school? He has agreed to go?'

'Very enthusiastic. He want to go.'

'It's normal, you know, for the parents to take a look at a school first before committing themselves. Make a tour of the premises, speak to the headmaster, get a feel of the place. Are you sure you and your husband and Drago don't want to pay a visit to Wellington College first?'

Marijana takes off the raincoat – it is made of some clear plastic material, purely functional – and drapes it over a chair. Her skin is warm, ruddy. No trace of the tension of their last encounter. ' Wellington College,' she says. 'You think Wellington College wants that Mr and Mrs Jokic from Munno Para come visit, see if maybe Wellington College is OK for their boy?'

Her tone is good-natured enough. If anyone is embarrassed, it is he.

'In Croatia, you know, Mr Rayment, my husband was famous man, sort of. You don't believe me? In all newspapers photographs of him. Miroslav Jokic and mechanical duck. On television' – with two fingers she makes walking motions in the air – 'pictures of mechanical duck. Only man who can make mechanical duck walk, make noise like how you say kwaak, eat' – she pats her bosom – 'other things too. Old, old duck. Come from Sweden. Come to Dubrovnik 1680, from Sweden. Nobody know how to fix it. Then Miroslav Jokic fix it perfect. One week, two week he is famous man in Croatia. But here' – she casts her eyes up to the heavens – 'who cares? In Australia nobody hear of mechanical duck. Don't know what is it. Miroslav Jokic, nobody hear of him. Just auto worker. Is nothing, auto worker.'

'I am not sure I agree,' he says. 'An auto worker is not nothing. Nobody is nothing. Anyhow, whether you visit them or not, whether you are from Munno Para or Timbuctoo, my guess is that Wellington College will be only too glad to take your money. Go ahead and apply. I'll pay. I'll give you a cheque right now for the application fee.'

So there it is. As easy as that. He is committed. He has become a godfather. A godfather: one who leads a child to God. Does he have it in him to lead Drago to God?

'Is good,' says Marijana. 'I tell Drago. You make him very happy.' A pause. 'And you? Leg is OK? No pain? You do your exercises?'

'The leg is OK, no pain,' he says. What he does not say is: But why did you walk off the job, Marijana? Why did you abandon me? Hardly professional conduct, was it? I bet you would not want Mrs Putz to hear of it.

He is still full of aggrievement, he wants some sign of contrition from Marijana. At the same time he is drunk with the pleasure of having her back, excited too by the money he is about to give away. Giving always bucks him up, he knows that about himself. Spurs him to give more. Like gambling. The thrill all in the losing. Loss upon loss. The reckless, heedless falling.

In her usual busy fashion Marijana has already set to work. Beginning in the bedroom, she is stripping the bed and fitting clean sheets. But she can feel his eyes on her, he is sure of that, can feel the warmth coming from him, caressing her thighs, her breasts. Eros always ran strong for him in the mornings. If by some miracle he could embrace Marijana right now, in this mood, taking the tide while it is high, he would overcome all that rectitude of hers, he is prepared to bet. But impossible, of course. Imprudent. Worse than imprudent, crazy. He should not even think of it.

Then the bathroom door opens and the Costello woman, wearing his dressing gown and slippers, makes her entry on the scene. She is drying her hair with a towel, showing patches of pink scalp. Cursorily he introduces her. 'Marijana, this is Mrs Costello. She is staying here briefly. Mrs Jokic.'

Marijana offers her hand and with solemn mummery the Costello woman takes it. 'I promise not to get in your way,' she says.

'No worries.'

Minutes later he hears the front doorlock click. From a window he watches the Costello woman recede down the street towards the river. She is wearing a straw hat he recognises as his own, one he has not worn for years. Where did she find it? Has she been rooting in his cupboards?

'Nice lady,' says Marijana. 'She is friend?'

'A friend? No, not at all, just an associate. She has business in town, she is staying here for the duration.'

'That's good.'

Marijana is in a hurry, so it seems. Normally, first thing in the morning, she attends to the leg and conducts him through his exercises. But today there is no mention of exercises. 'I must go, is special day, must pick up Ljubica from play group,' she says. From her bag she brings out a frozen quiche. 'I come back this afternoon, maybe. Here is something little I buy for your lunch. I leave slip, you pay me later.'

'A little something,' he corrects her.

'Little something,' she says.

She is barely gone when the key scrapes in the lock and Elizabeth Costello is back. 'I bought some fruit,' she announces. She sets down a plastic bag on the table. 'There will be an interview, I would guess. Do you think Marijana will be up to it?'

'Interview?'

'For this college. They will want to interview the boy and his parents, but mainly the parents, to make sure they are the right sort.'

'It is Drago who is applying for admission, not his parents. If the Wellington College people have any sense, they will jump to take Drago.'

'But what if they ask the parents straight out how they are going to pay those outrageous fees?'

'I will write them a letter. I will lodge guarantees. I will do whatever is required.'

She is building a little pyramid of fruit – apricots, nectarines, grapes – in the bowl on the coffee table. 'That's admirable,' she says. 'I'm so glad to have this chance to get to know you better. You give me faith.'

'I give you faith? No one has said that to me before.'

'Yes, you give me faith again. You must not take seriously what I said about yourself and Mrs Jokic. One is embarrassed, that is all, to find oneself in the presence of true, old-fashioned love. I bow before you.'

She pauses in what she is doing and offers, not without irony, the lightest of inclinations of the head.

'However,' she continues, 'do remember that there is still the hurdle of Miroslav to overcome. We cannot take it for granted that Miroslav will agree to have his son go off to a fancy boarding school a thousand miles away. Or that he will want his pecuniary obligations to be taken over by the man his wife visits six days a week, the man with the missing leg. Have you thought what you will do about Miroslav?'

'He would be stupid to refuse. It doesn't affect him. It affects his son, his son's future.'

'No, Paul, that is not right,' she says softly. 'From the son to the wife, from the wife to him: that is how the thread runs. You touch his pride, his manly honour. Sooner or later you are going to have to face Miroslav. What will you say when that day comes? "I am just trying to help"? Is that what you will say? That won't be good enough. Only the truth will be good enough. And the truth is that you are not trying to help. On the contrary, you are trying to throw a spanner into the Jokic family works. You are trying to get into Mrs J's pants. Also to seduce Mr J's children away from him and make them your own, one, two and even three. Not what I would call a friendly agenda, all in all. No, you are not Miroslav's friend, not in any way I can see. Miroslav is not going to take kindly to you; and can you blame him? Therefore what are you going to do about Miroslav? You must think. You must think.' With the tip of a finger she taps her forehead. 'And if your thinking leads you where I think it will, namely to a blank wall, I have an alternative to propose.'

'An alternative to what?'

'An alternative to this entire imbroglio of yours with the Jokics. Forget about Mrs Jokic and your fixation on her. Cast your mind back. Do you remember the last time you visited the osteopathy department at the hospital? Do you remember the woman in the lift with the dark glasses? In the company of an older woman? Of course you remember. She made an impression on you. Even I could see that.

'Nothing that happens in our lives is without a meaning, Paul, as any child can tell you. That is one of the lessons stories teach us, one of the many lessons. Have you given up reading stories? A mistake. You shouldn't.

'Let me fill you in on the woman with the dark glasses. She is, alas, blind. She lost her sight a year ago, as the result of a malignancy, a tumour. Lost one whole eye, surgically excised, and the use of the other too. Before the calamity she was beautiful, or at least highly attractive; today, alas, she is unsightly in the way that all blind people are unsightly. One prefers not to look on her face. Or rather, one finds oneself staring and then withdraws one's gaze, repelled. This repulsion is of course invisible to her, but she feels it nevertheless. She is conscious of the gaze of others like fingers groping at her, groping and retreating.

'Being blind is worse than she was warned it would be, worse than she had ever imagined. She is in despair. In a matter of months she has become an object of horror. She cannot bear being in the open, where she can be looked at. She wants to hide herself. She wants to die. And at the same time – she cannot help herself – she is full of unhappy lust. She is in the summer of her womanly life; she moans aloud with lust, day after day, like a cow or a sow in heat.

'What I say surprises you? You think this is just a story I am making up? It is not. The woman exists, you have seen her with your own two eyes, her name is Marianna. This tranquil-seeming world we inhabit contains horrors, Paul, such as you could not dream up for yourself in a month of Sundays. The ocean depths, for instance, the floor of the sea – what goes on there exceeds all imagining.

'What Marianna aches for is not consolation, much less worship, but love in its most physical expression. She wants to be, no matter how briefly, as she was before, as you in your way want to be as you were before. I say to you: Why not see what you can achieve together, you and Marianna, she blind, you halt?

'Let me tell you one more thing about Marianna. Marianna knows you. Yes, she knows you. You and she are acquainted. Are you aware of that?'

It is as if she were reading his diary. It is as if he kept a diary, and this woman crept nightly into the flat and read his secrets. But there is no diary, unless he writes in his sleep.

'You are mistaken, Mrs Costello,' he says. 'The woman you refer to, whom you call Marianna – I saw her only on the one occasion, at the hospital, where she could not have seen me, by definition. So she cannot be acquainted with me, not even in the most trivial sense.'

'Yes, perhaps I am mistaken, that is possible. Or perhaps you are the one who is mistaken. Perhaps Marianna comes out of an earlier part of your life, when both of you were young and whole and good to look at, and you have simply forgotten about it. You were a photographer by profession, were you not? Perhaps once upon a time you took her photograph, and it happened that all your attention was concentrated on the image you were making, not on her, the source of the image.'

'Perhaps. But there is nothing wrong with my memory, and I have no recollection of such an experience.'

'Well, old friends or not, why not see what you can achieve together, you and Marianna? Given the extraordinary circumstances of the case, I will take it on myself to arrange a meeting. You need merely wait and prepare yourself. Be assured, if there is any proposal I will put it to her in a way that will allow her to come without losing self-respect.

'A final word. Let me suggest that, whatever you and she get up to, you get up to it in the dark. As a kindness to her. Think of your bed as a cave. A storm is raging, a maiden huntress enters seeking shelter. She stretches out a hand and meets another hand, yours. And so forth.'

He ought to say something sharp, but he cannot, it is as if he is drugged or bemused.

'Of the episode of which you claim to have no recollection,' Costello goes on, '- the day when you might or might not have taken her photograph – I would only say, be a little less sure of yourself. Stir the memory and you will be surprised at what images rise to the surface. But let me not press you. Let us build your side of the story on the premise that you have had only that single glimpse of her, in the lift. A single glimpse, but enough to ignite desire. From your desire and her need, what will be born? Passion on the grandest of scales? One last great autumnal conflagration? Let us see. The issue is in your hands, yours and hers. Is my proposal acceptable? If so, say yes. Or if you are too abashed, just nod. Yes?

'Her name is Marianna, as I said, with two ns. I cannot help that. It is not in my power to change names. You can give her some interim other name if you wish, some pet name, Darling or Kitten or whatever. She was married, but after the stroke of fate I described her marriage broke up, as all else broke up. Her life is in disarray. For the present she lives with her mother, the woman you saw with her, the crone.

'That is sufficient background for the time being. You can get the rest from her own lips. Two ns. Once upon a time a pig-farmer's daughter. Her toilette is in disarray as is everything else in her life, but that can be forgiven, who would not make the occasional mistake, dressing in the dark?

'Agitated but clean. Since her surgery, her extremely delicate surgery, quite unlike the gross butchery of amputation, she has become morbidly scrupulous about cleanliness, about the way she smells. That happens with some blind people. You had better be clean for her too. If I speak crudely, forgive me. Wash yourself well. Wash everywhere. And put away that sad face. Losing a leg is not a tragedy. On the contrary, losing a leg is comic. Losing any part of the body that sticks out is comic. Otherwise we would not have so many jokes on the subject. There was an old man with one leg / Who stood with his hat out to beg. And so forth.

'Be advised, Paul: The years go by as quickly as a wink. So enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink. It's always later than you think.

'And no, the other Marijana, the nurse woman, was not my idea, if that is what you are wondering. There is no system for these things. Marijana of Dubrovnik, your unsuitable passion, arrived via your friend Mrs Putts. Nothing to do with me.

'You don't know what to make of me, do you? You think of me as a trial. Much of the time you think I am talking rubbish, making things up as I go. Yet you have not rebelled, I notice, not yet. You tolerate me in the hope that I will give up and go away. Don't deny it, it is written on your face, plain for all to see. You are Job, I am one of your unmerited afflictions, the woman who goes on and on, full of plans for saving you from yourself, gab gab gab, when all you crave is peace.

'It does not have to be this way, Paul. I say it again: this is your story, not mine. The moment you decide to take charge, I will fade away. You will hear no more from me; it will be as if I had never existed. That promise extends to your new friend Marianna as well. I will retire; you and she will be free to work out your respective salvations.

'Think how well you started. What could be better calculated to engage one's attention than the incident on Magill Road, when young Wayne collided with you and sent you flying through the air like a cat. What a sad decline ever since! Slower and slower, till by now you are almost at a halt, trapped in a stuffy flat with a caretaker who could not care less about you. But be of good heart. Marianna has possibilities, with her devastated face and the remorseful lust that grips her. Marianna is quite a woman. The question is, are you man enough for her?

'Answer me, Paul. Say something.'

It is like a sea beating against his skull. Indeed, for all he knows he could already be lost overboard, tugged to and fro by the currents of the deep. The slap of water that will in time strip his bones of the last sliver of flesh. Pearls of his eyes; coral of his bones.