Slow Man

SEVENTEEN

'I AM HAVING visitors,' he announces to the Costello woman. 'It won't be your kind of evening, I'm afraid. You may want to make other arrangements.'

'Of course. I'm glad to see you getting back into the social whirl. Let me think… What shall I do? Maybe I will go to the cinema. Is there anything worth seeing, do you know?'

'I am not making myself clear. When I say make other arrangements, I mean make arrangements to stay somewhere else.'

'Oh! And where else should I stay, do you think?'

'I don't know. It is not my business to say where you go from here. Back to where you came from, perhaps.'

There is a silence. 'So,' she says. 'At least you are blunt.' And then: 'Do you remember, Paul, the story of Sinbad and the old man?'

He does not reply.

'By the bank of a swollen stream,' she says, 'Sinbad comes upon an old man. "I am old and weak," says the old man. "Carry me to the other side and Allah will bless you." Being a good-hearted fellow, Sinbad lifts the old man onto his shoulders and wades across the stream. But when they reach the other side, the old man refuses to climb down. Indeed, he tightens his legs around Sinbad's neck until Sinbad feels himself choking. "Now you are my slave," says the old man, "who must do my bidding in all things."'

He remembers the story. It was in a book called Légendes dorées, Golden Legends, in his book-chest in Lourdes. Vividly he remembers the illustration: the skinny old man naked but for a loincloth, his wiry legs hooked around the hero's neck while the hero strides through the waist-deep torrent. What has happened to the book? What has happened to the book-chest and the other remnants of a French childhood that crossed the oceans with them to the new country? If he went back to the Dutchman's house in Ballarat, would he find them in the cellar, Sinbad and the fox and the crow and Jeanne d'Arc and the rest of his story-companions, closed up in cardboard boxes, patiently waiting for their little master to return and rescue them; or did the Dutchman cast them out long ago, after he became a widower?

'Yes, I remember,' he says. 'Am I to understand that I am Sinbad in the story and you the old man? In that case you face a certain difficulty. You have no means of – how shall I put this delicately – no means of getting onto my shoulders. And I am not going to help you up.'

Costello smiles a secretive smile. 'Perhaps I am already there,' she says, 'and you do not know it.'

'No, you are not, Mrs Costello. I am not under your control, not in any sense of the word, and I am going to prove it. I request you to kindly return my key – a key you took without my permission – and leave my flat and not come back.'

'That's a hard word to be speaking to an old woman, Mr Rayment. Are you sure you mean it?'

'This is not a comedy, Mrs Costello. I am asking you to leave.'

She sighs. 'Very well then. But I'm sure I don't know what will become of me, with the rain pelting down and the dark coming fast and all.'

There is no rain, no dark. It is a pleasant afternoon, warm and still, the kind of afternoon that ought to make one glad to be alive.

'Here,' she says: 'your key.' With exaggerated care she sets down the latchkey on the coffee table. 'I will need a brief grace to collect my belongings and put on my face. Then I will be off, and you will be alone again. I am sure you are looking forward to that.'

Impatiently he turns away. In a few minutes she is back.

'Goodbye.' She transfers a plastic shopping bag from right hand to left, offers him the right hand. 'I am leaving a small suitcase. I will send for it in a day or two, when I have found alternative quarters.'

'I would prefer it if you took your suitcase with you.'

'That is not possible.'

'It is possible, and I would prefer it if you did so.'

No more words pass between them. From the front door he watches her descend the stairs lingeringly, step by step, bearing the suitcase. If he were a gentleman he would offer to help, bad leg or no. But in this case he is not a gentleman. He just wants her out of his life.