Slow Man - Coetzee J. M.. Страница 21

A hand, small, light, touches his face, rests there. What the hell, he thinks: he turns towards the hand and kisses it. Let us play this to the end.

Fingers explore his lips, the nails cut back. Through the veil of lemon he smells, faintly, wool. The fingers trace the line of his chin; they cross the blindfold, run through his hair.

'Let me hear your voice,' he says.

She clears her throat, and already in the high, clear tone he can hear that she is not Marijana Jokic: lighter, more a creature of air.

'If you would sing, that would be best of all,' he says. 'We are on stage, in a certain sense, even if we are not being watched.'

Even if we are not being watched. But in a certain sense they are being watched, he is sure of that, on the back of his neck he can feel it.

'What is this?' says the light voice, and ever so gently he feels the frame being rocked. The accent not Australian, not English either. Croatian? Another Croatian? Surely not; surely Croatians are not so thick on the ground. Besides, what meaning could a string of Croatians have, one after another?

'It is an aluminium frame, known colloquially as a walker. I have lost a leg. I find a frame less tiring than crutches.' Then it occurs to him that the frame might be taken for a barrier. 'Let me put it aside.' He puts it aside and lowers himself onto the sofa. 'Will you sit down beside me? This is a sofa, one or two paces in front of you. I am afraid I cannot assist you, because of a blindfold that our mutual friend Mrs Costello has made me wear. She has a lot to answer for, Mrs Costello.'

He blames Mrs Costello for the blindfold as he blames her for much else, but he will not take it off, not yet, will not strip his vision bare.

With a rustle (what can she be wearing that makes so much noise?) the woman sits down at his side – sits on his hand, in fact. For a moment, until she lifts herself and he can withdraw it, his hand is under her bottom in the most vulgar of ways. Not a large woman but a large bottom nevertheless, large and soft. But then the blind are inactive, do not walk, do not run, do not ride bicycles. All that energy pent up with nowhere to vent itself. No wonder she is restless. No wonder she is ready to visit a strange man all alone.

Now that his hands are free, he can touch her as she touched him. But is that what he wants to do? Does he want to explore those eyes or anywhere near them? Does he want to be – what is the word? – appalled? The appalling: that which turns one's stomach, unmans one, leaves one pale and shaking. Can one be appalled by what one cannot see but what the fingertips report, even the fingertips of a novice like himself in the land of the blind?

Uncertainly he stretches out a hand. He meets a hard cluster of something or other, bubbles, baubles, berries sewn up in sheaths. Her throat or her bodice, it must be. An inch higher, her chin. The chin firm, pointed; then a short jaw, then the beginning of furze or hair that feels dark to him, just as her skin feels dark; then something hard, an earpiece. She is wearing glasses, glasses that curve back across her cheekbones, perhaps the same dark glasses she wore in the lift.

'Your name is Marianna, Mrs Costello tells me.'

'Marianna.'

He says Marianna, she says Marianna, but it is not the same name. His Marianna is still coloured by Marijana: it is heavier than hers, more solid. Of her Marianna he can say only that it is liquid, silver: not as quick as quicksilver, more like running water, a furling stream. And is this what it is like, being blind: having to weigh each word in one's hand, weigh each tone, rumble for equivalents that sound all too much (a furling stream) like bad poetry?

'Not the French Marianne?'

'No.'

No. Not French. A pity. France would be something in common, like a blanket to deploy over the pair of them.

The flour-and-water paste does its work surprisingly well. Even though his pupils must have dilated to their fullest, he is in a world of utter blackness. Where did Costello get the idea from? From a book? A recipe handed down from the ancients?

With his fingers still in her somewhat curly hair he draws her towards him, and she comes. Her face is pressed to his, the dark glasses too, though her fists are raised, two knobs keeping her breast apart from him.

'Thank you for your visit,' he says. 'Mrs Costello mentioned your present troubles. I am sorry.'

She says nothing. He can feel a light trembling run through her.

'There is no need,' he goes on, but then does not know what comes next. What is there need of, what is there no need of? Something to do with their being man and woman; something to do with yielding to, to resort to the Costello woman's term, lust. But between where they are, man and woman, and the exercise of lust a veritable chasm yawns. 'There is no need,' he begins again, 'for us to adhere to any script. No need to do anything we do not wish. We are free agents.'

She is still shivering, shivering or trembling like a bird. 'Come to me,' he says, and obediently she sidles closer. It must be difficult for her. He must aid her, they are in this together.

The strings and berries and baubles at her throat turn out to be purely decorative. The dress opens via a zip at the back, which helpfully goes all the way down to the waist. His fingers are slow and clumsy. If she had consented to sit on his hand a while longer his fingers would have warmed up. Animal heat. As for the brassiere, it is well constructed, sturdy, the sort of thing he imagines Carmelites would wear. Big breasts, a big bottom, yet slight for the rest. Marianna. Who is here, says the Costello woman, not out of solicitude for him, but for her own sake. Because there is a thirst in her that cannot be slaked. Because of her visage, her devastated face, that he is warned not to look upon and perhaps not even touch, because it would turn him to ice.

'I suggest we don't talk too much,' he says. 'Nevertheless there is one circumstance I should mention, for practical reasons. I have had no experience of this sort of thing since my accident. I may require a little help.'

'I know that. Mrs Costello told me.'

'Mrs Costello does not know everything. She cannot know what I do not know.'

'Yes.'

Yes? What does it mean, yes?

He doubts profoundly that he ever photographed this woman solo. If he had, he would not have forgotten her. Perhaps she was part of a group, in the days when he visited schools to take group photographs, that is possible; but not alone. The image he has of her comes only from the lift and from what his fingers tell him now. To her he must be even more of a jumble of sense-data: the cold of his hands; the roughness of his skin; the rasp of his voice; and an odour probably unpleasing to her supersensitive nostrils. Is that enough for her to construct the image of a man from? Is it an image she would be prepared to give herself to? Why did she agree to come, sight unseen? It is like a primitive experiment in biology – like bringing different species together to see if they will mate, fox and whale, cricket and marmoset.

'Your money,' he says, 'I am putting it on this side table, in an envelope. Four hundred and fifty dollars. Is that acceptable?'

He feels her nod.

A minute passes. Nothing more happens. A one-legged man and a partially disrobed woman waiting for what? For the click of a camera shutter? Australian Gothic. Matilda and her bloke, worn down by a lifetime of waltzing, parts of their bodies falling off or falling out, face the photographer one last time.

The woman's trembling has not ceased. He can swear it has infected him too: a light trilling of the hand that might be put down to age but is in fact something else, fear or anticipation (but which?).