Slow Man - Coetzee J. M.. Страница 43

Love: biggest of the big words. Nevertheless, let him sock her with it.

She takes the blow well this time, hardly blinking. The buttons of her coat are all done now, from bottom to top.

'Just love,' he repeats with some bitterness.

'Time to go,' she says. 'Long drive to Munno Para. See you.'

With considerable effort he quells a new bout of shivers. 'Not yet, Marijana,' he says. 'Five minutes. Three minutes. Please. Let's have a drink together and simmer down and be ordinary. I don't want to feel I can never call you again, for shame. Yes?'

'OK. Three minutes. But no drink for me, I must drive, and no drink for you, alcohol and pills is not good.'

Somewhat stiffly she resumes her seat. One of the three minutes passes.

'What exactly does your husband know?' he asks out of the blue.

She gets up. 'Now I go,' she says.

Distressed, remorseful, aching, uncomfortable, he lies awake all night. The pills that Marijana said she would leave are nowhere to be seen.

Dawn comes. Needing to go to the toilet, he gingerly tries to crawl out of the bed. Halfway to the floor the pain strikes again, immobilising him.

A sore back is not an emergency, says Marijana, whom he hired to save him from degradations of precisely this kind. Does being unable to control one's bladder count as an emergency? No, clearly not. It is just part of life, part of growing old. Miserably he surrenders and urinates on the floor.

That is the posture in which Drago – who ought to be at school but for reasons of his own seems not to be – finds him when he arrives to pick up his bag of stuff: half in bed, half out, his leg caught in the twisted bedclothes, stalled, frozen.

If he no longer hides anything from Marijana, it is because he cannot be more abject before her than he has already been. With Drago it is a different story. Thus far he has done his best not to make a spectacle of himself before Drago. Now here he is, a helpless old man in urinous pyjamas trailing an obscene pink stump behind him from which the sodden bandages are slipping. If he were not so cold he would blush.

And Drago does not waver! Does it run in the family, this matter-of-factness about the body? As Drago's mother had helped him into bed, so now Drago helps him out; and when he tries to explain himself, to excuse his weakness, it is Drago who shushes him – 'No worries, Mr Rayment, just relax and we'll have you fixed up in a minute' – and then strips the bed and turns the mattress and (somewhat clumsily, he is after all just a boy) spreads fresh sheets; it is Drago who finds a fresh pair of pyjamas and patiently, averting his eyes as decency requires, helps him on with them.

'Thank you, son, good of you,' he says at the end of it all. There is more he would like to say, for his heart is full, such as: Your mother has abandoned me; Mrs Costello, who jabbers on and on about care but takes care not to be around when care is needed, has abandoned me; everyone has abandoned me, even the son I never had; then you came, you! But he holds his peace.

He has a passage of crying, old-man's crying which does not count because it comes too easily, and which he hides behind his hands because it embarrasses both of them.

Drago makes a phone call, comes back. 'My mum says I should get you some pills for the pain. I've got the name here. She says she meant to leave you some but she forgot. I can go down to the pharmacy; but…'

'There is money in my wallet, in my desk drawer.'

'Thanks. You got a mop somewhere?'

'Behind the kitchen door. But don't…'

'It's nothing, Mr Rayment. It will take a minute.'

The magic pills turn out to be nothing but Ibuprofen. 'Mum says take one every four hours. And you should eat first. Shall I get you something from the kitchen?'

'Get me an apple or a banana if there is one. Drago?'

'Yes?'

'I'll be all right now. You don't have to stay. Thanks for everything.'

'That's OK.'

To complete the passage, Drago ought to say: That's OK, you would do the same for me. And it is true! If some cataclysm were to befall Drago, if some reckless stranger were to crash into him on his motorcycle, he, Paul Rayment, would move heaven and earth, spend every penny he had, to save him. He would give the world a lesson in how to take care of a beloved child. He would be everything to him, father and mother. All day, all night he would watch at his bedside. If only!

At the door Drago turns, waves, and flashes him one of the angelic smiles that must have the girls swooning. 'See you!'

TWENTY-SEVEN

THE INJURY TO his back is indeed, as Marijana told him, no great thing. By mid-afternoon he is able to move about, if cautiously, able to dress himself, able to make himself a sandwich. Last night he thought he was at death's door; today he is fine again, more or less. A dash of this, a dab of that, a smidgen of the other, mixed together and rolled into a pill in a factory in Bangkok, and the monster of pain is reduced to a mouse. Miraculous.

So when Elizabeth Costello arrives he is able to provide the briefest, calmest, most matter-of-fact recital of events. 'I slipped in the shower and twisted my back. I called Marijana, and she came and fixed me up, and now I'm fine again.' No mention of treacherous Johann August, no mention of the shivering and the tears, no mention of the pyjamas in the wash basket. 'Drago dropped by this morning to check up. A nice boy. Mature beyond his years.'

'And you are fine, you say.'

'Yes.'

'And your pictures? Your photograph collection?'

'What do you mean?'

'Is your photograph collection fine too?'

'I presume it is. Why should it not be?'

'Perhaps you should take a look.'

It is not that any of the prints are actually missing. Nothing is actually missing. But one of the Faucherys has the wrong feel to it and, as soon as he brings it out of its plastic sleeve into the light, the wrong look too. What he is holding in his hands is a copy, in tones of brown that mimic the original sepia, made by an electronic printer on half-glazed photographic paper. The cardboard mount is new and slightly thicker than the original. It is the added thickness that first gives the forgery away. Otherwise it is not a bad job. But for Costello's prompting he might never have noticed it.

'How did you know?' he demands of her.

'How did I know Drago and his friend were up to something? I didn't know. I was merely suspicious.' She holds up the copy. 'I wouldn't be surprised if one of these diggers was greatgrandfather Costello from Kerry. And look – look at this fellow.' With a fingernail she taps a face in the second row. 'Isn't he the spitting image of Miroslav Jokic!'

He snatches the photograph from her. Miroslav Jokic: it is indeed he, wearing a hat and open-necked shirt, sporting a moustache too, standing flank to flank with those stern-faced Cornish and Irish miners of a bygone age.

It is the desecration that he feels most of all: the dead made fun of by a couple of cocky, irreverent youths. Presumably they did it using some kind of digital technique. He could never have achieved so convincing a montage in an old-fashioned darkroom.

He turns on the Costello woman. 'What has become of the original?' he demands. 'Do you know what has become of it?' He hears his voice go out of control, but he does not care. He smites the copy to the ground. 'The stupid, stupid boy! What has he done with the original?'

Elizabeth Costello gives him a look of wide-eyed astonishment. 'Don't ask me, Paul,' she says. 'It was not I who welcomed Drago into my home and gave him the run of my precious photograph collection. It was not I who plotted my way to the mother through the son.'