Slow Man Read online

  Cold was not a word his wife used. What she said was quite different: I thought you were French, she said, I thought you would have some idea. Some idea of what? For years after she left him he puzzled over her words. What were the French, even if only the French of legend, supposed to have an idea of? Of what will make a woman happy? What will make a woman happy is a riddle as old as the Sphinx. Why should a Frenchman have the power to unknot it, much less such a notional Frenchman as he?

  Cold, blind. Breathe in, breathe out. He does not accept the charge; he does not believe in its truth. Truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love. The gaze of love is not deluded. Love sees what is best in the beloved, even when what is best in the beloved finds it hard to emerge into the light. Who is Marijana? A nurse from Dubrovnik with a short waist and yellow teeth and not bad legs. Who except he, with the gaze of love, sees the shy, sloe-eyed gazelle hiding within?

  That is what Elizabeth Costello does not understand. Elizabeth Costello thinks of him as a punishment brought down to blight the last days of her life, an incomprehensible penance she is sentenced to speak, to recite, to repeat. She looks on him with distaste, with dismay, with exasperation, with a sinking heart, with everything but love. Well, when he next catches up with her he will give her a lesson. Not cold, he will say, and not French either. A man who sees the world in his own way and who loves in his own way. And a man who not too long ago lost part of his own body: do not forget that. Have a little charity, he will say. Then perhaps you may find it in you to write.

  Twenty-one

  Drago. It continues to intrigue him, how little aware Drago seems to be of his own good looks. Not a narcissist; not reflective. On the other hand, if he were more self-aware he might lose some of that air of fearless candour, that warrior gaze.

  Is there a feminine equivalent to Dragonian candour? Amazonian purity? Blanka, the sister, the unknown quantity: what is she like? Will he ever get to meet her?

  Narcissus discovered a twin in the pool from whom he could not tear himself. Every time he smiled, the twin smiled back. Yet every time he bent to kiss those inviting lips, the twin would dissolve in ghostly ripples.

  No narcissism in Drago: not yet, perhaps never. No narcissism in Marijana either. An admirable trait, in its way. Curious that he has fallen for Marijana, seeing that in the past he fell always for women who loved themselves.

  He himself has never been at ease with mirrors. Long ago he draped a cloth over the mirror in the bathroom and taught himself to shave blind. One of the more irritating things the Costello woman did during her stay was to take down the drape. When she left he at once put it back.

  He covers the bathroom mirror not just to save himself from the image of an ageing, ugly self. No: the twin imprisoned behind the glass he finds above all boring. Thank God the day will come, he thinks to himself, when I will not have to see that one again!

  Four months have passed since he was released from hospital and allowed to return to his former life. Most of that time he has spent cloistered in this flat, barely seeing the sun. Since Marijana stopped coming he has not eaten properly. He has no appetite, does not bother to take care of himself. The face that threatens to confront him in the mirror is that of a gaunt, unshaven old tramp. In fact, worse than that. At a bookstall on the Seine he once picked up a medical text with photographs of patients from the Salpêtrière: cases of mania, dementia, melancholia, Huntingdon’s chorea. Despite the untidy beards, despite the hospital nightshirts, he at once recognised in them soul mates, cousins who had gone ahead down a road he would one day follow.

  He is thinking of Drago because, after the one night spent in his flat, Drago has not returned nor sent any word. And he is thinking of mirrors because of Mrs Costello’s story of the old man who turned Sinbad into his slave. Mrs Costello wants to subject him to some fiction or other she has in her head. He would like to believe that, since the Marianna episode, he has resisted her schemes, held her at bay. But is he right? He shivers to think what the merest passing glimpse in a mirror might reveal: grinning over his shoulder, gripping his throat, the shape of a wild-haired, bare-breasted hag brandishing a whip.

  He ought to write Marijana a letter, at her sister-in-law’s or at home or wherever she is. Please do not cut yourself off from me. Whatever I said, I promise never to repeat it. It was a mistake. I will not try to draw you into further intimacy. Even though you have done more for me, a great deal more, than duty requires, I have never been foolish enough to confuse your kindness with love, with the real thing. What I offer to Drago, and to you through Drago, is a token of gratitude, nothing more. Please accept it as such. You have taken care of me; now I want to give something back, if you will let me. I offer to take care of you, or at least to relieve you of some of your burden. I offer to do so because in my heart, in my core, I care for you. You and yours.

  Care: he can set the word down on paper but he would be too diffident to mouth it, make it his own speech. Too much an English word, an insider’s word. Perhaps Marijana of the Balkans, giver of care, compelled even more than he to conduct her life in a foreign tongue, will share his diffidence. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she has accepted without afterthought what she was told by the accreditation board: that the profession into which she was being initiated was in the English-speaking world known as a caring profession; that her business would henceforth be taking care of people or caring for people; and that such caring should not be assumed to have anything to do with the heart, except of course in heart cases.

  Yet is that not precisely what over the past four months he has mutated into – a heart case, un cardiaque? Once upon a time his heart was his strongest organ. Any one of its brother organs might let him down – bowels, spleen, brain – but his heart, tried and tested first on Magill Road and then in the operating theatre, would serve him faithfully to the end.

  Then he met Marijana, and his heart suffered a change. No longer is his heart what it used to be. Now it aches to serve Marijana, Marijana and all who belong to her. As she gave to him, so his heart wants to give back. To give back is not the same as to pay back, he should add in a footnote. Excuse the language lesson, I too am feeling my way, I too am on foreign soil.

  Dear Marijana, he writes, this time with a real pen on real paper, Do you, or does your husband, truly think that in return for Drago’s school fees I would try to inflict myself upon you? I would not dream of it; and anyway, Mrs Costello is always hovering around, making sure I stay in line. ‘No woman with two eyes in her head would have a fellow like you,’ says Mrs Costello. I could not agree more.

  You have had to see a great deal of me in the line of duty, too much perhaps. Let me simply say these words: for the impartial care you have given me I will be thankful to my dying day. If I offer to take care of Drago’s education, it is solely as a way of repaying that debt.

  Miroslav and I have discussed the matter of a trust fund. If a trust fund is what it takes to make Miroslav feel easy, I will see about setting one up – for Drago, indeed for all three of your children.

  I get your address from Mrs Costello, who seems to know everything. Will you and Miroslav please reconsider, and do me the honour of accepting a gift that comes, as they say in English, with no strings attached.

  Yours ever,

  Paul Rayment

  Twenty-two

  The letter to Marijana is addressed care of Mrs Lidija Karadžić, Elizabeth North. He hopes there is only one Karadžić in Elizabeth North; he hopes he has the diacritics right.

  Marijana’s reply comes two days later, in the form not of a letter – he never expected one, he can guess what a trial it would be for her to write in English – but of a telephone call.

  ‘Sorry I don’t come see you, Mr Rayment,’ she says, ‘but we got all kind of problems. Blanka – you know Blanka? – she get in trouble.’ And a long story emerges about a silver chain, a chain th
at is not even real silver, that you can buy for one dollar fifty in the Chinese market, that some shopkeeper, some Jew, accuses Blanka of taking, though Blanka did not take it, a friend of hers took it and slipped it to her and she wanted to put it back but didn’t have time; and the Jew says that the chain that is not real silver costs forty-nine ninety-five and he wants to take her to court for it, to youth court. So now Blanka is refusing to eat, is refusing to go to school, though exams are just a week away, is staying in her room all day except yesterday evening she dressed up and went out she won’t say where. And Mel doesn’t know what to do and she doesn’t know what to do. So does he, Paul Rayment, know someone he can talk to about Blanka, someone who can in turn talk to the Jew and make the charge go away?

  ‘How do you know he is a Jew, Marijana?’ he asks.

  ‘OK, he is Jew, he is not Jew, is not important.’

  ‘Perhaps I am a Jew. Are you sure I am not a Jew?’

  ‘OK, forget it. It slip from my tongue. Is nothing. You don’t want to talk to me, say so, is finished.’

  ‘Of course I want to talk. Of course I want to help. Why am I on this earth but to help? Give me the particulars. Tell me when and where it happened, this business of the silver chain. And tell me more about Blanka’s friend, the one who was with her in the shop.’

  ‘I got it here. Shop is Happenstance’ – she spells the word – ‘on Rundle Mall, and Mr Matthews is manager.’

  ‘And when did it happen, the business with Happenstance?’

  ‘Friday. Friday afternoon.’

  ‘And her friend?’

  ‘Blanka won’t say her friend’s name. Maybe Tracy. I don’t know.’

  ‘Let me see what I can do, Marijana. I am not the best person for this kind of thing, but I will see what I can do. Where can I reach you?’

  ‘You can phone, you got my number.’

  ‘Phone you at home? I thought you were staying with your sister-in-law. I wrote to you care of your sister-in-law. Didn’t you get my letter?’

  There is a long silence. ‘Is all finished,’ says Marijana at last. ‘You can phone me.’

  What Marijana wants is a man of influence, and he is not a man of influence, he is not even sure he approves of the phenomenon of the man of influence. But this must be how things are done in Croatia, so for Marijana’s sake and the sake of her unhappy daughter, who must surely have learned her lesson by now – namely, to be more careful when she steals things – he is prepared to try. Is Marijana wrong, after all, to believe that a man with a smooth name like Rayment and a comfortable home in an eminently comfortable part of the city and money to give away can make things happen in a way that an auto mechanic with a funny name like Jokić cannot?

  ‘Mr Matthews?’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I have a word with you in private?’

  Happenstance – which sells what it calls gear – is not, however, the kind of establishment where one can have a word in private. It is, at most, five metres square. There are tightly packed racks of clothing, there is a counter and a till, there is music rattling from somewhere above them, and that is all. So what he has to say to Mr Matthews has to be said in the open.

  ‘A girl was detained here for shoplifting,’ he says. ‘Last Friday. Blanka Jokić. Do you recall the case?’

  Mr Matthews, who either is or is not a Jew, and who has been all affability thus far, stiffens visibly. Mr Matthews is in his twenties; he is tall and slim; he has wide, dark eyebrows and bleached hair that stands up in spikes.

  ‘My name is Paul Rayment,’ he presses on. ‘I am a friend of the Jokić family. May I tell you something about Blanka?’

  The boy – what else is he but a boy? – nods guardedly.

  ‘Blanka has never done anything like this before. Since last Friday she has been through a great deal of torment, self-torment. She is ashamed of what she did. She is reluctant to show her face in public. She has, I would venture to say, learned her lesson. She is just a child; I don’t believe any good will be achieved by prosecuting her. So I have come to make a proposal. I want to pay for the item she took, which I understand was a silver chain retailing for fifty dollars.’

  ‘Forty-nine ninety-five.’

  ‘I am in addition, if you will agree to drop charges, prepared to buy goods from you to the value of, say, five hundred dollars. As a sign of good will. And all entirely above board.’

  Young Mr Matthews shakes his head. ‘It’s company policy,’ he says. ‘Every year we lose five per cent of turnover, all branches, to shoplifting. We’ve got to send a signal to shoplifters out there: steal from us and you get prosecuted. The full weight of the law. Zero tolerance. That’s our policy. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You lose five per cent but you build that five per cent back into your prices. I’m not criticising you, I’m just pointing out a fact. You have a policy aimed at shoplifters. Fair enough. But Blanka isn’t a shoplifter. She is just a child thinking as a child thinks, stupidly. Bad luck is what happens to other people, she thinks, it won’t happen to me. Well, now she knows bad things can happen to her too. If you wanted to teach her a lesson, you have taught her a lesson. She won’t forget it. She won’t steal again, it is not worth it, it has made her too miserable. So back to my offer. You make a phone call, retract the charge; I pay for the chain and in addition buy five hundred dollars worth of stuff, right here, right now.’

  Mr Matthews is wavering visibly.

  ‘Six hundred dollars. Here is my card. The police don’t enjoy prosecuting these cases. They have better uses for their time.’

  ‘It’s not a decision I can make, like, unilaterally. I’ll speak to the manager.’

  ‘You are the manager.’

  ‘I’m just the manager of this outlet. There is our area manager. I’ll speak to him. But I can’t promise anything. As I say, it’s company policy to prosecute. That’s the only way we can send a signal we are serious.’

  ‘Speak to your area manager now. Give him a call. I’ll wait.’

  ‘Mr DeVito is out of town. He’ll be back Monday.’

  ‘Mr DeVito may be out of town but he is not unreachable. Give him a call. Settle this business.’

  Young Mr Matthews retreats behind the till, turns his back on him, and brings out his cell phone. Young Mr Matthews is in the process of having his day spoiled, and by a cripple too. He is not a bully by nature, but probing for weakness in the boy, and then putting pressure on him, squeezing him, has been a not unpleasurable experience. Blanka Jokić: Matthews will not forget the name soon.

  The assistant, a girl with ghastly white make-up and violet lips, has been watching them covertly. He signals her to come over. ‘Help me pick out some gear,’ he says. ‘Up-to-the-minute. For a fourteen-year-old.’

  A friend of the family. That is how he presents himself to Happenstance, that is how Happenstance sees him: as an elderly gent with a disability who for God knows what reason chooses to watch over the welfare of a girl with a funny name. And it is true. He is indeed that elderly gent, that good-hearted benefactor. True, but not the whole truth. If he battles the crowds on Rundle Mall, if he bargains and cajoles and pays for stuff he does not need, it is not, or not just, for the sake of a child he has never laid eyes on.

  What does it look like to Marijana, this will to give with which he so doggedly pursues her? Has she had other clients like him, other doting old men? Surely you must know. Surely a woman always knows. I love you. How it must have jarred and irritated her: words of love from an object of mere nursing, mere care. Irritating but not, in the end, serious. The fantasy, working its way to the surface, of a man cooped up too long alone; an infatuation; not the real thing.

  What would it take to make Marijana see him as the real thing? What is the real thing? Physical desire? Sexual intimacy? They have been intimate, he and Marijana, for some while now – for longer than som
e love affairs last, start to finish. But all the intimacy, all the nakedness, all the helplessness has been on one side. One-way traffic; no exchange; not even a kiss – not the merest peck on the cheek. Two ex-Europeans!

  ‘You OK?’ says a voice.

  He is staring into the eyes, the entirely kindly eyes, of a young woman in blue uniform. A police officer.

  ‘Yes. Why should I not be OK?’

  She casts a glance at the man by her side, another officer. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘In North Adelaide. On Coniston Terrace.’

  ‘And how are you going to get home?’

  ‘I am going to walk to Pulteney Street and take a taxi. Is there anything wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing wrong.’

  He hooks the Happenstance bags over an arm, grips his crutches, and heaves himself up from the trash container against which he has been resting. Without a word, holding his head high, he picks his way through the crowd.

  Twenty-three

  ‘She cannot have it,’ says Marijana. ‘No. Is impossible.’

  He could not agree more. It is impossible. One is caught stealing a silver chain that is not even silver, no more silver than what one can get in the Chinese market for one dollar fifty, and what happens? One is rewarded with six hundred dollars worth of gear. Where is the justice in that? What will Drago say when he learns of it?

  Blanka the black sheep of the family. Drago the shining light, the angel with the sword, defender of the family’s honour. Commander Drago Jokić, R.A.N.

  ‘Lock the stuff away in a cupboard,’ he says to Marijana. He is in high spirits. He and she are on the phone again, like old friends, old gossips. ‘That is what I would do. Bring it out as an incentive, piece by piece, if she will agree to go to school and so forth. But you will have to hurry. It will all be out of fashion in a month’s time.’