Slow Man Read online

  ‘Go on then. I’ll meet you outside.’

  They troop out of the house. Miroslav rejoins them, wearing shorts and sandals and a T-shirt that says Team Valvoline. He rolls up the garage door. There stands the familiar red Commodore, and beside it what Miroslav calls the bike.

  ‘My, my!’ exclaims Elizabeth. ‘What a strange contraption! How does it work?’

  Miroslav wheels the machine out of the garage; then, with a smile, turns to him. ‘Maybe you can explain.’

  ‘It’s what they call a recumbent bicycle,’ he says. ‘On this model you don’t pedal, you turn the cranks with your hands instead.’

  ‘And Drago built it?’ says Elizabeth. ‘All by himself?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Miroslav. ‘Only the brazing I did. Over in the workshop. Brazing is specialist like.’

  ‘Well, what a splendid gift,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Don’t you think so, Paul? It will set you free again. Free to go wandering.’

  ‘Drago want to say thank you,’ says Marijana. ‘Thank you to Mr Rayment for everything.’

  All eyes are on him, Mr Rayment. Out of nowhere Ljuba has appeared. Even Blanka, who disapproved of him from the first, has joined the group. Slim body. A supple mover. Her father’s daughter. No beauty, but then, some women develop late. Is Blanka going to have a turn to thank him too? Has she been busy as a bee, working on a gift? What will it be? An embroidered wallet? A hand-dyed tie?

  He can feel a blush creeping over him, a blush of shame, starting at his ears and creeping forward over his face. He has no wish to stop it. It is what he deserves. ‘It’s magnificent,’ he says. And, since it is expected of him, and since it is the right thing to do, he takes a step forward on his crutches and inspects his prize more closely. ‘Magnificent,’ he repeats. ‘A magnificent gift.’ Munificent too, he might add, but does not. He knows what he pays Marijana; he can guess what Miroslav earns. Much more than I deserve.

  The wheel at the front is of standard bicycle size, with a set of cogs and a chain; the smaller wheels at the back merely roll. Spraypainted a vivid red, the bicycle – in fact a tricycle – stands less than a metre high. On the street the rider will be near to invisible, beneath a car driver’s line of sight. So behind the seat Drago has mounted a fibreglass wand with an orange-coloured pennant at its tip. Fluttering above the rider’s head, the brave little pennant is meant to warn off the Wayne Blights of the world.

  A recumbent. He has never ridden one before, but he dislikes recumbents instinctively, as he dislikes prostheses, as he dislikes all fakes.

  ‘Magnificent,’ he says again. ‘I am running out of words. May I take it for a spin?’

  Miroslav shakes his head. ‘No cables,’ he says. ‘No gear cables, no brake cables. Drago hasn’t put them in yet. But while we got you here we can adjust the seat. You see, we mounted the seat on a rail, so you can adjust it backward or forward.’

  He lays his crutches down, takes off his jacket, allows Miroslav to help him aboard. The seat feels odd.

  ‘Marijana help with the seat,’ says Miroslav. ‘You know – for your leg. She design it, then we mould it in fibreglass.’

  Not just hours. Days, weeks. They must have spent weeks on it, father, son; mother too. The blush has not left his face, and he does not want it to.

  ‘You can’t get this kind of thing in bike shops, so we thought we make it like one-off, custom made. I’ll give you a push, so you get the feel. OK? I’ll give you a push but I’ll keep a hold because, remember, there’s no brakes.’

  The onlookers stand aside. Miroslav trundles him out onto the paved driveway.

  ‘How do I steer?’ he asks.

  ‘With your left foot. There’s a bar here – see? – with a spring. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it.’

  No cars on Narrapinga Close. Miroslav gives a gentle push. He leans forward, grips the crank handles, gives them an experimental turn, hoping the contraption will steer itself.

  Of course he will never put it to use. It will go into the store room at Coniston Terrace and there gather dust. All the time and trouble the Jokićs have put into it will be for nothing. Do they know that? Did they know all along, while they were building it? Is this driving lesson just part of a ritual they are all performing, he for their sake, they for his?

  The breeze is in his face. For a moment he allows himself to imagine he is rolling down Magill Road, the pennant fluttering brightly overhead to remind the world to have mercy on him. A perambulator, that is what it is most like: a perambulator with a grizzled old baby in it, out for a ride. How the bystanders will smile! Smile and laugh and whistle: Good on you, grandpa!

  But perhaps, in a larger perspective, that is exactly what the Jokićs mean to teach him: that he should give up his solemn airs and become what he rightly is, a figure of fun, an old gent with one leg who when he is not hopping around on his crutches roams the streets on his home-made tricycle. One of the local sights, one of the quaint types who lend colour to the social fabric. Till the day Wayne Blight guns his engine and comes after him again.

  Miroslav has not left his side. Now Miroslav turns the machine in a wide arc that allows them to return to the driveway.

  Elizabeth claps her hands; the others follow suit. ‘Bravo, my knight,’ she says. ‘My knight of the doleful countenance.’

  He ignores her. ‘What do you think, Marijana?’ he says. ‘Should I take up riding again?’

  For Marijana has not so far uttered a word. Marijana knows him better than her husband does, better than Elizabeth Costello. She has seen from the beginning how he has striven to save his manly dignity, and has never jeered at him for it. What does Marijana think? Should he go on battling for dignity or is it time to capitulate?

  ‘Yeah,’ says Marijana slowly. ‘It suits you. I think you should give it a whirl.’

  With her left hand Marijana holds her chin; with her right hand she props up her left elbow. It is the classic posture of thought, of mature reflection. She has given his question its full due, and she has answered. The woman the touch of whose lips he still feels on his cheek, the woman who, for reasons that have never been fully clear to him, though now and then he has a flicker of illumination, holds his heart, has spoken.

  ‘Well then,’ he says (he was going to say Well then, my love, but forbears because he does not want to hurt Miroslav, though Miroslav must know, Ljuba must know, Blanka certainly knows, it is written all over his face), ‘well then, I’ll give it a whirl. Thank you. In all sincerity, all heartfelt sincerity, thank you, each one of you. Thank you most of all to the absent Drago.’ Whom I have misjudged and wronged, he would like to say. ‘Whom I have misjudged and wronged,’ he says.

  ‘No worries,’ replies Miroslav. ‘We’ll put it on the trailer and bring it over next weekend maybe. Just a couple more things to fix, the cables and suchlike.’

  He turns to Elizabeth. ‘And now we must take our leave, must we not?’ he says; and to Miroslav: ‘Can you give me a hand?’

  Miroslav helps him up.

  ‘PR Express,’ says Ljuba. ‘What does PR Express mean?’

  And indeed, that is what is painted on the tubing of the tricycle, in lettering that artfully suggests the rush of wind. PR Express.

  ‘It means I can go very fast,’ he says. ‘PR the rocket man.’

  ‘Rocket Man,’ says Ljuba. She gives him a smile, the first she has ever given. ‘You aren’t Rocket Man, you’re Slow Man!’ Then she breaks into giggles, and embraces her mother’s thighs, and hides her face.

  ‘A debacle,’ he says to Elizabeth. They are in a taxi, heading south, heading home. ‘A rout, a moral rout, nothing less. I have never felt so ashamed of myself.’

  ‘Yes, you did not come out well. All that fury! All that self-righteousness!’

  Fury? What is she talking about?

  ‘Just think,’ she continues: ‘you were on the
point of losing a godson, and for what? I could not believe my ears. For an old photograph! A photograph of a bunch of strangers who could not care less about you. About a little French boy who hasn’t even been born yet.’

  ‘Please,’ he says, ‘please let there not be another argument, I have not the stomach for it. What entitles Drago to take over my photographs I still don’t see, but let it pass. Marijana tells me that the photographs are now on Drago’s website. I am such an ignoramus. What does it mean, to be on a website?’

  ‘It means that anyone in the world who feels curious about the life and times of Drago Jokić can inspect the photographs in question, in their original form or perhaps in their new, revised and augmented form, from the privacy of his or her home. As for why Drago chooses to publish them in this way, I am not the right one to ask. He will be coming next Sunday to deliver your conveyance. You can quiz him then.’

  ‘Marijana claims that the whole forgery business is just a joke.’

  ‘It is not even a forgery. A forger is out to make money. Drago could not care less about money. Of course it is just a joke. What else should it be?’

  ‘Jokes have a relation to the unconscious.’

  ‘Jokes may indeed have a relation to the unconscious. But also: sometimes a joke is just a joke.’

  ‘Directed against –’

  ‘Directed against you. Whom else? The man who doesn’t laugh. The man who can’t take a joke.’

  ‘But what if I had never found out? What if I went to the grave in total ignorance of this so-called joke? What if the joke were to go unnoticed at the State Library too? What if it were to go unnoticed to the end of time? Take a look at these pictures, kids. The Ballarat diggers. Look at that bloke with the fierce moustaches! What then?’

  ‘Then it will become part of our folklore that brigand moustaches were in fashion in 1850s Victoria. That’s all. This is really not a matter worth going on about, Paul. What counts is that you have left your flat and visited Munno Para, where you have had words in private with your beloved Marijana and got to see her husband’s beekeeping outfit and the bicycle her son is building for you. That is the only outcome of the so-called forgery that matters. Otherwise the episode is of the utmost insignificance.’

  ‘You forget the missing print. Whatever opinion you may hold on photographs and their relation to the real, the fact is that one of my Faucherys, a genuine national treasure, worth more than mere money, has disappeared.’

  ‘Your precious photograph has not disappeared. Look in your cabinet again. Ten to one it is there, misfiled. Or else Drago will find it in his stuff and return it to you next Sunday, with apologies.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then the matter will be closed.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘After that? After Sunday? I am not sure there will be any more, after Sunday. Sunday may well mark the last of your dealings with the Jokićs, Mrs Jokić included. Of Mrs Jokić nothing alas but memories will remain to you. Of her supple calves. Of the splendid line of her bust. Of her charming malapropisms. Fond memories, shaded with regret, which will fade with the passage of time, as memories tend to do. Time, the great healer. However, there will still be the quarterly bills from Wellington College. Which I have no doubt you will pay, as a man of honour. And Christmas cards: Wishing you a happy Christmas and a prosperous new year – Marijana, Mel, Drago, Blanka, Ljuba.’

  ‘I see. And what more do you care to reveal of my future, Mrs Costello, while you are in prophetic vein?’

  ‘You mean, will there be someone to replace Marijana or is Marijana the end of the line for you? That depends. If you stay on in Adelaide, I foresee only nurses, a gallery of nurses, some pretty, some not so pretty, none of whom will come near to touching your heart as Marijana Jokić has done. If you come to Melbourne, on the other hand, there will be me, faithful old Dobbin. Though my calves are not, I suspect, up to your exacting standard.’

  ‘And what of the state of your heart?’

  ‘My heart? It has its ups and downs. It hammers and gasps like an old car when I climb the stairs. I dare say it will not last much longer. Why do you ask? Are you anxious you might turn out to be the one doing the nursing? Never fear – I would never demand that of you.’

  ‘Then is it not time you called upon your children? Is it not time your children did something for you?’

  ‘My children are far away, Paul, across the broad waves. Why do you mention my children? Do you want to adopt them too, become their stepfather? That will surprise them no end. They haven’t even heard of you.

  ‘But no, to answer your question, I would not dream of imposing myself on my children. If all else fails, I will check myself into a nursing home. Though the kind of care I seek is, alas, not provided in any nursing home I am aware of.’

  ‘And what kind of care might that be?’

  ‘Loving care.’

  ‘Yes, that is indeed hard to come by nowadays, loving care. You might have to settle for mere good nursing. There is such a thing as good nursing, you know. One can be a good nurse without loving one’s patients. Think of Marijana.’

  ‘So that would be your advice: settle for nursing. I disagree. If I had to elect between good nursing and a pair of loving hands, I would elect the loving hands any day.’

  ‘Well, I do not have loving hands, Elizabeth.’

  ‘No, you do not. Neither loving hands nor a loving heart. A heart in hiding, that is what I call it. How are we going to bring your heart out of hiding? – that is the question.’ She clutches his arm. ‘Look!’

  Three figures on motorcycles flash past in quick succession, going the other way, towards Munno Para.

  ‘The one in the red helmet – wasn’t it Drago?’ She sighs. ‘Ah for youth! Ah for immortality!’

  It was probably not Drago. Too much of a coincidence, too neat. Probably a trio of unrelated young men, though with the blood running equally hot in their veins. But let them pretend nevertheless that the one in the red helmet was Drago. ‘Ah Drago,’ he repeats dutifully, ‘ah for youth!’

  The taximan drops them on Coniston Terrace in front of his flat.

  ‘So,’ says Elizabeth Costello. ‘The end of a long day.’

  ‘Yes.’

  This is the moment when he ought to invite her indoors, offer her a meal and a place to sleep. But he speaks no word.

  ‘Just the right gift, isn’t it,’ she says – ‘your new bicycle. So thoughtful of Drago. A thoughtful boy. Now you are free to ride wherever you wish. If you are still nervous of Wayne Blight, you can confine yourself to the river path. It will give you exercise. It will improve your moods. You will develop strong arms in no time. Is there space for a passenger, do you think?’

  ‘Space for a child behind the rider, yes. But not for another grown-up.’

  ‘Just joking, Paul. No, I wouldn’t want to be a burden on you. If I were to go riding I would want a contraption of my own, preferably one with a motor. Do they still sell those little motors that you fasten to bicycles that go putt-putt and help you up the hills? They had them in France, I remember. Deux chevaux, two horses.’

  ‘I know what you mean. But they are not called deux chevaux. Deux chevaux is something else.’

  ‘Or a bath chair. Perhaps that is what I really ought to get for myself. Do you remember bath chairs, the kind with a tasselled sunshade and a steering-bar? We can scout around the antique shops, I’m sure we will find one, Adelaide is just the place for a bath chair. We can ask Miroslav to fix a couple of chevaux to it. Then we will be ready to set out on our adventures, you and I. You already have your nice orange flag and I will get another for myself, with a design.’

  ‘How about a mailed fist? A mailed fist in black on a white field, and beneath it the motto Malleus maleficorum.’

  ‘Malleus maleficorum. Excellent! You really are turning into quite a wit, Paul.
Who would have suspected you had it in you. Malleus maleficorum for me and Onward and upward for you. We could tour the whole land, the two of us, the whole of this wide brown land, north and south, east and west. You could teach me doggedness and I could teach you to live on nothing, or nearly nothing. They would write articles about us in the newspapers. We would become a well-loved Australian institution. What an idea! What a capital idea! Is this love, Paul? Have we found love at last?’

  Half an hour ago he was with Marijana. But Marijana is behind them now, and he is left with Elizabeth Costello. He puts on his glasses again, turns, takes a good look at her. In the clear late-afternoon light he can see every detail, every hair, every vein. He examines her, then he examines his heart. ‘No,’ he says at last, ‘this is not love. This is something else. Something less.’

  ‘And is that your last word, do you think? No hope of budging you?’

  ‘I am afraid not.’

  ‘But what am I going to do without you?’

  She seems to be smiling, but her lips are trembling too.

  ‘That is up to you, Elizabeth. There are plenty of fish in the ocean, so I hear. But as for me, as for now: goodbye.’ And he leans forward and kisses her thrice in the formal manner he was taught as a child, left right left.

  Author’s Note

  For their generous advice and assistance, my thanks to Arijana Božović, Catherine Lauga du Plessis, Peter Goldsworthy, Peter Rose, John Williams, and Sharon Zwi.

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