Slow Man Read online

  ‘The leg is OK, no pain,’ he says. What he does not say is: But why did you walk off the job, Marijana? Why did you abandon me? Hardly professional conduct, was it? I bet you would not want Mrs Putz to hear of it.

  He is still full of aggrievement, he wants some sign of contrition from Marijana. At the same time he is drunk with the pleasure of having her back, excited too by the money he is about to give away. Giving always bucks him up, he knows that about himself. Spurs him to give more. Like gambling. The thrill all in the losing. Loss upon loss. The reckless, heedless falling.

  In her usual busy fashion Marijana has already set to work. Beginning in the bedroom, she is stripping the bed and fitting clean sheets. But she can feel his eyes on her, he is sure of that, can feel the warmth coming from him, caressing her thighs, her breasts. Eros always ran strong for him in the mornings. If by some miracle he could embrace Marijana right now, in this mood, taking the tide while it is high, he would overcome all that rectitude of hers, he is prepared to bet. But impossible, of course. Imprudent. Worse than imprudent, crazy. He should not even think of it.

  Then the bathroom door opens and the Costello woman, wearing his dressing gown and slippers, makes her entry on the scene. She is drying her hair with a towel, showing patches of pink scalp. Cursorily he introduces her. ‘Marijana, this is Mrs Costello. She is staying here briefly. Mrs Jokić.’

  Marijana offers her hand and with solemn mummery the Costello woman takes it. ‘I promise not to get in your way,’ she says.

  ‘No worries.’

  Minutes later he hears the front doorlock click. From a window he watches the Costello woman recede down the street towards the river. She is wearing a straw hat he recognises as his own, one he has not worn for years. Where did she find it? Has she been rooting in his cupboards?

  ‘Nice lady,’ says Marijana. ‘She is friend?’

  ‘A friend? No, not at all, just an associate. She has business in town, she is staying here for the duration.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  Marijana is in a hurry, so it seems. Normally, first thing in the morning, she attends to the leg and conducts him through his exercises. But today there is no mention of exercises. ‘I must go, is special day, must pick up Ljubica from play group,’ she says. From her bag she brings out a frozen quiche. ‘I come back this afternoon, maybe. Here is something little I buy for your lunch. I leave slip, you pay me later.’

  ‘A little something,’ he corrects her.

  ‘Little something,’ she says.

  She is barely gone when the key scrapes in the lock and Elizabeth Costello is back. ‘I bought some fruit,’ she announces. She sets down a plastic bag on the table. ‘There will be an interview, I would guess. Do you think Marijana will be up to it?’

  ‘Interview?’

  ‘For this college. They will want to interview the boy and his parents, but mainly the parents, to make sure they are the right sort.’

  ‘It is Drago who is applying for admission, not his parents. If the Wellington College people have any sense, they will jump to take Drago.’

  ‘But what if they ask the parents straight out how they are going to pay those outrageous fees?’

  ‘I will write them a letter. I will lodge guarantees. I will do whatever is required.’

  She is building a little pyramid of fruit – apricots, nectarines, grapes – in the bowl on the coffee table. ‘That’s admirable,’ she says. ‘I’m so glad to have this chance to get to know you better. You give me faith.’

  ‘I give you faith? No one has said that to me before.’

  ‘Yes, you give me faith again. You must not take seriously what I said about yourself and Mrs Jokić. One is embarrassed, that is all, to find oneself in the presence of true, old-fashioned love. I bow before you.’

  She pauses in what she is doing and offers, not without irony, the lightest of inclinations of the head.

  ‘However,’ she continues, ‘do remember that there is still the hurdle of Miroslav to overcome. We cannot take it for granted that Miroslav will agree to have his son go off to a fancy boarding school a thousand miles away. Or that he will want his pecuniary obligations to be taken over by the man his wife visits six days a week, the man with the missing leg. Have you thought what you will do about Miroslav?’

  ‘He would be stupid to refuse. It doesn’t affect him. It affects his son, his son’s future.’

  ‘No, Paul, that is not right,’ she says softly. ‘From the son to the wife, from the wife to him: that is how the thread runs. You touch his pride, his manly honour. Sooner or later you are going to have to face Miroslav. What will you say when that day comes? “I am just trying to help”? Is that what you will say? That won’t be good enough. Only the truth will be good enough. And the truth is that you are not trying to help. On the contrary, you are trying to throw a spanner into the Jokić family works. You are trying to get into Mrs J’s pants. Also to seduce Mr J’s children away from him and make them your own, one, two and even three. Not what I would call a friendly agenda, all in all. No, you are not Miroslav’s friend, not in any way I can see. Miroslav is not going to take kindly to you; and can you blame him? Therefore what are you going to do about Miroslav? You must think. You must think.’ With the tip of a finger she taps her forehead. ‘And if your thinking leads you where I think it will, namely to a blank wall, I have an alternative to propose.’

  ‘An alternative to what?’

  ‘An alternative to this entire imbroglio of yours with the Jokićs. Forget about Mrs Jokić and your fixation on her. Cast your mind back. Do you remember the last time you visited the osteopathy department at the hospital? Do you remember the woman in the lift with the dark glasses? In the company of an older woman? Of course you remember. She made an impression on you. Even I could see that.

  ‘Nothing that happens in our lives is without a meaning, Paul, as any child can tell you. That is one of the lessons stories teach us, one of the many lessons. Have you given up reading stories? A mistake. You shouldn’t.

  ‘Let me fill you in on the woman with the dark glasses. She is, alas, blind. She lost her sight a year ago, as the result of a malignancy, a tumour. Lost one whole eye, surgically excised, and the use of the other too. Before the calamity she was beautiful, or at least highly attractive; today, alas, she is unsightly in the way that all blind people are unsightly. One prefers not to look on her face. Or rather, one finds oneself staring and then withdraws one’s gaze, repelled. This repulsion is of course invisible to her, but she feels it nevertheless. She is conscious of the gaze of others like fingers groping at her, groping and retreating.

  ‘Being blind is worse than she was warned it would be, worse than she had ever imagined. She is in despair. In a matter of months she has become an object of horror. She cannot bear being in the open, where she can be looked at. She wants to hide herself. She wants to die. And at the same time – she cannot help herself – she is full of unhappy lust. She is in the summer of her womanly life; she moans aloud with lust, day after day, like a cow or a sow in heat.

  ‘What I say surprises you? You think this is just a story I am making up? It is not. The woman exists, you have seen her with your own two eyes, her name is Marianna. This tranquil-seeming world we inhabit contains horrors, Paul, such as you could not dream up for yourself in a month of Sundays. The ocean depths, for instance, the floor of the sea – what goes on there exceeds all imagining.

  ‘What Marianna aches for is not consolation, much less worship, but love in its most physical expression. She wants to be, no matter how briefly, as she was before, as you in your way want to be as you were before. I say to you: Why not see what you can achieve together, you and Marianna, she blind, you halt?

  ‘Let me tell you one more thing about Marianna. Marianna knows you. Yes, she knows you. You and she are acquainted. Are you aware of that?’

  It is as if sh
e were reading his diary. It is as if he kept a diary, and this woman crept nightly into the flat and read his secrets. But there is no diary, unless he writes in his sleep.

  ‘You are mistaken, Mrs Costello,’ he says. ‘The woman you refer to, whom you call Marianna – I saw her only on the one occasion, at the hospital, where she could not have seen me, by definition. So she cannot be acquainted with me, not even in the most trivial sense.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps I am mistaken, that is possible. Or perhaps you are the one who is mistaken. Perhaps Marianna comes out of an earlier part of your life, when both of you were young and whole and good to look at, and you have simply forgotten about it. You were a photographer by profession, were you not? Perhaps once upon a time you took her photograph, and it happened that all your attention was concentrated on the image you were making, not on her, the source of the image.’

  ‘Perhaps. But there is nothing wrong with my memory, and I have no recollection of such an experience.’

  ‘Well, old friends or not, why not see what you can achieve together, you and Marianna? Given the extraordinary circumstances of the case, I will take it on myself to arrange a meeting. You need merely wait and prepare yourself. Be assured, if there is any proposal I will put it to her in a way that will allow her to come without losing self-respect.

  ‘A final word. Let me suggest that, whatever you and she get up to, you get up to it in the dark. As a kindness to her. Think of your bed as a cave. A storm is raging, a maiden huntress enters seeking shelter. She stretches out a hand and meets another hand, yours. And so forth.’

  He ought to say something sharp, but he cannot, it is as if he is drugged or bemused.

  ‘Of the episode of which you claim to have no recollection,’ Costello goes on, ‘– the day when you might or might not have taken her photograph – I would only say, be a little less sure of yourself. Stir the memory and you will be surprised at what images rise to the surface. But let me not press you. Let us build your side of the story on the premise that you have had only that single glimpse of her, in the lift. A single glimpse, but enough to ignite desire. From your desire and her need, what will be born? Passion on the grandest of scales? One last great autumnal conflagration? Let us see. The issue is in your hands, yours and hers. Is my proposal acceptable? If so, say yes. Or if you are too abashed, just nod. Yes?

  ‘Her name is Marianna, as I said, with two ns. I cannot help that. It is not in my power to change names. You can give her some interim other name if you wish, some pet name, Darling or Kitten or whatever. She was married, but after the stroke of fate I described her marriage broke up, as all else broke up. Her life is in disarray. For the present she lives with her mother, the woman you saw with her, the crone.

  ‘That is sufficient background for the time being. You can get the rest from her own lips. Two ns. Once upon a time a pig-farmer’s daughter. Her toilette is in disarray as is everything else in her life, but that can be forgiven, who would not make the occasional mistake, dressing in the dark?

  ‘Agitated but clean. Since her surgery, her extremely delicate surgery, quite unlike the gross butchery of amputation, she has become morbidly scrupulous about cleanliness, about the way she smells. That happens with some blind people. You had better be clean for her too. If I speak crudely, forgive me. Wash yourself well. Wash everywhere. And put away that sad face. Losing a leg is not a tragedy. On the contrary, losing a leg is comic. Losing any part of the body that sticks out is comic. Otherwise we would not have so many jokes on the subject. There was an old man with one leg / Who stood with his hat out to beg. And so forth.

  ‘Be advised, Paul: The years go by as quickly as a wink. So enjoy yourself while you’re still in the pink. It’s always later than you think.

  ‘And no, the other Marijana, the nurse woman, was not my idea, if that is what you are wondering. There is no system for these things. Marijana of Dubrovnik, your unsuitable passion, arrived via your friend Mrs Putts. Nothing to do with me.

  ‘You don’t know what to make of me, do you? You think of me as a trial. Much of the time you think I am talking rubbish, making things up as I go. Yet you have not rebelled, I notice, not yet. You tolerate me in the hope that I will give up and go away. Don’t deny it, it is written on your face, plain for all to see. You are Job, I am one of your unmerited afflictions, the woman who goes on and on, full of plans for saving you from yourself, gab gab gab, when all you crave is peace.

  ‘It does not have to be this way, Paul. I say it again: this is your story, not mine. The moment you decide to take charge, I will fade away. You will hear no more from me; it will be as if I had never existed. That promise extends to your new friend Marianna as well. I will retire; you and she will be free to work out your respective salvations.

  ‘Think how well you started. What could be better calculated to engage one’s attention than the incident on Magill Road, when young Wayne collided with you and sent you flying through the air like a cat. What a sad decline ever since! Slower and slower, till by now you are almost at a halt, trapped in a stuffy flat with a caretaker who could not care less about you. But be of good heart. Marianna has possibilities, with her devastated face and the remorseful lust that grips her. Marianna is quite a woman. The question is, are you man enough for her?

  ‘Answer me, Paul. Say something.’

  It is like a sea beating against his skull. Indeed, for all he knows he could already be lost overboard, tugged to and fro by the currents of the deep. The slap of water that will in time strip his bones of the last sliver of flesh. Pearls of his eyes; coral of his bones.

  Fifteen

  Marijana calls. Even before she speaks he knows what she is going to say: that she is sorry, but she cannot come today. A problem with her daughter. No, not Ljubica: Blanka.

  ‘Can I help?’ he asks.

  ‘No, nobody can help.’ She sighs. ‘I come tomorrow for sure, OK?’

  ‘Trouble with her daughter,’ muses Elizabeth Costello. ‘I wonder what kind of trouble that might be. Still, no cloud without a silver lining. The woman I mentioned, Marianna, the blind one – you can’t keep her from your thoughts, can you? Don’t dissemble, Paul, I can read you like a book. It so happens that Marianna is at a loose end today. Does not know what to do with herself. Be in the café on the corner, Alfredo’s I think it is called, at five this afternoon, and I will bring her to you. Dress up, even if she can’t see. I will bring her, then I will bid adieu. Don’t ask me how I do these things, it’s not magic, I just do them.’

  Costello stays away all afternoon. At four-thirty, as he is about to leave the flat, she reappears, breathless. ‘A change of plan,’ she says. ‘Marianna is waiting downstairs. She does not like the idea of Alfredo’s. She is being’ – she gives an exasperated snort – ‘she is being difficult. May I use your kitchen?’

  She returns from the kitchen bearing a little bowl of what looks like cream. ‘Just a paste of flour and water. It goes over your eyes. Have no fear, it will not hurt you. Why must you wear it? Because Marianna does not want you to see her. She insists. Here, bend down. Keep still. Don’t blink. To hold it in place, a lemon leaf over each eye. And to hold the leaves in place, a nylon stocking, freshly washed, I promise, knotted behind your head. You can slip it off at any time you wish. But I would not recommend that, truly I would not.

  ‘So. All done. I am sorry it is so complicated, but that is how we human beings are, complicated, each in our own unique way. Now, if you will settle down and wait, I will fetch your Marianna. Do you feel you are ready? Do you feel up to it? Yes? Good. Remember, you must pay her. That is the arrangement, that is how she keeps her self-respect. A topsy-turvy world, isn’t it? But it’s the only one we have.

  ‘As soon as I have delivered her I will slip away and allow the two of you to get to know each other better. I won’t be back until tomorrow or even the next day. Goodbye. Do not worry about me. I’m a tough old bird.
’

  She is gone. He stands facing the door, leaning on his frame. There is a murmur of voices from the stairwell. The door-latch clicks again.

  ‘I am here,’ he says into the dark. Despite his unbelief, his heart seems to be hammering.

  A gliding, a rustling. The scent of the damp leaves over his eyes overpowers every other smell. A pressure on the frame, which he feels through his hands. ‘My eyes are shut, sealed,’ he says. ‘I am not used to being blind, bear with me.’

  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 Jokić: 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.’