Slow Man - Coetzee J. M. - Страница 42

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So when Marijana rises and briskly dons her coat and picks up her keys, he has a quite childish sense of aggrievement. 'Can't you stay a while longer?' he says. 'Can't you spend the night?'

She sits down again on the bedside. 'OK if I smoke?' she says. 'Just one time?' She lights a cigarette, puffs, blows the smoke away from him. 'We have talk, Mr Rayment, fix up things. What you want from me? You want I must do my job, come back, be nurse for you? Then you don't say these things, like' – she waves the cigarette – 'you know what I mean.'

'I must not speak of my feelings for you.'

'You go through bad time, you lose your leg and all that, I understand. You have feelings, man's feelings, I understand, is OK.'

Though the pain seems to be dwindling, he cannot yet sit up. 'Yes, I have feelings,' he says, flat on his back.

'You have feelings, you say things, is natural, is OK. But.'

'Labile. That is the word you are hunting for. I am too labile for your taste. Too much at the mercy of the feelings you refer to. I speak my heart too openly. I say too much.'

'Mercy. What is mercy of feelings?'

'Never mind. I believe I understand you. I have an accident and am shaken to the core. My spirits rise, my spirits fall, they are no longer under my control. As a result I become attached to the first woman to cross my path, the first sympathetic woman. I fall, excuse the word, in love with her; I fall in love with her children too, in a different way. I, who have been childless, suddenly want children of my own. Hence the present friction between us, between you and me. And it can all be traced back to my brush with death on Magill Road. Magill Road shook me up so much that even today I let my feelings pour out without reckoning the consequences. Is that not what you are telling me?'

She shrugs but does not contradict him. Instead, drawing in the smoke luxuriously, blowing it out, she lets him run on. For the first time he sees what sensual pleasure there can be in smoking.

'Well, you are wrong, Marijana. It is not like that at all. I am not in a confused state. I may be labile, but being labile is not an aberration. We should all be more labile, all of us. That is my new, revised opinion. We should shake ourselves up more often. We should also brace ourselves and take a look in the mirror, even if we dislike what we will see there. I am not referring to the ravages of time. I am referring to the creature trapped behind the glass whose stare we are normally so careful to avoid. Behold this being who eats with me, spends nights with me, says "I" on my behalf. If you find me labile, Marijana, it is not just because I suffered a knock. It is because every now and then the stranger who says "I" breaks through the glass and speaks in me. Through me. Speaks tonight. Speaks now. Speaks love.'

He halts. What a torrent of words! How unlike him! Marijana must be surprised. Is there indeed at this moment some stranger speaking through a mirror, taking over his voice (but which mirror?), or is the present outpouring just another bout of lability, the aftershock of the latest accident – the bump on the head, the strained back, the aching stump, the icy shower, and so forth – rising in his throat like bile, like vomit? In fact, might it simply be an effect of the pill Marijana gave him (what could the pill have been?), or even of the coffee? He should not have taken the coffee. He is not used to coffee in the evenings.

Speaks love. He cannot be sure, he is not wearing his glasses, but a flush seems to be creeping up from Marijana's throat. Marijana says she wants him to curb himself, but that is nonsense, she cannot really mean it. What woman would not want a torrent of love-words poured out on her every now and again, however questionable their origin? Marijana is blushing, and for the simple reason that she too is labile. And therefore? What comes next? And therefore it does indeed all cohere! Therefore behind the chaos of appearance a divine logic is indeed at work! Wayne Blight comes out of nowhere to smash his leg to a pulp, therefore months later he collapses in the shower, therefore this scene becomes possible: a man of sixty caught more or less rigid in bed, shivering intermittently, spouting philosophy to his nurse, spouting love. And the blood moves in her, responding!

Exulting, he stretches out (Ignore the pain, who cares for pain!) and places his large and (he notices) rather unattractively livid hand over Marijana's smaller, warmer hand with the tapering fingers that, according to his grandmother in Toulouse, signify a sensual temperament.

For a moment Marijana lets her hand rest under his. Then she frees herself, stubs out the cigarette, rises, and begins to button her coat again.

'Marijana,' he says, 'I make no demands, neither now nor in the future.'

'Yes?' She cocks her head, gives him a quizzical look. 'No demand? You think I know nothing about men? Men is always demand. I want, I want, I want. Me, I want to do my job, that is my demand. My job in Australia is nurse.'

She pauses. Never before has she addressed him with such force, such (it seems to him) fury.

'You telephone, and is good you telephone, I don't say you must not telephone. Emergency, you telephone, OK. But this' – she waves a hand – 'this shower business is not emergency, not medical emergency. You fall in bathroom, you call some friend. "I get scared, please come," that is what you say.' She takes out a fresh cigarette, changes her mind, puts it back in the pack. ' Elizabeth,' she says. 'You call Elizabeth, or you call other lady friend, I don't know your friends. "I get scared, please come hold my hand. No medical emergency, just please come hold my hand."'

'I was not just scared. I have injured myself. I cannot move. You can see that.'

'Spasm. Is just spasm. I leave you pills for it. Back spasm is not emergency.' She pauses. 'Or else you want more, not just hold hand, you want, like you call it, the real thing, then maybe you join club for lonely hearts. If you got lonely heart.'

She draws a breath, eyes him reflectively. 'You think you know how it is to be nurse, Mr Rayment? Every day I nurse old ladies, old men, clean them, clean their dirt, I don't need to say it, change sheets, change clothes. Always I am hearing Do this, do that, bring this, bring that, not feeling good, bring pills, bring glass of water, bring cup of tea, bring blanket, take off blanket, open window, close window, don't like this, don't like that. I come home tired in my bone, telephone rings, any time, mornings, nights: Is emergency, can you come…'

Minutes ago she was blushing. Now he is the one who ought to blush. An emergency… can you come? Of course, in the language of the caring professions, this would not count as an emergency. One does not perish of cold in an air-conditioned flat on Coniston Terrace, North Adelaide. Even in the act of dialling the Jokic number he knew that. Yet he called anyhow. Come, save me! he called across the South Australian space.

'You were the first I thought of,' he says. 'Your name came to me first. Your name, your face. Do you think that is of no account – being first?'

She shrugs. There is silence between them. Of course it is a big word, an overbearing word to have hurled at one: first. But that is not the word that gives him pause. Your name. Your name came to me. You came to me. Words that rose in him without thought, came to him. Is this how it is when one is labile: words just come?

'I always thought,' he presses on, 'that nursing was a vocation. I thought that was what set it apart, what justified the long hours and the poor pay and the ingratitude and the indignities too, such as those you mentioned: that you were following a calling. Well, when a nurse is called, a proper nurse, she doesn't ask questions, she comes. Even if it is not a real emergency. Even if it is just distress, human distress, what you call a scare.' He has not lectured Marijana before, but perhaps the lecture is the mode in which, on this particular night, the truth will choose to reveal itself. 'Even if it is just love.'

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