'DON'T YOU THINK you should see a doctor?' he says to the Costello woman.
She shakes her head. 'It's nothing, just a chill. It will pass.'
It does not sound like a chill at all. It is a cough, and it has a soggy quality, as if the lungs are trying to expel, a fistful at a time, a layer of deeply settled mucus.
'You must have picked it up under the bushes,' he says. She looks back uncomprehendingly.
'Didn't you say you were sleeping under the bushes in the park?'
'Ah yes.'
'I can recommend eucalyptus oil,' he says. 'A teaspoon of eucalyptus oil in a pan of boiling water. You inhale the steam. It does wonders for the bronchial passages.'
'Eucalyptus oil!' she says. 'I haven't heard of eucalyptus oil in ages. People use inhalers nowadays. I have one in my bag. Quite useless. My standby used to be Friar's Balsam, but I can't find it in the shops any more.'
'You can get it in country stores. You can get it in Adelaide.'
'Can you. As our American friends say, that figures.'
He will get the eucalyptus oil out for her. He will boil a pan of water. He will even hunt in the medicine cabinet to see whether he has Friar's Balsam. She has only to ask. But she does not ask.
They are sitting on the balcony with a bottle of wine between them. It is dark, there is a strong breeze blowing. If she really is ill she would be better off indoors. But she does nothing to hide her distaste for the flat – 'your Bavarian funeral parlour,' she called it yesterday – and he is not her keeper.
'No word from Drago? No news from the Jokics?' she inquires.
'No word. I have written a letter, which I have yet to mail.'
'A letter! Another letter! What is this, a game of postal chess? Two days for your word to reach Marijana, two days for her word to come back: we will all expire of boredom before we have a resolution. This is not the age of the epistolary novel, Paul. Go and see her! Confront her! Have a proper scene! Stamp your foot (I speak metaphorically)! Shout! Say, "I will not be treated like this!" That is how normal people behave, people like Marijana and Miroslav. Life is not an exchange of diplomatic notes. Au contraire, life is drama, life is action, action and passion! Surely you, with your French background, know that. Be polite if you wish, no harm in politeness, but not at the expense of the passions. Think of French theatre. Think of Racine. You can't be more French than Racine. Racine is not about people sitting hunched up in corners plotting and calculating. Racine is about confrontation, one huge tirade pitted against another.'
Is she feverish? What has brought on this outburst?
'If there is a place in the world for Friar's Balsam,' he says, 'there is a place for old-fashioned letters. At least, if a letter does not sound right, you can tear it up and start again. Unlike speeches. Unlike outbursts of passion, which are irrevocable. You of all people ought to appreciate that.'
'I?'
'Yes, you. Surely you don't scribble down the first thing that comes into your head and mail it off to your publisher. Surely you wait for second thoughts. Surely you revise. Isn't the whole of writing a matter of second thoughts – second thoughts and third thoughts and further thoughts?'
'Indeed it is. That is what writing is: second thoughts to the power of n. But who are you to preach second thoughts to me? If you had only been true to your tortoise character, if you had waited for the coming of second thoughts, if you had not so foolishly and irrevocably declared your passion to your cleaning lady, we would not be in our present pickle, you and I. You could be happily set up in your nice flat, waiting for visits from the lady with the dark glasses, and I could be back in Melbourne. But it is too late for that now. Nothing left for us but to hold on tight and see where the black horse takes us.'
'Why do you call me a tortoise?'
'Because you sniff the air for ages before you stick your head out. Because every blessed step costs such an effort. I am not asking you to become a hare, Paul. I merely plead that you look into your heart and see whether you cannot find means within your tortoise character, within your tortoise variety of passion, of accelerating your wooing of Marijana – if it is indeed your intention to go on wooing her.
'Remember, Paul, it is passion that makes the world go round. You are not analphabete, you must know that. In the absence of passion the world would still be void and without form. Think of Don Quixote. Don Quixote is not about a man sitting in a rocking chair bemoaning the dullness of La Mancha. It is about a man who claps a basin on his head and clambers onto the back of his faithful old plough-horse and sallies forth to do great deeds. Emma Rouault, Emma Bovary, goes out and buys fancy clothes even though she has no idea of how she is going to pay for them. We only live once, says Alonso, says Emma, so let's give it a whirl! Give it a whirl, Paul. See what you can come up with.'
'See what I can come up with so that you can put me in a book.'
'So that someone, somewhere might put you in a book. So that someone might want to put you in a book. Someone, anyone – not just me. So that you may be worth putting in a book. Alongside Alonso and Emma. Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That is what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?
'Come on. Do something. Do anything. Surprise me. Has it occurred to you that if your life seems repetitive and circumscribed and duller by the day, it may be because you hardly ever leave this accursed flat? Consider: somewhere in a jungle in Maharashtra State a tiger is at this very moment opening its amber eyes, and it is not thinking of you at all! It could not care less about you or any other of the denizens of Coniston Terrace. When did you last go for a walk under the starry sky? You have lost a leg, I know, and ambulating is no fun; but after a certain age we have all lost a leg, more or less. Your missing leg is just a sign or symbol or symptom, I can never remember which is which, of growing old, old and uninteresting. So what is the point of complaining? Hark!
I am, yet what I am none cares or knows.
My friends forsake me like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes.
'Do you know the lines? John Clare. Be warned, Paul: that is how you will end up, like John Clare, sole consumer of your own woes. Because no one else, you can be sure, will give a damn.'
He never knows, with the Costello woman, when he is being treated seriously and when he is being taken for a ride. He can cope with the English, that is to say the Anglo-Australians. It is the Irish who have always given him trouble, and the Irish strain in Australia. He can see that someone might want to turn him and Marijana, the man with the stump and the mobile Balkan lady, into comedy. But despite all her gibing comedy is not quite what Costello seems to have in mind for him, and that is what baffles him, that is what he calls the Irish element.
'We should move indoors,' he says.
'Not yet. O starry sky… How does it go on?'
'I don't know.'
'O starry sky, o something something. How has it come about, do you think, that I am stuck with so incurious, so unadventurous a man as you? Can you explain? Does it all come down to the English language, to your not being confident enough to act in a language that is not your own?
'Ever since you reminded me of your French past, you know, I have been listening with pricked ears. And yes, you are right: you speak English, you probably think in English, you may even dream in English, yet English is not your true language. I would even say that English is a disguise for you, or a mask, part of your tortoiseshell armour. As you speak I swear I can hear words being selected, one after the other, from the word-box you carry around with you, and slotted into place. That is not how a true native speaks, one who is born into the language.'
'How does a native speak?'
'From the heart. Words well up within and he sings them, sings along with them. So to speak.'
'I see. Are you suggesting I return to French? Are you suggesting I sing Frère Jacques?'
'Don't mock me, Paul. I said nothing about returning to French. You lost touch with French long ago. All I say is, you speak English like a foreigner.'
'I speak English like a foreigner because I am a foreigner. I am a foreigner by nature and have been a foreigner all my life. And I don't see why I should apologise. If there were no foreigners there would be no natives.'
'A foreigner by nature? No, that is not it, don't put the blame on your nature. You have a perfectly good nature, if a little underdeveloped. No, the more I listen the more convinced I am that the key to your character lies in your speech. You speak like a book. Once upon a time you were a pale, well-behaved little boy – I can just see you – who took books too seriously. And you still are.'
'I still am what? Pale? Well-behaved? Underdeveloped?'
'A little boy afraid of sounding funny when you open your mouth. Let me make a proposal, Paul. Lock up this flat and bid farewell to Adelaide. Adelaide is too much like a graveyard. There is no more life for you here. Come and live with me in Carlton instead. I will give you language lessons. I will teach you how to speak from the heart. One two-hour lesson a day, six days a week; on the seventh day we can rest. I will even cook for you. Not as expertly as Marijana, but serviceably enough. Then after dinner, should the spirit move you, you can tell me more stories from your treasure-hoard, which I will afterwards tell back to you in a form so accelerated and improved that you will hardly recognise them. What else? No rough pleasures – you will be relieved to hear that. As clean as the blessed angels we will be. In all other respects I will take care of you; and perhaps in return you will learn to take care of me. When the appointed day arrives, you can be the one to close my eyelids and stuff cotton wool up my nostrils and recite a brief prayer over me. Or vice versa, if I am the one left behind. How does that sound to you?'
'It sounds like marriage.'
'Yes it is, marriage of a kind. Companionate marriage. Paul and Elizabeth. Elizabeth and Paul. Companions on the way. Or if Carlton doesn't appeal to you, we could buy a camper van and tour the continent taking in the sights. We could even catch a plane to France. How about that? You could show me your old haunts, the Galeries Lafayette, Tarascon, the Pyrenees. No end of options. Come on, what do you say?'
She may be Irish, but she sounds sincere, or half sincere. Now his turn.
He rises and stands propped against the table before her. Can he, for once, make his voice sing? He closes his eyes, empties his mind, waits for words to come.
'Why me, Elizabeth?' come the words. 'Why, of all the many people in the world, me?'
The same old words, the same disappointing old song. He cannot get beyond it. Yet until he has an answer to his question, whatever in the heart does the singing will be clogged.
Elizabeth Costello is silent.
'I am dross, Elizabeth, base metal. I am not redeemable. I am of no use to you, to anyone, of no value. Too pale, too cold, too frightened. What made you choose me? What gave you the idea you could make anything of me? Why do you stay with me? Speak!'
She speaks.
'You were made for me, Paul, as I was made for you. Will that do for the present, or do you want me to give it to you plenu voce, in full voice?'
'Speak it in so full a voice that even a poor dullard like me can understand.'
She clears her throat. 'For me alone Paul Rayment was born and I for him. His is the power of leading, mine of following; his of acting, mine of writing. More?'
'No, that is enough. Now let me ask you straight out, Mrs Costello: Are you real?'
'Am I real? I eat, I sleep, I suffer, I go to the bathroom. I catch cold. Of course I am real. As real as you.'
'Please be serious for once. Please answer me: Am I alive or am I dead? Did something happen to me on Magill Road that I have failed to grasp?'
'And am I the shade assigned to welcome you to the afterlife – is that what you are asking? No, rest assured, a poor forked creature, that is all I am, no different from yourself. An old woman who scribbles away, page after page, day after day, damned if she knows why. If there is a presiding spirit – and I don't think there is – then it is me he stands over, with his lash, not you. No slacking, young Elizabeth Costello! he says, and gives me a lick of the whip. Get on with the job now! No, this is a very ordinary story, very ordinary indeed, with just three dimensions, length, breadth and height, the same as ordinary life, and it is a very ordinary proposal I am making to you. Come back with me to Melbourne, to my nice old house in Carlton. You will like it, it has many mansions. Forget about Mrs Jokic, you don't stand a dog's chance with her. Take a chance on me. I'll be your best copine, the copine of your last days. We will share our crusts while we still have teeth. What do you say?'
'What do I say from the word-box I carry around with me or from the heart?'
'Ah, you've got me there, what a quick fellow you are! From the heart, Paul, just for once.'
He has been watching her mouth as she speaks, it is a habit of his: other people watch the eyes, he watches the mouth. No rough pleasures, she said. But right now he cannot help imagining what it would be like to kiss that mouth, with its dry, perhaps even withered lips and the trace of down above. Does companionate marriage include kissing? He drops his eyes; if he were less polite he would shudder.
And she sees it. She is not a higher being, but she sees it. 'I bet that as a little boy you didn't like it when your mother kissed you,' she says softly. 'Am I right? Ducked your head, let her peck you on the forehead, nothing more? And your Dutch stepfather not at all? Wanted to be a little man from the beginning, your own little man, owing nothing to anyone; self-made. Did they disgust you, your mother and her new husband – their breath, their smell, their pawing and fondling? How on earth could you expect someone like Marijana Jokic to love a man with such an aversion to the physical?'
'I have no aversion to the physical,' he protests coldly. What he wants to add, but does not, is: My aversion is to the ugly. 'What do you think life has consisted in ever since Magill Road but being rammed into the physical day after day? It is a testament to my faith in the physical that I have not done away with myself, that I am still here.'
Yet even as he speaks it is clear to him what the woman meant about the box of words. Done away with myself! he thinks. How artificial! How insincere! Like all the confessions she leads me into! And at the very same moment he is thinking: If we had had but five minutes more, that afternoon, if Ljuba had not come prowling like a little watchdog, Marijana would have kissed me. It was coming, I am sure, I felt it in my bones. Would have bent down and ever so lightly touched her lips to my shoulder. Then all would have been well. I would have taken her to me; she and I would have known what it was to lie side by side, breast to breast, in each other's arms, breathing each other's breath. Home country.
'Would you not concede, Paul' (the woman is still talking), 'that I have kept my humour exceedingly well, from the day I turned up on your doorstep to the present? Not a curse, not a cross word, lots of jokes instead, and a leavening of Irish blarney. Let me ask you: Do you think that is how I am by nature?'
He holds his tongue. His mind is elsewhere. He does not care how Elizabeth Costello is by nature.
'I am a tetchy old creature by nature, Paul, and given to the blackest rages. A bit of a viper, in fact. It is only because I vowed to myself to be good that I have been such a light burden for you to bear. But it has been a battle, believe me. Many is the time I have had to restrain myself from flaring up. Do you think what I have said is the worst that can be said of you – that you are slow as a tortoise and fastidious to a fault? There is much beyond that, believe me. What do we call it when someone knows the worst about us, the worst and most wounding, and does not come out with it but on the contrary suppresses it and continues to smile on us and make little jokes? We call it affection. Where else in the world, at this late stage, are you going to find affection, you ugly old man? Yes, I am familiar with that word too, ugly. We are both of us ugly, Paul, old and ugly, As much as ever would we like to hold in our arms the beauty of all the world. It never wanes in us, that yearning. But the beauty of all the world does not want any of us. So we have to make do with less, a great deal less. In fact, we have to accept what is on offer or else go hungry. So when a kindly godmother offers to whisk us away from our dreary surroundings, from our hopeless, our pathetic, unrealisable dreams, we ought to think twice about spurning her.
'I will give you a day, Paul, twenty-four hours, to rethink. If you refuse, if you insist on holding to your present dilatory course, then I will show you what I am capable of, I will show you how I can spit.'
His watch shows 3.15. Three hours yet to dawn. How on earth will he kill three hours?
There is a light on in the living-room. Elizabeth Costello lies asleep at the table she has annexed, her head cradled in her arms atop a mess of papers.
His inclination is to leave her strictly alone. The last thing he wants to do is wake her and open himself to more of her barbs. He is weary of her barbs. Half the time he feels like a poor old bear in the Colosseum, not knowing which way to turn. The death of a thousand cuts.
Nevertheless.
Nevertheless, ever so gently, he lifts her and slips a cushion in under her head.
In a fairy story, this would be the moment when the foul hag turns into a fair princess. But this is not a fairy story, evidently. Since the exploratory handclasp when they met, he and Elizabeth Costello have had no physical contact. Her hair has a lifeless feel to it, a lack of spring. And beneath that hair is the skull, within which activities go on that he would prefer not to know about.
If the object of his care were a child – Ljuba, for instance, or even handsome, heart-breaking, treacherous Drago – he might call the act tender. But in the case of this woman it is not tender. It is merely what one old person might do for another old person who is not well. Humane.
Presumably, like everyone else, Elizabeth Costello wants to be loved. And like everyone else faces the end gnawed by a feeling that there is something she has missed. Is that what she is looking for in him: whatever it is she has missed? Is that the answer to his recurring question? If so, how ludicrous. How can he be the missing piece when all his life he has been missing himself? Man overboard! Lost in a choppy sea off a strange coast.
Somewhere in the distance are the two Costello children he read about in the library, children she does not talk about, probably because they do not love her, or do not love her enough. Presumably, like him, they have had enough of Elizabeth Costello's barbs. He does not blame them. If he had a mother like her he would keep his distance too.
All alone in Melbourne in an empty house, entering upon her last days, starved for love, and to whom does she turn for relief but a man in another state, a retired portraitist, an utter stranger, yet one who has suffered a blow of his own and has his own need of love. If there is a human, a humane explanation for her situation, that must be it. Almost at random she has lighted on him, as a bee might alight on a flower or a wasp on a worm; and somehow, in ways so obscure, so labyrinthine that the mind baulks at exploring them, the need to be loved and the storytelling, that is to say the mess of papers on the table, are connected.
He glances at what she is writing. In fat letters: (EC thinks) Australian novelist – what a fate! What does the man have running in his veins? Under the words, a line across the page scored savagely into the paper. Then: After the meal they play a game of cards. Use the game to bring out their differences. Blanka wins. A narrow, intense intelligence. Drago no good at cards – too careless, too confident. Marijana smiling, relaxed, proud of her offspring. PR tries to use the game to make friends with Blanka, but she draws back. Her icy disapproval.
A meal and then a game of cards. PR and Blanka. Are they to be a family together after all, he with the ice-water in his veins and the Jokics, so full of blood? What else is Costello plotting in that busy head of hers?
The scribbler sleeps, the character prowls around looking for things to occupy himself with. A joke, but for the fact that there is no one around to catch it.
The scribbler's busy head lies at rest on the pillow. From her chest, if he listens carefully, a faint rattle as the air pumps in, pumps out. He switches off the lamp. He seems to be turning into the kind of person who falls asleep early and wakes up in the dark hours; she would seem to be the kind who stays up late, spinning her fantasies into the night. How could they possibly set up house together?