At this moment, I suspect, because such is your nature, you would break into a run. So I would have to run after you, ploughing as if through water through the thick grey sand, dodging the branches, calling out: 'Your stay in the camp was merely an allegory, if you know that word. It was an allegory-speaking at the highest level-of how scandalously, how outrageously a meaning can take up residence in a system without becoming a term in it. Did you not notice how, whenever I tried to pin you down, you slipped away? I noticed. Do you know what thought crossed my mind when I saw you had got away without cutting the wire? "He must be a polevaulter"-that is what I thought. Well, you may not be a polevaulter, Michaels, but you are a great escape artist, one of the great escapees: I take off my hat to you!'
By this time, what with the running and the explaining, I would have begun to gasp for breath, and it is even possible that you might have begun drawing away from me. 'And now, last topic, your garden,' I would have panted. 'Let me tell you the meaning of the sacred and alluring garden that blooms in the heart of the desert and produces the food of life. The garden for which you are presently heading is nowhere and everywhere except in the camps. It is another name for the only place where you belong, Michaels, where you do not feel homeless. It is off every map, no road leads to it that is merely a road, and only you know the way.'
Would I be imagining it, or would it be true that at this point you would begin to throw your most urgent energies into running, so that it would be clear to the meanest observer that you were running to escape the man shouting at your back, the man in blue who must seem to be persecutor, madman, bloodhound, policeman? Would it be surprising if the children, having trotted after us for the sake of entertainment, were now to begin to take your part and harry me from all sides, darting at me, throwing sticks and stones, so that I would have to stop and beat them away while shouting my last words to you as you plunged far ahead into the deepest wattle thickets, running more strongly now than one would ever expect from someone who did not eat-'Am I right?' I would shout. 'Have I understood you? If I am right, hold up your right hand; if I am wrong, hold up your left!'
THREE
WEAK AT THE KNEES AFTER HIS LONG WALK, SCREWING UP his eyes against the brilliant morning light, Michael K sat on a bench beside the miniature golf course on the Sea Point esplanade, facing the sea, resting, gathering his strength. The air was still. He could hear the slap of waves on the rocks below and the hiss of retreating water. A dog stopped to sniff his feet, then peed against the bench. A trio of girls in shorts and singlets passed, running elbow to elbow, murmuring together, leaving a sweet smell in their wake. From Beach Road came the tinkle of an ice-cream vendor's bell, first approaching, then receding. At peace, on familiar ground, grateful for the warmth of the day, K sighed and slowly let his head sag sideways. Whether he slept or not he did not know; but when he opened his eyes he was well enough again to go on.
More of the windows along Beach Road than he remembered seemed to be boarded shut, particularly at street level. The same cars were parked in the same places, though rustier now; a hulk, stripped of its wheels and burnt out, lay overturned on its side against the sea-wall. He passed along the promenade, conscious of being naked inside the blue overalls, conscious that of all the strollers he was the only one not wearing shoes. But if eyes flickered toward him at all, it was toward his face, not his feet.
He came to a stretch of scorched grass where amid broken glass and charred garbage new points of green were already beginning to shoot. A small boy clambered up the blackened bars of a play apparatus, his soles and palms sooty. K picked his way across the lawn, crossed the road, and passed out of sunlight into the gloom of the unlit entrance hall of the Côte d'Azur, where along a wall in looping black spray paint he read joey rules. Choosing a place across the passageway from the door with the monitory death's-head where his mother had once lived, he settled down, squatting on his heels against the wall, thinking: It is all right, people will take me for a beggar. He remembered the beret he had lost, that he might have put beside him for alms, to complete the picture.
For hours he waited. No one came. He chose not to get up and try the door, since he did not know what he would do once it opened. In mid-afternoon, when his bones had begun to grow cold, he left the building again and went down to the beach. On the white sand under the warm sun he fell asleep.
He awoke thirsty and confused, sweating inside the overalls. He found a public toilet on the beach, but the taps were not working. The lavatory pans were full of sand; driftsand lay against the far wall a foot deep.
As K stood at the basin thinking what to do next, he saw in the mirror three people enter behind him. One was a woman in a tight white dress wearing a platinum-blonde wig and carrying a pair of silver high-heeled shoes. The other two were men. The taller of them came straight up to K and took him by the arm. 'I hope you are finished your business here,' he said, 'because this place is booked.' He steered K out into the dazzling white light of the beach. 'Plenty of other places to go,' he said, and gave him a slap, or perhaps a light push. K sat down on the sand. The tall man took up position beside the toilet door, keeping an eye on him. He had a check cap, which he wore cocked to one side.
There were bathers dotted over the little beach but no one in the water save a woman standing in the shallow surf, her skirt tucked up, her legs sturdily apart, swinging a baby by its arms, left and right, so that its toes skimmed the waves. The baby screamed in terror and glee.
'That one is my sister,' remarked the man at the door, indicating the woman in the water. 'The one in there'-he pointed over his shoulder-'is also my sister. Plenty of sisters I have. A big family.'