Here I might have paused in my discourse on the Flats while from somewhere in the middle distance behind us came the sound of a man coughing and hawking and spitting, and the smell of woodsmoke; but my glittering eye would have held you, for the time being, rooted where you stood.
'I was the only one who saw that you were more than you seemed to be,' I would have proceeded. 'Slowly, as your persistent No, day after day, gathered weight, I began to feel that you were more than just another patient, another casualty of the war, another brick in the pyramid of sacrifice that someone would eventually climb and stand straddle-legged on top of, roaring and beating his chest and announcing himself emperor of all he surveyed. You would lie on your bed under the window with only the nightlight shining, your eyes closed, perhaps sleeping. I would stand in the doorway breathing quietly, listening to the groans and rustlings of the other sleepers, waiting; and upon me the feeling would grow stronger and stronger that around one bed among all there was a thickening of the air, a concentration of darkness, a black whirlwind roaring in utter silence above your body, pointing to you, without so much as stirring the edge of the bedclothes. I would shake my head like a man trying to shake off a dream, but the feeling would persist. "This is not my imagination," I would say to myself. "This sense of a gathering meaningfulness is not something like a ray that I project to bathe this or that bed, or a robe in which I wrap this or that patient according to whim. Michaels means something, and the meaning he has is not private to me. If it were, if the origin of this meaning were no more than a lack in myself, a lack, say, of something to believe in, since we all know how difficult it is to satisfy a hunger for belief with the vision of times to come that the war, to say nothing of the camps, presents us with, if it were a mere craving for meaning that sent me to Michaels and his story, if Michaels himself were no more than what he seems to be (what you seem to be), a skin-and-bones man with a crumpled up (pardon me, I name only the obvious), then I would have every justification for retiring to the toilets behind the jockeys' changing-rooms and locking myself into the last cubicle and putting a bullet through my head. Yet have I ever been more sincere than I am tonight?" And standing in the doorway I would turn my bleakest stare in upon myself, seeking by the last means I knew to detect the germ of dishonesty at the heart of the conviction-the wish, let us say, for example, to be the only one to whom the camp was not just the old Kenilworth racetrack with prefabricated huts dotted across it but a privileged site where meaning erupted into the world. But if such a germ lurked within me it would not raise its head, and if it would not what could I do to compel it? (I am dubious anyhow that one can separate the self that scrutinizes from the self that hides, setting them at odds like hawk and mouse; but let us agree to postpone that discussion for a day when we are not running away from the police.) So I would turn my gaze out again, and, yes, it would still be true, I was not deceiving myself, I was not flattering myself, I was not comforting myself, it was as it had been before, it was the truth, there was indeed a gathering, a thickening of darkness above one bed alone, and that bed was yours. ' At this stage I think you might already have turned your back on me and begun to walk off, having lost the thread of my discourse and anyhow being anxious to put more miles between yourself and the camp. Or perhaps by now, attracted by my voice, a crowd of children from the shanties would have gathered around us, some in their pyjamas, listening open-mouthed to the big passionate words and making you nervous. So now I would have had to hurry after you, keeping close at your heels so as not to have to shout. 'Forgive me, Michaels,' I would have had to say, 'there is not much more, please be patient. I only want to tell you what you mean to me, then I will be through.'
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.