They slept in an alley on a bed of flattened cartons. Michael propped a long side of cardboard at a pitch over their bed, but the wind blew it over. His mother coughed throughout the night, keeping him awake. Once a patrolling police van passed slowly down the street and he had to hold his hand over her mouth.
At first light he lifted her back into the cart. Her head lolled, she did not know where she was. He stopped the first person he saw and asked the way to the hospital. Anna K could no longer sit upright; and as she slumped, Michael had to struggle to keep the cart from toppling. She was feverish, she laboured to breathe. 'My throat is so dry,' she whispered; but her coughing was soggy.
In the hospital he sat supporting her till it was her turn to be taken away. When next he saw her she was lying on a trolley amid a sea of trolleys with a tube up her nose, unconscious. Not knowing what to do, he loitered in the corridor till he was sent away. He spent the afternoon in the courtyard in the thin warmth of the winter sun. Twice he sneaked back in to check whether the trolley had been moved. A third time he tiptoed up to his mother and bent over her. He could detect no sign of breathing. Fear gripping his heart, he ran to the nurse at the desk and tugged at her sleeve. 'Please come and see, quickly!' he said. The nurse shook herself free. 'Who are you?' she hissed. She followed him to the trolley and took his mother's pulse, staring into the distance. Then without a word she returned to her desk. K stood before her like a dumb dog while she wrote. She turned to him. 'Now listen to me,' she said in a tight whisper. 'Do you see all these people here?' She gestured towards the corridor and the wards. 'These are all people waiting to be attended to. We are working twenty-four hours a day to attend to them. When I come off duty-no, listen to me, don't go away!'-it was she now who tugged him back, her voice was rising, her face was near to his, he could see angry tears starting in her eyes-'When I come off duty I am so tired I can't eat, I just fall asleep with my shoes on. I am just one person. Not two, not three-one. Do you understand that, or is it too difficult to understand?' K looked away. 'Sorry,' he mumbled, not knowing what else to say, and returned to the yard.
The suitcase was with his mother. He had no money save the change from the previous evening's meal. He bought a doughnut and drank from a tap. He took a walk about the streets, kicking his feet in the sea of dry leaves on the pavement. Finding a park, he sat on a bench staring up through the bare branches at the pale blue sky. A squirrel chattered at him and he started. Suddenly anxious that the cart might have been stolen, he rushed back to the hospital. The cart was where he had left it in the parking lot. He removed the blankets and cushions and stove but then did not know where to hide them.
At six he saw the nurses from the day shift leave and felt free to sneak back. His mother was not in the corridor. At the desk he asked where to find her and was sent to a remote wing of the hospital where no one knew what he was talking about. He returned to the desk and was told to come back in the morning. He asked whether he might spend the night on one of the benches in the hall and was refused.
He slept in the alley with his head in a cardboard box. He had a dream: his mother came visiting him in Huis Norenius, bringing a parcel of food. 'The cart is too slow,' she said in the dream- ' Prince Albert is coming to fetch me. ' The parcel was curiously light. He awoke so cold that he could barely straighten his legs. Far away a clock tolled three or perhaps four. Stars shone on him out of a clear sky. He was surprised that the dream had not left him upset. With a blanket wrapped around him he first paced up and down the alley, then wandered out along the street peering into the dim shop windows where behind diamond grillework mannequins displayed spring fashions.
When at last he was allowed into the hospital he found his mother in the women's ward wearing no longer her black coat but a white hospital smock. She lay with her eyes closed and the familiar tube up her nose. Her mouth sagged, her face was pinched, even the skin of her arms seemed to have wrinkled. He squeezed her hand but met with no response. There were four rows of beds in the ward with no more than a one-foot space between them; there was nowhere to sit.
At eleven o'clock an orderly brought tea and left a cup at his mother's bedside with a biscuit in the saucer. Michael raised her head and held the cup to her lips but she would not drink. For a long while he waited as his stomach rumbled and the tea grew cold. Then, with the orderly about to return, he gulped down the tea and swallowed the biscuit.
He inspected the charts at thé foot of the bed but could not make out whether they referred to his mother or someone else.
In the corridor he stopped a man in a white coat and asked for work. 'I don't want money,' he said, 'just something to do. Sweep the floor or something like that. Clean the garden. ' 'Go and ask at the office downstairs,' said the man, and pushed past him. K could not find the right office.
A man in the hospital yard fell into conversation with him. 'You here for stitches?' he enquired. K shook his head. The man looked critically at his face. Then he told a long story of a tractor that had toppled over on him, crushing his leg and breaking his hip, and of the pins the doctors had inserted in his bones, silver pins that would never rust. He walked with a curiously angled aluminium stick. 'You don't know where I could get something to eat,' asked K. 'I haven't eaten since yesterday.' 'Man,' said the man, 'why don't you go and get us both a pie,' and passed K a one-rand coin. K went to the bakery and brought back two hot chicken pies. He sat beside his friend on the bench and ate. The pie was so delicious that tears came to his eyes. The man told him of his sister's uncontrollable fits of shaking. K listened to the birds in the trees and tried to remember when he had known such happiness.
He spent an hour at his mother's bedside in the afternoon and another hour in the evening. Her face was grey, her breathing barely detectable. Once her jaw moved: fascinated, K watched the string of saliva between her withered lips shorten and lengthen. She seemed to be whispering something, but he could not make out what. The nurse who asked him to leave told him she was under sedation. 'What for?' asked K. He stole his mother's tea and that of the old woman in the next bed, gulping it down like a guilty dog while the orderly's back was turned.
When he went back to his alley he found that the cardboard boxes had been cleared away. He spent the night in a doorway recessed from the street. A brass plate above his head read: le roux & halitingh-prokureurs. He woke when the police cruised past but soon fell asleep again. It was not as cold as on the previous night.
His mother's bed was occupied by a strange woman whose head was wrapped in bandages. K stood at the foot of the bed and stared. Perhaps I am in the wrong ward, he thought. He stopped a nurse. 'My mother-she was here yesterday… ' 'Ask at the desk,' said the nurse.
'Your mother passed away during the night,' the woman doctor told him. 'We did what we could to keep her, but she was very weak. We wanted to contact you but you didn't leave a number. '
He sat down on a chair in the corner.
'Do you want to make a phone call?' said the doctor.
This was evidently a code for something, he did not know what. He shook his head.
Someone brought him a cup of tea, which he drank. People hovering over him made him nervous. He clasped his hands and stared hard at his feet. Was he expected to say something? He separated his hands and clasped them, over and over.