Life and Times of Michael K (7 page)

K stayed on. Beyond the rack of paperback books, through the sweets in the display cases, he could still see the edge of the black dress. He shielded his eyes with his hands and waited. There was nothing to hear but the wind across the veld and the creaking of the sign overhead. After a while the old woman brought her head up over the counter and met his stare. She wore glasses with thick black rims; her silver hair was drawn back tight. On shelves behind her K could make out canned food, packets of mealie-meal and sugar, detergent powders. On the floor in front of the counter was a basket of lemons. He held the banknote flat against the glass above his bead. The old woman did not budge.

He tried the water-tap beside one of the petrol pumps, but it was dry. He drank from a tap at the rear of the shop. In the veld behind the filling station stood the hulks of scores of cars. He tried doors till he found one that opened. The back seat of the car had been removed, but he was too tired to search further. The sun was going down behind the mountains, the clouds were turning orange. He pulled the door to, lay down on the dusty concave floor with the box under his head, and was soon asleep.

In the morning the shop was open. There was a tall man in khaki behind the counter, from whom, without any trouble, K bought three cans of beans in tomato sauce, a packet of powdered milk, and matches. He retreated behind the filling station and made a fire; while one of the cans was warming he poured milk powder into his palm and licked at it. Having eaten, he set off, trudging along the highway with the sun on his right. He walked steadily all day. In this flat landscape of scrub and stone there was nowhere one could hide. Convoys passed in both directions, but
he ignored them. When dusk fell he broke from the road, crossed a fence, and found a place for the night in a dry river-course. He made a fire and ate the second can of beans. He slept close to the embers, oblivious of the night noises, the tiny scurryings across the pebbles, the rustle of feathers in the trees.

Having once crossed the fence into the veld, he found it more restful to walk across country. He walked all day. In the fading light he was lucky enough to bring down a turtle-dove with a stone as it came to roost in a thorntree. He twisted its neck, cleaned it, roasted it on a skewer of wire, and ate it with the last can of beans.

In the morning he was woken roughly by an old countryman in a tattered brown army coat. With strange vehemence the old man warned him off the land. ‘I just slept here, nothing else,’ K objected. ‘Don’t come looking for trouble!’ said the old man. ‘They find you in their veld, they shoot you! You just make trouble! Now go!’ K asked for directions, but the old man waved him off and began to kick dirt over the ashes of the fire. So he retreated, and for an hour trudged along the highway; then, feeling safe, he recrossed the fence.

From a feeding trough beside a dam he scooped half a tinful of crushed mealies and bonemeal, boiled it in water, and ate the gritty mush. He filled his beret with more of the feed, thinking: At last I am living off the land.

Sometimes the only sound he could hear was that of his trouserlegs whipping together. From horizon to horizon the landscape was empty. He climbed a hill and lay on his back listening to the silence, feeling the warmth of the sun soak into his bones.

Three strange creatures, little dogs with big ears, started from behind a bush and raced away.

I could live here forever, he thought, or till I die. Nothing would happen, every day would be the same as the day before, there would be nothing to say. Tbe anxiety that belonged to the time on the road began to leave him. Sometimes, as he walked,
he did not know whether he was awake or asleep. He could understand that people should have retreated here and fenced themselves in with miles and miles of silence; he could understand that they should have wanted to bequeath the privilege of so much silence to their children and grandchildren in perpetuity (though by what right he was not sure); he wondered whether there were not forgotten corners and angles and corridors between the fences, land that belonged to no one yet. Perhaps if one flew high enough, he thought, one would be able to see.

Two aircraft streaked across the sky from south to north leaving vapour trails that slowly faded, and a noise like waves.

The sun was declining as he climbed the last hills outside Laingsburg; by the time he crossed the bridge and reached the wide central avenue of the town the light was a murky violet. He passed filling stations, shops, roadhouses, all closed. A dog began barking and, having begun, went on. Other dogs joined in. There were no street lights.

He was standing before a display of children’s clothing in a dim shop window when someone passed behind him, halted, and came back. ‘It’s curfew when the bell goes,’ said a voice. ‘You’d better get off the street.’

K turned. He saw a man younger than himself wearing a green and gold track suit and carrying a wooden tool-chest. What the stranger saw he did not know.

‘Are you all right?’ said the young man.

‘I don’t want to stop,’ said K. ‘I’m going to Prince Albert and it’s a long way.’

But he went home with the stranger after all and slept at his house, after a meal of soup and pan-bread. There were three children. All the while K ate, the youngest, a girl, sat on her mother’s lap staring and, though her mother whispered in her ear, would not take her eyes off him. The two elder children kept their gaze severely on their plates. After hesitating, K spoke of his journey. ‘I met a man the other day,’ he said, ‘who told me
they shoot people they find on their land.’ His friend shook his head. ‘I’ve never heard of that,’ he said. ‘People must help each other, that’s what I believe.’

K allowed this utterance to sink into his mind. Do I believe in helping people? he wondered. He might help people, he might not help them, he did not know beforehand, anything was possible. He did not seem to have a belief, or did not seem to have a belief regarding help. Perhaps I am the stony ground, he thought.

When the light was switched off, K lay for a long time listening to the stirring of the children, whose bed he had taken and who now slept on a mattress on the floor. He woke once during the night with the feeling that he had been talking in his sleep; but no one seemed to have heard him. When he woke next there was a light on and the parents were getting their children off to school, trying to hush them for the sake of the guest. Mortified, he slipped on his trousers under the bedclothes and stepped outdoors. The stars were still shining; in the east there was a pink glow on the horizon.

The boy came to summon him to breakfast. At the table the urge again came over him to speak. He gripped the edge of the table and sat stiffly upright. His heart was full, he wanted to utter his thanks, but finally the right words would not come. The children stared at him; a silence fell; their parents looked away.

The two elder children were instructed to walk with him as far as the turnoff to Seweweekspoort. At the turnoff, before they parted, the boy spoke. ‘Are those the ashes?’ he said. K nodded. ‘Would you like to see?’ he offered. He opened the box, unknotted the plastic bag. First the boy smelled the ashes, then his sister did the same. ‘What are you going to do with them?’ asked the boy. ‘I am taking them back to where my mother was born long ago,’ said K. ‘That was what she wanted me to do.’ ‘Did they burn her up?’ asked the boy. K saw the burning halo. ‘She didn’t feel anything,’ he said, ‘she was already spirit by then.’

It took him three days to cover the distance from Laingsburg
to Prince Albert, following the direction of the dirt road, making wide circles around farmhouses, trying to live off the veld but for the main part going hungry. Once, in the heat of the day, he stripped off his clothes and submerged himself in the water of a lonely dam. Once he was called to the roadside by a farmer driving a light truck. The farmer wanted to know where he was going. ‘To Prince Albert,’ he said, ‘to visit my family.’ But his accent was strange and it was clear that the farmer was not satisfied. ‘Jump in,’ he said. K shook his head. ‘Jump in,’ repeated the farmer, ‘I’ll give you a ride.’ ‘I’m OK,’ said K, and walked on. The truck drove off in a cloud of dust; and at once K left the road, cut down into a river-bed, and hid till nightfall.

Remembering the farmer afterwards, he could recall only the gaberdine hat and the stubby fingers that beckoned him. On each joint of each finger there was a little feather of bronze hair. His memories all seemed to be of parts, not of wholes.

On the morning of the fourth day he was squatting on a hill watching the sun come up over what he knew at last to be Prince Albert. Cocks crowed; light blinked on the windowpanes of houses; a child was driving two donkeys down the long main street. The air was utterly still. As he descended the hillside towards the town, he began to be aware of a man’s voice rising up to meet him in an even and unending monologue without visible origin. Puzzled, he stopped to listen. Is this the voice of Prince Albert? he wondered. I thought Prince Albert was dead. He tried to make out words, but though the voice pervaded the air like a mist or an aroma, the words, if there were words, if the voice were not simply lulling or chanting tones, were too faint or too smooth to hear. Then the voice ceased, giving way to a tiny faraway brass band.

K joined the road that entered the town from the south. He passed the old millwheel; he passed fenced gardens. A pair of liver-coloured dogs galloped up and down inside a fence baying, eager to get at him. A few houses further along the street a young
woman was kneeling at an outside tap washing a bowl. She glanced over her shoulder at him; he touched his beret; she looked away.

Now there were shops on both sides of the street: a bakery, a café, a clothing store, a bank agency, a welding shop, a general dealer, garages. Grids of steel mesh were locked across the front of the general dealer’s. K sat down on the stoep with his back to the mesh and closed his eyes against the sun. Now I am here, he thought. Finally.

An hour later K was still sitting there, asleep, his mouth agape. Children, whispering and giggling, had gathered around him. One of them delicately lifted the beret from his head, put it on, and twisted his mouth in parody. His friends snorted with laughter. He dropped the beret askew on K’s head and tried to worm the box away from him; but both hands were folded over it.

The shopkeeper arrived with his keys; the children fell back; and when he began to remove the grillework K woke up.

The interior of the shop was dim and cluttered. Galvanized iron bathtubs and bicycle wheels hung from the ceiling alongside fan belts and radiator hoses; there were bins of nails and pyramids of plastic buckets, shelves of canned goods, patent medicines, sweets, babywear, cold drinks.

K stepped to the counter. ‘Mr Vosloo or Mr Visser,’ he said. Those were the names his mother had remembered from the past. ‘I’m looking for a Mr Vosloo or a Mr Visser who is a farmer.’

‘Mrs Vosloo,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Is that who you mean? Mrs Vosloo at the hotel? There is no Mr Vosloo.’

‘Mr Vosloo or Mr Visser who was a farmer long ago, that is who I am looking for. I don’t know the name for sure, but if I find the farm I will recognize it.’

‘There is no Vosloo or Visser who farms. Visagie—is that who you mean? What do you want the Visagies for?’

‘I have to take something there.’ He held up the box.

‘Then you have come a long way for nothing. There is no one
at the Visagies’ place, it has been empty for years. Are you sure the name you want is Visagie? The Visagies left long ago.’

K asked for a packet of ginger snaps.

‘Who sent you here?’ asked the shopkeeper. K looked stupid. ‘They should have got someone who knows what he is doing. Tell them that when you see them.’ K mumbled and left.

He was walking up the street wondering where to try next when one of the children came running after him. ‘Mister, I can tell you where Visagies is!’ he called. K stopped. ‘But it’s empty, there’s no one there,’ the child said. He gave directions that would take K north along the road to Kruidfontein and then east by a farm road along the valley of the Moordenaarsrivier. ‘How far is the farm from the big road?’ asked K. ‘A long way or a short way?’ The boy was vague, nor did his companions know. ‘You turn off at the sign of the finger pointing,’ he said. ‘Visagies is before the mountains, quite a long way if you are walking.’ K gave them money for sweets.

It was noon before he reached the pointing finger and turned off on to a track that led into desolate grey flats; the sun was going down when he climbed a crest and came in sight of a low whitewashed farmhouse beyond which the land rose from rippling flats to foothills and then to the steep dark slopes of the mountains themselves. He approached the house and circled it. The shutters were closed and a rock-pigeon flew in at a hole where one of the gables had crumbled, leaving timbers exposed and galvanized roof-plates buckled. A loose plate flapped monotonously in the wind. Behind the house was a rockery garden in which nothing was growing. There was no old wagonhouse such as he had imagined, but a wood-and-iron shed, and against it an empty chicken-run with streamers of yellow plastic blowing in the netting-wire. On the rise behind the house stood a pump whose head was missing. Far out in the veld the vanes of a second pump glinted.

Front and back doors were locked. He yanked at a shutter and
the restraining hook came loose. Cupping his eyes he peered through the window but could make out nothing.

As he entered the shed a pair of startled swallows flew out. A harrow covered in dust and cobwebs occupied most of the floor. Barely able to see in the gloom, breathing an odour of paraffin and wool and tar, he scratched along the walls among picks and spades, odds and ends of piping, loops of wire, cartons of empty bottles, till he came upon a pile of empty feed-sacks, which he dragged into the open, shook clean, and laid out as a bed for himself on the stoep.

He ate the last of the biscuits he had bought. He still had half of his money left but no more use for it. The light faded. There was a flutter of bats under the eaves. He lay on his bed listening to the noises on the night air, air denser than the air of day. Now I am here, he thought. Or at least I am somewhere. He went to sleep.