Life and Times of Michael K (21 page)

‘Sing,’ he said.

‘Sing? He’s not right in the head, man, he can’t speak properly—how do you expect him to sing?’

He shrugged. ‘It won’t hurt him to try,’ he said.

‘And how can you punish him with physical exercise? He’s as weak as a baby, you can see that.’

‘It’s in the book,’ he replied.

Michaels is conscious again. His first act was to pull the tube out of his nose, Felicity coming too late to stop him. Now he lies near the door under his heap of blankets looking like a corpse, refusing to eat. With his stick-arm he pushes away the feed bottle. ‘It’s not my kind of food’ is all he will say.

‘What the hell
is
your kind of food?’ I ask him. ‘And why are you treating us like this? Don’t you see we are trying to help you?’ He gives me a serenely indifferent look that really rouses my ire. ‘There are hundreds of people dying of starvation every day and you won’t eat! Why? Are you fasting? Is this a protest fast? Is that what it is? What are you protesting against? Do you want your freedom? If we turned you loose, if we put you out on the street in your condition, you would be dead within twenty-four hours. You can’t take care of yourself, you don’t know how. Felicity and I are the only people in the world who care enough to help you. Not because you are special but because it is our job. Why can’t you co-operate?’

This open row caused a great stir in the ward. Everyone listened. The boy I had suspected of meningitis (and whom I caught yesterday with his hand up Felicity’s skirt) knelt on his bed craning to see, a broad smile on his face. Felicity herself dropped all pretence of pushing the broom.

‘I never asked for special treatment,’ croaked Michaels. I turned my back and walked out.

You have never asked for anything, yet you have become an albatross around my neck. Your bony arms are knotted behind my head, I walk bowed under the weight of you.

Later, when things had calmed down in the ward, I returned and sat down at your bedside. For a long while I waited. Then at last you opened your eyes and spoke. ‘I am not going to die,’ you said. ‘I can’t eat the food here, that’s all. I can’t eat camp food.’

‘Why don’t you write out a discharge for him,’ I pressed Noël. ‘I’ll take him to the gate tonight and put a few rand in his pocket and chuck him out. Then he can start fending for himself like he wants to. You write a discharge and I’ll make out a report for you: “Cause of decease pneumonia, consequent on chronic malnutrition predating admission.” We can cross him off the list and we won’t have to think about him any more.’

‘I am baffled by this interest you have in him,’ said Noël. ‘Don’t ask me to tamper with records, I am not going to do it. If he is going to die, if he is starving himself to death, let him die. It’s simple enough.’

‘It’s not a question of dying,’ I said. ‘It’s not that he wants to die. He just doesn’t like the food here. Profoundly does not like it. He won’t even take babyfood. Maybe he only eats the bread of freedom.’

An awkward silence fell between us.

‘Maybe you and I wouldn’t like camp food either,’ I persisted.

‘You saw him when they brought him in,’ said Noël. ‘He was a skeleton even then. He was living by himself on that farm of his free as a bird, eating the bread of freedom, yet he arrived here looking like a skeleton. He looked like someone out of Dachau.’

‘Maybe he is just a very thin man,’ I said.

The ward was in darkness, Felicity asleep in her room. I stood over Michaels’ bed with a flashlight, shaking him till he woke
and shielded his eyes. I spoke in a whisper, bending so close that I could smell the odour of smoke he somehow carries with him despite his ablutions.

‘Michaels, there is something I want to tell you. If you don’t eat, you are truly going to die. It is as simple as that. It will take time, it will not be pleasant, but in the end you will certainly die. And I am going to do nothing to stop you. It would be easy for me to tie you down and strap your head and put a tube down your throat and feed you, but I am not going to do that. I am going to treat you like a free man, not a child or an animal. If you want to throw your life away, so be it, it is your life, not mine.’

He took his hand away from his eyes and cleared his throat deeply. He seemed about to speak, then shook his head instead and smiled. In the torchlight his smile was repulsive, sharklike.

‘What sort of food do you want?’ I whispered. ‘What sort of food would you be prepared to eat?’

Reaching out a slow hand he pushed the flashlight aside. Then he turned over and went back to sleep.

The training period for September’s intake is over, and this morning the long column of barefoot men, headed by a drummer and flanked by armed guards, set out on the twelve-kilometre march to the railway yards and dispatch up-country. They leave behind half a dozen of their number classed as intractable and locked up waiting to be shipped to Muldersrus, plus three in the infirmary not fit to walk. Michaels is among the latter: nothing has passed his lips since he refused to be fed by tube.

There is a smell of carbolic soap on the breeze and a pleasant stillness. I feel lightened, almost happy. Is this how it will be when the war is over and the camp is closed down? (Or will the camp not close down even then, camps with high walls always having their uses?) Everyone save a skeleton staff is off on a
weekend pass. On Monday the November intake is due to arrive. Rail services have deteriorated so badly, however, that we can plan ahead only day by day. There was an attack on De Aar last week, with significant damage to the yards. It did not get into the news bulletins but Noël heard of it reliably.

I bought a butternut squash from a hawker on the Main Road today, which I cut into thin slices and grilled under the toaster. ‘It’s not pumpkin,’ I told Michaels, propping him up with pillows, ‘but it tastes nearly the same.’ He took a bite, and I watched him mumble it around in his mouth. ‘Do you like it?’ I asked. He nodded. I had sprinkled the squash with sugar but had not been able to find cinnamon. After a while, to spare him embarrassment, I left. When I came back he was lying down, the plate empty beside him. I presume that when Felicity next sweeps she will find the squash under the bed covered in ants. A pity.

‘What would persuade you to eat?’ I asked him later on.

He was silent so long that I thought he had gone to sleep. Then he cleared his throat. ‘No one was interested before in what I ate,’ he said. ‘So I ask myself why.’

‘Because I don’t want to see you starve yourself to death. Because I don’t want anyone here to starve to death.’

I doubt that he heard me. The cracked lips went on moving as though there were some train of thought he was afraid of losing. ‘I ask myself: What am I to this man? I ask myself: What is it to this man if I live or die?’

‘You might as well ask why we don’t shoot prisoners. It is the same question.’

He shook his head from side to side, then without warning opened the great dark pools of his eyes on me. There was something more I had wanted to say, but I could not speak. It seemed foolish to argue with someone who looked at you as if from beyond the grave.

For a long while we stared at each other. Then I found myself speaking, in no more than a whisper. As I spoke I thought: Surrender. This is how surrender will feel. ‘I might ask the same question of you,’ I said, ‘the same question you asked: What am I to this man?’ Even softer I whispered, my heart hammering: ‘I did not ask you to come here. Everything was well with me before you came. I was happy, as happy as one can be in a place like this. Therefore I too ask: Why me?’

He had closed his eyes again. My throat was dry. I left him, went to the washroom, drank, and for a long while stood leaning on the basin, full of regret, thinking of the trouble to come, thinking, I am not ready. I returned to him with a glass of water. ‘Even if you don’t eat, you must drink,’ I said. I helped him to sit up and take a few mouthfuls.

Dear Michaels,

The answer is: Because I want to know your story. I want to know how it happened that you of all people have joined in a war, a war in which you have no place. You are no soldier, Michaels, you are a figure of fun, a clown, a wooden man. What is your business in this camp? There is nothing we can do here to rehabilitate you from the vengeful mother with flaming hair who comes to you in your dreams. (Do I understand that part of the story correctly? That is how I understand it anyhow.) And what is there for us to rehabilitate you into? Basketwork? Lawnmowing? You are like a stick insect, Michaels, whose sole defence against a universe of predators is its bizarre shape. You are like a stick insect that has landed, God knows how, in the middle of a great wide flat bare concrete plain. You raise your slow fragile stick-legs one at a time, you inch about looking for something to merge with, and there is nothing. Why did you ever leave the bushes, Michaels? That was where you belonged. You should have stayed all your life clinging to a nondescript bush in a quiet
corner of an obscure garden in a peaceful suburb, doing whatever it is that stick insects do to maintain life, nibbling a leaf here and there, eating the odd aphid, drinking dew. And—if I may be personal—you should have got away at an early age from that mother of yours, who sounds like a real killer. You should have found yourself another bush as far as possible from her and embarked on an independent life. You made a great mistake, Michaels, when you tied her on your back and fled the burning city for the safety of the countryside. Because when I think of you carrying her, panting under her weight, choking in the smoke, dodging the bullets, performing all the other feats of filial piety you no doubt performed, I also think of her sitting on your shoulders, eating out your brains, glaring about triumphantly, the very embodiment of great Mother Death. And now that she is gone you are plotting to follow her. I have wondered what it is you see, Michaels, when you open your eyes so wide—for you certainly do not see me, you certainly do not see the white walls and the empty beds of the infirmary, you do not see Felicity in her snow-white turban. What do you see? Is it your mother in her circle of flaming hair grinning and beckoning to you with crooked finger to pass through the curtain of light and join her in the world beyond? Does that explain your indifference to life?