Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee Read Free Book Online

with a red tiled roof.
    He ceased to observe the curfew. He did not believe that any harm would come to him; and if it should come, it would not matter. Dressed in his new clothes, the white jacket and black pants and beret, he pushed his cart where and when he wished. Sometimes spells of airiness came over him. He felt weaker than before, but not sick. He ate once a day, buying doughnuts or pies with money from his mother’s purse. There was pleasure in spending without earning: he took no heed of how fast the money went.
    He tore a black strip from the lining of his mother’s coat and pinned it around his arm. But he did not miss her, he found, except insofar as he had missed her all his life.
    With nothing to do, he slept more and more. He discovered that he could sleep anywhere, at any time, in any position: on the sidewalk at noon, with people stepping over his body; standing against a wall, with the suitcase between his legs. Sleep settled inside his head like a benign fog; he had no will to resist it. He did not dream of anyone or anything.
    One day the barrow disappeared. He shrugged off the loss.
    It appeared that he had to stay in Stellenbosch for a certain length of time. There was no way of shortening the time. He stumbled through the days, losing his way often.
    He was walking along the Banhoek road one day, as he sometimes did, with the suitcase. It was a subdued, misty morning. He heard the clip-clop of a horse’s hoofs behind him; first there was a smell of fresh manure, then he was slowly overtaken by a cart, an old green municipal refuse cart without hatches, drawn by a Clydesdale and driven by an old man in black oilskins. Fora while they were moving side by side. The old man gave a little nod; and K, hesitating a moment, peering down the long straight avenue of mist, found that there was after all nothing any more to keep him. So he hoisted himself up and took his place beside the old man. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘If you need help I can help.’
    But the old man did not need help, nor was he in the mood for talk. He dropped K a mile past the top of the pass and turned off down a dirt track. K walked all day and slept the night in a eucalyptus grove with the wind roaring in the branches high overhead. By midday the next day he had skirted Paarl and was heading northward along the national road. He halted only within sight of the first checkpoint, and waited in a skulking-place till he was sure that no one on foot was being stopped.
    Several times he was passed by long convoys of vehicles with armed escorts. Each time he left the road and stood well clear, not trying to hide, keeping his hands visible, as he saw other people do.
    He slept at the roadside and woke wet with dew. Before him the road wound upward into the mist. Birds flitted from bush to bush, their chirping muffled. He carried the suitcase on a stick over his shoulder. He had not eaten for two days; however, there seemed no limit to his endurance.
    A mile up the pass a fire winked through the mist and he heard voices. As he came closer the smell of frying bacon made his stomach churn. There were men standing around a fire keeping warm. At his approach they stopped talking and stared at him. He touched his beret but no one responded. He passed them, passed a second roadside fire, passed a column of vehicles parked head to tail with their lights on, and then came upon the reason for the stoppage. Lying on its side blocking the road, its rearmost wheels hanging over the lip of the gorge, was an articulated truck painted a blank eggshell blue. The cab was burnt out, the van blackened with smoke. A lorry loaded with sacks had collided with the wreck, and bursts of white flour marked the road. Backedup around the bend as far as K could see was the rest of the convoy. Two radios played loudly on competing stations; from up ahead came the forlorn bleating of sheep. K thought for a moment of stopping to scoop up pocketfuls of the spilled flour,