Life and Times of Michael K Read Online Free Page A

seen for herself how comfortable it was. The damp weather was not good for her, nor was the unending worry about the future. Once settled in Prince Albert she would quickly recover her health. At most they would be a day or two on the road. People were decent, people would stop and give them lifts.
    For hours he argued with her, surprising himself with the adroitness of his pleading. How could he expect her to sleep in the open in the middle of winter? she objected. With luck, he responded, they might even reach Prince Albert in a day—it was, after all, only five hours away by car. But what would happen if it rained? she asked. He would put a canopy over the cart, he replied. What if the police stopped them? Surely the police had better things to do, he answered, than to stop two innocent people who wanted nothing more than a chance to find their own way out of an overcrowded city. ‘Why should the police want us to spend nights hiding on other people’s stoeps and beg in the streets and make a nuisance of ourselves?’ So persuasive was he that finally Anna K yielded, though on two conditions: that he make a last visit to the police to find out about the permits that had not come, and that she ready herself for the journey without being hurried. Joyfully Michael acceded.
    Next morning, instead of waiting for a bus that might never come, he jogged from Sea Point to the city along the main road, taking pleasure in the soundness of his heart, the strength of his limbs. There were already scores of people queueing under the sign HERVESTIGING—RELOCATION ; it was an hour before he found himself at the counter facing a policewoman with wary eyes.
    He held out the two train tickets. ‘I just want to ask if the permit has come through.’
    She pushed the familiar forms towards him. ‘Fill in the forms and take them to E-5. Have your tickets and reservation slips with you.’ She glanced over K’s shoulder to the man behind him. ‘Yes?’
    ‘No,’ said K, struggling to regain her attention, ‘I already applied for the permit. All I want to know is, has the permit come?’
    ‘Before you can have a permit you must have a reservation! Have you got a reservation? When is it for?’
    ‘August eighteenth. But my mother—’
    ‘August eighteenth is a month away! If you applied for a permitand the permit is granted, the permit will come, the permit will be sent to your address! Next!’
    ‘But that is what I want to know! Because if the permit isn’t going to come I must make other plans. My mother is sick—’
    The policewoman slapped the counter to still him. ‘Don’t waste my time. I am telling you for the last time,
if the permit is granted the permit will come!
Don’t you see all these people waiting? Don’t you understand? Are you an idiot?
Next!
’ She braced herself against the counter and glared pointedly over K’s shoulder: ‘
Yes, you, next!
’
    But K did not budge. He was breathing fast, his eyes stared. Reluctantly the policewoman turned back to him, to the thin moustache and the naked lip-flesh it did not hide. ‘
Next!
’ she said.
    An hour before dawn the next day K roused his mother and, while she dressed, packed the cart, padding the box with blankets and cushions and lashing the suitcase across the shafts. The cart now had a hood of black plastic sheeting that made it look like a tall perambulator. When his mother saw it she stopped and shook her head, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,’ she said. He had to coax her to get in; it took a long time. The cart was not really big enough, he realized: it bore her weight, but she had to sit hunched under the canopy, unable to move her limbs. Over her legs he spread a blanket, then piled on that a packet of food, the paraffin stove and a bottle of fuel packed in a box, odds and ends of clothing. A light winked on in the flats next door. They could hear the waves breaking on the rocks. ‘Just a day or two,’ he whispered, ‘then