Elizabeth Costello полностью

Her eyes rest on his, or his on hers. Green-flecked. He feels a tug. An unexplored continent, from which he is about to part! A pang, a tiny pang of loss, shoots through him. Pain not without pleasure, like certain grades of toothache. He can conceive of something quite serious with this woman, whom he will probably not see again.

'I know what you are thinking,' she says. 'You are thinking we won't see each other again. You are thinking, A wasted investment!

'What else do you know?'

'You think I have been using you. You think I have been trying to reach your mother through you.'

She is smiling. No fool. A capable player.

'Yes,' he says. 'No.' He draws a deep breath. 'I will tell you what I really think. I think you are baffled, even if you won't admit it, by the mystery of the divine in the human. You know there is something special about my mother – that is what draws you to her – yet when you meet her she turns out to be just an ordinary old woman. You can't square the two. You want an explanation. You want a clue, a sign, if not from her then from me. That is what is going on. It's all right, I don't mind.'

Strange words to be speaking over breakfast, over coffee and toast. He did not know he had them in him.

'You really are her son, aren't you. Do you write too?'

'You mean, am I touched by the god? No. But yes, I am her son. Not a foundling, not an adoptee. Out of her very body I came, caterwauling.'

'And you have a sister.'

'A half-sister, from the same place. The real thing, both of us. Flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood.'

'And you have never married.'

'Wrong. Married and unmarried. What about you?'

'I have a husband. A husband, a child, a happy marriage.'

'That's good then.'

There is nothing more to be said.

'Will I have a chance to say goodbye to your mother?'

'You can catch her before the television interview. At ten, in the ballroom.'

A gap.

The television people have chosen the ballroom because of the red velvet drapes. In front of the drapes they have set up a rather ornate chair for his mother, and a plainer chair for the woman who will engage with her. Susan, when she comes, has to cross the whole length of the room. She is ready to travel; she has a calf-leather satchel over her shoulder; her stride is easy, confident. Again, lightly, like the brush of a feather, comes a pang, the pang of forthcoming loss.

'It has been a great honour to get to know you, Mrs Costello,' Susan says, taking his mother's hand.

' Elizabeth,' says his mother. 'Excuse the throne.'

' Elizabeth.'

'I want to give you this,' says Susan, and from her satchel produces a book. The cover shows a woman wearing antique Grecian costume, holding a scroll. Reclaiming a History: Women and Memory, says the title. Susan Kaye Moebius.

'Thank you, I look forward to reading it,' says his mother.

He stays for the interview, sitting in a corner, watching as his mother transforms herself into the person television wants her to be. All the quaintnesses she refused to deliver last night are allowed to come out: pungent turns of speech, stories of childhood in the Australian outback ('You have to realize how vast Australia is. We are only fleas on Australia's backside, we late settlers'), stories about the film world, about actors and actresses she has crossed paths with, about the adaptations of her books and what she thinks of them ('Film is a simplifying medium. That is its nature; you may as well learn to accept it. It works in broad strokes'). Followed by a glance at the contemporary world ('It does my heart good to see so many strong young women around who know what they want'). Even bird-watching gets a mention.

After the interview Susan Moebius's book almost gets left behind. He is the one who picks it up from under the chair.

'I wish people wouldn't give one books,' she murmurs. 'Where am I going to find space for it?'

'I have space.'

'Then you take it. Keep it. You're the one she was really after, not me.'

He reads the inscription: To Elizabeth Costello, with gratitude and admiration. 'Me?' he says. 'I don't think so. I was just' – his voice barely falters – 'a pawn in the game. You are the one she loves and hates.'

He barely falters; but the word that first came to mind was not pawn, it was clipping. A toenail clipping, that one steals and wraps in a tissue and takes away, for one's own purposes.

His mother does not reply. But she does give him a smile, a quick, sudden smile of – he cannot see it in any other way – triumph.

Their duties in Williamstown are over. The television crew are packing up. In half an hour a taxi will take them to the airport. She has won, more or less. On foreign turf too. An away win. She can come home with her true self safe, leaving behind an image, false, like all images.