The right hand has jerked. The right arm is a model of still control, and yet the hand that holds the hose six centimetres away from the brass nozzle has jerked sideways, so that the jet, following the movement, has fallen on the delicate reddish stem of the smallest castor-oil plant. The stem has not broken but the plant is uprooted. It is possible, however, to replant it quickly in the now softened earth.
– Conceited, lazy, unreliable. It is an article of faith.
– Ha! You dirty, you need washing. Ha!
– Aaah, sprtch, grrr, brrr, stop, shshtop, prshsh.
– Hee-hee-hee! The laugh is that of a delighted child. You have a heart condition. Symptoms? Verbal diarrhoea, sanguine complexion. Did you know that the dark patches on your cheeks are not flowers at all, but blood, belonging like words to the element of fire, quench it, quick, water, water, help fire. I am a doctor you see. Drench, drench.
The white wall is gently rounded as the road curves, and continues to curve, but almost imperceptibly. It is impossible ever to see whether things are different round the corner. The bougainvillaea clusters over the top of the wall, backed by young palm trees that sway a little in the luminosity of the white winter sky, and the white wall continues to curve along the curving road. It is impossible to tell when the mimosas will come into view. Sooner or later they will flare brightly into view. The red flowers of the poinsettia, or what appear to be red flowers, which will be coming out shortly, are not flowers at all but leaves. Did you know that? Well of course, I am a gardener. Feathery green branches droop down like ferns over the white wall that separates the property from the road, clustered here and there with yellow dots. Beyond the closed wrought-iron gates the mimosas are just beginning to bloom. Sooner or later they will be a mass of yellow. Sooner or later they will be a mass of gold against the post-card blue sky. It is difficult to revisualise the exact degree of blueness in a summer sky, or to re-imagine the exact degree of heat. You may wish to think about it, I’ll let you know. The hot season is not yet with us and much planting remains to be done.
– Yes, well, as a matter of fact I would like to think about it. I hadn’t quite visualised the exact degree of, I hadn’t quite visualised the degree of heat that would be applied. The fire of cosanguinity is excessive. The pressure of the water is low. Pulse diagnosis shows that the plant is uprooted, although the delicate stem has not been actually broken. It would be possible to replant it quickly in the now softened earth.
– Yes, well as a matter of fact I would like to think about it. I hadn’t quite visualised the degree of – servility implied. I am a doctor by training, and although circumstances have, through no fault of theirs, forced many of my countrymen to open the great wrought-iron gates, slowly, by remote control, the plane-trees lining the drive form with their bare and upward branches a series of networks, like a map of the nervous system, that become finer and finer as the drive recedes towards the big house, just discernible through the leaflessness. Beyond the thick network of bare branches there is a finer network, closing in a little over the drive, and beyond that a finer network still. The network of bare branches functions in depth, a corridor of cobwebs full of traps for flies. At the distant centre of the corridor of cobwebs the spider is advancing.
The spider is advancing with sparkling teeth bared in a wide flattened grin that blares white as it catches the luminosity of the white winter sky. Nearer and nearer it smoothly advances, apparently stretching across the whole width of the drive, broadening as the drive broadens, approaching with an engulfing threat to the wrought-iron gates until suddenly the gates dwarf it with their own tall fangs that close slowly behind it as it passes through. A pale blue face floats in a blue glass globe above the wide metallic grin. Beyond it, outlined against more light, more glass and moving fronds, a cavern-blue chin-line curved like a madonna’s and pale blue teeth flashing in wide mauve lips under a wide mauve hat of falling plumes, all of it cut, swiftly, by a shaft of light reflected in the glass, and then away, only a purple blob in a moving bubble of quickly shifting blue and green. The number of the vehicle is 24.81.632. There is no numerical significance in such a number. Beyond the vertical bars of the closed wrought-iron gates there is the thick network of the first plane-trees on either side of – oh hell. The number of the vehicle is, the number of the vehicle, the number of the vehicle is gone. The number of the vehicle is insignificant.
Daily from 8 a.m., at the Labour Exchange, a gnarled left hand lies stretched like a claw on the neighbouring human thigh. A fly straddles the high blue vein that comes down from the middle finger towards the thumb. The vein must seem like a rampart to the fly, unless perhaps the fly has no conception of a rampart, any more than it has of love, and does not even know that the vein is blue. Sooner or later the thumb, or even the whole hand with a flick of the wrist, will twitch the fly away. Sooner or later a group of five names will be called out and the thigh will slope up into a vertical position, slowly or suddenly according to the age and the humour and the health, according to the degree of sanguinity or melancholia, according to the balance or imbalance of hope and despair.
Dear Madam, your head gardener. Dear Madam, in an age of international and interracial enlightenment such as we have been privileged to witness and partake of on this continent since the displacement, it is a shock and a disappointment for me to have to report to you that your head gardener. Dear Madam, you will only know the name at the bottom of this letter through my wife who serves you, and for whom you were kind enough to arrange an interview with your head gardener. And on behalf of whom you were kind enough. And for whom you were kind enough to arrange an interview between me and your. Between your head gardener and. For whom you were kind enough to ask your head gardener to see me with regard to a job. Dear Madam – you will only know the name at the bottom of this letter through my wife, who works for you, and for whom you were kind enough to ask your head gardener to see me with regard to a job, as I understood it, a job presumably as assistant gardener. In an age of international and interracial enlightenment such as ours, the gnarled left hand lies on its side, with the fingers curling in under the stretched out thumb, as if the hand were holding a bunch of flowers or a stemmed glass. The high blue vein from the middle finger curves upwards towards the thumb.
In an age of international and interracial enlightenment such as we have been privileged to witness on our continent since the displacement, the fly moves jerkily on the canvas shoe of the left foot, between the bump made by the big toe and the first hole of the grey shoe-lace. The shoe-lace though grey, is brand new. The blue of the canvas is faded, the shoe is well worn but not in holes. The other shoe, half hidden by the left foot which is crossed over it, may be in holes.
The fly takes off. Perhaps the left canvas shoe has twitched slightly with the long waiting. The fly climbs up the air as if the air had steps, and at each stage it rests a little in a state of comatose suspension. From about eye-level it swoops to land on the left knee of the neighbouring human thigh whose leg has a foot that wears a blue canvas-shoe, well-worn but not, to the naked eye, in holes. The fly lands about fifteen centimetres away from the hand that holds an invisible bunch of flowers. Sooner or later a group of five names will be called out. It is a shock and a disappointment. It is with dismay that I have to report to you that your head gardener is still governed by reactionary prejudice. Ha! you dirty! Aaah, grrr.
– Please?
The neighbour’s face is as gnarled as his left hand. His eyes–the tiled floor is mottled. Up by the counter some twenty men stand in four short queues of five at each of the four grilled partitions. Further towards the door men mill about in murmuring groups of mostly Colourless faces, some detaching themselves to go out, some detaching themselves to come in. Above the door the notice says Do Not Spit. A Colourless boy pushes through the groups, looks around at the benches along the walls, hesitates then walks towards one of them along the opposite wall. The fly has left the mottled floor, frightened, perhaps, by t
he banging of metal cupboard doors and filing cabinets. The sound in the air, however, is mottled with human voices. It is all the more astonishing in view of the fact that your head gardener seems to be, to all appearances, himself an ex-Ukayan. The only possible explanation I can think of is all the more astonishing in view of the fact that the wall is dirty green and peeling. The portrait of the Governor on the far wall beyond the strong black heads of the employment clerks at their grilled partitions, the portrait of the Governor with his vain Asswati face, the fly sits like a wart on the corner of the Governor’s stalwart lips. The fly is reflected in the glass, like two warts. Unless perhaps it is a different fly, there being one fly inside the glass and one outside, the female fly seeking its mate on the mottled floor, the male fly on the Governor’s portrait, contemplating its image. The only possible explanation is that your head gardener is of a sanguinary complexion still uncontrollably radiating a reactionary prejudice.
Dear Mrs. Mgulu.
The neighbour’s gnarled hand that held an invisible bunch of flowers stretches out and lies flat on the left thigh. The far hand, which is also gnarled, and which may or may not have held an invisible bunch of flowers or even the stem of a glass, does the same. There is a tension in both the hands, as if the human mind in control of their movements expected at any moment to use them, perhaps for raising the body by means of pressure on the two knees. The thighs are thin and tightly trousered in faded denim. Creases starring out from the loin vanish under each wrist.
Dear Mrs. Mgulu. I hope you will not mind my writing to you, but through my wife I feel I am already acquainted with your great kindness and generosity and understanding. No doubt you know a little about me also. It is therefore in appeal to your well-known humanity-y-y-y
– You feel all right?
– Why?
– You groan much. It is long waiting.
– I’m in a state of comatose suspension.
– Please?
– I am happy with my thoughts.
– Excuse me.
The fingers drum a little on the thighs. The blue denim calls out the veins on the back of the hands. The chin crumples into a crumpled neck.
– Very witty. But unkind.
– He didn’t understand. He’s a foreigner.
– So are you.
– The dialogue will not take place, anyway.
– Sometimes it is sufficient just to be bloody rude.
– Sometimes it is sufficient merely to speak, to say perhaps or I don’t think so or how very interesting, as the case might be, for the effect to be bloody rude and the sequence, therefore, not to occur. Or to hammer a nail into the bent board over the dark sodden wood.
Dear Mrs. Mgulu.
The fly lies comatose on the Governor’s stalwart lips, unless it is contemplating its image. The Governor stares fiercely out regardless. The Governor gazes benignly down regardless. His dark eyes meet all eyes that meet his, but the meeting is not compulsory.
– Well I couldn’t help it, sir, I didn’t know. I wasn’t told.
– You people are all the same. You should have known and you could have found out. Listen you lot, this is the sort of thing I’m up against with you. This fellow says he’s a builder. He was sent to mend a roof-flashing which had got torn up by the gale and what did he do? He nailed it down into the wooden beam with ungalvanised iron nails. This in the rainy season. Needless to say they rusted immediately. The damp got into the beam and is rotting it.
The employment clerk hammers on the counter to make his voice louder and louder. The man on this side of the counter is puny, with a ginger head. Like a crooked ungalvanised nail he seems to sink into the tiled floor with every hammering of the employment clerk’s hand which is the colour of an old oak beam, startlingly braceleted with a white cuff-edge. The hall is silent. The silence of the hall is broken by coughs and shifting feet. The ginger head is raised again.
– I didn’t have no galvanised nails with me.
The bland Bahuko face shines, patched with curved oblongs and blobs of white light. The cuff-edge moves again, upholding the fly-flicking gesture of dismissal that must cause the ungalvanised nail to disappear from the floor.
There is a murmuring in the hall. The puny man with ginger hair shuffles past the row of sitting thighs and their belonging feet. His face is oxidised copper. Oxidative metabolism is a more efficient source of adenosine triphosphate than is fermentation. The greenish colour, however, is due to over-production in the gall-bladder, and gall-stones are the tomb-stones of bacteria. This is a good topic with which to go into reverse and bring about the sequence that has not yet occurred, should the non-occurrence of the sequence prove unbearable. Or not, as the case might be.
It is easy enough in the negative. It is more difficult to bring about than to prevent. Is this proposition true? Sometimes, anyway, the gruel is brought.
– Poor man.
– I beg your pardon? Smile to make up for tone.
– That man. He look sick.
– Oh, yes. He’s bilious. Over-production of the gall-bladder I should say.
– Please?
– I said, trouble in the gall-bladder.
– Were you doctor then in your country?
– Well, in a way.
– But why you queue here? They need doctors, many many sick, of the malady.
The fly, where is the fly? The Governor gazes benignly down regardless. Dear Mrs. Mgulu.
– Well. It’s a bit complicated. And you?
– Schoolmaster. Iranian. Useless here. Speak no good Asswati. Work on roads. Better for you, speak Ukayan, second language, and medicine better.
– Well. Not really.
– You ex-Ukayan?
– Yes.
– I see.
The sequence has occurred.
At home, a recipe would be read. At home there would be a remedy. It would occupy the air. Or a letter from someone possibly. According to our records you have not reported to this exchange for three weeks. Retrospectively a name will be called out daily from 8 a.m.
– You get slip?
– Er, yes.
– Doctors also?
– Well. Not quite. It’s a bit complicated.
– I understand.
– I wasn’t complaining.
– No. But sad. Excuse me. You take your dole pills?
– I haven’t reported for three weeks, just as it says.
– I have extra some. I collect but keep for big pep booze. You wish one?
– No, no. Thank you. Very kind.
– Please.
At home there would be a remedy. A remedy would be read out and it would occupy the air. It is more difficult in the negative, more difficult, that is, to stop than to bring about. Sometimes, however, a group of names is called.
– It is not really as you think, anti-Ukay. Look at me, Iranian. And that man up there now, ex-Uessayan, every day he come. And there is ex-French. And him Portuguese.
– Of course, all Colourless. But the head gardener up at one of the big houses is bright pink. Mauve even.
– Pink is a colour. Yellow is a colour. Beige is a colour.
– That is an article of faith.
– I understand their attitude. White is the colour of the mal –
– Waxiness is due to a deficiency in the liver. A greenish colour is –
A group of names is called out.
– Excuse me.
The gnarled, blue-veined hands press the tightly denimed knees as the thighs change to a vertical position. There is a nod high up.
At home there would have been a recipe. Dear Mrs. Mgulu. I hope you won’t mind, I hope you will not mind my writing to you, but in an age of international and interracial equality such as we have been privileged to witness and partake of since the great displacement, it is a shock and a disappointment for me to have to report to you that the two hands clasped together between the next human thighs are brown, dark brown like strong and tudor bea
ms. The two index fingers point up cathedrally, touching at the tips. The two thumbs touch, pointing dihedrally towards the loin. A lodge is formed, with porch and gate, pink within, brown without. Pink is a colour. Brown is a colour. Black is a colour. It is an article of faith. There is a movement in the neighbour’s neck of one who is about to talk, to show that despite everything he is in the same boat, temporarily at least. They should know that people with kidney trouble find it difficult to use their voice, the voice gets lost and little. People with kidney trouble do not like people. It is easy enough in the negative.
– What job are you hoping for?
– Oh, anything, odd job. And you?
– What were you before?
– I was a schoolmaster.
– Uessayan?
– No, no, Iranian. And you?
– How very interesting. Ah, that’s me. Goodbye. Good luck.
The fly moves close to the white leather shoe on the mottled floor. Brown is a colour. Sooner or later, however, the correct identity, the Colourless identity that belongs, will be, is called out. The fly takes off swiftly. The left foot whose big toe is wearing out the canvas steps squarely into a mottled tile. The mottled tiles merge, move fast. Through the metal trellis the bland Bahuko face is splintered. It is not bland and not Bahuko but lean and brown and Berber, granulated like basalt rock, with hooded eyes over white slits that vanish. The Governor stares fiercely out regardless.
– Ex-occupation?
– Schoolmaster.
– Speak up, I can’t hear you.
– Schoolmaster.
– Ex-nationality?
– Iranian.
The brown hoods lift.
– That is two of you in five minutes. It is statistically improbable. What was your occupation?
– I used to be a joiner.
– We have you down as a philosopher.
– No, no, no. That’s not true.
The Brooke-Rose Omnibus Page 4
