– Well, it all comes to the same thing in the end.
– Why ask then?
The white cuff-edge encircles the brown wrist like a bracelet. The finger-nails along the golden pen are pink and well rounded. Whereas no amount of positive evidence can ever conclusively confirm a hypothesis, one piece of negative evidence conclusively falsifies it. Discuss fully, making detailed reference to your set texts. Dear Mrs. Mgulu.
– We have you down as an odd job man.
– Well it all comes to the same thing in the end.
– Don’t be impertinent. We’re doing all we can for you people but it isn’t easy.
Framed by the square in the middle of the metallic trellis the lean basalt face bears a wart above its well-chiselled lips. To the left of the nose, with the right eye closed, the left side of the trellis square divides the face almost exactly in half with a vertical bar. To the right of the nose, with the left eye closed, the bar moves to the left of the face.
– Oh, now wait, someone rang through about you. I didn’t connect the name. Where are we? Yes. That’s it. From Mrs. Mgulu of Western Approaches. Apparently there was a misunderstanding.
– A misunderstanding?
– That’s what’s written on the pad. Misunderstanding.
– Did she say that?
– Well, no, it was the butler, or someone. She wants you to start work tomorrow. In the garden.
Hee-hee-hee of a delighted child, the jet shoots out, the feet are apart, the index finger covers the brass nozzle-holder and the jet sprays out over the sliding blue globe in which against the moving palms a cavern-blue chin-line curves like a madonna’s, underlining a blob of mauve beneath a wide mauve crest of falling plumes, drowned in the water and away bearing a lucky number. Beyond the tall wrought-iron gates the mimosas are difficult, you see. We have no prejudice that’s an article of faith. But there is an irrational fear of the Colourless that lingers on, it’s understandable, in some cases, even justifiable, with the malady still about, well, it makes them unreliable. However, good luck to you. Oh, wait, here’s your unemployment pill, you’re entitled to it as you’re not working till tomorrow.
Whereas no amount of positive evidence. Dear Mrs. Mgulu, I know you won’t mind my writing to you in this way. The peeling walls are painted green. You must understand, we do all we can. Men move aside. Above their heads the notice says Do Not Spit. This lady takes an interest, as you should know, since your wife, the floor is mottled. A young palm tree mops the luminous white sky, framed darkly by the door.
Inside the avenue of the mind that functions in depth, Mrs. Mgulu sits back on the cushions of the vehicle as it glides towards the tall wrought-iron gates. The tumbling purple plumes of the wide hat shade off the cave-blue face, call out the wide and purple mouth.
To the right of the driver’s cap, far ahead, a man is standing beyond the wrought-iron gates. The sun flickers through the quick plane-trees. The iron gates grow and the man moves to the left behind the driver’s head. The iron gates open towards the vehicle, forming a guard of lances. The man stands in the road, shabbily dressed. He is Colourless.
– Who was that, Ingram, did you see?
– I’m afraid I didn’t, ma’am.
– I do believe it was the husband of one of my maids, she has often described him to me.
Mrs. Mgulu turns her black madonna chin-line towards the rear window just as the vehicle slides along the rounded corner.
– I wonder what he was doing there.
Ingram is silent, his eyes fixed on the coming curve of the road.
– I do hope the head gardener didn’t upset him, he is so very insensitive. A sanguine temperament. I really ought to get rid of him. But he is old and I am sorry for him. No, this would only be a thought. Mrs. Mgulu thinks, I do hope etc. Ingram, she says aloud, you didn’t hear anything in the servants’ quarters about the head gardener interviewing someone for a job as assistant gardener did you? I mean could anything have gone wrong?
– No ma’am, at least, nothing specific.
– What do you mean, nothing specific?
Ingram looks cryptically into the driving-mirror, sees her mauve mouth and stares at the curve in the road ahead.
– I only know that he came into the servants’ hall just before I left for the garage. He seemed rather angry.
– Oh dear, what a nuisance.
The olive-trees move slowly along, tinged by the sunset. It is difficult to tell the exact colour. The knowledge of their normal silvery green interferes with the absolute result of being tinged. And yet the road is pink. Not underfoot, where the immediate familiarity with its normal greyness makes it grey, but further ahead, receding even, the pinkness of the road recedes beyond the greyness covered. The white house on the hill is pink. The pink house higher up is flame-coloured. At eye-level, the shacks come into view. Three of them are on fire. Three of them are having a party. The glass verandah doors of three of them reflect the setting sun in dazzling orange. Some people would call them bungalows.
It was the glass that was blue of course, making the hat look purple and the face cave-blue and the wide mouth mauve in the avenue of the mind. The hat inside the vehicle must be pink. The wide pink hat of falling plumes calls the wide and dark pink mouth out of the chin-line that is charcoal smooth. In the driving mirror Ingram glimpses the crimson mouth and stares at the wrought-iron gates that grow as the man beyond them moves to the left. The iron gates open, forming a guard of lances. The man stands in the road, blue through the glass.
– Who was that, Ingram, did you see?
– No ma’am.
– I do believe it was Lilly’s husband, I have seen him before on this road. I wonder what he was doing there?
– Oh dear, what a nuisance. I did promise Lilly. Lilly is such a very excellent woman.
We can make our errors in a thought and reject them in another thought, leaving no trace of error in us. Comment and percolate. Sooner or later the bladder must be emptied, leaving no trace of urine in us. Explicate and connect. The grey base of the olive-tree darkens and steams a little.
Sooner or later a bowl of gruel will be set down on the wrinkled wood inside the rectangle of light. Unless perhaps it is set down in a round pool of light.
Mrs. Ned’s bungalow is on fire. The glass verandah doors of Mrs. Ned’s bungalow reflect the last rays of the setting sun, but the other bungalows are extinguished. The fig-tree looks blasted. Its thick black twigs poke upwards into the dusk, out of contorted branches. The dark trunk leans along the edge of the bank at an angle of forty degrees inside which, from the road, the lower section of the brown clapboard wall next to the verandah may just be seen, that is, with the help of the knowledge that it can normally be seen from this position. One of the branches sweeps downwards out of the trunk, away from the road, forming with the trunk an arch that frames the lower section of the wall within it, the frame merging into the darkness of the clapboard wall. The thick long twigs on this down-sweeping branch grow downwards first, then up, like large U-letters, almost invisible against the dark patch of grass and the dark wood of the bungalow beyond. It is the knowledge of their shape which makes them visible. Discuss and titillate.
The glass door of the verandah reflects a green light, in which a filmy monster shifts into view, cut into three sections. The top section frames a jellyfish, the middle section a tiered hierarchy of diagonal wobbles, the lower section two thin trunks, wavering like algae. The lower section two thin trunks as still as trees; the middle section a tiered hierarchy of frozen diagonal zigzags with two arms that can lift away out of the tiered zigzag to form two angles of forty-five degrees, two angles of ninety degrees, two angles of a hundred and eighty degrees, continuing the two thin trunks up into the top section on either side of the jellyfish. Sooner or later the identity will be called out. And here is Mr. Blob in our studio tonight. Mr. Blob, you’ve been cutting yourself into three sections of different wriggling shapes for twenty years now, beati
ng your own record year after year. Can you tell us why you do it?
– Yes. I can no more help doing it than breathe, you see. It’s something inside me that drives me. Like climbing a mountain, one must get to the top, you see. Of course one could give up and go down again, but it’s so much more satisfying to go on, however difficult, it gives one a sense of purpose, you see.
– But isn’t there a very real danger of complete disintegration?
– I might of course disintegrate, but that is a risk worth taking.
– Worth taking for whom, Mr. Blob? What can really be the point of an activity which costs one and a half million every time and keeps two hundred and ninety-seven people fully occupied all along the operation assembly line just seeing to it that you don’t disintegrate?
– In these days of severe unemployment Mr. Hatchet, I don’t think that keeping two hundred and ninety-seven people occupied can possibly be called wasteful. They are all extremely loyal and believe in it tremendously, without them I would be as nothing and I must say that. It may look pointless to you but the ionization industry is backing it heavily. Each time, technical discoveries are made which help them considerably in their research. Ultimately however the greatest importance of my achievement – modest though it may be in scope – is that it adds to Ukayan prestige abroad and in the whole world.
– But Mr. Blob, this record for, what is it, I quote, standing still in near disintegration, it’s your own record you keep beating. No one else has the slightest desire to compete with you.
– It doesn’t matter whose record it is. I think you will find that in the long run any world record broken adds to Ukayan prestige abroad and in the whole –
– Mr. Blob: thank you very much.
– Eh!
The picture has been quite replaced.
– Oh, good evening Mrs. Ivan. Nice evening. Er, yes, I was just looking at the verandah door to see if, well, to see –
– Yes?
– To see myself, Mrs. Ivan. Not you I assure you. I apologise. I disintegrate.
– My verandah. Okay?
– Okay.
– Goodnight Mrs. Ivan. Thank you, thank you Mrs. Ivan. Goodnight.
The bead curtain crackles. The kitchen is rounded by the twilight. It is the knowledge of the shape and size of the kitchen table and chairs which make them visible. In absolute blackness, however, the knowledge of their shape and size would not make them visible, it would merely guide the sense of touch. Is this true or am I mad? Discuss and denigrate.
The remedy lies in the sudden pool of light, set down in the wrinkled wood. Behind the hanging beads the door is shut. The stone floor between the doorway and the table is dark brown and still.
The remedy is called Metabol. The light over the table makes a moon in the darkness beyond the window. Below the moon is the jellyfish. Closing in on the jellyfish it is possible to see deep within it, a rectangle of faint orange light, itself enclosed in the black trapeze-shape that is Monsieur Jules’s shack and melts into the darkness beyond the kitchen window. Moving the jellyfish a little it is possible to capture other black trapeze-shapes deep within it. The view from the kitchen window, when it can be seen, is of innumerable low-built bungalows. The remedy is for emotional manifestations. But then, she will complicate life for herself, sitting back in the cushions of the vehicle as it glides towards the tall wrought-iron gates. Her face is cavern-blue.
– Who was that, Ingram, did you see?
– I don’t know ma’am, a Colourless man.
– Oh but his eyelids were all right. I do believe he is a doctor, I have seen him before. Stop the vehicle, Ingram, I feel so ill.
Inside the jellyfish beyond the kitchen window, the night engulfs. The conversation, during the hammering, takes the form of admiring murmurs and modestly expressed advice. The hanging beads over the doorway are mottled and still.
– Whatever were you doing at sunset on your verandah?
– At sunset?
– Well, it was just getting dark. You had your arms lifted up above your head and you were dancing about like a puppet on strings.
The trapeze shape is enormous and quite black.
– Mrs. Ned?
– Anyone at home?
– Hello, there?
– Mrs. Ned. It’s me. I came to see if your tub is all right.
– Hello? Mrs. Ned. I’ve been given a job.
During the hammering the conversation is one-sided.
A tape-recorder might perhaps reveal certain phrases that came and went, leaving no trace of error in us. Everything that moves increases risk.
The first failure is the beginning of the first lesson. Learning begins with failure. The green thermoplastic hose, held downwards into the night, with the right-hand six centimetres away from the brass nozzle-holder, and with the brass nozzle-holder almost touching the night-black earth around the small castor-oil plant, would perhaps be black in the circumstances, and give a black or maybe silvery jet which does not remove or disturb the earth but flows gently into it. The dark jet must not touch the delicate stem and the right arm is a model of still control. The blackness, however, nudges.
– Oh, hello, Mrs. Ned. I’ve been given a job.
– Oh, hello. I didn’t recognise you without the chip on your shoulder. Oh, hello, I didn’t recognise you in the dark.
The letter is on the table, folded in four, next to the remedy. The handwriting on the top quarter is upside down which draws the eye to decipherment. The remedy is called Metabol. Nervousness and agitation irritability motor unrest insomnia hostility aggressiveness phobias and hallucinations. Even though many personality problems characteristic of senility may be linked with organic changes in the brain which I … hope … hasn’t … reached you … in any … shape or … form … you … being … such a very … active ….person This terrible malady which I hope hasn’t reached you in any shape or form you being of course their fear is irrational as it’s not catching from people it’s the radiation in the air and they merely resist better, but it’s all very soul-destroying though I must cry it out aloud that they’re being extraordinarily humane and generous about it. I must say I’m lucky to have married as I did, at least my children stand a sporting chance.
The light over the table makes a moon in the darkness beyond the window. Below the moon is the window-ledge. The pool of light engulfs the entire table and part of the red stone floor. The wrinkled wood is quite static in the light, as static, at any rate, as the network of minute lines on the back of the wrist. A microscope might perhaps reveal which is the more static of the two. The protozoan scene under the microscope is one of continual traffic jams and innumerable collisions.
– What was it you said?
– I was saying that Mr. Marburg the butler was most obliging today –
– No, before that.
– Don’t forget to lick your spoon.
– Ah, yes, I knew it was something important.
The circle of steaming gruel in the bowl is greyish white and pimply. The squint seems blue tonight, and wider. The pale eye that doesn’t move is fixed on the remedy, but the mobile eye wriggles away, its blue mobility calling out the blueness of the temple veins and a hint of blue in the white skin. A microscope might perhaps reveal a striking increase in the leucocyte count, due to a myeloid hyperplasia leading to an absolute increase in the granular leucocytes. Sooner or later immature and primitive white cells appear in the peripheral blood and corresponding changes in the bone marrow. Then the mobile eye too remains fixed, reproachful perhaps.
– Mr. Marburg just happened to mention it to me, I had no idea of course, and I would never have known if he hadn’t come up to the guest wing just at the time that I happened to be there. I’ve never seen him up there I must say, it was the purest chance, unless perhaps he came specially to tell me, which is always a possibility. But why did you do it?
Sooner or later movement, which is necessary but not inevitable, will lead to attain
ment. That seems to be the general theory at any rate. Yet everything that moves increases risk. Sometimes it is sufficient merely to desire intensely.
The knock ushers Mrs. Ivan into the kitchen to fill her two large jugs of water. Phrases come and go, with and without smies, not at all, good evening, thank you, goodnight.
– Oh, Mrs. Ivan.
– Yes?
– I hope you don’t mind my mentioning it, but could you use up and throw away your opened tins more quickly? They do smell so and anyway it’s dangerous for your health. You may get food poisoning.
– Thank you Mrs.
– I mean if you don’t eat the whole contents why open so many?
– Thank you. Thank you. Goodnight.
– Goodnight. She’ll break my heart with those tins. Well anyway it was very awkward for me, I mean, I didn’t know whose fault it was and I assumed naturally that it was ours in some way. But Mrs. Mgulu couldn’t have been kinder. She really takes an interest you see and it’s become a matter of principle with her. She said – I say are you listening? That thing is for doctors, not patients. I mean you want to be careful, listen to this, for instance. Care should be taken in prescribing other depressants of the central nervous system such as anaesthetics, analgesics and hypnotics since their effects may be potentiated by Metabol. Tachycardia and postural hypotension have occasionally been observed but these have rarely been sufficiently serious to warrant the discontinuation of the drug. Other side-effects reported in isolated cases are convulsions, constipation, anorexia, dyspnoea, epistaxis, insomnia and slight oedema. Well I mean it doesn’t do to read that sort of thing, it’s better to stick to posologies for patients.
The light over the table makes a moon in the darkness beyond the window. Below the moon is the jellyfish. Mr. Blob: thank you very much. Closing in on the jellyfish it is possible to see deep within it a black trapeze-shape that melts into the blackness. It is possible to see it, that is, helped by the knowledge that it can normally be seen from this position. Moving the jellyfish a little, only blackness can be seen. Knowledge certain or indubitable is unobtainable.
The Brooke-Rose Omnibus Page 5
