The Brooke-Rose Omnibus

by Brooke-Rose, Christine

  – You might have found it in a garbage-can, for all I know.

  – Mr. Swaminathan, excuse my asking, but how do I know you are the managing agent, and not, say, in import and export?

  – If we start with conjectures that have the highest possible informative content or – which has been proved to be the same thing – the lowest possible probability, and if we test these conjectures with the greatest possible severity, those which survive the tests will acquire the patina of prestige that traditionally attaches to knowledge.

  – Yes, but does it bear any relation to the real thing?

  – Well, it’s only a crumpled piece of paper after all. By hand, it doesn’t mean anything.

  When you want somebody

  Scrap it.

  The thyroid will be scarlet. It is about the life-size of a pear, and a tenth the size of the spleen, which increases progressively and usually painlessly until it fills most of the abdomen. The shapes on this side of the facia-board are quite geometrical. The note requires an answer, of polite thanks merely, but an answer. By hand. It won’t mean a thing. Dear Mrs. Mgulu. Thank you very much for all the trouble you have gone to on my behalf. I am most grateful and will make every endeavour to serve you to your greatest satisfaction. To the best of my ability. The green trapeze lies side by side with the white square, its slanted line touching the blue triangle. I hope you will have every reason to be entirely satisfied. I am most grateful and will endeavour to serve you to the best of my ability, which I hope will satisfy you in every way. Which I hope will not cause you any further trouble. Yours truly.

  Mr. Swaminathan stands on the steps of the gazebo and sways slowly from one foot to another.

  – It’s only because the builder is ill and the job is urgent. There shouldn’t be any objection but I’d keep quiet about it, you know.

  – Mr. Swaminathan, why are you afraid of employing me? What is this pressure, this barely spoken discrimination against us?

  – Us? Who’s us? You’re imagining things.

  – Good. Make him say the obvious, it’s easier to conceive the reply. The reply must be passionate and deeply moving. On pronouns for example. You used to be Us and we used to be Them, to you, but now it’s the other way about. Why? We tried our best. Oh, we brought you syphilis and identity and dissatisfaction and other diseases of civilization. But medicine too, and canned ideas, against your own diseases. And we couldn’t bring you radiation leukaemia or chemical mutations, because we absorbed all the chemicals ourselves and must have spared you only just enough to immunise you. Or else you had an ancient strength inside, that we couldn’t corrupt. We were whited sepulchres and never came to terms with our dark interior, which you wear healthily upon your sleeves, having had so little time to lose touch with it. Now we are sick. Is that the reason? Is that why you are afraid, afraid of our white sickness?

  The rhetoric is vain, the passion pale and disengaging. Even inside the mind that pours it out in silence Mr. Swaminathan stands on the steps of the gazebo, swaying slowly from one foot to another, failing to identify himself with suffering. The process is known as alienation, and yet the passion hurts, seizes the body at the back of the neck somehow, in the medullary centres, down the glosso-pharyngeal nerve perhaps, or the pneumogastric, at any rate forward and down into the throat, which tightens as enlargement of the lymphatic glands occurs and pain spreads through the chest, aching and down into the stomach, nauseous. Sooner or later it will reach the spleen, which will increase in size until it fills most of the abdomen, remaining firm and smooth, however, on palpation. The onset is insidious and well advanced before diagnosis. Prognosis poor, continuing to a fatal termination. Splenectomy contra-indicated, treatment unsatisfactory, no therapy, but the blood-count, marrow biopsy and glandular biopsy will furnish a firm diagnosis. These organs on section appear grey or reddish grey, packed with myeloid cells, mainly polymorphonuclears and immature cells such as myeloblasts, promyelocytes, myelocytes and metamyelocytes. The psyche on section appears grey.

  From this position in the gutter, the paving stones look large as tables. The trousers widen slightly at the bottom, most of them brown or black. Shoes are dusty or caked with mud. It is like being in a forest. The trees run away as the flagstones vibrate. The thing is a long distance away. A seismograph might perhaps reveal, but the curving jaw of the street crumbles further up, swallowing the insect crowds. Some people are always left, kissing the gutter. Darling, they’re playing our tune.

  The wiggly oblong resembles nothing but a wiggly oblong, to be pencilled on to the pink piece of perspex beneath the facia-board. From this position, Mr. Swaminathan, I love you.

  It is important to believe in the bowl of steaming gruel. A microscope might perhaps reveal animal ecstasy in the innumerable white globules that compose the circle, but the gruel tastes hot and salty on the soft palate at the back of the mouth and flows hotly down the digestive track to the duodenum. Sooner or later the white globules will feed the corpuscles in the blood stream, occasioning continual traffic jams and innumerable collisions. The wrinkled wood is quite static in the pool of light, which overspreads the table and transfers itself on to the still and red stone floor. The table casts a large rectangular shadow on the red stone floor, flanked on one side by the tangential shadows of the empty chair at the end to the left. Next to these the body’s shadow makes a bulging growth on the clean line of the rectangle. It is swallowed up from time to time by the moving shadow of the occurring conversation. The door is shut behind the hanging beads and to the right of it, on the top shelf, the recipes stand side by side, on gaily coloured tins.

  – It’s best to keep them really, tempting though they may be. You never know when they may come in useful. Besides, none of them is self-contained. Each recipe requires the contents of at least two other tins, and I never seem to have the right combinations. I do now have two out of three for Beef Strogonoff, though, because cook gave me a tin of it today and I have a tin of rice. Let’s see, it says open the tin and empty contents into a copper-bottomed saucepan, stirring slowly on low heat. Add salt and paprika to taste. Meanwhile open large Gala tin of fried rice, oh dear I only have a medium tin, but this says serves six, empty contents over a dessertspoonful of ground-nut oil in a copper-bottomed saucepan and heat slowly, chop a handful of fresh parsley take a medium tin of Gala sauté carrots, you see that’s the one I don’t have.

  Some of the gruel’s globules remain attached to the rounded white sides of the bowl. The light over the table makes a moon in the darkness beyond the window. The squint seems wider tonight, and yet less blue. The pale eye that doesn’t move is fixed on the shelf of can-recipes, but the mobile eye stares towards the reflected moon in the darkness beyond the window.

  – In an emergency of course one wouldn’t bother about proper dishes. One might be glad to have just the fried rice. Or guavas.

  – What a wind there is tonight. The shack seems about to take off.

  – Yes and it’s raining too, listen. Most extraordinary weather for the time of year, we should be having Spring showers. I like it though. I hate the stillness of a sickly sky. I can identify with the wind, especially the night wind.

  – Hello, is there anyone there? It’s Mrs. Tom.

  – Who-ever’s that? Oh dear, why can’t they come round the back, they must know I’ve got lodgers in front. I am so sorry, Mrs. Ivan. I didn’t know – you don’t? Oh, it is kind. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again. Just a minute. Who is it? Oh hello Mrs. Tom, goodness me you look like a sea-lion under that raincoat. Could you come round the back? Mr. and Mrs. Ivan live in this room.

  – No, I just want to give you a message, anyway I’d only wet your kitchen, it really is streaming. You know you need a gutter along the roof of this porch, or do you call it a verandah, look at it, I’ve had to cross through a curtain of rain. It’s from Mrs. Mgulu. She rang through and asked me to let you know urgently that the kitchen light reflected in the darkness beyond the window remains quite s
till despite the wind. It is the still centre of the storm. No one has ever photographed the inside of the moon. There is of course a very real danger of disintegration, but that is a risk worth taking. Mr. Blob: thank you very much. Mr. Swaminathan, thank you. Sometimes it is sufficient to formulate a need for the need to vanish, or proliferate rapidly as the case might be. Identity has its chemistry too. Mr. Swaminathan will be there to help, and if there are any objections that side of it can be arranged in the morning, she says, after all it’s an emergency, the gale blew it down, so would he come at once. Mrs. Mgulu emerges from the bedroom, wearing something diaphanous. My husband is speaking to the nation in half an hour, can you possibly put it up again by then? Oh don’t worry about the Labour Exchange, my dear, Mr. Swaminathan sways gently from one foot to another, smiling cryptically. Mr. Swaminathan is my arranger of all things, my right hand. Well I must rush off or they’ll be wondering where I’ve got to at home. Oh dear this rain, it’s like a bead curtain you really must get him to put a gutter up there. Goodnight. Here goes. Wow! Pshshsh. The noise must have been continuous, but leaps into hearing now to be shut off and muffled. The wrinkled wood is quite static in the pool of light, which overspreads the table on to the still and red stone floor. 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 alive of the two, the fear or the expectation.

  – That was Mrs. Tom.

  – I know.

  – She came across in all that rain, with Mrs. Mgulu’s black raincoat over her head, you know, the one I was so hoping Mrs. Mgulu’d give to me. I said to her you look like a performing seal in that raincoat. She didn’t mind, though, she’s a good sort is Mrs. Tom. Up to a point. She should have known about the lodgers, though, and they were in bed and she was peering in like anything, for all the world as if a bit of slap and tickle were going on during the very interruption. It’s true they were whispering.

  – What does Mrs. Mgulu want?

  – Mrs. Mgulu? Why should Mrs. Mgulu want anything? Oh, you mean Mrs. Tom. Well she had a message for me from Mrs. Jim up at the house. She’s feeling ill and wants me to come early tomorrow and do the market for her. I said I would, of course, poor dear she’s tired herself out. She’s anaemic you know, I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s pernicious, and she has gallstones. Will you have some more gruel?

  The circle in the bowl is greyish white and pimply. It steams less and appears quite flaccid. The wrinkled wood is dead in the pool of light.

  – Lilly, help me.

  The skin around the eyes, both the mobile eye and the static eye, is waxy. There is no reproach in the mobile eye, the emotion expressed is nearer to concern. The static eye expresses only off-ness, which emphasises whatever the mobile eye is expressing, reproach perhaps, or puzzlement as to whether the inaudible voice has or has not raised itself from its condition of chronic aphonia.

  – Lilly, how do you identify with the wind?

  – The wind? I just listen to it. And sway a little. In my mind I mean. It has the rhythms of strength. The night wind especially.

  – It has the rhythms of anguish.

  – Well that’s up to you, isn’t it?

  – The wind is only the wind, you know that, it carries no significances.

  The mobile eye rests on the bowl of gruel.

  – Start with small things. Believe in the bowl of gruel. And eat up, now, while it’s still hot.

  – How is Mrs. Mgulu?

  – Well, it’s funny you should ask. I think she looks quite ill, at least, as far as one can tell, she’s always beautiful in any circumstances. She wears an alexandrite in her left nostril you know. But then, she will complicate life for herself. Even this market business, for instance, it’s a sort of health fad, really, she could get everything delivered, and of course she does, but not vegetables, she doesn’t trust the tradesmen she says, and she’s probably right, so Mrs. Jim goes to the market early and chooses everything. Though they’ve a big kitchen garden now as well. No radioactive fertilisers and no chemical insecticides. Oh she did a lot of thinking on that. But it won’t start producing till the Spring. Why that’s almost now, isn’t it?

  – Do you think everything’s all right up there? In this gale I mean.

  – What, in the kitchen garden?

  – Well, anywhere. The roof, the aerial for instance, or the telephone wires.

  – Mrs. Jim rang up all right. And, it’s a solid house you know.

  – Didn’t Mrs. Tom say something about Mr. Swaminathan? I thought I heard his name.

  – No, I don’t think so. Why should she? He isn’t there anyway at this time of night. He lives in the town.

  The face lies upside down, beautiful in any circumstances, with the thick hair spread out like roots, the eyeballs pushing their black nucleus down towards the underlining eyebrows and the street below, the nostrils flat and far apart, the wide lips huge, agape in ecstasy, the dark breasts high and rounded to the hand. Mr. Swaminathan stands alone in the curved empty street, swaying gently from one foot to another, worshipping the face in a chant. The black thermoplastic hose follows imperceptibly like a dying metronome. There is no water coming out of the hose, but it could gush forth any minute.

  – Tell me Mr. Swaminathan, will you be voting for history or for progress?

  – There is no such thing as history, except in the privacy of concupiscence. That is an article of faith. Memory is a primitive organ in the left hemisphere of the brain, inscribed with sensory observations, which are reflected by the right hemisphere as the moon reflects the sun. But that’s another story.

  – So you will be voting for progress?

  – There is no such thing as progress. There is only the Moment of Truth.

  – Mr. Swaminathan help me. Is there a secret? A story behind the story?

  – There is a secret. But it is not a story.

  – Come to bed, Lilly. I want to make love.

  The wind, which does not have the rhythms of either Strength or anguish, rattles the shack’s corrugated iron roof. The rain shimmies down the small high window, a long way from the mattress on the floor. In the dark the four raised knees make a table mountain under the army blanket. The condition is not one of priapism. In action, it might perhaps be sufficient to imagine a face the colour of irrigated earth lying there instead, beautiful in any circumstances, the eyes white slits, the nucleus half gone into half consciousness, the nostrils flat and far apart, the wide lips mauve with pink and white between, the dark breasts high and lively to the hand. In absolute immobility however, it is enough merely to evoke the gestures of the past, which does not exist save in the privacy of concupiscence. The four raised knees beneath the army blanket are dark and presumably bare of flies, the two bodies placid under the tent, the male to the left, the female to the right. Limply the right hand of the male holds the left hand of the female. The outer hands lie quietly alongside.

  – Lilly you start. I need you so.

  – Do you remember when you were the hospital porter, how you used to come into the women’s ward to collect and deliver the letters? Twice a day you’d come.

  – Yes, yes, go on.

  – And you’d call out, any letters for posting, and the women would call back from various beds, usually the same beds every day, but sometimes there’d be a shy voice from a different bed.

  – Yes, yes. And what else did I say?

  – You’d walk up one side of the ward, handing out the mail, and collecting any for postage, and you’d call out, anyone want a jelly-baby? And some would call back yes, and others would be silent, some too ill to care, some unconscious maybe. And you’d walk up the other side of the ward, handing out more mail, and collecting any for postage, and you’d call out, anyone want a jelly-baby? And some would call back yes, and you’d go up to the bed and give them one out of a crumpled paper bag which had been in your trouser pocket. You held it in your left hand, with the letters still to be delivered b
etween the index and third finger, and you took out the jelly-baby with the thumb and same two fingers of your right hand and gave it to them. The letters to be posted went into your right hand coat pocket.

  – Yes, yes. Go on.

  – You were very popular. The women would call out yes George I want one, and here George, I’ve got a letter, and oh thank you George I knew you’d bring me some good news.

  – And what did the sister say?

  – The sister said any man who comes into a women’s ward every day offering jelly-babies out of a paper bag needs medical attention.

  – Oh-ah, that’s good, that’s wonderful.

  – That’s how we met.

  – Go on.

  – You’re forgetting me. Tickle my memory a little too.

  – Do you remember how impressed I was when I first took you out and found you were such a good mimic? You mimicked the women in the ward at 5 a.m. over their early morning tea. Please do it again, please do it again.

  – Well. That’s a nice cup o’ tea this morning – Eh? – I said, that’s a nice cup of tea this morning. – Oh. Yes, it is nice, isn’t it? – Not like yesterday – Eh? – I said not like yesterday. Yesterday was terrible. If I’d have shut my eyes I’d’ve thought it was hot water (long silence). That wasn’t yesterday, that was the day before. Yesterday’s wasn’t too bad. – Eh? – I said, that wasn’t yesterday mornin’ the tea was like hot water, it was the day before. Yesterday’s was all right-Oh was it? Well this one’s real good tea. It’s a pleasure to drink it. – Eh? – I said this one’s real good tea anyway – Oh. Yes, it’s a lovely cup of tea. And you said –

  – I think you’re wonderful.

  – And I said what’s your name and you said Bill to you. And I said call me Lilly.

  – Go on.

  – And one day you came into the ward as usual and you went up to Granny Grumble and she said raise me Charlie I’ve slid right down and the nurses don’t know how and don’t pay no attention to me anyways. And it’s true the nurses just weren’t strong enough they had to raise us in bits and she always yelled with pain or pretended to be. And you put down your letters and your paper bag on the edge of the bed and you crooked your two hands under her armpits from the back and raised her swift and sharp and she cried oooh! how lovely in eighty-year-old ecstasy.