The Brooke-Rose Omnibus

by Brooke-Rose, Christine

  – Well, I didn’t ask for your company.

  – You’re dead right. Don’t you trust anyone. Here’s my card. I’d ask you round to my place, I live down town, couple of blocks along but I share the room with four others. I like you. Let’s get out of this and go sit on a bench. I’d like to know you.

  – Well, er, I have to be getting back. My wife’s ill.

  – Oh. I’m sorry. I see you have all the more reason to be suspicious.

  – Well, it’s not quite like that. As a matter of fact I just won’t believe that. If I did I couldn’t go on living.

  – What? I can’t hear you. Come along round this corner, that’s better, we can breathe. Now listen to me, I’ll tell you something. I believe we’re being slowly exterminated. And I’ll tell you another thing. I’m not having it. I don’t take my pills either. I spat out that one too.

  – You’re mad. Stark raving mad.

  – Ha! That’s what you’d like to believe, that’s what everyone’d like to believe. Oh, I know you lot, you ex-Europeans, you’ll play along with them as far as you can, you don’t want to know your own kind, do you, the cold-hearted kind, they call us all, you know, but it’s people like you that have made it so, it’s your sickness we’re suffering from. Your wife is ill is she, and you live in THE-er-just-outside-the-town, do you? I know where that is, I’ll find you, if I want to, that is.

  The fist lands straight on the snarling mouth with the advantage of surprise, paralyzing the mind behind the fist as much as it disfigures the face beyond it, so that the returning blow astonishes equally. The side-street rocks, then straightens. The grip is less strong than expected, the staggering is unsteady, the man is feeble, sick perhaps, tears burn the eyes, the grip lasts longer than expected, and aching burns the throat and head, the staggering is unsteady, the side-street rocks, the paving stone moves up. Innumerable trousers widen slightly at the bottom, grey or buff-coloured, like trees, or in creased grey denim like fig-tree bark, and some legs bare and thin and white. From this position in the gutter the paving stones look as large as tables.

  – Are you all right, man?

  – Of course, he’s all right. They’ve neither of them got the strength to hurt a fly.

  – Are you hurt somewhere?

  – Two old men, they should be ashamed of themselves, fighting like that.

  – Look at them, they’re crying now, both of them.

  – Licking their wounds. It’s disgusting.

  – Now then, what’s happening here?

  – Oh nothing, constable. An old Colourless man knocked down another. I don’t think any harm’s done.

  – You all right, man? Come on up then. What’s all this about? You fighting at your age? Who started it?

  – I’m not old. I only look old. On account of the –

  – Is it? Yes, it is. Constable, I know this one. I say, aren’t you Lilly’s husband? Yes you are. His wife works up at Mrs. Mgulu’s, Western Approaches, you know, that’s where I work and I’ve seen him around. I think he does odd jobs.

  – Oh, well, if you’d like to see to him I won’t take the matter further. Western Approaches, you said, Mrs. er? Mrs. Jim. Thank you. How about you, man, are you hurt?

  – Don’t you touch me!

  – Now then, now then, I’m entitled to lay hands on you if you give me cause. I suppose you started this?

  – I say, you are Lilly’s husband aren’t you? Oh, thank goodness, I’d hate to have perjured myself to the law of the land. Whatever got you into that mess? Well, never mind now. I think you’ve wriggled out nicely. I’m Mrs. Jim. I daresay Lilly’s talked to you about me. Look, would you like me to help you home? I’ve only got a bit more marketing to do if you’d like to wait for me in that bar. No? I think you should at least have a drink. You look very shaky. And perhaps a bite to eat. Come along, now. I’ll pay for it, don’t worry. That’s it. Just hold my arm. I work up at Mrs. Mgulu’s you know, that’s where I must have seen you.

  At home there would be a remedy. A remedy would be read, it would occupy the air. Or a letter from the Labour Exchange, according to our records. At home the gruel would be brought.

  The palm wine tastes a little acid, the bread a little sour. Sooner or later Mrs. Jim will go and finish her marketing. Mrs. Jim has gallstones. She’s anaemic, you know. I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s pernicious. But Mrs. Jim is the picture of health, pale pink and fleshy and bedworthy in a purely physical way. She certainly lives in the present. She has adapted to her environment, has Mrs. Jim.

  – Well, you don’t have much to say for yourself, do you? I can’t imagine your ever saying enough even to get into a fight. But maybe it’s shock. Perhaps you’d rather have had mint tea? No, you just sip that quietly while I finish my marketing then I’ll see you home. You can help me carry some of the bags as a matter of fact. I shan’t be long.

  Inside the avenue of the mind, that functions in depth, Mrs. Mgulu sits back in the cushions of the vehicle as it glides smoothly out of the town. The shining hair is coiled up high, dressed in gold chains and off the face, cave-blue through the blue glass and the wide lips mauve.

  – That looks like Lilly’s husband just ahead. Olaf, will you slow down so that I can see? I hear he had a little trouble in town with a Colourless ruffian. Perhaps he could do with a lift. Yes it is him, will you stop. Hello, there. Can I give you a lift? How are you? You don’t look too good. Jump in.

  The concrete huts move slowly by, grey in the shimmering heat. No. The sun beats down into the nervous system that has no foliage to protect the nerve-ends. The road burns through the thin soles of the canvas shoes. Mrs. Mgulu walks lightly alongside, wearing something diaphanous, smelling of aloes and hair fixative. The vehicle moves slowly ahead waiting upon her fatigue. But she walks lightly alongside, although the tall acacia trees give insufficient shade. The number of the vehicle is eight four … the number of the vehicle is insignificant.

  – Oh but I love walking. Especially with someone. I never really see anything by car. I never really see anything except with you. Look at the concrete huts moving slowly by, grey in the shimmering heat. The road burns through the thin soles of your canvas shoes, I expect, as it burns through my gold sandals.

  – The tall acacia trees give insufficient shade.

  – The number of my vehicle is 8473216.

  – It wasn’t the way you think, you see, he told the employment clerk the pills were bad for us, and the clerk made him take it there in front of him and me too so I spat mine out and he saw me and well it turned out that he meant genocide, and I said he was mad and he said, oh he said horrible things, he called me cold-hearted. You know I’m not, don’t you?

  – Now you really mustn’t go believing everything you hear from the man in the street.

  – That’s what Mr. Swaminathan says.

  – Ah, my old friend Mr. Swaminathan. Is he still swaying away at the back there?

  – He’s there all right. But he refuses to acknowledge my existence. It’s very hard. He just watches. He watches me desire you, he occupies me with you like a sneak and a small-time spy. I would prefer him out of the way, I would prefer to give myself entirely over to desiring you, but he is one of the warm-hearted and I cannot transfer any energy to him to move him out.

  – That isn’t true. You know that isn’t true, don’t you?

  – No. It isn’t true. You are quite right. He is no longer there. He hasn’t been there for a long time.

  – Because I am there. Wholly and fully, my presence burns up your psychic energy as the road burns through the thin soles of your shoes. I shall always be with you, talking to you and sharing your observation of phenomena, until you die, because that is the way you want it, and I am your dark reality.

  – I don’t want it. I never wanted it, I was happy watching flies and eating gruel and talking to myself and making mental love to my wife. Why did you have to take an interest? I didn’t ask for your interest. I didn’t ask to be confront
ed with your accomplishments and your possessions. Why did you have to flaunt your privileges at me? All privilege brings its dissatisfactions and the privilege of health is no exception. I didn’t ask to be psychoscoped. It’s made me ill. I wasn’t ill before. Why did you have to enter and occupy me in this way? I don’t even like you.

  – Because you are my servant and you do as I tell you.

  The Settlement is on the right. The hot road continues emptily on then vanishes into the olive groves. In the distance on the hill the upper storey, dazzling white, the flat roof of Western Approaches emerges from greenery that looks grey in the shimmering heat. The fig-tree’s foliage is deeply green, the leaves are large and still, five-lobed, clear-cut and stiff against the tense blue sky. The rough grey bark is wrinkled in the bend of the trunk like an old man’s neck, and along the trunk like a thigh of creased grey denim irregularly shot with darker thread. The rough grey bark is shot with black lines made up of discontinuous black dots, but interrupted by transverse cracks where the trunk curves, or by crinkly craters where branches have been cut away. The rough grey bark is lined and wrinkled like the inside of the brain. The dotted lines make up a system of parallel highways, along which march unending convoys of ants, each one behind the other like jungle porters, patient and purposeful as neural impulses on their way to the synapse in the neural ganglia, where with the action of alkaloid substances such as muscarine for the parasympathetic system and adrenaline for the sympathetic, annulled respectively by atropine and ergotoxine, they will produce their influence on the effector cells. On the right of the nose, with the left eye closed, the thickest grey branch sweeps horizontally below the starting line of the yellow grass patch where Mrs. Ned’s shack begins. The cunonia at the corner sticks out its wine-red spike from a mass of crimson leaves brilliant in the sun. On the left of the nose, with the right eye closed, it underlines Mrs. Ned’s shack, as if Mrs. Ned’s shack were built on it as on a boat with the sea of foliage below, where the long grey twigs it bears curve downwards and then up, in large U-letters just discernible through the leaves.

  – Here is the Colourless Settlement. This, Mrs. Mgulu, is where I live. Look at the fig-tree, how it leans. No, it isn’t my fig-tree, it belongs to the State I suppose, but I love it nevertheless. That is my bungalow, there, well not mine exactly either, yes, we’re comfortable thank you, though I must admit the atmosphere was friendlier in the bidonville, where we lived before. That’s Mrs. Ned’s shack, next door, she’s the one I was mentally unfaithful to Lilly with, as you see she’s very close. There is also Mrs. Jim who despite her gallstones is pale pink and fleshy and bedworthy in a purely physical way, she lives in the present, you see, and has adapted to her environment. But she lives further away. I don’t know where Mrs. Jim lives.

  Leaning against the horizontal branch it is possible to observe the shacks and yet remain hidden by the foliage of the fig-tree, the trousers of faded denim blending with the trunk no doubt, from far away. Look at the smooth grey bark, Mrs. Mgulu my love, how the lines run parallel down the length of the branches, but discontinuous, and interrupted by transverse cracks where the trunk curves. On the smaller branches the dotted lines are not immediately visible to the carelessly naked eye, but a microscope would certainly reveal a system of parallel highways along the branches in discontinuous black blobs like vehicles immobilised. How large do you suppose they seem to the ants, or to the neural impulses?

  That is how the malady begins. The onset is insidious, well advanced before diagnosis. The fingers tap the smooth grey bark which remains firm on palpation and retains its characteristic notch. The imagination increases in size progressively and by no means painlessly until it fills most of the abdomen. Enlargement of the lymphatic glands may occur in the later stages of the disease, with a general deterioration to a fatal termination. The absolute knowledge that Mrs. Mgulu writes no notes and walks along no highway and does not nod and aches there by her absence, the absolute knowledge enters the body through the marrow bone, and up into the medullary centres, down the glosso-pharyngeal nerve no doubt or the pneumogastric, at any rate forward and down into the throat which tightens as the knowledge spreads into the chest and hurts. Sooner or later it will reach the spleen, which will increase in size until it fills the world. From ground-level on the dried-up yellow lawn the arch formed by the leaning trunk and the down-sweeping branch frames a whole landscape of descending olive groves beyond the road, which itself disappears behind the bank. The grey framework of the trunk and branch is further framed by the mass of deep green foliage. Inside the frame is Lilly’s white face aureoled in wispy hair. A telescope might perhaps reveal, from this position on the dried-up lawn, that the squint is less wide, less blue, hardly visible at all at this distance and in the luminosity of the midday sun.

  – Careful, you’ll get sunstroke there. What have you been up to? Mrs. Jim came back from town and said you’d been in a fight. I got off early. You look awful. Why don’t you go inside, it’s cooler. Or at least lie in the shade of the fig-tree. Listen, would you like your gruel brought out here for a change?

  Daily from 8 a.m. outside the Labour Exchange no dark blue face the size of a bungalow lies upside down, but a group of smooth, scaleless green monsters with green faces and the whites of black eyes bulging from strips of black skin like masks between the green below the eyes and the green skull caps above. The group surrounds another green monster recumbent with black snout. SO GRIPPING, SO HUMANE. The chief surgeon grips the knife. He is giving a lecture on recumbent humanity. Splenectomy is contra-indicated. The prognosis is poor. The disease is specially characterised by the peculiar greenish infiltrating subperiosteal masses in the bones of the skull, particularly in the orbits and sinuses. When in the marrow they lead to bone erosion. The green colour of the tumour masses fades rapidly in the air and light, being a protoporphyrin derivative. Symptoms, marked exophthalmos, diplopia, caecity, surdity, pyrexia, purpura. The doctors wear the masks of the humans, green is the colour of the biosphere, COME OVER INTO PATAGONIA AND HELP US.

  The Governor’s vain Asswati face is cut diagonally by a shaft of light reflected in the glass, from left to right across the nose to the right ear, or, in his position, from right to left across his nose to his left ear. Beneath the shaft of light, the Governor juts his stalwart lips and stares fiercely out regardless from the far wall beyond the heads of the employment clerks at their grilled partitions. With his unbandaged ear the Governor listens to the shuffle of feet and the murmur of male voices and the calling out of names and the squeaking of hinges on metal cupboard doors and the banging of same, not to mention files and metal drawers, and he gazes benignly down. His dark eyes meet all eyes that meet his, but the meeting is not compulsory. The heads of the employment clerks are mere black silhouettes behind the small print of the grid partitions. The neighbour’s magnifying-glass moves away from the micronewscard which drops between the thighs on to the mottled floor.

  – If no news is good news then news must be bad news.

  The syllogism has a soft centre, firm nevertheless on palpation, retaining its characteristic notch.

  The vibration of the voice has not been sufficient to carry the witticism into the neighbour’s left ear, and the syllogism evaporates, leaving no trace of error either in the air or in the mind, except perhaps a residue at the back of the brain, greenish in colour, to be dealt with by Dr. Fu Teng in his own good time, slow time. In the corner of the eye, the neighbour is Chinese, a refugee from Sino-America perhaps, or a renegade from Chinese Europe. The magnifying-glass recedes and then advances into his left trouser pocket, making a circular bulge on the thigh.

  Underneath the eyelids the men continue to mill about the Labour Exchange but the whole scene goes grey. Nevertheless it bears a close resemblance to the real thing. The ceiling is pink and veined in white, and a long way away. The wall ahead is pink, above and all around a glossy and pale orange door. To the immediate right, close to the body, is a wall of pink veined ma
rble, not very high, half a metre perhaps or a little more, edged by a two centimetre mud-coloured band where the marble has been removed. To the left of the body is another wall of pink veined marble, half a metre high or a little more, also edged with a mud-coloured band where the marble has been removed. Beyond this low wall, some distance away is a high pink marble wall joining the pink marble ceiling. The wall beyond the low wall to the right is mud-coloured, with some of the pink stripped off, the frontier between the pink and the mud being straight and vertical half-way up the wall, then zig-zagging to the ceiling. Good heavens, you look as if you were lying in a coffin. You’d better give me your hand and try to sit up. Look, I’ll sit down here with my feet in the bath and you lie alongside it with your head on my lap. Just relax. Close your eyes. Under the red networks of your eyelids in the sunlight the dark curves of my lips and nose seen from below my breasts that are ensilked in orange fill up your eyespace shimmering with yellow and black and pale and hectic red. Nevertheless it bears a close resemblance to the real thing, as a mere lifting of the eyelids could prove. The left nostril wears an alexandrite set in gold. In daylight the stone is blue. At dusk the stone is green. In the electric light the stone is mauve. At the moment it is possible to take one’s choice, daylight, for example, in the refracted orange of the summer sunset as it slants into the pink marble bathroom on the top floor of the big house. The bathroom, however, faces South. Beyond the flowering shrubs and trees the mimosas are over.

  In the corner of the right eye, the neighbour is gone. At dusk the alexandrite is green. In daylight it is bluey-green, at night a pinky-mauve. At the moment it is possible to take one’s choice, cyclamen for example, on the dark velvet skin. In the corner of the right eye the neighbour is pale and Scandinavian blond. His head leans against the wall and he stares vacantly ahead of him, into the eyes of the Governor perhaps, compulsively. There is thus no obligation to disturb the air with errors and platitudes. The Governor listens to the shuffle of feet and the murmur of male voices and the squeak of metal hinges and the banging of metal doors, not to mention the multiplied buzzing of flies. The shaft of light has slipped down the dark face, bandaging the mouth and leaving the nose quite flattened. The nose is a broad-based triangle with the two nostrils wide apart, rounding the lower angles. Sooner or later the identity will be called out and the occupation demanded.