Life's Fare

by Greg Yevko

  Umhlabathi 6.3 9:23am Wednesday July 17th 1996; the Hospice

  His death was not acclaimed as “magnificent.”

  In its own way it did at least bring a smile to the carer’s face. As soon as she started to prepare the body for the grieving relatives, she found it. First, a rolled-up stash of five-pound notes in the top pocket of his pyjamas. Then several more notes of larger denominations in his right-hand jacket pocket. Stanley had often worn his jacket over his pyjamas; always be prepared, he used to think. Then a small bag of coins (eight pounds and fifty-six pence as catalogued) in his pyjama bottoms right hand pocket. Then some more money in his other pocket and, finally, neatly rolled up in the turn-ups of his pyjama bottoms covering his emaciated ankles, a further collection of various notes, making a grand total of two hundred and seventy-eight pounds and fifty-six pence. In the left-hand pyjama jacket pocket, a betting slip with six marked-up horses for the afternoon’s races at New Market for Wednesday 17th July and a battered old bottle cap with a cockerel on it. This had confused some of his extended family greatly.

  Yesterday he had borrowed £10 from Marlene, to put on the horses, claiming in a frail voice, “Those thieving bastards in here have taken all my money and left me with nothing,” and of course she had dutifully handed over the single, crisp note – who could refuse a dying man? Even up to the end, the complicated relationship built on distrust and disharmony had endured to its final and endearing conclusion.

  His family were with him at the end. They spoke to each other in hushed tones, almost as though they were afraid that he would wake up if they talked too loudly. They watched as the morphine took him in and out of reality. They saw him as he eventually found the release he had been looking for over the recent painful days, but he didn’t really see them; Stanley had indeed taken his last trip on his journey through life.

  When the family were shown to the room where Stanley was laid out after all the formalities of registering his death had been taken care of, Marlene was the first to cry. To the surprise of those around, she tenderly leaned over the drawn features of her now dead husband and gently kissed his forehead. “Stubborn old bastard,” she whispered, “I do love you.”

  Everyone wore black; well, nearly everyone. Standing out in a dazzling flower-covered jump-suit was a sprightly young toddler, barely twenty months old, who didn’t really comprehend what was actually taking place on that overcast Friday morning, though she knew she had to be quieter than she normally was because her mummy had told her that this was a special occasion where people were usually quiet and were sometimes quite sad.

  “This is the bit where we say goodbye to Granddad,” whispered Maria closely into her ear, and she pressed a solitary rose into the infant’s small hand, having already removed the thorns from the stem to avoid even more tears then there already were from the small crowd gathered around the rectangular hole in the ground.

  Marlene had gone first, walking up to the grave, saying a barely audible and brief, “Bye, Stanley, see you on the top deck of the bus soon,” before kissing her rose and gently tossing the bud onto the top of the coffin, wiping a solitary tear from her right cheek. The young toddler was a bit confused as to why people should be throwing nice flowers into a big hole with a box in it, but she dutifully followed her mother’s instructions when it was their turn to go up to the grave. Clutching her mother’s hand tightly, she slowly edged up to the side of the hole and gingerly peered in. She gave a quizzical look to her mother, who raised her eyebrows before nodding briefly, then she turned back to the hole, bent over it a little and at the top of her voice yelled, “Bye Granddad!” before bringing her arm back and hurling her rose on top of the others with all the force that a young child could muster. She then looked down into the hole and waved energetically with a big smile; she had always liked the way Granddad had held her tightly and then made funny faces at her to make her laugh.

  Everybody smiled; one of the pall-bearers was even heard to quietly say to his colleague, “Well, an old one going out, a new one just starting off, time just keeps marching on, no matter what we do …”

  Somewhere, way out of sight of anybody on Umhlabathi, Tempus flipped the bulb over once again.

  Some months later, on a damp and drizzly October weekend, Nollie and her sister Alvita were making one of their regular visits to make sure that there were fresh flowers in the many vases dotted around the new marble head-stone, now standing proudly at the top of Stanley’s grave. As they approached, they overheard a conversation between two perplexed middle-aged men who had been staring at the head-stone.

  “Well, I’ve seen some head-stones in my time, adorned with all sorts, but never one with both a cockerel and a horse’s head in the corner,” the one with the greyer hair had said with a puzzled shake of his head to his colleague. “Any idea what that’s all about?”

  “Not 100% sure,” his friend had replied in a whisper, “but I know that old Stanley liked a bit of a flutter. That’ll explain the horse, but no idea where the chicken fits in.”

  “Maybe he liked roast chicken dinners? Maybe he supported the French rugby team?” suggested the first man in a half-hearted manner.

  “Nah, don’t think so,” replied his friend, screwing up his face in a contorted twist as he tried to recall anything from his past encounters with Stanley, all be they brief ones, which might throw light onto the cockerel conundrum.

  “Excuse me,” interjected Nollie, “could I possibly get there to sort these flowers out, please?”

  “Oh, sorry, love, of course, we’re just on our way,” stuttered the man, taking a half-step backwards as though he had just been given a small nudge, since he had been so preoccupied in their deliberations that he had not noticed the two young ladies quietly approaching the grave.

  As Nollie and Alvita went about the flowers, discarding the withered and dead ones, tenderly rearranging the evergreen foliage that offset the colourful radiance of the new ones that were being added, the man plucked up enough courage to ask them a question.

  “Excuse me, love,” he started. Nollie had never particularly liked the lazy terminology that a lot of men used to address her if they didn’t know her actual name. She turned to face him, a false smile slightly betraying her annoyance. He thought he’d risk it. “You don’t happen to know why there’s a chicken, or is it a rooster or cockerel, on this head-stone do you?” he asked.

  Nollie looked across to her sister, and gave a small wink, unnoticed by either of the two men.

  “Well, do you know,” she said in a very serious tone, “I’ve no idea really, it’s a bit of a puzzle. Maybe you might be able to work it out for me? I wish you all the best luck in the world in trying to solve that one,” and she returned to rearranging the flowers with Alvita, who was hiding her face as she bent over the grave, giggling quietly to herself.

  The two men retreated from the grave, wishing the sisters a good day, and made their way back to the cemetery entrance. Once safely out of ear-shot, the first man turned to his compatriot with a sombre face. “Well, I’ve no idea what she’s on about, but I’ll tell you something. Before I go, I’m going to make sure I design me own headstone, thank you very much,” he concluded. “I ask you, a chicken AND a horse’s head. What is this, the bleedin’ Mafia?”

  Golland 6.2 Fryday, bit later on

  “Oh, is that it?” Bondje was desperately trying to not sound disappointed.

  “Indeed, tavarisch, that most definitely, is it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of these two-legs make a comeback once they’ve decayed.” Perun then thought for a moment “But there was that one time that seemed to kick up quite a stir right back at the start of the week when The Creator got involved and did in fact give a very small extension to one of them after he had technically expired; she seemed to take quite a shine to that one with the long hair for some reason. To be fair, he did have a nice smile.”

  Bondje did indeed recall the episode, and all the ramifications that followed when a
whole bunch of the two-legs decided that this was Divine Intervention and went around trying to convince all the others that it was going to happen again one day; the gods had had a quiet chuckle on that one, knowing that The Creator had decided to definitely NEVER get involved like that again – it had caused far too much trouble all over their newly created Umhlabathi.

  “So, pros and cons then, tavarisch. Can the two-legs cope or not?”

  Bondje exhaled somehow.

  “Well, first of all, let’s look at how well they cope. They’re generally good in small groups.”

  “But mostly, dangerously bad in bigger groups,” interjected Perun.

  “Whoa, whoa let’s just list the good things first then compare that to a list of the not so good.”

  “You mean the bad, don’t try and soften it to Not So Good, tavarisch.” Perun had clearly not done the second part of the supervisory skills course on positive spin at this stage, unlike Bondje who was being fast-tracked by The Management.

  “As I was saying,” Bondje continued, “Good in small groups, especially when one of them disgorges a helpless one that they then have to look after.”

  Perun gave a dismissive snort.

  “Second, they can be good at coping sometimes in bigger groups. Like that, what did they call it, Hearing Aid, when they were able to distribute things to other two-legs in different, harsher areas who didn’t have much themselves, in order to help them out?”

  “It was Live Aid, tavarisch, and that gathering of two-legs for doing good things has been more than offset many times by bigger groups doing bad things like blowing up large bits of each other’s areas that we spent all last Sadderday’s class putting together; how uncaring is that?”

  “Ah, but we are comparing how they can cope, rather than whether they are specifically doing good or bad things per se,” countered Bondje, suddenly realising that he might be onto something that could swing the wager more into his favour.

  “And in most cases, looking at our case study, whenever something difficult has cropped up, like lack of the stuff they use to exchange for things for example, they seem pretty ingenious in working out ways around it, like working for longer so that someone else gives them more.” Both of the gods had nodded approvingly, albeit in a headless sort of way, when the two-legs had initiated some sort of system where if A had an abundance of something that B wanted, they agreed to swap bits of that with something that B had a lot of, which A might want. A great example of coping, Bondje had declared triumphantly. Eventually though, this very workable system got corrupted to one which relied on B having to earn things which appeared to have no physical value to swap for the things he wanted from A; this is what they had called Money. After that invention, they had heard the two-legs use strange terms like Market Forces which neither of them could actually work out or see, no matter where they looked all over their creation, but somehow these powerful forces seemed to alter at will how much of this new material would need to be exchanged for exactly the same item at any particular time. Baffling, they had agreed.

  “What about providing shelter then?” Perun felt he had a good case here as there seemed to be two-legs dotted around everywhere who didn’t appear to have even the most basic of shelter, ranging from millions of them in some of the hottest areas on Umhlabathi, to small groups who just seemed to sleep wherever they could in the heavily built up parts of their creation; often in what were called doorways or under the things that the two-legs had made to get over the wet bits that the gods had put there. “Bridges, I think?” Bondje had helpfully tried to clarify.

  “Whilst I might agree that this is definitely an area for improvement in general, may I take you back to the wording of our wager in which we agreed to monitor a small sub-section of the two-legs, namely the funny looking two-leg from my area and any of the helpless ones he was responsible for disgorging,” declared Bondje in courtroom-like tones.

  “But he didn’t actually disgorge any, tavarisch.”

  “You’re not getting me on a technicality, Perun, you know better than me that only the ones with the two lumps in the front disgorge in practice, but it has to be prefaced by the jerky-jerky thing which needs a two-leg without the lumps.”

  “Fair enough,” retorted Perun, though he was confident that there was no danger of the wager slowly slipping from him, “But do you recall the first shelter that your two-leg got for his mate; it was something that I’m pretty sure I saw going around picking up and dropping off lots of different two-legs all the time when it had an engine. Seems to me that it was providing shelter for many more two-legs before it became a shelter for just the couple of two-legs that we were observing. That can’t be a good sign of coping, surely?”

  Bondje contemplated for a moment. “Weeellll,” he started, drawing out the word as if to emphasize his thoughtfulness. “It did demonstrate to me that the two-leg was pretty inventive to adapt something in the way he did, in order to use it in a way totally contrary to the design for its original purpose. That’s got to be classed as coping in my book.”

  Perun snorted derisively, and Bondje could see that he was not going to get far with his argument unless he came up with a killer blow. He thought hard, then it dawned on him.

  “O M G,” he said out loud, leaving large pauses between each syllable. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but he had definitely heard it several times down on Umhlabathi, and it was always followed by some significant pronouncement.

  “I’ve just realised – we are BOTH right!” He swirled around in his excitement as things started to get more and more clear in what could have been his mind.

  “Tavarisch,” uttered Perun, “now you are, how do they say it, taking the piss.” Perun was clearly not impressed by his colleague’s new approach to their situation. “We cannot both be right, now can we?”

  “But that’s exactly the point, we CAN both be right.” Bondje had started to swirl around in ever more agitated circles, and was coming across like an Agatha Christie detective, pulling all the disparate pieces together before revealing the killer punch as to Who Did It, and more importantly, The Way They Did It.

  Perun decided to let Bondje have his moment.

  “Okay, tavarisch, enlighten me,” was all he said.

  “Clearly,” began Bondje, “these two-legs are pretty useless when first disgorged, but then, as they get bigger, they do get more capable. They then have a period when they try and make the most of wherever they happen to live on Umhlabathi, and let’s face it, there are some pretty grotty places on our little team-building project. But at the end of the day, whether it be one of their extremely ridiculously short days, or our more normal length days of ten turns of the bulb, at the end of the day, they cope as best they can. Most of the time it works out for them, sometimes it doesn’t. Some of them definitely don’t cope, most of them definitely do. As they get nearer their decay time, more of them fail to cope, but then others rally round to help. I like the way that The Creator made the early part of non-coping after disgorging very similar to the end part of non-coping just before decay; a touching piece of symmetry, I think. However, the important thing is that the bit in between demonstrates some amazing examples of being able to cope, even in our little case-study. So ultimately, neither of us is completely right and neither of us is completely wrong.”

  Bondje ended his summing up speech with what could almost have been a twirl of an unseen barrister’s gown, and let his triumphant presence pervade the atmosphere. He looked across at Perun with an air of expectation. “Well?”

  “Bollocks,” said Perun, “They can’t cope.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Golland 7.1 Sadderday

  It was Sadderday, and for once, Bondje was actually feeling quite sad. He had grown fond of the two-leg with the family that he and Perun had been studying during the last week. In spite of their sometimes-annoying little habits and rituals, no he realised, it was because of their sometimes-annoying little habits and rituals, there was a ce
rtain endearing element to the way they careered about Umhlabathi stumbling from crisis to crisis. Even though he had not been able to convince Perun of what he believed was his cast-iron logic, he had decided to take it as a moral victory. After having spoken to most of the other gods, there had been a general consensus that it did seem true that the two-legs went through from disgorge to decay in a bewildering state, flicking between coping and not coping. There were several other studies carried out by other gods which irrefutably confirmed this hap-hazard existence, but Perun was adamant that his view prevailed; sometimes it was just not possible to get your point across to a stubborn thunder-god.

  This week’s team-building topic was “Sustainability.” The Creator had challenged the break-out groups to come up with a system that could be shared by all the moving things on Umhlabathi to complement all the areas that had been finished during the previous Sadderday’s exercise. This system would need to be plentiful enough to provide all the food and energy that the moving things needed to keep from decaying too quickly, but would also need to be able to be replenished sufficiently so that there was stock ready for the next batch of moving things that came along. The Creator had also noticed that some of the moving things weren’t particularly good at sharing things out, resulting in a quite disproportionate impact according to which of the moving things had happened to end up in whichever specific area that her team had created last week. For example, there seemed to be a very unhealthy trend in the way some of the two-legs brawled over or hung onto the areas with the black sticky stuff which seemed to be a very important factor in the way most things on Umhlabathi had developed.