The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (4 page)

– So you see this top bit keeps coming off and that’s just where I beat the washing, it can’t take the strain I suppose.

The wash-tub is a rounded hollow of zinc encased in dark sodden wood which has cracked. Along the top in front. A new but bent board of thin wood lies on the ground in front of the tub, with nails sticking out of it. Next to it lies a hammer.

Sooner or later the bent board of thin soft wood will embrace the tub. The eyes of Mrs. Ned strike a tonic chord of expected notes. The arms no longer throw the voice about, the voice is quiet and the white arms naked to the elbow rest along the edge of the tub. The vertical upper arms, after the elbow, are wrapped in red and the fresh air absorbs the smell of washing-up water and sweat. The red cardigan partly conceals the goitre on the neck. Sooner or later a movement will have to be made. The kitchen, through the hanging beads, is dark.

Sometimes it is sufficient merely to speak, to say perhaps or I don’t think so, as the case might be, or even, in this
instance
, to hammer a nail into the bent board over the dark sodden wood, for the sequence not to occur. Such as, for example,

– Ooh! You gave me a shock, that went right through me.

– I don’t think so.

The white forearms move away from the edge of the tub, but one hand remains on it with the arm arching over.

Up at the big house, the mimosas are in bloom. Beyond the tall wrought-iron gates they rise and gracefully drape over the white wall separating the property from the road. The mimosas –

The conversation, during the hammering, takes the form of excited squeals and giggles.

– Ooh! You gave me a shock.

– Did I, my dear? And what would you say to this?

Or rather, the conversation, during the hammering, takes the form of admiring murmurs and modestly expressed advice. One hand remains on the edge of the tub with the arm arching over. The right leg stands so near that it would be possible to stroke it all the way up, thin though it is. The right leg is very white and granulated with black dots.

– The nails don’t get a grip. The wood is too sodden.

– I know. I need a whole new casement really.

The bent board of soft wood embraces the top of the tub. The hammer lies on the edge, then falls with a clatter into the rounded zinc tub, pushed by a careless movement. Both arms dart in to retrieve it, and the hands touch.

Beyond the open iron gates up at the big house the
plane-trees
line the drive, forming with their bare and upward branches a series of networks that become finer and finer as the drive recedes towards the house, made now discernible by the leaflessness. The network of bare branches functions in depth, a corridor of cobwebs full of flies.

– My tub seems to have broken, do you think you could come through to the back and have a look at it? If you don’t mind I mean.

The passage is almost cubic in its brevity, with walls at right angles. To the left, the kitchen is not luminous, but muddled and mottled, nor is it framed in red. A
tape-recorder
might perhaps reveal this to be the phrase that came and went, through the short dark passage with walls at right angles. There is otherwise no explanation for the lack of lodgers in the front verandah-room or for the lack of the red framework, or for the colourless mottled kitchen. Beyond the colourlessness the kitchen has once been painted in cream and green. The hanging beads over the doorway are mottled and make a crackling sound.

During the hammering, the arms no longer throw the voice about, the voice is quiet and the white forearms hang limp down the white apron, continued a little lower by the marble veined legs, thin and about one metre away.

It is sometimes sufficient to say nothing or, in this instance, to hammer a nail into the bent board over the dark sodden wood, for the sequence not to occur, if indeed, the
circumstances
have been brought about at all in that precise form.

– The nails don’t get a grip. The wood is too sodden.

– Did you say something?

– The wood is too sodden.

– I know. Your wife helped me with it earlier but it came off. I need a whole new casement really.

The bent board of soft wood embraces the top of the tub. The hammer lies on the edge.

– Were you winking at me as you came up to the
bungalow
? You were making such peculiar faces.

– I don’t think so.

The hammer falls with a clatter into the rounded zinc tub, pushed by a careless movement.

Beyond the closed wrought-iron gates of the big house the mimosas are just beginning to blossom. Feathery green branches droop like ferns over the white wall that separates the property from the road, scattered here and there with yellow dots. The white wall is gently rounded as the road curves and continues to curve, but almost imperceptibly. It is impossible at any one moment to see whether things are any different round the corner.

Mrs. Mgulu, on the other hand, takes an interest.

In the white wall, the glossy black door opens suddenly and a jet of icy cold water shoots out at face level.

– Ice!

Or alternatively,

– Aaah, sprtch, grrr brrr expressing iciness and force of water on face.

– Ha-ha! You dirty! You need washing.

Or alternatively,

– Oh, you poor man you. This was not intended. You look sick. Have some
Duodenica.

–
No.

– Ha-ha! You dirty! You need washing.

The Bahuko face grins behind the pursuing jet of water which seems to spray out from between the two rows of white teeth, though in fact two black hands must be holding the hose, which is made of red thermoplastic, and a dark but pink-nailed index finger must be on the empty nozzle-holder to make the jet spray instead of pour.

– Hee-hee-hee-hee.

The laugh is that of a delighted child.

The red thermoplastic hose lies inside the flower-bed like a snake. The brass nozzle-holder has no spray-nozzle and out of it the water pours gently around the stem of a laurel bush. The red thermoplastic hose curves out of the flower-bed and all the way up the path, then turns behind the white corner of a small house.

– Oh, you poor man, you look wet. Is it the bladder troubling you? Have some colimycin.

No, that’s the wrong one.

The other one laughs like a delighted child and says you dirty, you need washing.

In the white wall the glossy black door opens at last. Good afternoon, I’m the new gardener. But the reality is a negative of the previous images. Instead of the black man clothed in the pursuing jet of water, a woman stands framed in the whiteness, dressed in a black cotton overall, pale face, pale eyes that strike no note, pale hair. The waxiness is due to a deficiency in the liver. Behind the woman in the white frame the background is brown and cypress green.

– I’ve come about the gardening job.

– Oh, yes. My husband’s somewhere about. Come in.

The path leads straight up to a small white cottage. On either side of the path runs a narrow brown flower-bed and a cypress hedge. The converging greenery engulfs the woman in the black overall, which may after all be a dress, or a black rectangle on two white pillars, moving up the path. The path is made of pink hexagonal tiles, slightly elongated like benzene rings.

– Wait here. I’ll go and call him.

The left foot in its dirty canvas shoe is wholly contained in a benzene ring, the other, a little less dirty, has its big toe on the top dividing line like a carbon atom. If there were a single carbon atom at every angle the result would be graphite, soft and black. A little further up, two steps away perhaps, the left foot steps on the dividing line like the two shared carbon atoms of naphthalene, or for that matter the two shared carbon atoms of adenine, but no, the right-hand tile would in that case be pentagonal, more or less, with
complex
extensions to the right. Nevertheless the left foot angles off on the line that holds the atoms of the molecules together, linking the nitrogen atom to the carbon. The right foot makes a V with it, linking the nitrogen atom to the carbon and hydrogen. The cement between the sides of the long pink hexagons is thin and grey. In this manner, with the
appropriate
enzyme, represented perhaps by the left heel in a ribose molecule to the South East and a whole series linked by two energy-rich phosphate bonds, the energy can be quantitatively transferred from one molecule to another so that the
backward
and forward reactions are thermodynamically
equivalent
. Under biological conditions, however, the reaction is virtually irreversible. The forward reaction is attended by a large loss of energy in the form of heat. Unless perhaps –

– Good afternoon.

The head gardener is shocking pink, almost red, under a wide-brimmed hat. He looks ill, too, not like a gardener at all. Perhaps he only ordains the gardening. Quite clearly it is not radiation, or even kidney trouble, it must be his heart. As a dark pink man he is employable.

– I believe Mrs. Mgulu –

– What? Speak up, I can’t hear you.

– I believe Mrs. Mgulu –

– Ah yes. She told me about it. You know Mrs. Mgulu well?

– No. Oh no. It’s my wife, she –

– Oh, I see. Well isn’t that nice. I’m all for everyone
helping
each other especially us. Yes. I always say to Polly, that’s my wife, forty-four years we’ve been married and we’ve seen plenty I can assure you. I always say to Polly in these difficult times we must all pull together and sink our ex-differences as Westerners, don’t you agree?

The dialogue slowly but smoothly runs along the kindness of his blue eyes and many flowers are mentioned. The red network of veins over his face is very fine, especially on the cheeks where it forms a darker patch like a flower. The
dialogue
falters and comes to an end. The face turns the red network of veins away, leaving only the broad-brimmed hat and a deeply lined red neck. The voice starts up again, slow, deliberate. A monologue moves away on the other side of the moving hat and the red neck.

– That is poinsettia on that wall over there to the right. It will be coming out shortly. Now, did you know that the red flowers, or what appear to be red flowers, are not flowers at all, but leaves? The flower, now, is a modest little yellow thing, inside the red leaves, looking like a mere pistil. These are zinnias, or rather they will be zinnias, in due course. Here the winter irises are out.

– And the mimosas. I much admired your mimosas on the way here.

– Oh mimosas need no real care. Just sandy soil. The soil is very sandy here. Too sandy for almost everything we want. But modern chemistry is wonderful.

The left foot is inside another adenine molecule, the right foot having blotted out one of the energy-rich phosphate bonds East of ribose. The energy-rich bonds cannot be directly used for biological work of any kind, unless
transferred
to adenesine diphosphate so as to generate new
triphosphate
molecules. The phosphate radicals –

– I’m afraid that once a triphosphate molecule has shed its terminal phosphate radical its life as energy-donor is at an end. In my country –

– In your country men were lazy. That is why they lost the battle for survival. It is an article of faith.

– This dialogue is out of place, he’s nice, he likes you.

– They’re conceited, lazy, unreliable.

– We don’t bother with them here, they’re a typically temperate flower, you know. Mrs. Mgulu says that
chrysanthemums
remind her of damp December funerals in the North. But she’s fond of begonias, as you can see, and laurels. These are the young orange-trees. They have been wrongly planted though, in round hollows, instead of on mounds of earth. The water should drain away. They should never be allowed to soak. The gardener who did that seems to have been out of his mind, or drunk perhaps. Well, he was ill, actually, of the malady, he died last week I believe. He was supposed to know. The heel of the left foot is in the ribose molecule, the toe, which is wearing out the canvas, is in the adenine, no, that’s no use, they are pentagonal, it could,
however
, be oestrone, obtained from stallion’s urine. The right foot is wholly in the elongated hexagon, as in a coffin, during the rainy season. Quite likely they will have been seriously harmed. You would not be replacing him, however, he has in fact already been replaced. I want you, rather, for the watering, not now, but when the dry season begins. Here is one of the hoses, it is kept stretched along the inside of this flower-bed right back to where you came in. In the other direction, however, it will also reach as far as that wall,
beyond
the olive grove. There are six other hoses and six taps.

The thermoplastic hose is green after all that, and slithers along the left flower-bed. The feet move obliquely towards the phosphate energy-rich bonds East of ribose, it takes four or five hours, because of course every plant must be watered individually. Some plants like the spray, you see, and some prefer a plain jet, on the root, or even, some, around the root. These little castor-oil plants, for instance, they grow up large and massive, like those over there, but while they are so small and delicate the jet must not touch them at all, the stem would break. So it’s better not to use the spray-nozzle, but just to put your finger over the nozzle-holder whenever you need to spray. There is a spray-nozzle, however, for certain beds. You need not know much about gardening, but you will have to learn the whole drill. It must be done in the correct order, otherwise some beds get forgotten. The cactuses don’t need direct watering.

Both toes are in one large oblong paving stone. Each heel is in a smaller stone, and the line of cement runs between them. The heart beats reach the throat suddenly.

– I am a gardener. I received Vocational Training at the Resettlement Camp after the displacement. I –

– Did you say something?

– I am a gardener. I received Vocational Training at the Resettlement Camp after the displacement.