The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (7 page)

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, beating 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 attainment. 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 gesture is one of benediction. The hands are pink. The earth is pale and dry. The plants are blackened by the frost.

Or something like that, the hands being brown perhaps and the flowers a mass of pink.

– Mrs. Mgulu says they remind her of damp December funerals in the North.

The flowers a mass of red.

The black hands out of the white cotton sleeves spread over the flaccid white belly, the third finger of one
occasionally
tapping the third finger of the other, flatly brown on the white flesh. No, it is the head gardener who is in question and his hands are definitely pink. The earth is brown and healthy.

– The dry season hasn’t really begun yet, I don’t know what to do with you. That’s all I said you know. Well you could dig up those old bulbs, here, they should have come out two months ago, but the fellow who was to have done it died last week. As a matter of fact the best thing would be for you to get to know all the plants intimately before the watering begins. Every plant must be watered individually, you see. I’ll have to take you round and introduce you, one or two beds a day for the first couple of weeks, or you’ll never learn the drill. It must be done in the correct order otherwise some beds get forgotten.

– Those little orange-trees look wrongly planted, don’t they?

– Oh, they’re all right. Some plants like the spray and some prefer a plain jet on the root. Or even around the root. The important thing is to do them one at a time,
remembering
each plant’s individuality. The little orange-trees now, they don’t need watering every day, but every two or three days, and then you give them plenty, deep down into the root.

Above the gesture are the two mauve flowers. The red network is very fine.