The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (8 page)

Through the red plastic trellis made by the fly-swatter the winter sky in the rectangle of the shack window is white and luminous. It is difficult to remember the degree of luminosity in the summer sky. The summer sky being blue, which is in one sense almost the other end of the prism. The metal grid splinters the bland Bahuko face, which also shines with curved oblongs of white light, although the day is cool. No, this time it was a pale brown face, lean and Berber,
granulated
like basalt rock.

– Oh, now wait, someone rang through about you. Where are we? Yes, that’s it. From this Mrs. Mgulu, of Western Approaches. She wants you to start work tomorrow. In the garden.

– In the garden?

– It is not however permissible. No. The job isn’t odd enough.

The gesture is one of helplessness, palms flat and briefly facing upwards, paler, almost pink, and heavily lined. The gesture would be the same if the helplessness were faked.

– We have you down as an odd job man. This is a
gardening
job. The gardeners’ union would object. What did you say you used to be?

– A fortune-teller.

– Yes well, there’s no future in that, not nowadays.

The gesture is one of denial, palms up and vertical, paler, almost pink, and heavily lined. To live the gesture in
immobility
is to evoke it and therefore to have observed it. Or something like it, the palms being white perhaps, the head gardener’s, and the earth dark and damp, swallowing up all gestures as realised and rejected, leaving no trace of error in us.

– You won’t need the hose yet, at least not with water running through it, but you could practice with the dry hose. It’s best to identify with each of the plants one at a time. Then you will know exactly what its needs are on any one day during the dry season.

– Excuse me but how can I identify without the water?

– That’s a very good question. I congratulate you on having avoided the trap. What did you say your occupation was?

– Well at the moment –

– No, I mean, before the displacement.

– I used to be a welder.

– Oh, I see. Somebody told me you were a historian of sorts.

– That’s not true. Oh, no. Never.

– Oh well, it all comes to the same thing in the end. The important thing is in the holding and the applying of the instrument. At least you’ll be used to aiming correctly, whether it’s fire or water.

– It all comes to the same thing I suppose.

– Don’t be impertinent. We haven’t built you up yet. There will be a period of initiation. At the moment all the plants are shrivelled and blackened with the frost. But the leaf is in the seed. That is an article of faith. It is with the seed that you must identify. This will give time for the black and white image to percolate. We can add the colours later, when they crop up. The process is known as osmosis.

– What is the catch, though?

– Well, there might be an explosion. Too many to the square centimetre.

– The flowers a mass of red.

– I don’t know about red. In any case one type of explosion tends to cancel the other. The answer to the one is to fill the body’s reservoirs with minerals like potassium or carbohydrate complexes found in seaweed, so that radioactive minerals are absorbed and passed out. This of course tends to
encourage
the other type, the population explosion. However, it is a risk worth taking, and square centimetres can be enlarged.

– I thought you said that it’s best to identify with the plants one by one?

– That’s a very good question. But these are mere statistics in time. You must learn to identify with the flux.

– It’s an article of faith, I suppose … it is difficult to tell who’s talking in this type of dialogue.

– If you must have your schematisations the job can go to someone else. There are other candidates for initiation. But Mrs. Mgulu made a particular point of taking a special interest.

The number of the vehicle has no numerical significance. The gesture is of holding a conventional weapon. A
flame-thrower
for example, or an atomic machine-gun. Sooner or later some such interruption will be inevitable. Under the fig-tree, however, as in a brain, there is only immobility. The sky is entirely filled with long grey twigs that poke into the eyebrow line topping the field of vision. In the lower part, on either side of the nose, the branches that bear the twigs are thick and contorted. To the right of the nose, with the left eye closed, the thickest branch sweeps horizontally along the edge of the grass patch, underlining Mrs. Ned’s shack, as if the shack were built on it. To the left of the nose, with the right eye closed, it darkly cuts across Mrs. Ned’s dark shack, cancelling it almost. Close up, the fig-tree looks blasted, filling the sky with its metallic trellis.

– The gardeners’ union, however, would not object to your working overtime only. At overtime rates I’m afraid, which is quarter-pay at the moment.

– That’s all right. What are the overtime hours?

– In the dry season twelve to three. In winter seven to ten.

– But it’s dark at seven in winter.

– Yes well, as a matter of fact it’s rather a nominal
concession
anyway, because as you know in this time of severe unemployment overtime is almost universally disallowed. We’d have to get a special permit for you. Oh, but wait now, someone rang through about you. Mrs. Mgulu, that’s it. Oh well in that case the special permit might not be necessary.

The pinkness of the flower is its gesture. It is essential to hold on to that. The earth is dark with mould. As humus decays it yields carbon dioxide, which, dissolved in the soil water, attacks the mineral particles and makes available the phosphate and potash they contain.

In the white wall the glossy black door opens suddenly. The woman stands framed by the whiteness dressed in a black cotton overall. Pale eyes, pale hair, and the face is waxy. Have some Metabol. You dirty, you need washing. Behind the woman in the white frame the background is brown and cypress green.

– Good morning.

– Yes?

– 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 the converging cypress hedges engulf 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 cypress hedges are trimmed flat and square at eye-level. On the other side of the left-hand hedge is the field of tomato plants protected from the heat by straw wigwams that stretch out like a vast encampment. On the other side of the right-hand hedge the tall cob-corn grows higher than the hedge.

– Wait here, will you, I’ll go and call him.

The left foot, in its dirty canvas shoe, is in an elongated hexagonal tile like a benzene ring, or, for that matter,
aminobenzoic
acid. Benzoic acid given to an animal reacts with amino-acid glycine and is excreted as hippuric acid. The heel is on the atoms nitrogen hydrogen two, the toe on the atoms oxygen two hydrogen, or for that matter on the atoms sulphur oxygen two nitrogen hydrogen two, the ring of sulphanilamide being very similar in shape. The process is known as competitive inhibition. The shoe of the right foot is caked with dry mud, and looks dirtier than the shoe of the left foot, which is merely dusty. The big toe of the left foot is wearing out the canvas.

– Good morning.

– Good morning. I believe Mrs. Mgulu –

– Yes, she told me about it. You know Mrs. Mgulu well?

– Yes, I mean no. It’s my wife. She works –

– Oh, I see. Well I’m glad you’re punctual, there’s plenty to do. These old gladioli corms have to be lifted for one, and sorted for spawn which must be kept separately for saving. I suppose you know all about that. As a matter of fact they’ve been left there so long, owing to one thing and another, it may not be possible to keep the spawn this year, and it’ll soon be time to replant, from stock I mean. You’ll have to prepare the soil. I did think of just leaving them there, the winter’s been mild so far and the soil’s well drained, it would just have to be mulched with leaves. But the calochorti are going to be planted just in front of them at about the same time so it’s best to prepare the ground anyway. I suppose you know about celosia, do you? I’m trying a little experiment here.

Above the gesture are the two mauve flowers. The red
network
of veins is very fine. Mrs. Mgulu watches through the fine network of bare branches, from a window in the big house, made just discernible by the leaflessness. No, Mrs. Mgulu walks in the olive grove beyond the bougainvillaea, and in among the laurel trees, through the red poinsettia. Beyond the tall wrought-iron gates the mimosas are in bloom. Clay occurs mostly in colloid form which is not chemically inert, like sand, and this makes it indispensable to soil fertility. I suppose you know all about base exchange, for instance, with a salt solution like soil water, which releases the insoluble potassium and makes it available to the plant. The feeling is one of autotrophism. Mrs. Mgulu sits graciously at her dressing-table in the sand behind the large-leafed red poinsettia, having her hair brushed into sleekness. Mrs. Mgulu takes more than an interest.

That is how the malady begins. The onset is insidious, well advanced before diagnosis. Anaemia, progressive emaciation, fatigue, tachycardia, dyspnoea, and a striking enlargement of the abdomen due to splenomegaly and hepatomegaly. But the spleen remains smooth and firm on palpation and retains its characteristic notch. The black fingers tap the flaccid white flesh, the wrist emerging dark from the white sleeve of the doctor’s coat. The imagination increases in size progressively and usually painlessly until it fills most of the abdomen. The gesture is one of careful
investigation
. Enlargement of the lymphatic glands may occur in the later stages of the disease, with a general deterioration to a fatal termination. Humus has an exchange capacity roughly six times that of clay, it’s important to know these things.

Mrs. Mgulu steps out from behind the poinsettia, wearing something diaphanous.

– You must come at once, she says, it’s your wife, she’s very ill.

No. Mr. Marburg the butler steps out from behind the poinsettias.

– Mrs. Mgulu has sent for you, he says, will you kindly step this way.

– What is it? What’s happened?

– It’s your wife. I’m afraid she’s fallen ill.

Mrs. Mgulu steps out from behind the bedroom screen, wearing something diaphanous.

– I’m very sorry. My husband is doing all he can.

– Of course.

– I have to tell you that it’s the acute, fulminating type. Nothing can be done.

– What, the monocytic? Or chloroma?

– Oh, I wouldn’t know, you’ll have to ask my husband. Are you a doctor too, then?

– I once studied chemistry.

– Oh, I see. It’s terrible, she looks quite green. Would you like to see her?

The gesture is one of invitation. Behind the screen the black fingers tap the flaccid white flank. The eyes and gums are bleeding. The gums are maroon or purplish.

– Lilly. Lilly, it’s me.

Lilly is deaf.

– The leucocyte count is 700.000 to the square millimetre.

– Doctor, how long?

Dr. Mgulu is not a medical doctor but a Ph.D. (Tokyo), Economics and Demography. This fantasy is therefore ruled out of order by the Silent Speaker. The Silent Speaker’s gesture is one of benediction between the two mauve flowers above and the unborn plants below the humus which yields carbon dioxide that dissolves in soil water. It is important to fill the body’s reservoirs with minerals like potassium or
carbohydrate
complexes found in seaweed, so that radioactive minerals of a similar type are then absorbed and passed straight out.

– What exactly is the cause, doctor?

– The aetiology is unknown. It could be a neoplastic disease. Or due to metabolic disturbances. Or toxic factors. Chemically treated food and such. Has your wife been taking any sulphonamide derivatives? Some doctors still prescribe them.

– You know very well that she is Colourless.

At the moment, the fantasies are under control. Sooner or later, however, they will pervade the blood-stream and
increase
at a striking rate, paralysing the skull with tumorous growths. Sometimes it is sufficient merely to imagine an episode for the episode to occur, though not necessarily in that precise form.

At eye-level, through the window, about four metres away, and to the right of the fig-tree which overlooks the road, there is Mrs. Ned’s shack. The windowless clapboard wall immediately opposite is dark with age and the cunonia on the corner is dead, its red spike withered away. To the right, at the front of the house, the verandah looks dilapidated and the straw shed over the wash-tub at the back is crumbling down. The wash-tub has a bar of new yellow wood nailed along its top edge.

The view to the right, if it were visible from this position at the right of the window, would be of the fig-tree. The view obliquely to the left is of the corner of the porch belonging to Mrs. Hans, who has the shack next to Mrs. Ned’s. The view ahead, if a view were available, would consist of innumerable shacks in small bare gardens where nothing grows very tall. At least, that is the view from the kitchen window over the sink, which faces the South East side of the Settlement,
unblocked
by Mrs. Ned’s shack. If Mrs. Ned’s shack were not in the way all the innumerable other shacks to the South and South West would be visible from this window also, unless they had been removed, or destroyed, in the walking distance between the fig-tree and this window. A periscope might perhaps reveal a scene of pastoral non-habitation.

In the walking distance to the kitchen window, the shacks are innumerable. A rectangle of light ripples on the wooden table. The wrinkled wood inside the rectangle of light seems to be flowing into the wrinkled wood outside it, which looks darker. The wrinkled wood might be thought alive. But the rectangle of light is only a refracted continuation of an oblong on the red stone floor, made by an oblique ray of winter sun filtering through the hanging beads over the doorway and turning the red stone floor into a river. Soon the gruel will be served.