The Restless Supermarket (34 page)

But Clotho put a spoke in my wheel. As I gathered myself to speak, there was another rumpus at the door, and Errol and Co spilled off the escalator, laughing and swearing. The New Management rushed to defend the buffet.

*

The newcomers came rolling in. ‘Yo!’ they said. Raylene, Nomsa, Floyd. The new girl
–
she hadn’t been hardened yet, I thought, she might still be redeemed if someone showed her a good example. A new boy too, so black he would have served quite well as a printer’s devil. He would scarcely have required inking.

‘Huge,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Huge Semenya.’

‘Phil, Phil Harmonic.’

They were toting cardboard boxes full of bottled lager. ‘The invite said
BYOB
,’ Raylene explained.

Boy backwards to the blood group. Boy backwards. They should have ‘Yob’ on their caps instead of ‘Boy’. I should find some entrepreneur and suggest it as a new range. Yobs and slags: backward children. It would look good on a baseball cap, especially when they wore them back to front on their silly heads. Wessels says it’s because they don’t know whether they’re coming or going. Sometimes they wear their trousers back to front
too.

As their contribution to the ‘graze’, they presented an enormous plastic bag of fluorescent ‘Cheesnaks’. Floyd was carrying this fodder over his shoulder.

‘I see you brought the Cheese Snacks,’ I enunciated, not that I expected him to get the hint. ‘No nutritional value whatsoever. You may as well eat this newspaper.’

Spilkin piped up: ‘That’s a very unhelpful attitude, Aubrey. Some snacks will tide us over nicely while the buffet is out of bounds.’

Unhelpful? Aubrey?

Floyd took a dagger from his pocket and cut a corner off the bag. He was wearing one of his playsuits with cartoon characters on it, odd creatures, hybrids of human and hound. You’d think he was on his way to a pyjama party. Errol, by contrast, was wearing a tuxedo.

‘Where did you swipe that?’

‘Don’t be like rude, Mr T,’ Raylene said. Evidently they had all taken it upon themselves this evening to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do. ‘He bought it at the Jewish Benevolent in Yeoville.’

‘It makes him look like an assassin.’

‘He’s going to get a job as a bouncer.’

‘And he’s gonna practise tonight, keeping out those what wasn’t invited.’

Floyd began to make a circuit of the room, spilling the garish doodahs out on the tablecloths.

The ‘invite’? Had Wessels gone so far as to print invitations? And if so, why hadn’t I received
one?

*

‘Have you got any tassies?’ Another new one, going by the name of Ricardo. He’d mistaken me for the proprietor. I suppose I did look rather authoritative in my collar and
tie.

Tassy? Tassie? It rang a bell. I looked it up: small cup, a Scots term. This Ricardo had unexpected depths of vocabulary. His preference for small measures was encouraging too; the others were drinking straight from the bottle as if tomorrow would never come. Where had he sprung from, I wondered, as I steered him towards the paper cups. Perhaps there was a Highlander in his colourful background? I should find a way of testing his capabilities later on. He might even be ripe for ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’
–
and wouldn’t that be a turn-up for the books?

*

In the clutter behind the counter was a bottle of Pfeffi, the Pfiffiger Pfefferminzliqör, green stuff as thick as cough mixture. The neck of the bottle had been stretched by some clot of a glass-blower into a screw a yard long, and it had stood unopened on the top shelf, with its cap brushing the ceiling, since the reign of Mrs Mavrokordatos. Floyd climbed up on the counter to fetch it down
–
they just wanted to see the label, they said, and that bumpy thing in the bottom that looked like a gallstone
–
and before I could say a word, he had seized the floating trophy for ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ as well, and they were passing it around and cracking jokes. Lascivious comments about the little gymnast on the lid and their own reproductive prowess.

‘Where’d this come from?’

‘Ask old Churl,’ Wessels
said.

Another opportunity to introduce ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ came and went. It would be madness to raise a serious subject in the company of this rabble. I should bide my time until Errol and Co grew bored and wandered off into the streets. When the old crowd was left, in the lull, I would produce my
fait accompli
.

As for the trophy, much as it pained me, I must let them have their sport, they would tire of it soon enough; not one of them could concentrate for more than five minutes at a time on a single activity, pool excepted. At an opportune moment, I would recover the trophy and put it somewhere for safe keeping. While I was musing, the trophy had already been discarded on table No. 2, and they were beginning to drift off in the direction of the pool room with the Pfeffi in hand. Then that blasted Darlene sat straight up in her chair as if she’d been bitten by a horsefly.

‘What’s a champoin?’ she squeaked.

Stupid woman. No social graces whatsoever, all flaking varnish and crooked pri-horrities. She showed the trophy to Wessels, who buffed it with a forefinger like a maulstick and guffawed. I ought to have cleaned
it.

‘What is it
now?’

‘Put on your spectacle and you’ll check.’

Spilkin stuck his nose in and smirked, ‘This is rich. A corrigendum.’

‘Cham-poing!’ said Wessels, as if one of his inner springs had finally broken.

They were pulling my leg and pinching a nerve. Spilkin thrust the trophy at me, almost gleefully, and I glanced at the inscription, still touchingly familiar, although I had not examined it closely in years: Transvaal Gymnastics Union
–
Senior Ladies
–
Overall Champion. Except that it did in fact seem to say: Overall Champoin. I would have been grateful for a more palatable explanation, I might even have stomached a practical joke
–
but the simple transposition of i and o was irrefutable. Champoin. Engraved in metal. I had missed it. I saw at once what had happened: those io’s in ‘Union’ and ‘Senior’ had lingered on the retina and the after-image had bamboozled me. Then again, the whole inscription had been an irritation. Was it because I’d wanted too badly to wish it away that I’d overlooked a blunder so elementary even Spilkin’s illiterate lady friend had spotted
it?

I felt my cheeks burning as if she’d slapped
me.

‘I’m glad you noticed that.’ A melting ice cube jammed in my throat for a breathtaking instant and then slid down. ‘That’s half the reason I bought this particular cup. To test the mettle of the champion. Or should I say: the cham
poin
.
At the prize-giving.’

She was looking at me blankly. Suddenly, I couldn’t remember whether she knew about ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’. She must have, they all did. Surely Spilkin would have told her. When exactly had Darlene come among us? I looked at Spilkin, for whom my rather clever explanation had been intended. If he could be convinced … He looked back with a sceptical smile on his cherubic lips, but said nothing. I’d never noticed before quite how curvirostral he was, for a cherub.

‘There’ll be no silverware for you,’ I said, ‘if you don’t know your Onions.’ I’d been saving the joke for later, during my speech, but it slipped out now, as if Wessels had poked me in the
ribs.

No one laughed.

Once when Spilkin was doing the crossword, he’d got stuck on: O--o--. Authority on English language (6). Naturally I suggested Onions, thinking they had Charles Talbut in mind. Talk about throwing a spilkin in the works. They were looking for ‘Oxford’!

Excuse me, back in a
tick.

My legs felt wobbly. What a scrape I’d got myself into. And even though I’d managed to come out of it with my dignity unsullied, I saw afterwards that it was the turning point of the evening. From that moment on, it was downhill all the way. It was as if they’d sensed some weakness in my character, caught a whiff of blood on the breeze, and that gave them the courage to turn on me. Like the herd on the old bull elephant.

*

The Gentlemen’s room smelt of Jeyes
Fluid. I took off my spectacles and splashed water over my head. My excrescences were acting up
–
the eight o’clock occipital had begun to throb and its companion at nine was itching sympathetically. In the frosted glass of the window, behind which my precious copies dangled over the abyss, the familiar pattern of light appeared, like a pelt stretched to dry.
Tan me hide when I’m dead, Fred
.
The paper-towel dispenser was empty and I had to mop my head with my handkerchief.
So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde.
What do you call a boy who’s been mauled by a lion? Claude. One of Merle’s games. I felt queasy. I went into the cubicle to suck a mint. The lock had been jemmied, and I wedged the door closed with a cigarette box from the floor. On the back of the door was a childish drawing of genitalia, male and female, labelled ‘Supply’ and ‘Demand’. I could imagine them as two painted signs: Adam and Eve, Jack and Jill, Mickey and Minnie. Or pinned to the notice boards in the public library. What do you call a boy with a car on his head?
Jack.

A scrap of melody with its agmas in tatters bowled along the horizon of hearing …
tumblin’ along, like a tumblin’ tumbleweed
…
and disappeared into a merciful silence.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to take a short break. We’ll see you in ten minutes.’

Machines must be weary.

I sat down on the throne to compose myself. The King of the Elves. Glancing to one side, I saw that someone had bored a hole clean through the chipboard panelling. What would the vandals think of next? Putting my tireless right to the hole, I discovered that it afforded nothing but an unobstructed view of the urinal. Honestly, I was thinking to myself, of all the senseless
–
when Hunky Dory came in to relieve himself and made the purpose of the hole apparent. Thank God he didn’t see
me.

*

Once the neck oil had been broached, there was no stopping them. They wanted to sample every bottle on the shelves.
BYOB
went by the board. Put it on the tab, they said, devil-may-care, and Tone obliged hopelessly. Errol made his selections with the tip of his pool cue and potted the stoppers off the end of the counter into the waste-paper basket to demonstrate that they would not be needed again. Bokma.
Gestookt
,
it said. Bärenjäger honey liqueur, with a plastic bee stuck to the label. Moringué. Made of peanuts.

Wessels came hobbling at the first pop and pronounced the Friesian genever the best thing he’d ever tasted. It wasn’t long before everyone wanted to join in. Mevrouw Bonsma ordered Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and Errol made it a round for the company. The stuff tasted of chocolate.

Tone put a brave face on it. He unsealed concoctions even the Bogeymen had declined to consume and mixed up a cocktail called an Exploding Rainbow. Like a chameleon in a paintbox (punchlines, Wessels). Errol drank it down in a
gulp.

I’d never seen such drinking in all my days. It was inhuman. And they would keep forcing one to join in, practically pouring the liquor down one’s throat. When one was upset too, what with the shock of Merle’s death and the closing down of the Café to deal
with.

*

‘Howzit Phil.’ It was Huge, in the vernacular. ‘What you got there?’

‘This is a dictionary. The
Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current English
.
The words of a language with their meaning and usage. Mausoleum ~ mean ~ mean ~ mechanical.’

‘Come again?’

‘Do you know that you’re in here?’ I asked, thumbing. ‘See:
Huge
. Adjective. Very large.
Huge mountain, rat, difference.
’

‘It’s not “Huge”, man, it’s “Eug”.
E-U-G.
For Eugene. How’s your mind?’

*

Wessels had crept closer to eavesdrop on my discussion with Bogey. I could practically hear his ears flapping.

‘Apartheid is yesterday,’ Bogey was saying. ‘But things of apartheid is today. Many things, rememborabilia … benches, papers, houses.’

He pressed a business card into my hand. Dan Boguslavić. Apartheid memorabilia. Import/export. The postal address was in Rndbrg. He made me look at his catalogue, eight glossy pages smelling of fresh ink. Ostrich eggs with paintings on them: Sharpeville Massacre. District Six, Forced Removals. Student Uprising, 1976. Stephen Bantu Biko. I thought ‘Bantu’ was outré? It didn’t end with eggs, either. There were all sorts of things for sale. Benches, whites only. Easy to assemble. Blankets, prison, grey. Books, reference.

‘People will hardly be interested in this old junk.’

‘Wakey-wakey, Aubrey. Is same in Germany now. Uniforms and hats is coming very strong.’

‘It’ll be Yugoslavia next.’

‘Bingo. Is exactly so. Major turnover is rubble.’

As if I couldn’t see the fresh produce sprouting from his pockets.

‘What’s with the veggies?’ Wessels said,
sotto voce
,
the voice of the sot, canny as
ever.

‘Is help for keep mout’ busy. I am give up smoking an’ stress like
mad.’

In the pool room, Raylene was dabbing the end of her cue with a block of chalk. She must have felt my eyes upon her, because she glanced up and showed me the blue-smudged tip of her finger. Quite friendly, despite the muscles. There was Errol, bent over the table, with his bottom lip almost touching the cue. Full of himself, slopping over, dripping from that fleshy spout. And there was the improvable girl, drinking beer again and blowing smoke through her nose as awkwardly as a child who has stolen a cigarette from her mother’s handbag.

‘Quite a jôl, hey Aubs? And you said it would be a damp squid.’

Empty Wessels, the echo chamber, my incontinent, uncontinental china. He should be in Bogey’s catalogue amongst the novelty items.