The Folly

by Ivan Vladislavic

  They were waiting for the pot to boil when Nieuwenhuizen went into action. He raked a red-hot nail as long as a pencil from the coals, elevated it with a pair of wire tongs, dunked it in his water drum, waved it to disperse the steam, inspected it meticulously, approved of it, and held it up by its sharp point. “Do you stock these?”

  A tremor of foreboding ran through Malgas. He knew at once that a critical moment had been reached and he rose to the occasion like a fish to the bait. He narrowed his eyes professionally, took the nail, weighed it in one palm and then the other, tapped it on his thumb-nail and held it up to his ear, sniffed its grooved shank and pressed its flat head to the tip of his tongue. “Unusual. I could requisition them for you … but surely you won’t be needing such giants? If you were laying down railway lines or building an ark I could see the point of it, but for laths and joists and stuff like that something half this size would be twice as good.”

  “Don’t give me a thousand words,” Nieuwenhuizen said with a flicker of irritation. “I want three hundred of these, and so help me if they’re not exactly like this one I’ll send them back.”

  “I’ll do it, relax. We have a saying at Mr Hardware: ‘The Customer is always right.’ But don’t blame me —”

  Just then the pot boiled, Nieuwenhuizen jumped up to wrest it from the coals, and Malgas swallowed the meat of his sentence, which was “— when your place doesn’t have the professional finish, because the horns of these monsters are sticking out all over the show.”

  “The horns,” said Mr to Mrs, “the horns of the monsters. That was what did it. He finally saw my point of view. If he builds that house of his one day he’ll have me to thank.”

  particoloured. Castanets, chromium-plated, Clackerjack (regd. T.M.). Willow-pattern Frisbee. Mickey and Minnie, blessed by Pope (Pius). Pine-cone. Crucifix, commemorative, balsa-wood and papier-mâché, 255mm × 140mm. Calendar, Solly Kramer’s, Troyeville, indigenous fauna painted with the mouth, 1991. Clock, Ginza, broken (TocH?)

  It turned out that the factory couldn’t deliver before the weekend because of a strike (living wage, benefits, maternity leave) and so Malgas made a detour through Industria on his way home from work and picked up the nails himself. Two hundred and eighty-eight of them came pre-packed snugly in two wooden boxes designed to hold a gross each, and the remaining dozen had been taped into a bundle and wrapped in brown paper.

  Everything about this example of the packager’s craft reassured Malgas. The grainy deal boards and ropy handles spoke of concern for safety in transit and overall effect; but there was attention to detail too, in the countersunk screw-heads and the spacing of the stencilled lettering: THIS SIDE UP. Rush-hour traffic gave him pause, and by the time he arrived at the site he was almost convinced that the gigantic nails would be perfect for the construction that lay ahead.

  He loaded the boxes from the back of the bakkie into the barrow and wheeled them to the camp. Nieuwenhuizen had excused himself from this activity so that he could rummage through his portmanteau; Malgas therefore took the initiative and stored the boxes in a cool, dry place under the tree. Then he went back for the package containing the surplus dozen – the Twelve, as he thought of them. No sooner had he returned with those under his arm than Nieuwenhuizen found what he was looking for: a leather bandoleer, well loved but little used, to judge by the patina of dried Brasso on its buckle and the marrow of congealed dubbin and fluff clogging its many loops.

  While Nieuwenhuizen strapped the bandoleer over his shoulder, Malgas took the initiative again and prised open the first box. He found a thick layer of shredded paper the colour of straw. Excellent. He threw the paper out and there they were: one hundred and forty-four of the finest nails money could buy, neatly stacked in rows of twelve, with the direction of the heads alternating stratum by stratum to compensate for the taper of the shanks. Even his exceptional sensitivity to packaging had not prepared him for this fastidious arrangement, and his admiration for the nails redoubled.

  “Now that I see them here like this, in their proper context, I begin to see what you’re driving at,” Malgas mused. “There’s something about them, I can’t quite put my finger on it …”

  Nieuwenhuizen looked into the box and smiled. He extracted one of the nails, blew a wisp of paper off it and slipped it into a leather loop. It fitted.

  “Ah,” said Malgas.

  “Fill me up,” Nieuwenhuizen commanded, spreading his feet and raising his arms as if Malgas was his tailor. He continued to smile benignly while Malgas loaded the bandoleer.

  Malgas found it a satisfying task, punching out the dubbin marrow with the sharp point of each nail, wiping the goo off on his pants, and tugging the shank through until the head rested securely against the loop. Progressively, he was careful to research and develop an energy-conserving rhythm. There were thirty-six loops. Nieuwenhuizen bounced up and down on his toes, discovering his new equilibrium. Malgas was surprised his skinny legs didn’t snap under the load.

  “My hat.”

  Malgas unhooked the hat from a thorn, beat the dust out of it against his thigh, punched its crown into shape and placed it on Nieuwenhuizen’s head. Nieuwenhuizen cocked it rakishly and asked, “How do I look?”

  “Striking. What’s the word … debonair.”

  “I like that. I feel debonair.”

  Nieuwenhuizen struck a few carefree poses and this gave Malgas a chance to examine his outfit more closely. He cut a fine figure. The only item that jarred was the bandoleer. In Malgas’s opinion it was excessive. The longer he looked at it, the less he liked it. It was pretentious. A plain pouch on a leather belt would have served just as well. Now that he’d conjured up a pouch, he couldn’t prevent a stream of plain images from gliding through his mind – the open face of a ball-peen hammer … a sturdy clod crumbling between a strong finger and thumb … a sap-stained scythe … a gush of chlorinated water from a hose … a sjambok … ploughshares … hessian pantaloons … hieroglyphs of mud dropping from the treads of a workmanlike boot. These uncalled-for images – who had summoned them? – and their stately passage – who was beating the drum? – gave him the creeps.

  “You’ve got your nails,” he said, rolling back the tide, “and rather too big than too small, I suppose. But, forgive me for pointing it out, you’ve got nothing to nail together. Forward planning is becoming more and more urgent. It’s high time you ordered your materials: bricks, cement —”

  “Enough is enough in any man’s language!” Nieuwenhuizen said crossly. The fellow was already getting too big for his boots.

  “Timber and allied products —”

  “Shut up.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Be still. I can’t take this obsession with brass tacks a minute longer.”

  “Tacks?”

  “You’ve got hardware on the brain, my friend, and it leaves you no room for speculation.”

  This outburst offended Malgas deeply. He had made a substantial contribution to recent developments, and Nieuwenhuizen knew it. Why was he distorting the facts? Nevertheless Malgas stammered an apology. “I’m just trying to be practical.”

  “You’re so practical,” said Nieuwenhuizen, who had not anticipated a defence, and repeated, “You’re so practical,” while he thought of what to say next. Then, without emphasis at all, “If you’re as practical as you say you are, answer me this: Have you ever given a moment’s thought to the shape and size of the new house?” By “ever” he meant since Malgas had been privy to his plans; and it must be said that this was exactly what Malgas understood him to mean. He went on regardless. “No you haven’t, there’s no need to state it. But let me tell you that I, for one, have to think about the new house all the time. Hardly a moment goes by that I don’t think about it. I can see it before me as clear as daylight this very instant, even as I’m speaking to you. Can you see it? Hey? Can you name one little nook of it? Is it on a rack up here in the warehouse?” And he emphasized this final question rather crudely by rapping
on Malgas’s skull with his knuckles.

  Such cruelty was out of character, and Malgas shrank from it in confusion and disappointment. “Not really …”

  “There you are. That’s what I’m talking about. No conception of the new house, but you’re worrying yourself sick over what it’s made of! You’d better sort out your priorities, man, or we won’t be able to carry on collaborating on this project.”

  “I’m sorry Father,” Malgas mumbled. “Collaborating,” spoken in anger, had pierced him to the quick and the hurt was written all over his face. “I’m a simple soul, as you know. Now that you mention it, I’d love to see the new place. I’d give my eye-teeth to see it (as Mrs would say). But I’m not sure I can. You haven’t given me clues. Shall I try anyway? Let’s see … Is it a double-storey by any chance?”

  “There-there, say no more.” Just as suddenly as it had flared up, Nieuwenhuizen’s rage died down again. “I’m the one who should apologize. I’ve expected too much of you, I thought you’d pick things up on your own, without guidance, and now we’re both suffering because of my presumption. Perhaps it’s not too late to make amends.”

  They sat on their stones with their knees almost touching. Both of them were suddenly apprehensive. Nieuwenhuizen opened and shut his mouth three and a half times, as if he wasn’t sure where to begin, but at last took Malgas’s hands in his own, kneaded them into one lump of clay, and said carefully, “Do you remember the old place I was telling you about on the night we met?”

  Mere mention of that historic encounter, vividly evoked by the brambly clutches of Nieuwenhuizen’s fingers, was enough to make Malgas throb with longing for days gone by, but he mastered his emotions and said matter-of-factly, “It was beyond repair. The plumbing was shot. If my memory serves me correctly, the boards under the bath were a shade of … green.”

  “Whatever. Point is: The new place will be nothing like that. In fact, it will be the absolute antithesis. Ironic. Where that place was old, for instance, this will be new. Where that was falling to pieces, this will be holding together very nicely thank you. That was rambling and draughty, this will be compact but comfortable. Spacious, mind, not poky, and double-storey …”

  “I knew it!”

  “… to raise us up above the mire of the everyday, to give us perspective, to enable surveillance of creeping dangers. Make that triple-storey, don’t want to cramp our style. Bathrooms en suite. Built-in bar. All tried and tested stuff, bricks and mortar and polished panels, the stuff of your dreams, none of this rotten canvas and scrap metal, transitional, all this, temporary, merely. Forward! Nothing tin-pot! Everything cast-iron! Bulletproof – we have to think of these things I’m afraid – with storage space for two years’ rations. And on top of that wall-to-wall carpets in a serviceable colour, maybe khaki, and skylights and Slasto in the rumpus room. Materials galore, Malgas, right up your street. Malgas?”

  Malgas opened his eyes, which were unnaturally bright.

  “Can you see it?”

  “I can’t see it as such,” said Malgas, reshaping two hands for himself, one with the other, and packing them around the brambles, “but I can see that it will be a fantastic place! I’ve made a start. Thank you.”

  “That’s much better. Now what do I owe you for the nails?”

  “Forget it.”

  “I insist.”

  “I really couldn’t.”

  particoloured. Boot, camouflage, combat. Chopper, Soviet-made, collapsible. Traditional weapon: assegai, knopkierie, panga, pike, pole, stick, stone, brick, mortar-board, fountain-pen, paper-clip, rubber stamp, gavel, sickle, spade, rake, hoe, spoke, knitting-needle, crochet-hook, darning-egg, butter-knife, runcible spoon, pot, pan, gravy-boat, whisk

  Nieuwenhuizen’s hat hung at an impudent angle in the thorn-tree and his boots stood side by side on the ground below with their tongues sticking out. Taken together hat and boots suggested nothing so much as an invisible man.

  Nieuwenhuizen in person, the object of the invisible one’s scrutiny, stood at attention nearby – in the north-western corner of block IF – gazing candidly into the sunrise. Until this moment the sun had been rising irrecoverably like a child’s balloon, but now it stood still, surprisingly enough, as if a dangling string had caught in the branches of the hedge.

  Although he appeared to be considering the implications of this earth-shattering improbability, Nieuwenhuizen’s thoughts were in fact on the top of his head and the soles of his feet, which were developing pins and needles. He furrowed his forehead and shimmied his eyebrows in an effort to flush some blood into his scalp. He stretched his toes. He flexed his left hand, which was in his pocket: that at least was in good condition and ready for the task that lay ahead. His right hand, by contrast, was frozen into a claw around his flint hammer, and felt numb and unwieldy. To crown it all, the bandoleer, with its freight of nails, began to hurt his shoulder.

  He was on the point of conceding defeat and retreating to his tent, when the sun escaped from the grasp of the hedge and bobbed up into the sky.

  “Optical illusion,” he said with a sigh of relief, and sallied forth.

  He stepped off with his right foot and took six stiff paces. The earth felt unusually firm and steady. When his left foot came down for the third time, in the middle of IE, he flung the hammer in his right hand forward with all his might, pivoted on his heel, toppled sideways, flew into the air, flapped after the hammer like a broken wing, went rigid as a statue in mid-air, hung motionless for a long, oblique instant, and crashed to earth with a cry of triumph. He levered himself up and located the impression of his heel on the ground; then the starch went out of him and he flopped down on all fours to get a good look at the mark. It was shaped like a comma, with a bloated head and a short, limp tail. He took a nail from the bandoleer and pressed its point into the comma. Then, swinging his right arm like a piece of broken furniture, he hammered the nail into the ground.

  Sparks flew! He was satisfied.

  He closed his eyes, stretched out both arms and turned in circles, clockwise, counting under his breath, “Two thousand and one, two thousand and two, two thousand and three …” At this point he stopped, ran on the spot, fell on his knees, patted the earth with his palms, pummelled it with his fists, sniggered, jumped up again and began to turn in circles, anti-clockwise, “Two thousand and three, two thousand and two, two thousand and one … There, that’s better.”

  He fixed his eyes on the stunted appendage that passed for the chimney of Malgas’s house, extended his arms once again like a tightrope artist, and proceeded in measured paces across the plot. The hammer in his right hand disturbed his balance and introduced an unsightly wobble into his limbs; but his head for a change was completely still. He gritted his teeth and kept going, step after step, until at last his whole frame was vibrating like a dowsing-rod. With a final effort of will he threw himself into the air, cracked his heels together and struck the earth with his head. Light-bulbs flickered in his brain. He saw the firmament, tricked out with stars in pastel colours, and three scrawny birds, scavengers, flapping tiredly in a circle. Then everything went dark.

  When he came to his senses his head was throbbing. He had no idea how much time had been lost, although he could have worked it out easily enough from the position of the sun. Sitting up and looking about, he was cheered to discover on the ground a perfectly legible imprint of the back of his head. Auspiciously, it was in VID. He pulled a hot, oily nail from a loop and bashed it into the ground in the middle of the depression.

  The planting of this second nail left him drained and disorientated, so he paced the next three out sedately, marking the spot for each one with his elbow as if he was testing the baby’s bath-water and tapping them in as if they were made of glass. It happened that the fifth nail lay in a far-flung corner, IA, where the hedge met the Malgases’ wall, and the desolate surroundings weighed so heavily upon him that he resolved to find a resting-place for nail number six in the more hospitable neighbourhood
of his own homestead.

  Accordingly, he put his left foot in front of his right, bent his knees, and swept his arms up behind his back like a diver. He raised the toes of his left foot and the heel of his right. Then he swung his arms forward and brought his hands together in front of him, clutching his flint, at the same time raising the heel of his left foot and the toes of his right. Then he went back to the first position, breathed in, held it to a count of ten, returned to the second position and breathed out. Then he rocked from the second position to the first and back again five times, and once more for luck. And then he ran forward, hopped, skipped, dodged, ducked, rolled head over heels, swerved, leap-frogged over the ash-heap and bore down upon the thorn-tree as if he intended to pass straight through it.

  At the last moment he bounced on the balls of his feet – he was warm as toast by now, he was doggerel in motion – and leapt onto an overhanging branch. It was a pin-point landing, and he sustained just one superficial scratch on his shin. He quickly located the launching site and, hanging upside-down from his heels, was able to position the sixth nail (IIA) before dropping down to dispatch it with a few assertive blows. Fireworks!

  When it came to lucky number seven, he was bold enough to attempt a backflip with a half-twist over the tent, nearly pulled it off, belly-flopped, and consoled himself with a catnap.

  “Mr!”

  Mrs Malgas, whose turn it was to make the morning coffee, was filling the kettle at the sink when Nieuwenhuizen came to her attention. The sight of him on an empty stomach all but robbed her of the power of speech.

  Mr shuffled through in his towelling dressing-gown. “Where’s the fire?”

  All she could say was: “Him!”

  Mr looked out of the window. He saw Nieuwenhuizen going round in circles. This was something entirely new. What in heaven’s name was he up to now?

  Mr sat Mrs down at the table and poured the coffee. Once she was clutching her favourite mug Mrs managed to get a grip on herself as well, and within a minute had recovered well enough to give a full account of the incident.