The Folly

by Ivan Vladislavic

  “It’s unspeakable,” she said, “but I’ll do my best. I was standing where you are now, yes there, and I happened to look out of the window, which is only to be expected, one can hardly help it, and what do you think I saw?”

  “Him?”

  “That’s right. At first He was just standing there with His back to me, in His usual impolite way. But without warning He flung Himself down face first, and started to heave and thump this way and that in the throes of an ungovernable lust, as if He meant to penetrate the very earth upon which we stand.”

  “He was doing some P.T. He’s building himself up for Phase Two.”

  “He was thrusting and thumping nineteen to the dozen! You can still see the dust.”

  “Probably push-ups.”

  “Afterwards, He hurled Himself to His feet again, and strutted up and down as immodestly as ever.”

  Nieuwenhuizen was still waddling in circles, with his chest puffed up and his feet turned out.

  “I don’t see anything untoward,” said Mr.

  “It’s too late now. If you’d come when I called you, you’d have seen it with your own eyes, and you wouldn’t be so quick to defend Him.”

  “There’s more to this than meets the eye. I know for a fact that he’s afraid of sinking through the crust of the earth. Yet you say he forced himself upon it. It’s a contradiction.”

  “Don’t patronize me.”

  Nieuwenhuizen lay down on his back with his arms flung wide and his feet crossed. He stared into the streaming eye of the sun. Then he flopped over on his stomach, spread-eagled his arms and legs, and put his ear to the ground.

  “I’m sure there’s a perfectly simple explanation,” said Mr.

  “My word counts for nothing in this house.” Mrs flounced to the lounge to finish her coffee.

  Nieuwenhuizen raised his head and squinted at the topsoil under his nose. His ear pressing against the sand had created a small relief map, a flat-topped mountain surrounded by whorled hillocks and vales. He peeped through his eyelashes. Some pebbles assumed the appearance of boulders piled at the foot of the mountain; then his nostrils stirred up a dust-storm; and that blew over, leaving in its wake a dry blade of grass that looked just like a wind-wracked palm-frond.

  He stuffed a hand into a crack in his side and pulled a nail from the bandoleer. He pressed it into the mountain, just deep enough so that it would stand upright on its own. In this prone position driving the nail in was no easy task. He flailed his arms like a drowning victim.

  “Tsk! I might have known!” Mr exclaimed. “He’s making a plan!”

  He stomped through to the lounge. “I’ve cleared up the mystery, Mrs: he’s making a plan. For the new house. Remember?”

  “Bully for Him.” Her coffee was cold, but she took a sip anyway so that she could exchange a knowing look with the mug-frog.

  “Did I mention the nails?”

  “Monsters.”

  “All along I’ve been thinking he wants them for the actual construction – and here he is, making a plan with them. It goes to show that you can’t take anything for granted with him. He’s so crafty.”

  “He’s a show-off.” She went to her room.

  Nieuwenhuizen walked backwards and sat down.

  “I think I’ll pitch in,” said Mr. He pursued Mrs to the bedroom. She was lying on the bed with the candlewick bedspread pulled up to her chin. He said to her: “I think I’ll pitch in.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “He needs me.”

  “He’s doing just fine on His own. He told you He didn’t need your help. He spurned you.”

  “Don’t be petty. You’ve seen for yourself what a struggle it is for him. Another pair of hands will make all the difference, but he finds it hard to ask, because he prides himself on his independence.”

  “I can see the two of you, lying there thumping like a couple of gaffed barbels.”

  Malgas donned his overalls and went next door. He found Nieuwenhuizen lying on his side in the shade under the hedge. He appeared to be sleeping, but as Malgas drew near he raised his head and opened his eyes.

  “Father.”

  “Malgas.”

  “Making a plan, I see.”

  “Trying.”

  “Ingenious, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “Not at all. Thanks.”

  “Plans are interesting. Fascinating, actually. I suppose I’ll always have a soft spot for materials, it’s in my blood, along with packaging, but as I get older I find I become more and more curious about the planning side of things.”

  “Stop beating about the bush,” Nieuwenhuizen said, sitting up and dusting off his sleeve. “What do you want?”

  “To give you a hand here, if you’ll have me.”

  Nieuwenhuizen looked dubious. “I don’t know. Are you ready for it, I wonder? I don’t want to rush you.”

  “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. I can’t see the new house yet, but it goes without saying that you can. And I’m eager to learn. I have a great hunger and thirst for knowledge of the house. If necessary I’m prepared to start at the bottom and work my way up. You’ll teach me everything you know, and in the mean time I’ll fetch and carry the tools and so on. I took the liberty of bringing this mallet – with rubber you don’t damage the heads.”

  “I’m not sure …”

  “Look at it this way: I have my own field of expertise, or ‘know-how’ as we call it in the trade, and one day I’ll be able to repay every little kindness shown me in these difficult times. Just shout: Mr Hardware, A World of Materials under One Roof.”

  Nieuwenhuizen sprang to his feet. He stuck one of his skinny fingers through a loop of the bandoleer and said, “You’re just in time to reload me. I didn’t want to ask, but since you’re offering …”

  They walked towards the camp, where the boxes of nails were standing one on top of the other, and Malgas ventured to walk at Nieuwenhuizen’s side.

  With Malgas’s enthusiastic assistance, the mapping out of the ground-plan proceeded apace. A less elaborate drafting procedure was called for now, and the acrobatics of the early morning therefore gave way to more conventional pacing and pointing; and while before there had been as many different marks as there are parts of the human body, now there was one standardized sign, a plump full stop made with the heel, so that the apprentice could not fail to recognize it.

  Malgas politely commandeered the bandoleer and took charge of placing the nails according to Nieuwenhuizen’s wishes. Although he assumed that the grid system was finally coming into its own, he accepted the given division of labour and made no attempt to decipher the plan: he concentrated instead on inserting the nails expertly. Now was the time to explore the ins and outs of the undervalued art of hammering. As he perfected his swing, he brought the effort required for each insertion down to a single preliminary tap to make the nail stand on end; two decisive double-fisted smashes to sink it; and a concluding salvo of tiny blows to ensure that the head was protruding above the surface to the specified extent (the thickness of his thumb).

  Nieuwenhuizen sang a song. It was his tent-pitching song, and its haunting tones brought the bitter-sweet memory of his advent into Malgas’s mind as clearly as if it was yesterday. However, it also broke his concentration, and he was relieved when Nieuwenhuizen fell silent and focused on the measurements.

  As for Nieuwenhuizen, when he judged that Malgas had mastered the full stop, he added the colon and the ellipsis to his repertoire, although he was careful to keep the combinations simple. Malgas took it in his stride.

  The world turned. The sun trundled like a brass ball across the leaden bowl of the sky. They didn’t miss a beat.

  At one o’clock Mrs Malgas flung her window open and offered “Lunch!,” and was turned down by the muted rhythm of the mallet and the sky resounding like a cracked gong. She shut the window and went away.

  Hour after hour, Nieuwenhuizen fumed over the plot, disseminating his indelible punctuation
. Malgas dogged his footsteps, discharged volley after volley of nails, reloaded the bandoleer again and again, and never once complained.

  Night fell at last. The second box of ammunition was broached. By now the nails had been scattered far and wide; their heads glistened everywhere, like tiny pools holding the lees of the light. Still there was work to be done.

  Nieuwenhuizen lit the lamp and carried it with him, swinging wildly from one hand, as he paced. He held it so close to the action that he singed the hairs on Malgas’s arm. And through it all he kept demanding, “More light!” and imploring the moon to rise, which it didn’t. Then Malgas took the unprecedented step of running a lead-light through his kitchen window (Mrs wept) and they soldiered on with new vigour. In the light cast by the cowled globe Nieuwenhuizen acquired the stature of a giant, striding across immense, uninhabited plains, while Malgas, shambling after him, brought his master’s mallet crashing down on nails as tall as flagstaffs.

  Finally the moment came when Malgas reached into the box and grasped nothing but a mulch of shredded paper. Permission was granted for him to tear open the brown-paper bundle containing the Twelve. He intended to slip these too into the bandoleer, but Nieuwenhuizen intervened. The final dozen required special attention.

  Nieuwenhuizen curled the forefinger and thumb of his left hand into a loophole and peered through it with his right eye. He panned across the entire landscape, apprehending each and every nail both as a distinct entity and as part of a complex pattern, computing the most abstruse distances and obtuse angles, and considering entirely unexpected relationships between them. Then he took the lead-light and explored the spangled darkness, pointing out nooks and crannies among the glittering constellations underfoot, and Malgas flew the nails to those spots.

  It was done.

  A half-jack of Johnny Walker and a nip of Drambuie had been laid down in the portmanteau and now came to light. “I’ve been saving them for a rainy day,” Nieuwenhuizen explained, “but this star-crossed evening will do.” He also produced a cocktail shaker, made out of a lampshade and a surgical glove, and in two shakes they had their feet up and were sipping cocktails out of tin mugs.

  “It’s a little late for sundowners, and a little early for nightcaps, but cheers anyway. To you and yours!”

  His host’s gratitude, so deeply felt and tastefully expressed, brought a lump to Malgas’s throat, and he had to wash it down with a slug of the mixture before he could voice his own appreciation for everything.

  Then Nieuwenhuizen said, “If you don’t mind I’d like to go over the plan now, while it’s fresh. If you’re not ready for such heady stuff, perhaps you should block your ears. Better still, go home to the Mrs. I don’t want to cause any trouble. Go on, take your drink with you.”

  “I’d be grateful if I could stay,” Malgas protested. “Plans aren’t my thing, I admit, I’m a supplier at heart – but I’ve got to start somewhere.”

  “That’s my boy, I was hoping you’d say that. Are you comfortable? Okay … where to begin? Yes: the corners. See that nail there, on the edge of the shadows, and the two behind it, with their heads together? Well, that, my Malgas, delimits the north-eastern extremity of the rumpus room.”

  Malgas gasped.

  “That one there, in line with the letter-box, is the left-hand what’s-its-name … jamb of the front door. Not that one, my left.”

  The long shadow of Nieuwenhuizen’s forefinger brushed over the smooth heads of the nails, weaving a web of diaphanous intent in which Malgas was willingly ensnared and cocooned. Nieuwenhuizen’s hand, moving now with the delicate poise of a spirit-level, now with the brute force of a bulldozer blade, levelled terraces and threw up embankments, laid paving and plastered walls. With a touch, his skittery fingers could open a tracery of light and air in a concrete slab, and through it his papery palms would waft a sea breeze laden with salt and the fruity scents of the orchard. Apricot, blueberry, coconut-milk. He made it seem so simple.

  He began with the situation and dimensions of the rooms, which were many and various. Then he took the rooms one at a time and elaborated on the location of doors and windows, built-in cupboards, electricity outlets, switches and light fixtures. He catalogued special features, such as burglarproofing, air-conditioning and knotty-pine ceilings. He dwelt upon the observation deck, the rumpus room and the bomb shelter, all of which, he assured Malgas, had an integral place in the conception.

  “Fascinating,” said Malgas, shaking off the narcotic effects of the presentation. “But I must admit that I still can’t really see it. There’s no point in lying about it, is there?”

  “Of course not. You’re finding it heavy going because the plan isn’t quite finished; we’ve still got to join up the dots. When that’s done it will all become clear. For the time being, don’t lose heart, and practise, practise, practise. You know what they say.”

  “I’ll try. But I feel so clumsy.”

  “Let me give you a tip. I find that it helps if I … I shouldn’t be telling you this, I’m rushing you again. Let’s wait until you begin to see on your own.”

  “No, no, please go on,” Malgas pleaded, “I’ll stop you if it’s too much too soon.”

  “Just say when. I find that it helps if I think along the following lines: layers, levels; colour schemes, cutaway views and cross-sections; also surfaces and sheens; and last but not least, varnishes and veneers. Consider: the letter-box of the new house. No minor detail, this. The letter-box. Not exactly a replica of the new house itself, not exactly a scale model, that’s too obvious, but … reminiscent. An Alpine chalet, of the kind you associate with the better sort of pleasure resort, but not thatched. A roof of painted metal, red, but faded to a cooldrink colour, strawberry – no, that’s not it – faded to a – yes, this is good – to a pale shade of mercurochrome, a grazed knee after two or three baths, and just beginning to blister. The rusty door, for example, yes, I like this too, the rusty door has the scabrous texture of a cold sore. No, no: impetigo. Are you with me? You open the door, scree, you look in, the walls are galvanized, hygienic, hard-wearing and maintenance-free. There’s a letter in the box, a tilted plane of pure white, you reach in, your hand glides over the floorboards, tongued and grooved meranti, sealed against the elements, yes —”

  “When.”

  Malgas paused at the letter-box. He looked in through a sash-window. Empty.

  As he made his way home he heard Mrs saying, Where is everybody? Does He have relatives? He never gets visitors. What does He want with that letter-box? Is He on mailing lists? Does He get items marked Private and Confidential? Manila envelopes and cardboard tubes, magazines in plastic wrappers, tax returns, advertising flyers, free literature with a money-back guarantee?

  Mr came in from the wilds reeking of whisky and gunpowder. His palms were covered in blisters and he showed them off like handfuls of medals.

  “What have you done to your thumbs?” Mrs demanded.

  But he silenced her with a speech about the plan, the mystery of the new house, and the special techniques Nieuwenhuizen had revealed to him for understanding it. Very impressive it was, she had to agree. Gratified, he marched to the bathroom, flung off his overalls and admired his aches and pains in the mirror. Then he sat in the tub with his knees jutting out of the foam like desert islands, while Mrs soaped the broad beach of his back.

  “I think I understand about the plan,” she said, “and the palace fit for an emperor, even though I don’t approve. But what’s this about special techniques?”

  “I probably shouldn’t be telling you at all, but I’ll go over it once more.” He dipped the sponge in the water and held it up. “Take this sponge, Mrs. Solid, not so? Look at the surface here, that’s it, the surface. Full of holes, craters yes? Craters yes, mouths, leading to subsurface tunnels, souterrains, catacombs, sewers – yes, I like that – twists and turns. Squeeze it out, go on, schquee, full of water, not any old water, second-hand bathwater, I should think so, yes.”

 
“I’ve never heard such nonsense in my life! Really. I wish you could hear yourself.”

  “You’d appreciate it if you’d been in the wars like me.” He let in more hot to cauterize his wounds.

  While Mr was shovelling down his cold supper Mrs said, “You used to have your feet on the ground. That’s why I married you. That’s why you went into Hardware.”

  This set Mr thinking about Nieuwenhuizen again, and he replied, “I think he’s a bit of a hardware man himself, you know, although he won’t admit it. He’s good with his hands. And this stuff about varnish and veneer, it boils down to materials. Doesn’t it?”

  One hand poured fuel on the other. Then the pouring hand flicked an orange lighter and the doused hand burst into flames. The burning hand! Then the flicking hand snuffed out the flames with a silver cloth. The charred hand! Then the snuffing hand peeled off a charred glove. The pink flesh of the inner hand. The perfect hand! The perfect hand turned this way and that, and waved (hello or goodbye), a V sign (for victory, approval, or vulgar derision), thumbs up (sl. excl. of satisfaction), finger language (up yours!), fist language (Viva!), so that you could see it was perfect.

  Mr fell asleep in his La-Z-Boy with the TV glaring. Mrs went to the bedroom, seated herself before the winged mirror of her dressing-table and said, “Although I appear to be thin and small, and fading away before your eyes, I am a substantial person. At least, it feels that way to me.”

  Her pale reflection repeated the lines in triplicate.

  Yet she saw through the pretence. It was clear: she was made of glass. And under the bell-jar of her skin, in a rarefied atmosphere, lashed by electrical storms and soused by chemical precipitations, her vital organs were squirming.

  In the middle of that same night, somewhere around three, as if he hadn’t endured enough already, it happened that Malgas was boiled alive in a gigantic cauldron. Nieuwenhuizen was in there too, fully clothed. It was rough. Logs of carrot and cubic metres of diced potato swirled up on torrents of bubbles and buffeted them. Hot spices seared the skin off their faces and onion-rings strangled them. They clung together in the seething liquid. A pea the size of a cannon-ball caromed off the side of the pot and struck Malgas in the eye. He went under once. Twice. The third time he grabbed hold of Nieuwenhuizen and dragged him down for luck. Now it was every man for himself. Nieuwenhuizen seized a bouquet garni bound in muslin and held it over Malgas’s face. Bubbles, Bisto, Malgas began to lose consciousness. His lungs filled up with gravy, gasp, gasp, sinking, spinach, must hold on, everything went brown … He awoke in a sweat, clutching his pillow.