The Folly

by Ivan Vladislavic

  The stock left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he had to go to the bathroom to rinse it out. On the way there he made a detour past the lounge window to confirm that Nieuwenhuizen had never existed at all. But no sooner had he parted the curtains than a match flared and the hurricane-lamp bloomed into light.

  Holding the lamp high, rocking it portentously like a censer, Nieuwenhuizen circled the ash-heap. After three circuits, he waded into the ashes and scuffed a clearing with his boots. He took a nail folded in a bandanna from his pocket, unwrapped it under the light, kissed it, knelt and pressed its point into the ground. It kept falling over, and in the end he had to prop it up with a forked twig. For a while he was silent, on his knees in the grey surf. Then he began to sway backwards and forwards from the waist, solemnly, gathering momentum slowly, extending his range, until at length his bony forehead, at the limit of its forward swing, began to meet the head of the nail. And by these means he kowtowed it into the ground. When the ashes had settled he killed the lamp and went back to bed.

  Mr recognized the secret nail at once: it was the one Nieuwenhuizen had annealed in the fire on the night he placed his order. It was the odd nail out, and yet it was the very model of a nail. Fire and ash. What did it signify? He made a note of its secret location (IIIC) but still he was baffled. Then all at once bafflement gave way to an embarrassing abundance, and his empty mind was cluttered with possibilities: chains of mnemonics shaped like knuckle-bones and skeleton keys; a tissue of lies, knitted on nails and pencils; the family tree of fire, leaves of flame, seeds of ash. He pushed these shop-soiled articles aside and found a small, hard certainty, which he strung on the scale of intimacy between Nieuwenhuizen and himself: communion.

  The plan was incomplete and it lay fallow. Nieuwenhuizen said it was maturing.

  Mr Malgas spent all his spare time practising to see the new house, racking his brains to recall Nieuwenhuizen’s guidelines and finding them all reduced to the unhelpful ambiguity of dreams.

  One night, after Nieuwenhuizen had sent him home and retired, Mr Malgas had such a powerful need to pursue his observations that he took a torch and crept back onto the plot in his gown and slippers.

  Shielding the beam with a cupped palm, he examined the clearing in the ashes, and there he thought he saw the head of the secret nail glimmering. In the presence of this mystery, the key to the new house and its creator – he could reach out and touch it if he chose – his courage failed him and he almost fled. Steady, Malgas. He wiped the beam of the torch slowly across the plan, and here and there, here and there the nails glinted, as if the land had been sown with petty cash.

  He became bolder. He drew the beam from nail to nail, emulating Nieuwenhuizen’s self-assured gestures, hoping to trace the outlines of just one room, a passage way, an alcove that would presage a dwelling. The nails winked and told him nothing. He could not make out even a fragment of the blueprint nailed to the ground.

  Growing increasingly agitated, and casting the need for stealth to the wind, he began to stride back and forth, doodling the finger of light from one shiny marker to the next, foraging in the outlying areas for any he might have missed and stirring them into significance. And even though there was no sign of the new house, he found himself whispering vehemently, “Bedroom … yes! Double bed, king-size … yes! Bathroom en suite, shower cubicle … yes! yes!” When this approach failed to produce tangible results, it came to him that everything would be crystal clear if only he could view it from above, from some vantage-point like the anthill – no, that had ceased to exist – like the tree – no, no, that was full of thorns – like the roof of his own house! The impropriety of this idea, especially at such a late hour, brought him down to earth with a bump, and he quickly went home.

  Nieuwenhuizen saw him go, from the mouth of the tent, and laughed like a drain; Mrs Malgas saw him coming, from the lounge window, with tears in her eyes, and hurried back to bed, where she pretended to be sleeping.

  “Queen-size … never! Over my dead body!”

  Mr Malgas tossed and turned, trying to remember the disposition of the nails and chart them dot for dot, but try as he might, his markers were swept away repeatedly by avalanches of punctuation.

  Never fear, Malgas practised harder than ever.

  And late one afternoon his persistence paid off. He had been criss-crossing the plan for an hour on end with his chin on his chest and his hands behind his back. Nieuwenhuizen was sitting at the fireplace, in which some split logs and balls of newspaper had been stacked in a pyre, peeling a clutch of lumpy roots for a stew. He had a tolerant smile on his face. Suddenly a light-bulb blazed in a dusty recess in Malgas’s mind, and he understood why he could not see the new house: it was underground!

  “What a clot I’ve been, assuming that these nails mark the foundations, when it’s perfectly obvious – once you cotton on to it – that they mark the chimney-pots, gutters, eaves, spires, domes and dormers, to name but a handful of your more prominent roof-top features. This nail here is clearly a television aerial. Two pigeons over there – that’s a nice touch – a family of gargoyles, and here’s a weather-cock.”

  Malgas felt the Cape Dutch gables of the subterranean house thrusting up against his soles. He took off his shoes. That did the trick. In a transport of heightened sensitivity, he tottered along a gutter, clambered up a steep, shingled roof and established himself next to a chimney with a cloud of smoke swirling about his knees.

  Then he came to his senses and found that he was standing in the ash-heap.

  Nieuwenhuizen, who was crouching nearby dicing his roots on a chopping-block with a hand-beaten copper cleaver, called out, “Good one, Mal! You’re getting the hang of it.”

  Malgas was embarrassed.

  He went home looking for sympathy, but Mrs glared at his laddered socks, rattled her newspaper and gave him a lecture: “Terrible times we’re living in. Death on every corner. The forces of destruction unleashed upon an unsuspecting public. Trains colliding, ferries capsizing, mini-buses overturning, air liners plummeting from the sky on top of suburbs, massacres in second-class railway coaches, public transport in general becoming unsafe, rivers bursting their banks, earthquakes shaking everything up, volcanoes erupting, bombs exploding, businesses going bang, buildings collapsing, among other things. And on top of all this, as if we don’t have enough on our plates, a lunatic on our doorstep. And on top of the top, his accomplice under our own roof.”

  “It could be worse.”

  “It could be better. Look here: BOF! in a bubble. Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Here, a cat cracking jokes in English. Ducks in suits and ties, a dog in a flashy sports coat, a mouse driving a car. And here’s your foolish friend to a T: this man is walking on thin air, if you don’t mind, until someone points it out to him … and that makes him fall like an angel.”

  Out of the blue shadows of a Sunday afternoon, Nieuwenhuizen let it be known that the plan had reached maturity. Malgas’s joy in this news was premature and short-lived. Apparently, the fact that the plan was mature did not imply that the actual construction was about to begin; rather, it meant that the plan could now be completed, and unfortunately Nieuwenhuizen alone was qualified to perform this delicate operation. He sent Malgas packing, with strict instructions to lie low until his presence was requested at the official unveiling.

  “I’ve got your interests at heart,” Nieuwenhuizen said. “You’ve been a sport, but there’s really no point in seeing bits and pieces of the plan. To get the proper effect you need to see the whole thing, fully assembled.”

  Feeling that he had unwittingly passed some test, and failed another, Malgas said, “Thank you, thank you,” and left.

  Nevertheless, as soon as he arrived home he ordered a beer shandy and a bowl of salted peanuts from Mrs and when she went to do his bidding usurped her stool behind the net curtain.

  She did not protest. “I’m tired of humouring Him anyway. He loves being the centre of attraction, like some
one else I know.”

  Mr Malgas had hardly installed himself when Nieuwenhuizen popped out from behind the thorn-tree with a ball of string in his hand. After a brief search he squatted down and attached the end of the string to the head of a nail, tying several knots of different kinds – Mr Malgas spotted a clove-hitch and two grannies – and tugging hard to make sure they held. Mr Malgas judged correctly that this was no ordinary nail and made a note of its position (IE), but he had no way of knowing that it was the inaugural nail, the very first one to take its place in the plan.

  Nieuwenhuizen stuck his index fingers into either end of the cardboard tube on which the string was wound and swung out his forearms like hinged brackets. He raised them and lowered them a few times, as if he was testing out a patent string-dispenser. Apparently the gadget worked, for he now walked confidently backwards, playing out the string as he went, until he bumped into Malgas’s wall. He chose another nail and looped the string around it, performed a difficult manoeuvre with the whole ball which unexpectedly resulted in a slipknot, and pulled that tight.

  Mr Malgas’s standpoint may have been comfortable, but it was also limiting, and he found that he couldn’t determine what block of the grid this second nail was in. Oh well, it didn’t seem to matter. The line between Point A and Point B (Obscured), as he spontaneously renamed them, was so beautiful, so true, that he laid his eyes on it with love. Upon such a line one wished, without even thinking about it, to erect a noble edifice. This desire stretched the line so tight that it hummed with possibility and he grew afraid that it would snap.

  Nieuwenhuizen, meanwhile, had trotted off to the hedge in search of another nail. He dropped down on all fours and scrambled in among the woody stems, thrashed around in an uproar of splintering twigs and dust, re-emerged boots first, picked himself up, shook himself like a spaniel, and set off again, wagging the line behind him.

  The technique was clumsy, Mr Malgas thought, as his initial infatuation with it wore off, but the intention was clear: this new line, B (Obscrd) to C, proposed a wall. It was a little too close to his own wall for comfort, perhaps, but what the hell, it was also a beautiful line.

  Again and again, Nieuwenhuizen stooped, looped and knotted, and Mr Malgas, catching glimpses of grand columns and entablatures between the lines, muttered, “Yes! Yes!” and struck his palm with his fist.

  But then, without warning, Nieuwenhuizen sundered the beautiful line between A and B (Obs) as if it had no more substance than a shadow. The components of the new house that Mr Malgas had been building up, all labelled clearly with letters of the alphabet, disengaged their joints with doleful popping noises (oompah) and drifted deliberately apart.

  “Use your imagination, Malgas!” he rebuked himself. “Don’t be so bloody literal.”

  Nieuwenhuizen went from nail to nail, stooping and looping. From time to time, when he stood back to observe the emerging plan, Mr Malgas studied it too, climbing up on his stool and peeping from under the pelmet in the hope that added elevation would bring greater insight. Nothing worthy of being called a new house suggested itself, neither rising above the ground nor sinking below. Something resembling a room would appear, a string-bound rectangle of the appropriate dimensions, but soon enough Nieuwenhuizen would put a cross through it, or deface it with a diagonal. By some stretch of the imagination a passage would become viable, only to be obliterated a moment later by a drunken zigzag. An unmistakable corner, a perfect right angle, survived for close on an hour. Mr Malgas became convinced that it was the extremity of the rumpus room Nieuwenhuizen had once referred to. But, without blinking, Nieuwenhuizen allowed it to spin out an ugly slash that traversed the entire plan and dislocated every element of it.

  “Mrs! Peanuts!”

  As the geometry of string proliferated, a disturbing potential arose: with every move Nieuwenhuizen made, some portion of a new house became possible. Mr Malgas would clap his hands and give vent to his gratitude. At last, a keystone! From that he could elaborate a bathroom, say, and then a door, necessarily, and, it follows, another room … But sooner or later his house, rising reasonably, wall by wall, would tumble down as Nieuwenhuizen backed into it in his big boots, unreeling his string, and crossed it off the plan.

  Mr Malgas was relieved when Nieuwenhuizen called it a day, and he resolved to put the plan from his mind entirely until his participation was invited once more. This looking on from the sidelines was too stressful.

  The ball of string remained unbroken on the edge of the unfinished plan, wrapped in a plastic bag and weighted with stones.

  “Up and down, up and down all day, busy as a butcher,” Mrs told Mr the following evening when he came in from work. “Making loops and tying knots, knit one, purl one, sling two together and drop the whole caboodle.”

  She was ready to demonstrate the procedure with a ball of wool and some tins from the grocery cupboard, but he said gruffly, “Never mind that, I get the picture. Just tell me: Does this plan make sense? Can you see the new house? Is it taking shape?”

  “Don’t ask me. I’m not interested in Him and His house. I just happened to glance that way once or twice when I was making a pot of tea.”

  A car chase followed by a gun battle and a bomb blast, which shook the Malgases’ house to its foundations, gave Nieuwenhuizen a welcome respite from prying eyes. He took what was left of the ball of string out of its protective covering, unwound the tail-end and tossed the cardboard tube into the fire on the edge of the ash-heap. It had taken him three days of back-breaking toil to finish the plan. All this movement, backwards, forwards, even sideways when necessary, had spilled ash over the secret nail. He stooped into the clearing in the ashes and blew the head clean, deposited a blob of spittle on it and polished it with his forefinger. Then he looped the remnant of string around the nail, pulled it tight and knotted the end. It fitted perfectly.

  Shortly afterwards he flicked a pebble against the lounge window to attract Malgas’s attention, Malgas chuffed out into the garden and they conferred through the spokes of a wagon-wheel.

  The plan was finished! Malgas was willing to be delighted, until he was informed that the official unveiling was scheduled for the very next day.

  “Congrats!” he gulped. “I really mean it. But can’t the ceremony wait for the weekend? It’ll keep. Some of us have to work you know.”

  “Out of the question. It’s now or never. You’ll have to take the day off.”

  Malgas’s mind was racing. “Mrs will give me a mouthful if I don’t go to work.”

  “That’s neither here nor there.”

  “In any case, I’m not ready for the plan. I won’t understand it.”

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Nieuwenhuizen said, reading Malgas’s thoughts in the open book of his face.

  While Mr was explaining why he had to take the day off, Mrs absent-mindedly picked up her china shoe, the one with the gilt buckle and the wineglass heel. She fogged the buckle with her breath and buffed it with the sleeve of her cardigan. She was about to return the shoe to its place on the mantelpiece when without warning it hiccuped and spat dust over her knuckles.

  “It’s an omen,” she said. “We haven’t had one of those for ages.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “It says you’re going too far with this new house thing and one of these days you’ll be sorry.”

  Nieuwenhuizen was waiting for Malgas at his front gate the next morning. Malgas was surprised to see him there, as he seldom – if ever – ventured beyond the borders of his own territory. Before he could remark on it (“Surprise, surprise,” he was going to say) Nieuwenhuizen took him by the hand and issued instructions (“Close your eyes and shut your mouth,” he said). Malgas was tingling with the novelty of playing truant and itching for an adventure. He offered his own monogrammed handkerchief (ems and aitches interwoven) as a blindfold, just to be on the safe side, but it was courteously declined. So, screwing up his eyes until they watered, he let himself be led next door, a
nd had many little mishaps on the way, stumbled over the kerb and twisted his ankle, but not too badly, it didn’t hurt any more, thanks, rubbed it vigorously and was tempted to peek, overcame temptation, stubbed his toe on a rocky outcrop there had not been reason to mention before, let alone curse to high heaven, goose-stepped over the string, felt less foolish than he might have because it was all in a good cause, was propped like an effigy in the middle of the plan.

  Despite his misgivings of the night before, a spark of hope had kindled in his breast while he slept. He had woken with an inkling that the plan would be loud and clear after all and reveal the new house to him in all its splendour. Now, as his guide’s footsteps receded and he waited anxiously for further instructions, with the incense of the breakfast fire in his nostrils and the morning sun inflaming his sealed eyelids, his little hope flared up into a burning desire for revelation.

  From a distance, Nieuwenhuizen commanded him to see.

  He opened his eyes.

  All hope was snuffed out in an instant. He found himself in the midst of an immense, tattered net full of holes and knots and twisted threads, more holes than threads, as a matter of fact, but for all that utterly impenetrable. To call it a plan was to grant it a semblance of purpose and order it evidently did not deserve. It was a shambles. It was so unremittingly drunken and disorderly that tears started from Malgas’s eyes.