The Solid Mandala

by Patrick White

  Dad was at the bank then. They looked in to see him whenever possible, to be made a fuss of by the young ladies, and Mr Mackenzie would give them things, sometimes even sixpences. Best of all Arthur liked to go upstairs to the residence. He loved other people’s houses, and never quite succeeded in breaking himself of a habit, it shocked Mother terribly, of opening cupboards and drawers to look inside. Mother continued shocked even after he pointed out it was the best way of getting to know about the owners.

  “It’s a form of dishonesty,” Mother said.

  “It’s not! It’s not!” Arthur shouted.

  “I shouldn’t like to think you were dishonest.”

  He could feel inside him the rush of words which wouldn’t come.

  “What’s dishonest,” he blathered, jerking his head against the gag, “when all you want is know, talk to people? I can talk better if I know them better.”

  “People tell you as much as they want you to know.”

  “Is that honest?”

  “Don’t excite yourself, dearest. It isn’t good for you. We do know that.”

  It wasn’t good for him. But Mother could also be unjust.

  So at least he didn’t look inside any of the cupboards or drawers at the bank manager’s residence. It would apparently have been too humiliating for Dad. Whenever they were taken upstairs Arthur had to content himself with the sound of silence, the brown shadows, and the mystery of the bank manager’s wife.

  “Mrs Mackenzie is bed-ridden,” Mother explained.

  “What?”

  “She’s delicate. An invalid. She has to stay in bed.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “That’s something we don’t ask.”

  Waldo said: “I think Mrs Mackenzie is a pressed flower,” and giggled.

  It was of the greatest interest to Arthur. Certainly Mrs Mackenzie’s hand had the dry cool scratch of clean writing-paper or pressed flowers. And yellow, she was yellow, in her still, brown room, with a blow-fly that had got inside, and the little prayer-desk, or pre-dew, she called it, which she was no longer strong enough to kneel against.

  “Perhaps,” suggested Arthur, “if you wore a surgical appliance.”

  But Mrs Mackenzie appeared too delicate to see any point. She only wet her lips.

  So Arthur didn’t collect Mrs Mackenzie, although he was the one interested in people. Waldo was more interested in words and all that Waldo was going to do. Natural enough — Waldo was the clever twin.

  It was not till towards the end of their stay at Barranugli, on an occasion when Waldo had gone behind the counter to give his views to two of the clerks sitting at their ledgers, that Arthur decided to go up alone to the residence, and if things had turned out otherwise, might even have started looking through the cupboards and drawers. But it did not happen that way.

  The residence above the bank was laid out rather unusually. Almost at the top of the stairs there was a little half-landing where you were offered a choice of directions. Arthur had never been there long or unencumbered enough to discover what lay beyond the right-hand turn, beyond the brown linoleum and the thick brown light. On the morning when he should have found out, he was, so to speak, arrested. He was approaching the little landing, when he stood, and held on to the banister.

  For precisely at that moment, Mrs Mackenzie the manager’s wife, yellower, brittler than ever before, flew or blew across the landing in the sound of her own starchy nightdress. He could hear the sound of her long, rather fine, but yellow feet, just scratching the surface of the linoleum, somewhat sandpapery in effect.

  On seeing Arthur, Mrs Mackenzie too, was arrested. On the little landing. She stood looking down at her own toe-nails. He was surprised to find her so tall. Far taller than her tobacco-y husband. Perhaps it was from lying in bed.

  Then Mrs Mackenzie said, still staring at her toes, which were curling upward to meet her gaze: “My husband has taken the trap, and gone to Wilberforce for the day.”

  Arthur wished he knew what to say.

  “It is business,” she said. Then she laughed out of pale gums. “Men are a business to themselves.”

  The nightdress looked quite solid compared with skinny Mrs Mackenzie.

  Suddenly she said, looking straight at him, and he recognized the look: “I am sick, you know. Didn’t they tell you? I shouldn’t have left my bed. My husband will be so upset. When he returns from Wilberforce. If he doesn’t find me arranged.”

  She began to drift back to her room, trailing the sound, not of flesh, but skin and crumpled starch.

  “All right, Mrs Mackenzie,” Arthur felt he had to call out as she flitted, “I only know as much as you’ve told me.”

  It was disappointingly true, for he never found out whether the manager’s wife had some important secret, or whether he had simply caught her on her way to break into a pot of jam.

  Just then Waldo started calling from the bottom of the stairs, and he had to go down, when he would have liked to stay and at least watch Mrs Mackenzie arrange her invalid arms in the right position on the counterpane. He loved the ladies, and even though they didn’t take him seriously, knew quite a lot about them. On the whole he didn’t require the confirmation of cupboards and drawers.

  About this time they bought the land down Terminus Road. On several occasions Dad had been out there on his own. He had met a storekeeper, a man called Allwright, who told him Sarsaparilla was a coming place.

  “Not that we’re interested in that sort of thing,” Dad warned them when he got back from one of his expeditions. “What we want is to live to ourselves don’t we? with a minimum of nosey parkers. Well, Mr Allwright believes Sarsaparilla will never lose its backwaters, though the greater part of it is bound to open up.”

  “Oh dear,” Mother was beginning, she seemed afraid of something. “Do you think Mr Allwright is trustworthy? You know you are too trusting, George.”

  “Any major move,” said Dad, “is a leap in the dark. And you, Mother, were the biggest leap of all.”

  Mother kept quiet, as Arthur got to know, when Dad confused the issues.

  Soon they all went out to Sarsaparilla on the train, to see the land and meet Mr Allwright, so that Mother would be convinced.

  “But it’s so far, George!” she complained in the swaying train. “Imagine after a day at the bank!”

  Because Dad did not answer and looked so grim they knew it was all going to happen. While the train strewed their laps with smuts.

  Mr Allwright met them at the siding with a buggy. Arthur did not look at him closely, and years afterwards, trying to remember the first time he set eyes on his employer, wondered why the first occasion had left so little impression on him. Mr Allwright can never have been a particularly young-looking man. He was tall and fairly broad, oblong like a bar of chocolate. His full moustache, his thick glasses, his waistcoat over his shirtsleeves, all made you feel he was an honest man. Perhaps the reason you didn’t at first notice anyone so solid was that you knew he would still be there, he would keep till later. Anyway, Arthur hardly bothered to look, but was staring in all other directions, at Sarsaparilla, which lay glittering with early summer.

  Mr Allwright, who didn’t say an awful lot, drove them in the buggy, and pointed out to Mother the convenience of their road. It was already theirs. It was already called Terminus, because of being close to the station, practically planned, in fact, for Dad.

  As they drove down Terminus Road they passed a ruined house standing amongst fruit trees which had been allowed to go wild.

  “What is that?” Waldo asked.

  “Ah,” said Mr Allwright, “there’s a story attached to that.”

  “What story?” Arthur could hear Waldo insisting.

  “Ah,” said Mr Allwright, “something for a winter evening. Too long for now, and we’re nearly there.”

  Arthur knew this meant Mr Allwright wasn’t willing to tell, just as he knew Waldo was put out.

  “If you don’t tell it n
ow,” Waldo said, “how do I know you won’t have forgotten it?”

  Arthur laughed. He was enjoying himself.

  “It doesn’t matter, Mr Allwright,” he said. “If you don’t tell, my brother will make the story up.”

  Mr Allwright flicked his whip, and turned to Dad.

  “Young fullers,” he pronounced the “fell-” to rhyme with “gull”, “young fullers,” he said, “are a bit too sharp. Too much imagination could get them into trouble.”

  But Dad who was already living down Terminus Road did not answer. He had stuck out his jaw. He had taken off his billycock hat. He sat showing the mark where the leather band had eaten into his forehead, and for quite some time he had forgotten to shift his bad leg.

  So that before very long they were living really and truly on the land they bought from Allwrights down Terminus Road. First, of course, there was the house to build, and they used to come out from Barranugli on Sundays to supervise the building by Mr Haynes and a couple of men, and Arthur would play with a big randy dog belonging to one of the labourers.

  Arthur loved the classical façade of the brown weatherboard house. He learned there was something about the Classical which Dad called “sacrosanct — in a manner of speaking.”

  After Waldo had pestered him enough, and fetched the book, Dad would read them the Greek Myths. While pausing every few weeks to remind them: none of this is real, none of this is true. Whatever he meant by that. In the strong sunlight of Sunday mornings, or the more fruitful evenings seen through leaves, Arthur could not even care. He loved Demeter for her fulness, for her ripe apples, he loved Athene for her understanding.

  There was an occasion when Dad put down the book and said: “Sometimes I wonder, Arthur, whether you listen to any of this. Waldo can make an intelligent comment. But you! I’ve begun to ask myself if there’s any character, any incident, that appeals to Arthur in any way.”

  Arthur couldn’t answer Dad, or not in full.

  “Tiresias,” he said, to keep him quiet.

  “Why on earth Tiresias?” asked Dad.

  And Waldo had begun to stare.

  But it was too difficult to explain to their father even if Arthur had wanted to. He could not explain the diversity of what he partly understood. He was too lazy. It was too long. Nor would his family understand. How could he tell them of his dreams, for instance, except as something to laugh about. They would laugh to be told how shocked he was for Tiresias when Zeus took away his sight at the age of seven — seven — for telling people things they shouldn’t know. So Arthur kept quiet. He was only surprised they didn’t notice how obviously his heart was beating when Zeus rewarded Tiresias with the gift of prophecy and a life seven times as long as the lives of ordinary men. Then there was that other bit, about being changed into a woman, if only for a short time. Time enough, though, to know he wasn’t all that different.

  So when Waldo stared at Arthur stupid Arthur, who couldn’t answer Dad’s question, Arthur simply plaited his too-pliable fingers, and sat looking down.

  Brown Brown Arthur Brown? he heard them at school, but the other side of his own more interesting thoughts. He heard the voice of Mr Hetherington who, after a little, realized, and did not keep him in.

  The headmaster was Mr Heyward, with whom at first there was a spot of trouble. It was not so much over the green Junior Scripture Books which Mr Hetherington doled out. You didn’t need to bother with those. You could look at other things beyond the page. The trouble began over the half-hour segregation, when the clergyman, the ministers came.

  Dad wrote Mr Heyward a note:

  Dear Sir,

  As my twin boys are convinced unbelievers I must request you to exempt them from religious instruction. I myself was born a Baptist, but thought better of it since.

  Yours truly,

  Geo. Brown.

  Mr Heyward sent a reply:

  My dear Mr Brown,

  The problem is a simple one. All agnostics are classified automatically as C of E. You can rest assured the Rev. Webb-Stoner will not assault your boys’ convictions.

  H. E. Heyward

  (Principal.)

  Then Dad thought of a tremendous joke:

  Dear Mr Heyward,

  What if I should reveal that a pair of Moslem boys are attending your very school?

  G. Brown.

  The Brothers Brown were pestered no more, but allowed to moon about the yard. Waldo kept a book hidden on him. But Arthur used to play with the marbles he had earned. Arthur in particular longed for the half-hour segregation. Which did seem to set them apart. It got round Sarsaparilla there was something queer about the Browns, over and above one of them a real dill. It did not worry Arthur. Dill in the engravings looked like fennel, which grew increasingly wild down most of the side roads at Sarsaparilla.

  Of course Mrs Allwright, so well placed at the store she always heard about everything, had suspected in the beginning there was something wrong with the Browns, though from goodness of heart, on their coming out Sundays to supervise (I ask you!) Mr Haynes, she had provided a cold tomato, a wet leaf of lettuce, and a slice of beef, with sometimes perhaps a hard-boiled egg as an extra.

  Mrs Allwright said: “Fred, I knew you were acting unwise selling land to such as them. My land, too, though I don’t propose to harp on that.”

  Land was one of the several reasons Mrs Allwright was superior to her husband, Arthur learned in time. But now he had just come into the store to buy humbugs with one of the sixpences Mr Mackenzie the manager had given.

  “I have a feeling,” Mrs Allwright was saying, “that the Browns are on our hands for always. Mind you,” she said, “I have nothing against the English in general, the decent, church-going ones who you wouldn’t mind sitting down at table with. But these!”

  “These are human beings, Ivy,” Mr Allwright said.

  “Human beings,” said Mrs Allwright, “are all very well.”

  Then Arthur declared himself.

  “Mrs Allwright,” he called, chipping on the counter with the sixpence, “I don’t want to interrupt, but have come for humbugs if you’ve got them.”

  Mrs Allwright came out from behind. She was that red. She was wearing a little watch which you could pull out to the end of its chain, to tell the time conveniently.

  “Not humbugs,” she said, as though she wouldn’t have had them on the place. “Not humbugs, but bull’s-eyes. They’re the same.”

  “They aren’t really,” said Arthur, “but I’ll take the bull’s eyes. I never really cared for bull’s-eyes.”

  Mrs Allwright began to weigh them out.

  “Why,” she said, “what a trick you are!”

  “How would you feel, Mrs Allwright,” Arthur asked, “sucking a bull’s eye?”

  While Mrs Allwright was twisting the corners of the paper bag.

  “Come along,” she said. “I haven’t time for argument.”

  “You wouldn’t feel good,” said Arthur, taking the paper bag and the change.

  Mrs Allwright didn’t answer, she only breathed.

  “That’s a pretty nice watch,” Arthur said, to sweeten her. “Will you let me pull the chain?”

  But Mrs Allwright said: “I would of thought, Arthur, your mother would of taught you that ladies don’t appreciate bold behaviour in little boys.”

  So Arthur Brown realized that Mrs Allwright did not like him. It did not disturb him, however, nor that she should continue to dislike. It was Mr Allwright who mattered.

  On a later occasion going to the store for some article of less importance, Arthur looked through what must have been the storekeeper’s bedroom window, and there was Mr Allwright down on his knees in a blaze of yellow furniture. Arthur was fascinated, if not actually frightened, by his friend’s face sunk on his chest, by the hands which he held out in front of him, pressed straining together as stiff as boards. It puzzled Arthur a lot.

  “Mrs Allwright,” he said at the counter, “I saw Mr Allwright down on his knees.�
�

  Mrs Allwright blushed and pursed up her mouth.

  “He is praying to his Maker,” she said, as though that explained everything.

  “His maker?”

  He liked the idea, though, of the wooden man, freshly carved, and sweet-smelling.

  “To the Lord Almighty.”

  As Mrs Allwright elaborated, she very discreetly lowered her eyes.

  If Arthur did not altogether understand, the wooden man began to put on flesh.

  And then Mr Allwright himself came.

  “Well, young fuller,” he said, which continued to fascinate Arthur. “I bet you’ve found out something else since yesterday.”

  But Arthur had grown shy, for some power which Mr Allwright possessed.

  Then the grocer rummaged in the calico bag in which he kept the change from when he went round delivering.

  “Did you ever see a lead florin?”

  Arthur couldn’t touch it enough.

  “Was it made?” he asked.

  “It was made, all right,” said the grocer. “A brum two-bob — like anything else.”

  Then he took the hammer and struck the coin into a disc of blurred metal.

  “That’ll cost you a whole two bob!” Arthur was enjoying it.

  While Mrs Allwright stood wincing, as though suffering it in her own flesh.

  “Somebody,” she said, “always has to pay the bagpipes.”

  Though she made pretty sure, as a rule, that she would not be somebody.

  Arthur eventually added Mr Allwright to what he knew as truest: to grain in wood, to bread broken roughly open, to cowpats, neatly, freshly dropped. If he did not add Mrs Allwright it was because she did not fit into that same world of objects, she never became distinct, she was all ideas, plots, and tempers. In myth or life, he never ever took to Hera.