After the Dance

by Alan Warner

  ‘Would you like a glass of milk?’ she asked.

  ‘Thank you very much, missus.’ He pronounced his consonants in a very strange manner: of course, they didn’t know English well, goodness knew where they came from. She handed him a tall cold tumbler of milk and watched as he took it delicately in his dark hand, the blackness contrasting very strongly with the white of the milk. He drank it very quickly and handed it back to her, then began to put stuff on the floor.

  ‘Silk scarf. Blue,’ he said. ‘Very nice.’ He held it up against the light in which the silk looked cold.

  ‘It is very nice,’ she said in her precise English.

  He stopped.

  ‘You no from here?’ – as if he had heard some tone of strangeness in her voice.

  ‘No. No from here,’ she half-imitated him.

  ‘I am from Pakistan,’ he said, bending down again so that she could only see the bluish turban. ‘I am a student,’ he added.

  She could hardly make out what he was saying, he spoke in such a guttural way.

  ‘Are you a student?’ she said at last.

  ‘Student in law,’ he said as if that made everything plain. He took out a yellow pullover and left it on the floor for her to look at. She shook her head: it was very nice wool, she thought, picking it up and letting her hands caress it, but she had no use for it. She supposed that Pakistan must be very warm and yet he appeared hot as if the weather didn’t agree with him. What must it be like for him in the winter?

  ‘Where you come from then?’ he asked, looking up and smiling with his warm, quick, dark eyes.

  ‘I come from the north,’ she said slowly.

  ‘North?’

  ‘From the Highlands,’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, as if he did not fully understand.

  ‘Do you like here?’ he asked innocently.

  ‘Do you like here yourself?’ she countered.

  He stopped with a scarf in his hand.

  ‘Not,’ he said and nodded his head. ‘Not. Too cold.’ His eyes brightened. ‘Going back to Pakistan after law. Parents got shop. Big shop in big town.’ He made a motion with his hands which she presumed indicated the size of the shop.

  ‘Do you come here often?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t seen you before.’ Nor tinkers. She never saw any tinkers. Up in the Highlands the tinkers would come to the door quite often, but not here. Drummond their name was, it was a family name.

  ‘Not often. I’m on vacation, see? Sometimes Saturdays I come. I work in shop in Glasgow to make money for law. For education. This vacation with me.’

  She nodded, half understanding, looking down at the clothes. She wondered what the women wore in Pakistan, what they did. She had seen some women with long dresses and pigtails. But was that India or China?

  The stuff he was selling was pretty cheap. ‘Men’s handkerchiefs.’ He held up a bundle of them. She shook her head. ‘Men’s ties,’ he said, holding up a bundle of them, garish and painted. He looked quickly round the living room, noting the glass, the flowers . . .

  ‘You live alone, missus?’ he said. She said yes without thinking, wondering why he had asked. Perhaps he would come back later and rob her: you couldn’t tell with anyone these days.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, again mopping his brow.

  ‘City no good,’ he said. ‘Too hot. Too great traffic.’ He smiled warmly, studying her and showing his white teeth. ‘Parents go to mountains in summer in Pakistan.’

  He placed a nightgown on top of the pile: it had a blue ground with small pink flowers woven into it.

  ‘Nice nightgown,’ he said, holding it up. ‘Cheap. Very cheap. Bargain. For you, missus.’

  She held it in her hands and studied it. ‘Too small,’ she said finally. She had one nightgown already she had received from her sister in Canada; it had frills as well, but she never wore it.

  ‘Dressing gown then,’ he pursued. ‘Two pound. Good bargain. Nice quality.’ It was far too expensive.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she said at last.

  ‘No today, missus. Perhaps next time if I come.’

  If he came! That meant he might not come again. Of course if he didn’t sell much he wouldn’t come, why should he? And it didn’t look as if he had sold much, what with the case crammed to the top, the children’s stuff still there, panties, jerseys, little twin sets. They were all intact. The young wives had been avoiding him, that was clear. But they would buy sweets and cakes all right though they wouldn’t buy clothes for their children. It was scandalous.

  ‘Knickers,’ he said. ‘Silk knickers.’ He held them, very cool, very silky, letting them run through his fingers, his black fingers.

  There was hardly anything else there that she could buy, except for the ladies’ handkerchiefs but she had plenty of these already, some even from the best Irish linen. One always gathered handkerchiefs, though one hardly ever used them, not these delicate ones anyway.

  ‘Do you ever go home to Pakistan?’ she asked.

  ‘Not to Pakistan since I came to this place two years ago. No money.’ He smiled winningly, preparing to return everything to the case. ‘Some day, perhaps. Two year from this time.’ He held up two fingers. ‘When law finished.’

  She watched his black hands busy against the whites and reds and greens. She noticed for the first time that his own clothes were quite cheap; a painted tie, a dirty looking collar, a dark suit and scuffed shoes, shoes so dusty that it looked as if he had been walking for ever. She was standing by the window, and as she watched him she could see a big red bus flashing and glittering down the road.

  He was really quite young when you studied him. For some reason she thought of the time that Norman had come home drunk at two in the morning after the dance, the sickness in the bathroom under the hard early-morning light of the bulb, his refusal to get up the following morning for work . . . She wondered if this young man drank. Probably not. There would be some law against it in their religion. They had a very funny religion, but they were clean-living people, she had heard. They didn’t have churches over there as we had. It was more like temples or things like that.

  As he was putting all the clothes back in the case, she put out her hand and picked up the silk knickers, studying them again. She stood at the window looking at them. Lord, how flimsy they were! Who would wear such things? What delicate airy beings, what sluts, would put these next to their skin? She wouldn’t be seen dead buying that stuff. It wouldn’t even keep out the winter cold. Yet they were so cool in your hands, so silky, like water running, like a cool stream in the north.

  ‘How much?’ she said.

  ‘Fifteen shillings,’ he said looking at her devotedly, his hands resting lightly on the case.

  She put them down again.

  ‘Have you any gents’ socks?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘How much are they?’

  ‘Five shilling,’ he said. ‘Light socks. Good bargain. Nice.’ He handed over two pairs, one grey, the other brown. As she held them in her hands, stroking them gently, she realised how inferior they were to her own, she knew that no love had gone into their making. She had never bought a pair of shop socks in her life: she had always knitted Norman’s socks herself. Why, people used to stop him in the street and admire them, they were so beautiful, so much care had gone into them! And she knew so many patterns too, all those that her mother had taught her so long ago and so far away. In another country, in another time, in another age.

  ‘Five shillings,’ she repeated dully. Still, that was about the cheapest thing he had. She said decisively, ‘I’ll take them,’ though her heart was rent at their cheapness.

  She went into the bedroom and took the five shillings out of the shiny black bag, shutting the door in case he might follow her. That left her with three pounds five for the week. Still, in summer it wasn’t too bad, she didn’t have to use so much electricity and she could save on the coal.

  She counted the two silver half-crowns
coldly into his warm black hand, and he gave her the socks.

  ‘Thank you, missus,’ he said. Could she detect just a trace of Glasgow accent behind the words? That displeased her for some reason. He bent down, strapping the case tight, and, when he was ready to go, he smiled at her radiantly.

  ‘Will you be coming again?’ she asked, thinking how quickly the hour had passed.

  ‘Every Tuesday while vacation is on,’ he said, looking out of the window at the traffic and the children playing.

  She followed him down the lobby.

  ‘You sit at window much?’ he said, and she didn’t like that, but she said, ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘See you Tuesday then,’ he said. ‘Maybe have something else. Something nice.’

  She closed the door behind him and heard his steps going downstairs, and it was almost as if she was listening to Norman leaving. She went back to the window, looking down, but she couldn’t see him: he must be keeping to this side of the street. Later on, however, she saw him crossing the road. He stopped and laid the case down and waved up at her, but she couldn’t make out the expression on his face. Then he continued and she couldn’t see him at all.

  She got up slowly and put the socks in with the pile of the ones she had knitted herself, the loved ones, as if she were making an offering to the absent, as if she were asking for forgiveness. She hoped that next week he would have something cheap. She continued knitting the socks.

  The Maze

  It was early morning when he entered the maze and there were still tiny globes of dew on the grass across which he walked, leaving ghostly footprints. The old man at the gate, who was reading a newspaper, briefly raised his head and then gave him his ticket. He was quite easy and confident when he entered: the white handkerchief at his breast flickered like a miniature flag. It was going to be an adventure, fresh and uncomplicated really. Though he had heard from somewhere that the maze was a difficult one he hadn’t really believed it: it might be hard for others but not for him. After all wasn’t he quite good at puzzles? It would be like any puzzle, soluble, open to the logical mind.

  The maze was in a big green park in which there was also a café, which hadn’t as yet opened, and on the edge of it there was a cemetery with big steel gates, and beyond the cemetery a river in which he had seen a man in black waterproofs fishing. The river was as yet grey with only a little sparkle of sun here and there.

  At first as he walked along the path he was relaxed and, as it were, lounging: he hadn’t brought the power of his mind to bear on the maze. He was quite happy and confident too of the outcome. But soon he saw, below him on the stone, evidence of former passage, for there were empty cigarette packets, spent matches, empty cartons of orangeade, bits of paper. It almost irritated him to see them there as if he wished the maze to be clean and pure like a mathematical problem. It was a cool fresh morning and his shirt shone below his jacket, white and sparkling. He felt nice and new as if he had just been unpacked from a box.

  When he arrived at the first dead-end he wasn’t at all perturbed. There was plenty of time, he had the whole morning in front of him. So it was with an easy mind that he made his way back to try another path. This was only a temporary setback to be dismissed from his thoughts. Obviously those who had designed the maze wouldn’t make it too easy, if it had been a group of people. Of course it might only have been one person. He let his mind play idly round the origin of the maze: it was more likely to have been designed by one person, someone who in the evening of his days had toyed idly with a puzzle of this nature: an engineer perhaps or a setter of crosswords. Nothing about the designer could be deduced from the maze: it was a purely objective puzzle without pathos.

  The second path too was a dead-end. And this time he became slightly irritated for from somewhere in the maze he heard laughter. When had the people who were laughing come in? He hadn’t noticed them. And then again their laughter was a sign of confidence. One wouldn’t laugh if one were unable to solve the puzzle. The clear happy laughter belonged surely to the solvers. For some reason he didn’t like them; he imagined them as haughty and imperious, negligent, graceful people who had the secret of the maze imprinted on their brains.

  He walked on. As he did so he met two of the inhabitants of the maze for the first time. It was a father and son, at least he assumed that was what they were. They looked weary, and the son was walking a little apart from the father as if he was angry. Before he actually caught sight of them he thought he heard the son say, ‘But you said it wouldn’t take long.’ The father looked guilty and hangdog as if he had failed his son in some way. He winked at the father and son as he passed them as if implying, ‘We are all involved in the same puzzle.’ But at the same time he didn’t feel as if he belonged to the same world as they did. For one thing he was unmarried. For another the father looked unpleasantly flustered and the son discontented. Inside the atmosphere of his own coolness he felt superior to them. There was something inescapably dingy about them, especially about the father. On the other hand they would probably not meet again and he might as well salute them as if they were ‘ships of the night’. It seemed to him that the father was grey and tired, like a little weary mouse redolent of failure.

  He continued on his way. This too was a dead-end. There was nothing to do but retrace his steps. He took his handkerchief out of his pocket, for he was beginning to sweat. He hadn’t noticed that the sun was so high in the sky, that he had taken so long already. He wiped his face and put his handkerchief back in his pocket. There was more litter here, a fragment of a doll, a torn pair of stockings. What went on in this maze? Did people use it for sexual performance? The idea disgusted him and yet at the same time it argued a casual mastery which bothered him. That people should come into a maze of all places and carry out their practices there! How obscene, how vile, how disrespectful of the mind that had created it! For the first time he began to feel really irritated with the maze as if it had a life of its own, as if it would allow sordid things to happen. Calm down, he told himself, this is ridiculous, it is not worth this harassment.

  He found himself standing at the edge of the maze, and over the hedge he could see the cemetery which bordered the park. The sun was flashing from its stones and in places he could see bibles of open marble. In others the tombstones were old and covered with lichen. Beyond the cemetery he could see the fisherman still angling in his black shiny waterproofs. The rod flashed back from his shoulder like a snake, but the cord itself was subsumed in bright sunlight.

  And then to his chagrin he saw that there was a group of young people outside the maze and quite near him. It was they who had been the source of the laughter. One of them was saying that he had done the maze five times, and that it was a piece of cake, nothing to it. The others agreed with him. They looked very ordinary young people, not even students, just boys from the town, perhaps six or seven years younger than himself. He couldn’t understand how they had found the maze easy when he himself didn’t and yet he had a better mind, he was sure of that. He felt not exactly envy of them in their assured freedom but rather anger with himself for being so unaccountably stupid. It sounded to him as if they could enter and leave the maze without even thinking about it. They were eating chips from brown paper, and he saw that the café had opened.

  But the café didn’t usually open till twelve o’clock, and he had entered the maze at half past nine. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was quarter past twelve. And then he noticed something else, that the veins on his wrists seemed to stand out more, seemed to glare more, than he had remembered them doing. He studied both wrists carefully. No, no question about it, his eyes had not deceived him. So, in fact, the maze was getting at him. He was more worried than he had thought.

  He turned back down the path. This time something new had happened. He was beginning to feel the pressure of the maze, that was the only way that he could describe it. It was almost as if the maze were exerting a force over him. He stopped again and considered. In
the beginning, when he had entered the maze in his white shirt, which now for some reason looked soiled, he had felt both in control of himself and the maze. It would be he who would decide what direction he would take, it would be he who would remain detached from the maze, much as one would remain detached from a crossword puzzle while solving it in front of the fire in the evening. But there had been a profound change which he only now recognised. The maze was in fact compelling him to choose, pushing him, making demands on him. It wasn’t simply an arrangement of paths and hedges. It was as if the maze had a will of its own.

  Now he began to walk more quickly as if feeling that he didn’t have much time left. In fact he had an appointment with Diana at three o’clock and he mustn’t break it. It would be ridiculous if he arrived late and said, ‘I couldn’t come because I was powerless to do so. I was a prisoner.’ She was sure to think such an explanation odd, not to say astonishing. And in any case if he arrived late she wouldn’t be there. Not that deep down he was all that worried, except that his nonappearance would be bad manners. If he was going to give her a pretext for leaving him, then it must be a more considered pretext than that.

  He noticed now that his legs were becoming tired and heavy. He supposed that this was quite logical, as the stone would be absorbing some of the energy that he was losing. But what bothered him more than anything was the feeling that it would be a long time before he would get out of the maze, that he was going round in circles. Indeed he recognised some of the empty cigarette packets that he was passing. They were mostly Players and he was sure that he had seen them before. In fact he bent down and marked some of them with a pen to make sure of later identification. This was the sort of thing that he had read of in books, people going round and round deserts in circles. And yet he thought that he was taking a different path each time. He wiped his face again and felt that he was losing control of himself. He must be if he was going round and round in helpless circles all the time. Maybe if he had a thread or something like that he would be able to strike out on fresh paths. But he didn’t have a thread and some remnant of pride determined that he would not use it, rather like his resolve not to use a dictionary except as a last resort when he was doing a crossword puzzle. He must keep calm. After all, the café and the cemetery were quite visible. It wasn’t as if he was in a prison and couldn’t shout for help if the worst came to the worst. It wasn’t as if he was stranded on a desert island. And yet he knew that he wouldn’t shout for help: he would rather die.