– I was a degree-collector.
– A what – collector? Speak up. You mean garbage?
– Bachelor of Haematology, Doctor of Apologetics, Bachelor of Oscillography, Doctor of Metallurgy –
– And Master of None?
– Master of Arts, Fellow of the Society of Royal Urologists, Fellow of –
– We have you down here as a schoolmaster. Iranian. We have you down here as a welder.
– Oh well it all comes to the same thing in the end.
– Don’t be impertinent. We haven’t built you up yet. There will be a period of initiation. The important thing is in the holding and the aiming of the instrument.
Through the round goggles the sparks fly out. The situation is highly inflammatory and demands constant reappraisal. In white helmet and round goggles Mr. Marburg the butler emerges from behind a metal screen, Mrs. Mgulu has sent for you, he says in an ominous tone, will you kindly step this way. What is it? What’s happened? It is not for me to say, I am her servant and I do not exceed my frame of reference. She has sent Olaf with the vehicle for you. The number of the vehicle is insignificant. The vehicle moves swiftly and smoothly across the blue landscape. The sun flickers through the tall quick acacia trees, increasing the neural electricity to help the oscillograph.
Mrs. Mgulu steps out from behind the bedroom screen, wearing a mauve silk dress and golden shoes. Her arms are made of iodine crystals. Her stiff black hair is coiled up high and smells of fixative. The alexandrite set in gold looks sea-green in the left nostril.
– It’s your wife. It’s Lilly, she’s very ill. Dr. Lukulwe is doing all he can. I’m afraid it’s the acute, fulminating type.
Behind the screen the black fingers tap the flaccid white flank. The eyes and gums are bleeding. The gums look purple and the face pale green. All round the bed the microscopes point down like conventional weapons, and the glaring lights are hot.
– Lilly, Lilly, it’s me.
Lilly is deaf and blind.
– I’m so very sorry.
But Dr. Lukulwe is only a psychoscopist, a charlatan, he will make her worse, he will make her suffer with his machine, please get a real doctor.
– Real? What is real? His eyelids are the right colour.
– Please let her die in peace without self-knowledge that is false, built up by instruments and the minds behind the instruments.
– Oh but it bears a close resemblance to the real thing.
The gesture is one of careful examination. The doctor’s eyes are those of an inspired pedant. The doctor’s black eyes gleam with triumph inside the pinky whites, the triumph perhaps of a fanatic inventor astonished to find that his invention works.
Up on the monitor the jellyfish are writhing inside one another, disintegrating and reaggregating into different patterns in depth as well as width.
The gesture is one of helplessness, palms flat and facing upwards briefly, paler, almost pink, and heavily lined with past mistakes and present prospects.
– It is important to fill the body’s reservoirs with minerals like potassium and carbohydrate complexes found in sea-weed, so that radio-active minerals of a similar type are then absorbed and passed straight out.
– But doctor, it is quite evidently too late to do that.
– I said it would have been advisable.
– What exactly is the cause, doctor?
– There you go again with your sick talk. Don’t you understand that in paleontology the beginning of a new organism cannot be observed, because at the beginning it is not recognisable as a new organism and by the time it has become one the beginning is lost. I have already told you, diagnosis merely prognosticates aetiology.
– You mean, you remember me?
– There are records. You, however, seem to have forgotten.
– But Lilly, but my wife, my wife is not a paleontological specimen.
– The rule is universal in all fields. It is a scientific law.
– An article of faith.
– Until disproved. In the meantime, we are content to know how the thing functions.
– What thing?
– Anything. Society. Life. The universe. God. The unconscious. A land-reclaimer. I must go now.
– But doctor, the patient.
– Oh yes. Blood transfusions would help a little. Ease her at least. May I see your group card? Hmmm. Pity. Won’t do at all. I’ll have the right Colourless blood sent from the bank at once. You nearly forgot her yourself, didn’t you?
– Doctor, please, why her? She’s led a selfless, blameless life.
– I am not a theologian. Goodbye.
– Camille, show Dr. Lukulwe out will you. You stay here. Goodbye, doctor. Listen my dear, I’m the same group as Lilly. I know it’s not allowed, but really it’s too absurd, isn’t it, I mean I can understand it the other way round but what harm can good healthy Melanian blood do to Colourless? Even my husband, Dr. Mgulu, who stands on a narrow Nationalist platform would applaud from a human point of view. Now I’m going to lie down here, you must help me with the needle and straps.
It is more difficult to find the vein in the arm that is made of iodine crystals than in the sick white arm, where the blue vein stands out like a rampart, calling out the grey-blueness of the flesh around it.
The rectangle of light ripples on the wooden table. The wrinkled wood inside the rectangle seems to be flowing into the wrinkled wood outside it, which looks darker. If the source of light were not known to be the oblique ray of sun filtering through the slightly swaying beads over the doorway, the wrinkled wood might be thought alive, as alive, at any rate, as the network of minute lines on the back of the wrist. But the minute lines on the back of the wrist do not flow as the wrinkled wood seems to flow. A microscope might perhaps reveal which is the more alive of the two.
– the essential amino-acid tryptophan combined with potassium iodide and the sodium salt of glutanic acid plus a minimal addition of di-iodo-tyrosine. Take two once a day or according to advice from physician. Oh dear where’s the fly-swatter?
– Lilly, who am I, what was I?
– D’you want to go to bed? There isn’t much time. I have to be back at the house at half past two.
The squint seems not so wide, so blue, in the luminosity thrown by the oblong of flowing light on the red stone floor. The static eye fixes the empty bowl of gruel, the mobile eye is static too, reproachful perhaps or full of wonder or puzzlement or anticipation, without which it would be indistinguishable from the static eye. Some of the gruel’s globules remain attached to the rounded white sides of the bowl which looks like the inside of the moon. The stone floor is a red river.
– I must just rinse the bowls and spoons and scrub the pan.
– Lilly, I love you. I’ve always loved you, from the beginning I’ve loved you.
– What is the beginning?
– The beginning is now. Leave the dishes. I’ll do them afterwards.
– After the beginning which is now. And then.
– When?
– When we first met. Do you remember how it was? Come my love and I will tell you, titillate you, arouse you from your deathly deficiency, it was a corridor like this one only longer, not quite so cubic and with numbered doors.
– Oh yes, I like that one. But the doors were labelled.
– Labelled then. A long way underground, oh very deep, very significant. I came out of the operations room, you remember, with a sheaf of notes in my hand, and bumped straight into you, it was some collision. I was in uniform too, and our tin buttons clicketied together as we kissed, I didn’t know you from Adam and your helmet fell off, clattering to the concrete floor.
– And it rolled down the corridor. Go on.
– Lie down with me and hold my hand. And I will tell you. Lie down with me I said, what on the concrete floor, you said, and I said life is short, don’t argue, give me a child. And people came and went, their legs stepped over us, and the Wing Commander came o
ut of the operations room on the way to the lavatory and said for heaven’s sake put your helmet on man it’s regulations. I had a crush on him you know, but he wouldn’t look at me, his eyes wouldn’t meet mine, they’d veer away, in embarrassment perhaps, at the dissymmetry.
– I was a messenger, wasn’t I, from the observation room.
– Only for the duration. You told me you’d been a student. Though I must admit you looked older than that, you looked older than your years even then.
– Yes, well I was. I’d been studying for some time. There were always funds somewhere one could apply to. The State, Big Business, Big Philanthropy.
– That’s not how you put it last time.
– Isn’t it? How was it then?
– Don’t you remember, it was on account of the termites, it was prettier.
– Tell me.
– That the library in the desert shack where you spent all those years alone had seven hundred books –
– Seven hundred and thirty-two.
– And thirty-two.
– One on every subject. The Government had stocked the library for the survival of knowledge. I was its librarian.
– But the termites were eating their way through the books, every book had holes like craters right through all the pages, some had small holes, some big holes –
– And sometimes the hole was in the top half of the page –
– And sometimes in the bottom half.
– But holes nevertheless. It made reading very difficult.
– Oh but you knew so much.
– There were gaps.
– And you said, I had to laugh, you said, I love the asymmetry of your eyes. You had so many theories. You even had a theory about my eyes. But I forget what it was. Something about a satellite out of orbit, or an excited atom. I never did meet your parents. Or you mine.
– Or me mine. Or you yours.
– They were above, naturally. Do you remember the music, it was just one note, oscillating though, from the seismograph or something in the observation room, and it was broadcast all over the corridors and even the lavatories and dormitories. We learnt to sleep with it. And with each other, well, everyone did that. Goodness me, the babies born down there, they were numberless. Do you remember ours, how frail, how thin, how pitiable?
– You’re talking about yourself.
– But it was only for the duration. Tickle me a little too.
– Do you remember the night-classes, everyone was so bored, we all started self-improvement on one another, and we sat on a bench together and learnt Perpetual Motion. Very tiring, after working all day. I taught semanthropy on Tuesdays.
– And the dances, do you remember the dances? The one when we got engaged, I remember it as if it were yesterday, you held me at arm’s length and we writhed away at each other and I just knew.
Through the gold lorgnette of the Governor’s wife, the dancers quiver on the ballroom floor which is as round as the eye of a microscope. The dancers lean backwards, bouncing their shimmied bellies, then forwards, bouncing their flounced behinds in dignified postures and steady rhythms. Mrs. Mgulu slowly stirs the air in front of her with her bare black arms, the hands flat out at right angles. Mrs. Mgulu leans her plunging neckline forward in dignified posture and steady rhythm and says what books have you been reading? You must have got these items from somewhere, but they’re all wrong you know, you mustn’t go believing everything Dr. Lukulwe says, he’s only a doctor in psychoscopy. Ultra-specialisation is death to the species, look at orthogenesis. Look at us. Look at the Tertiary era or the Palaeozoic. But I’ve always loved you, from the beginning I’ve loved you.
– The beginning cannot be observed.
– The beginning is now.
– What’s the matter dear? Have you gone off?
– I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. I’ve no duration. Lilly, you must forgive me. It’s all so long ago. I’m tired. So very tired.
Beyond the closed wrought-iron gates the feathery green branches droop like ferns over the white wall that separates the property from the road. Beyond the tall wrought-iron gates and beyond the feathery green mimosas on either side the plane-trees line the drive, casting a welcome shade. One half of the tall wrought-iron gates might be unlocked, might perhaps be pushed open with an effort of the will. Sometimes it is sufficient.
At the beginning it was sufficient. It was at times and within certain limits sufficient to imagine a movement for the movement to occur, although it was easier in the negative. A scene of pastoral non-habitation, perhaps, or the prevention of a sequence. But sometimes the gruel was brought. And whereas no amount of positive evidence conclusively confirmed a hypothesis, one piece of negative evidence conclusively falsified it. Since the beginning there has been a displacement from cause to effect. The episodes imagined now go down into the spleen which increases in size by no means painlessly until it fills most of the abdomen. The leucocyte count is 900,000 to the square millimetre and quite beyond the will’s control.
Beyond the closed wrought-iron gates that open only by remote control the plane-trees line the drive in a green tunnel that recedes into more greenery with a gleam of sunlight here and there, and blobs of colour from the bougainvillaea, the poinsettia and perhaps the laurels still. The house is quite invisible.
The white wall gently rounds as the road curves, and continues to curve, but almost imperceptibly. It is impossible ever to see whether things are any different round the corner.
In the white wall, the glossy black door opens suddenly. Sprtch, grrrr, no, not that. The black door opens and good afternoon, I’m the new gardener.
In the white wall the glossy black door opens. The woman stands framed by the whiteness, dressed in a black cotton overall. The background is of rose-red flowers and cypress hedge receding. Pale face, pale eyes that strike no note, pale hair. The waxiness is due to a deficiency in the liver. The waxiness creates a silence.
– Good afternoon. Could I possibly see the head gardener?
– Who wants him?
– I came once before, you may remember, Mrs. Mgulu sent me, well, there was a misunderstanding. I’ve been unwell. But I’m all right now. I’m sorry to trouble you.
The two white pillars beneath the black rectangle are made of sodium chloride. Behind them the path is crazy pavement.
– Oh. Well, I suppose it’s all right. Will you wait there, I’ll see if I can find him. I’ll have to shut the door.
Or something like that, the legs being brown perhaps and the flowers a mass of pink. Mrs. Mgulu says they remind her of damp December funerals in the North, the hands being black, the flowers a deathly white. To live the gesture in immobility is to evoke and therefore to have observed the gesture. But imagination is not an imaged projection of observed phenomena. Sometimes it is sufficient to imagine an episode for the episode to occur, and that is the terrifying thing, though not necessarily in that precise form. The first failure is the beginning of the first lesson. Learning presupposes great holes in knowledge.
In the white wall the glossy black door opens suddenly. The woman stands framed by the whiteness, pert and petite and pretty in a white linen dress the neckline of which embraces the glowing basalt of her throat as a crescent moon the night sky. It is more difficult as a negative. The background is of pale flowers and cypress hedge receding. The brownish green of the cypress hedge looks darker in the light of the white linen dress, merging with the skin’s rich earthy brown. The negative creates a silence.
– Good afternoon, ma’am. Would it be possible to see the head gardener?
– What’s that?
– I was wondering if it would be possible to see the head gardener. I’m sorry to disturb you.
– Who wants him?
– I came once before, it was another lady. Mrs. Mgulu had sent me, but there was a misunderstanding.
The two pillars beneath the white vessel are made of graphite. Behind them the path is crazy pavement.
&nb
sp; – Oh. Well, I suppose it’s all right. He’s about somewhere. I’ll go and see if I can find him. Wait there please. I’ll have to shut the door.
The gestures are framed by the white wall. Above the gestures are two mauve flowers. The red network is very fine.
– Oh yes. You know Mrs. Mgulu well? I’m all for everyone lending a helping hand. Especially us, I mean we must stick together, mustn’t we, I always say to Milly, that’s my wife, or is it Dolly, I always say to Polly, forty-nine years we’ve been married and we’ve seen plenty, I can assure you, I always say to Polly, in these difficult times we must all pull together and sink our ex-differences as Westerners, don’t you agree.
– I’m afraid I never studied non-Euclidean geometry. I specialised early, you see, in my country –
– In your country men were lazy and smug. That’s why they lost the battle for survival. It’s an article of faith. Conceited, lazy, unreliable. These little orange-trees, for instance, they’ve been wrongly planted, in round hollows, instead of on mounds of earth. The fellow who did that was one of you lot. Hosed them for minutes at a time, that’s what he did, and let them soak in a great pool of water, why it’s murder, especially in the dry season, they can’t take the contrast. You have to be gentle with them you know. The water should be allowed to drain down slowly.
The green snake slithers along the left flower-bed right back to the yellow door in the white wall, though in the other direction it also reaches as far as the wall beyond the olive grove, where the brass tap is. There are six other hoses and taps.
– Oh of course I realise that it takes four or five hours, because every plant must be watered individually. I do know that, it’s one thing we can’t do with machines, though naturally you probably use the automatics for vegetables. Some plants like the spray, I know, and some prefer a plain jet on the root or around the root. These castor-oil plants for example, they need a very gentle jet which mustn’t touch them at all or the stem would break. So I wouldn’t use the spray at all but I’d put my finger over the nozzle-holder whenever I need a spray.
The Brooke-Rose Omnibus Page 16