– Yes.
– Mrs. Ivan –
– Shsh. He hear.
– Oh. Is he asleep?
– No, no, him, in door.
– But, Mrs. Ivan, that’s you.
– It is me-him. The light.
– Oh, I see.
– Shsh.
The algae are still. The hierarchy of diagonal shafts are still. The aureole is dark gold as an angel’s. To the right, a little behind, is the jellyfish, petrified in frozen zigzags.
– For me it is him. For you, her. You understand?
– Yes. I understand.
– Sometimes, then, for me it is her. Like, for you, him.
– Yes … Yes … I love you Mrs. Ivan.
– I love also. Long in your house, only goodday, goodnight, excuse, no friends, wife busy, I love, all must love.
– I’ve always loved you, from the beginning I’ve loved you.
– And him in door?
– Layers and layers of love.
– Lares? What is lares?
– Lay-ers. Like geology. Or geophysics.
– Ah. You love tea? Samovar tea?
– The god will go if you open the door.
– He come back. Dark now.
– Yes, he has almost gone.
– He go inside maybe. Come in please. You sit. Look, I have many tins now, all boiled, your wife ask, clean, this shelf all full, many many. Roof, Ivan build hut. One day.
– Where?
– God he know.
– So you’ll be leaving us?
– One day. Private. You understand?
– Yes.
– What you were before?
– I was an Intellectual.
– Ye-es?
– I was a broad-based Liberal humanist.
– Please?
– And you?
– I am born here.
– Yes of course. I’m old enough to be your daughter.
– Please?
– It was a joke.
– Ah yes, Ukay humour. Different from Uessessarian. I speak Asswati very good, I laugh in Asswati but not Ukayan. They teach at school, here everyone speak Ukayan good like Asswati, but for me not, my mother always speak Uessessarian as child to me.
– It all comes to the same thing in the end.
– Please?
– We seem to communicate all right.
– Ah yes. You love my tea?
– Very good, thank you very much.
– You prefer with milk?
– No, no, it’s fine like this. You – er – you’re very cosy in here, aren’t you? You’ve arranged the furniture quite well.
– Ye-es.
– I’m afraid it’s very old furniture we picked up here and there. I got that armchair on a rubbish dump outside the town you know, they were about to burn it.
– Yes.
It is the knowledge of the shape and size of the sparse furniture which makes it visible in the darkened room, the armchair with its inside spewing, the rickety iron bed in the corner to the left of the verandah-door, the curtained shelves on the wall facing the verandah, the small table with the wash-basin that doesn’t match the jug or slop-pail, the cooking-ring in the corner, the larger table against the other wall, its far end covered from edge to edge with opened cans, the wooden kitchen chair. It is the knowledge of the history of every item which makes it sharply visible in the darkening room, even, if need be, in absolute blackness. It is likewise the knowledge of Mrs. Ivan however limited so far, that makes her tangible to the eyes and inner thoughts in the almost blackness of the darkening room. There is thus no need to talk, the atoms of her being move soundlessly in waves across the darkened room. A conversation, however, occurs. It is the knowledge of the history of every item thought that makes it tangible to the neural cells both before and after utterance, the utterance merely giving it that particular form which may or may not have been expected by the neural cells as they quickly rearrange themselves to enfold it in that precise form.
– What does your husband do, Mrs. Ivan?
– Labour Exchange.
– You mean, as an official?
– No, no. Unemployed. He wait.
– I’ve never seen him there.
– No? Maybe different, er – chass ..
– Group?
– No. Different, er – well, yes, different group, different, ah, time.
– What did he do before?
– You on other side yes? Questionnaire.
– I’m sorry, one gets so used to thinking of oneself that way, one transfers it.
– Yes? You transfer much? Your sickness. Yes? Or contain?
– I suppose I transfer most of it. Mrs. Ivan, how did all this happen, really I mean?
– Really? What is really?
– Through all the false identities that we build, the love-making, the trauma-seeking, the alchemising of anecdote to legend, of episode to myth, what really happened to us?
– Us. Us is difficult. You still think us. I do not think us. My mother Tartar, some Chinese, my father Uzbek, half Bahuko.
– But. But your hair is blonde!
– Red, no? Red gold, on identity. You not look in daylight. Funny genes. My son, eight years, my son surprising black. He strong. He work good at school.
– I see. I thought – but if you’re quarter Bahuko, why are you living here? Why are you so poor? You’re even poorer than we are.
– Always somebody poorer. Look Sino-America, nothing to eat, and Seatoarea.
– Oh yes I know, I know.
– Ivan, he ex-Uessessarian. Unskill. Skill before, no use, gone. Lucky room here. Thank you.
– What happened, Mrs. Ivan? What happened? Please tell me.
– To Ivan?
– No, to us.
– Us again. You very sick. People come, strong, too much strong, sick from too much strong, they go, more different people come, with not sickness.
– No, it’s not that simple. Something happened, something robbed us of the fruits of the earth.
– Perhaps nothing. That is what happened. The fruits are to everyone. But something, something means all. It was too much difficult. Oh, I cannot say, for me Ukayan words not come.
– You mean, Mrs. Ivan, that the human element mutated in some way, disintegrated even, as a radioactive element transmutes into another by emitting particles, diminishing itself?
– Diminish is … less? No not diminish. More. Human element more bigger.
– Covering the whole earth and interpenetrating itself to a new consciousness and those who cannot grow with it must die.
– Yes. Cannot trap the god for strong. He get into blood and no get out with giving, so poison.
– Man needs his daily ration of the whole world, and nothing less than symbiosis will do.
– Man is daily ration of whole world, he must be also eaten by all others. He petrol, grain, he electricity, he books, he satellites, he information bad good, he hello how are you, goodnight, sleep well, you love my tea I love your sickness, and that perhaps was too much difficult. Oh, I have speak never so many words Ukayan.
– Your samovar tea loosens your tongue.
The steps on the verandah loudly surround the enveloping darkness back to the angles felt one second before the sudden flood of light brings them leaping into sharp outlines and colour. The entry of Mr. Ivan and young, Bahuko, bright-eyed, thin Ivan Ivanovich, does not dispel the interpenetration of the psychic rays but adds to it, enriching it with smiles, and oh what nice surprise, how kind, you will be better soon, now you have work, alas not me but there is always hope, Ivanek here is first in mathematics, have some more tea, I love your samovar.
The flies lie quiet on the transverse bar, at eye-level, so quiet they might be dead, this very dawn on the transverse bar of the closed window in front of the closed shutters. The closing of the window after the hot night, the closing of the window like an earthquake to the flies, did not disturb the flie
s in their embrace. Beyond the shutters, a few metres away, rises the slatted shape of Mrs. Ned’s bungalow dark in the shadow cast by this shack and the rising sun. In the evening it is the slatted shape of Mrs. Ned’s shack that casts a shadow, keeping the burning sun in its late aspect off the little room, creating in theory a coolness, were it not for the corrugated iron roof that has absorbed the heat all day. But now the sun is rising on the other side. Soon it will beat down upon the iron roof.
The mattress on the floor is already covered over. The kitchen door is framed by the bedroom door. At the end of the short dark passage, almost cubic in its brevity, the kitchen through the two open doors seems luminous and apparently framed in red. The door, however, is of rough wood. The luminosity is due to the rising sun that flows obliquely into the kitchen through the bead curtain over the door and more obliquely still through the window above the sink to the right of the door, due to the slanted shade from Monsieur Jules’s roof. Only a narrow shaft of light turns the red stone floor into a miniature ditch of fiery water across the threshold. The wrinkled wood of the wooden table is still and dead, unlit by any shaft refracted or direct.
The squint is not so blue to-day, or so wide, in the luminosity of the sunrise pouring its dust into the molecules of air through the window above the sink. But it is bluer and wider than at noon, when the luminosity is more stark, even with the shutters closed. The circle of gruel in the bowl is greyish white and pimply. The gruel occurs at dawn these days, and is come to, arrived at, never brought, movement being necessary and sooner or later leading to attainment.
– Lilly, why don’t we move from here?
– Are you out of your mind? How can we move? It isn’t allowed. And we’re extremely lucky to –
– I know. I meant, go, emigrate.
– Wherever to? Eat up your gruel and hurry, we’re late. You know this is the best, the richest, the freest part of the world.
– That’s just it.
Some of the gruel’s globules remain attached to the rounded white sides of the bowl, which looks like the inside of the moon.
– Nobody has ever photographed the inside of the moon.
– Or the inside of the earth for that matter. Why should they?
– Oh but they have. The very bathysphere of our being.
– Do you mean you want me to leave the big house, and Mrs. Mgulu, and everything, to follow you into the bathysphere of your being?
– Perhaps.
– Where were you thinking of going?
– Into Patagonia.
– Oh I see. Yes. I understand. You feel your job up at the house isn’t real, then?
– Oh I’m grateful, don’t think I’m not grateful.
– Don’t you love Mrs. Mgulu any more?
– I love her. But she doesn’t possess me.
– She wouldn’t claim to. The slave age is over.
– Officially.
– It’s always up to you. I’m glad. It’s good to be free. But you’re in no state to sacrifice yourself for others. They want strong healthy persons who can stand up to a life of unimaginably hard work that never ends, in terrible conditions. You wouldn’t last two minutes.
– I’d find the strength.
– You’re not serious, are you?
Sometimes it is sufficient to imagine a way of life for the way of life to occur. Or not, as the case might be, the silence seeming to support the negative. The static eye fixes the empty bowl of gruel, the mobile eye expresses an emotion nearer to concern, perhaps, than to admiration.
– I don’t think you realise how sick you are.
– Yes, I am pale, but look at my eyelids, they are the right colour, for the time of year, I mean.
– Perhaps I ought to tell you – well, we’ll talk about it some other time. We’re terribly late, I’ll have to wash up tonight, come on, we must go.
The fig-tree’s grey framework of trunk and branch, which leans along the edge of the bank at an angle of forty degrees, is further framed by a mass of deep green foliage. Inside the angle the road is briefly seen. The road is not too hot underfoot as yet. I do wish Mrs. Ned would do something about her shack, it does look so dilapidated, doesn’t it. Especially the verandah. She ought to get a new wash-tub too, I keep mending it for her. You too? Oh, I didn’t know. The wood’s rotten, the nails can’t get a grip. But then our roof does need a gutter along the front, it slopes straight down to a curtain of rain on the verandah, Mrs. Tom made the remark to me, I felt so ashamed. You will? Oh, that’s wonderful. Before the rainy season. How hot it is already. The conversation proceeds and immediately underfoot the road moves slowly along, warming the soles of the foot through the thin canvas shoe as it steps down upon it, ahead of the body and ahead of the other foot, until the other foot follows, carrying the body with it, and steps down on the warm road ahead of the body and ahead of the other foot. That is the way a man advances, his hands free to hold another’s hands, his eyes unblinkered by the other eyes that share the observation of phenomena, along the road with the town behind, through the olive groves and the carefully terraced, carefully irrigated vegetable gardens which nevertheless look so dry, through the village of smart concrete huts, past the concrete post-office and the grocer’s square shop, between the friendly wave and the dust from the beaten carpet, along the road, past the big white houses with tall wrought-iron gates and shaded drives, up the hill along more olive groves.
– Can I give you a lift? I take it you’re going to Western Approaches.
The vehicle has drawn up silently alongside. The pale blue face at the wheel remains impassive. The rear glass is down, framing no cavern-blue but the normal healthy tone of irrigated earth, deep velvet round a radiant smile, under the sea-green alexandrite and the pink straw hat.
– Hop in. Lilly, you come in the back with me. I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up before, it would have saved you the long walk. But I started off later than I intended this morning. I’ve been up-country at the farm you know, and I promised myself an early start before it got too hot. Well, I’ve almost made it. Olaf switch the fan on will you, please?
The road is flint, the olive groves are misty-blue, the pale blue wall is gently rounded. It is impossible at any one moment to see whether things are any different round the corner but the moments vanish fast. Above the pale blue walls the poinsettia bunches purple, the bougainvillaea hangs intensely violet, the pines are blue-black and the palms aquamarine. Beyond the tall wrought-iron gates the feathery branches droop like sea-ferns over the pale blue wall that separates the property from the road. Beyond the tall wrought-iron gates and beyond the mimosas on either side the plane-trees line the drive, casting a welcome shade. The tall wrought-iron gates open by remote control forming a guard of lances on each side of the vehicle as it glides in between them. The sun flickers through the quick plane-trees, increasing the neural electricity for the oscillograph, a huge triangle appears, orange, and a yellow shower, circles of red, oh, close your eyes, relax, under the eyelids the dark curves of chin and lips and nose seen from below the breasts ensilked in orange fill up the eyespace shimmering with yellow and black and pink, swiftly moving, but under the eyelids the triangle remains, trembling in orange, and here we are, home at last, well I must say I feel quite tired, I’m not used to getting up so early. I have an enormous schedule too, so Lilly you must come up and help me change, Camille is off I think today. Goodbye. Oh not at all, don’t mention it. I’m glad I saw you.
It is impossible ever to see the beginning of anything because at the beginning the thing is not recognisable as anything distinct and by the time it has become something distinct the beginning is lost.
To the right of the drive through the trees the gazebo is just visible on the lawn. The new pavilion has been removed in the walking interval between the making of the facia-board and the burning of the weeds. The new pavilion looks old. The cedar boards have greyed and the windows look blocked in with canvas. The door squeaks on its hinges, releasi
ng the scent of hay and dung and milk that had anonymously roused archaic layers of memory on approach, but only now remembered. The right side of the pavilion is divided into large stalls at ground and upper levels, each filled with hay stacked up, and some with straw. The left side is a stable, each stall white tiles and stainless steel, filled with its cow ruminating in clean fresh straw. Straight ahead, at the upper level, there is no facia-board but only another stack of hay. Straight ahead, at the upper level, in the corner to the left where the hay has been dipped into, the morning light pours from the Southern window to illuminate one solitary kidney shape of perspex, in brilliant summer blue.
The voices grow into the consciousness. At the far end of the pavilion two men emerge out of a stall and walk together down the wide aisle between the cows and the stacks of hay. They are both very dark against the gleam of Southern light, then dark as well in the full daylight from the windows above the stable stalls, and one is shorter than the other, well-dressed and not belonging quite. He nods as he walks past and on out of the door.
Beyond the trees the earth has been ploughed up into neat but pale and stony furrows, darkening in a wide circle under the already swirling spray, round and round as it unfurls its minute particles at enormous distances. The field stretches as far as the clumps of laurels and azaleas, the hibiscus, fuchsias, palm fronds, pomegranates and green bays that make the white wall merely guessable behind them. To the left of the drive the lawn has also become a pale ploughed field under a swirling universe. Further down beyond the swirling universe the brown goes grey, or is it pale mauve, it becomes grown basil, or is it lavender spike. Along the white wall of the kitchen gardens, to the right of the olive grove, stands the settlement of beehives in a row. There must be a path somewhere leading from here to the head gardener’s cottage beyond the wall and the patch of waste ground where the weeds are burnt. The bees should not be disturbed. Neither the newly planted seed nor the lavender should be trampled. The only way is to go back to the front of the house, turn right then down towards the olive grove. The boy always comes through the olive grove with his wheelbarrow.
The air is hot, enveloping, it presses down. The lavender smells pale and sickly along the edge of the hot air. Is there a story? Ah, that’s another story. But is there a story behind the story? That’s a very good question. I congratulate you on having avoided the trap. Imagination is a function, not an organ, it is an energy but can get sick and cold and radiate no warmth to stronger bodies. Mr. Swaminathan, you don’t have to explain. Sometimes it is kinder to explain at the beginning. But when and how did it begin, your nod just now meant nothing. That’s a very good question. Diagnosis always prognosticates aetiology, as you well know.
The Brooke-Rose Omnibus Page 18