‘Yes yes.’ The echo chamber slumped down in one chair and propped his plaster cast on another. Seeing the toes of Wessels that close to the table top made my stomach churn. ‘Peace & luv’ had been printed on the cast in red ink, next to a drawing of a bird. Glory be. The duv of peace, the pidgin. I averted my eyes.
‘How’s it?’
‘Can’t complain,’ and so on. I don’t know why I bother. One may as well speak to a plank.
Then a spar of sense sluiced out on the bilge water: ‘I had a great idea.’
‘You’re moving back to Halfway House?’
‘Serious. Let’s have a party, before we close down here. A farewell.’
‘What for?’
‘To say fare thee well, what else? It’ll be tough not seeing the guys any more.’
‘I’ll be only too pleased to see the back of this mob, if that’s who you mean. I won’t even grace them with a goodbye.’ Errol and Co were lounging on the balcony. Goodbye wouldn’t suit them, godless heathen that they were. They were always shouting chow-chow at one another like a bunch of jinricksha men.
‘Not a goodbye bash,’ he said brightly. ‘A get-together, a reunion. We’ll ask all the old faces.’
This was complex reasoning for Wessels – so early in the day too. I examined his nose, the surest barometer of his state of inebriation the night before. Strawberry this morning, a full three degrees – raspberry, ruddy, Rudolph – from the top of the scale. And out came the Paul Reveres. When he was really the worse for wear, it was Peter Stuyvesant. Perhaps he’d missed the bottlestore last night after all? Those old faces I had spent the night thinking about, those speechless heads with fading features, drifted through my mind.
‘The old faces on their own might be awkward,’ I said. ‘You’d have to ask them to bring their old bodies along.’
‘Serious Aub.’
‘You could append it to the invitation, it’s quite acceptable: BYOB.’ Suitably baffled. I hate being called Aub.
‘Wouldn’t it be nice to see everyone again − Mevrouw Bonsma and them. Merlé. And Bogey – I wonder where he’s at? Mrs Mav.’
‘I honestly can’t imagine that Mrs Mavrokordatos would want to come back here. It would rake up too many painful memories. It would break her heart to see what the place has become. To see what we’ve become.’
‘Nothing wrong with us.’
‘Not that her hands are clean. But in any case, we don’t know where she is. We don’t know where anyone is.’
‘Tone’s got Mrs Mav’s number.’
So the New Management had finally turned into a monosyllable. He’d be an initial next and then he’d vanish altogether. ‘What does Tone say about your plan?’
‘He thinks it’s a great idea to go out with a bang. You’ll see. It’ll be a jôl. I’ll organize everything. You don’t have to lift a finger, you can just pull in.’
A (from the Old Norse jól, a heathen festival) is a rowdy sort of Afrikaner party, accompanied by heavy drinking and smoking of marijuana. And ‘pulling in’ is one of the more popular vehicular metaphors for arriving unannounced.
‘If it’s all the same, I think I have a prior arrangement. Or will have any minute.’
I didn’t like going out on New Year’s Eve anyway. It had become far too dangerous, with flat-dwellers of colour using the occasion to heave unwanted furniture from their windows into the streets below. In fact, the entire ‘festive season’ had degenerated into a drunken street fight, and the wise lay low until it was all over.
‘Anyway, you’re invited. Now give us a page of your notebook.’
‘No.’
‘Don’t be so snoop man.’
(Snoop? Put it on the list after ‘tawty’.)
‘I can’t.’ I showed him why: I number all the pages in advance, in the top right-hand corner, in ink, precisely to deter filchers. A tactic I learnt from Erasmus, whom I’ve mentioned before, my colleague at the Department of Posts and Telecommunications in the days of pen and paper.
*
During the course of my constitutional, I found the elephant’s ear in the gutter at the top of Nugget Hill. The Queen of Sheba must have dropped it there; when the weather was good, the Pullinger Kop park served as her country seat. In the rosy light of sunset, the ear looked for all the world like a gigantic petal fallen from some impossible bloom. Closer inspection revealed treadmarks from tyres and shoes, gooey fingerprints, splashes of what might have been royal blood. Perhaps Her Majesty’s minions had used the ear to stretcher her hither? Understandably, I was reluctant to touch this repulsive, disease-ridden thing, but I meant to drop in at the Jumbo Liquor Market the next morning to clear up the Dumbo question, and so I sacrificed a few pages from the classified section of my Star to wrap it in and bore it along with me.
As I was crossing Abel Road with my unsought trophy, a little preoccupied it’s true, but as mindful of the traffic regulations as ever, a baker’s delivery van, adorned with a painting of Atlas shouldering a crisply browned Planet Earth still steaming from the oven, careered around the corner and very nearly knocked me down. I am in good shape for a man of my age, pate excepted, and I was able to leap to safety. I had the presence of mind, even as I overbalanced on the kerb and plummeted to the pavement, to glance at the rear of the vehicle to note the registration number. And there on the bumper I saw, to my annoyance, a sign that read: ‘How am I driving?’
Some bystanders came to my assistance, but I fended them off with elbows and epithets, equally sharp. They try to pick your pockets under cover of kindness. My fall had loosened the newspaper covering the ear, and people were staring. I rewrapped it as best I could, picked myself up, and hurried away. The mishap had disorientated me and I found myself going down Catherine Street, the way I had come. This was all too much. Unable to turn back without losing face, unwilling to stray from my accustomed path, I took refuge in the lounge at the Chelsea Hotel, and ordered a whisky to steady my nerves. They didn’t have whiskey at all – which I should have taken as forewarning that the place had gone to the dogs.
No sooner had my drink arrived than a woman sidled into the chair opposite and commanded me to buy her one too. My astonished expression produced a gust of tittering from her friends at the next table. Ladies of the night, I would say. They all seemed to be wearing foundation garments on top of their daywear. I took out my notebook and jotted down a few points about the Atlas Bakery van while the episode was still fresh in my memory. The harlot did not go away. Instead, she started picking at the newspaper in which the ear was swaddled. I had to gulp my drink and leave. She made a crack in isiSotho or whatever, and the streetwalkers tee-heed in the same lingo.
It was growing dark. As I approached Abel Road for the second time that evening, the full horror of my narrow escape overwhelmed me and I broke out in a sweat. I shouldn’t be surprised if the bolted drink also played a part. To think that I might have been lying in the roadway here right now, awaiting the ambulance or, God forbid, the mortuary van. Strangers rifling through my clothing, making a show of ascertaining my identity while lifting my small change, reading my notebook, leafing through my Pocket with their greasy fingers, scattering my bookmarks to the wind … farceur … feather … fiat … fleck … flint … I saw my life ebbing away. I saw my death, touch wood, as a precipitate efflux of vocabulary and idiom, the hoarded treasures of a lifetime spent in a minute, one immaculate vintage running into another, and the whole adulterated brew spilt on the dirty macadam of an unmemorable corner of a lawless conurbation. Flow: glide along as a stream; gush out, spring; (of blood) be spilt; (of wine) be poured out without stint (f. OE flōwan, unconnected with L fluere: flux). Unconnected. This city had a short memory. How many deaths might have occurred on this very spot and left no memorial? How many forgotten Abels had bled out their spirits at these crossroads, how many smooth-cheeked Cains were going about scot-free. And what would I have left behind, apart from these shop-soiled mortal remains? Invisible work. A pile of manuals
and documents, obscure gazettes, directories and yearbooks, most of them out of print, which I had proofread well, and on which I had therefore left no visible trace. A negative achievement. ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’, through which I had hoped to make a little mark, something of lasting value to which my name might be attached, lay incomplete in my desk drawer. Some second-hand furniture dealer would tip it into the rubbish skip in the alley behind his shop, along with my notes and cards and clippings, and the skip would be emptied into a landfill site and covered over with sand, and in the fullness of time another housing development would arise on the spot and bury it for ever. Hit and run! I saw myself lying there, sprawled across the elephant’s ear, newsprint fluttering around me like the Prospect Road corpse, and some ambulance man, or paramedic as they style themselves nowadays, smelling the alcohol on my breath and making the obvious wisecrack. But could a corpse be said to have something on its breath? The whisky was anachronistic anyway. If the bakery van had delivered me into the hands of the Great Compositor, I should never have stopped at the Chelsea to wet my whistle. I would have come up smelling not exactly of roses, but of Wilson’s XXX mints. My generally impeccable sense of chronology had been quite disordered. And it was all Wessels’s fault, talking about old faces and cartoon characters. He really was the bane of my life.
I didn’t want to take the ear up in the lift with me; what if I bumped into that nosey Mrs Manashewitz? That’s all I needed, to get half of Lenmar Mansions talking. So I left it in the care of Gideon, the nightwatchman, and he put it in the coal room in the parking garage overnight. Now that the thing had nearly cost me my life, I had more reason than ever to barter it for some useful information at the Jumbo Liquor Market.
*
Lenmar Mansions was built just after the war. It’s a six-storey block, square and solid, made of bricks and mortar, as a building should be. I took a one-bedroomed flat on the top floor (the bachelors didn’t suit me, despite my marital status). The minute I set foot in the place, I felt at ease. Spacious rooms, separated by proper walls and doors, parquet throughout, black and white tiles in the kitchen and bathroom. The south-facing lounge had large windows – there was no need for burglar-proofing so high up – and a small balcony.
In my researches, I discovered that the block had been built by the property tycoon Ronnie Lazerow, and named for his children Leonard and Marilyn. Portmanteau names of this kind have always been popular in Johannesburg. At one time, supposing the phenomenon might bear closer scrutiny, I started a list in my notebook.
Portmanteaus, residential: Lenmar Mansions … Milrita Heights … Norbeth East … Villa Ethelinda … Alanora Maisonettes …
But the sheer banality of the coinages exhausted my curiosity.
*
In the shiny glass doors of the Jumbo Liquor Market, with my black polythene rubbish bag over my shoulder, I appeared to myself for an instant as a sinister Santa Claus bearing gifts for the black Christmas everyone was threatening to visit upon us if they didn’t get their own way at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, and this perception sent a malicious rush of sangfroid to my head. I deposited the bag on the cash desk. The cashier was the same young woman who had called out to Mr Ferreira, the manager, as the ritual ravishing of Jumbo/Dumbo reached its climax. I expected to be recognized – after all, I had played a prominent if unassuming part in that sordid drama – but the girl was clearly none too observant. Mrs Da Silva, as the badge on her lapel denoted her, seemed improbably young to be married, if you asked me, and inelegantly hirsute in the oxter.
‘Ken I yelp yew, Sir?’
(I hope I’ve captured the accent. A phonetic transliteration – – would be better by far, but not everyone knows the language.)
‘You may summon Mr Ferreira for me.’ I glanced meaningfully at the elephant with its one ear cocked. ‘You may say it is in connection with the corporate image.’ If needs be, I can bandy the jargon about as well as the next man.
‘Sorry, Sir, bud Meesta Ferreira yeece howt.’
Oh. ‘Da Silva has absolutely nothing to do with the metallic element,’ I said, conversationally, ‘whose symbol in the periodic table is Ag, from the Latin argentum; whose properties are lustrous, malleable, ductile. What else? Precious. Well, that first and foremost.’
‘Doughling, I yaven’t god oll dye. Yew god empties in da beg?’
I unbagged the ear, liberating a gust of the anti-canine scent with which the plastic was impregnated. She still didn’t seem to recognize me, but she was delighted to see the ear. She patted it with the convex ends of her manicured left hand. The nails on the other hand, I noticed, the one she used to punch the keys of the till, were half as long. In all likelihood the musculature on that arm would be more developed too.
‘Where dod yew fine deece yeah?’ she demanded.
I explained.
She spoke so fervently into the microphone sticking out of the till that it trembled like an antenna. ‘Joaquim! Joaquim! Pleece comb tew da frount!’
Da Silva. As in sylvan. Forests and so on. Boscage. Woods. Five o’clock shadow on the upper lip, and not even teatime. Lipstick: cherry tomato.
Joaquim appeared from behind a ziggurat of boxed wine. Beaujolais in boxes. Whatever next. Whisky in tins? Instant ice – just add water and chill? Under Mrs Da Silva’s direction, Joaquim tried the ear on the elephant, inserting the snapped-off metal strut like the stalk of a big autumn leaf into the hole in the elephant’s head, and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was indeed the missing part.
Mrs Da Silva clapped her lazy hand on her thigh, twice, and said, ‘Tenk yew, tenk yew.’
Joaquim carried the ear into the storeroom at the rear.
Portuguese workforce: manuel labour.
A man in a suit, another pseudo-businessman, a Stan, a Vern, approached with a six-pack of Lion Lagers in his paw, and she excused herself to ring it up.
‘Cheerio, Rosa,’ he said.
‘Yave a nace dye.’
Hypermeat was advertising lambada lamb sosaties, hottest prices in town. Little red and yellow flames flickered around the blistered letters.
‘Ken I yelp yew still?’
‘This elephant of yours interests me. I think I’ve seen him somewhere before.’
‘Heece dere oll da time.’
‘I mean I’ve seen an elephant like him somewhere else.’
‘Oll hour brenches hev dem. Troyeville yas tew.’
‘Wait a minute, it’s coming back to me. It’s Dumbo, isn’t it? The little elephant who wanted to fly?’
‘Ken be.’
Hopeless case.
‘Yew wand somb kesh?’ she said suddenly.
‘For the ear? My dear Mrs Woods, I wouldn’t dream of it. I was just doing my civic duty, as any decent person would.’
Before I could stop her, she had summoned Joaquim again, mumbled something to him − he must be a native of Moçambique, as he speaks the lingo – and in a trice he was pressing a bottle of Sedgwick’s Old Brown Sherry into my hands. It was almost offensive.
‘Could I have my bag, please?’
She spat on a working fingertip and dabbed up one of the yellow ones covered with pink elephants.
‘That’s one of yours,’ I said firmly but politely. ‘I’d prefer to have my own back, if it’s all the same.’
Joaquim fetched my rubbish bag from the storeroom.
‘Obrigado,’ I said nonchalantly, wrapped the bottle of sherry in it and sauntered conveniently out onto the pavement, no wiser than when I had arrived. Old Brown Sherry. Cheapskates. Ships’ kites. At least it wasn’t Paarl Perlé, which was quite undrinkable, by all accounts, and smacked of bitter associations. I supposed it would do for cooking with.
I found one of Dumbo’s literary efforts in the Central News Agency in Hillbrow, an autographed copy of Dumbo and the Pachyderms from Alpha Centauri. He was a brainchild, a brainbeast of that Walter Disney, whose passion for furry animals was surely unhealthy. The family resemblanc
e to the Liquor Market’s mascot was striking. While I was paging, the shop manager came and stared at me over the erasers. Apparently I was acting suspiciously, and not for the first time. News to me. The rubbish bag was probably creating the wrong impression. I took out my Oxford. That made Management’s eyebrows disappear. Ostrogoth … overenthusiasm … pagoda … here we are: pachyderm. From the Greek pakhus, meaning thick, and derma, meaning skin.
‘You may thank your lucky stars,’ I informed Management, pocketing the Pocket again, ‘that I am the last gentleman in Hillbrow, as honest as the day is long, and pachydermatous to boot. As for Henry Watson Fowler, the man’s prejudice against polysyllabic humour did him no credit. No one’s perfect.’
Departed, trumpeting (inwardly).
*
Wessels found me writing in my notebook, an Okay Bazaars (Hyperama) special with a blue cover and white spiral binding, good value for money. To my chagrin, he produced a notebook from his own pocket and rested it on his thigh. A child’s scribbling block of cheap grey paper, feint ruled, with a chubby, bilingual little man called Mr Fatso/Mnr Vetsak on the cover. It was roughly the same size as mine, but also contrived to be a childish comment on it. He took out a pen, clicked the ballpoint in and out pensively, gazed up at a chandelier, and then made to write. No sooner had the pen touched paper than he let out a cry of frustration and had to wipe it clean on the lining of his jacket. I always write my rough copies with a pencil because it allows for erasure; I saw that Wessels, unable to lick the nib of the pen, but keen to emulate my technique in every particular, was licking the tip of his index finger between flourishes of the writing hand and surreptitiously using his tie as a blotter. The formation of each letter was accompanied by a sympathetic, schoolboyish contortion of facial muscles. That writing should be such a painful procedure! In anyone else, it might have been enough to thaw my frozen heart.
The Restless Supermarket Page 3