The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (24 page)

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, releasing 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 weeds are scattered all over the scorched earth. They have to be raked up into the pile. The heat beats down. The green hose slithers in the dried-up grass towards the brass tap in the wall, the water spurts and flows into the blackened ashened earth. The fire crackles like rain on a stone
pavement
, the falling water patters. The funeral pyre of human hair smoulders gently on the marble floor. The banisters weave circles round it, unfurling its minute particles over the dried-up grass. It is important to hold the instrument like a conventional weapon and to aim correctly. You cannot bend a jet of water but you can make it go round the corner in a way. You can hold the weapon like a microphone and answer into it.

That is how it all began. There is a secret but it is not a story. It is not possible to witness the beginning, the first ticking of the metronome, because all you are entitled to assume is that it would have been as now described if it had been seen by minds with the kind of perception man has evolved only quite recently. Those that cannot grow with it must die.

The fire leaps up bright orange, with a yellow shower, circles of red, oh, close your eyes, relax but grip the
instrument
and hold it up, well up, let it gush forth from the deep sphere of our being and reach up for the sky before it turns to spray its dust over the fire that crackles, leaps up bright orange, open your eyes, the sun hits the back of the neck, the dust fills up the head, bombarding the cells that run amok, emitting helium particles until the human element
disintegrates
and radiates into the huge consciousness of light, under the eyelids a gold triangle, a yellow shower, circles of orange and the head goes leaden, grey in a hundred and sixty micro seconds, three million two hundred and thirty one thousand six hundred and forty two years one hundred and seventy three days point nine. And a billion more besides. We are merely marking time and time is nothing, nothing. A moment of agony, of burning flesh, an aspect of the human element disintegrating to ash, and you are dead. But that’s another story. 

 

 

 

Silence says the notice on the stairs and the stairs creak. Or something creaks in the absolute dark, the notice having come and gone like things. Someone creaks, levelling out nails perhaps with the pronged side of a hammer.

The coffin lid creaks open. Voices hang on a glimpse of five moons, five planets possibly. The layers of my
atmosphere,
however, distort the light waves travelling through it and upset the definition.

–Yes, well, you go too far. I mean you exaggerate.

–I draw the line as a rule between one solar system and another.

–Can’t you see the notice on the stairs says silence?

–I can. I collect silences. This one has a special creaking quality, as of a coffin-lid opening.

–Get up then, and climb out.

The five moons unless planets perhaps hang about anxiously as the stairs creak out of the grave. The planets move in their orbits and the orbits surround me like meridians in slight ellipses. One of them says lie down, I shall dissect you now.

They force me gently on my back, head down the stairs. The heavy woman sits on my chest with her huge buttocks in my face. Her skirt rides high and she sits reading a book propped up on my thighs. The men and women go up and down the stairs that creak and she says don’t worry, they only play at going up and down, like actors. Soon the curtain will fall.