The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (3 page)

It is not, however, January. Early December must be the latest possible time for flies to make love. For flies to have sexual intercourse. Unless perhaps a certain period has already elapsed since that episode, if indeed it occurred. The flies may have been a product of the fine network that
functions
in depth, in which case they will certainly have got caught in the cobwebs.

The squint, very wide and very blue, hovers in the
doorway
, a planet off course, a satellite out of orbit. The skin around the eyes, both the mobile eye and the static eye, is waxy. There is no reproach in the mobile eye. The emotion expressed is nearer to concern. The static eye expresses only off-ness, since it is static, and it is this off-ness which
emphasises
whatever emotion the mobile eye is expressing.

– Would you rather have your gruel now or later? It makes no difference to me.

– I’ll be along in a few minutes.

– I can bring it to you here if you like.

Sooner or later the other question will occur also.

– No, it’s all right.

Most eyes are an octave, one note repeating the other. These are a ninth, sometimes an augmented ninth. The two waves of light, like the two waves of sound, are not quite parallel, and may cause the minute voltages of the neural cells to rise from five microvolts to ten for example. An
oscillograph
might reveal curious fluctuations. These would not, however, represent the waves of light or sound emanating from the eyes or from the augmented ninth.

– The only snag about hiding things for emergencies is that one forgets, either that one has hidden them, or where one has put them. It was just by chance that I took down a tin of curried chicken to read the recipe – it’s a rather succulent one and I wanted to cheer myself up a bit – and there behind it I saw the extra packet of gruel.

– I used to be an electrician, actually.

– I thought so, from your delicate hands. Now let me see, there is a temporary vacancy for an oscillographer up at Government House. In the Gallup Poll Department. I take it you play all the instruments?

– Was there anything at the Labour Exchange this morning?

– I didn’t go.

– Oh, you said you would. You haven’t been for three weeks.

– And before that I went for eighteen months.

– Well at least you got the unemployment pills. Just look at you. Well, I promised Mrs. Mgulu you would go up and see her head gardener this afternoon. It’s very kind of her to have arranged it, you know. She takes an interest.

Beyond the tall wrought-iron gate the mimosas are in bloom, gracefully draping the top of the white pillars on either side. Single branches also droop over the white wall that separates the property from the road. Beyond the mimosas the plane-trees line the drive, casting a welcome shade. No. Beyond the mimosas the plane-trees line the drive, forming with their bare and upward branches a series of networks that become finer and finer as the drive recedes towards the big house, discernible through the leaflessness. One half of the tall wrought-iron gate is open, by remote control perhaps, unless it has been pushed open by an effort of the will.

– You have to go round the back, past the kitchen garden, you know. There’s a black painted door in the wall, and you ring the bell, it’s a cottage really, the head gardener lives there. He’s expecting you at three.

Sometimes the gruel is brought.

Mrs. Mgulu sits graciously at her dressing-table, brushing her thick black hair into sleekness and she takes an interest. Mrs. Mgulu sits graciously at her dressing-table, having her thick long black hair brushed into sleekness and she takes an interest. She takes an interest in the crackling electricity of her hair which is being brushed into sleekness by a pert Bahuko maid, whose profile is reversed in the mirror. Mrs. Mgulu does not choose to be touched by sickly Colourless hands. In the tall gilt-frame mirror the smooth Asswati face smiles, mostly at the front of the head framed by the long black hair, with self-love in the round black eyes and in the thick
half-open
lips, but occasionally with graciousness at the reflection of the white woman changing the sheets on the bed behind the head framed by the long black hair. The white woman can be seen in the mirror beyond the pert profile and beyond the smooth Asswati face, whose smiling black eyes shift a little to the right, with graciousness, and then a little to the left, with self-love. A psychoscope might perhaps reveal the expression to be one of pleasure in beauty, rather than
self-love
. The scene might occur, for that matter, in quite a different form. The personal maid, for example, could be Colourless after all.

– Oh, no. I mean, she’d have to assist me in my bath. Oh, no.

– Why not? says somebody or other representing some thing dead, but there is no person in the mirror.

– Even my husband Dr. Mgulu, who stands on an Inter nationalist Platform, would not let his white boy assist him in his bath.

– And yet, says somebody or other, his eyelids are the right colour.

The waxiness is due to a deficiency in the liver. The
waxiness
, hovering in the doorway, hides behind a curling wisp of steam. There is no reproach in the mobile eye, the emotion expressed is nearer to concern, veiled a little by the curling wisp of steam.

– The post has come. There’s one for you, it’s the Labour Exchange. I’ve got a letter too, I can’t think who from. It gets on my nerves the way Mrs. Ivan opens tins and leaves them out on the table in there. It smells even in the corridor. I wonder how they haven’t poisoned themselves. I can’t read the postmark.

The circle of steaming gruel in the bowl is greyish white and pimply.

– I know this writing, I know it very well, but I just can’t – let’s see – oh I do believe – yes it’s from Joan Dkimba née Willoughby, she was at school with me. You don’t know her, she married very well, dear Lilly I’ve been meaning to write for ages but I’ve been so busy I wonder how you are, well I hope, here all is well too except that the children all had measles one after the other instead of all together according to our records you have not reported to this Exchange for three weeks a terrible bout of gastric trouble but I’m better now, poor thing I must send her some
Duodenica,
Denton is doing very well he is Chief Spokesman now you must have seen his name he travels a lot too and unemployment benefit cannot be administered retrospectively. We cannot keep any person on our books who does not report daily. Your group’s
reporting
time is: 8 a.m. Daily from 8 a.m. a gnarled left hand lies immobile on the next human thigh at the Labour Exchange. Sooner or later a name will be called out and the thigh will slope up in a vertical position, slowly or suddenly according to this terrible wave of unemployment which I hope hasn’t reached you in any shape or form you being
such
a
very
active
person
well at least she remembers that about me, isn’t that nice, and er-er-er-er – ever down your way I’ll look you up though at the moment it seems unlikely.
However
one never knows and in the meantime do let me know how you’ve been faring yours ever Joan.

Some of the gruel’s white globules remain attached to the rounded white sides of the bowl. Sooner or later there will be a movement to make, a raising of the haunches, a shuffling of the feet, an emptying of the bladder. Sooner or later a name will be called out, and the next human thigh will slope up into a vertical position though not necessarily in that precise form.

– I am a gardener. I received Vocational Training at the Resettlement Camp after the displacement. Since then,
however
, I have only been intermittently employed.

– I am a gardener. I specialise in tending fig-trees. I eat the first crop of buds, in January, they make me strong and virile. I tend the second crop with secret knowledge handed down by generations.

– What does your letter say?

– I must report daily from 8 a.m.

– Nothing else?

– It’s a printed slip. The time is handwritten.

– Oh I see. Well, that’s lucky isn’t it? You could do with the benefit pills. It’s nice to hear from Joan. She always played the part of the fairy princess in the school play. And she’s done very well. You never know, she might be able to help you, indirectly I mean. Not that I’d ever ask her, but she takes an interest. Would you like some more gruel?

The white globules – sometimes it is sufficient simply to speak, to say no thank you, or yes please, as the case might be, for the sequence not to occur.

The black nodules on the bare branches of the fig-tree which, close up, does not look blasted, seem to represent the first crop of buds. A simple test would be to taste one, or even several. From here inside the curve of the downsweeping branch the sky is entirely filled with long grey twigs that poke into the eyebrow line topping the field of vision. In the lower part, on either side of the nose, the branches that bear the twigs are thick and grey and contorted. To the right of the nose, with the left eye closed, the thickest branch sweeps
horizontally
below the starting-line of the yellow grass patch, where Mrs. Ned’s shack begins. To the left of the nose, with the right eye closed, it underlines Mrs. Ned’s shack, as if Mrs. Ned’s shack were built on it. The fig-tree does not look blasted, for the rough grey bark is wrinkled in the bend of the trunk like a thigh of creased denim shot with darker thread. The rough grey bark is shot with black lines running parallel down the length of the thicker branches, in high relief but discontinuous and made up of black dots. These lines are interrupted by the thick transverse cracks where the trunk curves, or by crinkly craters where branches have been cut away. The smaller branches are like curved spines, knotty but smoother in between the bumps, and with the transverse lines more regularly marked. The dots are paler and more scattered. To the carelessly naked eye the dots of these smaller lines are not immediately visible. But a microscope would certainly reveal a system of parallel highways all along the branches in discontinuous black blobs like vehicles
immobilised
. Or neural cells perhaps.

The bud tastes sweetly insipid on the tongue, but sharper on the palate. One step forward and Mrs. Ned’s shack is framed in a trapeze of black twig and branch. The branch runs below, thickly, like a censored caption, and sweeps down to the right towards the grass, where the long grey twigs it bears grow first downwards and then curve up, in large U-letters. The buds taste distinctly sharper after they have passed beyond the taste-buds. The mimosas could just be in bloom.

Mrs. Ned’s shack grows big. A red and white blob floats in the darkness behind the verandah window, grows big and becomes presumably Mrs. Ned, though without a head. The rectangular frame of the verandah is itself still held in the rounded frame formed by the line of the eyebrow and the line of the nose, to the left of the nose with the right eye closed, to the right of the nose with the left eye closed; below, there is the invisible but assumed line of the cheek, which becomes visible only with a downward look that blurs the picture. The frame of the verandah expands beyond the rounded field of vision as Mrs. Ned grows unmistakably into Mrs Ned, who is ironing in the small front room. She bends her white face downwards, more than is perhaps necessary for ironing, and shows therefore mostly the top of her brown head, with the thin untidy hair emerging now from the dark background. She is cut across the chest by an oblong bar of light reflected in the glass. The frame of the verandah engulfs as Mrs. Ned looks up and smiles, with eyebrows raised perhaps more than is necessary for the occasion. A camera with a telescopic lens used on approach might perhaps have revealed that Mrs. Ned had in fact looked up and out of the verandah door, but only to the human mind behind the lens, and besides, the rigging up or even the mere carrying, at eye-level, of such a camera, if one had been available, would have caused Mrs. Ned to look up, thus proving nothing. The bar of oblong light reflected in the glass vanishes. Mrs. Ned is no longer cut in half but framed by the open door, whole and unmistakably Mrs. Ned, in a white apron and red cardigan. The cardigan’s collar half hides the goitre to the left of the neck.

A conversation occurs.

The ironing-board rests on the backs of two kitchen chairs. The smell is of steamed soap. A basket of unironed things lies on the floor to the right of the ironing-board. To the right of the verandah door, facing Mrs. Ned, a crisp white overall hangs on a hanger from the left hand knob on the top drawer of the tall dark chest of drawers. A shining but faded green blouse hangs from the other knob. And over the big brass double-bed in the left corner behind Mrs. Ned clothes and towels are neatly folded and regimented. Mrs. Ned’s four grown daughters, who are out in service, use the bed in turns of two and Mrs Ned sleeps in the small back room.
Alternatively
three of the four grown daughters who are out in service sleep in the big brass double-bed, the fourth sharing the small back room with Mrs. Ned. Or two, and two, Mrs. Ned using the big brass double-bed perhaps. The walk look like the surface of the moon. The smell is of steamed soap. The hard eyes stare but strike an octave. At most a tonic chord. The phrase what a surprise has come and gone, unless perhaps it formed part of the merely tonic chord, the
expected
notes, which have not in fact been played.

– if you don’t mind, I mean.

– No, I don’t mind.

The tall dark chest of drawers is pocked with worms. The passage, with walls at right angles where curving is desired, is almost cubic in its brevity. The smell of soap remains behind as the nose follows Mrs. Ned, who smells of freshly chopped onions and washing-up water. Her legs are thin and very white, which, in a black man’s world, has more than adulterous appeal, the tender, incestuous appeal of love within minorities. To the left, the kitchen is not luminous, nor is it framed in red. The kitchen is spick and span but colourless and Mrs. Ned herself smells of freshly chopped onions, sweat and washing-up water. Her arms throw her voice about, it rebounds against the walls and she catches it. The kitchen is colourless and mottled. The hanging beads over the doorway are mottled and make a crackling sound.