The Restless Supermarket (4 page)

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 brain
beast
of that Walter Disney, whose passion for furry animals was surely unhealthy. The family resemblance 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.

I introduced Mr Fatso/Mnr Vetsak to his brethren in my notebook
–
he fitted in between Mr Video and Mr Meat
–
and went on with my own work. Fortunately, I had finished my composition, in the requisite brief paragraphs, and was busy inking up a fair copy (which I would typewrite later that evening at home), and so I was able to put Wessels from my mind and concentrate on my penmanship.

When I had finished, I laid my notebook down on the table. The sight of a pen in Wessels’s freckled fist in place of a reeking cigarette was compelling. But it was so obviously a ruse to implicate me in his plans for the Goodbye Bash
–
as I was determined to call it
–
that I resolved to make no comment. Soon he put down his pad too. He swizzled his brandy with his pen, then clipped it in the flap of his right
ear.