The Restless Supermarket (5 page)

No sign of Moçes. Perhaps he was out on the balcony, behind the venetian blinds, where Errol and Co were cackling and hooting. Probably sharing an illicit cocktail laced with amphetamines. Discipline among the waiters had broken down entirely under the influence of these hooligans.

‘What you got there?’

‘A letter to the editor of the
Star
about an unnerving experience I had yesterday, which I wanted to get off my chest.’

‘We haven’t had one of those for donkey’s years-ss. Can I
see?’

The man was a fount of amphibology. It was Café etiquette, in the old days, never to ask to read my communications until they were printed in the newspaper. Wessels’s flouting of the rules, to which I had long thought myself inured, coupled now with his persistent invocation of the past, irritated me all over again. But having watched his version of writing, I was intrigued to see him reading as well, so I handed him the notebook, which he bore up towards his face at once like a toasted sandwich, as if he meant to take a bite out of it. As I expected: the thick lips moved to frame each word. Personally, I prefer reading silently, to myself. Reading belongs in the head, behind the eyes, not just under the breath, but inside the folds of the brain. I can tolerate reading out loud on occasion, if the words are enunciated clearly and the circumstances are fit. But this soundless movement of the lips is uncouth, like a cat twitching through a rutting dream.

7 December
1993

Dear
Sir,

In a lifetime of accident-free motoring, I have been the owner of half a dozen passenger vehicles, including several purchased out of the box, but as a pensioner I am now reduced to travelling either by bus, an ordeal since the municipal prohibition on smoking is no longer enforced, or by shank’s pony, ever the most reliable means of private transport, despite the hazards posed by ‘muggers’, excavations, hawkers, uneven paving-stones and reckless drivers.

Yesterday afternoon, I was crossing Abel Road in Hillbrow at the Catherine Street intersection when a delivery van in the service of the Atlas Bakery tore through a red robot and very nearly knocked me
down.

As the rear bumper of the vehicle flashed before my eyes, I saw affixed to it a sign that read: ‘How am I driving?’ One might have assumed that the question was merely rhetorical. However, the telephone number appended made it clear that an answer was sought. I have a head for figures, thanks to my professional background, and so I was quick to memorize this number, along with the registration number, and several other details.

Immediately after the incident, I transcribed these details into the notebook I was carrying, and am enclosing a photostatic copy of the relevant page. The man in the street is not expected to have pen and paper to hand nowadays, I know, but then I have never resembled that mythical creature.

This morning, I dialled the telephone number of the Atlas Bakery and was put through to a Miss Papenfus, a superficially polite but intrinsically ineffectual young woman, who showed no interest whatsoever in the nimble undertones of her ostensibly flat-footed
name.

Explaining the purpose of my call, I provided the registration number of the van and asked to speak to the driver concerned, but this request was refused. I was urged instead to address my complaint to the Director of Human Resources in writing, an offer I flatly rejected as being likely to end with my statement ‘put on file’ and duly forgotten. In any event, I am not a human resource, I am a member of the public, and I did not have a complaint, but an answer to a question.

Having failed to make a verbal report, an affidavit in the true sense of the word, I am now ‘going public’ through the channels of your newspaper.

‘How am I driving?’ You are driving atrociously. You are a menace on the road. A more urgent question might well be: ‘Why am I driving?’ And an honest answer should persuade you to seek a form of employment more suited to your temperament.

Yours faithfully,

A. Tearle

(Proofreader, retired)

Not one of my best, but adequate for a man who was out of practice.

Wessels, true to character, remarked on none of its qualities. After an elaborate show of thinking, which brought to mind the ‘cog’ in ‘cogitation’, he said: ‘You checked all these facts and figures with those binoculars of yours? This ou must of been doing five miles an hour.’

‘Bifocals, kilometres,’ I said, leaving aside the finer points of grammar and usage for the time being. ‘My eyesight is every bit as acute as your
own.’

And I demonstrated by reading the signs that said ‘Ladies’ and ‘Gentlemen’ on the lavatory doors (facetiously, of course, I have absolutely nothing to prove to Wessels). That ‘Gentlemen’ in particular has always touched me. I stood up for it too, when its existence was threatened by the New Management’s ethnic expedients ‘Amadoda’ and ‘Abafazi’. Not that too many of the individuals, both scruffy and overly groomed, who crossed that threshold deserved the compliment, but it was the thought that counted. ‘Gentlemen’ was so much more encouraging than the ‘Gents’ one encountered everywhere else. Or the cute couplings of Adams and Eves, Jacks and Jills, Romeos and Juliets, Bonnies and Clydes, Guys and Dolls, Mickies and Minnies, and even, confusingly, Nuts and Bolts (
vide
‘nomenclature, cloakrooms’ in the notebooks). Frequently illustrated with tailcoats and crinolines and other outward signs, increasingly archaic, of the distinctions between the sexes.

‘Who’s this guy Shanks, with the pony?’

‘Old friend. Went to different schools together.’

‘Didn’t they teach you to write short and sweet? What’s-his-face will cut this in half, if he gives it out at
all.’

Unfortunately, he was right. This letter has been shortened
–
Ed. The letters editor was someone of the Wessels type, at home among the Gavs and Erns. He’d delete the half he didn’t understand. Wouldn’t even bother to use a pen: just hit a button and make it vanish.

‘And what’s the use of talking to the driver? He probably doesn’t read the
Star
.
Probably can’t read!’

‘Thanks for the constructive criticism.’ I took back my notebook. Mr Fatso/Mnr Vetsak puffed out his chest. Wessels wanted me to ask about his own literary efforts. I hid behind my newspaper.

‘What you suppose I got here?’

‘Invitation list. For the Goodbye Bash.’

‘Reunion.’

‘Have it your
way.’

‘You wanna see it?’ And without waiting for a response, he shoved the pad under the bottom of my newspaper. I might have brushed it aside, but for the morbid fascination of Wessels’s drunken handwriting. Across that grey parade-ground of paper staggered mutinous ranks of tipsy letters, incapable of standing up straight without the support of their neighbours, struggling vainly to keep their feet on the lines. Half a dozen had fallen flat on their faces, one or two had wobbled right off the page. The only upright character was the very first capital M, rooted to the spot by the blue ink-blot, like a plaster cast, in which its right leg was encased.

Mr M.T. Wessels

Mr Aubrie Tearl
e

Mevrou Anna Bonsma

Mr Dan Bogus—

Miss Merlé Graaff

Errol and Raylene

Vlooid en
Nomsa

Bill and Pardner

Mrs
Mav

Mrs
Hay

Ernie and them (Harry, Eddie, Little Harry
etc)

Carmelita and Pardner

Mr Everistus alius Eveready

One hardly knew where to start.

‘Partner has a “t” in it,’
I said. Boggled. ‘A pardner is someone who trots along beside you on a bobtailed mare.’

‘Have I missed anyone
out?’

‘Mnr Vetsak.’

‘Ha, Aub. Jokes aside.’

‘You’ve been very thorough. I see the bottle-washer’s invited. You should ask him to bring the kitchen sink along.’

‘I reckoned you wouldn’t mind about Everistus. He was like family. And times have changed: if he pulled in here today, he could park off with us and have a fresh orange.’

First it was a club, now it’s a family.

‘How are you going to track everyone down?’ I had a list of names and addresses he would have found very useful, but I wasn’t going to help him with this nonsense.

‘I’ve got my ways. My contacts.’

‘What’s become of Spilkin?’

‘He was on first, but then I took him off again. I don’t want to stand on anyone’s feet.’

‘I ’d have thought Spilkin’s name should lead all the rest, like Abou Ben Adhem. Not that he loved his fellow man, especially, but he had an eye for the ladies. Anyway, it’s your party, invite who you please. Even the hooligans.’

Speak of the devil. Errol came sliding in from the balcony with Raylene in tow
–
or was it Maylene? they all sound like household cleaners to me
–
and then Floyd and Nomsa, who appears to wear wigs, and our very own Moçes bringing up the rear, with his waistcoat unbuttoned and his bowtie hanging down from one point of his collar. Errol pulled up a chair at our table
–
‘Please won’t you join us,’ I said
–
and flung himself over it like a discarded overall. Raylene or Maylene sat on the armrest and crossed her long right leg, not on her
own
knee but on Errol’s! I couldn’t quite see how it was done. She turned her face up to the fan, flushed, sweaty from the sun. They do seem to perspire rather a lot (although I remember reading somewhere that it’s a sign of good health, except in the tropics). Floyd and Pardner went on into the kitchen. I believe Moçes was supplying them with drugs
–
or vice versa
–
although Wessels insisted he gave them food. Leftovers. They were undernourished, according to Wessels, who had developed an entirely misplaced social conscience. Undernourished! With those muscles?

‘Howzit Wessie, Mr T, how the tawpies?’ (I’ve recorded a few snippets of the argot over the months. A
is an elderly person
–
from their youthful perspective, more often than not someone in the prime of life. I suspect there’s an element of the racial slur in it too. And ‘Mr T’, in case you were wondering, refers to me.) ‘Dop?’ Errol went on. ‘Brandy or whatever the case may be?’ His mouth hung open. Also characteristic. You’d think he was always hungry, like a baby bird or some sea-dweller browsing for plankton. Certainly, he was usually putting something in his mouth, a Chesterfield cigarette (when he scrounged ‘smokes’ from Wessels, he snapped off the filters before he lit them), or some Black Label beer straight from the bottle, or a luminous orange larva called a Cheesnak (sic). But it was more than hunger, it was lassitude, some slackness in his long dark face, in his whole lank body, as if the bones were too loosely jointed. Needed starch. The outsize clothing he favoured didn’t help either. ‘Slapgat’ Wessels called it, and the vulgar Afrikanerism was
apt.

‘We was just wrapping about the closing-down jôl,’ said Raylene/Maylene, ‘and Err had one of his bright ideas. He schemes we should get Hunky Dory to play. Like he’s usually weekends only, but I reckon Tony could ask him to come on Thursday instead, specially for the party. For old time’s sake.’

Err. Tony. Hunky Dory. They sounded more like conditions than human beings. But even Hunky Dory was a person. Tone had employed him as the resident musician. He played on Saturday nights only, but his equipment lay in the corner all week, like a junior electronics set, handfuls of gauges and dials, tangles of cable and wire, chromium tubing and grey insulation tape. ‘Hunky Dory’ hung on a string above the rostrum that passed as the stage, in glittering letters with ragged fringes of the kind usually reserved for Seasons Greetings, stirring gently in the breeze from the overhead
fans.

I had once heard him manufacture ‘music’ on these ‘instruments’, to my regret.

‘I would rather hear a tribe of cats quartered on a bandsaw, fortissimo and accelerando,’ I quipped, ‘than be subjected to Hocus Pocus and his engines.’

Errol’s lip drooped. ‘Come again?’

‘Rock and roll gives me a headache.’

‘Take a Grampa,’ said Errol.

‘You a funny old tawpy,’ said Raylene/Maylene, and jogged her foot on Errol’s knee. It was unnerving, as if they were one person, Siamese twins joined at the thigh, a single creature that didn’t know whether it was Arthur or Martha. The impression was strengthened by the girl’s muscular calf and rubber-toothed combat boot (Israeli army surplus, they claimed). To test the limits of my theory, Errol’s right hand, which had been asleep on her hip with a cigarette smouldering between its fingers, awoke and began to creep over her bare midriff. It traced circles around her navel with the tip of an index finger and then dropped off again. The damp end of the cigarette slipped into the omphalic whorl in her flesh like a jack into a socket. The girl’s belly rose and fell with her breathing, the cigarette fumed. It was perverse. It reminded me of something I had seen on television: a barber-shop quartet of ugly Mongolians, which turned out to be paunches with faces painted on them. Humor.