The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (10 page)

The perspex pieces must be a little larger, so as to stick on to the board since this is the wrong side, they need not be cut to the exact shape but may remain geometrical, providing they do not overlap each other, for they must lie flat. When the board goes up on the wall over the lights, only the rounded shapes on the other side will show, and be lit up in all the different colours. It is difficult to decide on the colours. Blue for the lung perhaps, and green for the spleen, purple for the kidney. Or pink for the lung, blue for the spleen, red for the womb, purple for the cardiac shape. No, that won’t do, two purples are next to each other. It is more important to balance the colours in relation to each other than to equate them with the significance of shapes. The designing and lay-out of the shapes has been done by someone else.

Mr. Swaminathan stands on the steps of the gazebo and sways gently from one foot to the other.

– Yes, well, how do I know it’s you? This piece of paper is quite creased all over.

– My wife threw it away by mistake.

– What? Speak up man.

– My wife threw it away by mistake.

– You might have found it in a garbage-can for all I know. There’s no name on it. If at least it said admit bearer I could rightfully take the risk. You have borne it, I can’t deny that.

– I can tell you about the mix-up she refers to.

– Yes, well, she did describe you to me as a matter of fact. The white hair. But you people look so alike you know.

– My wife works here. She could identify me.

– By hand, that means nothing. Oh well I’ll take your word for it. There’s no time to lose, really. Two builders are off ill and the big pavilion must be finished in time for the garden-party.

– Mr. Swaminathan, excuse my asking, but how do I know you are the managing agent, and not, for instance, a professor of philosophy?

– Don’t be impertinent.

– Or in import and export? In town in the street you said you were in import and export.

– You don’t want to believe everything you hear and see in the street. Now get on with it, the foreman will tell you what to do.

The piece of blue perspex between the orange rectangle and the green trapeze overlaps the green. It is necessary to slip it underneath the facia-board and outline the cut-out kidney shape on to it with a pencil, so as not to saw it smaller than the shape, plus a little all round for glueing. The kidney shape has a large lower lobe. The piece of blue perspex is an uneven triangle with the narrowest angle sawn off. The longest side saws down quite easily. The piece of blue perspex is an isosceles triangle with the narrowest angle sawn off. Down on the facia-board, the space that the angle would have taken is occupied by part of a red parallelogram. The blue perspex fits very well. A flat stone holds down all four pieces of perspex while the glue dries to a good hold. The yellow piece of perspex can go next to the orange. A pair of feet, shod in buff leather to match the buff trousers, strides over the facia-board without touching it. Or tripping it, as the case might be, in brown trousers for example, saying sorry mate followed by silence. A woman’s foot, black in a pink shoe, steps on the wooden frame on one side of the
facia-board
. The other similar foot steps across to the wooden frame on the other side. It is possible, without looking up from the grey perspex, to see the hem of the pale orange overall which hovers for a moment within the outer orbit of the downward absorption.

The paving-stones are large as tables. The trousers widen slightly at the bottom, most of them brown or black. Shoes match and shine. It is like being in a forest. The trees run away as the flag-stones vibrate.

No, Mr. Swaminathan sways gently from one foot to another. The black plastic hose follows almost imperceptibly, like a dying metronome. The cluster could be of caladium hybrids, or a speckled sea-anemone.

– You sound very professorial if I may say so, for a business man. Do you think the proposed aid to Sino-America or even to Seatoarea would help to solve the problem?

– I’d rather not comment on that.

– So you’d prefer to see a definite economic association with Chinese Europe?

– Oh no, I’m against that.

– Why?

– Well, it wouldn’t be in our interest, would it?

– What about you, do you have any views on the situation?

– Yes. Compulsory blood-tests, permissive death and
compulsory
birth control. That’s the only way out. I mean it’s not fair to burden us with their mutations is it?

So torrid, so tender. The face lying upside down, the eyeballs holding back their black nucleus from the attracting orbit of the street below. A group of men shuffling about beneath them, near the steps of the Labour Exchange. The black mannequins in the dress shop to the right, wearing red and orange, dance in arrested motions, protruding their behinds. To the left, on the big poster, the teeth are agape in rigid horror, or pleasure as the case might be. One brown face opposite is as lined as a walnut, with a toothless mouth that says, We had a dream. It’s a disgrace.

– Yes sir, can you speak up a bit. What’s your occupation?

– I’m an old man. My face is lined as a walnut and entirely surrounded with white hair. My face stands out in stark serenity.

– Could you speak up a bit? Straight into the mike, that’s better. It’s a noisy street, isn’t it? Now, which way are you going to vote tomorrow, dad?

– When I was a young man we had a dream, of universal brotherhood. We were all going to work side by side in partnership, the strong helping the weak. Nobody was going to be afraid. Nobody was going to take revenge, revenge was for primitive people, and we had rapidly become civilized. There’s always as much to be thankful for as angry. What’s happened to all that? Why aren’t we helping those who have now become weak? We only pretend to help. What are we afraid of? Why have we fallen away from the dream?

– Well, we can’t get into a theological discussion here, I’m afraid.

– Theology! You tolerate the gods as you pension off old men. We did the same. We always learn too late.

– Thank you very much. What about you? What’s your occupation, sir?

– I’m a hairdresser.

– Do you approve of the satisfaction campaign?

Or, alternatively,

Mr. Swaminathan stands on the steps of the gazebo, swaying gently from one foot to another.

– You might have found it in a garbage-can, for all I know.

– Mr. Swaminathan, excuse my asking, but how do I know you are the managing agent, and not, say, in import and export?

– If we start with conjectures that have the highest
possible
informative content or – which has been proved to be the same thing – the lowest possible probability, and if we test these conjectures with the greatest possible severity, those which survive the tests will acquire the patina of prestige that traditionally attaches to knowledge.

– Yes, but does it bear any relation to the real thing?

– Well, it’s only a crumpled piece of paper after all. By hand, it doesn’t mean anything.

The thyroid will be scarlet. It is about the life-size of a pear, and a tenth the size of the spleen, which increases progressively and usually painlessly until it fills most of the abdomen. The shapes on this side of the facia-board are quite geometrical. The note requires an answer, of polite thanks merely, but an answer. By hand. It won’t mean a thing. Dear Mrs. Mgulu. Thank you very much for all the trouble you have gone to on my behalf. I am most grateful and will make every endeavour to serve you to your greatest
satisfaction
. To the best of my ability. The green trapeze lies side by side with the white square, its slanted line touching the blue triangle. I hope you will have every reason to be entirely satisfied. I am most grateful and will endeavour to serve you to the best of my ability, which I hope will satisfy you in every way. Which I hope will not cause you any further trouble. Yours truly.

Mr. Swaminathan stands on the steps of the gazebo and sways slowly from one foot to another.

– It’s only because the builder is ill and the job is urgent. There shouldn’t be any objection but I’d keep quiet about it, you know.

– Mr. Swaminathan, why are you afraid of employing me? What is this pressure, this barely spoken discrimination against us?

– Us? Who’s us? You’re imagining things.

– Good. Make him say the obvious, it’s easier to conceive the reply. The reply must be passionate and deeply moving. On pronouns for example. You used to be Us and we used to be Them, to you, but now it’s the other way about. Why? We tried our best. Oh, we brought you syphilis and identity and dissatisfaction and other diseases of civilization. But medicine too, and canned ideas, against your own diseases. And we couldn’t bring you radiation leukaemia or chemical mutations, because we absorbed all the chemicals ourselves and must have spared you only just enough to immunise you. Or else you had an ancient strength inside, that we couldn’t corrupt. We were whited sepulchres and never came to terms with our dark interior, which you wear healthily upon your sleeves, having had so little time to lose touch with it. Now we are sick. Is that the reason? Is that why you are afraid, afraid of our white sickness?

The rhetoric is vain, the passion pale and disengaging. Even inside the mind that pours it out in silence Mr.
Swaminathan
stands on the steps of the gazebo, swaying slowly from one foot to another, failing to identify himself with suffering. The process is known as alienation, and yet the passion hurts, seizes the body at the back of the neck somehow, in the medullary centres, down the glosso-pharyngeal nerve perhaps, or the pneumogastric, at any rate forward and down into the throat, which tightens as enlargement of the lymphatic glands occurs and pain spreads through the chest, aching and down into the stomach, nauseous. Sooner or later it will reach the spleen, which will increase in size until it fills most of the abdomen, remaining firm and smooth, however, on palpation. The onset is insidious and well advanced before diagnosis. Prognosis poor, continuing to a fatal termination. Splenectomy contra-indicated, treatment unsatisfactory, no therapy, but the blood-count, marrow biopsy and glandular biopsy will furnish a firm diagnosis. These organs on section appear grey or reddish grey, packed with myeloid cells, mainly polymorphonuclears and immature cells such as myeloblasts, promyelocytes, myelocytes and metamyelocytes. The psyche on section appears grey.

From this position in the gutter, the paving stones look large as tables. The trousers widen slightly at the bottom, most of them brown or black. Shoes are dusty or caked with mud. It is like being in a forest. The trees run away as the flagstones vibrate. The thing is a long distance away. A seismograph might perhaps reveal, but the curving jaw of the street crumbles further up, swallowing the insect crowds. Some people are always left, kissing the gutter. Darling, they’re playing our tune.

The wiggly oblong resembles nothing but a wiggly oblong, to be pencilled on to the pink piece of perspex beneath the facia-board. From this position, Mr. Swaminathan, I love you.

It is important to believe in the bowl of steaming gruel. A microscope might perhaps reveal animal ecstasy in the innumerable white globules that compose the circle, but the gruel tastes hot and salty on the soft palate at the back of the mouth and flows hotly down the digestive track to the duodenum. Sooner or later the white globules will feed the corpuscles in the blood stream, occasioning continual traffic jams and innumerable collisions. The wrinkled wood is quite static in the pool of light, which overspreads the table and transfers itself on to the still and red stone floor. The table casts a large rectangular shadow on the red stone floor, flanked on one side by the tangential shadows of the empty chair at the end to the left. Next to these the body’s shadow makes a bulging growth on the clean line of the rectangle. It is swallowed up from time to time by the moving shadow of the occurring conversation. The door is shut behind the hanging beads and to the right of it, on the top shelf, the recipes stand side by side, on gaily coloured tins.

– It’s best to keep them really, tempting though they may be. You never know when they may come in useful. Besides, none of them is self-contained. Each recipe requires the contents of at least two other tins, and I never seem to have the right combinations. I do now have two out of three for Beef Strogonoff, though, because cook gave me a tin of it today and I have a tin of rice. Let’s see, it says open the tin and empty contents into a copper-bottomed saucepan, stirring slowly on low heat. Add salt and paprika to taste. Meanwhile open large Gala tin of fried rice, oh dear I only have a medium tin, but this says serves six, empty contents over a dessertspoonful of ground-nut oil in a copper-bottomed saucepan and heat slowly, chop a handful of fresh parsley take a medium tin of Gala sauté carrots, you see that’s the one I don’t have.

Some of the gruel’s globules remain attached to the rounded white sides of the bowl. The light over the table makes a moon in the darkness beyond the window. The squint seems wider tonight, and yet less blue. The pale eye that doesn’t move is fixed on the shelf of can-recipes, but the mobile eye stares towards the reflected moon in the darkness beyond the window.

– In an emergency of course one wouldn’t bother about proper dishes. One might be glad to have just the fried rice. Or guavas.

– What a wind there is tonight. The shack seems about to take off.

– Yes and it’s raining too, listen. Most extraordinary weather for the time of year, we should be having Spring showers. I like it though. I hate the stillness of a sickly sky. I can identify with the wind, especially the night wind.