The Brooke-Rose Omnibus E-Book

Christine Brooke-Rose

• Herausgeber: Carcanet Fiction
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 1061

Beschreibung

FOUR NOVELS: Out (1964), Such (1966), Between (1968) and Thru (1975) The Brooke-Rose Omnibus brings together four unexpected novels: Out, a science-fiction vision of a world surviving catastrophe; Such, in which a three-minute heart massage is developed into a poetic and funny narrative; Between, a glittering experience of the multiplicity of language; and Thru, a novel in which text and typography assume a life of their own. Linking them all is wit, inventiveness and the sharply focused intellegence of Christine Brooke-Rose, a great European humanist writer.

Leseprobe

THE CHRISTINE BROOKE-ROSE OMNIBUS

Four Novels

OutSuch Between Thru

CONTENTS

Title Page

Out (1964)

Such (1966)

Between (1968)

Thru (1975)

About the Author

Also by Christine Brooke-Rose from Carcanet

Copyright

Out

1

 

AFLY straddles another fly on the faded denim stretched over the knee. Sooner or later, the knee will have to make a move, but now it is immobilised by the two flies, the lower of which is so still that it seems dead. The fly on top is on the contrary quite agitated, jerking tremulously, then convulsively, putting out its left foreleg to whip, or maybe to stroke some sort of reaction out of the fly beneath, which, however, remains so still that it seems dead. A microscope might perhaps reveal animal ecstasy in its innumerable eyes, but only to the human mind behind the microscope, and besides, the fetching and rigging up of a microscope, if one were available, would interrupt the flies. Sooner or later some such interruption will be inevitable; there will be an itch to scratch or a nervous movement to make or even a bladder to go and empty. But now there is only immobility. The fly on top is now perfectly still also. Sooner or later some interruption will be necessary, a bowl of gruel to be eaten, for instance, or a conversation to undergo. Sooner or later a bowl of gruel will be brought, unless perhaps it has already been brought, and the time has come to go and get rid of it, in which case –

– Would you rather have your gruel now or when I come back from Mrs. Mgulu?

The question is inevitable, but will not necessarily occur in that precise form.

– Two flies are making love on my knee.

– Flies don’t make love. They have sexual intercourse.

– On the contrary.

– You mean they make love but don’t have sexual intercourse?

– I mean it’s human beings who have sexual intercourse but don’t make love.

– Very witty. But you are talking to yourself. This dialogue will not necessarily occur.

The straddled fly stretches out its forelegs and rubs them together, but the fly on top is perfectly still. Soon the itch will have to be scratched.

– Hello, is there anyone there? It’s Mrs. Tom.

– Who is it? Oh, hello, Mrs. Tom, did you get my message?

– Yes, that’s why I came, and how are you?

– I was delayed this morning by Mrs. Ned’s tub, it was broken you see, so I was too late to catch Mrs. Jim. But Mr. Marburg the butler kindly offered to get in touch with you.

The itch is scratched very gently, so as not to disturb the flies. The fly on top trembles, quivers and sags, then stretches out its left foreleg to flicker some reaction out of the straddled fly, which, however, is now quite still. Sooner or later the knee’s immobility will undergo a mutation, a muscle will twitch and the flies will be disturbed. But for the moment they are dead to the world, even to the commotion made at the door by the coming interruption, the question which sooner or later must occur, in some form or other.

– That was Mrs. Tom.

– I know, I heard her.

– She got my message in spite of everything. You see I was late at Mrs. Mgulu’s this morning, on account of Mrs. Ned’s tub.

– Look, two flies are making love on my knee.

The squint seems bluer today, and wider. The pale eye that doesn’t move is fixed on the two flies, but the mobile eye wriggles away from them, its blue mobility calling out the blueness of the temple veins and a hint of blue in the white skin around. Then this eye too remains fixed, reproachful perhaps.

– Mrs. Mgulu looks quite ill you know, at least, as far as one can tell, with that wonderfully black skin. Yesterday apparently the doctor changed all her medicines, so she said I could have her old ones. This is for the thyroid. And this one’s for the duodenum, look.

– Don’t come too near, you’ll frighten them.

The pale fixed eye stands guard over the flies. The other moves along the print.

– Duodenica is an oral antacid buffer specially prepared for easy absorption by the sick the aged and the very young its gentle action provides continuous antacid action without alkalisation or fluctuations reducing gastric acidity to an equable level of p H 4 which is sufficient to relieve pain and discomfort with practically no interference with the secretory balance of the stomach or other normal digestive mechanisms. Duodenica is particularly recommended in cases of over-alcoholisation supersatiation ulceration hyperacidity dyspepsiaDuodenica is NOT a drug one capsule twice a day during or after meals NOT to be taken without a doctor’s prescription.

In the sudden silence the fly on top is very still, so still that it seems dead under that pale policing eye.

– Would you rather have your gruel now or in a little while? It makes no difference to me, I have things to do.

– Sooner or later I shall have to disturb them.

The mobile eye shifts towards the knee and back, but the two flies lie quite still, as if dead to that extra light of awareness briefly upon them.

– Where’s your fly-swatter? Ah, here.

– Don’t! … frighten them.

– There’s hundreds of eggs in that fly. Think of the summer. It’s the winter flies you have to kill. Well I’ll leave the thyroid thing with you, and the Duodenica. There are some suppositories too, let’s see, anti-infectious therapeutic and tonifying by means of bacteriostatic properties of four sulphonamides selected among the most active and least toxic, together with – ah no, that’s for dogs, how silly of me.

The winter flies lie quite still, dead to the removal of that pale light of awareness briefly upon them. Sooner or later there will be a movement to make, a bladder to go and empty and a bowl of gruel to go and eat. The fly-swatter is made of bright red plastic. Through it, the high small window looks trellised in red, a darker red against the light, almost a wine-red. Through the trellis the winter sky is blue and pale, paler than the summer sky. But it is difficult to re-visualise the exact degree of blueness in the summer sky without interposing picture postcards as sold in the city streets. No sky is as blue as that, not even here in the South. It is difficult to re-imagine the exact degree of heat, and picture postcards are cold. The winter flies lie quite still, dead to their present framing in a circle of dark red plastic, dead to the removal of the red plastic frame around the light of awareness on them. Sooner or later they must be interrupted, but now there is only immobility.

The knee lowers itself gently, an earth transferred, a mountain moved by faith. The leg stretches slowly to a horizontal position. The elbows on which the recumbent body rests have to straighten out so that the body can rise from the mattress on the floor, using the hands to lean on. In the process the knees bend up again slightly. The winter flies take off, locked in a lurching flight, at eye-level, then, together still, they sway up towards the high small window a long way from the floor, and land their conjugal bodies on the transverse bar, where they lie very quiet, so quiet they might be dead.

Even at eye-level the flies lie quiet on the transverse bar, so quiet they might be dead.

The kitchen door is framed by the bedroom door. At the end of the short dark passage, almost cubic in its brevity, the kitchen through the open door seems luminous, apparently framed in red. The doors however are of rough dark wood. The walls of the passage are at right angles when curving is desired.

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

A conversation occurs.

A microscope might perhaps reveal animal ecstasy among the innumerable white globules in the circle of gruel, but only to the human mind behind the microscope. And besides, the fetching and the rigging up of a microscope, if one were available, would interrupt the globules. If, indeed, the gruel hadn’t been eaten by then, in which case a gastroscope would be more to the point. And a gastroscope at that juncture of the gruel’s journey would provoke nausea.

– Mrs. Mgulu looks quite ill, you know, but then she will complicate life for herself. She was expecting toys for the children this morning, and it was important they shouldn’t see them arrive, so they were sent out with the nanny and Mrs. Mgulu stayed home, so that delayed her, and by the time she got to town she was late for the hairdresser and he kept her waiting, though really, she doesn’t need it, her hair looks lovely and smooth, in the middle of all those preparations, and pheasants too, and seven servants away ill. Well, she was grateful to me, I can tell you, she even gave me a bonus. So I bought a tin of pineapple fingers. You never know when it may come in useful.

A rectangle of light ripples on the wooden table. The wrinkled wood inside the rectangle seems to be flowing into the wrinkled wood outside it, which looks darker. If the source of rippling light were not known to be an oblique ray of winter sun filtering through the top segment of the slightly swaying beads over the doorway, the wrinkled wood might be thought alive, as alive, at any rate, as the network of minute lines on the back of the wrist. But the minute lines on the back of the wrist do not flow as the wrinkled wood seems to flow. A microscope might perhaps reveal which is the more alive of the two.

The rectangle of light is only a refracted continuation of the oblong thrown on the red stone floor between the doorway and the table. The beads ripple the light of this oblong also, turning the red stone floor into a red river. Sometimes it is sufficient to envisage a change for the change to occur. The hanging beads are still, however, and the red river is only a stone floor.

– Take one or more tins of Frankfurt sausages allowing two per person gently split each sausage down the middle and insert one pineapple finger into each split simmer in pineapple juice for two to three minutes meanwhile open a tin of either spinach or garden peas and warm up but do not boil in thick bottomed saucepan serve the pineapple sausages piping hot on a bed of spinach or garden peas. That sounds very good. Would you like some more gruel?

The circle of gruel in the bowl is greyish white and pimply. It steams less, and appears quite flaccid. In the rectangle of rippling light a fly moves jerkily.

The squint is not so blue, or so wide, in the luminosity thrown by the oblong of moving light on the red stone floor and the rectangle of rippling light on the wooden table. It is good that the gruel was not brought but come to, arrived at. Sooner or later movement, which is necessary but not inevitable, will lead to attainment. Yet, frequently, the gruel is brought.

– Mrs. Ned’s tub was broken, you see, and I helped her mend it. So naturally I arrived too late this morning to catch Mrs. Jim. Mr. Marburg the butler said she waited as long as possible, but then she had to go or she’d get the worst of the market. Because of course she knew from yesterday that I would have a message for her to give to Mrs. Tom, but she didn’t know that Mrs. Ned would delay me with her tub. So then when she got back I hadn’t been able to give her the message. Well in the end it didn’t matter because Mr. Marburg the butler was most obliging and said he would contact Mrs. Tom and himself give her the message, but he charged me for the call, pocketing the money no doubt because I can’t see that Mrs. Mgulu would know one way or the other, but he said she keeps a careful check on such things.

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. To see inside a bladder the instrument is called a cystoscope. The inside of a bladder is framed in pink.

Yet frequently, the gruel is brought. It has then been sufficient merely to imagine movement for the movement to occur. Or not, as the case might be.

The skin around the eyes, both the mobile eye and the fixed eye, is waxy. But the eyelids are the right colour. More so, at any rate, than usual, at least in the luminosity thrown by the oblong of moving light on the red stone floor.

– Yes, I am pale, but look at my eyelids, they are the right colour, for the time of year, I mean.

– So they are. It is a pity, of course, that the colour has gone out of fashion.

– Very witty. But you are talking to yourself. This dialogue does not necessarily occur.

The waxiness is due to a deficiency in the liver.

In the rectangle of rippling light on the wrinkled wood of the kitchen table there is no fly.

– Did you bring the Duodenica? It said during or after meals, or was it before? What does it say?

The formula printed on the bottle marked Duodenica is Aluminium glycinate (dihydroxy aluminium aminoacetate) 850 mg. light magnesium carbonate B.P. 150 mg.

– I think you ought to take this, not me.

– Oh thank you, I was hoping you’d say that. Then you can have this heart extract, o point two grammes of heart extract, corresponding to o point eight o six grammes of fresh organs. Or this one. It’s for the bladder. Hexamethylene tetramine crystallised and chemically pure both preventive and curative diuretic it constitutes an active dissolvant of uric acid especially for all infections of bilious and urinary ducts colitis angiocholitis pyelitis pyelonephritis etcetera its antiseptic powers are reinforced by a minimal addition of potassium citrate to the hexamethylene tetramine. By the way did you go to the Labour Exchange this morning?

The waxiness could even be due to cancer.

The bedroom door is framed by the kitchen door. In the short passage, almost cubic in its brevity, the lavatory door to the left is certainly another possibility. To the right of the kitchen door, facing the lavatory door, the door to the front verandah room, where the lodgers live, is not a possibility. If the waxiness were due to cancer then the eyelids would not be the right colour, but of course the colour of the eyelids might have reflected the luminosity from the rectangle of rippling light. On the other hand, the luminosity thrown by the rectangle of light would also have affected the waxiness of the skin elsewhere around the eyes. A microscope might perhaps reveal, a teinoscope might perhaps reveal, from this position between the small high window and the mattress on the floor, through the cubic passage and the angular framework of the kitchen door, that the squint is less wide and less blue, less noticeable in the luminosity thrown by the oblong of moving light on the red stone floor. A telescope might perhaps reveal a planet off course, a satellite out of orbit.

The transverse bar of the window is dark and flaking with age. At eye-level it is empty of flies. The old wood has cracked considerably, as if the flies had caused much commotionin their wintry love-making. Flies do not make love, they have sexual intercourse. Only human beings make love. The transverse bar at eye-level is quite empty. The vertical bar is empty too, and the window-sill, and the window-panes, and the vertical wall around the window, and the other three walls, and the low cracked ceiling, all are empty of flies in their wintry occupation.

– Occupation?

– I am a builder.

Behind the trellis the bland black face looks patched like wet asphalt with curved oblongs and blobs of white light.

– A builder? But your hands. They look such sensitive hands.

– Ah, but have you seen my eyelids, they are the right colour.

– You know very well this dialogue cannot occur. Start again. Occupation?

– I am a builder.

– The truth is after all unimportant in a case like this.

– I haven’t actually built for a long time, you see. I am as you might say a master builder, a man of ideas, which others carry out. No, well, they haven’t for a long time, it’s true. In my country they did, before the displacement of course. I had many people under me. I built many houses, in many different styles, as for example the miniature stately home style. That used to be very fashionable you know. I lived in a miniature stately home style house I built myself. I also built office blocks. The old glass house style, you seem to like it here. I was very successful –

– Look, since you’re inventing this dialogue you ought to give something to the other chap to say.

– But I must get all those facts in.

– He won’t let you, he exists too, you know.

– I suppose so, with his beautiful bland black face patched like wet asphalt in curved oblongs and blobs of light. And the facts, anyway, are not true.

– I know. You must be more realistic. Say for instance that you were trained at a Resettlement Camp.

– I built the tower of Pisa and it leant.

– Inside it spirals. A bronchoscope might perhaps reveal –

– Oh shut up.

At eye-level through the window, about three metres away, and to the left of the fig-tree which overlooks the road, there is Mrs. Ned’s bungalow. Some people would call it a shack. The windowless clapboard wall immediately opposite is dark with age and the cunonia at the corner of it is dead, its dark red spike dried up. To the right, at the front of the bungalow, the verandah looks dilapidated and at the back the straw shed over the wash-tub is crumbling down. The wash-tub has a bar of new pale wood nailed along its top edge. The shack is exactly similar to this bungalow and exactly in line with it, but too close, for it blocks the view. Some people would call the verandah a porch.

– Well, you started it, your dialogue gets out of hand.

A telemetre might perhaps reveal the distance to be three and a half metres, or even four. The view to the right, if it were visible from this position at the right of the window, would be the fig-tree. The view obliquely to the left is of the corner of the porch belonging to the shack next to Mrs. Ned’s. The view ahead, if a view were available, would consist of innumerable bungalows in small bare gardens where nothing grows very tall. Some people would call them shacks. The shacks would be low and spare with slightly sloping corrugated iron roofs that straddle the smaller roofs of the entrance verandahs. The insulating paint on most of the roofs would have flaked away leaving brown patches of rusting ripple. The gardens would be small and flat.

– You’re incapable of preparing any episode in advance. You can’t even think.

At least that is the view from the kitchen window over the sink, which faces the South East side of the Settlement, unblocked by Mrs. Ned’s shack. If Mrs. Ned’s shack were not in the way, all the innumerable other shacks to the South West would be visible from this window also, unless all the shacks save this one had been removed, or destroyed, in the walking interval between the kitchen window and this window. It is sometimes sufficient merely to imagine an episode for the episode to occur. A periscope might perhaps reveal a scene of pastoral non-habitation. It would be sufficient merely to move two steps to the left for the window to be filled, in an oblique way, only with the fig-tree.

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

Frequently, after all, the gruel is brought. It is sometimes sufficient merely to imagine movement, in the walking interval between the kitchen window and this window, for the movement to occur, though not necessarily in that precise form. The gardens, when visible, are too small and the shacks too close for health. Every shack, climbing over its own verandah, might be a fly straddling another fly. It is sometimes sufficient to imagine a change, but in this case the shacks, if visible, would merely be shacks. Some people like to call them bungalows.

Beyond the closed wrought-iron gates the mimosas up at the big house are in bloom, gracefully draping the top of the white pillars on either side of the gate. Single branches also droop over the white; wall that separates the property from the road. Beyond the tall wrought-iron gates and beyond the mimosa on either side the plane-trees line the drive, casting a welcome shade. One half of the tall wrought-iron gates may be ajar, might perhaps be pushed open with an effort of the will. It is sometimes sufficient.

Here however the fig-tree’s thick grey twigs poke upwards into the sky. The branches bearing them are contorted, like the convolutions of the brain. The darker grey trunk leans along the edge of the bank at an angle of forty degrees, inside which, from a standing position, the road may be seen. One of the branches sweeps downwards out of the trunk, away from the road, forming with the trunk an arch that frames the piece of road within it. The thick and long grey twigs on this down sweeping branch grow first downward also, then curve up like large U-letters.

In summer, from ground-level, nearer to the fig-tree, the arch formed by the leaning trunk and the down-sweeping branch frames a whole landscape of descending olive-groves beyond the road, which itself disappears behind the bank. In summer the grey framework of trunk and branch is further framed by a mass of deep green foliage.

At the moment, from a standing position, it is only a piece of road which is framed. At the moment the fig-tree looks blasted.

If the fig-tree here looks blasted then the mimosas up at the big house cannot be in bloom. The two events do not occur simultaneously. It is sometimes sufficient to imagine but only within nature’s possibilities.

Beyond the closed wrought-iron gates 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, made now discernible by the leaflessness. First there are the vertical bars of the tall wrought-iron gates, flanked, behind the two white pillars and white walls, by the feathery green mimosa trees which are not in bloom. Beyond the vertical bars of the closed wrought-iron gates there is the thick network of the first plane-trees on either side of the drive. Beyond the thick network of bare branches there is a finer network, closing in a little over the drive, and beyond that a finer network still. The network of bare branches functions in depth, a corridor of cobwebs full of traps for flies, woven by a giant spider behind huge prison bars.

It is not true that the mimosas cannot blossom while the fig-tree looks blasted. The small nodules just visible on the straight long twigs of the fig-tree may already represent the first, January round of buds, the edible ones which do not produce leaves and fruit. Therefore the mimosas could just be in bloom. Unless of course the fig-tree does not look as blasted as all that. The nodules could already be the buds that produce leaves and fruit, in which case the problem does not arise.

– Oh anyworrourr slishy ming nang pactergoo worror worrerer-er-er-er whinnyman shoo. Oh no. Fang hang norryman, go many wolloshor-or-or nang – Oh, how silly of me, tharrawarrapack hang norryman.

– Is it you or me you’re talking to? Because I haven’t heard a word.

– I was talking to myself. I was just saying that I forgot to ask Mrs. Jim to buy me a packet of gruel when she went to the market this morning. I couldn’t go myself because Mrs. Mgulu wanted the sheets changed in three of the guest-rooms, her friends from Kenya are leaving you see and others are arriving. She didn’t say where from. And then I remembered that I had an extra packet stored away behind the tins for just such an emergency.

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 avery 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.

– So you see this top bit keeps coming off and that’s just where I beat the washing, it can’t take the strain I suppose.

The wash-tub is a rounded hollow of zinc encased in dark sodden wood which has cracked. Along the top in front. A new but bent board of thin wood lies on the ground in front of the tub, with nails sticking out of it. Next to it lies a hammer.

Sooner or later the bent board of thin soft wood will embrace the tub. The eyes of Mrs. Ned strike a tonic chord of expected notes. The arms no longer throw the voice about, the voice is quiet and the white arms naked to the elbow rest along the edge of the tub. The vertical upper arms, after the elbow, are wrapped in red and the fresh air absorbs the smell of washing-up water and sweat. The red cardigan partly conceals the goitre on the neck. Sooner or later a movement will have to be made. The kitchen, through the hanging beads, is dark.

Sometimes it is sufficient merely to speak, to say perhaps or I don’t think so, as the case might be, or even, in this instance, to hammer a nail into the bent board over the dark sodden wood, for the sequence not to occur. Such as, for example,

– Ooh! You gave me a shock, that went right through me.

– I don’t think so.

The white forearms move away from the edge of the tub, but one hand remains on it with the arm arching over.

Up at the big house, the mimosas are in bloom. Beyond the tall wrought-iron gates they rise and gracefully drape over the white wall separating the property from the road. The mimosas –

The conversation, during the hammering, takes the form of excited squeals and giggles.

– Ooh! You gave me a shock.

– Did I, my dear? And what would you say to this?

Or rather, the conversation, during the hammering, takes the form of admiring murmurs and modestly expressed advice. One hand remains on the edge of the tub with the arm arching over. The right leg stands so near that it would be possible to stroke it all the way up, thin though it is. The right leg is very white and granulated with black dots.

– The nails don’t get a grip. The wood is too sodden.

– I know. I need a whole new casement really.

The bent board of soft wood embraces the top of the tub. The hammer lies on the edge, then falls with a clatter into the rounded zinc tub, pushed by a careless movement. Both arms dart in to retrieve it, and the hands touch.

Beyond the open iron gates up at the big house 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 house, made now discernible by the leaflessness. The network of bare branches functions in depth, a corridor of cobwebs full of flies.

– My tub seems to have broken, do you think you could come through to the back and have a look at it? If you don’t mind I mean.

The passage is almost cubic in its brevity, with walls at right angles. To the left, the kitchen is not luminous, but muddled and mottled, nor is it framed in red. A tape-recorder might perhaps reveal this to be the phrase that came and went, through the short dark passage with walls at right angles. There is otherwise no explanation for the lack of lodgers in the front verandah-room or for the lack of the red framework, or for the colourless mottled kitchen. Beyond the colourlessness the kitchen has once been painted in cream and green. The hanging beads over the doorway are mottled and make a crackling sound.

During the hammering, the arms no longer throw the voice about, the voice is quiet and the white forearms hang limp down the white apron, continued a little lower by the marble veined legs, thin and about one metre away.

It is sometimes sufficient to say nothing or, in this instance, to hammer a nail into the bent board over the dark sodden wood, for the sequence not to occur, if indeed, the circumstances have been brought about at all in that precise form.

– The nails don’t get a grip. The wood is too sodden.

– Did you say something?

– The wood is too sodden.

– I know. Your wife helped me with it earlier but it came off. I need a whole new casement really.

The bent board of soft wood embraces the top of the tub. The hammer lies on the edge.

– Were you winking at me as you came up to the bungalow? You were making such peculiar faces.

– I don’t think so.

The hammer falls with a clatter into the rounded zinc tub, pushed by a careless movement.

Beyond the closed wrought-iron gates of the big house the mimosas are just beginning to blossom. Feathery green branches droop like ferns over the white wall that separates the property from the road, scattered here and there with yellow dots. The white wall is gently rounded as the road curves and continues to curve, but almost imperceptibly. It is impossible at any one moment to see whether things are any different round the corner.

Mrs. Mgulu, on the other hand, takes an interest.

In the white wall, the glossy black door opens suddenly and a jet of icy cold water shoots out at face level.

– Ice!

Or alternatively,

– Aaah, sprtch, grrr brrr expressing iciness and force of water on face.

– Ha-ha! You dirty! You need washing.

Or alternatively,

– Oh, you poor man you. This was not intended. You look sick. Have some Duodenica.

–No.

– Ha-ha! You dirty! You need washing.

The Bahuko face grins behind the pursuing jet of water which seems to spray out from between the two rows of white teeth, though in fact two black hands must be holding the hose, which is made of red thermoplastic, and a dark but pink-nailed index finger must be on the empty nozzle-holder to make the jet spray instead of pour.

– Hee-hee-hee-hee.

The laugh is that of a delighted child.

The red thermoplastic hose lies inside the flower-bed like a snake. The brass nozzle-holder has no spray-nozzle and out of it the water pours gently around the stem of a laurel bush. The red thermoplastic hose curves out of the flower-bed and all the way up the path, then turns behind the white corner of a small house.

– Oh, you poor man, you look wet. Is it the bladder troubling you? Have some colimycin.

No, that’s the wrong one.

The other one laughs like a delighted child and says you dirty, you need washing.

In the white wall the glossy black door opens at last. Good afternoon, I’m the new gardener. But the reality is a negative of the previous images. Instead of the black man clothed in the pursuing jet of water, a woman stands framed in the whiteness, dressed in a black cotton overall, pale face, pale eyes that strike no note, pale hair. The waxiness is due to a deficiency in the liver. Behind the woman in the white frame the background is brown and cypress green.

– I’ve come about the gardening job.

– Oh, yes. My husband’s somewhere about. Come in.

The path leads straight up to a small white cottage. On either side of the path runs a narrow brown flower-bed and a cypress hedge. The converging greenery engulfs the woman in the black overall, which may after all be a dress, or a black rectangle on two white pillars, moving up the path. The path is made of pink hexagonal tiles, slightly elongated like benzene rings.

– Wait here. I’ll go and call him.

The left foot in its dirty canvas shoe is wholly contained in a benzene ring, the other, a little less dirty, has its big toe on the top dividing line like a carbon atom. If there were a single carbon atom at every angle the result would be graphite, soft and black. A little further up, two steps away perhaps, the left foot steps on the dividing line like the two shared carbon atoms of naphthalene, or for that matter the two shared carbon atoms of adenine, but no, the right-hand tile would in that case be pentagonal, more or less, with complex extensions to the right. Nevertheless the left foot angles off on the line that holds the atoms of the molecules together, linking the nitrogen atom to the carbon. The right foot makes a V with it, linking the nitrogen atom to the carbon and hydrogen. The cement between the sides of the long pink hexagons is thin and grey. In this manner, with the appropriate enzyme, represented perhaps by the left heel in a ribose molecule to the South East and a whole series linked by two energy-rich phosphate bonds, the energy can be quantitatively transferred from one molecule to another so that the backward and forward reactions are thermodynamically equivalent. Under biological conditions, however, the reaction is virtually irreversible. The forward reaction is attended by a large loss of energy in the form of heat. Unless perhaps –

– Good afternoon.

The head gardener is shocking pink, almost red, under a wide-brimmed hat. He looks ill, too, not like a gardener at all. Perhaps he only ordains the gardening. Quite clearly it is not radiation, or even kidney trouble, it must be his heart. As a dark pink man he is employable.

– I believe Mrs. Mgulu –

– What? Speak up, I can’t hear you.

– I believe Mrs. Mgulu –

– Ah yes. She told me about it. You know Mrs. Mgulu well?

– No. Oh no. It’s my wife, she –

– Oh, I see. Well isn’t that nice. I’m all for everyone helping each other especially us. Yes. I always say to Polly, that’s my wife, forty-four years we’ve been married and we’ve seen plenty I can assure you. I always say to Polly in these difficult times we must all pull together and sink our ex-differences as Westerners, don’t you agree?

The dialogue slowly but smoothly runs along the kindness of his blue eyes and many flowers are mentioned. The red network of veins over his face is very fine, especially on the cheeks where it forms a darker patch like a flower. The dialogue falters and comes to an end. The face turns the red network of veins away, leaving only the broad-brimmed hat and a deeply lined red neck. The voice starts up again, slow, deliberate. A monologue moves away on the other side of the moving hat and the red neck.

– That is poinsettia on that wall over there to the right. It will be coming out shortly. Now, did you know that the red flowers, or what appear to be red flowers, are not flowers at all, but leaves? The flower, now, is a modest little yellow thing, inside the red leaves, looking like a mere pistil. These are zinnias, or rather they will be zinnias, in due course. Here the winter irises are out.

– And the mimosas. I much admired your mimosas on the way here.

– Oh mimosas need no real care. Just sandy soil. The soil is very sandy here. Too sandy for almost everything we want. But modern chemistry is wonderful.

The left foot is inside another adenine molecule, the right foot having blotted out one of the energy-rich phosphate bonds East of ribose. The energy-rich bonds cannot be directly used for biological work of any kind, unless transferred to adenesine diphosphate so as to generate new triphosphate molecules. The phosphate radicals –

– I’m afraid that once a triphosphate molecule has shed its terminal phosphate radical its life as energy-donor is at an end. In my country –

– In your country men were lazy. That is why they lost the battle for survival. It is an article of faith.

– This dialogue is out of place, he’s nice, he likes you.

– They’re conceited, lazy, unreliable.

– We don’t bother with them here, they’re a typically temperate flower, you know. Mrs. Mgulu says that chrysanthemums remind her of damp December funerals in the North. But she’s fond of begonias, as you can see, and laurels. These are the young orange-trees. They have been wrongly planted though, in round hollows, instead of on mounds of earth. The water should drain away. They should never be allowed to soak. The gardener who did that seems to have been out of his mind, or drunk perhaps. Well, he was ill, actually, of the malady, he died last week I believe. He was supposed to know. The heel of the left foot is in the ribose molecule, the toe, which is wearing out the canvas, is in the adenine, no, that’s no use, they are pentagonal, it could, however, be oestrone, obtained from stallion’s urine. The right foot is wholly in the elongated hexagon, as in a coffin, during the rainy season. Quite likely they will have been seriously harmed. You would not be replacing him, however, he has in fact already been replaced. I want you, rather, for the watering, not now, but when the dry season begins. Here is one of the hoses, it is kept stretched along the inside of this flower-bed right back to where you came in. In the other direction, however, it will also reach as far as that wall, beyond the olive grove. There are six other hoses and six taps.

The thermoplastic hose is green after all that, and slithers along the left flower-bed. The feet move obliquely towards the phosphate energy-rich bonds East of ribose, it takes four or five hours, because of course every plant must be watered individually. Some plants like the spray, you see, and some prefer a plain jet, on the root, or even, some, around the root. These little castor-oil plants, for instance, they grow up large and massive, like those over there, but while they are so small and delicate the jet must not touch them at all, the stem would break. So it’s better not to use the spray-nozzle, but just to put your finger over the nozzle-holder whenever you need to spray. There is a spray-nozzle, however, for certain beds. You need not know much about gardening, but you will have to learn the whole drill. It must be done in the correct order, otherwise some beds get forgotten. The cactuses don’t need direct watering.

Both toes are in one large oblong paving stone. Each heel is in a smaller stone, and the line of cement runs between them. The heart beats reach the throat suddenly.

– I am a gardener. I received Vocational Training at the Resettlement Camp after the displacement. I –

– Did you say something?

– I am a gardener. I received Vocational Training at the Resettlement Camp after the displacement.

– Oh. But Mrs. Mgulu gave me to understand that you had no training, and no experience. An odd job man, she said. This is an odd job you understand.

– In my country –

– Excuse my asking but was your country Ukay?

– I was head gardener at the White House, I had twenty men under me.

– The white house. Which white house? The Ukayans have long had a bad reputation as workers, you know. However, I am not one for generalisations, as I always say to Polly, one must not be hide-bound by dogma, come what may, it’s the particular that counts. I understood from Mrs. Mgulu that your wife had told her you had been a politician in – er – London, would it be?

– That’s not true. Never. No, no, no. I was a gardener –

– I see. Well, it all comes to the same thing in the end, doesn’t it. I mean I’m not one for prejudice in these matters. One of my best friends was a Uessayan of Ukay extraction. On the other hand there is no hurry about this particular job. The hot season is not yet due, and much planting remains to be done. You may wish to think about it. I’ll let you know.

The feeling is one of heterotrophism. The left foot treads the length of a cemented line. Between the tiles, the right foot carefully selects another line of cement parallel with the edge of the path. The amount of free energy that becomes available for the performance of useful work does not correspond to the total heat change but is equivalent to about ten thousand calories per gram, molecule, the remaining two thousand being involved in the intra-molecular changes of the reaction. It is possible to walk on such parallel lines only, almost without touching the diagonals. It is possible, but difficult, and a little slow, for the molecules are closely linked and have to be either skipped or touched, democratically, each and every one, which leaves little choice. A periscope, held backwards, might perhaps reveal whether the turning away of the red network of veins and the moving off, beyond the red poinsettias, of the broad-brimmed hat over the deeply lined red neck has been totally accomplished, or whether there has been another turn, and a pause, and a watching there still. The green thermoplastic snake lies along the inside of the right-hand flower-bed, about twenty centimetres away from the cypress hedge, quite straight, and very long, leading towards the glossy black door in the white wall. The green thermoplastic snake comes to an end by a laurel-bush, pointing its brass nozzle-holder at the stem, without the spray-nozzle attachment. There is no water coming out of the hose. The glossy black door in the white wall, on this side, is painted yellow.

The end of the green thermoplastic hose, held downwards with the right hand six centimetres away from the brass nozzle-holder, and with the left hand further away still, pours an imagined jet of water straight at the spot where the strong stem of the laurel-bush comes out of the earth. The pressure of the water in the hose is not strong. It can be made stronger by holding the hose higher, about a metre or more above the plant, so that the jet of water goes straight down into the root, making a slight hole in the dry earth around the strong stem. The earth drinks quickly. It has been baked all day by the hot sun and it is thirsty. A small puddle forms around the laurel-bush. The baby castor-oil plants are next. The hose must be held much closer, the brass nozzle-holder almost touching the earth around each plant but not touching the plant itself. Held at this height, it gives a jet which does not remove or disturb the earth but flows gently into it.

The right hand has jerked. The right arm is a model of still control, and yet the hand that holds the hose six centimetres away from the brass nozzle has jerked sideways, so that the jet, following the movement, has fallen on the delicate reddish stem of the smallest castor-oil plant. The stem has not broken but the plant is uprooted. It is possible, however, to replant it quickly in the now softened earth.

– Conceited, lazy, unreliable. It is an article of faith.

– Ha! You dirty, you need washing. Ha!

– Aaah, sprtch, grrr, brrr, stop, shshtop, prshsh.

– Hee-hee-hee! The laugh is that of a delighted child. You have a heart condition. Symptoms? Verbal diarrhoea, sanguine complexion. Did you know that the dark patches on your cheeks are not flowers at all, but blood, belonging like words to the element of fire, quench it, quick, water, water, help fire. I am a doctor you see. Drench, drench.

The white wall is gently rounded as the road curves, and continues to curve, but almost imperceptibly. It is impossible ever to see whether things are different round the corner. The bougainvillaea clusters over the top of the wall, backed by young palm trees that sway a little in the luminosity of the white winter sky, and the white wall continues to curve along the curving road. It is impossible to tell when the mimosas will come into view. Sooner or later they will flare brightly into view. The red flowers of the poinsettia, or what appear to be red flowers, which will be coming out shortly, are not flowers at all but leaves. Did you know that? Well of course, I am a gardener. Feathery green branches droop down like ferns over the white wall that separates the property from the road, clustered here and there with yellow dots. Beyond the closed wrought-iron gates the mimosas are just beginning to bloom. Sooner or later they will be a mass of yellow. Sooner or later they will be a mass of gold against the post-card blue sky. It is difficult to revisualise the exact degree of blueness in a summer sky, or to re-imagine the exact degree of heat. You may wish to think about it, I’ll let you know. The hot season is not yet with us and much planting remains to be done.