The Love Songs of Nathan J. Swirsky E-Book

Christopher Hope

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

It is the early fifties in Badminton, Johannesburg, where all the street-names recall British kings and queens and where retired soldiers relive the desert war in their dusty gardens. This small-town dreamscape erupts with the arrival of Nathan J. Swirsky, a pink volcano with an extravagant moustache; a magical pharmacist who speaks of exotic travels to faraway, forbidden places. In alarm and delight, the children of Badminton observe his unlikely resurrection...

Leseprobe

Title page

The Love Songs

of Nathan J. Swirsky

Christopher Hope

Atlantic Books

LONDON

Dedication

IN MEMORY OF GRAHAM HARVEY (1944–1992)

GENIAL SPIRIT …

Epigraph

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each;I do not think that they will sing to me.

The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockT. S. ELIOT

CONTENTS

NATIVITY

DRAGONS

PINK

BUNNIES

PRECIOUS

ARRIVEDERCI!

PATTERNS

BRAVO!

MAUNDY

CHUMS

LOVE SONGS

ALOFT

NATIVITY

NATHAN Swirsky came to Badminton just before Christmas of 1950. New houses rose raw on Victoria Road or William Street at the rate of one a month. The gardens our fathers fought so hard to establish were pretty poor affairs. Returning home from the desert war in Egypt and Libya, they began battling the bare veld. Every weekend they wrestled the hard, red earth into gardens.

Badminton was a new housing estate built outside Johannesburg for returning soldiers. Its streets were named after English kings and queens, because we were English South Africans. Behind the houses ran the sanitary lanes, where the night-soil men drove their horse and cart after dark and collected the black rubber buckets before we woke.

My friends Tony and Sally lived opposite me, in Henry Street. Next door to Tony and Sally lived Eric and Sammie. Their uncles were famous cricketers. Their ma, dark and panting, chased them in the garden, from time to time, trying to box their ears. Eric often ran away from home. To one side of us lived the Strydoms. Mr Strydom had not fought in the War because he was Afrikaans. On the other side lived Maggie. But she didn’t really count because we hardly ever saw her. And when she showed off we weren’t really supposed to look because usually she wasn’t wearing any clothes. She ran round and round her house very fast until her father caught her and threw a blanket over her.

Sometimes the water truck came and sprayed the streets to keep the dust down. Once a week, Mr Govender, the greengrocer, visited Badminton. And Errol, the man who sold topsoil for our gardens. But mostly nothing much happened. Until Swirsky came to live on the estate. Swirsky was made for trouble, my mother said.

The boxy new houses, with their corrugated-iron roofs, ran down a slope to a small stream and a copse of giant bluegums. Five years after the War ended soldiers, who had gone to fight against Germans, had turned into gardeners in uniform. My father worked in his Army boots. Gus Trupshaw wore a sailor’s blue shirt. Maggie’s father, in the garden next door to ours, wore his khaki puttees because, he said, they kept stones out of his shoes.

Our fathers looked up from their zinnias, mopped their brows, and said, ‘It’s hotter down South than it was up North, make no mistake.’ ‘Up North’, they also called ‘the Western Desert’. It was confusing. But our fathers never explained. They knew where they had been.

They cursed the African heat. They cursed the stubborn shale that had to be broken up with picks, forked over, sieved, spread and sweetened with rich brown earth, delivered by Errol the topsoil man.

They cursed the burglars. My mother said that there were swarms of burglars hiding among the bluegum trees. They ran down the sanitary lanes at night and slipped into the houses like greased lightning. As I lay in bed I saw the sanitary lanes teeming with burglars and night-soil men, coming and going.

Swirsky arrived wearing a most deadly moustache. The back window of his Opel Kapitän piled with bottles of blood-red mercurochrome and packets of Joywear Stretch Nylons in attractive shades of ‘Bali Rose’ and ‘Jamaica Rum’. And he came from the direction of the dynamite factory. That I am sure of. Within what seemed about two minutes flat he had opened the doors of his pharmacy, built in the window a castle from green cough-drop boxes and hung above it a silver star on a length of fishing line.

‘Grüss’ Gott,’ said Swirsky to Papas, who ran the Greek Tea Room at the end of the line of shops on Charles Drive which served the estate. The line was short: the Badminton Bottle Store; Swirsky’s new pharmacy; Mr Benjamin, the Rug Doctor; and Papas, who sold everything from newspapers to pins. Everything except tea and cake.

‘They say that all the time in Switzerland,’ said Swirsky. ‘It means God’s greeting. I’ve just been abroad, as you can probably guess.’

‘I was born abroad,’ Papas said. ‘Abroad is where I began.’

Swirsky was English. Or so he said. My mother didn’t believe him. ‘English or Jewish?’ she said. ‘He can’t have it both ways.’

Within a week Swirsky had lettered ‘A Merry X-Mas to All My Customers’ in shaving cream soap along the length of his window, just above the green turrets of his cough-drop castle and just below the silver star on the fishing line. The heat of December would dry out the shaving cream and he would replace his Christmas message each day. With my friend Sally, from across the road, I liked to watch him. Sally and I would kneel on the pavement and rest our elbows on the ledge of Swirsky’s window. We called it ‘going to see the show’. Sally said it was better than going to the bioscope in Orange Grove. I agreed even though I had never been to the bioscope – just because Sally said it so nicely, and smiled.

At three in the afternoon Swirsky would lift his white coat, like a skirt, and climb into the window, latter up the shaving mug he carried and write the message again, his tongue between his teeth.

‘I have to letter it the wrong way round.’ He waved his shaving brush. ‘Leonardo da Vinci did something like this. Avanti!’

Swirsky was soft and pink. His black hair was combed in a centre parting and his eyes were the colour of the blackest olives. He smelt of liquorice and Will’s Gold Flake Cigarettes.

This rather amused Gus Trupshaw. ‘Gold Flake is the man’s cigarette that women like,’ he said to my father as they sat in the ex-servicemen’s club in the corner of the kindergarten hall. I sat under a plastic palm tree, sipping lemonade.

‘I’ve never understood what women like,’ said my father.

‘You’re missing the point, Gordon,’ said Gus Trupshaw.

My father breathed out hard. ‘I see what you mean!’

‘What does he mean?’ I asked.

‘Little pitchers have big ears,’ Gus Trupshaw said.

‘If I told you your mother would murder me,’ my father looked at me. ‘Let’s not break up the happy home, shall we?’

Swirsky’s white chemist coats were the loveliest ever seen. He washed, starched and ironed them himself. They were wafer thin, each thread frozen, so crisp you heard him crackle.

‘How that man manages without a servant, I cannot imagine,’ said my mother. Of course, I suppose if you travel as much as he does, a servant is just too much bother. Like keeping a cat. What do you do with it when you head for the bright lights?’

Swirsky’s moustache was black, sharp, shiny. It was honed to a razor’s edge, jet fighter’s wings beneath his nose. Sally liked it so much she copied it in black eyebrow liner she got from her mum’s sample case, and she rolled down the grass bank in her garden shouting ‘Avanti! Avanti!’ until her brother Tony went and blabbed, and Sally’s mum made her take it off.

‘Have a little respect, my girl. I happen to represent that line in cosmetics myself,’ she said and drove off in her light blue Austin A40.

‘You are such a total drip!’ Sally told her brother. She turned her wide blue eyes to me. ‘Let’s go and look in Swirsky’s window, Mart. But we won’t take him.’

Tony followed about ten steps behind us all the way to Swirsky’s chemist shop and every now and then Sally said, ‘I think there must be something following us, Mart. I can smell something.’

Tony said, ‘Well, it’s a free country. I can walk wherever I want.’

Eric came by from next door with his little brother Sammie. Sammie knew so much. He was little and dark with big brown glasses on the end of his nose and he could throw a clay ball faster and harder than anyone else when we had fights down by the river bank using long whips of willow to launch them. Sammie could knock you down if he hit you plumb centre. Eric was whistling ‘The Railroad runs through the middle of the house …’ Sammie said, ‘Did you know that when the King and Queen came to South Africa a few years ago, the King made this lady-in-waiting swim out to sea and pretend to be drowning just so that he could watch the lifeguards rescue her?’

‘Rubbish,’ said Sally, ‘the King would never do that.’

But Sammie went right on. ‘Swimming close by her was a certain major and he really thought she was drowning so he rescued her first. Then she told him that it was all a joke.’

‘Don’t tell lies,’ Sally said, very shocked.

‘I believe you,’ called Tony from way behind us.

‘Why is Tony walking behind us?’ Eric asked.

‘Who?’ said Sally and looked around, shaking her head. ‘I don’t see anyone. Close the door behind you, Mart. Just in case.’

Swirsky was in his shop window on his hands and knees pitching a small tent, midway between a pyramid of aspirins and a tree made entirely of boxes of laxatives called California Syrup of Figs.

‘I’m trying to build a nativity scene. It’s not really my line of country. But I must tell you that I have visited the original – when I was in Israel. Bethlehem’s a lovely little town. I can recommend it, when you’re next down that way.’

A crowd of black servants watched from the other side of the glass. Swirsky lathered up his shaving mug and painted his Christmas greeting on the window. ‘Leonardo da Swirsky!’ The servants clapped. Tony watched him through the window, pressing his lips to the glass. They looked like the undersides of two pink snails.

We built quite a good manger. Though we didn’t have straw, we found a pile of sawdust in a shipment of German thermometers and used that. Sammie and Eric fetched their lead farmyard animals. Sally offered a doll named Antoinette and an old cradle that had belonged to her Dutch great-grandmother.

‘Just wait till Mom finds out you’ve taken her yellow-wood cradle,’ Tony shouted from the other side of the glass. And Sally said to me, ‘Did you hear something wet, Martin, something with blobby, drippy lips?’

Sammie cut three kings from cardboard and coloured them in wax crayons.

‘Why is one of the kings black?’ Swirsky asked. And when we told him he said, ‘Fancy that. So there was a black chappy in on all this?’

I offered a statue of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour which had stood out in the garage next to the crate of Trotter’s jellies. And for the figure of Joseph we used a large wooden puppet of Sinbad the Sailor got from the props room down at the kindergarten hall.

‘Isn’t this a lot of fun?’ Swirsky said as he fitted a blue light bulb to the tent pole holding up our manger. ‘There’s more to this nativity business than meets the eye.’

Swirsky’s nativity made people talk all over Badminton. My mother said, ‘I’m afraid this is rather typical. They’re taking over.’

‘Who are taking over, Monica?’ my father wanted to know.

‘Did you know, Gordon,’ my mother demanded, ‘that Martin has gone and given Mr Swirsky the statue of Mary for his window? And there is a great crowd of servants dressed to the nines outside that window day and night. When Margot van Reen and I went to the tea room today we had to step off the pavement and walk round them. If this goes on I foresee ugly scenes by Boxing Day. Mark my words.’

‘Putting a Christmas crib in your shop window is not against the law. At least not yet. But who knows? Judging by the way this bunch of fascists who run this country are carrying on, it might be illegal soon.’

‘It’s not a Christmas message. It’s “X-mas”, according to Mr Swirsky, if you please,’ my mother said. ‘And I’d be very grateful if you didn’t use that word. All over the estate children are calling each other fascists. It’s not a word for eight-year-olds. If you’re not careful, the servants will be using it next.’

Swirsky offered to take us to the Christmas grotto in the Cape To Cairo Department Store. My mother said I could go, providing that I did not speak to strangers. Eric and Sammie couldn’t come because their ma said she wasn’t sending her boys shopping with a stranger. Sammie told her the Christmas Lucky Dips were free, but she said that nothing in life was free. And then she made her boys take back their lead farmyard animals from Swirsky’s window.

‘I’m really sorry, Mr Swirsky,’ Eric said. ‘But our ma says that we have to.’

‘Never mind, boykies,’ Swirsky said, ‘the loss of a couple of moo-cows won’t kill my nativity.’

Sally, Tony and I drove to the grotto in Swirsky’s Opel.

‘Remember, Martin,’ my mother told me before we left, ‘if you get lost, stay exactly where you are.’

Down in the Christmas grotto, Santa Claus sat on a red throne bright with silver glitter. Beside him was a reindeer with one big yellow glass eye and horns. It was pulling a sleigh piled with cardboard boxes tied with ribbon. The grotto was very warm and full of kids holding their mothers’ hands. The cardboard boxes in the sleigh were tied up in big ribbons, pink for girls, blue for boys. A sign said: Strictly one dip only per child.

‘It looks like a moose,’ said Sally. ‘Not a reindeer.’

‘You’ve never seen a moose,’ her brother said.

‘If you kids don’t simmer down, you can forget about Christmas,’ a man suddenly said in a rough voice. ‘And remember, only one dip each.’

Father Christmas wore a big cottonwool beard and his lips were pink. His hood hung over his eyes. ‘OK, boys and girls. Who’s first?’ Several children began crying.

Tony went first and came back swinging his lucky dip. Swirsky pushed me forward. I looked at Father Christmas’ cottonwool eyebrows. Where his robe ended he showed grey flannels and black shoes. His lips were not only pink, they were wet and I didn’t like to look at them. At least boys could whisper in his ear. Girls had to sit in his lap and he had this way of spreading his legs so they fell into the red gap between them. I told him I wanted a box-cart for Christmas. He told me I would have to be very good. I never imagined for a moment I would ever get a box-cart but what was the point of asking for something you knew you wouldn’t get if you didn’t go all the way? Papas made them – wooden crates mounted on four pram wheels, and steering shafts wrestled into shape from wire coat hangers. I saw the steep rise at the top of Henry Street and heard the wind in my ears.

Swirsky pushed Sally forward. Tony whispered to her, ‘He smells of beer.’ Sally made as if to go forward and then she put her chin on her chest and began fiddling with the red bow at her waist. Her toes pointed inwards and the more Swirsky pushed her forward the more her toes pointed inwards. Swirsky left her then and walked over and whispered in the ear of Father Christmas who wiped sweat from his brow and shook his head. He lifted his woollen eyebrows to the queue. ‘Next please,’ said Father Christmas.

‘Sorry squire, I’m not going till I get the box,’ said Swirsky.

‘I never knew people like you believed in Christmas,’ said the man in red.

‘I don’t believe in you,’ Swirsky said loudly.

Father Christmas stood up. He was a big man. ‘Is that so?’ he said. And he reached up and with a loud tearing sound he ripped off his beard. There were a lot of people crying now.

‘I hope you’re really pleased with yourself,’ Tony whispered to his sister.

The manageress arrived and made Father Christmas put his beard back. Then she gave Swirsky a lucky dip and she led us quickly out of the grotto.

On the way home we sang ‘Hold Him Down You Zulu Warrior’ and Swirsky advised us to travel to Rhodesia whenever possible. It was the coming country, he said. He recommended the Leopard Rock Motel. ‘Baths in every room and billiards. You look like a billiard player to me,’ he said to Sally who sat beside him saying nothing and holding her lucky dip to her chest.

Inside the lucky dips there were six marbles in a canvas bag, a spinning top painted with colours of the rainbow, a cardboard kaleidoscope, three balloons and a rubber dagger, if you were a boy, and a face mirror for girls.

Back in Badminton we found the crowds had gone from Swirsky’s nativity. Instead there was a great hole in the window and a lot of glass on the pavement. And there was a brick inside the window. The pup tent had collapsed on the crib. The blue light was still on. The three kings were buried but they were OK and the yellow-wood cradle had tipped over. We helped Swirsky clear the window. The only thing missing was Sally’s doll Antoinette, the Christ child.

Mr Swirsky looked at his broken window. ‘Well, that wasn’t much of a nativity,’ he said. ‘But it was fun, while it lasted.’

He went over to Papas’ place because he had a brother in Orange Grove who ran a used-car lot and he got from him a big wooden crate and boarded up his window until after Christmas. When he’d finished his window read: N. Rubin and Partners, Potato, Onion and Poultry Suppliers. Racehorse Feed Specialists, Ship’s Chandlers.

‘My godfathers!’ my mother said. ‘I don’t know which looked worse. The crib or the boards.’

Gus Trupshaw said that people should keep out of other people’s religions. ‘Tigers don’t mate with bears, do they?’

‘Excuse me,’ said my mother, ‘there was nothing religious about Swirsky’s window. Of that we can all be quite sure. As if Christmas wasn’t difficult enough. On Christmas Eve all the servants will be drunk. On Boxing Day they’ll be round for their Christmas boxes and before you know it, they’ll be banging on the street poles and shouting “Happy! Happy!” And then the New Year will be on us. Where will it end, I ask? Where will it end?’

‘I’m sorry about your dolly,’ said Swirsky to Sally. ‘I’ll get you another.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Sally. ‘I hate dolls, really.’