Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

In the general way of passing the time with strangers in that countryside, I exchanged with the tobacco people the names of acquaintances who lived within a six-hundred-mile radius of where we sat, reducing this list to names mutually known to us. The trooper contributed his news from the region between Lusaka and Livingstone. Meanwhile an argument was in process between Cramer, Fanny and Mannie, of which Fanny seemed to be getting the better. It appeared there was to be a play or concert on Christmas Eve in which the three were taking part. I several times heard the words ‘troupe of angels’, ‘shepherds’, ‘ridiculous price’ and ‘my girls’ which seemed to be key words in the argument. Suddenly, on hearing the trooper mention a name, Fanny broke off her talk and turned to us.

‘She was one of my girls,’ she said, ‘I gave her lessons for three years.’

Mannie rose to leave, and before Fanny followed him she picked a card from her handbag and held it out to me between her fingernails.

‘If any of your friends are interested …’ said Fanny hazily.

I looked at this as she drove off with the man, and above an address about four miles up the river I read:

Mme La Fanfarlo (Paris, London)

Dancing Instructress. Ballet. Ballroom.

Transport provided By Arrangement

Next day I came across Cramer still trying to locate the trouble with the Mercedes.

‘Are you the man Baudelaire wrote about?’ I asked him.

He stared past me at the open waste veldt with a look of tried patience.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘What made you think of it?’

‘The name Fanfarlo on Fanny’s card,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you know her in Paris?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Cramer, ‘but those days are finished. She married Manuela de Monteverde — that’s Mannie. They settled here about twenty years ago. He keeps a Kaffir store.’

I remembered then that in the Romantic age it had pleased Cramer to fluctuate between the practice of verse and that of belles-lettres, together with the living up to such practices.

I asked him, ‘Have you given up your literary career?’

‘As a career, yes,’ he answered. ‘It was an obsession I was glad to get rid of’

He stroked the blunt bonnet of the Mercedes and added, ‘The greatest literature is the occasional kind, a mere afterthought.’

Again he looked across the veldt where, unseen, a grey-crested lourie was piping ‘go’way, go’way’.

‘Life,’ Cramer continued, ‘is the important thing.’

‘And do you write occasional verses?’ I inquired.

‘When occasion demands it,’ he said. ‘In fact I’ve just written a Nativity Masque. We’re giving a performance on Christmas Eve in there.’ He pointed to his garage, where a few natives were already beginning to shift petrol cans and tyres. Being members neither of the cast nor the audience, they were taking their time. A pile of folded seats had been dumped alongside.

Late on the morning of Christmas Eve I returned from the Falls to find a crowd of natives quarrelling outside the garage, with Cramer swearing loud and heavy in the middle. He held a sulky man by the shirt-sleeve, while with the other hand he described his vituperation on the hot air. Some mission natives had been sent over to give a hand with laying the stage, and these, with their standard-three school English, washed faces and white drill shorts, had innocently provoked Cramer’s raw rag-dressed boys. Cramer’s method, which ended with the word ‘police’, succeeded in sending them back to work, still uttering drum-like gutturals at each other.

The stage, made of packing-cases with planks nailed across, was being put at the back of the building, where a door led to the yard, the privy and the native huts. The space between this door and the stage was dosed off by a row of black Government blankets hung on a line; this was to be the dressing-room. I agreed to come round there that evening to help with the lighting, the make-up, and the pinning on of angels’ wings. The Fanfarlo’s dancing pupils were to make an angel chorus with carols and dancing, while she herself, as the Virgin, was to give a representative ballet performance. Owing to her husband’s very broken English, he had been given a silent role as a shepherd, supported by three other shepherds chosen for like reasons. Cramer’s part was the most prominent, for he had the longest speeches, being the First Seraph. It had been agreed that, since he had written the masque, he could best deliver most of it; but I gathered there had been some trouble at rehearsals over the cost of the production, with Fanny wanting elaborate scenery as being due to her girls.

The performance was set to begin at eight. I arrived behind the stage at seven-fifteen to find the angels assembled in ballet dresses with wings of crinkled paper in various shades. The Fanfarlo wore a long white transparent skirt with a sequin top. I was helping to fix on the Wise Men’s beards when I saw Cramer. He had on a toga-like garment made up of several thicknesses of mosquito-net, but not thick enough to hide his white shorts underneath. He had put on his make-up early, and this was melting on his face in the rising heat.

‘I always get nerves at this point,’ he said. ‘I’m going to practise my opening speech.’

I heard him mount the stage and begin reciting. Above the voices of excited children I could only hear the rhythm of his voice; and I was intent on helping the Fanfarlo to paint her girls’ faces. It seemed impossible. As fast as we lifted the sticks of paint they turned liquid. It was really getting abnormally hot.

‘Open that door,’ yelled the Fanfarlo. The back door was opened and a crowd of curious natives pressed round the entrance. I left the Fanfarlo ordering them off, for I was determined to get to the front of the building for some air. I mounted the stage and began to cross it when I was aware of a powerful radiation of heat coming from my right. Looking round, I saw Cramer apparently shouting at someone, in the attitude of his dealings with the natives that morning. But he could not advance because of this current of heat. And because of the heat I could not at first make out who Cramer was rowing with; this was the sort of heat that goes for the eyes. But as I got farther towards the front of the stage I saw what was standing there.

This was a living body. The most noticeable thing was its constancy; it seemed not to conform to the law of perspective, but remained the same size when I approached as when I withdrew. And altogether unlike other forms of life, it had a completed look. No part was undergoing a process; the outline lacked the signs of confusion and ferment which commonly indicate living things, and this was also the principle of its beauty. The eyes took up nearly the whole of the head, extending far over the cheekbones. From the back of the head came two muscular wings which from time to time folded themselves over the eyes, making a draught of scorching air. There was hardly any neck. Another pair of wings, tough and supple, spread from below the shoulders, and a third pair extended from the calves of the legs, appearing to sustain the body. The feet looked too fragile to bear up such a concentrated degree of being.

European residents of Africa are often irresistibly prompted to speak kitchen kaffir to anything strange.

‘Hamba!’ shouted Cramer, meaning ‘Go away’.

‘Now get off the stage and stop your noise,’ said the living body peaceably.

‘Who in hell are you?’ said Cramer, gasping through the heat.

‘The same as in Heaven,’ came the reply, ‘a Seraph, that’s to say.’

‘Tell that to someone else,’ Cramer panted. ‘Do I look like a fool?’

‘I will. No, nor a Seraph either,’ said the Seraph.