Ivan Vladislavić - The Restless Supermarket

Darlene shouted me down. The Madiba had more knowledge of the world in his pinkie , she said, than I had in my entire white body.

Now that we were on the subject of white bodies, Mevrouw Bonsma wanted to know how Wessels had broken his ankle, and so he retold the tall story about his apprehension of an armed bandit. His nonsense made everyone laugh. ‘You and your stories!’ Mevrouw Bonsma said. ‘What a pity Merle isn’t here. She would have loved it.’

‘It’s not like her to be late,’ I said.

She looked at me, appalled. ‘You haven’t heard?’

‘Heard what?’

‘I’m sorry, Tearle, she passed away.’

‘Passed away?’ The phrase cut me to the quick. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Must be a month ago. I’m surprised you didn’t see it in the paper.’

‘Ag, no man. I was just wondering where old Merlé was.’

‘Jason said it was over quickly. She was at home until the end and then the hospice.’

‘She died? I didn’t even know she was ill. Were the two of you in touch?’

But she did not want to talk about it. It upset her too much, she said, it would spoil the evening. Mrs Hay awoke as if from a trance and said that no one was more shocked than she. Wessels declared that drinks were needed all round, for the nerves, and went to fetch them. There were no waiters tonight, it was self-service only.

A lost fascicle of ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ drifted down from the roof of my mind. Dinner at the Budgerigar. The maître d’ had recommended the duck and gone away to the kitchen. Fluxman took Georgina’s hand in his and carried it up to his lips (Alibians knew without even thinking to confine such gestures to the entrée). There was a faint zest of lemon on her fingers.

‘Whatever tomorrow brings, I want you to know that I will never allow anything unpleasant to happen to you.’

‘If it’s within your power.’

‘Exactly.’

Dead. Spadework for gravediggers. Graaff. Graf. Earl. Tearle. The doggerel of the interior life.

I could have killed Wessels. When he came back with the brandy, he’d taken a swig off the top of the bottle two fingers deep, I spotted it at once. ‘You said you got hold of her!’

‘I left a message with the mate.’

‘Douglas has been dead for years.’

‘With the domestic, Aubs-ss. What’s your case anyway?’

‘If you were more responsible, I wouldn’t have heard the news in this way, at a party of all places. We should call the whole thing off out of respect for her memory.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. We haven’t seen Merle for ages.’

‘She wouldn’t want us to neither. She’d want us to enjoy ourself.’

Spilkin suggested that Mevrouw Bonsma play something to remind us of Merle, as a tribute to her, and she went to inspect the musical machinery in the corner.

‘We’ve got a responsibility to Tone as well. He’s gone to a lot of trouble.’

‘You can always go home,’ Darlene said. ‘We’ll understand.’

The news of Merle’s death was a blow. More so because I felt it not just as a personal loss, but as a professional failure. Mevrouw Bonsma had put her finger on it as surely as if it were middle C. How could I have missed the announcement? The sad fact was that I couldn’t bear to read the death notices any more. ‘Safe in God’s cave’ … ‘I will always remember your similes and laughter’ … For heaven’s sake! One was not even free from insult beyond the grave.

I had looked forward so keenly to showing her ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ and thanking her publicly for her guidance. There was a line to that effect in my speech.

‘There’s one more angle in heaven’ … ‘Dried tragically’ … ‘A cruel twist of fete’ … The only fate I could remember now was Clotho. Who were the others? I looked up ‘fates’ in the Pocket . No names. While I was about it, I looked up ‘monoblepsia’: also not there. Mono was ‘one’, of course, but one what? — ia. Forming abstract nouns. Often in Medicine. Blepsia … blepsia …

Mevrouw Bonsma came back and subsided into her chair. She regretted to inform us that she could not find the button to switch the music manufactory on. She began to hum. This made me aware of a sympathetic murmuring, like a muted string section, from the other tables. More old faces gathering, the newcomers as well as the originals. There was one of the ’Enries, McAllister, some Bobbies and Freddies and what-have-you. The show going on, as it must.

*

It was in the Concise . Monoblepsia: condition in which vision is perfect when one eye is used, but confused and indistinct when both are used. What was he driving at? I’ve got a lazy left, it’s true, he knew that as well as anyone, and none of us were spring chickens any more. But I wouldn’t say I was ‘monobleptic’.

I put the dictionary back in its hiding place on the cistern and took out the original of ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’. How badly I had wanted to show it to Merle. I couldn’t help wondering whether her approval was the main reason I had pressed on with it, perhaps even the only one. But she would never see it. What could be done with it now that she was dead?

Then it bore in upon me, unavoidable and crushing, like some juggernaut with ‘How am I driving?’ carved into its treads. Death itself was the greatest decline in standards of all. That was the certainty I had always been trying to evade. And expiring was just the beginning: unpleasant as it was, it was infinitely more palatable than the decomposition to which it led.

A gruesome vision took hold of me. Merle in her box, disintegrating, liquefying. It was wet, this deterioration, it consisted of leaking and oozing, it struck through crêpe, it wept. And then I saw myself too, mummified, in a box as grey as a ledger, the skin stretched tight as parchment over my irreducible bones. My solid waste, my dry remains. Such fine distinctions would have comforted the squeamish, the ones afraid of water, but they made my blood curdle. A match flared up on the edge of my vision, wet and dry fought a battle on the tips of my fingers. What did it matter? We would have to pass through a river of putrefaction before we issued in dust. Perhaps it would be better to burn, to turn at once to ashes, to go up in smoke.

Morbid thoughts. What next: a public display of emotion? Pull yourself together, Aubrey. Asafoetida … liquidambar … turpentine. Now who will keep you in bon-bons, madame (6)? It fitted itself into the dibbled furrows of ‘An English Country Garden’.

*

Hunky Dory was twiddling his thumbscrews. Time I introduced myself.

‘Good evening. Tearle. You must be Hunky. Any relation to John?’

‘It’s Rory actually. Hunky Dory’s the name of my group.’

‘Group? There’s only one of you.’

‘The drummer split. It used to be Rory and the Hunky Dory, know what I mean, but my drummer fucked off to Cape Town. He says Joburg’s getting too heavy.’

Hunky pushed some buttons. ‘Wanna see my wah-wah?’

‘If it’s all the same …’

‘Okay, that’s cool.’

‘Do you know any Max Bygraves? Let’s see … “Consider Yourself’’?’

‘How’s it go again?’

But I am not a hummer.

By way of showing an interest, I threw in a couple of gems from the Look and Listen: ‘How about some Tosh? Or some Luther van Dross?’

*

As soon as everything had been properly connected, Hunky played some ‘golden oldies’ on our behalf with the sound turned down low. ‘Played’ is too strong a word: his part in the production involved no more than the periodic throwing of a switch. Killed the conversation stone-dead. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. The machines were less like musical instruments than gadgets for poking fun. He had one which gave a passable imitation of the absconded percussionist, and also of a trombonist and a Scottish piper. It was marvellous. The band played on even when Hunky excused himself to fetch a drink from the bar.