Ivan Vladislavić - The Restless Supermarket

Mevrouw Bonsma, who had been gazing mournfully into the distance since the first note, made a special request for ‘Roll out the Barrel’, and he was playing that when Bogey arrived with some Patronymić or other in tow. Looking quite spruce, in a leather jacket and a Paisley cravat, the genuine Croatian article, presumably. I noticed, when he slung the jacket over the back of a chair, that the labels of his clothing had retreated to the linings where they belonged. But the pockets were bulging with fruit and vegetables. Must have become a market gardener.

‘I am make big money,’ he declared by way of introduction, indicating with outflung arms banknotes the size of beach towels. ‘It so easy make big money in new Sout’ Africa, only lazy pig poor like you.’ He was holding out a fistful of notes, as if he meant me to take them. The cheek of it. I made a point of ignoring him, and he stuffed his ill-gotten gains back into his pocket and took out a carrot. What was that Wessels joke about the shrinking rand? It was a manhole cover … Poor old Van der Merwe, if I remember correctly, the butt of all jokes. ‘I am just worry about damn Communists,’ Bogey went on. ‘They want take everytink. Is good we kill them.’

His English was much improved, although he was rolling his r’s and twanging away at his n’s like a singing cowboy. I should send him across the road to cry on Herr Toppelmann’s shoulder, I thought. I could see the pair of them lamenting among the sausage-skins.

Bogey and Spilkin began to talk business. The vegetables were a sideline; the war hero had gone into souvenirs.

My thoughts returned to business of my own: ‘The Proofreader’s Derby.’ Finished or unfinished business? It was hard to say, exactly. Spilkin’s question — which is everyone’s, when all is said and done — came back to me across the years: ‘So what are you going to do with it?’ I still wasn’t sure. Long before, when the idea of presenting ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ to the world was still fresh, a false spirit of invention had had me in its thrall and my imaginings had been grandiose. But in the weeks before the Goodbye Bash, as I laboured to finish the fair copy, I had decided to content myself with making my work known and leaving it at that. If a full-scale championship followed, at someone else’s initiative, well and good.

‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ I would chime on the rim of a champagne glass with a cake fork until I had their attention. ‘Many of you will know of the project on which I have been engaged these many decades, the crowning achievement of a long career’ — with a nod towards Spilkin — ‘my life’s work.’ I had the speech in my notebook. There was a prologue on declining standards and the prophylactic properties of ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’, some expressions of gratitude — especially to Merle! — a passing reference to the floating trophy, an outline of corrigenda and proofreading marks, a digression on deletion, an epilogue on the rules and regulations. By the time I proffered the photostatic copies, an interested few would be pressing forward to take them from my hand. Perhaps their enthusiasm would be infectious, and the others would ask for a demonstration. Then a few sample fascicles — not the whole thing, of course, this was neither the time nor the place — could be administered right there to whet the appetite. I might provide the corrected version on an overhead projector (if one could be secured), and then glance over their efforts and reward the author of the best one with a prize, as an encouragement. So I had imagined.

Now, as I looked around at my companions — Spilkin and Bogey brooding on the price of ostrich eggs (painted, for the tourist trade, I discovered afterwards), Mevrouw Bonsma and Darlene on the care of the cuticles, Mrs Hay somewhat crestfallen, a herd of Olé ’Enries, Wessels agleam like a toby jug — my ambitions shrank to even more modest proportions. I would be satisfied with a simple announcement. Do you remember ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’? Well, it’s finished. I’ve done it, as I said I would. If any of you want to take a closer look, I have copies. You only have to ask.

And this is the moment to do it, I concluded, with just the few of us here, the originals and the less disruptive late arrivals.

But Clotho put a spoke in my wheel. As I gathered myself to speak, there was another rumpus at the door, and Errol and Co spilled off the escalator, laughing and swearing. The New Management rushed to defend the buffet.

*

The newcomers came rolling in. ‘Yo!’ they said. Raylene, Nomsa, Floyd. The new girl — she hadn’t been hardened yet, I thought, she might still be redeemed if someone showed her a good example. A new boy too, so black he would have served quite well as a printer’s devil. He would scarcely have required inking.

‘Huge,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Huge Semenya.’

‘Phil, Phil Harmonic.’

They were toting cardboard boxes full of bottled lager. ‘The invite said BYOB,’ Raylene explained.

Boy backwards to the blood group. Boy backwards. They should have ‘Yob’ on their caps instead of ‘Boy’. I should find some entrepreneur and suggest it as a new range. Yobs and slags: backward children. It would look good on a baseball cap, especially when they wore them back to front on their silly heads. Wessels says it’s because they don’t know whether they’re coming or going. Sometimes they wear their trousers back to front too.

As their contribution to the ‘graze’, they presented an enormous plastic bag of fluorescent ‘Cheesnaks’. Floyd was carrying this fodder over his shoulder.

‘I see you brought the Cheese Snacks,’ I enunciated, not that I expected him to get the hint. ‘No nutritional value whatsoever. You may as well eat this newspaper.’

Spilkin piped up: ‘That’s a very unhelpful attitude, Aubrey. Some snacks will tide us over nicely while the buffet is out of bounds.’

Unhelpful? Aubrey?

Floyd took a dagger from his pocket and cut a corner off the bag. He was wearing one of his playsuits with cartoon characters on it, odd creatures, hybrids of human and hound. You’d think he was on his way to a pyjama party. Errol, by contrast, was wearing a tuxedo.

‘Where did you swipe that?’

‘Don’t be like rude, Mr T,’ Raylene said. Evidently they had all taken it upon themselves this evening to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do. ‘He bought it at the Jewish Benevolent in Yeoville.’

‘It makes him look like an assassin.’

‘He’s going to get a job as a bouncer.’

‘And he’s gonna practise tonight, keeping out those what wasn’t invited.’

Floyd began to make a circuit of the room, spilling the garish doodahs out on the tablecloths.

The ‘invite’? Had Wessels gone so far as to print invitations? And if so, why hadn’t I received one?

*

‘Have you got any tassies?’ Another new one, going by the name of Ricardo. He’d mistaken me for the proprietor. I suppose I did look rather authoritative in my collar and tie.

Tassy? Tassie? It rang a bell. I looked it up: small cup, a Scots term. This Ricardo had unexpected depths of vocabulary. His preference for small measures was encouraging too; the others were drinking straight from the bottle as if tomorrow would never come. Where had he sprung from, I wondered, as I steered him towards the paper cups. Perhaps there was a Highlander in his colourful background? I should find a way of testing his capabilities later on. He might even be ripe for ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ — and wouldn’t that be a turn-up for the books?

*

In the clutter behind the counter was a bottle of Pfeffi, the Pfiffiger Pfefferminzliqör, green stuff as thick as cough mixture. The neck of the bottle had been stretched by some clot of a glass-blower into a screw a yard long, and it had stood unopened on the top shelf, with its cap brushing the ceiling, since the reign of Mrs Mavrokordatos. Floyd climbed up on the counter to fetch it down — they just wanted to see the label, they said, and that bumpy thing in the bottom that looked like a gallstone — and before I could say a word, he had seized the floating trophy for ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ as well, and they were passing it around and cracking jokes. Lascivious comments about the little gymnast on the lid and their own reproductive prowess.