Ivan Vladislavić - The Restless Supermarket

‘As a matter of fact …’

Bee? A Cheese Snack buzzed out of the night and caromed off the side of my head.

‘Merle used to say that there was something almost Casaubonish about you and your “System of Records”. She thought you were never going to finish it. Not that one required special powers of perception to make that deduction.’

Spilkin’s expression drew me back to solid ground. ‘Of course not,’ I said, while ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ burnt a hole in my pocket.

*

My copies were still there, and so was the Concise . Funky. Presumably not ‘terrified, cowardly’ but ‘fashionable, unconventional’. Having a strong smell? Umpteen. Indefinitely many. How would one spell ‘Casaubonish’? Casualty department … catafalque … cat-and-dog … But I wasn’t dressed for fartlek. (I’ve since discovered who Edward Casaubon was, and it’s an injustice second to none that we should have been mentioned in the same breath.)

*

‘All this was mantled,’ Herr Toppelmann said sadly, wagging a pimply pickle at the four walls, ‘and now also dismantled shall be.’

*

They came shouting ‘Viva!’ and dancing the highveld fling. A mob. Capering about like baboons. From the Latin babewynus : an Old World monkey with naked callosities on its buttocks. To think that the Café Europa had once been a haven in an urban jungle, and now the jungle was in here too, on our side of the pale. I looked for a fist waving an apple as a credible excuse, but found no such comfort. Hunky Dory ran away. The hurdy-gurdy soldiered on without him. Patronymić flung Bogey down in a corner and lay on top of him. I hadn’t realized he was a bodyguard. Why should Bogey require the services of a bodyguard? There was a rushing to and fro the likes of which had never been seen before under that roof. The proofreader’s motto came back to me (in the illuminated version that hung on the wall behind Erasmus’s desk): ‘Widows and orphans first.’ So I stayed where I was, in my proper place, a model of dignified restraint.

‘Kill the bull, kill the farmer!’ I’d heard it on the radio. A native folk song. Obviously, if one kills the bull, one kills the farmer, figuratively speaking, by depriving him of his livelihood. Why make a song and dance about it?

In the green meadows of Alibia, the lion was not lying down with the lamb, exactly, but Frieslands were chewing the cud alongside Jerseys and Aberdeen Anguses. Not an Afrikander in sight. I was there, under a willow-pattern thorn tree, flat on my back in the sweet grass, in clover. The sward beneath, succulent and overgrown, the sky above. One could never lie down in the veld as such, it was too scratchy. A stile over a bony hedgerow. A humpbacked bridge over a babbling brook, running off at the mouth. Can the ocean keep from rushing to the shore? It’s just impossible . Mevrouw Bonsma, give the devil her due, had taken over the keyboard and was trying to restore order — If I had you, could I ever ask for more? It’s just impossible — but it seemed to have no effect. Her spotlit face was as soft and wan as a ripened Camembert. A full moon stooped over Alibia, broadening the daylight. In the market place, the grocers were crying the last shipments of bottled beer. On the canals, the boatmen were singing. Children were climbing trees and rolling hoops. Men were shaving boards and twisting nails, tilling the earth and reaping the harvest. A busy human noise burbled up. But it was not the music of the Alibian masses gathered to honour the champions of order: it was the invaders in our midst, clamouring for blood. One beggar at the banquet might be tolerated — but a whole crowd of them? Then a voice rose above the din, like an ark on the deluge. Spilkin. Screaming blue murder. It was enough to give a chicken goose-flesh. There he was fleeing, leaping over the furniture, scattering paper plates and bones. They ran him to ground in the corner by the Gentlemen’s room. I was shocked to see Darlene among the pursuers, grinning maniacally, her turban unravelling like a winding-sheet. They crowded in on him. I saw his mouth contorted, his eyes streaming. What were they doing to him? Their shoulders shook, their heads bobbed, their buttocks squirmed. Then the crowd scattered abruptly. There seemed to be more of them than ever. Spilkin had vanished. Had they consumed him?

I might have escaped their attention, had I remained frozen in my seat. But I must have risen spontaneously, meaning to intervene in Spilkin’s defence, despite everything.

‘Fuddy old barley!’

The strangers set upon me like a pack of wolves. Many hands seized me roughly. I wasn’t going to submit without a fight. I let them have it with a few epithets, the sorts of things that would ring in the ears for days afterwards. I kept my eyes peeled, too, in case there was ever an identity parade. As I fell, I saw Mevrouw Bonsma stoking up the boilers, and then ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ poured forth over the babewyni . Familiar faces, but trampled out of shape, tossed like leaves in the far reaches of the room, stuck to the wallpaper. Glory! Glory! Huge with the lid of the trophy on his head. Wessels — brandishing the crutch — ‘Boonzaaier!’ Raylene.

A storm of blows rained down on me. Fists, foreheads, kneecaps, elbows, heels. Hard bone under soft flesh. My spectacles, knocked sideways on my cheek, reduced my assailants to a blur. Yet by a fatal twist of optics, one lens was turned into a magnifying glass, and a single face came into focus within its frame: Darlene. They had wrestled me to the ground, and she was sitting on top of me. The bones in my chest cracked and splintered. I put out my hands to ward her off and clasped instead the swollen yellow bulb of her belly. Great with child. Spilkin? Impossible! And now, in all likelihood, gone for ever. Widows and orphans. But they were not even married. Before I could pursue this train of thought any further, my spectacles were plucked from my face and the world flew away. Climb every mountain … Ford every stream … Follow every rainbow … Hands were kneading my cheeks, pinching my chin, tweaking me, buffing me. My face felt cold. Then it went completely black before my eyes.

*

Merle.

*

My breath came back. I listened to its roar, to the buckled ribs squeaking, the throat rattling. Extraordinarily, I was still alive. The black gave way to grey, shot through with red. Blood in my eyes. I wiped them clear. I patted my head for gashes. Nothing gapingly obvious. One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock … Excrescences all present and accounted for. Pockets? Ditto. I felt around on the floor for my spectacles. A fuzzy teddy bear appeared out of the mist, weeping hysterically, and put them in my hand. Somehow they had come through intact.

The world fell back into focus. A circle of people around me, but keeping their distance, like onlookers at the scene of an accident, chattering among themselves, pointing, pulling faces. I got to my feet. An odd little man stood before me, a black man, some faithful old servant perhaps, who had witnessed the massacre. He was wearing one of the caps with ‘Boy’ written on it, and weeping inconsolably. He wanted to speak to me, but every time he caught his breath, he was racked by a fresh outpouring. I considered slapping him across the face — it was the recommended remedy — but he had something wrong with his skin. It was as thick as paste. Scar tissue. Wattles of mortified flesh at the neck. Had he been burnt?

Despite the disfigurement, there was something familiar about him. Could it be Eveready? No, he was taller. I studied the features, the gasping maw, the eyes brimming with tears, the dripping nose. And then it came to me in a flash that made me reel. It was Spilkin. And in the glare of that recognition, I saw something else: he wasn’t weeping at all. He was laughing.