Ivan Vladislavić: The Restless Supermarket

‘Who are we looking for?’

‘Max Bygraves.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘A singer of yesteryear. A particular favourite of mine.’

‘Don’t know him from cheese.’

‘Look. I think it’s Hedy Lamarr.’

‘Who?’

I could see I would have a lot of explaining to do. Flora Robson, Hayley Mills. Stars of stage and screen. I imagined myself kneeling before a tabula rasa of wet cement. What would I choose to impress upon posterity? My leafing thumb? My index finger? My mutton fist? No. My head. It would have to be that, warts and all.

Inevitably, Shirlaine tried to fit her tennis shoes into Beryl Grey’s stiletto prints and marvelled at how small they were. All the women had such tiny feet! I had to dispel the misapprehension; the cement had merely subsided before it dried.

We crept up and down over the flags, the flame cupped in her palm like a little torch, but there was still no sign of Max Bygraves. On the edge of the terrace, a thicket of purple grass swayed in the breeze like an enormous anemone. My knees began to ache. I suggested that we repair to the park on the south side of the building to watch the sun rise.

Another bronze in the gloom, another unholy trinity: three fat men, with orthopaedic boots and plaster casts for feet, three Wesselses, dancing in a circle.

‘It’s the family of man,’ she said. ‘Like me, my mom and dad, and my brother Duwaine.’

We found a bench on the lawn, with a south-east prospect that wouldn’t place too much strain on the neck. I confessed that I hadn’t seen a sunrise in three decades. Sunsets, on the other hand, had remained a firm favourite down through the years.

The sky in the east was already the colour of mercury. Then the sun came up. Just a flat disc of light that hurt the eyes.

*

As soon as it was light, she took out a cigarette packet and handed it to me.

‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

‘No, man. Read this.’

I read: ‘Camel cigarettes are blended from the finest Oriental and American tobaccos.’ And at the bottom in small print: ‘R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co, Winston-Salem.’

‘Now tell me how many e’s there are. You can read it again. Count them.’

‘Twelve.’

‘I’m impressed,’ she said, although she sounded disappointed. ‘You’d be amazed how many people get it wrong. They usually say ten or eleven. I think they leave out this one in “Reynolds” or the second one in “cigarettes”. Old Floyd said five, but that’s Floyd.’

Suddenly I saw that she was extending the hand of friendship, and I grasped it, symbolically speaking. ‘It’s simple enough, if you’re acquainted with the methods of proofreading. I could show you some techniques. The boustrophedon, for instance.’

‘The what?’

‘It means the way an ox turns in ploughing. Instead of starting at the beginning of each line, you go backwards and forwards like this. Some proofreaders I used to know — I’ve lost touch with them all over the years — swore that their best work was done backwards! Proofreading against the grain, we say. Others claimed that it was better not to know the language at all. I myself once proofread the Pentateuch in isiZulu, against the original (I don’t have a word of the language) and against the grain — and made only one error.’

For a reason I still cannot fathom, this struck me as one of the saddest things I had ever said. A wave of melancholic nostalgia washed over me. Why do such things always come in waves?

*

The precise shade of her skin troubled me. The obvious choices had adjectives clinging to them, like swatches from the do-it-yourself counter, tropical sands, amber dawn. But it was more like fudge.

*

‘Are you hungry?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Do you want some breakfast?’

‘I could do with a bite.’

‘I’m going to swing past High Point for some chicken. Do you want to come?’

‘We don’t have any money.’

‘Never mind, I’ll draw some.’

I thought the streets would be empty, but there were still people about, night owls like ourselves, and more and more of them as we went along Pretoria Street towards High Point. Disreputable-looking people with dim eyes and hollow cheeks. Staring at us, nudging one another, sniggering. And who could blame them? What a sight we must be, walking along side by side, as naturally as sneezing, and she in her active leisurewear. Like a lecherous old duffer with a prostitute. If we bumped into Wessels, I’d never hear the end of it.

The Black Panther Debt Collection Service. That was new. The Carry Nation Shebeen. We stopped at an automated teller machine and Shirlaine fished a plastic card from the front of her shirt. Get funky. Why on earth did they call the thing ‘Bob’? Personally, I don’t believe in dealing with automata. Cash in hand, we went towards the passage beyond Diplomat Luggage Specialists. Daylight Pharmacy was open, living up to its name. Dispensing remedies for the morning after, no doubt, or prophylactics for the night ahead. We went down the stairs, past the straggly clumps of ha’penny creeper, the parched hydrangea, the arthritic aloes. In the instant photograph booth under the stairs, where I had once seen Bogey capturing the back of his head, a tramp was squatting to relieve himself.

How could one say, when there were so many contenders for the honour, whether this was the low point of the night or not?

*

The golden fringes of the ‘Merry Xmas’ sign stirred like the filaments of a sea creature as we went through the turnstiles. Fish-eye mirrors hung at angles over the aisles, so that the cashiers could watch out for shoplifters. I saw the shelves reflected there, filled with pot-bellied bottles and jars, and myself, ashen-faced, with my head bulging hydrocephalically. Everything was out of shape.

The last time I’d set foot in here, it was to rebuke the manager for the menu’s B-B-Q chicken and cornish pastries. I saw him now, coming out of the office, and caught his eye. I thought he might come over for a chat, but he just raised a rascally eyebrow and went on towards the bakery.

We made our way to the fast-food counter. A whole flock of chickens lay spreadeagled on the grille, with their wings flung wide, as if they had died surrendering. We found a place at one of the toadstool tables. I have never been in favour of eating standing up. It does the digestion no good. Not that our scurvy fellow diners seemed overly concerned with their health. Most of them were eating bristly chicken legs in that beriberi sauce they’re so fond of. Shirlaine went to place our order.

While she was gone, a hag in a blue dustcoat came to clear away the papers and wipe the table tops with a damp rag, succeeding only in smudging the fingerprints in the animal fat and spreading a film of grease more evenly over everything. I remembered the dirty streets we had come through, the flotsam of beer tins, the curled and blackened scrapings of porridge pots, newspapers, food wrappers, mealie cobs, tripe ribbons. What would it take to wipe these surfaces clean?

Shirlaine brought a whole chicken on a sheet of waxed paper. It was savage, this obsession with fowl. Before I could say a word, she hooked her thumbs into the alimentary canal, gripped the carcase with both hands, and tore it in half with a great splintering of bone and splattering of grease. Good Lord. We ate. She used her fingers and I did my best with the plastic knife and fork.

‘Make a wish, Tearle,’ she said, proffering the wishbone hooked into her little finger. ‘And don’t tell me what it is, or it won’t come true.’

As luck would have it, I won. I wished that I could pass this entire city through the eye of the proofreader’s needle.

*

Gazing into the chaotic interior of the Café Europa, I felt like Moses arrived at Canaan only to find that the day trippers with their wirelesses and their wine in boxes had got there first. Shirlaine rapped on the glass with a coin, hoping to rouse some drunken Charon from the ruins. Then I thought to give the door a shove, and it swung open. We went in.