Patrick White - The Solid Mandala

Afterwards in the racketty train which was taking them back to Sarsaparilla, Mother asked: “What is it, Waldo? What is it, dearest?”

Unusual for her; she was by no means soft .

But how could he tell her? And he knew, what was more, she was only asking to be told something she already knew. (In his crueller moments as a man, Waldo suspected their mother was not always able to resist a desire to probe their common wounds.)

So he sat in the spidery local train and willed it to dislocate the vision of those normally liquid eyes set like glass inside the cage. For ever, it seemed, and ever.

But the train did not co-operate, and it was only on walking up their garden path, when he trod on one of those brown slugs which had come out too soon in search of evening moisture, that Waldo was able to relieve his feelings. As he crushed the slug, his own despair writhed and shrivelled up.

The old men weaving along the main street, the one stalking, the other stumping, had known their surroundings so long they could have taken them to bits, brick by brick, tile by tile, the new concrete kerbing, and Council-approved parapets. They would even have known how the bits should be put together again. The old men were still fascinated by what they knew, while often overwhelmed by it. For it was overwhelming, really. Take Woolworths. Though Arthur Brown loved Woolworths.

“Can’t we go into Woolies, Waldo?”

“It isn’t open yet.”

Arthur liked to spend mornings in Woolworths costing the goods. Because of course things were marked up higher than should have been allowed. Often they told him not to be a nuisance, and sent him out. Once the manager had searched his pockets, and found the bus tickets, the rather grey handkerchief — Arthur’s laundry always came out grey — and the glass taws he carried around.

“Those are my solid mandalas,” Arthur explained to the manager.

Today the manager was parking early.

“Shan’t be coming in this morning,” Arthur called. “I’m with my brother. We’re going for a walk.”

The manager screwed up one of his cheeks in a freshly-shaven synthetic smile.

Gathered by the wind the two old men flitted across the plate glass, each examining himself, separately, secretly. On the whole each was pleased, for reflexions are translatable symbols of the past, Chinese to the mind which happens to be unfamiliar with them. Some of those who noticed the old blokes might have seen them as frail or putrid, but the Brothers Brown were not entirely unconscious of their own stubbornness of spirit. Arthur, for instance, whose mechanism had in some way threatened his continuity earlier that morning, was still able to enjoy the gusty light of boyhood in the main street of Sarsaparilla, his lips half open to release an expression he had not yet succeeded in perfecting. His body might topple, but only his body. The drier, the more cautious Waldo walked taking greater care in spite of the strength of his moral convictions.

Everybody to their own. The Presbyterians had their red brick. The convicts had built the Church of England. Over his shoulder the Methoes had hung out their business sign. Waldo Brown, so thin, was filled out considerably by knowing that nothing can only be nothing. It was almost the only gratitude he felt he owed his parents — not love, which is too demanding in the end, affection perhaps, which is more often than not love watered down with pity — but gratitude he could allow himself to offer, a cooler, a more detached emotion when not allied to servility. So Waldo stalked through the main street, in the wind from his oilskin, on only physically brittle bones, knowing in which direction enlightenment lay. Waldo stiffened his neck, and skirted round the Church of England parson with a smile, not of acknowledgment, but identification. As for priests, jokes about them made him giggle. He would look for the vertical row of little black buttons, for the skins of priests which flourished like mushrooms behind leather-padded doors. Waldo believed his parents had just tolerated clergymen as guardians of morality, priests never. Myths, evil enough in themselves, threatened one’s sanity when further abstracted by incense and Latin, and became downright obscene if allowed to take shape in oleograph or plaster.

On this hitherto evil morning, of a cold wind and disturbances, of decisions and blotting-paper clouds, Waldo Brown’s convictions helped him to breathe less obstructedly. He failed for the moment to notice the smell of mucus in his nostrils. Putting his mind in order had eased the oilskin at his armpits. Intellectual honesty glittered on his glasses, blinding his rather pale eyes. How dreadful if Dulcie. But she hadn’t. It was the kind of near-slip which made him hate Dulcie’s judgment rather than deplore his own temporary lack of it. Suppose his exercise in loving Dulcie had been forced to harden into a permanent imitation of love! The intermittent drizzle of resentment is far easier to bear, may even dry right up. It had, in fact, until Arthur.

Why had Arthur? Where was Arthur?

“Look, Waldo, it’s turned to clay!” Arthur called, dawdling, fascinated by the crumbling turd of Mr Hepple’s over-stuffed cocker spaniel.

“Come along,” Waldo ordered. “It’s only old.”

The old man and two old dogs gathered round the whitened stool shocked the youth inside Waldo Brown.

Each of the blue dogs, pointing a swivel nose, sniffed with a delicacy of attention, lifted a leg in turn, aimed sturdily enough, then came on, chests broad to the wind, not so good in the pasterns. It was the old man who lingered, as though unable to decide on the next attitude to adopt.

Then Arthur Brown spat, or dribbled. It faltered on his chin, hung and swung silverly against the knife-edged light.

“That sort of smell,” he said, “could give a person diphtheria.”

It choked Waldo. What had Dulcie seen in Arthur?

“Didn’t I tell you come along?”

Arthur came.

He took his brother by the hand, who would have resisted if he had remembered how to resist. But twin brothers, brothers of a certain age, at times only remember what has been laid down in the beginning.

They were walking on in the direction Waldo knew now he had not chosen; it had chosen him.

“Did you ever have diphtheria, Waldo?”

“You know perfectly well I didn’t.”

“Yes,” said Arthur.

The habit of motion, the warmth of skin, were so very comforting, he put out his tongue and licked the air. It might have been barley-sugar.

Arthur said: “You know when you are ill, really ill, not diphtheria, which we haven’t had, but anything, pneumonia — you can’t say we haven’t had pneumonia — you can get, you can get much farther in.”

“Into what?”

It tired Waldo.

“Into anything.”

The wind coming round the corner, out of Plant Street and heading for Ada Avenue, gave Waldo Brown the staggers. Arthur, on the other hand, seemed to have been steadied by thoughtfulness.

He said: “One day perhaps I’ll be able to explain — not explain, because it’s difficult for me, isn’t it, to put into words — but to make you see . Words are not what make you see.”

“I was taught they were,” Waldo answered in hot words.

“I dunno,” Arthur said. “I forget what I was taught. I only remember what I’ve learnt.”

If he stumbled at that point it was because he had turned his right toe in. Although she tried, Mother had not broken him of it.

“Mrs Poulter said,” said Arthur.

“Mrs Poulter!”

Waldo yanked at the oblivious hand. Mrs Poulter was one of the fifty-seven things and persons Waldo hated.

“She said not to bother and I would understand in my own way. But I don’t, not always, to be honest. Not some things. I don’t understand cruelty.”