Patrick White - The Solid Mandala

Bloody old bore, Waldo decided. If he continued half-listening it was only because of the impression of solidity Mr Feinstein created.

“Take this little cap, Waldo,” said Mr Feinstein, taking a very strange one off the knob of a chair, “this capple . Perhaps you haven’t met one before. Well,” he said, “it is part of the big circus act. But if I wear it — which I do,” and he popped it gravely on his head, “it is not that I am allowing myself to be put through any reactionary hoop. It is because this capple happens to protect my nut from draughts.”

Here Mr Feinstein flopped into one of the over-stuffed chairs. For a moment the cap seemed to have extinguished some of his conviction. Then he began to shine again, and laugh.

“Eh?” he laughed. “There couldn’t be a more practical use!”

And his wife laughed to keep him company.

It was better when old Feinstein showed off some of his other possessions: a walking-stick made from rhinoceros hide, the signed photo of Sarah Bernhardt, a ship in a bottle, and the gold clock on the mantelpiece.

“This nude lady,” he explained, and winked, “represents Reason keeping an eye on Time. Because of course Time becomes unbearable if you don’t approach it rationally.”

Waldo looked at the clock, then realized how late it was. Supposing Feinsteins thought he was trying to cadge another meal?

He began to grunt, and redden, and grind a foot into the roses on the carpet. At last he said he ought to go. They did not stop him.

But suddenly Mrs Feinstein remembered. She was one who smiled almost habitually, it seemed. Mrs Feinstein smiled and said:

“You will come again, Waldo. When Dulcie is recovered. And then you will see the garden.”

“There’s nothing in the garden,” said Dulcie, “but old hydrangeas. And agapanthus.”

“Ohhh!” roared her father. “When we pay a man to keep the beds filled with flowers?”

Dulcie put her arm through her father’s, and automatically rested her head against his shoulder, but did not answer. Looking at them, Waldo grew guilty for his own foreignness.

When normally you didn’t think about her, it was Mrs Feinstein who appeared to be trying to put him at his ease. Mrs Feinstein, hovering and smiling, had taken over from her steel dress.

“There is one thing, Waldo,” she said, “I would like you to promise. Next time you come I want you to bring your brother.”

“Arthur? But you don’t know,” he started quickly.

“Oh yes, I do,” Mrs Feinstein answered in an everyday voice. “He has been here. He so enjoyed ringing the bell.”

Waldo looked at Dulcie, who at least on that occasion had been inside practising the piano. Now she did not look up, except for a moment to say: “Good-bye,” when her eyes expressed nothing but the return of her cold. He could not be sure whether she had already made his brother’s acquaintance.

At the prospect of Arthur’s introduction into his relationship with the Feinsteins, Waldo found he cherished that relationship more than he was prepared to admit. It was not the Feinsteins themselves who interested him particularly. Old Feinstein, with more or less his own parents’ ideas, was frankly a bore, but it was at least something to have become a target for the theories of somebody not his parent, and in another way Mrs Feinstein, of doubtful syntax, and skin with the peculiar uncovered look, confirmed his individual existence as comfortingly as cake. As for their daughter, he was not yet sure of Dulcie, of what part she was intended to play, or whether she despised and rejected him. But he had received her, jealously, expectantly, into his mind, and allowed her to drift there passively, along with the musty flavour of poppy seeds and the dense little tune on the walnut piano. The Feinsteins were too private an experience, then, to resist Arthur. Arthur would explode into, and perhaps shatter, something which could not be repaired.

So Waldo continued remembering, when circumstances didn’t force him to forget. There were fortunately the exams ahead. He had to study; he was, and would remain weak in Maths. There was also the question of the Influential Client of the bank, whether he had spoken — by now it did not seem as though the latter realized how much depended on him. Waldo would wake at night in a sweat. Once he dreamed he was working on the railway as a fettler, and had not dared admit his true, his elective work. As he lay there beneath the creaking roof, at home, he thought how safe he would be returning from the books in the Library to write his own. Comparatively safe, anyway. He would still have to face Arthur and his own doubts.

The third occasion on which he came in contact with the Feinsteins Waldo knew there was no escaping something which was being prepared. Mrs Feinstein’s formal note deliberately arranged it for the Saturday. So that you are able to introduce your brother to our circle , the writing ended underlined.

Waldo wondered whether he dared pretend he had not received the letter. In that way time, naked but finally rational, might solve his problem.

It was Arthur who decided which line they were to take.

“Saturday,” he was telling Mother, “both of us are going up to Feinsteins’. Do you think there’ll be a big tea? Will there be other people? Or shall I have an opportunity of making conversation with Mrs Feinstein?”

Waldo could not decide whether he was hearing what he heard.

“What put it into your head,” he asked, “that the Feinsteins are expecting you?”

“The letter,” Arthur said, “which you left lying on the dressing-table. I thought you meant me to read it, Waldo, seeing as she’s invited me.”

Mother did not even correct the grammar, but told Arthur it would be in order for him to go without his coat provided he wore his silk shirt. That was good enough to stand up to any formality.

As they walked up the hill to Feinsteins’ on the day, Waldo saw that Mother’s present of a silk shirt was much too large for Arthur. It ballooned out on his shoulders, a physical deformity to all the rest. The water, besides, was trickling down the red side-burns from Arthur’s attempts to reduce his staring hair.

“I am looking forward to this opportunity,” he said, “of meeting Mrs Feinstein socially.”

He was trembling by the time they reached “Mount Pleasant”, whereas it was Waldo who should have trembled, if resentment hadn’t tempered him.

Phlox was fluttering in the beds, beside the steps which led from the road, by steep, yet clipped, grassy banks, to Feinsteins’ door.

Arthur was gasping.

“We came, all right!” he called from near the top.

As Mr Feinstein appeared in the doorway.

“You needn’t tell me!” The old boy laughed. “And on a Saturday!”

In the hall he took Waldo aside.

“You realize,” he said, “this is to bear out a theory I expounded. Do you know, Waldo, it is the Sabbath today? Yet here is your brother blowing like a flame, or spirit of enlightenment, through a Jewish household, with all the doors thrown open.”

Waldo only half-listened. He was too agonized wondering what Arthur might get up to.

“Shall we have a feast then Mr Feinstein?” Arthur called from somewhere behind.

“Oh, yes! It will be all feast!” Mr Feinstein was shining with laughter. “Once upon a time it was only for a family of Jews mumbling together behind closed doors.”

“Shall we be your family?” Arthur was gibbering with hope and pleasure.

“Naturally!” Mr Feinstein could not laugh enough; his stomach was laughing behind the gold chain, to say nothing of his illuminated cranium. “We expected nothing less.”

Though when his wife appeared he withdrew, Waldo suspected, for good. It would be for Mrs Feinstein, rather, to produce the cakes of enlightenment.