Patrick White - The Solid Mandala

Arthur was relieved to think he might be blamed less bitterly.

“Aaron.”

After trying it out he was tolerably content.

Though he would not wait for Dulcie to return. Taking Mr Saporta by the wrist — the latter no longer wore the little gun-metal wristlet-watch, but a large golden disc which showed practically everything — Arthur confirmed that it was time for him to leave. Even though Dulcie was coming down the stairs, though he was close enough to hear the sound of her skirt after she had finished calling to him, he neither looked back nor answered, but hurried throbbing spongily along the street.

Sometimes on arrival at the house he would go up unannounced to old Mr Feinstein, who had chosen to live in a narrow, maid’s room, or attic, when his daughter and son-in-law moved in. There he was spending his last days, between newspapers and tobacco, taking refuge from what he referred to as the Jewish Reaction. Although his speech had not been made unintelligible by his first attack — that happened only with the third — his tongue was noticeably clumsier, and his right arm had withered on its trunk.

“I will not deny they thrive on superstition,” Mr Feinstein referred to his children, “but it could also be the extra food. Because Jews, Arthur, use their religion as an excuse to overeat.”

Mr Feinstein continued going to the store until the third stroke prevented it.

On the last occasion Arthur saw his friend, the old gentleman had been sat up in one of those arm-chairs which continue to survive their owners.

“I shall leave you to talk to him,” Dulcie said practically.

“Why?” asked Arthur.

“Because the baby is singing for his supper.”

Old Mr Feinstein appeared fairly satisfied by now with everything which was done for him. To the centre of his chest they had pinned a card, with the words, the phrases, and the names he was most likely to need, and he would make his rather suffocated sounds, and scratch at the card with the less withered of his hands.

As the old man snuffled and gasped Arthur leaned forward to read what was printed there, but could not decide which of it all might suit what his friend wanted to say.

ARTHUR, he saw, and: AARON. GOOD FOR BUSINESS, I WANT THE CHAMBER PLEASE. The word TORAH puzzled Arthur.

“What’s this TORAH?” he had to ask, though without the greatest expectations.

Then Mr Feinstein scratched at his chest, at the print which hardly served to explain.

CHANGEABLE WEATHER, Arthur read.

He would have liked to do something for this old man whose strings had tangled and trussed him. But he himself could only shamble round the narrow room, looking for help from the old gentleman’s possessions. It was a relief to discover on a cluttered shelf the little Star of David he had seen Dulcie wearing round her neck.

“See this, Mr Feinstein,” he said, “this, this thing ,” he said, “this is just another mandala.”

This time Mr Feinstein did not attempt to scratch a reply, but sat still, looking at Arthur. Waiting, it seemed.

Then Arthur knew he could never explain what was too big, an enormous marble, filling, rolling round intolerably inside his speechless mouth.

He had sat down opposite the old man, so that they were knee to knee. He was holding Mr Feinstein’s cold claws in his own warmer, spongy hands. Otherwise there was nothing he could do.

“The mandala,” he was trying to say, and did, but mouthing it so idiotically, he too might have had a stroke.

Then they sat looking at each other from opposite ends of the tunnel, in a light of such momentary intensity, Arthur at least was too confused to know exactly what he saw.

On the next occasion when he visited the Feinstein-Saporta castle he found Dulcie in their big square living-room seated without her shoes, on a mattress, on the floor. She was wearing a dress in flowing black, the folds of which, together with the lights in her neck and her rounded limbs, made her into something of a statue.

“My father died, Arthur,” she explained, as though the old man had tottered out only a moment before, into the park. The only unusual part of it was: they couldn’t expect him back.

Then, when she had gathered up her knees inside her arms, and laid her face against her shoulder, she began dreaming, as she rocked:

“Oh yes, I’ve mourned for him, and shall continue to mourn. But my father was always embarrassed by what he used to call ‘Jewesses indulging themselves by tearing their clothes and emotions to tatters’. We were only ever allowed to love him on his own terms. I think on the whole that made him unhappy, but any other behaviour would have offended against his principles. A complete surrender to love might have let in God. Of course, in the end, he did. When they were shut up together in a room, he couldn’t avoid it. I saw. My father died peacefully.”

Dulcie raised her head.

“You, Arthur,” she said, “are you, I wonder, the instrument we feel you are?”

Whatever she intended to convey he was glad not to grasp it, and lowered his eyes to the level of her breast, from which the milk had trickled, through the black dress. She noticed at once, and covered herself with her scarf. With the same slow but natural motion, she covered her head.

As he continued to visit the Saportas over the years with some regularity, Arthur did not particularly notice Dulcie’s greyness or her glasses, nor that Mr Saporta was setting in fat, because friends and lovers enjoy a greater freedom than their bodies: they are at liberty to move out of them, and by special dispensation, communicate with one another through far-sighted eyes.

It was Waldo who suffered, Arthur regretted, from his meeting with the whole Saporta family in Pitt Street, in middle age. The shock of recognition had sent Waldo temporarily off his rocker, with the result that he was knocked down farther along, his pince-nez damaged beyond repair. It was not Arthur who had arranged the meeting, though Waldo seemed to think it was.

All the way to his brother’s bedside Arthur had suffered for Waldo’s suffering, more particularly for Waldo’s fear of death. The crisp perfection of the sister colliding with the weakness of his stricken brother sent him almost frantic. It put him in a most difficult position: to pacify the bossy sister by keeping quiet, while convincing Waldo he couldn’t afford to let him die. Careful regulation of his conduct at last persuaded her they might be left, and at once Waldo sounded less afraid. Though Arthur continued to blub a little to show his brother he needed him. Love, he had found, is more acceptable to some when twisted out of its true shape.

Not that Waldo would accept much. He was too busy with his problems, of libraries, and Mr Crankshaw. Arthur realized he had a problem of his own when Waldo joined the staff of the big new Public Library, where Arthur himself was inclined to read. Fortunately Waldo, in occasional flight through the reading room, was too preoccupied to notice anyone beyond the outskirts of his mind.

He barely noticed the War even, the second one which was going on. In the First War Arthur Brown had been all fireworks and singing. He wore a patient gravity for the Second. Too much had happened down Terminus Road and in other parts. Although still a boy he went more slowly, nursing his jammed fingers, expecting the next kick in the pants.

On the night of the Peace, when the singing was let loose, the vomit, the piss, the gobs, and the little girls with their wicked bums and flouncing hair, Arthur couldn’t make up a song, until at last a couple of lines — or three:

“No more dying only the dead

love is lying in the parks

and lying and lying …”

He smiled, though, for all those pairs of twins, and no word between them to express the truth.