Patrick White - The Solid Mandala

Arthur didn’t intend to die. He couldn’t afford to. He had his duty towards his brother. If not to perform for Waldo the humblest tasks, to allow him to believe himself superior to anything proposed. It seemed fitting to Arthur that the house which had been built in the shape of a temple should be used as a place of worship, and he took it for granted it would continue to fulfil its purpose, in spite of timber thin as paper, fretting iron, sinking foundations. Like the front gate, it would hold together by rust and lichen, or divine right. At least there was that about age: there were others in the conspiracy.

The gentleness of it appealed to Arthur. It was his brother who kicked. Or turned his face away. That night, for instance, the worst happened in bed. When Waldo got the diarrhoea.

“What are you doing to me?” he bellowed.

Almost as though Arthur were responsible for the act as well as for the mopping up.

“All right, Waldo. Don’t tell me. I know I’m the cause of a lot. But I know my responsibilities.”

Glad to perform the humblest act of all.

Waldo’s breathing sounded pacified at last.

It was Arthur who bit his breath the morning he got the shock, the morning his ticker didn’t actually stop, but ticked over slower bumping grating paining. He put his hands to his side, as if trying to hold in them, to protect and prolong, the first apple he was ever given.

If it was Arthur who got the shock, it was Waldo who took fright. You could see that. Even when there was no longer any reason for it, the fright persisted. Waldo had prescribed the walks to show them they were still good for something. As, of course, they were. After the warning, Arthur had never felt fitter. It was Waldo who shrivelled up, bluer, thinner than if he had been — what was it? collating his notes — or writing a novel.

“Do you think,” said Arthur, “we ought to be taking these walks?” but looked at Waldo, and added: “At least they must be doing us some good. Yes,” he said, because Waldo was looking so furious, “they’re doing us good.”

When even the aged dogs had begun to have their doubts. Runt had refused once or twice. Scruffy had turned the other side of the service station.

“Those dogs are going to die on us,” Arthur complained, “and what are we going to do then?”

Waldo laughed.

“We shall have each other.”

They had their memories. Sometimes a memory would assume a more convincing shape than any present flesh. If Arthur picked up from behind the copper that old dress, embroidered with rat-pellets and the light skeleton of a small bird, it was not an act of malice, but because the past forces itself on those who have participated.

“What is it, Waldo?” he asked.

Of course he knew. He only wanted to hear it said. You can never really confirm too often.

But he saw at once Waldo was hurt.

“Put it away,” he shouted, “where it was!”

“Why,” asked Arthur, “should we keep what hurts?”

Though he knew the answer.

He threw away the dress. Which turned into that poem.

Now the poems were about the only part of him Arthur would not have revealed to his brother. The mandala, the knotted mandala, he would have given, had kept, in fact, for that purpose, had offered even. But not the poems. There was no blasphemy at the centre of the mandala. Whereas, in certain of the poems, there was a kind of blasphemy against life. Which Waldo exaggerated quite horribly and deliberately on finding the crumpled poem unfortunately fallen out of an overstuffed pocket.

“all Marys in the end bleed”

Waldo’s voice was reading, deliberately blaspheming,

“they know they cannot have it any other way …”

In spite of mornings shouting with light, and faces of women receiving the truth.

“I know, Waldo!” Arthur cried. “It was never ever much of a poem.”

Because, more than his own, written words, his brother’s voice was convincing him of his blasphemy against life. Not so much against God — he could understand God at a pinch — but against the always altering face of the figure nailed on the tree.

“Give it to me, Waldo!”

But Waldo made it unnecessary. Waldo was tearing the poem up.

That his brother continued to suffer from the brutality of their revelation was evident to Arthur when, in the course of the afternoon, he looked through the trees and saw Waldo carrying his boxful of papers towards the pit. Knowing he had probably destroyed his brother did not help Arthur to act. Through the trees he could smell the burning papers. He stood around snivelling, sniffing the fumigatory smell of burning. But he was not in any way cleansed.

When finally he went into their room, he found Waldo lying on the bed. Waldo raised himself on an elbow.

And Arthur saw.

He saw the hatred Waldo was directing, had always directed, at all living things, whether Dulcie Feinstein, or Mrs Poulter, or the blasphemous poem — because that, too, had life of a kind — the poem which celebrated their common pain.

“Waldo!” Arthur was afraid at last. “What are you trying to do to me?”

Arthur was afraid Waldo was preparing to die of the hatred he had bred in him. Because he, not Waldo, was to blame. Arthur Brown, the getter of pain.

Then Waldo, in the agony of their joint discovery, reached out and grabbed him by the wrist, to imprint him for ever with the last moment.

“Waldo! Let me go! Wald.”

Big and spongy though he was, Arthur, Waldo’s big dill brother, could go crumbly as one thing for love and now the death of it.

Waldo was lying still, but still attached to Arthur at the wrist.

When Arthur saw the murder he had committed on his brother he began to try to throw him off. He did not immediately succeed, because the fingers of this dead man were determined, in their steel circlets, to bring him to trial. So he had to fight against it. And finally snapped the metal open.

Then Arthur went stampeding through the house in which their lives, or life, had been lived until the end. It was a wonder the cries torn out of him didn’t bring the structure down. Before he slammed a door on the shocked faces of dogs.

YOU COULDN’T SAY SHE WASN’T COMFORTABLE. HE KEPT THE home painted up. Bill never showed his age. Lucky to still, in spite of his quirks, have his strength. Took a few jobs on the side to make the something extra. Like grass-cutting and pruning roses. For the few extra luxuries. You had to keep up with the times. They had bought the plastic awnings for the front. She had the electricity, she had the phone. Sarsaparilla wasn’t on the sewer of course, and Bill wouldn’t come at a septic, but she had her health, in spite of one or two aches, and what was a few steps across the yard to the dumpty. Altogether you couldn’t say she wasn’t comfortable. She had the radio, but no longer used it all that much, not since they got the telly, or anyway began the payments, like most else since recently. Bill said people had never in history had it so good, and well, she admitted, you couldn’t say it wasn’t pretty good. You couldn’t complain. Not with the electric frying-pan — never used her oven now — not with the phone, and two doctors. And the telly. If she didn’t have any friends without the ones she yarned with over fences, in buses, or the street, she didn’t need any. She had the telly, the nice announcers, and world figures in your own lounge. She could afford to mind her own business, without Mrs Dun reminding her of it. That Mrs Dun was something of a disappointment. Cold. A dash of Scotch somewhere there. There was nothing like the Scotch for keeping their distance. Well, you couldn’t blame them, you couldn’t blame nobody for how they were made. And the Duns, both, were what the magazine articles call neurotic. From living with Bill she could tell neurotic, oh yes, even in the bus. Still, you couldn’t say no to Mrs Dun. Company becomes a habit, if only the journey in the bus, and mucking around Davy Jones, or seeing a big new feature picture at the Roxy, you wouldn’t ever go on your own, it was something at least to know who it was breathing in one of the seats alongside of you. So you developed the habit. But there was nothing intimate with Mrs Dun, such a yellow little person, knotting up her scarf tighter still, those brown silk scarves, or buff, and the cameo brooch her auntie from West Maitland left. You couldn’t say Mrs Dun wasn’t a refined-looking lady, only somewhat cold, and never a dash of colour, that old black velour which must of been renovated, it was the niece who did it, more than once. But that was Mrs Dun’s business.