Christine Brooke-Rose - The Brooke-Rose Omnibus

— I wonder why she bothers. I never asked her for anything. I don’t really care one way or another.

— Now that’s not a nice thing to say. You’ve been out of work for nineteen months now and I can’t take all the burden.

— So has everyone else.

— She has strong ideas on the subject, you know. She said to me while she was waiting for the Manager on the telephone, it’s a purple telephone you know, she said, it’s not charity, it’s not philanthropy, Lilly, you must understand, it’s a basic right, she said, but when a thing gets out of hand, like this, and for reasons beyond anyone’s control it becomes impossible to give a large number of men their basic rights one can but do one’s bit to help one individual case whenever it comes one’s way. That’s what she said. Then the top man came on.

The steaming circle of gruel in the bowl is greyish white and pimply. The squint is not so wide, or so blue, in the luminosity thrown by the oblong of moving light on the red stone floor and in the rectangle of rippling light on the wooden table.

— I also think she’s very fond of me, that’s why. I’ve worked for her a long time, all in all. She’s a real lady, and she knows, well, she respects me as a human being. And you too. She went to the trouble of writing you a note, where is it? Oh and by the way, I got Mrs. Ivan to clear out those tins. She seemed quite upset, but I think I managed to make her understand about wastage and poisoning. After all there is constant famine about. I made signs on my tummy. She made signs with her hands like an inverted V, roof she said, and Ivan, I don’t know what she meant, unless they’re building a shack of their own somewhere and need the tin.

By hand, across the top left corner. By hand. I am so sorry about all this mix-up, but all is well now, please come to the house tomorrow and report, with this note, to Mr. Swaminathan, my Managing Agent, who will give you all the instructions you need. D. Mgulu.

The gesture is of crushing the note into a ball and flicking it across the kitchen towards the hanging beads. It falls into the flowing red river on the floor.

— Damn the woman. Lilly, you’re worth all of them put together. Don’t ever despair of me, Lilly, don’t.

The gesture is of tenderly enfolding all the refracted colours and bringing them together again in one transparent light. A teinoscope would no doubt reveal that the squint is really a straight look in the luminosity thrown by the sudden knowledge of the person inside the person, a little girl perhaps, dandled on the knee. The gesture is of capturing an electron from the nearest orbit and rearranging everything within by the emission of an X-ray. You never know when that may come in useful. There is thus no need to talk, in the best of possible worlds.

DAILY from 8 a.m., outside the Labour Exchange, a dark blue face the size of a bungalow lies upside down at eye-level, the thick hair spread like roots over red desert land, the eyeballs pushing their black nucleus down towards the underlining eyebrows and the street below, the teeth agape in rigid horror, or pleasure as the case might be. The dark blue breasts are high and rounded tumuli slashed by curved oblongs of gloss as if by the nearness of the spidery hand or by the invisible emanation from a black sphere of crinkly matter that hangs above like a carbonised sun within the slanted orbit of an enormous shoulder line, all this beneath a giant cactus candelabrum, SO TORRID, SO TENDER.

The street follows the curve of the lower line of teeth agape above the upper line of teeth. It is not as curved as the chin-line or the rounded tumuli slashed with gloss, nor does it make the same orbit as the enormous and slanted shoulder line. The street swarms with much smaller people.

Face to face, however, the man is large and coffee-coloured, dressed in pale blue. He holds out a black thermoplastic hose too close for comfort. All around, just above the crowd, conventional weapons point.

— What about you, sir, would you like to comment on the situation?

— Yes. It’s a mug’s game.

Behind the metallic trellis the face is very black Bahuko, star-fished with light-reflecting sweat, although the day is not yet hot.

— Unemployment benefit pills cannot be administered retrospectively I’m afraid. Now then, occupation?

— Look, do we have to go through all that?

— You know the rules. Three weeks of non-attendance, I’m sorry but you have to re-register. We can’t keep up otherwise. Here, you can fill it up for yourself if you like. I’m not fussy. I’ll see what there is. Hmm. Difficult, you odd job men.

— But I’ve got an odd job. That’s what I came in to report. In any case I attended yesterday.

— Now wait a minute, there’s a note here at the bottom. Someone rang through about you. A Mrs. er –

— Mgulu.

The young palm tree in the square mops the luminous white sky, framed darkly by the door. The square has one slightly rounded side which the street at this point skirts, forming an almost imperceptible segment of a non-existent circle. To the right the street continues straight on, and to the left it forks into two narrower streets, one of which continues straight on. From the Labour Exchange, the impression is one of a straight street, although experience has proved that a man standing at one end to the left cannot see the street at the other end to the right. Or vice versa, as the case might be. The Street in any case is swarming with people. On the other side, on the curved edge of the square, a large collision of them is clustered in arrested motion, overtopped by microscopes pointing. In the centre of the group the man in the pale blue suit holds the black plastic hose to the chest level of a man with high cheekbones polished like shoe-tips and a white gold smile.

— Are you going to vote for the Asswati Governor or against?

— Last time I was sweet, lick me now, said the salt.

— What do you have against the Governor’s policies?

— I never said I was against.

— Well do you disapprove of particular policies, the satisfaction campaign, for instance?

— What satisfaction?

— Surely you’ve seen the slogan. We won’t demand satisfaction till we satisfy demand.

— Yes I disapprove of that.

— Why? Don’t you think it’s dynamic and imaginative, something the people have been really crying out for. Genuine satisfaction.

— No, I don’t. I’d call it a demand campaign anyway.

— So you’ll be voting against the Governor then?

— I never said that.

— What about you, sir, which way will you be voting tomorrow?

— I don’t know. Haven’t made up my mind yet.

— Do you approve of the demand campaign?

— Yes, I think so. Yes, yes, I suppose so.

— Why do you approve of it? I mean, isn’t it a little hard on the unemployed millions?

— Well, yes, I suppose it is in a way.

— Are you unemployed?

— No. I’m a crane-operator.

— Are you satisfied with the Government’s record?

SO TORRID, SO TENDER. The face lies upside down, the eyeballs pushing their black nucleus towards the underlining eyebrows and the street below. A group of men stands under them, near the steps of the Labour Exchange. The slight curve of the street follows the curve of the lower line of teeth above the upper line. It is not as curved as the chin-line or the tumuli that come alive like ant-heaps to the nearness of the spidery hand.

— I’m a physicist. I used to be an alchemist. Lick me now, said the salt.

— I’m a maize-grower.

— I have been all these things.

The buildings to the right of the Labour Exchange are drab four-storey municipal buildings very similar to each other. To the left there is the face, covering the windows of several old houses from the top of the shop fronts to the roof two floors up. Next to the face is the Colourless child, shrivelled and smudged with sores, COME OVER INTO PATAGONIA AND HELP US. The houses continue at the same low level all the way along the street to the left until they merge on account of the slight curve, into the opposite houses on this side, which from here seem taller but may or may not be, according to the degree of perspective trick. To the right of the Labour Exchange the height of the municipal buildings is more or less maintained with offices and shops up both the narrow forking streets towards the centre of the town.