Christine Brooke-Rose: The Brooke-Rose Omnibus

— Good afternoon.

The head gardener is shocking pink, almost red, under a wide-brimmed hat. He looks ill, too, not like a gardener at all. Perhaps he only ordains the gardening. Quite clearly it is not radiation, or even kidney trouble, it must be his heart. As a dark pink man he is employable.

— I believe Mrs. Mgulu –

— What? Speak up, I can’t hear you.

— I believe Mrs. Mgulu –

— Ah yes. She told me about it. You know Mrs. Mgulu well?

— No. Oh no. It’s my wife, she –

— Oh, I see. Well isn’t that nice. I’m all for everyone helping each other especially us. Yes. I always say to Polly, that’s my wife, forty-four years we’ve been married and we’ve seen plenty I can assure you. I always say to Polly in these difficult times we must all pull together and sink our ex-differences as Westerners, don’t you agree?

The dialogue slowly but smoothly runs along the kindness of his blue eyes and many flowers are mentioned. The red network of veins over his face is very fine, especially on the cheeks where it forms a darker patch like a flower. The dialogue falters and comes to an end. The face turns the red network of veins away, leaving only the broad-brimmed hat and a deeply lined red neck. The voice starts up again, slow, deliberate. A monologue moves away on the other side of the moving hat and the red neck.

— That is poinsettia on that wall over there to the right. It will be coming out shortly. Now, did you know that the red flowers, or what appear to be red flowers, are not flowers at all, but leaves? The flower, now, is a modest little yellow thing, inside the red leaves, looking like a mere pistil. These are zinnias, or rather they will be zinnias, in due course. Here the winter irises are out.

— And the mimosas. I much admired your mimosas on the way here.

— Oh mimosas need no real care. Just sandy soil. The soil is very sandy here. Too sandy for almost everything we want. But modern chemistry is wonderful.

The left foot is inside another adenine molecule, the right foot having blotted out one of the energy-rich phosphate bonds East of ribose. The energy-rich bonds cannot be directly used for biological work of any kind, unless transferred to adenesine diphosphate so as to generate new triphosphate molecules. The phosphate radicals –

— I’m afraid that once a triphosphate molecule has shed its terminal phosphate radical its life as energy-donor is at an end. In my country –

— In your country men were lazy. That is why they lost the battle for survival. It is an article of faith.

— This dialogue is out of place, he’s nice, he likes you.

— They’re conceited, lazy, unreliable.

— We don’t bother with them here, they’re a typically temperate flower, you know. Mrs. Mgulu says that chrysanthemums remind her of damp December funerals in the North. But she’s fond of begonias, as you can see, and laurels. These are the young orange-trees. They have been wrongly planted though, in round hollows, instead of on mounds of earth. The water should drain away. They should never be allowed to soak. The gardener who did that seems to have been out of his mind, or drunk perhaps. Well, he was ill, actually, of the malady, he died last week I believe. He was supposed to know. The heel of the left foot is in the ribose molecule, the toe, which is wearing out the canvas, is in the adenine, no, that’s no use, they are pentagonal, it could, however, be oestrone, obtained from stallion’s urine. The right foot is wholly in the elongated hexagon, as in a coffin, during the rainy season. Quite likely they will have been seriously harmed. You would not be replacing him, however, he has in fact already been replaced. I want you, rather, for the watering, not now, but when the dry season begins. Here is one of the hoses, it is kept stretched along the inside of this flower-bed right back to where you came in. In the other direction, however, it will also reach as far as that wall, beyond the olive grove. There are six other hoses and six taps.

The thermoplastic hose is green after all that, and slithers along the left flower-bed. The feet move obliquely towards the phosphate energy-rich bonds East of ribose, it takes four or five hours, because of course every plant must be watered individually. Some plants like the spray, you see, and some prefer a plain jet, on the root, or even, some, around the root. These little castor-oil plants, for instance, they grow up large and massive, like those over there, but while they are so small and delicate the jet must not touch them at all, the stem would break. So it’s better not to use the spray-nozzle, but just to put your finger over the nozzle-holder whenever you need to spray. There is a spray-nozzle, however, for certain beds. You need not know much about gardening, but you will have to learn the whole drill. It must be done in the correct order, otherwise some beds get forgotten. The cactuses don’t need direct watering.

Both toes are in one large oblong paving stone. Each heel is in a smaller stone, and the line of cement runs between them. The heart beats reach the throat suddenly.

— I am a gardener. I received Vocational Training at the Resettlement Camp after the displacement. I –

— Did you say something?

— I am a gardener. I received Vocational Training at the Resettlement Camp after the displacement.

— Oh. But Mrs. Mgulu gave me to understand that you had no training, and no experience. An odd job man, she said. This is an odd job you understand.

— In my country –

— Excuse my asking but was your country Ukay?

— I was head gardener at the White House, I had twenty men under me.

— The white house. Which white house? The Ukayans have long had a bad reputation as workers, you know. However, I am not one for generalisations, as I always say to Polly, one must not be hide-bound by dogma, come what may, it’s the particular that counts. I understood from Mrs. Mgulu that your wife had told her you had been a politician in — er — London, would it be?

— That’s not true. Never. No, no, no. I was a gardener –

— I see. Well, it all comes to the same thing in the end, doesn’t it. I mean I’m not one for prejudice in these matters. One of my best friends was a Uessayan of Ukay extraction. On the other hand there is no hurry about this particular job. The hot season is not yet due, and much planting remains to be done. You may wish to think about it. I’ll let you know.

The feeling is one of heterotrophism. The left foot treads the length of a cemented line. Between the tiles, the right foot carefully selects another line of cement parallel with the edge of the path. The amount of free energy that becomes available for the performance of useful work does not correspond to the total heat change but is equivalent to about ten thousand calories per gram, molecule, the remaining two thousand being involved in the intra-molecular changes of the reaction. It is possible to walk on such parallel lines only, almost without touching the diagonals. It is possible, but difficult, and a little slow, for the molecules are closely linked and have to be either skipped or touched, democratically, each and every one, which leaves little choice. A periscope, held backwards, might perhaps reveal whether the turning away of the red network of veins and the moving off, beyond the red poinsettias, of the broad-brimmed hat over the deeply lined red neck has been totally accomplished, or whether there has been another turn, and a pause, and a watching there still. The green thermoplastic snake lies along the inside of the right-hand flower-bed, about twenty centimetres away from the cypress hedge, quite straight, and very long, leading towards the glossy black door in the white wall. The green thermoplastic snake comes to an end by a laurel-bush, pointing its brass nozzle-holder at the stem, without the spray-nozzle attachment. There is no water coming out of the hose. The glossy black door in the white wall, on this side, is painted yellow.