Breyten Breytenbach - Mouroir

When he reached this far in his writing he laid down the pen, pushed the notebook away. He removes his thick spectacles and rubs his eyes with the knuckles of his thumbs. He is tired, worn out. Night has long since fallen outside and the wind is playing hide-and-seek with the trees, laughing softly like a servant girl furtively with her lover in the darkened garden. In a moment she will sigh a few times and start biting the air with the small of her back and the lower part of her body thumping and sucking the soft seed bed by the humid hedge. He squints at his watch, brings his wrist right up to the eyes, for without the eyeglasses his vision is weak and blurred and it is only from close up that he can focus. It’s true that he feels morally obliged to go and visit Gregor Samsa — old bonds of friendship probably impose it — and half sullenly he remembers that it has been agreed that he and Giovanna Cenami should leave the following day. There is of course the temptation of the strange room. . The house also, except for the pool of light over his desk-top, is shrouded in darkness. Just the mirrors glow vaguely as if reflecting something which somewhere gave off some light. He will just have to accommodate himself to the thought of pushing aside his work programme for a few days.

Differential, disc brakes, distributor and contact points, carburettor, gearbox, acceleration pump, de-aerator checked. The glareproof windows defogged. Luggage in the dustfree boot. Fitted into the casing of metal alloys and chromium. Rocking softly on plastic-foam cushions. By the afternoon of the next day Angelo and Giovanna Cenami were on their way. According to Angelo’s calculation they should reach their destination towards the hour of dusk. Along the route, climbing and turning, the vegetation gradually became denser; rushing past the car it was often a solid green wall. The trees which exceptionally engage the eye are also stockier of trunk, taller and with leafier crests than those of several hours ago in the lower valleys. After a while it started raining. Like silver wires stretching through the forests on either side, like telephone lines full of dripping sounds, like soft spectacles, like balls which are just contents without any shape against the motor car’s windscreen. And when the showers faded away from time to time, the remaining spattering of droplets reminded one of insects, of the inner life of insects. But the reader should keep in mind that this is not a landscape, only words, like a landscape. Angelo remembered again that house which they had bought many years ago somewhere in this area. He was absent, taking part in some seminar, and Giovanna Cenami had to take care of the house-moving all by herself. When he went there for the first time it was on a rainy afternoon much like this one now. The house was situated on a little rise deeper in the forest and quite some way from the tarred road. When he arrived that first evening after several kilometres of sludge, his shiny automobile was splashed with mud. He was upset. The house was still a mess, cardboard boxes and the crates which had contained their furniture scattered all over. Still, when he climbed the steps of the high terrace — somewhat disgusted by the caterpillars of mud clinging to his soles — he was surprised to see how shiny the floors of the corridor and the living room were. There was a sombre glow in the house. Straight-backed leather chairs were grouped provisionally, without any pattern, and there were elegant, long-stemmed candlesticks; so many candlesticks and so many mirrors. Light, which had moved into the house from somewhere, rested with an intimate sparkle on the ribbed silver of the chandeliers and the looking-surfaces of the mirrors. As if the building were full of unworldly but fashionable guests. Do we possess only mirrors and candlesticks? he asked, playfully worried, and his lovely wife came with a tinkle of laughter to be embraced by the reach of his arms. They were young then, carefree, a bow and arrow pointed at life. Later on they sold the house. . And the bowstring. .

And when they approach the yellow-brick building rain has already died away. As he had foreseen the sun too had started falling behind the horizon, cloudless now and very distant, for they found themselves on the most elevated knoll of the multiple series of hills. In extremely fine fishing nets the raindrops were spun over the dark green lawns, with flowers a startling red and orange caught in the nets. On the terrace of the Director’s wing Elefteria waited for them. Heaven a magnificent ink blot, all the tinges of purple and violet, spreading fast to suck up everything. In the wash of twilight Elefteria’s white, flowered dress was nearly luminous. Now there remained just a few sunbeams shooting over the ridge of blue shade, low and long and blinding like sword blades, and where they hit the earth with flat edges there was a sprinkling of drops, lilac-coloured and white. The swords were cutting the fishing nets to ribbons. With a travelling bag in the hand Angelo stood looking at the letters, in all the colours of the rainbow, splashed against the wall of the balcony jutting out above the main entrance: THE YELLOW SUBMARINE. A nice name, but is it really fitting for an institution which has such a sombre function? When he sees the iron bars in front of all the windows he tries to shake the shivers from his clothes.

Gregor Samsa was busy somewhere. He had to supervise personally (some responsibilities cannot be delegated) the evening lock-up of prisoners, and had to verify that all are counted, that the count tallies with the morning’s total and with the numbers in the books — drudgery, Elefteria hinted. Only in the rooms of the Director’s living quarters some last coals of sunlight still flared. And these rooms were incredibly stately with decoration and furniture testifying to wealth and impeccable taste. Thick wool carpets to hush the sound of footfalls. The dying sun shimmered and pulsated in dark wall-hangings, in countless candlesticks with slim silver arms, in rows of mirrors, each in its Venetian baroque frame of old blue and gold, at an angle over low tables massively carved from precious wood and decorated with motifs under chestnut-brown or ambercoloured glass tops, with here and there, discreet but opulent, the flash of an ashtray hewn from jade, an antique silver platter from Samarkand or Fez, Delft porcelain on a shelf or a Greek vase now flowing over with freshly cut snapdragons or bougainvillaea.

They had already lip-tastingly finished the first cocktails, a rusty red liquid since the sun finally withdrew from here too and left behind only a purple bruise, a cool afterburn, when Gregor Samsa turned up. He was glad to see them, so very glad; grasped Angelo’s hands in his and squeezed them, but there was an evasive and bashful look in his yellowish eyes. Angelo felt that the hands were cold and clammy. Gregor Samsa sat bolt upright in one of the leather chairs and started talking excitedly, in one flow, about everything, in a disjointed way. At times he interrupted his own jumble of words and, with hands which unconsciously opened and closed over his knees, tilted his head to listen. In the background one could hear uninterruptedly the humming of hundreds of birdies’ voices, a warbling and a chirruping. In one wall of the room there was a window reinforced with bars — an abomination in this exquisite space making the harmonious ensemble perverse, obscene. This aperture became ever more conspicuous. Once you’ve noticed it, it can no longer be ignored. Once you’ve become aware of the humming of voices, they keep on throbbing in your ears. With the delicate crystal glass still in his hand Angelo finally rose from his chair and sauntered over to the opening. Through the bars (there was no glass in the frame) he looked down upon a large hall lying quite a way lower than the floor of the sitting room towards which the voices rose. Along colourless tables row upon row of prisoners were thronged: the clothes shapeless and of a dull grey material, the heads shaven — he saw the yellowish scalps through the stubble of hair, often fresh scabs or the fainter lines of older injuries, knife wounds, tracks of the ringworm, skin diseases. And all the faces were turned upwards to the window where he stood watching. Some had eyes white with cataracts, sunken in sockets and closed tight, swollen or red from ophthalmia; some eyes were incisively mad, others expressionless as if blind lipoma. And the excretions, the warts and blotches, probably neurofibromatosis. All uttered sounds with pouted lips or with slack and dribbling mouths. The majority had red fists all knobbly and raw before them on the tables, but a few with bent backs clutched their hands (those hurting toys) between the knees or desperately pushed them under the armpits. What does it bring to mind? Bats? On the sidewalk before a pet shop in Paname he once saw an enormous hairy vampire hanging in a cage, a threadbare fox, upside down from nearly human little feet, naked and blinded by the fierce light of day and the screeching and the poisonous fumes of cars caught in the streets. Angelo started noticing the musty body odours filtering into the sophisticated living room, finally not to be evicted by the flower smells or the perfume emanating from the women’s little hollows. Why doesn’t anyone say something? Obscuring, all of it a glossing over. When he turns around with a sense of loathing his eyes meet the pleading, nearly doglike expression in those of Elefteria. And Gregor Samsa was no longer in his chair. Alone, totally alone, a thought said to him. Like a mirror.