‘There was nothing I could do,’ he says, ‘to stop that disc from spinning; eating power, eating money.’ If he disconnected the lamp and fire and radio still the flat metal monitor crept anticlockwise, notching up amperes on the digital display. Elsewhere in the Jorgensen home gadgets slumbered, drip-fed by electricity: the fridge, the fish tank, the doorbell, the telephone-answering machine, the yoghurt-maker, the deep-freeze in the garage, the kitchen clock, the water-heater. (With the naming of each item we beg for explanations.) ‘But if I could not stop it,’ he says, ‘then I could make it go fast. One flick at the side of the electric fire with my toe. More heat! And the energy disc begins to trot. What fun we would have when the children came home. Christoffer, Kirsten and I had devised an experiment.’
At last the twins returned from school. Christoffer was apprehensive. (What if his parents arrived mid-escapade?) Kirsten was overexcited and impatient. She wished to begin immediately, haphazardly. ‘But I insisted on scientific strategy and order,’ says the schoolmaster. ‘We started in our own rooms and worked outwards and downwards to the spinning disc in the conservatory. Everything electric, from the lights to typewriters, we set in motion.’ He traces a quickening circle in the air with a chalky finger. He grins at the memory. The energy disc was gaining speed. Bedside lamps, electric blankets, convector heaters, a tape-recorder, a train set, a sewing machine. The downstairs rooms were the most prized. Kirsten was the first to lay claim to the clamorous appliances in the toilet and the laundry room. The washing-machine embarked upon its longest, most warlike cycle. The tumble-dryer barrelled a tornado of hot air. The water-heater catered silently for pipes. Towel-rails and steam-irons shared overloaded sockets with sun-lamps and electric toothbrushes. Kirsten was too small to reach the toiletry cabinet. The schoolteacher was summoned. He opened it and handed down her father’s shaver and her mother’s hair-dryer. They dangle-danced from their high socket on springing cords, bouncing, blowing and chewing at the bathroom rug.
Christoffer was busy in the Jorgensen living room. ‘Table lamp, standard lamp, fire, television,’ he yelled, patiently turning silence into buzz and buzz into roar. ‘Stereo, video, radio.’ And then, to the shudder of a rudimentary, over-amplified chord, ‘Guitar!’
Now they hurried to reach the kitchen: cooker, toaster, mixer, grinder, blender, carver, polisher, sweeper, dishwasher, kettle. Another radio, another fire, another small television set. Fountain. Fairy lights. At last, they were done. Together, they dispatched the garden mower down the lawn. At the extent of its lead, it tugged and growled at the free, long grass beyond its reach, like a tethered, liverish goat. The house and garden were a powered cauldron of heat and light and sound.
How did the spinning disc survive this onslaught? The teacher lowers his voice and leans forward to tell. ‘It had disappeared,’ he says. ‘It was moving so fast that we could no longer see it. I climbed on a chair and tried to view it from above. But no, nothing. Only the faint smell of scorched metal and a cloudy smoking of the glass.’ This is the point — with the teacher high on the chair, the twins holding their ears and laughing, the Jorgensen home clamouring like a nightmare — where Jens and Lotte returned. ‘We screamed our explanations. We retraced our routes and unplugged. We picked the fibres from the shaver; we unpicked the keys of typewriters; we replaced the scorched towelling on the ironing board; we rewired the lawn-mower; we patched up the burns on Lotte’s hand (she had leaned on the toaster); we apologized to neighbours; we blushed. But, now, here is a mystery. Once the house had cooled and quietened, still the energy disc was missing. The Jorgensens said it must have disintegrated at speed, like a meteorite, and its flaming pieces had fallen into the workings of the meter. Certainly the digits on the amperage counter never budged again. But I can’t accept so prosaic an explanation.’
We look to the teacher for his explanation. But he is being playful. He has none. He is teasing us, that is all. ‘Soon,’ he says, ‘thanks to Awni’s obsequious petitions, this town, with its oil lamps, its hand pumps, its long nights, its stillness, will be a powered cauldron of heat and light and sound. It will spin with electricity. And it will disappear.’
AWNI HAS closed the solemn inner room of the Rest House restaurant to all but electricians. He will give no explanation. Guests, travellers and those townspeople with time and money now eat and drink at crowded tables on the veranda. It is marvellously successfuclass="underline" stranger jostles with stranger; titbits are exchanged; trays of food are passed from hand to hand to inaccessible tables; whispers are inaudible, everybody shouts.
‘Be patient,’ Awni tells his customers. ‘Soon these inconveniences will be forgotten and my rooms re-opened…’But those on the veranda are not listening. A bat-moth is flapping wildly amongst the tables and customers are trying to read its signs. It pauses for an instant of rest on a plate of pomatoes and is caught. An upturned glass jug — hastily emptied of water over veranda floor and customer shoes — is lowered over the moth’s arched black wings. The eaters and drinkers gather round and wait. For a minute or so, the moth strikes the jug with its wings, and quivers — but then it quietens, spreads itself across the fruit, and plays dead. Now the customers are as equally still and silent. All eyes trace a line along the bat-moth’s body and down its red-tipped tail spike. The spike is pointing at the policeman’s wife. The moth is telling her fortune. She counts the grey smudges along the moth’s still back: seven children! She measures its wing-latch: long life! She peers closely and nervously at the four black wings: the love wing, the money wing, the pleasure wing are perfect. But one hind wing is ragged at the edge, an injury. ‘Bad health,’ says the policeman’s wife. She lifts the glass jug and the bat-moth flaps and spirals once again amongst the tables.
‘Soon these inconveniences will be forgotten,’ repeats Awni, striking at the moth with his hand. But still his customers are not listening. Now the policeman’s wife is standing with her back against the shuttered window of the restaurant (her face lit like an actress by the bending flames of candle and lamps) and is singing.
‘The night is warm,
The night is long;
We are alone, alone, alone.’
There are tears in the electricians’ eyes as they stand at their table on the veranda and raise their glasses to the singer. These are the times that their grandfathers spoke of: music, food and good humour. ‘Soon,’ says Awni, ‘there will be improvements.’
IN DAYLIGHT, the veranda becomes a workplace. The electricians rest their reels of wire against chairs and spread their drills and screws and fittings on tables. They are working on the electrification of the inner room and on its preparation for the opening ceremony. Warden Awni has tacked a notice (hand-decorated and lettered by a calligrapher in the city) on the veranda walclass="underline" ‘The Warden of this Rest House, in pursuance of his Honoured Duties towards Residents and Travellers, announces that, to mark the Advent of Electrical Power, Modernizations are in process with all the Urgency required to secure their completion in time for the Visit to these Premises of our Friend and Benefactor, the Minister, and Representatives…’
Who can read any further without first resting, drawing breath and sneaking forward to explore within? None of the townspeople, certainly. Curiosity impels them along the veranda to the open door, through which electricians are passing with the fussing preoccupation of weevils in cake. There, just as Awni has promised, is the box of glass mangoes, dull and disappointing. A wooden crate, the size of four coffins, contains what the children have identified as a small white truck. It is the new icebox. Cartons of cola and beer and fruit drinks await refrigeration. Table lamps with New York skylines as a friezed motif are packed in shredded bark. A liquidizer gleams beside its newly fitted socket. And against the far wall is a square, flat box, as wide as a demon’s cartwheel. ‘This is my centrepiece,’ says Awni, but will say no more. ‘It is the world’s largest petition,’ suggests the teacher. ‘Awni is respectfully requesting the provision of a wetter climate. Next time it rains Awni will take the credit.’ But the children know better. They have climbed on tables and peered into the open top of the box. Inside are a set of aeroplane propellers, cut from the heaviest, the most polished and tiger-grained tarbony, each blade the height of a man.