— Oh, hello, Mrs. Ned. I’ve been given a job.
— Oh, hello. I didn’t recognise you without the chip on your shoulder. Oh, hello, I didn’t recognise you in the dark.
The letter is on the table, folded in four, next to the remedy. The handwriting on the top quarter is upside down which draws the eye to decipherment. The remedy is called Metabol. Nervousness and agitation irritability motor unrest insomnia hostility aggressiveness phobias and hallucinations. Even though many personality problems characteristic of senility may be linked with organic changes in the brain which I … hope … hasn’t … reached you … in any … shape or … form … you … being … such a very … active ….person This terrible malady which I hope hasn’t reached you in any shape or form you being of course their fear is irrational as it’s not catching from people it’s the radiation in the air and they merely resist better, but it’s all very soul-destroying though I must cry it out aloud that they’re being extraordinarily humane and generous about it. I must say I’m lucky to have married as I did, at least my children stand a sporting chance.
The light over the table makes a moon in the darkness beyond the window. Below the moon is the window-ledge. The pool of light engulfs the entire table and part of the red stone floor. The wrinkled wood is quite static in the light, as static, at any rate, as the network of minute lines on the back of the wrist. A microscope might perhaps reveal which is the more static of the two. The protozoan scene under the microscope is one of continual traffic jams and innumerable collisions.
— What was it you said?
— I was saying that Mr. Marburg the butler was most obliging today –
— No, before that.
— Don’t forget to lick your spoon.
— Ah, yes, I knew it was something important.
The circle of steaming gruel in the bowl is greyish white and pimply. The squint seems blue tonight, and wider. The pale eye that doesn’t move is fixed on the remedy, but the mobile eye wriggles away, its blue mobility calling out the blueness of the temple veins and a hint of blue in the white skin. A microscope might perhaps reveal a striking increase in the leucocyte count, due to a myeloid hyperplasia leading to an absolute increase in the granular leucocytes. Sooner or later immature and primitive white cells appear in the peripheral blood and corresponding changes in the bone marrow. Then the mobile eye too remains fixed, reproachful perhaps.
— Mr. Marburg just happened to mention it to me, I had no idea of course, and I would never have known if he hadn’t come up to the guest wing just at the time that I happened to be there. I’ve never seen him up there I must say, it was the purest chance, unless perhaps he came specially to tell me, which is always a possibility. But why did you do it?
Sooner or later movement, which is necessary but not inevitable, will lead to attainment. That seems to be the general theory at any rate. Yet everything that moves increases risk. Sometimes it is sufficient merely to desire intensely.
The knock ushers Mrs. Ivan into the kitchen to fill her two large jugs of water. Phrases come and go, with and without smies, not at all, good evening, thank you, goodnight.
— Oh, Mrs. Ivan.
— Yes?
— I hope you don’t mind my mentioning it, but could you use up and throw away your opened tins more quickly? They do smell so and anyway it’s dangerous for your health. You may get food poisoning.
— Thank you Mrs.
— I mean if you don’t eat the whole contents why open so many?
— Thank you. Thank you. Goodnight.
— Goodnight. She’ll break my heart with those tins. Well anyway it was very awkward for me, I mean, I didn’t know whose fault it was and I assumed naturally that it was ours in some way. But Mrs. Mgulu couldn’t have been kinder. She really takes an interest you see and it’s become a matter of principle with her. She said — I say are you listening? That thing is for doctors, not patients. I mean you want to be careful, listen to this, for instance. Care should be taken in prescribing other depressants of the central nervous system such as anaesthetics, analgesics and hypnotics since their effects may be potentiated by Metabol. Tachycardia and postural hypotension have occasionally been observed but these have rarely been sufficiently serious to warrant the discontinuation of the drug. Other side-effects reported in isolated cases are convulsions, constipation, anorexia, dyspnoea, epistaxis, insomnia and slight oedema. Well I mean it doesn’t do to read that sort of thing, it’s better to stick to posologies for patients.
The light over the table makes a moon in the darkness beyond the window. Below the moon is the jellyfish. Mr. Blob: thank you very much. Closing in on the jellyfish it is possible to see deep within it a black trapeze-shape that melts into the blackness. It is possible to see it, that is, helped by the knowledge that it can normally be seen from this position. Moving the jellyfish a little, only blackness can be seen. Knowledge certain or indubitable is unobtainable.
The gesture is one of benediction. The hands are pink. The earth is pale and dry. The plants are blackened by the frost.
Or something like that, the hands being brown perhaps and the flowers a mass of pink.
— Mrs. Mgulu says they remind her of damp December funerals in the North.
The flowers a mass of red.
The black hands out of the white cotton sleeves spread over the flaccid white belly, the third finger of one occasionally tapping the third finger of the other, flatly brown on the white flesh. No, it is the head gardener who is in question and his hands are definitely pink. The earth is brown and healthy.
— The dry season hasn’t really begun yet, I don’t know what to do with you. That’s all I said you know. Well you could dig up those old bulbs, here, they should have come out two months ago, but the fellow who was to have done it died last week. As a matter of fact the best thing would be for you to get to know all the plants intimately before the watering begins. Every plant must be watered individually, you see. I’ll have to take you round and introduce you, one or two beds a day for the first couple of weeks, or you’ll never learn the drill. It must be done in the correct order otherwise some beds get forgotten.
— Those little orange-trees look wrongly planted, don’t they?
— Oh, they’re all right. Some plants like the spray and some prefer a plain jet on the root. Or even around the root. The important thing is to do them one at a time, remembering each plant’s individuality. The little orange-trees now, they don’t need watering every day, but every two or three days, and then you give them plenty, deep down into the root.
Above the gesture are the two mauve flowers. The red network is very fine.
Through the red plastic trellis made by the fly-swatter the winter sky in the rectangle of the shack window is white and luminous. It is difficult to remember the degree of luminosity in the summer sky. The summer sky being blue, which is in one sense almost the other end of the prism. The metal grid splinters the bland Bahuko face, which also shines with curved oblongs of white light, although the day is cool. No, this time it was a pale brown face, lean and Berber, granulated like basalt rock.
— Oh, now wait, someone rang through about you. Where are we? Yes, that’s it. From this Mrs. Mgulu, of Western Approaches. She wants you to start work tomorrow. In the garden.
— In the garden?
— It is not however permissible. No. The job isn’t odd enough.
The gesture is one of helplessness, palms flat and briefly facing upwards, paler, almost pink, and heavily lined. The gesture would be the same if the helplessness were faked.