That is how the malady begins. The onset is insidious, well advanced before diagnosis. Anaemia, progressive emaciation, fatigue, tachycardia, dyspnoea, and a striking enlargement of the abdomen due to splenomegaly and hepatomegaly. But the spleen remains smooth and firm on palpation and retains its characteristic notch. The black fingers tap the flaccid white flesh, the wrist emerging dark from the white sleeve of the doctor’s coat. The imagination increases in size progressively and usually painlessly until it fills most of the abdomen. The gesture is one of careful investigation. Enlargement of the lymphatic glands may occur in the later stages of the disease, with a general deterioration to a fatal termination. Humus has an exchange capacity roughly six times that of clay, it’s important to know these things.
Mrs. Mgulu steps out from behind the poinsettia, wearing something diaphanous.
— You must come at once, she says, it’s your wife, she’s very ill.
No. Mr. Marburg the butler steps out from behind the poinsettias.
— Mrs. Mgulu has sent for you, he says, will you kindly step this way.
— What is it? What’s happened?
— It’s your wife. I’m afraid she’s fallen ill.
Mrs. Mgulu steps out from behind the bedroom screen, wearing something diaphanous.
— I’m very sorry. My husband is doing all he can.
— Of course.
— I have to tell you that it’s the acute, fulminating type. Nothing can be done.
— What, the monocytic? Or chloroma?
— Oh, I wouldn’t know, you’ll have to ask my husband. Are you a doctor too, then?
— I once studied chemistry.
— Oh, I see. It’s terrible, she looks quite green. Would you like to see her?
The gesture is one of invitation. Behind the screen the black fingers tap the flaccid white flank. The eyes and gums are bleeding. The gums are maroon or purplish.
— Lilly. Lilly, it’s me.
Lilly is deaf.
— The leucocyte count is 700.000 to the square millimetre.
— Doctor, how long?
Dr. Mgulu is not a medical doctor but a Ph.D. (Tokyo), Economics and Demography. This fantasy is therefore ruled out of order by the Silent Speaker. The Silent Speaker’s gesture is one of benediction between the two mauve flowers above and the unborn plants below the humus which yields carbon dioxide that dissolves in soil water. It is important to fill the body’s reservoirs with minerals like potassium or carbohydrate complexes found in seaweed, so that radioactive minerals of a similar type are then absorbed and passed straight out.
— What exactly is the cause, doctor?
— The aetiology is unknown. It could be a neoplastic disease. Or due to metabolic disturbances. Or toxic factors. Chemically treated food and such. Has your wife been taking any sulphonamide derivatives? Some doctors still prescribe them.
— You know very well that she is Colourless.
At the moment, the fantasies are under control. Sooner or later, however, they will pervade the blood-stream and increase at a striking rate, paralysing the skull with tumorous growths. Sometimes it is sufficient merely to imagine an episode for the episode to occur, though not necessarily in that precise form.
At eye-level, through the window, about four metres away, and to the right of the fig-tree which overlooks the road, there is Mrs. Ned’s shack. The windowless clapboard wall immediately opposite is dark with age and the cunonia on the corner is dead, its red spike withered away. To the right, at the front of the house, the verandah looks dilapidated and the straw shed over the wash-tub at the back is crumbling down. The wash-tub has a bar of new yellow wood nailed along its top edge.
The view to the right, if it were visible from this position at the right of the window, would be of the fig-tree. The view obliquely to the left is of the corner of the porch belonging to Mrs. Hans, who has the shack next to Mrs. Ned’s. The view ahead, if a view were available, would consist of innumerable shacks in small bare gardens where nothing grows very tall. At least, that is the view from the kitchen window over the sink, which faces the South East side of the Settlement, unblocked by Mrs. Ned’s shack. If Mrs. Ned’s shack were not in the way all the innumerable other shacks to the South and South West would be visible from this window also, unless they had been removed, or destroyed, in the walking distance between the fig-tree and this window. A periscope might perhaps reveal a scene of pastoral non-habitation.
In the walking distance to the kitchen window, the shacks are innumerable. A rectangle of light ripples on the wooden table. The wrinkled wood inside the rectangle of light seems to be flowing into the wrinkled wood outside it, which looks darker. The wrinkled wood might be thought alive. But the rectangle of light is only a refracted continuation of an oblong on the red stone floor, made by an oblique ray of winter sun filtering through the hanging beads over the doorway and turning the red stone floor into a river. Soon the gruel will be served.
Mrs. Ned’s kitchen, through the hanging beads in the imagination, is dark. The hanging beads are mottled and make a crackling sound. Mrs. Ned is standing by the kitchen window, staring at the innumerable shacks to the South East of the Settlement. Her thin mouth is slightly ajar. She is wearing a crisp white cotton overall with short sleeves. There is otherwise no explanation for the lack of the red framework or for the Colourless mottled face, with the untidy hair growing low on the brow. The staring eyes are hazel and strike two notes of expectancy. A stethoscope might perhaps reveal that her heart beat faster on seeing him appear round the East corner of the house. The mouth is thin but wet and welcoming, though the overall looks clinical, half hiding the goitre on the neck which, however, seems larger. The two white forearms hang limply but move up to unbutton the white overall down the front as the need is wordlessly transmitted and mouth meets mouth and the groin races into function.
Sexual intercourse takes place on the kitchen chair. It is satisfactory. The woman is on top, carrying out the necessary motions, smelling of sweat, chopped-up onions and washing-up water. The crisp white overall is wide open over greyish underwear. She is a gaunt lady and moves in jerky rhythm, head thrown back on its thick mushroom stem that swells where the goitre is laid bare. Human beings do not make love. They make agreements to enfold each other briefly. The disintegration has come together again and there is thus no need to talk. A conversation, however, occurs, for the sake of civilisation. It is of no consequence.
— Mrs. Mgulu gave me a very special message for you. Both verbal and written, in case I forgot one of them. Where did I put it?
— Oh, Lilly! Well, what was the verbal one?
— You might as well have your gruel now, since you’re here. I’ll warm it up. She was sorry about the Exchange, she should have known, she said, but there is a way out, if you really do keep to odd jobs. She rang them up again, do you know she rang herself, in front of me, and spoke to the Manager or whatever he calls himself, the top man. She said, oh, but it’s all a misunderstanding, I never intended to employ him in the garden, it is simply that my head gardener does all the interviewing for jobs outside the actual house. Building? she said, oh, no, though I do want a few potting sheds put up, he would only be trundling wheelbarrows, no, how did she put it, transporting material, ladders and such, you know, assisting here and there, cleaning out the front flight of steps, cleaning windows and such. Well, she had quite a time with them I can tell you, what with the builders’ union and the window cleaners’ union, but she was so polite and patient, and after all she is Mrs. Mgulu, they had to give way. It’s nearly ready.