— Though of course, there is the spiritual hunger, as you were saying, and that I can’t deny.
— There are plenty of remedies.
— Oh, you’re a great one for remedies, Lilly, I know. But in the end they’re more dangerous than the original –
— Have a slice of pineapple.
— Well, that is kind of you. I was going to say cachexy. Can you spare it? I mean, it was for him, wasn’t it?
— Why him?
— That’s a very good question.
— Why now?
— That is an ignorant remark.
Mrs. Ned’s arms throw her voice about, her laughter rebounds against the wall and she catches it excitedly. As for the squint it seems a little wide this evening, the blue mobility of the one eye calling out the blueness of the temple veins and a hint of blue in the white skin around. The skin around the eyes, both the mobile eye and the static eye, is waxy.
But Mr. Swaminathan dwells within, swaying from side to side, aching his absence from the sharing of phenomena.
The floor is almost finished. The other workers have left. From this position, laying the marbled thermoplastic tiles on the last strip of floor between the wash-basins and the dressing-tables, it is possible to distinguish the dark legs of the hairdressing assistants from those of the guests as they step across from time to time in variously coloured shoes, for the hem of their pale orange overalls just comes within the outer orbit of downcast absorption. The guests, however, wear black slipovers. It is necessary to raise the eyelids a fraction to include a serial of long black legs that shoot out, in variously coloured shoes, each leg supported below the knee by another which rests vertically on the thermoplastically marbled floor. Different sizes and darknesses of thigh are underlined variously in red or pink or black. The floor is almost finished, the other workers have left and the salon is functioning in embryo, for a few guests only. The floor is scattered with snippets of dark cut hair, mostly wet and curved, but they dry quickly, and when they dry they thicken out. Some are almost circular. A few are silvery pink or green. A pink and yellow boy in pink and yellow cotton trousers sweeps the snippets with a miniature broom and brings them together in a grey funeral pyre, the colours merging with the dust. The hairdresser himself is a small dark man in candy-stripe trousers, with delicate black hands and large brown lips thickly pursed in concentration. Mrs. Mgulu wears golden shoes, and a girl in an orange overall with piled gold hair is lathering her thrown-back head, the neck-line dark and taut, the chin well up and rounded, the lips protruding above it and beyond them the wide nostrils. The gold setting of the alexandrite is just visible on the left nostril. The marbled thermoplastic tiles are purple, with a streak of pink.
— Why now? Why not now? You know the past proves nothing. There’s no such thing as the past, save in the privacy of concupiscence. That’s an article of faith. So stop fretting about how it might have been. Unless of course the urge is too great to be contained. Then go find yourself a whore, a bureaucrat’s willing wife, they’re all willing to reenact you know, regardless of race or creed, so just go ahead and indulge yourselves with post-mortems and forged identities. Go on, go on.
— Why, Lilly, whatever’s the matter?
— He gets on my nerves. And there’s my tin of pineapple gone, for nothing.
— Don’t cry, Lilly. Shall I take him over for a bit? You need a rest.
— Oh, my pineapple!
— But the pineapple was gorgeous, and we had a good laugh, didn’t we? Look, I’ve got a tin of prunes at home I can let you have instead. Oh I know it’s not the same but there’s a lovely recipe on it for prune kebab. He’s a sick man you know.
— I’m perfectly healthy. I do a full day’s work. That’s the test isn’t it? Can he love, can he work?
— Well –
— And if the past proves nothing why do they keep asking about my previous occupation?
— They’re bureaucrats. They’re behind the times.
— What were you before the displacement! What displacement for heaven’s sake?
— The displacement from cause to effect.
— Oh Mrs. Ned! You understand me! Help me, help me.
— Lilly, d’you mind?
— No, I don’t mind. Not if you bring me the prunes.
— My dear, you mustn’t get so worked up. It’s their little weakness, they fed on our past you see, and drained us of its strength, and we feed on their present. Now they deny the past, but need to ask as a matter of form, it flatters them, it’s a relic that they adhere to. We must allow them their little weaknesses.
— Come closer. Tell me, Mrs. Ned, how can you know they fed on it if there’s no such thing as the past?
— There you go again with your sick talk. It’s all a question of adjustment.
— Mrs. Ned, you are full of promise, I want to make mental love to you, here, on the kitchen chair. D’you mind, Lilly?
— No, I don’t mind. I can tell you in advance, though, it won’t help. Don’t forget the prunes.
— Tell me about yourself, Mrs. Ned.
— There’s not much to tell, it’s banal really, I first met my father in the usual circumstances, as a transference, and I said to him, why did you deprive me of my trauma, I’ve been looking for it ever since, alchemising anecdote to legend, episode to myth, it’s exhausting, you’ve made my life a misery, it’s because of you that I’ve grown up deprived, but he didn’t reply. I fell in love with him, deeply, painfully in love. How did you first meet your mother?
— At her funeral. The flowers on her coffin were a mass of red.
— Really? Why, what did she die of?
— In the displacement, you know.
— Go on.
— I can’t.
— What did she say to you?
— She was covered with purple patches. Her eyeballs stuck out. She couldn’t speak, she was deaf and blind.
— Was it the monocytic type?
— No, Chloroma.
— Go on.
— I can’t … Come in.
— Excuse. Boeuf Strongonoff. Wife.
— Well, thank you Mrs. Ivan. But why?
— Cry on tins. Present.
— It’s most kind of you. Lilly will be delighted.
— Please empty to return. Keep for roof. Ivan.
— Certainly. Thank you very much.
— Nichevo. Goodnight. Goodnight Mrs.
— Goodnight Mrs. Ivan.
— Goodnight Mrs. Ivan. Oh dear where were we?
— I don’t know.
— Erm. What did you do, before?
— What do you think I did?
— Something important.
The image of the man grows up a little. The two hands clutch each other damply across the wrinkled wood of the table, which is quite still and unflowing in the dusk. The goitre opposite seems to swell as Mrs. Ned relishes the idea.
— You’re important to me.
— Oh. But who are you? You must make yourself important too, a worthy vessel to contain my importance.
— You must make me a worthy vessel. It takes two to make love.
— Did you ever find your trauma?
— Not really. It got lost, in the displacement, you know.
— What displacement?
— The displacement from cause to effect.
— From birth to death.
— From nothing to something.