— Look, since you’re inventing this dialogue you ought to give something to the other chap to say.
— But I must get all those facts in.
— He won’t let you, he exists too, you know.
— I suppose so, with his beautiful bland black face patched like wet asphalt in curved oblongs and blobs of light. And the facts, anyway, are not true.
— I know. You must be more realistic. Say for instance that you were trained at a Resettlement Camp.
— I built the tower of Pisa and it leant.
— Inside it spirals. A bronchoscope might perhaps reveal –
— Oh shut up.
At eye-level through the window, about three metres away, and to the left of the fig-tree which overlooks the road, there is Mrs. Ned’s bungalow. Some people would call it a shack. The windowless clapboard wall immediately opposite is dark with age and the cunonia at the corner of it is dead, its dark red spike dried up. To the right, at the front of the bungalow, the verandah looks dilapidated and at the back the straw shed over the wash-tub is crumbling down. The wash-tub has a bar of new pale wood nailed along its top edge. The shack is exactly similar to this bungalow and exactly in line with it, but too close, for it blocks the view. Some people would call the verandah a porch.
— Well, you started it, your dialogue gets out of hand.
A telemetre might perhaps reveal the distance to be three and a half metres, or even four. The view to the right, if it were visible from this position at the right of the window, would be the fig-tree. The view obliquely to the left is of the corner of the porch belonging to the shack next to Mrs. Ned’s. The view ahead, if a view were available, would consist of innumerable bungalows in small bare gardens where nothing grows very tall. Some people would call them shacks. The shacks would be low and spare with slightly sloping corrugated iron roofs that straddle the smaller roofs of the entrance verandahs. The insulating paint on most of the roofs would have flaked away leaving brown patches of rusting ripple. The gardens would be small and flat.
— You’re incapable of preparing any episode in advance. You can’t even think.
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 West would be visible from this window also, unless all the shacks save this one had been removed, or destroyed, in the walking interval between the kitchen window and this window. It is sometimes sufficient merely to imagine an episode for the episode to occur. A periscope might perhaps reveal a scene of pastoral non-habitation. It would be sufficient merely to move two steps to the left for the window to be filled, in an oblique way, only with the fig-tree.
— I am a builder. I received Vocational Training at a Resettlement Camp after the displacement. Since then, however, I have only been spasmodically in labour. Since then, however, I have only been employed intermittently.
Frequently, after all, the gruel is brought. It is sometimes sufficient merely to imagine movement, in the walking interval between the kitchen window and this window, for the movement to occur, though not necessarily in that precise form. The gardens, when visible, are too small and the shacks too close for health. Every shack, climbing over its own verandah, might be a fly straddling another fly. It is sometimes sufficient to imagine a change, but in this case the shacks, if visible, would merely be shacks. Some people like to call them bungalows.
Beyond the closed wrought-iron gates the mimosas up at the big house are in bloom, gracefully draping the top of the white pillars on either side of the gate. Single branches also droop over the white; wall that separates the property from the road. Beyond the tall wrought-iron gates and beyond the mimosa on either side the plane-trees line the drive, casting a welcome shade. One half of the tall wrought-iron gates may be ajar, might perhaps be pushed open with an effort of the will. It is sometimes sufficient.
Here however the fig-tree’s thick grey twigs poke upwards into the sky. The branches bearing them are contorted, like the convolutions of the brain. The darker grey trunk leans along the edge of the bank at an angle of forty degrees, inside which, from a standing position, the road may be seen. One of the branches sweeps downwards out of the trunk, away from the road, forming with the trunk an arch that frames the piece of road within it. The thick and long grey twigs on this down sweeping branch grow first downward also, then curve up like large U-letters.
In summer, from ground-level, nearer to the fig-tree, the arch formed by the leaning trunk and the down-sweeping branch frames a whole landscape of descending olive-groves beyond the road, which itself disappears behind the bank. In summer the grey framework of trunk and branch is further framed by a mass of deep green foliage.
At the moment, from a standing position, it is only a piece of road which is framed. At the moment the fig-tree looks blasted.
If the fig-tree here looks blasted then the mimosas up at the big house cannot be in bloom. The two events do not occur simultaneously. It is sometimes sufficient to imagine but only within nature’s possibilities.
Beyond the closed wrought-iron gates the plane-trees line the drive, forming with their bare and upward branches a series of networks that become finer and finer as the drive recedes towards the big house, made now discernible by the leaflessness. First there are the vertical bars of the tall wrought-iron gates, flanked, behind the two white pillars and white walls, by the feathery green mimosa trees which are not in bloom. Beyond the vertical bars of the closed wrought-iron gates there is the thick network of the first plane-trees on either side of the drive. Beyond the thick network of bare branches there is a finer network, closing in a little over the drive, and beyond that a finer network still. The network of bare branches functions in depth, a corridor of cobwebs full of traps for flies, woven by a giant spider behind huge prison bars.
It is not true that the mimosas cannot blossom while the fig-tree looks blasted. The small nodules just visible on the straight long twigs of the fig-tree may already represent the first, January round of buds, the edible ones which do not produce leaves and fruit. Therefore the mimosas could just be in bloom. Unless of course the fig-tree does not look as blasted as all that. The nodules could already be the buds that produce leaves and fruit, in which case the problem does not arise.
— Oh anyworrourr slishy ming nang pactergoo worror worrerer-er-er-er whinnyman shoo. Oh no. Fang hang norryman, go many wolloshor-or-or nang — Oh, how silly of me, tharrawarrapack hang norryman.
— Is it you or me you’re talking to? Because I haven’t heard a word.
— I was talking to myself. I was just saying that I forgot to ask Mrs. Jim to buy me a packet of gruel when she went to the market this morning. I couldn’t go myself because Mrs. Mgulu wanted the sheets changed in three of the guest-rooms, her friends from Kenya are leaving you see and others are arriving. She didn’t say where from. And then I remembered that I had an extra packet stored away behind the tins for just such an emergency.
It is not, however, January. Early December must be the latest possible time for flies to make love. For flies to have sexual intercourse. Unless perhaps a certain period has already elapsed since that episode, if indeed it occurred. The flies may have been a product of the fine network that functions in depth, in which case they will certainly have got caught in the cobwebs.