— Are you all right, man?
— Of course, he’s all right. They’ve neither of them got the strength to hurt a fly.
— Are you hurt somewhere?
— Two old men, they should be ashamed of themselves, fighting like that.
— Look at them, they’re crying now, both of them.
— Licking their wounds. It’s disgusting.
— Now then, what’s happening here?
— Oh nothing, constable. An old Colourless man knocked down another. I don’t think any harm’s done.
— You all right, man? Come on up then. What’s all this about? You fighting at your age? Who started it?
— I’m not old. I only look old. On account of the –
— Is it? Yes, it is. Constable, I know this one. I say, aren’t you Lilly’s husband? Yes you are. His wife works up at Mrs. Mgulu’s, Western Approaches, you know, that’s where I work and I’ve seen him around. I think he does odd jobs.
— Oh, well, if you’d like to see to him I won’t take the matter further. Western Approaches, you said, Mrs. er? Mrs. Jim. Thank you. How about you, man, are you hurt?
— Don’t you touch me!
— Now then, now then, I’m entitled to lay hands on you if you give me cause. I suppose you started this?
— I say, you are Lilly’s husband aren’t you? Oh, thank goodness, I’d hate to have perjured myself to the law of the land. Whatever got you into that mess? Well, never mind now. I think you’ve wriggled out nicely. I’m Mrs. Jim. I daresay Lilly’s talked to you about me. Look, would you like me to help you home? I’ve only got a bit more marketing to do if you’d like to wait for me in that bar. No? I think you should at least have a drink. You look very shaky. And perhaps a bite to eat. Come along, now. I’ll pay for it, don’t worry. That’s it. Just hold my arm. I work up at Mrs. Mgulu’s you know, that’s where I must have seen you.
At home there would be a remedy. A remedy would be read, it would occupy the air. Or a letter from the Labour Exchange, according to our records. At home the gruel would be brought.
The palm wine tastes a little acid, the bread a little sour. Sooner or later Mrs. Jim will go and finish her marketing. Mrs. Jim has gallstones. She’s anaemic, you know. I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s pernicious. But Mrs. Jim is the picture of health, pale pink and fleshy and bedworthy in a purely physical way. She certainly lives in the present. She has adapted to her environment, has Mrs. Jim.
— Well, you don’t have much to say for yourself, do you? I can’t imagine your ever saying enough even to get into a fight. But maybe it’s shock. Perhaps you’d rather have had mint tea? No, you just sip that quietly while I finish my marketing then I’ll see you home. You can help me carry some of the bags as a matter of fact. I shan’t be long.
Inside the avenue of the mind, that functions in depth, Mrs. Mgulu sits back in the cushions of the vehicle as it glides smoothly out of the town. The shining hair is coiled up high, dressed in gold chains and off the face, cave-blue through the blue glass and the wide lips mauve.
— That looks like Lilly’s husband just ahead. Olaf, will you slow down so that I can see? I hear he had a little trouble in town with a Colourless ruffian. Perhaps he could do with a lift. Yes it is him, will you stop. Hello, there. Can I give you a lift? How are you? You don’t look too good. Jump in.
The concrete huts move slowly by, grey in the shimmering heat. No. The sun beats down into the nervous system that has no foliage to protect the nerve-ends. The road burns through the thin soles of the canvas shoes. Mrs. Mgulu walks lightly alongside, wearing something diaphanous, smelling of aloes and hair fixative. The vehicle moves slowly ahead waiting upon her fatigue. But she walks lightly alongside, although the tall acacia trees give insufficient shade. The number of the vehicle is eight four … the number of the vehicle is insignificant.
— Oh but I love walking. Especially with someone. I never really see anything by car. I never really see anything except with you. Look at the concrete huts moving slowly by, grey in the shimmering heat. The road burns through the thin soles of your canvas shoes, I expect, as it burns through my gold sandals.
— The tall acacia trees give insufficient shade.
— The number of my vehicle is 8473216.
— It wasn’t the way you think, you see, he told the employment clerk the pills were bad for us, and the clerk made him take it there in front of him and me too so I spat mine out and he saw me and well it turned out that he meant genocide, and I said he was mad and he said, oh he said horrible things, he called me cold-hearted. You know I’m not, don’t you?
— Now you really mustn’t go believing everything you hear from the man in the street.
— That’s what Mr. Swaminathan says.
— Ah, my old friend Mr. Swaminathan. Is he still swaying away at the back there?
— He’s there all right. But he refuses to acknowledge my existence. It’s very hard. He just watches. He watches me desire you, he occupies me with you like a sneak and a small-time spy. I would prefer him out of the way, I would prefer to give myself entirely over to desiring you, but he is one of the warm-hearted and I cannot transfer any energy to him to move him out.
— That isn’t true. You know that isn’t true, don’t you?
— No. It isn’t true. You are quite right. He is no longer there. He hasn’t been there for a long time.
— Because I am there. Wholly and fully, my presence burns up your psychic energy as the road burns through the thin soles of your shoes. I shall always be with you, talking to you and sharing your observation of phenomena, until you die, because that is the way you want it, and I am your dark reality.
— I don’t want it. I never wanted it, I was happy watching flies and eating gruel and talking to myself and making mental love to my wife. Why did you have to take an interest? I didn’t ask for your interest. I didn’t ask to be confronted with your accomplishments and your possessions. Why did you have to flaunt your privileges at me? All privilege brings its dissatisfactions and the privilege of health is no exception. I didn’t ask to be psychoscoped. It’s made me ill. I wasn’t ill before. Why did you have to enter and occupy me in this way? I don’t even like you.
— Because you are my servant and you do as I tell you.
The Settlement is on the right. The hot road continues emptily on then vanishes into the olive groves. In the distance on the hill the upper storey, dazzling white, the flat roof of Western Approaches emerges from greenery that looks grey in the shimmering heat. The fig-tree’s foliage is deeply green, the leaves are large and still, five-lobed, clear-cut and stiff against the tense blue sky. The rough grey bark is wrinkled in the bend of the trunk like an old man’s neck, and along the trunk like a thigh of creased grey denim irregularly shot with darker thread. The rough grey bark is shot with black lines made up of discontinuous black dots, but interrupted by transverse cracks where the trunk curves, or by crinkly craters where branches have been cut away. The rough grey bark is lined and wrinkled like the inside of the brain. The dotted lines make up a system of parallel highways, along which march unending convoys of ants, each one behind the other like jungle porters, patient and purposeful as neural impulses on their way to the synapse in the neural ganglia, where with the action of alkaloid substances such as muscarine for the parasympathetic system and adrenaline for the sympathetic, annulled respectively by atropine and ergotoxine, they will produce their influence on the effector cells. On the right of the nose, with the left eye closed, the thickest grey branch sweeps horizontally below the starting line of the yellow grass patch where Mrs. Ned’s shack begins. The cunonia at the corner sticks out its wine-red spike from a mass of crimson leaves brilliant in the sun. On the left of the nose, with the right eye closed, it underlines Mrs. Ned’s shack, as if Mrs. Ned’s shack were built on it as on a boat with the sea of foliage below, where the long grey twigs it bears curve downwards and then up, in large U-letters just discernible through the leaves.