“Notice the built-in hinges here, and the little triangular compartment in the corner for Sauce. Brilliant.”
Nieuwenhuizen peered into the container, grunted, wiped his fingers on his safari suit and tore another rib from the rack. When they had eaten their fill they moved their stones back in preparation for the bonfire.
”Say a few words, Father,” Malgas suggested.
“Why not? I’m in a talkative mood.” Nieuwenhuizen gathered his thoughts as he scoured the grease from his palms with a handful of sand, and then called for silence, cleared his throat, and began: “We have dined sumptuously, thanks to the generosity of our friend and colleague Malgas. Now let us enjoy a blazing fire and sit around it chatting amiably.”
“Hear! Hear!” Malgas exclaimed. “Well spoken!”
Nieuwenhuizen took a match from a waterproof container, struck it, and dabbed the base of the heap with the flame.
It wouldn’t burn.
“It so happens,” said Malgas, reaching into the darkness and producing, with a flourish, a king-size pack of Blitz Firelighters.
Nieuwenhuizen shook his head resolutely.
It was a crestfallen Mr who barged through his house a few minutes later, snatched a key from a hook and went to the garage. Mrs followed him silently to the back door and waited there until he returned carrying a petrol tin.
“You be careful with that,” she said.
Mr took two six-packs of beer from the fridge (Lions and Castles).
“You be careful with that too,” she said, following in his footsteps to the front door and watching after him through the bars of the security gate. Then she went back to her stool in the darkened lounge.
Nieuwenhuizen took the petrol tin and departed for the top of the heap. Malgas wanted to go with him, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “You’ll get your boots dirty,” he crowed. Malgas was left behind at the camp, staring dejectedly at his Hush Puppies. Nieuwenhuizen went up the heap in leaps and bounds and in no time at all he was standing on the summit. Instead of emptying the petrol into the “core,” as Malgas had proposed, he raised the tin in an expansive toast and kicked his heels.
Malgas took the opportunity to break the Firelighters into sticks and spike the lower slopes. When that was done, he saw that Nieuwenhuizen was still occupied, so he slipped off his garters and pushed his socks down to his ankles. He ruffled his hair. He began to feel much better. Nieuwenhuizen stopped dancing and started pouring libations, first to the cardinal points of the compass and then to the lesser-known points in between. NNW, SSE, NWS. Malgas stretched himself out on the ground, rolled over a few times, and then looked up at the stars. They were far away, no argument. Mrs liked to describe them as pinpricks in a velvet tarpaulin. They had names, which the fundis were familiar with, and they were said to be “wheeling.” Furthermore, your stars foretold. If you understood how to join them together, like puzzles, you could arrive at mythological beings and household names. “He probably knows just how to do it. He’s travelled. Why don’t I, when I know so much about the world? Over coffee I — blast! — the chocolate digestives!”
When Nieuwenhuizen eventually returned he was greeted by enthusiastic cries of “Speech! Speech!” but he waved the request aside. His adventures on the heap had had a marvellously soothing effect on him, for he patted Malgas between the shoulder-blades and handed him the matches. “Do the honours — you’re the guest. I’ll get the lights.” He doused the hurricane-lamp.
Afterwards, when he recalled his conduct in these unusual circumstances, Malgas allowed himself a flush of pride. It would have turned out badly for him had he followed Nieuwenhuizen’s lead and stooped to light the fire. In the heat of the moment, however, he was able to acquit himself with grace and composure. An image came into his mind — a match, like a tiny rocket, blazing an arc through space — and this godsend saved the day and impressed it on his memory as one of beauty and balance. His hand found exactly the gesture that was required to scrape the head of the match along the side of the box and propel it on its journey; the match, igniting as it entered the atmosphere and burning ever brighter as it flew, found precisely the triumphal trajectory that would bring it, when it was at its brightest, to the heap, which was by now embroiled in a miasma of volatile fumes; the heap sucked in its breath, soured with the smell of petrol, its tangled limbs shuddered, it gasped — and blurted out a tongue of flame so huge and incandescent that it turned night into day and extinguished the stars.
Nieuwenhuizen could not have been more astounded if Malgas himself had burst into flames. He pointed weakly at the stone next to him. Malgas lowered his bulk onto it and the two of them gaped in speechless wonder at the burning mountain.
At last the flames died down, the mountain began to collapse onto itself, squirting sparks into the insurgent darkness, and Nieuwenhuizen found his tongue.
“Pull your stone a bit closer and I’ll tell you a story.”
“Which reminds me,” said Malgas. He reached casually into the shadows and brought forth the beers. They were still icy. Nieuwenhuizen punched Malgas’s arm and chose a Castle, Malgas followed suit, and they popped them open.
“Cheers!”
They drank.
Malgas wiped the froth from his lips lavishly with the back of his hand. “Tell me about the old place,” he prompted. “What made you tear up your roots and come all this way to start over?
Do you have a dream? Tell me everything, don’t leave out a single detail, I’m an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Also, I need facts, to win over the doubting Mrs.”
These lines struck Malgas as among the finest he had ever uttered; there was no question that they were the most inspired he had addressed to Nieuwenhuizen so far. Nieuwenhuizen appreciated the speech too, and there was a touch of admiration in his expression as he tilted back his head, creating an oblique play of shadows across his features, stared into the fire, where a mass of twisted tongues were wagging, and murmured, “The Mrs.”
“My wife.”
“I remember.” Pause. “Where to begin. . Yes.” He scuffed a burnt rib from the ashy edge of the fire with the toe of his boot. “Take this rib here, Malgas.”
Malgas spat on his fingers and picked up the bone.
At that moment lights blazed in Malgas’s lounge, a window burst open explosively, and Mrs Malgas was heard to shout, “Put out that fire at once! This is a smokeless zone! Give Him hell, Cooks!”
“She’s gone too far this time,” Malgas muttered, leapt to his feet and plunged into the darkness. As he fumed across the stubbled field, pressing his beer tin to his sunburnt neck, a broth of angry phrases seethed up in his throat, but the mere sight of his wife’s trembling silhouette was enough to make him swallow it down. All he could manage as he hurried up to the wall was, “Put out that light! You’re spoiling the fire.”
“He’s getting soot all over everything,” she whined, and flustered like a paper cut-out against the window-pane. “The pool’s turned black as ink. Look at your clothes! What have you been doing?”