Mr looked on distraught. Mrs, still visibly shaken by her encounter with the incontinent china shoe the night before, was scrubbing bric-à-brac in the kitchen sink. She said sharply, “It serves you right.”
“It does not.”
“He treats you like a dog and I’m not surprised, the way you run after Him with your tongue hanging out. Now stop snuffling and go to work.”
At length Nieuwenhuizen arrived at, “Entrance hall. . whatnot. . dimmer switch. . front door. . peephole. . welcome mat. .” He wiped his feet, scrambled into his tent and zipped shut the flap.
Zzzzzzz.
He would not be seen again in person for several weeks. Mr Malgas, the penitent, imagined that he had Nieuwenhuizen’s skinny legs and big boots, and he took long creaking strides with these legs and bounced on his toes. He heard Nieuwenhuizen’s dry bones grating together. He imagined that he had Nieuwenhuizen’s thorny index finger, and he squinted down it and muttered, “Gomma Gomma armchair. . La-Z-Boy. . Gomma Gomma armchair. . display cabinet. . Gomma Gomma sofa. . Antimacassar!”
When he started naming all the knick-knacks, in a tone of voice that seemed to mock her own cataloguing efforts, Mrs lost her temper and said, “For crying out loud, will you stop that. I can’t stand it any more. If I close my eyes I could swear it’s Him, right here in our midst. If you’re not going to work today, why don’t you make yourself useful around the home. The place is going to rack and ruin. Clean the pool. Mow the lawn. Do some weeding.”
So Mr Malgas creaked around in his backyard, fingering and thumbing the rusty shafts of his neglected garden implements, and the more he tried to be like Nieuwenhuizen, the more acutely he felt his absence, and had to ache with the loss.
Poor old Malgas.
There was no sign of life at the camp. It was so quiet over there, day after day, that Mr Malgas began to suspect that Nieuwenhuizen had made good his escape under cover of darkness.
Mrs was no comfort.
“What I would like to know is this:” she said. “What does He eat? Has He been salting away songbirds and lap-dogs? Is He on some sort of starvation diet? How does He dispose of His night-soil? Does it constitute a health hazard? Does He do His ablutions in Tupperware? Can you imagine how it pongs by now in that confined space? When last did you lay eyes on Him? Yesterday? The day before? How do you know He’s still in there? Does He answer when you call? What if He’s made a get-away? That’s all.”
“He would never abandon the plan,” Mr insisted. “He’s not like that.”
But at the end of the day he was forced to investigate and found it harrowing. His knees were shaking as he slunk along in the shadow of the hedge, averting his eyes from the plan and blocking his ears with the fleshy palms of his hands. He made a brief tour of the camp and its environs. Although the ashes in the fireplace were cold and crusted over, the gadgets were all in place, indicating that the camp was still inhabited, and heartened by this discovery he crept closer to the tent and put an ear to the canvas. Ha! He heard the stirring music of Nieuwenhuizen’s breathing, in and out, round and round, like a spoon scraping the bottom of a pot.
He headed home to break the news, but got no further than the gutter, where he came across the letter-box. What a perfect symbol of his humiliation it was. . and yet it saddened him to see it lying there, all scuffed and down at heel. He cradled it tenderly, murmured comforting words, and balanced it on top of its post.
This small constructive gesture made him feel better.
He glanced apprehensively at the plan. It was looking a little the worse for wear. He went closer. His heart began to pound again. The signs of neglect were all too clear: the string was frayed and yellowing; a nail or two had worked loose; diminutive dunes of sand and ash had rolled up around the knots. Despite the ravages of the season’s bitter winds and frosts, some porraceous weeds were sprouting.
He crouched down and twirled a length of gritty string between thumb and forefinger. He became aware of Nieuwenhuizen’s breathing, which rose and fell like a tide in the background, and the sound gave him goose-flesh. A salty sense of transience washed over him, dumped him head over heels in its surf, and receded, casting up this disturbing conclusion: “I, Malgas, hold the new house in my hands. In the absence of Father, who is indisposed, albeit temporarily, or is it permanent? we don’t know, I, the Malgas, am custodian of the plan, and without me it is doomed. This bewildering blueprint, bewitching too in its way, produced with faith and discipline under difficult circumstances, will fade away. The nails will rust. The string will be poached little by little to tie up packages and truss roasts and fly kites and do the million and one other indispensable, insignificant things string does. The construction site will be reclaimed by the fertile veld.”
“Father has turned his back on us, it seems. But what if his heart, which is big, and strong, and soft in the middle, still cossets a spark of hope, as mine did once, even in its darkest chamber. As mine does now! What if Father emerges from his self-imposed exile — was I the sole and singular cause? I hope not — rested and restored, ready to have that spark fanned into a beacon to light our way to the future, which I see before me now, no, it’s gone again — I say, emerges only to find the plan in ruins?”
Quite overcome by his own grandiloquence, Mr Malgas stumbled to the tent and called, “Daddy! Daddy!”
“Zzzzzzz.” What a joker! Nieuwenhuizen had to think about his mortal remains rotting in the bowels of the earth to keep from laughing.
Mr Malgas turned back to the plan. Somehow it seemed less chaotic than before.
A voice he didn’t recognize said distinctly, “Malgas.”
“There must be more to life than Hardware,” he made answer. “Materials are important, I won’t deny it, they’ve been good to me. Tools too. Packaging is an art-form, the wheels must go round, these things are given. But surely one should also build, with one’s own hands, according to one’s own innermost desires, and be seen to build. Ask me: I’ve done a bit of building in my time. Do it yourself. See our display advert.”
He unbuttoned his shirt, to reveal Mr Hardware with his hammer and nail. Then he opened his eyes as wide as they’d go, walked steadfastly into the middle of the plan and chose for trial purposes an especially grubby triangle. He spat on his handkerchief and wiped the string. He dusted off a trio of nails and tightened a few knots. The improvement was dramatic. So he went back to the camp, soaked his hanky in the drum of stagnant water under the tree, wrung it out, and set about systematically cleaning the entire plan.
The following day Mr Malgas came prepared. He brought a tub of axle-grease to lubricate the shafts of the nails and safeguard them against rust, and some Silvo and a soft cloth to buff the heads. It was tricky work: he had to extract each nail from its hole, smear it and reinsert it, without undoing any knots or dropping any stitches. As if that wasn’t taxing enough, no sooner had the nails been removed than the wounds would want to heal themselves. The lubrication took three days.