“As if by magic?”
“Hey presto! Clinker brick and corrugated iron.”
She thought: He’s flipped his lid, he’s seeing things. But I suppose we should count our blessings. At least it’s all in his mind; the real thing would be intolerable.
Now that he had something concrete to go on, Malgas tried to engage Nieuwenhuizen in conversation, on the reasonable assumption that a familiar voice and a well-loved topic would coax him back into the land of the living, and so he introduced a daily report-back into his programme. During these sessions he sat on a stone at the end of the tent where he imagined Nieuwenhuizen’s head to be and spoke matter of factly about his new powers of insight. “I must say: Bakelite, yes,” he would say, “balusters, bay windows, breastsummers, bricks of course, and, I almost forgot, braai-spots. Please insert, I do declare.”
Then he tended the plan, and block by block, wall by wall, with an unpredictable oozing of mortar and PVA, with innumerable proliferations and ramifications, with digressions, diversions and divagations, with false starts, blind spots and dead ends, with set-backs and quantum leaps, two steps forward and one step back, the new house made an appearance, until one day he found himself enclosed in it, surrounded on all sides and sealed off from the outside world. And still the house continued to grow: here a room, there a room, here a passage in between. Here a wall, there a wall, here a screen. And storey by storey, here a floor, there a floor, now a mezzanine, the house continued to grow.
It was a magnificent place, every bit as grand as Malgas had thought it would be, but it had its shortcomings, which he was quick to perceive too. It had no depth. It had the deceptive solidity of a stage-set. The colours were unnaturally intense, yet at the slightest lapse of concentration on his part the whole edifice would blanch and sway as if it was about to fall to pieces.“It has to be said,” he said, feeling insecure.
Interestingly, although he had learned to see the new house, and understood that this accomplishment was somehow connected with his love for the plan, the exact relationship between the two continued to elude him. He was puzzling over this one day when he recalled the secret nail, which had lain forgotten under the compacted remains of the ash-heap. No sooner had he called the nail to mind, than the entire house spurted out of the ground.
Until this moment he had never dared to venture from his post in the entrance hall at the foot of the grand staircase, but now he was carried aloft on a wave of optimism and found himself in a reception room on the second floor with the whole house humming around him, alive to his senses, ablaze with light and colour. As he gazed upon his luscious surroundings, his mouth began to water. The place was good enough to eat. He would start on the wall next to the fireplace — layers of flaky stone sandwiching globs of caramelized mortar, studded with cherries and nuts. He had never seen so much light gathered together in one place! It poured from crystal chandeliers and twisty candelabra. It dripped from lozenges of coloured glass. It seeped like honey from the brick and gleamed like a sugared glaze on slabs of creamy marble and chocolaty wood.It was so sweet to be alive inside the new house that Malgas swooned.
Everything fell into place.
The secret nail, pulsing like a beacon, drew Malgas to a room under the stairs which had been set aside especially for him. It was musty and narrow, and the ceiling sloped awkwardly and made him stoop, but a bright rug and a swinging lantern made it cosy as a casket. There was a hammock, and an armchair with a soft cushion for the small of the back, a side-table with a reading-lamp, and a toolbox that doubled as a footstool.When Mr told Mrs about his room she sniffed and said, “I always knew you’d want to go off without me some day.”
Practice makes perfect, and Malgas was something of a perfectionist. He practised seeing the new house until it came out of his ears. He popped open its rooms as if they were Chinese lanterns and stretched out entire wings like concertinas. He telescoped columns and slotted them into moist sockets on balconies. He unrolled floors and stacked up stairs. He rollercoastered reams of tiles over the rafters.
Then, in the wink of an eye, he did all of these things again in reverse.
He also practised being in the new house. He practised strolling around in the rooms and leaning in the interleading doorways. He went into every room at least once, not excepting the tiniest antechamber or alcove. When he knew where everything was, he practised the everyday tasks that would transform the house, in time, into a home: ringing the bell, locking the security gate, listening to messages on the answering-machine, filling the kettle, turning on the telly, sitting on the couch, eating the TV dinner, answering the telephone, Hello? straightening the pictures, leafing through the magazines, sighing, putting out the cat, filling the hot-water bottle, switching on the bedside lamp, turning back the corner of the carpet, picking up the paper-knife. When he had finished practising for the day, he rested in his room under the stairs.
It was during one of these rest periods that Nieuwenhuizen reappeared on the scene.
“There you are,” he said from the doorway, into which he had slotted himself without making the slightest sound, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
Malgas was astonished at the sight of him. His cheeks were like crumpled wrapping-paper. A child had coloured his features in with thick wax-crayons — purple for the lips, bottle-green for the nose, blood-red for the eyes. The hair on his head was scribbled Indian ink. Under lids like wads of damp blotting-paper his irises spluttered fitfully. Malgas was filled with pity and compassion for the owner of this vandalized face; but he knew that restraint was called for, so he kept his emotions in check, continued to dandle himself in his hammock, and said simply, “Here I am.”
“You’ve made yourself at home.”
“I’ve been seeing to things in your absence. Everything’s here, in perfect shape.”
“My faithful Malgas. I’m proud of you.”
This tribute moved Malgas deeply. It seemed to him that the time had now come to express his feelings. “I think we’ve both been marvellous,” he said, lumbering to his feet and embracing Nieuwenhuizen. His confinement had left him thinner and drier than ever: he felt like a bundle of reeds. When Malgas released him he staggered back and blinked his droopy eyes. “It’s bright in here.”
Malgas averted the reading-lamp, suddenly ashamed of his own tears, and said bluffly, “Can I get you something? Juice? Lager?”
“It’s cold for beer. But a whisky would hit the spot.”
“Let’s make our way then to the built-in bar.”
Malgas bustled Nieuwenhuizen out of the doorway, pulled the door shut and took him by his sharp elbow. They walked. When Malgas heard the tentative squee? squee? of Nieuwenhuizen’s rubber soles and the affirmative patter of his own velskoene, the turmoil in his heart subsided and he began to recover his composure. They went upstairs and passed down a long, gleaming gallery. At the end they turned right and elbowed through batwing doors into the bar. Nieuwenhuizen sat on a tall stool, which had brass trimmings and was bolted to the floor, while Malgas mixed the drinks.
Then side by side, with glasses in hand, Nieuwenhuizen, on the left, and Malgas, on the right, walked through the new house.
At the end of every sparkling corridor they saw their own reflections in full-length mirrors and polished stone, in smoked-glass partitions and lacquered panels, and all these silent witnesses to their containment conspired to give Malgas the courage of his convictions.