“You choose.”
“The cottage pie is also known as a shepherd’s pie, for some reason now lost to us. It consists of minced meat baked under a shroud of mashed potatoes. Or it will when I’ve put it in the microwave.”
“I don’t care. Just do it.”
“I know! It was made with mutton, once upon a time, sheep would die of exposure, bad shepherds, and potatoes are cheap and freely available.”
Nieuwenhuizen burst from his chair like a jack-in-the-box and writhed out of the room. The old volume, launched carelessly from his lap, flapped through the air and crash-landed in the fire. Malgas leapt to the rescue with the tongs, then thought better of it and left it to burn.
“I’ll bake you both and we’ll go halves,” he said to the dinners and hurried them back to the kitchen.
Mr Malgas stopped going to work. He lost weight and he began to smell, because he wouldn’t eat and he wouldn’t bath. All he would do was keep Nieuwenhuizen company.
And Mrs, despite her better intentions, found that she could do nothing but observe. Her loneliness and lack of self-esteem pressed in upon her and her health declined. She wasn’t allowed to do the ironing anymore. She wouldn’t dust. The Hoover had given up the ghost. Day after day, week after week, she had to watch them going through the motions.
On a typical morning Mr went next door at dawn. He looked in the letter-box. BEWARE OF THE DOG! He marched boldly towards the plan, which sad to say was now a pale and tatty shadow of its former self, and stepped into it. He waved his hands around, shuffled sideways, walked, knocked, buzzed, tweaked, fiddled with the air, opened it and went inside.
“Otto!”
“Cooee!”
“Cookalooks!” Mrs cried, and bit her tongue so hard it bled. Nieuwenhuizen turned over in the ashes, stretched, rose, opened
the door under the stairs and shook Mr’s hand. Side by side they began to walk. They walked up and down and on the spot. They went in circles and seated themselves on the ground. They spoke briefly. Three times Nieuwenhuizen got to his feet, threw himself into the air, and allowed his limbs to rattle down like pick-up sticks. Mr followed his example, laughing good-naturedly even while he was bruising himself and spraining various parts of his body.
Then Nieuwenhuizen excused himself and sloped away to a corner of the plan, where he leant on the air and stared into space. Mr took off his clothes. He rubbed sand and ash all over his skin and scraped it off with sticks and stones. He danced around. He put on his clothes again and went and stood next to Nieuwenhuizen, staring out. They walked together, arm in arm, and stopped, walked apart and waved to each other, lay down on the ground like a pair of brackets, and went to sleep.
Malgas dreamt that he and Nieuwenhuizen were flying at a great height (side by side).
When they awoke they sat together again in a triangle of string, like toddlers in a play-pen, staring and talking. Then they stood up, patted themselves, and walked all over the show, each according to his own inclinations, careful to avoid the camp, going in circles, hopping, turning left and right, until they were reunited at the front door, whereupon they shook hands and shouted out greetings.
“Farewell!”
“Sweet dreams!”
Mr stepped out of the plan and walked to the street. He looked in the letter-box and came home.
“Your food’s in the warming-drawer,” Mrs said. “Probably spoilt.”
“I’m not hungry,” said Mr with a wan smile. “I couldn’t eat a horse. Not even a pony.”
“You should put something in your stomach. Your clothes are hanging on you.”
“I’ve eaten.”
“You look like death warmed up,” she said, trying to wipe the smile off his face, “and you smell like bonemeal. We’ll be digging you into the flower-beds one of these fine days. For the phlox.”
But Mr was too happy for words. He drifted through his house as if it wasn’t there. He lay down in a dark corner of the pantry and fell asleep with a smile on his lips.
Mrs wanted to describe what he’d been up to, but she couldn’t get a word in edgeways.
On an evening like this, a fairly typical evening when all is said and done, as Mrs Malgas lay alone in the clutches of the La-Z-Boy, the unrest report finally delivered up, as an item of news, the film of a woman being burnt alive.
A woman suspected of being a spy, the unrest reporter declared, was set alight today by an angry mob.
There was a warning that sensitive viewers might find the following scenes distressing, and Mrs shut her eyes responsibly. But when the screen cast its light upon her lids, it came to her that she had been waiting for nothing so much as this moment, and she felt obliged to open her eyes again, and saw the burning woman running down a road between matchbox houses.
A burning woman!
A woman suspected of being a spy.
I spy something beginning with a B. A burning.
The people who had set the woman alight, beginning with an L, the one who had struck the match and the curious others drawn to the flames, and furious others afraid of the dark, ran after the woman and breathed the smoke. She leapt into the air. One of her shoes flew off. She fell and crumpled into a ball, and her tattered red frock settled over her. The others, delirious fools, appalled arrangements of dots, gathered and by their watching fuelled, the woman curled, the woman unfurled and stood up again on two legs. A shoe.
Brth.
A woman on fire! Aflame.
The moths, ordinary people, the other poor mirrors, momentarily scattered, gathered again. Mrs found herself in the smothering circle of onlookers, scattering and gathering, gazing upon, pull yourself together, their illuminated faces, as if, as if the naming of their expressions, by the light of the human torch, by its dying, its death, were the claiming of her own.
She switched off the set, belatedly, and the image died down into two coals under her eyelids. Remembers, embers, mbrs, mrs, s.
Mrs thought about the fact that she was sensitive. Was documentary proof required? Written evidence?
Then Mrs thought about Mr and how he was embarrassing himself. He was up to maggots and losing weight — even the spare tyre. His happiness was consuming him. And Nieuwenhuizen? There were bits and pieces of Him everywhere. What was left of Him? She rose and went towards the window, but the net curtain blew like smoke into her face and she was turned back gasping into her restless household. Nieuwenhuizen and Malgas sat down to pass the time of day in their easy chairs in the rumpus room. They had spent an active morning playing a version of snap thought up by Malgas, involving fixtures and features, and they were both pleasantly tuckered out.
They mulled over a comfortable silence.
Malgas looked once again at the bandoleer and the hunter’s hat, which Nieuwenhuizen had taken to wearing day and night. Malgas had always disapproved of the bandoleer, although it may have suited the rough and ready atmosphere of the camp. But in the new house it was totally out of place. As for the hat. . did one really need protective headgear indoors? Had it come to that? He’d been meaning to say something all day, but held back for fear of spoiling the easy comradeship that had developed between them. Perhaps criticism was premature? Time had to pass, it had to be allowed to pass unmolested. Or had the right moment arrived? Did the moment have to be challenged with an unpronounceable password? He formulated a question, edited it, and was about to come out with it when Nieuwenhuizen raised his right hand to hush him, kinked his eyebrows into kappies (circumflexes) and formed a perfect o with his lips, flexed his fingers, plunged his hand like a grapnel through the floorboards, fished, and hauled up a section of the plan.