The Dwarfs (7 page)

- What, now?

- Yes. Just rung.

All ears open. Eyes.

- Hullo?

- Mr Cox?

- Yes. Who’s that?

- I’ve phoned up to say that my client is not satisfied with your work on the ceiling.

- What?

- Don’t forget you gave my client a guarantee. He’s willing to take sixty percent for the castoffs but he can’t stand drips. You fulfil your obligations and he’ll do the same with his. My client’s willing to give you -

- Len, not now, I’m busy. When shall I see you?

- You don’t seem to understand the gravity of this situation, Mr Pox, I mean Cox. The plumbing’s out of order and the meter’s clogging up. The grand piano’s probably beyond repair. If you make a bargain it’s up to you to keep it. My client -

- Righty-o then. If you’re near here, meet me after work.

- This is unheard of.

- Cheerio.

- Don’t forget to bring the sauerkraut.

Ten

- I’m here, Len said, wiping his feet on the hallmat. It’s not raining.

He unhooked the hallmirror from the wall and carried it down the stairs.

- Put it back, Mark said, following him into the room.

- This is the best piece of furniture you’ve got in the house. Did you know that? It’s Spanish. No, Portuguese. You’re Portuguese, aren’t you?

- Put it back.

Len screwed his nose and stared.

- I don’t understand you, he said.

- Put it back.

- Look in this mirror. Look at your face in this mirror. Look! It’s a farce. Your liver’s wrapped up in your kidneys. Where are your features? You haven’t got any features. You’ve got a nose here, an ear there. You’ve been deceiving yourself for years. What’s this supposed to be, a face? You look ready for Broadmoor. I don’t know why I associate with you.

- Take that mirror back, Len.

- I saw Pete today. I met him after work. You didn’t know that. This mirror? What have you got against it? What’s the matter with it? I think I’ll have to call in your male nurse.

He walked up the stairs and hooked the mirror back on the wall. Mark sat down in an armchair and watched him return and pause in the doorway.

- I wonder about you. I often wonder about you, Len murmured. But I must keep pedalling. I must. There’s a time limit.

- Is there?

- Yes.

He smiled and looked about the room.

- Who have you got hiding here? What? You’re not alone here.

- You’re quite right.

- Hmn. How are you getting on with your Esperanto? Don’t forget, anything over two ounces goes up a penny.

- Thanks for the tip, Mark said.

- Yes, but what tips can you give me? None. I’ll go. I’m rusty. I can’t do it. What do you care? You don’t know. But I’ll tell you. Do you know where I’ve just been?

- No.

- I’ve been to the Conway Hall. I’ve just heard the Grosse Fuge. I’ve never heard anything like it. It’s not musical. It’s physical. It’s physical. It’s not music. It’s someone sawing bones in a coffin.

- Really?

- I saw Pete today.

- You said.

- I met him after work. We walked along the Embankment. He asked me to lend him a quid.

- Well?

- I refused.

- What?

- You don’t understand. I told him if I lent him a quid it would be an event. And I don’t want anything to do with events.

Mark closed one eye and squinted, lighting a cigarette.

- What did he say to that? he asked.

- What did he say? He said. He spoke. He had his say. Do you know something? Since I left him I’ve been thinking thoughts I’ve never thought before. I’ve been thinking thoughts I’ve never thought before.

He waved his arms and dropped them.

- Look here, Mark said.

- What?

- Why don’t you leave Pete alone?

- Leave him alone?

- Why don’t you give it a rest? He doesn’t do you any good.

- What did you say?

- I’m the only one who can get on with him, Mark said.

- You?

- Yes. You’ve got to have a certain kind of - something - to get on with him. Anyway, I’ve got it and at the moment you haven’t. What good does he do you? You should give it a rest.

- You get on with him? Len said.

- He doesn’t take any liberties with me. He does with you.

- What makes you think he takes liberties with me?

- Do what you bloodywell like.

- You mean come over to your side.

- What do you mean? Mark said.

Len unhooked the toastingfork from the wall and peered at it.

- This is a work of genius.

- What did you mean by that?

- Do you ever make any toast?

The fork slipped from Len’s hand as he turned it to the light and dropped on to the carpet. Mark bent forward.

- Don’t touch it! Len hissed, cutting the air with his hands. No! You don’t know what will happen if you touch it. Jesus Christ’ll come up if you touch it. Don’t you know that? You’re frightened of Christ, aren’t you? He frightens you.

- Do me a favour, will you?

- No, but he makes you shiver, doesn’t he?

Len bent swiftly and lifted the fork from the floor.

- There you are. Nothing happens when I touch it. No one would bother. I’m in a musty old clothescupboard. I stink of old clothes. I’m only fit for the boiler room. You can see that. Tar, sweat, engines. That’s all. Do you know how you’re looking at me? Excuse me if I laugh. I’ll laugh tomorrow. You’re looking at me as if I were a human being. You’re an old hand at this game, I know, but it’s no use
looking at me like that. You’re trying to look me straight in the eye and I’m looking at your navel. Or are you looking down my throat? If you are, I’m sure you can see a long way down. Anyway, I prefer to stare glasseyed at the navel. When I can. What else do you want me to do? What else can I do? I was never one to prescribe remedies. What about you? I’m sure your remedy would cause a lot of good clean shitting all over the place. So would Pete’s. But they’re not my remedies. I don’t prescribe remedies.

He dropped into an armchair, clutching the toastingfork, and slowly let it slide to his side, covering his eyes.

- You see - I can’t see the broken glass. I can’t see the mirror I have to look through. I see the other side. The other side. But I can’t see the mirror side.

His head lolling, he keened.

- I want to break it, all of it. But how can I break it? How can I break it when I can’t see it?

He hissed through his teeth and shook his head fiercely.

- You’re stone. Am I dead in you? I’ve shot the bolt. If I could move from this chair I’d go.

- Pete and Virginia will be round any minute, Mark said.

- That’s all right. That, I tell you, is all right! Leave me alone. What do you want? Ah. Sniff this room. Sniff it. This room has changed since I’ve been in it. I’ve permeated it. It’s all acrid now.

- You’re wrong. The room’s the same.

- No. Don’t give me that. You don’t know. You’ve no idea what a jackal you’ve got in this room.

- Yes I have.

- No. You think you know something about me but you don’t. Do you know what I am? I’m the ragamuffin who vomits in the palace. There’s a dryrot in me. Rot everywhere. What about the worm that ate a building down? That’s what it’s like. I could stay in this armchair for ever. Or in bed. Yes. Do you know, I can’t step out of bed? I’m unable to step out of the bed. I can’t put my foot on the
floor. I could stay there, always. Have people come and feed me. They could do that easily enough. Yes, you don’t know. You don’t know what you’ve got in this room. A sack of old bones. But can’t you understand? I can’t even commit suicide. It’s got to be a decision. That’s an action. I can’t act. I’m not justified in committing suicide. It would be worthless, meaningless. Suicide isn’t meaningless. It’s an action. That’s what it is.

II

Eleven

What are the dwarfs doing, in their journeys to the street-corners? They stumble in the gutters and produce their pocket-watches. One with a face of chalk chucks the dregs of the day into a bin and seats himself on the lid. He is beginning to chew though he has not eaten. Now they collect at the backstep. One scrubs his veins at the lower sink, now he is gorged in the sud. Spruced and preened, in time for the tuck. Time is kept to the T.

Pete is in the cabin. He cannot hear the backchat of bone from the yard, the crosstalk of bristled skin. He is listening to himself. Now Mark, who combs his hair in mirrors. He holds six pocket-mirrors at related angles. He sings the song of Mark to the cocked glass. He does not see the market outside the window. He sees himself and smiles.

The floor is scrubbed to the grain, my own work.

It is to this fund I donate, and sublet the premises. I strike a shrewd bargain. I am the promoter, although neither Pete nor Mark is aware of the contract, nor of the contractor.

They are still there, the two of them. Or perhaps they have gone. We must wait. I am prepared to wait. I do not want to stop waiting. The end of this vigil is the beginning of nothing.

Twelve

- Come away, come away, death, and in sad cypress let me be laid, Pete sang.

The sun was setting. Lilac hung heavy on the arched tree. The garden flickered. In low deckchairs Len and Mark were lying. Pete gravely ended the dirge, standing at the garden door.

- I like this garden. It’s tranquil.

In a lower garden a bonfire, burning, collapsed, in a gash, splintered. Smoke smarted thinly across the fences.

- My mind’s a blank, Mark said.

- Say the first thing, Len said, that comes into it.

- Shaving in the asylum of Wednesday I saw a toadstool sitting on a blank rabbit, Mark said in one breath.

- Blimey!

- There you are.

- I’ll tell you what, Pete said, thinking got me into this and thinking’s got to get me out. You know what I want? An efficient idea. Do you know what I mean? An efficient idea. One that’ll work. Something I can pin my money on. An eachway bet. Nothing’s guaranteed, I know that. But I’m willing to gamble. I’ve never stopped gambling but I’m a bit cramped these days. That’s what I need. Do you know what I mean? Of course, some people are efficient ideas in themselves. You might be an efficient idea yourself, Mark. You can never tell. I wouldn’t like to pass judgement. But I’m not. I’ve got to sweat for one. And if I can get hold of one I’ve got to make it a going concern. No grafting and no fiddling. Some people can afford to take three or four days off a week. I can’t afford the time. Do you know what I mean?

- I should think they’re very few and far between, efficient ideas, Mark said.

- They may be. But I told you, thinking got me into this and thinking’s got to get me out.

- I once knew a man who didn’t think, Mark said. He rushed home as fast as he could every evening, turned the armchair round, sat in it and looked out of the window. After about two hours, when it was dark, he’d get up and turn on the light.

- Yes, Len said, but I know what you mean about an efficient idea. Like a nutcracker. You press the cracker and the cracker cracks the nut. There’s no waste of energy. It’s an exact process and an efficient one. The idea’s efficient.

- No, Pete said, you’re wrong. There is waste. When you press the cracker with the proper purchase the nut cracks, but at the same time the hinge of the cracker gives out a friction, a heat, which is incidental. It’s unnecessary to the particular idea. It’s nearly efficient but not quite. Because there’s an escape and wastage of energy to no purpose. It’s uneconomic. It’s exactly the same, after all, with a work of art. Every particle of a work of art should crack a nut, or help form a pressure that’ll crack the final nut. Do you know what I mean? Each idea must possess stringency and economy and the image, if you like, that expresses it must stand in exact correspondence and relation to the idea. Only then can you speak of utterance and only then can you speak of achievement. If there’s any excess heat or friction, if there’s any waste, you’ve failed and you have to start again. It’s simple enough.

- But what about the sun and moon? Len said. Isn’t there something ambiguous about the sun and moon?

- Then again, Pete went on, there’s nothing against a geezer constructing his own efficient idea, but he’s got to be quite sure, in the first place, what he means by the term efficient. And once he’s understood it, he’s got to determine to what the idea is relevant, or whether it’s relevant at all. Some ideas that were adequate enough in the past wouldn’t take you farther than the Edgware Road now. You’ve got to be
able to distinguish between a workaday efficiency and a relative one, one that might have been relevant once, or might be relevant in different circumstances, but isn’t now. It’s a matter of considering what world you’re relating it to.

- Well, we can’t make any mistake about that, said Mark.

- I don’t know, Pete said. I don’t know that we quite agree on that point, Mark.

- You mean we may be talking about two different things?

- Yes. What it comes down to is what world, exactly, are you talking about?

- What world? The whole gamut as far as you can sniff. Backwards and forward and in and out.

- Yes, but I sometimes think you’re omitting to sniff relevant matters which are right under your nose. You know what I mean?

- I think I sniff what you’re getting at all right.

- Well, quite frankly, Mark, I suggest you don’t pay enough attention to what goes on around you.

- You mean the headlines.

- There’s more to it than that. You’re subject to what goes on around you and you depend on it for your welfare and existence. I don’t see how you can fail to be involved. This is the society you live in and I wouldn’t say you’re fulfilling your part of the bargain.

- You refer to the busticket world.

- All right. You have tuppence in your pocket and you pay your fare. But it seems to me you regard that tuppence, and more to the point, the conveyance itself, as a divine right. The way you pay your tuppence you don’t really pay it at all. You’re getting a free ride. You don’t fully realize that the tuppence is sweat and the ride is sweat too.

- I’m a liability on the world’s bank balance.

- You’re not only a liability, Pete laughed, you’re a bloody hallucination! Sometimes I can’t believe you exist at all.

- But where you do believe I exist, Mark said, is as a parasite.

- Not entirely.

- A parasite, Mark said, standing up. But it’s inaccurate. I don’t live on anyone’s earnings. I don’t pinch anything from the till. I’ve nothing but contempt for the till. I’m not concerned with the standards you’re talking about. I follow my itch, that’s all. It’s not going up your alley, it may not be going up anyone’s alley, so what? I don’t aspire to the great standards. They don’t apply to me. I don’t live with them.

- That’s the point, Pete said. What I’m accusing you of is operating on life and not in it.

- If I’m a ponce, Mark said, I’m my own ponce. I’m nobody else’s ponce. I live and I operate in my own life.

- You can’t live safely tucked up in a test tube.

- You’re off the beam.

- Your danger, Mark, is that you might become nothing but an attitude.

- Not while I’ve still got balls, mate.

- They won’t save you. They might drop off.

- I keep them well oiled.

- Look. What I’m objecting to is that you tend to take a bit of a holiday in between times.

- If I do, they’re not with pay. I fork out. Anyway the term holiday isn’t valid. You use the term holiday because I’m deviating from your course. I’m not deviating from my own.

- Ah, Pete said, there may be some truth in that. I told you, you might be an efficient idea.

He passed Mark a cigarette and struck a match.

- What you don’t understand about me, Mark said, is this - I’ve got no ambition.

Pete looked at him.

- Oh, he said. I see.

- Listen, Mark snapped. It’s about time I told you people something else - for your own good.

- What?

- Did you know I was born circumcised?

- What!

- The geezer came along with the carvingknife to do the necessary and nearly dropped down dead with the shock. They had to give him a doublebrandy on the house. He thought I was the Messiah.

- Well, Len asked, own up. Are you?

Later, they left the house and walked past the pond to the Swan café, to meet Virginia. She had arrived, and was sitting in the corner.

- Well, Pete said, as they sat down with tea, how’s Marie?

- She’s very well, said Virginia.

- Marie Saxon? said Mark. What’s she doing now?

- She spends most of her time, Pete said, in Soho. Prancing about with all and sundry.

- Is she still in love with me?

- She didn’t mention it, Virginia said.

- She was mad about me, Mark said, in the old days.

- She isn’t the one, Pete asked, that you banged round the earhole once?

- No. That was Rita.

- Oh yes. Rita.

- What was that? Len asked.

- She was leading him up the garden, Pete laughed, or something, so he knocked her teeth in.

- Not quite, Mark said, but she asked for it, anyway. It was the biggest surprise of her life. I’ve got no regrets. Taught her respect. Listen Len. Don’t look at me like that. You didn’t know the girl. There was room for no other action, I assure you. So Marie’s not in love with me, any more, eh?

- Love? Pete said. She’s flogging her whatsit to bellboys and pisshounds.

From the inner room of the café came the sound of a guitar, strummed heavily.

- What have you all been doing? asked Virginia.

- Chatting, Pete said. A social evening.

- Right, said Mark.

- I was trying to explain to Len, Pete said, how he’d benefit under my health scheme, but he wouldn’t listen.

- What’s the book, Virginia? Mark asked.

-
Hamlet
.

-
Hamlet
? Pete said.

- What’s it like?

- Do you know, Virginia said, it’s odd, but I suddenly can’t find any virtue in the man.

- Really? Mark said.

- No.

- Why?

- No, she said, no, I - after all, what is he? What is he but vicious, maudlin, spiteful, and sensitive to nothing but his own headaches? I find him completely unprepossessing.

She sat back, tapping her spoon on the table. A voice was raised, from the inner room, singing in Italian to the guitar.

- Well, Mark laughed, it’s a point of view.

- You’re quite wrong, Pete said, of course.

- I don’t know, Virginia murmured. What does he do but talk and talk, and now and again stick a knife into someone. I mean a sword.

- I find this rather amusing, Pete said. But we won’t go into it.

- I’ve got to go, Len said, standing up.

- Yes, Pete said, we’ll adjourn.

- Allnight shift? Mark asked, as they walked to the door.

- Yes, Len said. There’s my bus.

- Be seeing you, said Pete. Len ran across the road.

- You can see yourself home, Ginny? Pete said. I think I’ll go straight back.

- Of course.

- Shall I see you home? Mark said.

- No, no, it’s quite all right.

- My bus, Pete said. See you. Ta-ta, Mark. He walked across the road.

- Well, Virginia said, I’d better be off.

Mark watched her lips move.

- I can easily -

- No, it’s all right, Mark. It’s only five minutes.

- How are you? he asked.

- Fine.

- Uh-huh.

- Well, she said, I’d better be going. I’ll be seeing you.

- Yes.

- Cheerio.

- Goodnight, Mark said.

- Goodnight.