Authors: Ivan Vladislavic
Despite his misgivings of the night before, a spark of hope had kindled in his breast while he slept. He had woken with an inkling that the plan would be loud and clear after all and reveal the new house to him in all its splendour. Now, as his guide’s footsteps receded and he waited anxiously for further instructions, with the incense of the breakfast fire in his nostrils and the morning sun inflaming his sealed eyelids, his little hope flared up into a burning desire for revelation.
From a distance, Nieuwenhuizen commanded him to see.
He opened his eyes.
All hope was snuffed out in an instant. He found himself in the midst of an immense, tattered net full of holes and knots and twisted threads, more holes than threads, as a matter of fact, but for all that utterly impenetrable. To call it a plan was to grant it a semblance of purpose and order it evidently did not deserve. It was a shambles. It
was so unremittingly drunken and disorderly that tears started from Malgas’s eyes.
Distantly, from the peripheries of his sight, Nieuwenhuizen invited him to explore.
Malgas remembered the web Nieuwenhuizen had woven once of transparent stuff as smooth as silk (or was it satin?) and as sweet as candy-floss. He tried to transform the bristly macramé scattered around him into that dreamy substance, but it remained stubbornly itself. Then he tried to recall the grid system, Roman numerals down one side and capitals down the other,
A
,
I
,
E
,
A
,
E
,
E
,
E
, but the wild and woolly scribblings made it impossible to sustain his cross-hatching. He called to mind a helpful hint: varnishes and veneers. Vrnshs ’n vnrs. Nonsense. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, and the brittle crust of the earth broke into mosaic pieces and Scrabble tiles. “House,” he mumbled, as if he was praying, and the verb itself shattered into spillikins against his palate.
Nieuwenhuizen’s applause rang in Malgas’s ears like the footfalls of a fleeing suspect.
With an effort, Malgas dragged his eyes over the plan yet again, frantic for meaning, urgently willing some fragment of the new house to rise from the jumble of nails and string. His eyes began to burn. He unpicked a thread, followed it around the perimeter of a lopsided square, lost it in a sheepshank. He picked up another, wove with it until it plunged into a knot the size of a child’s fist and was gone for ever. The edges of his vision unravelled. He welcomed the onset of delusion, taking it for extra-sensory perception; and when the whole
shabby web seemed to drift and billow in a troubled current, he was relieved to assume that the plan was beginning to communicate its meaning to him.
Acting on this assumption, he stepped out of the square in which he had been stranded into an adjacent triangle.
Nieuwenhuizen beamed, but Malgas was oblivious. He stepped boldly over the hypotenuse of the triangle into a rhombus. Nieuwenhuizen’s face clouded over. Malgas strode across the rhombus in three long steps, gaining momentum, and jumped feet first into a rickety rectangle. The heel of his shoe caught on the dividing line and it twanged. He turned right, he stepped into a passage way segmented by countless lines of string, and hopscotched along it.
There is no telling what his next move would have been, had Nieuwenhuizen’s angry cries not brought him to a sudden halt, balanced on his left foot in a small parallelogram, his right foot suspended in mid-air, like a statue of a man hopping.
Nieuwenhuizen sprang into action. He bounded onto the plan and skipped lithely from figure to figure. He made left turns, right turns, and about turns, he marched on the spot, he ran forwards, he whirled in circles and came face to face with Malgas, he seized him by the shoulders and shouted, “Where the blazes are you man? Do you have any clue?”
“Er.” Malgas put down his right foot and looked wildly around. “
IVG
?” he asked hopelessly.
“Forgy?”
“
IV-G
.” Malgas held up four fingers. For a delirious moment he
thought he had stumbled upon the correct answer. “You know, The Grid.”
“Forget about the bloody grid! We left that behind long ago. Concentrate on The Plan and tell me where you are.”
Malgas chewed his cheeks.
Nieuwenhuizen rocked him backwards and forwards, and hissed, “Open your ears and I’ll tell you. You’re on the brink of disaster! Do you read me? One more step – just one more – and you’ll plummet to a horrible end in the frog-infested moat.”
Malgas tasted blood. Tears crept out of his eyes.
“There-there,” Nieuwenhuizen relented, “there-there.” He took Malgas gently by the arm and manoeuvred him around in a circle. “There. Can you see it now? Take your time.”
“I
can’t
,” said Malgas in a broken voice. “We Malgases have never been good at this kind of thing.”
“What you need is the guided tour,” said Nieuwenhuizen. “It’s a pity, I had high hopes for you once, but now it can’t be helped. Wait here and keep your eyes open. And your ears.” He leapt back and waved his arms around: “Observation deck!” He pointed to the left: “Balustrade.” He pointed to the right: “Sliding door.” He stepped over a line and pointed at the ground: “Spiral staircase.” He walked downstairs and turned right: “Passage, first floor.” He took five paces down the passage and his left arm shot out: “Master bedroom.” His right arm shot out: “Armoury.” He walked on the spot and skipped across three triangles: “Ground floor, west wing.” He spun in a spiral: “Basement. Bomb shelter.”
Through all this Malgas stood rooted to the spot. But now a desperate desire to participate made him tear up one heavy foot, take a ponderous step over the nearest line and say poignantly, “Guest-room.”
Nieuwenhuizen flew into a towering rage. He ran furiously on the spot, turning left and right and left again, he flung his arms away and snatched them back, he went in circles and squares, he ran upstairs, he turned left, he ran up more stairs, turned right, sprinted across a landing, jumped, and shouted in Malgas’s ear, “You clueless monkey! How did you get in there? Can you walk through walls? Come out at once!”
Malgas fled. Nieuwenhuizen trotted after him, shoving him in the small of his back and shouting, “You’re a big waste of time, you blind buffoon. You’re a stink-bomb. You’ll never see the new house. Get off my plan! Off! Off!”
Mr Malgas ran into the street without looking left or right or left again. Nieuwenhuizen snapped the letter-box off its post and threw it after him. “You’ll have to live in here! You’re not fit to live in the new house. I don’t know why I bother, really.”
The letter-box clattered against the kerb.
Mr ran home, sobbing with hurt and frustration.
For hours afterwards, Nieuwenhuizen was pacing to and fro, upstairs and downstairs, from room to room, from feature to feature, naming them all to himself in a quavering voice: “Linen cupboard … radiogram … bar … bakelite thing … workshop … barricade, railway sleepers … wine-cellar … eye-level oven … dishwasher … working surface … polished polyester finish … burglarproofing, floral motifs … crazy paving … outdoor living area … moat … rockery …
gnomes … swimming-pool, Roman kidney … built-in braai-spot … halogen floodlight … carport, double … servants’ quarters … revolving door … master bedroom … bird’s-eye maple … Dolly Varden … bathroom en suite … control room … liquor cabinet … knobs …”
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.
M
r 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.
Next he got to work on the string, massaging the lengths with raw linseed oil and treating the knots with dubbin and beeswax. While he worked many little tasks suggested themselves, and each new one took its place in the scheme of things to constitute a routine. Some, like sweeping between the lines, he attended to daily; others, like squashing the life out of unwanted seedlings between thumb and forefinger, only when the need arose.
For three days, morning and evening, he brought food for Nieuwenhuizen and left it at the tent-flap, but it remained untouched.
“He’s given up,” said Mrs, “and it’s the only decent thing He’s done since He arrived. Why should you worry?”
“It’s the least I can do. He’s neglecting himself and the new house, and all because of me. If only I’d been able to see it – he wasn’t asking much when you think about it – we’d have started the actual construction ages ago. We may even have been finished by now. It’s all my fault. I’m a spanner in the works. It shows you how considerate he is, that he won’t start without me.”
“He’s waiting for you because He knows you can be relied on to do the dirty work.”
“What’s gotten into you? Instead of carping all the time, you could help. Come over and look at the plan. You’ll pick it up in no time, with your artistic streak.”
“Never! What if He’s creeping around and I bump into Him?”
No matter what Mrs said, Mr Malgas refused to give up. If anything, her dismissive attitude made him more determined than ever to care for the plan until Nieuwenhuizen needed it again. As the days grew longer and queued up in weeks, he refined his daily duties into a satisfying and efficient programme. As soon as he came in from work he would change into his overalls and go next door. In the unlikely event that Nieuwenhuizen had regained consciousness, he would hail him cheerfully as he approached the camp. When there was no answer, and there never was, he would cock an ear to confirm that Nieuwenhuizen
was still inside the tent and breathing. This superstitious little rite never failed to lift his spirits. And only then did he bring out his maintenance kit, which he kept in a cardboard box under the hedge, and begin whatever tasks were scheduled for the day. He would be home in time to eat supper with Mrs while they watched the eight o’clock news, with special reference to the unrest report.
Initially, Mr Malgas found Nieuwenhuizen’s invisible presence inhibiting. His stertorous breathing was a constant reminder of the one’s confinement and the other’s liberty, and insinuated a lamentable causality between the two. But he discovered ways of weaving this raucous conscience into his activities and before long he felt free to savour whole-heartedly the pleasures of caretaking. The work was absorbing. New techniques had to be devised to meet the unprecedented needs of the plan, new rhythms evolved to minimize effort and maximize effect. Concerns like these were dear to Mr Malgas. In his nurturing hands the lines became supple and beautiful again, and the nails regained their lustre. Moreover, he found that maintenance renewed his faith in the whole sphere of materials, and he began to enjoy his work in the hardware shop for the first time in months.
Mrs noticed the change in him, and cheered up as well.
In this way a semblance of normality returned to the Malgas household. It did not last.
After several weeks Mr Malgas’s single-minded dedication to maintenance produced an unexpected result. One evening he was kneading
a scoop of wintergreen into a fibrous knot near the heart of the plan when he noticed a breeze-block lying on the ground nearby. He looked at it in surprise, naturally, whereupon it vanished without trace.
How often in his thankless quest for the new house – at first under Nieuwenhuizen’s tutelage, latterly on his own – had Malgas yearned for just such a keystone; how often had its absence weighed heavily on his mind. Yet now, when the key finally appeared, he could not grasp it! It must be a practical joke, he thought, someone’s pulling my leg. But this was not borne out by the evidence. There were no mirrors to be seen, no give-away wires, no burning cigarette-ends. Nowhere on the carefully swept plot was there a single mark that Malgas could not account for, no footprint, no tell-tale gouge or scrape. Finding his way cautiously to the scene of the appearance, or rather the disappearance, as he thought of it, he went down on his hands and knees and examined the surface closely, but the breeze-block itself had left no impression. He was forced to dismiss it as a figment of his imagination, a side-effect of stress and overwork. Wasn’t he holding down two jobs? He didn’t breathe a word to Mrs.
The following evening’s shift held no surprises. But the day after was a Saturday, and he was obliged to spend the whole afternoon tending the plan. Towards sunset he was sweeping with a grass broom when a ghostly balustrade floated into view some five metres above the ground and dependent upon nothing at all.
A less steadfast man might have taken to his heels, but Malgas stood firm. He even had the presence of mind not to confront the apparition
directly. He sensed danger: he saw himself turned to stone. So he maintained the steady rhythm of his sweeping and watched the floating balustrade out of the corner of his eye. It shimmered, and shimmied, and emitted a halo of brilliant light. It faded, and was on the point of vanishing altogether, but, as Malgas’s heart skipped a beat, it glowed again with new intensity and appeared to stabilize and solidify somewhat. It grew a landing, it excreted a film of crimson linoleum, it oozed wax. Then it gave birth to a flight of stairs, each riser condensing in the incandescent vapour and toppling in slow motion from the edge of the tread above it, shuffling languidly into place. The handrails of the grand staircase curved gracefully, uncoiling like stems, and progressed slowly but surely down to the ground. A pool of yellow light seeped out, gathered itself, and extruded from its syrupy depths five strips of Oregon pine, which hovered just above the surface. They came closer, he smelt wax and sawdust, they eased in below the speeding bristles of his broom. The bristles chased over the floorboards and scared clouds of lemon-scented dust out of the cracks. These particles spun gaily in the rosy air, phosphoresced into pointy golden stars and sifted gently down, enveloping him.
Malgas let out his breath with a whoosh. He cast aside his broom, dispersing the staircase into a haze of ordinary dust-motes, and launched himself across the plan in an ecstasy, whooping with joy and bellowing to wake the dead, “I can see! I can see!”
Nieuwenhuizen slept through the ruckus, but Mrs came running to the lounge window and looked on aghast.
Round and round went Mr, leaping into the air and waving his fists, drumming on his thighs, tearing his hair, laughing and crying, smearing his tears into mud on his cheeks, frothing at the mouth, rolling head over heels, swallowing his tongue, collapsing, steaming. Yes.
“I’ve tried to be happy for you,” Mrs said, “but I really don’t get this. Are you imagining things? Is it a case of play-play? Are you hallucinating? What the hell’s going on out there?”
“None of the above,” Mr replied firmly. “The new house …
materializes
. It’s a manifestation.”
“He’s having visions.”
“Of course, one has to be receptive.”
“Goes without saying.”
“Then it’s like this – although words don’t do it justice: a paintbrush with a tousled head swooshes across a blank screen, and swooshes back again, scattering gold-dust and glitter, and 1-2-3, a multi-storey mansion appears, in full colour.”
“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.