The Folly (8 page)

Sparks flew! He was satisfied.

He closed his eyes, stretched out both arms and turned in circles, clockwise, counting under his breath, “Two thousand and one, two thousand and two, two thousand and three …” At this point he stopped, ran on the spot, fell on his knees, patted the earth with his palms, pummelled it with his fists, sniggered, jumped up again and began to turn in circles, anti-clockwise, “Two thousand and three, two thousand and two, two thousand and one … There, that’s better.”

He fixed his eyes on the stunted appendage that passed for the chimney of Malgas’s house, extended his arms once again like a tightrope
artist, and proceeded in measured paces across the plot. The hammer in his right hand disturbed his balance and introduced an unsightly wobble into his limbs; but his head for a change was completely still. He gritted his teeth and kept going, step after step, until at last his whole frame was vibrating like a dowsing-rod. With a final effort of will he threw himself into the air, cracked his heels together and struck the earth with his head. Light-bulbs flickered in his brain. He saw the firmament, tricked out with stars in pastel colours, and three scrawny birds, scavengers, flapping tiredly in a circle. Then everything went dark.

When he came to his senses his head was throbbing. He had no idea how much time had been lost, although he could have worked it out easily enough from the position of the sun. Sitting up and looking about, he was cheered to discover on the ground a perfectly legible imprint of the back of his head. Auspiciously, it was in
VID
. He pulled a hot, oily nail from a loop and bashed it into the ground in the middle of the depression.

The planting of this second nail left him drained and disorientated, so he paced the next three out sedately, marking the spot for each one with his elbow as if he was testing the baby’s bath-water and tapping them in as if they were made of glass. It happened that the fifth nail lay in a far-flung corner,
IA
, where the hedge met the Malgases’ wall, and the desolate surroundings weighed so heavily upon him that he resolved to find a resting-place for nail number six in the more hospitable neighbourhood of his own homestead.

Accordingly, he put his left foot in front of his right, bent his knees,
and swept his arms up behind his back like a diver. He raised the toes of his left foot and the heel of his right. Then he swung his arms forward and brought his hands together in front of him, clutching his flint, at the same time raising the heel of his left foot and the toes of his right. Then he went back to the first position, breathed in, held it to a count of ten, returned to the second position and breathed out. Then he rocked from the second position to the first and back again five times, and once more for luck. And then he ran forward, hopped, skipped, dodged, ducked, rolled head over heels, swerved, leap-frogged over the ash-heap and bore down upon the thorn-tree as if he intended to pass straight through it.

At the last moment he bounced on the balls of his feet – he was warm as toast by now, he was doggerel in motion – and leapt onto an overhanging branch. It was a pin-point landing, and he sustained just one superficial scratch on his shin. He quickly located the launching site and, hanging upside-down from his heels, was able to position the sixth nail (
IIA
) before dropping down to dispatch it with a few assertive blows. Fireworks!

When it came to lucky number seven, he was bold enough to attempt a backflip with a half-twist over the tent, nearly pulled it off, belly-flopped, and consoled himself with a catnap.

“Mr!”

Mrs Malgas, whose turn it was to make the morning coffee, was filling the kettle at the sink when Nieuwenhuizen came to her attention.
The sight of him on an empty stomach all but robbed her of the power of speech.

Mr shuffled through in his towelling dressing-gown. “Where’s the fire?”

All she could say was: “Him!”

Mr looked out of the window. He saw Nieuwenhuizen going round in circles. This was something entirely new. What in heaven’s name was he up to now?

Mr sat Mrs down at the table and poured the coffee. Once she was clutching her favourite mug Mrs managed to get a grip on herself as well, and within a minute had recovered well enough to give a full account of the incident.

“It’s unspeakable,” she said, “but I’ll do my best. I was standing where you are now, yes there, and I happened to look out of the window, which is only to be expected, one can hardly help it, and what do you think I saw?”

“Him?”

“That’s right. At first He was just standing there with His back to me, in His usual impolite way. But without warning He flung Himself down face first, and started to heave and thump this way and that in the throes of an ungovernable lust, as if He meant to penetrate the very earth upon which we stand.”

“He was doing some
P.T.
He’s building himself up for Phase Two.”

“He was thrusting and thumping nineteen to the dozen! You can still see the dust.”

“Probably push-ups.”

“Afterwards, He hurled Himself to His feet again, and strutted up and down as immodestly as ever.”

Nieuwenhuizen was still waddling in circles, with his chest puffed up and his feet turned out.

“I don’t see anything untoward,” said Mr.

“It’s too late now. If you’d come when I called you, you’d have seen it with your own eyes, and you wouldn’t be so quick to defend Him.”

“There’s more to this than meets the eye. I know for a fact that he’s afraid of sinking through the crust of the earth. Yet you say he forced himself upon it. It’s a contradiction.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

Nieuwenhuizen lay down on his back with his arms flung wide and his feet crossed. He stared into the streaming eye of the sun. Then he flopped over on his stomach, spread-eagled his arms and legs, and put his ear to the ground.

“I’m sure there’s a perfectly simple explanation,” said Mr.

“My word counts for nothing in this house.” Mrs flounced to the lounge to finish her coffee.

Nieuwenhuizen raised his head and squinted at the topsoil under his nose. His ear pressing against the sand had created a small relief map, a flat-topped mountain surrounded by whorled hillocks and vales. He peeped through his eyelashes. Some pebbles assumed the appearance of boulders piled at the foot of the mountain; then his
nostrils stirred up a dust-storm; and that blew over, leaving in its wake a dry blade of grass that looked just like a wind-wracked palm-frond.

He stuffed a hand into a crack in his side and pulled a nail from the bandoleer. He pressed it into the mountain, just deep enough so that it would stand upright on its own. In this prone position driving the nail in was no easy task. He flailed his arms like a drowning victim.

“Tsk! I might have known!” Mr exclaimed. “He’s making a plan!”

He stomped through to the lounge. “I’ve cleared up the mystery, Mrs: he’s making a plan. For the new house. Remember?”

“Bully for Him.” Her coffee was cold, but she took a sip anyway so that she could exchange a knowing look with the mug-frog.

“Did I mention the nails?”

“Monsters.”

“All along I’ve been thinking he wants them for the actual construction – and here he is, making a plan with them. It goes to show that you can’t take anything for granted with him. He’s so crafty.”

“He’s a show-off.” She went to her room.

Nieuwenhuizen walked backwards and sat down.

“I think I’ll pitch in,” said Mr. He pursued Mrs to the bedroom. She was lying on the bed with the candlewick bedspread pulled up to her chin. He said to her: “I think I’ll pitch in.”

“What on earth for?”

“He needs me.”

“He’s doing just fine on His own. He told you He didn’t need your help. He spurned you.”

“Don’t be petty. You’ve seen for yourself what a struggle it is for him. Another pair of hands will make all the difference, but he finds it hard to ask, because he prides himself on his independence.”

“I can see the two of you, lying there thumping like a couple of gaffed barbels.”

Malgas donned his overalls and went next door. He found Nieuwenhuizen lying on his side in the shade under the hedge. He appeared to be sleeping, but as Malgas drew near he raised his head and opened his eyes.

“Father.”

“Malgas.”

“Making a plan, I see.”

“Trying.”

“Ingenious, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Not at all. Thanks.”

“Plans are interesting. Fascinating, actually. I suppose I’ll always have a soft spot for materials, it’s in my blood, along with packaging, but as I get older I find I become more and more curious about the planning side of things.”

“Stop beating about the bush,” Nieuwenhuizen said, sitting up and dusting off his sleeve. “What do you want?”

“To give you a hand here, if you’ll have me.”

Nieuwenhuizen looked dubious. “I don’t know. Are you ready for it, I wonder? I don’t want to rush you.”

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. I can’t see the new house yet, but it goes
without saying that
you
can. And I’m eager to learn. I have a great hunger and thirst for knowledge of the house. If necessary I’m prepared to start at the bottom and work my way up. You’ll teach me everything you know, and in the mean time I’ll fetch and carry the tools and so on. I took the liberty of bringing this mallet – with rubber you don’t damage the heads.”

“I’m not sure …”

“Look at it this way: I have my own field of expertise, or ‘know-how’ as we call it in the trade, and one day I’ll be able to repay every little kindness shown me in these difficult times. Just shout: Mr Hardware, A World of Materials under One Roof.”

Nieuwenhuizen sprang to his feet. He stuck one of his skinny fingers through a loop of the bandoleer and said, “You’re just in time to reload me. I didn’t want to ask, but since you’re offering …”

They walked towards the camp, where the boxes of nails were standing one on top of the other, and Malgas ventured to walk at Nieuwenhuizen’s side.

With Malgas’s enthusiastic assistance, the mapping out of the ground-plan proceeded apace. A less elaborate drafting procedure was called for now, and the acrobatics of the early morning therefore gave way to more conventional pacing and pointing; and while before there had been as many different marks as there are parts of the human body, now there was one standardized sign, a plump full stop made with the heel, so that the apprentice could not fail to recognize it.

Malgas politely commandeered the bandoleer and took charge of placing the nails according to Nieuwenhuizen’s wishes. Although
he assumed that the grid system was finally coming into its own, he accepted the given division of labour and made no attempt to decipher the plan: he concentrated instead on inserting the nails expertly. Now was the time to explore the ins and outs of the undervalued art of hammering. As he perfected his swing, he brought the effort required for each insertion down to a single preliminary tap to make the nail stand on end; two decisive double-fisted smashes to sink it; and a concluding salvo of tiny blows to ensure that the head was protruding above the surface to the specified extent (the thickness of his thumb).

Nieuwenhuizen sang a song. It was his tent-pitching song, and its haunting tones brought the bitter-sweet memory of his advent into Malgas’s mind as clearly as if it was yesterday. However, it also broke his concentration, and he was relieved when Nieuwenhuizen fell silent and focused on the measurements.

As for Nieuwenhuizen, when he judged that Malgas had mastered the full stop, he added the colon and the ellipsis to his repertoire, although he was careful to keep the combinations simple. Malgas took it in his stride.

The world turned. The sun trundled like a brass ball across the leaden bowl of the sky. They didn’t miss a beat.

At one o’clock Mrs Malgas flung her window open and offered “Lunch!,” and was turned down by the muted rhythm of the mallet and the sky resounding like a cracked gong. She shut the window and went away.

Hour after hour, Nieuwenhuizen fumed over the plot, disseminating his indelible punctuation. Malgas dogged his footsteps, discharged
volley after volley of nails, reloaded the bandoleer again and again, and never once complained.

Night fell at last. The second box of ammunition was broached. By now the nails had been scattered far and wide; their heads glistened everywhere, like tiny pools holding the lees of the light. Still there was work to be done.

Nieuwenhuizen lit the lamp and carried it with him, swinging wildly from one hand, as he paced. He held it so close to the action that he singed the hairs on Malgas’s arm. And through it all he kept demanding, “More light!” and imploring the moon to rise, which it didn’t. Then Malgas took the unprecedented step of running a lead-light through his kitchen window (Mrs wept) and they soldiered on with new vigour. In the light cast by the cowled globe Nieuwenhuizen acquired the stature of a giant, striding across immense, uninhabited plains, while Malgas, shambling after him, brought his master’s mallet crashing down on nails as tall as flagstaffs.

Finally the moment came when Malgas reached into the box and grasped nothing but a mulch of shredded paper. Permission was granted for him to tear open the brown-paper bundle containing the Twelve. He intended to slip these too into the bandoleer, but Nieuwenhuizen intervened. The final dozen required special attention.

Nieuwenhuizen curled the forefinger and thumb of his left hand into a loophole and peered through it with his right eye. He panned across the entire landscape, apprehending each and every nail both as a distinct entity and as part of a complex pattern, computing the most abstruse distances and obtuse angles, and considering entirely
unexpected relationships between them. Then he took the lead-light and explored the spangled darkness, pointing out nooks and crannies among the glittering constellations underfoot, and Malgas flew the nails to those spots.

It was done.

A half-jack of Johnny Walker and a nip of Drambuie had been laid down in the portmanteau and now came to light. “I’ve been saving them for a rainy day,” Nieuwenhuizen explained, “but this star-crossed evening will do.” He also produced a cocktail shaker, made out of a lampshade and a surgical glove, and in two shakes they had their feet up and were sipping cocktails out of tin mugs.