The Complete Short Stories Part 10

'She was one of my girls,' she said, 'I gave her lessons for three years.'

Mannie rose to leave, and before f.a.n.n.y followed him she picked a card from her handbag and held it out to me between her fingernails.

'If any of your friends are interested ...' said f.a.n.n.y hazily.

I looked at this as she drove off with the man, and above an address about four miles up the river I read: Mme La Fanfarlo (Paris, London) Dancing Instructress. Ballet. Ballroom.

Transport provided By Arrangement Next day I came across Cramer still trying to locate the trouble with the Mercedes.

'Are you the man Baudelaire wrote about?' I asked him.

He stared past me at the open waste veldt with a look of tried patience.

'Yes,' he replied. 'What made you think of it?'

'The name Fanfarlo on f.a.n.n.y's card,' I said. 'Didn't you know her in Paris?'

'Oh, yes,' said Cramer, 'but those days are finished. She married Manuela de Monteverde - that's Mannie. They settled here about twenty years ago. He keeps a Kaffir store.'

I remembered then that in the Romantic age it had pleased Cramer to fluctuate between the practice of verse and that of belles-lettres, together with the living up to such practices.

I asked him, 'Have you given up your literary career?'

'As a career, yes,' he answered. 'It was an obsession I was glad to get rid of'

He stroked the blunt bonnet of the Mercedes and added, 'The greatest literature is the occasional kind, a mere afterthought.'

Again he looked across the veldt where, unseen, a grey-crested lourie was piping 'go'way, go'way'.

'Life,' Cramer continued, 'is the important thing.'

'And do you write occasional verses?' I inquired.

'When occasion demands it,' he said. 'In fact I've just written a Nativity Masque. We're giving a performance on Christmas Eve in there.' He pointed to his garage, where a few natives were already beginning to shift petrol cans and tyres. Being members neither of the cast nor the audience, they were taking their time. A pile of folded seats had been dumped alongside.

Late on the morning of Christmas Eve I returned from the Falls to find a crowd of natives quarrelling outside the garage, with Cramer swearing loud and heavy in the middle. He held a sulky man by the shirt-sleeve, while with the other hand he described his vituperation on the hot air. Some mission natives had been sent over to give a hand with laying the stage, and these, with their standard-three school English, washed faces and white drill shorts, had innocently provoked Cramer's raw rag-dressed boys. Cramer's method, which ended with the word 'police', succeeded in sending them back to work, still uttering drum-like gutturals at each other.

The stage, made of packing-cases with planks nailed across, was being put at the back of the building, where a door led to the yard, the privy and the native huts. The s.p.a.ce between this door and the stage was dosed off by a row of black Government blankets hung on a line; this was to be the dressing-room. I agreed to come round there that evening to help with the lighting, the make-up, and the pinning on of angels' wings. The Fanfarlo's dancing pupils were to make an angel chorus with carols and dancing, while she herself, as the Virgin, was to give a representative ballet performance. Owing to her husband's very broken English, he had been given a silent role as a shepherd, supported by three other shepherds chosen for like reasons. Cramer's part was the most prominent, for he had the longest speeches, being the First Seraph. It had been agreed that, since he had written the masque, he could best deliver most of it; but I gathered there had been some trouble at rehearsals over the cost of the production, with f.a.n.n.y wanting elaborate scenery as being due to her girls.

The performance was set to begin at eight. I arrived behind the stage at seven-fifteen to find the angels a.s.sembled in ballet dresses with wings of crinkled paper in various shades. The Fanfarlo wore a long white transparent skirt with a sequin top. I was helping to fix on the Wise Men's beards when I saw Cramer. He had on a toga-like garment made up of several thicknesses of mosquito-net, but not thick enough to hide his white shorts underneath. He had put on his make-up early, and this was melting on his face in the rising heat.

'I always get nerves at this point,' he said. 'I'm going to practise my opening speech.'

I heard him mount the stage and begin reciting. Above the voices of excited children I could only hear the rhythm of his voice; and I was intent on helping the Fanfarlo to paint her girls' faces. It seemed impossible. As fast as we lifted the sticks of paint they turned liquid. It was really getting abnormally hot.

'Open that door,' yelled the Fanfarlo. The back door was opened and a crowd of curious natives pressed round the entrance. I left the Fanfarlo ordering them off, for I was determined to get to the front of the building for some air. I mounted the stage and began to cross it when I was aware of a powerful radiation of heat coming from my right. Looking round, I saw Cramer apparently shouting at someone, in the att.i.tude of his dealings with the natives that morning. But he could not advance because of this current of heat. And because of the heat I could not at first make out who Cramer was rowing with; this was the sort of heat that goes for the eyes. But as I got farther towards the front of the stage I saw what was standing there.

This was a living body. The most noticeable thing was its constancy; it seemed not to conform to the law of perspective, but remained the same size when I approached as when I withdrew. And altogether unlike other forms of life, it had a completed look. No part was undergoing a process; the outline lacked the signs of confusion and ferment which commonly indicate living things, and this was also the principle of its beauty. The eyes took up nearly the whole of the head, extending far over the cheekbones. From the back of the head came two muscular wings which from time to time folded themselves over the eyes, making a draught of scorching air. There was hardly any neck. Another pair of wings, tough and supple, spread from below the shoulders, and a third pair extended from the calves of the legs, appearing to sustain the body. The feet looked too fragile to bear up such a concentrated degree of being.

European residents of Africa are often irresistibly prompted to speak kitchen kaffir to anything strange.

'Hamba!' shouted Cramer, meaning 'Go away'.

'Now get off the stage and stop your noise,' said the living body peaceably.

'Who in h.e.l.l are you?' said Cramer, gasping through the heat.

'The same as in Heaven,' came the reply, 'a Seraph, that's to say.'

'Tell that to someone else,' Cramer panted. 'Do I look like a fool?'

'I will. No, nor a Seraph either,' said the Seraph.

The place was filling with heat from the Seraph. Cramer's paint was running into his eyes and he wiped them on his net robe. Walking backward to a less hot place he cried, 'Once and for all -'

'That's correct,' said the Seraph.

'- this is my show,' continued Cramer.

'Since when?' the Seraph said.

'Right from the start,' Cramer breathed at him.

'Well, it's been mine from the Beginning,' said the Seraph, 'and the Beginning began first.'

Climbing down from the hot stage, Cramer caught his seraphic robe on a nail and tore it. 'Listen here,' he said, 'I can't conceive of an abnormality like you being a true Seraph.'

'True,' said the Seraph.

By this time I had been driven by the heat to the front entrance. Cramer joined me there. A number of natives had a.s.sembled. The audience had begun to arrive in cars and the rest of the cast had come round the building from the back. It was impossible to see far inside the building owing to the Seraph's heat, and impossible to re-enter.

Cramer was still haranguing the Seraph from the door, and there was much speculation among the new arrivals as to which of the three familiar categories the present trouble came under, namely, the natives, Whitehall, or leopards.

'This is my property,' cried Cramer, 'and these people have paid for their seats. They've come to see a masque.

'In that case,' said the Seraph, 'I'll cool down and they can come and see a masque.

'My masque, said Cramer.

'Ah, no, mine,' said the Seraph. 'Yours won't do.'

'Will you go, or shall I call the police?' said Cramer with finality.

'I have no alternative,' said the Seraph more finally still.

Word had gone round that a mad leopard was in the garage. People got back into their cars and parked at a safe distance; the tobacco planter went to fetch a gun. A number of young troopers had the idea of blinding the mad leopard with petrol and ganged up some natives to fill petrol cans from the pump and pa.s.s them chainwise to the garage.

'This'll fix him,' said a trooper.

'That's right, let him have it,' said Cramer from his place by the door.

'I shouldn't do that,' said the Seraph. 'You'll cause a fire.'

The first lot of petrol to be flung into the heat flared up. The seats caught alight first, then the air itself began to burn within the metal walls till the whole interior was flame feeding on flame. Another car-load of troopers arrived just then and promptly got a gang of natives to fill petrol cans with water. Slowly they drenched the fire. The Fanfarlo mustered her angels a little way up the road. She was trying to rea.s.sure their parents and see what was happening at the same time, furious at losing her opportunity to dance. She aimed a hard poke at the back of one of the angels whose parents were in England.

It was some hours before the fire was put out. While the corrugated metal walls still glowed, twisted and furled, it was impossible to see what had happened to the Seraph, and after they had ceased to glow it was too dark and hot to see far into the wreck.

'Are you insured?' one of Cramer's friends asked him.

'Oh yes,' Cramer replied, 'my policy covers everything except Acts of G.o.d - that means lightning or flood.'

'He's fully covered,' said Cramer's friend to another friend.

Many people had gone home and the rest were going. The troopers drove off singing 'Good King Wenceslas', and the mission boys ran down the road singing 'Good Christian Men, Rejoice'.

It was about midnight, and still very hot. The tobacco planters suggested a drive to the Falls, where it was cool. Cramer and the Fanfarlo joined us, and we b.u.mped along the rough path from Cramer's to the main highway. There the road is tarred only in two strips to take car-wheels. The thunder of the Falls reached us about two miles before we reached them.

'After all my work on the masque and everything!' Cramer was saying.

'Oh, shut up,' said the Fanfarlo.

Just then, by the glare of our headlights I saw the Seraph again, going at about seventy miles an hour and skimming the tarmac strips with two of his six wings in swift motion, two folded over his face, and two covering his feet.'

'That's him!' said Cramer. 'We'll get him yet.'

We left the car near the hotel and followed a track through the dense vegetation of the Rain Forest, where the spray from the Falls descends perpetually. It was like a convalescence after fever, that frail rain after the heat. The Seraph was far ahead of us and through the trees I could see where his heat was making steam of the spray.

We came to the cliff's edge, where opposite us and from the same level the full weight of the river came blasting into the gorge between. There was no sign of the Seraph. Was he far below in the heaving pit, or where?

Then I noticed that along the whole mile of the waterfall's crest the spray was rising higher than usual. This I took to be steam from the Seraph's heat. I was right, for presently, by the mute flashes of summer lightning, we watched him ride the Zambezi away from us, among the rocks that look like crocodiles and the crocodiles that look like rocks.

The p.a.w.nbroker's Wife.

At Sea Point, on the coast of the Cape of Good Hope, in 1942, there was everywhere the sight of rejoicing, there was the sound of hilarity, and the sea washed up each day one or two bodies of servicemen in all kinds of uniform. The waters round the Cape were heavily mined. The people flocked to bring in the survivors. The girls of the seash.o.r.e and harbour waited two by two for the troops on sh.o.r.e-leave from ships which had managed to enter the bay safely.

I was waiting for a ship to take me to England, and lived on the sea-front in the house of Mrs Jan Cloote, a p.a.w.nbroker's wife. From her window where, in the cool evenings, she sat knitting khaki socks till her eyes ached, Mrs Jan Cloote took note of these happenings, and whenever I came in or went out she would open her door a little, and, standing in the narrow aperture, would tell me the latest.

She was a small woman of about forty-three, a native of Somerset. Her husband, Jan Cloote, had long ago disappeared into the Transvaal, where he was living, it was understood, with a native woman. With his wife, he had left three daughters, the house on the sea-front, and, at the back of the house which opened on to a little mean street, a p.a.w.nshop.

Mrs Jan Cloote had more or less built up everything that her husband had left half-finished. The house was in better repair than it ever had been, and she let off most of the rooms. The p.a.w.nshop had so far flourished that Mrs Jan Cloote was able to take a shop next door where she sold a second-hand miscellany, unredeemed from the p.a.w.nshop. The three daughters had likewise flourished. From all accounts, they had gone barefoot to school at the time of their father's residence at home, because all his profit had gone on his two opulent pa.s.sions, yellow advocaat and black girls. As I saw the daughters now, I could hardly credit their unfortunate past life. The youngest, Isa, was a schoolgirl with long yellow plaits, and she was quite a voluptuary in her manner. The other two, in their late teens, were more like the mother, small, shy, quiet, lady-like, secretarial and discreet. Greta and Maida, they were called.

It was seldom that Mrs Jan Cloote opened the door of her own apartment wide enough for anyone to see inside. This was a habit of the whole family, but they had nothing really to hide, that one could see. And there Mrs Jan Cloote would stand, with one of the girls, perhaps, looking over her shoulder, wedged in the narrow doorway, and the door not twelve inches open. The hall was very dark, and being a frugal woman, she did not keep a bulb in the hall light, which therefore did not function.

One day, as I came in, I saw her little shape, the thin profile and k.n.o.bbly bun, outlined against the light within her rooms.

'Sh-sh-sh,' she said.

'Can you come in tonight for a little cup of tea with the others?' she said in a hushed breath. And I understood, as I accepted, that the need for the hush had something to do with the modesty of the proposed party, conveyed in the words, 'a little cup ...'

I knocked on her door after dinner. Maida opened it just wide enough for me to enter, then closed it again quickly. Some of the other lodgers were there: a young man who worked in an office on the docks, and a retired insurance agent and his wife.

Isa, the schoolgirl, arrived presently. I was surprised to see that she was heavily made up on the mouth and eyes.

'Another troopship gone down,' stated Isa.

'Hush, dear,' said her mother; 'we are not supposed to talk about the shipping.'

Mrs Jan Cloote winked at me as she said this. It struck me then that she was very proud of Isa.

'An Argentine boat in,' said Isa.

'Really?' said Mrs Jan Cloote. 'Any nice chaps?'

The old couple looked at each other. The young man, who was new to many things, looked puzzled but said nothing. Maida and Greta, like their mother, seemed agog for news.

'A lot of nice ones, eh?' said Maida. She had the local habit of placing the word 'eh' at the end of her remarks, questions and answers alike.

'I'll say, man,' said Isa, for she also used the common currency, adding 'man' to most of the statements she addressed to man and woman alike.

'You'll be going to the Stardust!' said Mrs Jan Cloote. 'Won't you now, Isa?'

'The Stardust?' said Mrs Marais, the insurance agent's wife. 'You surely don't mean the nightclub, man?'

'Why, yes,' said Mrs Jan Cloote in her precise voice. She alone of the family did not use the local idiom, and in fact her speech had improved since her Somerset days. 'Why, yes,' she said, 'she enjoys herself, why not?'

'Only young once, eh?' said the young man, putting ash in his saucer as Mrs Jan Cloote frowned at him.

Mrs Jan Cloote sent Maida upstairs to fetch some of Isa's presents, things she had been given by men; evening bags, brooches, silk stockings. It was rather awkward. What could one say?

'They are very nice,' I said.

'This is nothing, nothing,' said Mrs Jan Cloote, 'nothing to the things she could get. But she only goes with the nice fellows.'

'And do you dance too?' I inquired of Greta.

'No, man,' she said. 'Isa does it for us, eh. Isa dances lovely.'

'You said it, man,' said Maida.

'Ah yes,' sighed Mrs Jan Cloote, 'we're quiet folk. We would have a dull life of it, if it wasn't for Isa.'

'She needs taking care of, that child,' said Mrs Marais.

'Isa!' said her mother. 'Do you hear Mrs Marais, what she says?'