Kleinzeit

Seven Fruity Buns

Kleinzeit went into the Underground, took a train, got off at one of the stations he liked, walked about in the corridors. An old man was playing a recorder. Kleinzeit didn’t like his manner, gave him 5p anyway. He walked among the walls and footsteps, sometimes looking at people, sometimes not.

He saw ahead of him the red-bearded man he had once dreamed about. He saw him drop a sheet of yellow paper, saw him drop another, followed him into a train, followed him out into another station, kept following him into and out of trains and corridors, saw the red-bearded man begin the return journey, pick up a sheet of yellow paper, write something on it and drop it again.

Kleinzeit picked up the paper, read:

Morrows cruel mock.

He put the paper in his pocket, hurried to catch up with the red-bearded man.

‘Excuse me,’ he said.

Redbeard looked at him, kept on walking. ‘You’re excused,’ he said. His accent was foreign. Kleinzeit remembered that in the dream his accent had been the same.

‘I dreamed about you,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘There’s no charge for that,’ said Redbeard.

‘There’s more to be said.’

‘Not by me.’ Redbeard turned away.

‘By me, then,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Can I buy you a coffee?’

‘If you’ve got the money you can buy one. I don’t say I’ll drink it.’

’Will you drink it?’

‘I like fruity buns,’ said Redbeard.

‘With fruity buns then.’

‘Right.’

They went into a coffee shop selected by Redbeard. Kleinzeit bought four fruity buns.

‘Aren’t you having fruity buns too?’ said Redbeard.

Kleinzeit bought a fifth fruity bun and two coffees. They sat down at a table by the window. Redbeard put his bedroll and carrier-bags in the corner behind his chair. Both stared into the street while drinking coffee and eating fruity buns. Kleinzeit offered a cigarette. They lit up, inhaled deeply, blew out smoke, sighed.

‘I dreamed about you,’ said Kleinzeit again.

‘As I said before, no charge,’ said Redbeard.

‘There’s no use beating about the bush,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What’s all this with the yellow paper?’

‘You police?’

‘No.’

‘Bloody cheek then.’ Redbeard stared hard at Kleinzeit. His eyes were bright blue, intransigent like a doll’s eyes. Kleinzeit thought of a doll’s head lying on a beach, elemental like the sea, like the sky.

‘I picked up a sheet of yellow paper a couple of weeks ago,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘On it I wrote a man with a barrow full of rocks.’

‘Harrow full of crocks,’ said Redbeard without looking away.

‘“Morrows cruel mock,”’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What’s it mean?’.

Redbeard turned, stared out of the window.

‘Well?’

Redbeard shook his head.

‘You show up in my head,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘and you say, “Don’t come the innocent with me, mate.” ‘

Redbeard shook his head.

‘Well?’ said Kleinzeit.

‘If I dream you that’s my affair,’ said Redbeard. ‘If you dream me that’s your affair.’

‘Look here,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘don’t you come the innocent with me. You and your flaming pretensions.’

‘What do you mean, “pretensions”?’

‘Well, what else is it, I’d like to know,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘when you go about dropping yellow paper so that barrows full of rocks come out of my typewriter and I get sacked.’

‘Harrow full of crocks,’ said Redbeard. ‘You keep on interfering with me and I may yet have to sort you out.’

‘I interfere with you!’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Flashpoint’s dying words were “Arrow in a box”. I bought my glockenspiel at YARROW, Fullest Stock. There was never anything of that sort before your yellow paper.’ He gave Redbeard a cigarette, lit it for him, lit one for himself. Both smoked, stared out of the window.

Redbeard showed Kleinzeit his empty cup. Kleinzeit bought two more coffees and two more fruity buns. ‘Fruity buns, for that matter!’ he said. ‘The fat man ate fruity buns. What’re you, another ullage case?’

Redbeard stared at him while he ate the buns. ‘You!’ he said when he had finished chewing. ‘You’re no better than a little sucking baby. You bloody want answers to everything, everything explained, meanings and whatnot all laid on for you. What’s it to me what the yellow paper does to you? Do you care what it does to me? Of course you don’t. Why should you?’

Kleinzeit had no answer.

‘Right,’ said Redbeard. ‘There’s nothing to say. We’re all alone, those of us who are alone. Why do they have to lie about it?’

‘Who? About what?’

‘Newspapers and magazines. About how it is. Harry Solvent, for instance.’

‘The one who wrote Kill for a Living?’

‘Right,’ said Redbeard. ‘In the Sunday Times Magazine you see photos of him in his Robert Adam mansion.’

‘Pompwood.’

‘Right. There he is in the photos having a bath in a tub which is one of Tiepolo’s smaller chapel domes inverted, it’s about twenty feet across. The frescoes have been coated with perspex to make it waterproof. The drain plug, carved of pink coral, is fitted into Venus’s right nipple. The dome is set in a base of Parian marble blocks weighing twelve tons, from a temple of Apollo at Lesbos.’

‘Yes,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I saw the photos.’

‘The caption under the picture of Solvent in his bath is: “Alone at the end of the day, Harry Solvent relaxes in his bath correcting the proofs of his new novel, Transvestite Express”’

‘Yes,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What about it?’

‘He isn’t really alone, you see,’ said Redbeard. ‘Why can’t they say: “While the eighteen members of his household staff are variously occupied elsewhere in the mansion, Harry Solvent, in the presence of his agent Titus Remora, his solicitor Earnest Vasion, his research assistant Butchie Stark, his secretary and p.a. Polly Filla, his flower arranger Satsuma Sodoma, his masseur and trainer Jean Jacques Longjacques, his boyfriend Ahmed, Times photographer Y. Dangle Peep and his assistant N. Ameless Drudge, and Times writer Wordsworth Little, sits in his bath with proofs of his new novel Transvestite Express”? There’s a difference, and the difference matters.’

‘I’ve often thought the same,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘It’s bad enough in books,’ said Redbeard. ‘When Kill is alone in the submarine trapped on the bottom by Dr Pong’s radio-controlled giant squid …’

’He isn’t really alone because the giant squid is there,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘He isn’t really alone because Harry Solvent is there to tell about it,’ said Redbeard. ‘What I say is at least let Harry Solvent not be reported as being alone when he isn’t. That isn’t much to ask. It really is not much to ask at all.’

‘An entirely reasonable request,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Seemly in its moderation.’

‘What’re you sucking up to me for?’ said Redbeard. ‘I can’t do a bloody thing for you. Ordinary foolscap, eh?’

‘What about ordinary foolscap?’

‘I wasn’t born here, you know,’ said Redbeard. ‘Read a lot of stories from here as a child. Often a young man in the stories lived in a bare room, rough white walls, one peg for his coat, plain deal table, ream of ordinary foolscap. I didn’t know then that foolscap was a size, thought it was some kind of coarse rough paper that dunce caps were made of. Asked for it in shops, they didn’t know.’ He was talking louder and louder. People turned their heads, stared. ‘Got it into my head that rough A4 yellow paper might be foolscap, used to buy it with my pocket money. Even after I found out I stayed with the A4 yellow paper because I’d got used to it. Now I’m a yellow-paper freak. There bloody isn’t any bare room. Empty rooms yes. Bare ones no. You ever seen a bare room? Curtain rods and clothes hangers jingling in the cupboard. Plastic things with that special kind of dirt that plastic things get on them. No end of gear. Carpet sweepers with no handles, plastic toilet-brush holders. Ever find a plastic toilet-brush holder in a plain deal table story? Try to make a room bare and in five minutes three-year-old cans of dried-up paint leap into the larder. From where? You’d thrown everything out. Old shoes you’ve worn one time fill up the cupboard, jackets you’re too fat for. Your arm grows weak sliding things along the bar that you’ll never wear again, and they won’t go away. Move out and they flop along after you tied up with string. Not alone like the young man at the plain deal table with the ordinary foolscap. Bloody awful really alone with yellow paper, tons of rubbish. And you think you’ve got answers coming to you. What a baby. You and your Ibsen and your Chekhov. Maybe the revolver in the drawer’s for another play, you ever think of that? You think your three acts are the only three bloody acts there are? Maybe you’re the revolver in somebody else’s play, eh? Never thought of that, did you. It’s all got to mean something to you. Do I ask you to explain anything to me? No. Because I’m a bleeding man and I’ll take my bleeding lumps and get on with whatever it is I’m getting on with. Got enough answers for your fruity buns?’ He began to cry.

‘Good God,’ said Kleinzeit. He gathered up the bedroll and the carrier-bags, hustled Redbeard out into the street.

‘You still haven’t said why you drop the yellow paper and pick it up and write on it and drop it again,’ said Kleinzeit.

Redbeard grabbed the bedroll, swung it, knocked Kleinzeit down. Kleinzeit got up and hit Redbeard.

‘Right,’ said Redbeard. ‘Ta-ra.’ He disappeared into the Underground.