Kleinzeit

All in Blue

The next day Kleinzeit took time out from his business in the Underground to buy running gear, also a shirt, trousers, underwear and socks. Still enough in his cheque account for three months, and the busking was covering his daily expenses. In the evening he went to the hospital.

‘What do you think now?’ said Redbeard. ‘Still nonsense? I heard what Schwarzgang said. I saw Piggle give you a piece of yellow paper.’

‘Two cases don’t make a whole ward,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘Two plus two is four,’ said Redbeard. ‘You forgot to count you and me. Try some more.’

‘I’m not sure I want to.’

‘Brave, aren’t you?’

‘I never said I was.’

They stared at each other for a while without saying anything. Kleinzeit went over to Nox’s bed.

‘How’s it going?’ he said.

‘I don’t think I’ve got much time left,’ said Nox. He looked and sounded not much more than a shadow.

‘Nonsense,’ said Kleinzeit like a pipe-smoking vicar with twinkling eyes. ‘You’re looking much fitter than you were when I first came here.’

‘No, I’m not,’ said Nox. ‘And they’ve done three refractions already. It’s going to be total eclipse for me next time, I think.’ He laughed. ’A to B is how it began, but Z is coming up quite soon.’

A little more blackness in the air than usual, thought Kleinzeit, staring hard. Pollution.

‘A to B,’ said Nox. ‘At one time I even thought of writing a story about it. Never finished it, though. Actually, I think I’ve got it here somewhere.’

Kleinzeit shut his eyes and held out his hand. He heard Nox shuffling papers in the drawer of his locker, felt several sheets of paper put into his hand.

‘Why’ve you got your eyes shut?’ said Nox.

‘Sometimes I get headaches,’ said Kleinzeit without opening his eyes. ‘It doesn’t feel yellow.’

‘It isn’t yellow,’ said Nox. ‘It’s just ordinary foolscap.’

‘Ah,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Ordinary foolscap.’ He opened his eyes, looked at the paper. Ordinary feint-ruled foolscap. Nox’s writing was a firm black chancery hand. Kleinzeit read:

There it was again, like a shadow on the sun: a rounded shape of black overlapping a bright circle, intersecting the perimeter at A and B.

Kleinzeit closed his eyes again. ‘Difficult to read,’ he said. ‘My eyes are bothering me. What happens next? Do you pick up a piece of ordinary foolscap in the Underground, go to your office, ring up your doctor, write something on the paper, and get sacked?’

‘How in the world did you know?’ said Nox. ‘I picked up the foolscap in the corridor, it was lying on the floor, quite clean. I went to the department store where I work (Glass and China, Ground Floor), rang up my doctor, then had an absolutely overwhelming urge to write something on the foolscap, which I did.’

‘What did you write?’ said Kleinzeit.

Nox took from the drawer a folded sheet of foolscap that looked as if it had been carried in a rear pocket and much sat on. The chancery script was larger and less firm than the writing on the other sheets. Kleinzeit read:

Narrow, cool. The flock.

‘I had a display of Spode to arrange,’ said Nox, ‘so I set up a pair of steps by the shelves and got on with it. There’s a pattern called the Italian Design, quite pretty, all in blue. Dotted clouds, lacy trees, an attractive ruin, five sheep, and a lady kneeling by the river while the shepherd approaches her from behind, flourishing his staff. Nearby in a posh little cave sits an indeterminate figure telling beads perhaps, or meditating. Well, there I was standing on the steps with a teapot in my hand when I found myself possessed by a strong desire to get into the picture, push the shepherd to one side and have a go at the lady myself while the indeterminate figure in the cave either looked on or didn’t.’

‘Did you,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘get into the picture?’

Nox stared at him for a moment. Kleinzeit’s eyes were closed again, but he could feel it. ‘No,’ said Nox, ‘I didn’t. I became aware that my governor was standing there looking up at me, had been for some time. He’s got a face like a baboon’s bottom but deeply lined, which baboons’ bottoms generally aren’t, I believe. “Well, Nox,” he said, “when you’ve finished posing for the monument or contemplating infinity or whatever it is you’re doing, perhaps you’ll get on with it.” All this time I was more and more inclined, quite literally I mean, towards the lady kneeling by the river. I inclined so far that I toppled off the steps, grabbed at the shelf as I fell and brought it, with about £100 worth of crockery (retail price, that is) and myself down on the governor’s head.

‘He was quite reasonable about it actually. All he said was that he thought my talent might possibly lie elsewhere than in Glass and China, wondered whether demolition work might be worth a try, and suggested that I have the goodness to look about for something whenever convenient. I was still looking when I came to hospital. Dr Pink had suggested a few tests. I should have liked to finish the story, the idea of getting into that pretty blue picture absolutely fascinated me, especially with the teapot, which struck me as somehow more mystical than the other pieces. But I haven’t the talent. Nor, it seems now, the time.’

Kleinzeit opened his eyes, gave the foolscap back to Nox, shook his head, made a thumbs-up sign, and went over to Drogue’s bed singing under his breath, ‘Narrow, cool — the flock.’

‘Funny you should be singing that,’ said Drogue.

‘Why?’ said Kleinzeit.

‘Because I didn’t know there was such a song. Thought I’d made it up myself. Not precisely the same tune, mind you, but the same words.’

‘ “Narrow, cool — the flock”?’

‘Oh,’ said Drogue. ‘I thought you were singing “Sparrows rule the clocks.”’

‘Which you made up?’

‘As far as I know,’ said Drogue. ‘As a matter of fact it was on the very day my fusee trouble began that I first sang the song. Curious, really.’

‘How?’ said Kleinzeit.

‘I’m a traveller for a clock company,’ said Drogue. ‘Speedclox Ltd. I was out with the new line, coming down the M4, when a tremendous lorry hurtled by …’

‘Morton Taylor?’

‘Not at all. Why should I be afraid of a passing lorry? As I was saying, the lorry hurtled by, my car rocked a bit in the slipstream, and the day suddenly seemed darker than it had been, less light in the light if you follow me.’

‘I follow you,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘And at the same time,’ said Drogue, ‘I had the feeling of being strained to the limit by a heavy dead weight pulling me down. If I could unwind somehow I knew I could relieve the strain, but I couldn’t unwind. I was still feeling that way when I got to my hotel. When I walked in I saw an orange packet of Rizla cigarette papers lying on the floor, and I picked it up. In my room I took a leaf out of the packet, and on it I wrote:

Sparrows rule the clocks.

Odd thing for a Speedclox traveller to write, wouldn’t you say.’

‘Yes,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘I found myself singing the words,’ said Drogue, ‘and since then I’ve written other little songs on Rizla papers. Have you ever written on Rizla?’

‘Not yet,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘It seems to me to be a universal sort of paper to write on, and I only write songs about universal things.’

‘Such as what?’

‘Have a look,’ said Drogue. He took a little sheaf of cigarette papers out of his locker and gave it to Kleinzeit. The writing was tiny, neat, and compressed, like something to be smuggled out of prison. Kleinzeit read the top one:

If sky were earth and ocean sky,

Green turtles would be kites to fly.

Kleinzeit read the second one:

Golden, Golden, Golden Virginia,

Be my tobacco, be my sin,

Golden, Golden, Golden Virginia,

Be my original, be my tin.

‘You see what I mean,’ said Drogue. ‘Universal subjects on universal paper. It’s just now come to me why the sparrow popped into my head.’

‘Why?’

‘Something I read in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, from Bede. About man’s life being like the flight of a sparrow out of the wintry dark into a warm and brightly lit hall. It flies in through one door and out of another, into the cold and dark again. I don’t want to go back to travelling for Speedclox when I get out of hospital. I don’t know what I’ll do but I won’t do that.’

‘Have you a spare Rizla?’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I’d like to try one.’

‘Of course,’ said Drogue. He gave him a little red packet of them. WORLD’S LARGEST SALE, said the packet. Kleinzeit wrote on a Rizla:

Rizla, world’s largest sales are thine,

Rizla, smoke a little song for Kleinzeit.

He put the Rizla in his pocket, gave the packet back to Drogue.

‘Keep it,’ said Drogue. ‘I’ve got more.’

‘Thanks,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘but I’d rather not. I’m a yellow-paper man, you see.’

‘Ah,’ said Drogue. ‘Yellow paper. You’d say that was universal, would you.’

‘No question about it,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Same as ordinary foolscap and Rizla.’

‘Ah,’ said Drogue, ‘yellow paper and foolscap may be universal in their way but they’re not universal the way Rizla is.’