Mouroir

Leftovers

In those days many of the inhabitants had already deserted the city. Not a soul dared to be seen along the majestic boulevards which swept through the centre of town. The trees bordering these, accumulating dust, looked as if they had been left behind. Doors and windows were bolted. Balconies overlooking courtyards or street-corners were sightless and the rooms behind them empty too. It hadn’t rained for a long time — the daily sky of an indecipherable metallic blue with the organization of stars present and understood though unseen, and at night the moon a soft myopic eye without eyelids — but slime and mud nevertheless oozed everywhere. Some said it must be a vast underground lake forcing itself to the surface through every shaft and cellar and foundation and grave. Others held the cause to be burst mains and cracked sewers. Sabotaged perhaps. It was a time of subterranean modifications. Every pipe jutting from the spongy earth was in reality a periscope, each faucet a listening device. Those who had stayed behind were either too foolhardy or idealistic to leave (and that amounted to the same), or else infirm, soft-minded, left in the lurch without transportation, poor, browbeaten, suicidal, stateless. Some were petty criminals misreading the signs.

Food was practically impossible to come by. In the mornings I sat in my cell scribbling my fibbles, the bits I could remember as if from a lost and aromatic night — about Enfesj and Tuchverderber and Fagotin and Prisoner Hawk and Gregorian Samosa and Savopopo and my wife, Sweetime. Into which night had she disappeared? Outside I could hear the rats rustling. One often saw them, streaked with mud, their unbuttoned eyes, the fangs shimmering. They were everywhere. They were also indestructible. And the range of sounds emitted — the hisses, squawks, sneers, puffs, grunts, screeches, threats! The city was devouring its own innards. The rats, I often imagined, were now usurping the roles of all other animals. Some even walked the dusty trees like birds. If one could only tame them, or cook them adequately. But the power had long since been cut. In fact, we were warned not to attempt using any electric appliances, and there was no timber dry enough for kindling. In the afternoons I took my grandfather to find something to eat, some sustenance, anything to survive on. He was very old and very weak and quite blind. But he’d insist on wearing his spectacles and walking — which meant being walked — as if he could still separate shapes and shades. By wearing glasses he thought people would surmise his eyes still functioned. I took him by the elbow and led him through the alleys of unfrequented sectors of the town. It wouldn’t do to be observed anywhere along the dead arteries. We squelched through the mud, my grandfather clutching (pathetically) his sheaf of papers. For, as he used to joke bitterly, we are a line of compulsive scribblers. He wore a waistcoat and a shirt no longer very white, a tie oily with age. We trudged over sticky or slippery surfaces, passing by mouldy hedges, low vegetation already damp as if covered by the juice of the spurge, discoloured façades with cracks widening every day. Working our way secretly to the stadium of grey concrete. In more affluent days, days of pomp and pretence, it was known as the Sport Palace. Now it was merely a huge arena reeking of rot and urine and deceased athletes. But at least it still sported underground spaces resistant to the seeping liquids although greenish fungi splotched the walls. And here the stay-behinds could assemble without being seen. Here too some rations were still to be had. Not much. Doughy bread with a white beard. And grey chunks of horsemeat. The supplies, some averred, came to us (or were left to us) by the grace of the Withdrawn Authorities. And they abjured us not to criticize the set-up for reasons of communal security. Also: if you pretended not to see the food it just might not disappear.

In one respect this area was exceptional. Apart from the ubiquitous rats with their fulvous or blackish coats shiny with dew, there were also thousands of enormous white butterflies fluttering overhead, perching wherever they could with wings a-tremble, clean as unwritten and unthought thoughts. Their darting and hovering a series of sibilant letters.

Going down. Down we went into the cavernous interior. In the good old days some racists had squirted their slogans on the walls of the stairwell. BLACK IS BOUNTEOUS, and THE POPULATION EXPLOSION LIES HENCEFORTH IN THE LAP OF THE BLACKS. Or CAN A MAN TAKE FIRE IN HIS LAP AND NOT BURN HIS THE MUMMY? To which a wit had thoughtlessly added Jung’s squib as footnote — FOR WOE OH WOE — EE THE PENIS IS A PHALLIC CYM-BOL. But even these were flaking off, being obliterated by the insidious wetness, the caresses of passing butterflies. Our arrival was always raucously cheered and taunted by those already present. In a way those left behind were fond of my grandfather. Wasn’t he believed to be the seer? Some were students, young-faced once, gaunt and emaciated now. They sat on the stained concrete steps with sheets of white paper in their hands and these they would fold and refold and then agitate rapidly so that it looked as if each held in the fist one of the big pale insects.

The chorus would continue while we waited for our part of the dwindling daily pittance. Chant: “Mister Meschanin Mister Meschanin” — as my ancestor was called — “when will you let the Saints of Sin come in ah come in.” Or again: “Master hey master Do open your heart! Pour to us please Your new work o’ fart!” And often one of their number got up and recited, apropos of nothing I always considered: “I have been responsible for three murders — that of Wrench and Pitters and the African.”

Gradually the hubbub would die down. My grandfather sitting there unperturbed. Hand him something to eat. We would be handed something to eat, to sustain ourselves with. (The inner man.) Was that not after all the reason for our being there? Grandfather picking at the carrion with bony fingers. And eventually when everything was queer except for the brush of the butterfly multitude’s wings and the scurrying of bold rats — shiver-sound of disillusioned ex-students weaving their paper imitations, victims of star-vision — maybe the soundless shifting of water underfoot, inexorable — then my grandfather — and here I should certainly add that he had always abhorred the false-hearted with the prim lips camouflaging primed impurities, the oh- and the so-sayers, the Sunday-sainted scented scavengers — then my black grandfather would lift a manuscript page to the approximate level of his black lenses (which used to embarrass me as I knew his blindness as also his vanity) and declaim in a catacombic voice always the same lines — as if he were addressing the future — the now:

The circuses are empty;

There are no more loins about

And e’en the Christians are excreted. .

I may have emptied my eyes,

But my’air will grow again

Like chains.