The Solid Mandala Page 3

  Arthur had been Dad’s favourite, in the beginning. Who’s coming for the ice-cream horn? Not Waldo, George, it only brings the pimples out.

  “I wonder why Mrs Poulter is so awful?”

  Arthur, puffing, threatened to topple, but saved himself on Waldo’s oilskin.

  “I don’t say she’s awful!”

  “If you don’t say, it’s likely to fester,” said Arthur, and sniggered.

  Some of his remarks were of the kind which should have crumbled along with the cornflour cakes in the mouths of elderly women.

  “It’s splinters that fester,” Waldo answered facetiously.

  “Perhaps,” said Arthur, and sniggered again.

  Because they were brothers, twins moreover, they shared secrets warmer than appeared.

  The two old dogs were having a whale of a time amongst the fresh cow-turds and paspalum tussocks. They growled on and off to proclaim their pleasure and virility.

  Arthur was thoughtful.

  “You ought to write something about Mr Saporta.”

  “Whatever made you think of Saporta?”

  “I saw them.”

  “When?”

  Arthur was silent, stumbling.

  “When? When, Arthur?”

  Arthur had begun to pout.

  “Some time ago, I think.”

  Waldo averted his face from something. Then he said very distinctly, enunciating from between his original teeth, in his cold, clear, articulate voice:

  “I don’t want to think about the Saportas.”

  The sun caught the gold of his spectacles with a brilliance which turned the skin beneath the eyes to washed-out violet.

  “What made you think about Leonard Saporta?” he asked more gently.

  “I don’t know,” Arthur grumbled.

  But not bad-tempered. Arthur was never what you could have called bad-tempered; it was just that sometimes the more difficult thoughts grated on the way out of him.

  “I expect it was Dulcie,” he said at last.

  Waldo went on crunching over the bush soil of the neglected surface of Terminus Road. Soon at least they’d come out on tar.

  “But Leonard Saporta was such a very ordinary man. I have nothing against him. But why I should write about him!”

  Lady callers had enquired about Waldo’s Writing as though it had been an illness, or some more frightening, more esoteric extension of cat’s-cradle.

  “There is nothing in Leonard Saporta,” said Waldo, “that anyone could possibly write about.”

  Arthur walked looking at the stones.

  “Well,” he said carefully, “if you ask my opinion,” and sometimes Mrs Poulter did, “simple people are somehow more” — he formed his lips into a trumpet — “more transparent,” he didn’t shout.

  But Waldo was deafened by it.

  “More transparent?”

  He hated it. He could have thrown away the fat parcel of his imbecile brother’s hand.

  “Yes,” said Arthur. “I mean, you can see right into them, right into the part that matters. Then you can write about them, if you can write, Waldo — can’t you? I mean, it doesn’t matter what you write about, provided you tell the truth about it.”

  Scruffy and Runt had started a rabbit.

  “What do you know?”

  Waldo was worrying it with his teeth.

  “No,” said Arthur.

  “You were always good at figures,” Waldo had to admit.

  He was yanking at his twin’s blue-veined hand.

  “Yes. That was useful, wasn’t it?” said Arthur. “Even Mrs Allwright, who didn’t like me, admitted it was useful.”

  Waldo was striding now. The great gates of his creaking oilskin had opened on his narrow chest and the long legs stuffed inside the gum-boots. His flies were spattered with fat from a remote occasion at the stove.

  “Oh,” cried Waldo Brown in anguish, “but I have not expressed half of what is in me to express!”

  The heavy Arthur had to run to keep up with his brother. He was whimpering, too.

  “Don’t worry,” he blubbered. “There’s time, Waldo, isn’t there? There’s still time. You can write about Mr Saporta and the carpets, and all the fennel down the side roads.”

  Just then that Mr Dun straightened amongst the stakes up which he had been coaxing his peas. He looked away quickly though, from what he saw.

  Waldo Brown saw a small mean face recognizing.

  “One of the carpets had,” Arthur whimpered, “right in the centre, what I would say was a mandala.”

  Waldo could not walk too fast. He had hoped originally for intellectual companions with whom to exchange the Everyman classics and play Schubert after tea.

  “Come on!” he mumbled.

  He hated his brother.

  Mr Dun, who had finished looking, erected a behind.

  “He didn’t look at us. Or not properly,” Arthur said.

  “He hasn’t been here long enough to know us.”

  “But I know him.”

  “That is different.”

  The Brothers Brown had almost emerged from the subfusc vegetation, the clotted paddocks of Terminus Road, into the world in which people lived, not the Poulters or the Duns or themselves, but families in advertised clothes, who belonged to Fellowships, and attended Lodges, and were not afraid of electrical gadgets. Waldo yearned secretly for the brick boxes to an extent where his love had become hatred. He would have to control, as he had always known how to control, himself, his parents, his colleagues — and his brother.

  Now when he heard his own breathing united with Arthur’s, and realised how it might startle a stranger, he thought it better to advise:

  “It won’t do not to remember that your heart may be starting to give trouble. When I said not to brood, I meant not to brood. To take care is only reasonable.”

  Arthur trotted a little, the white hair flopping at his neck. He was obviously giving thought to what his brother was trying to impress. But it could have been that Arthur was not impressed by reason, or that reason did not concern himself.

  “Reasonably reasonable,” he said, and frowned. “If he isn’t careful the lorry will overturn and all his cauliflowers get bashed.”

  In spite of his equable nature he sometimes suffered from anxiety. But would immediately cheer up.

  “After they pulled the store down, if I hadn’t retired, I might have gone and worked at the petrol station. I like cars when they don’t swerve. When they’re stationary. And the money’s so good I could have kept you. If I’d started early enough I might have kept everybody. In an overall.”

  So they were sitting down to dinner in one of the brick boxes. A hot dinner in the middle of the day, except that everyone is at work, has its advantages, Dad used to say, you can put your feet up at night and read.

  Waldo held himself so rigid Arthur must have felt it in his spongier hand. But made no sign. In some ways you were so close you did not always notice.

  Waldo freed his hand for a moment. The wind getting in behind his spectacles had stung his rather pale eyes. It was so many years, he realized, since he had looked at himself without his glasses, he could barely see his youth’s, not to say boy’s, face. Only sense it. And that, though less concrete, was more painful. In more normal circumstances there were only the scars where the acne had been on the back of his neck.

  “These are our twins,” Mother touched their hair to explain. “Yes, Waldo is the smaller. He had his setback. But is better. Aren’t you, Waldo, better? You’re strong now.”

  He had heard it so often he didn’t always answer.

  “No, there aren’t any others.”

  Mother might have been grunting it if she hadn’t been taught how to behave. She was what people called vague, or English. She didn’t Come Out of Herself, which was a Bad Thing in a new country.

  “Well, two is plenty, I think,” she said and laughed. “Especially when they grow out of their clothes. And fall ill.” She turned her cheek t
o their questions, as she answered in her high, embarrassingly educated voice: “Who knows? I didn’t expect to have twins.”

  Waldo knew, from what he knew, that there wouldn’t be any more, of any combination.

  Dad was usually more specific, especially about illnesses.

  “He was born with his innards twisted. We had to have the doctor sort them out. That’s why Arthur got a start on him.”

  So Waldo grew delicately in the beginning. It was expected of him. When he had a cold he stayed at home and learned the names of plants from Mother. There was a certain pale-green, sickly light which made him feel sad: the light of delicate plants and waiting for Arthur to return from school. Because much as he loved to drift about the house touching the furniture and discovering books he only partly understood, he was lost without his twin. He could not have explained it, least of all to Arthur, who certainly knew.

  “Arthur’s the fair one, the copper-knob,” Dad used to say, mashing Arthur’s hair with his hand as though the hair had been something else.

  People said Arthur was a fine-looking kid.

  Even if the word had not been used Waldo would not have admitted beauty in Arthur, but enjoyed studying his twin. Arthur’s skin, ruddy where it ought to be, dwindled where protected to a mysterious, bluish white. Almost edible. Sometimes Waldo buried his face in the crook of Arthur’s neck, just to smell, and then Arthur would punch, they would start to punch each other, to ward off any shame, as well as for the pleasure of it.

  There were many such games and pretences. Sometimes on evenings of sickly light, before Arthur had returned, Waldo approached the looking glass, his face growing bigger and bigger, his mouth flattening on the throbbing glass, swallowing, or swallowed by, his mouth. Until he would hear Arthur, books falling on the kitchen floor; Arthur had not cared for books. And Waldo would drag himself out of the mirror’s embrace, and run to meet his brother. He never kissed his twin, even when they tried to make him, or at least he couldn’t remember. Instead they wrestled together, and laughed, and even their breathing was inextricably intertwined.

  Dad used to say in the beginning: “Arthur’s so strong he’ll make a wrestler. Or some kind of athlete.”

  As if he already saw his boy throwing a javelin or putting the weight. Like somebody in the paper. Because Dad never went to sports. If you take the trouble to invent gods, he said, you don’t turn them into sweating lumps of human beings. He read to them sometimes abort the Greeks, after he got home from the bank. He sat there ruffling Arthur’s hair, and Waldo would only half listen. Whether Arthur understood, or had listened at all, Waldo doubted. Nor did he enquire, because it was better not to be sure how much, or how little, his brother understood.

  All this reading from the Greek myths was really for Arthur, whom Dad loved best in the beginning. There was a point where he seemed to go off him. Not that Arthur hadn’t continued receiving what was due to him in affection, but more like some dog you had around the place. You had your duty towards him, because you’d got him, and he couldn’t help himself.

  And Waldo. There was never any question of Dad’s ignoring or not being fond of Waldo. He was just in his dealings with everyone. But Waldo was born with that small head, with what you might have called that withered-looking face, if you had been inclined to unkindness. The heads of father and son were both, in fact, carved in rather minute detail, and where they gained in similarity was in the eyelids, not the eyes, the hair-coloured hair, the thin lips which tended to disappear in bitterness or suffering. Physical suffering, certainly, was something Waldo hardly experienced after early childhood. But Dad probably suffered without telling, or giving expression only indirectly to his pain. There was his leg. His foot. Often strangers, and always children, were fascinated by George Brown’s boot, which was something members of the family hardly noticed. It fell into the same category as inherited furniture.

  One evening Waldo was hanging over the gate watching their father limp down Terminus Road after his journey back from the bank. It was one of the steamy months of summer. How very yellow and horrid you are looking, Waldo thought.

  As Dad walked his thin lips were slightly parted. His shoulder was moving inside his coat, fighting for greater ease. When he caught sight of Waldo it was something he obviously hadn’t been bargaining for. But had to speak, and at once, otherwise it would have seemed peculiar.

  So Dad wet his lips, and said what jumped into his head.

  “Where is Arthur?” he asked.

  Waldo did not know. Or rather, he did. Arthur was in the kitchen with Mother, who was allowing him to knead the dough.

  Dad began spluttering, reaching out with his lips for something he was being denied. Then he realized. He bent and kissed Waldo. Waldo kissed him. Or touched with his lips his father’s cheek, which, in spite of the clammy summer evening, was colder than he remembered of any other person’s skin. It was a shock to discover, through the smell of sweat and crushed weed. While Dad and Waldo stood looking at each other.

  So Waldo was in the position of a stranger, but one who knew too much.

  He wanted to make amends, however, both at the moment and afterwards. At the time, to correct himself partially, he said: “Arthur is in the kitchen doing things for Mother” as they walked up the brick path. And Dad, too, perhaps wanted to soothe some possible hurt. He put his hand on Waldo’s shoulder, through which the limp transferred itself. They were limping and struggling, as if in the one body, all the way to the front veranda.

  Presently, when Dad was sitting on the corner of that old day-bed — pausing, which is how he used to describe his flopping heavily down — Arthur came out. But Dad’s need was less by then. It would have been different if Arthur had been hanging over the gate as he came limping down the road. And now, Waldo was watching.

  Mother and Dad used to watch Arthur, or at least up to a certain stage. At first, it seemed, they could not see far enough into him, when Waldo, who could, and who had grown used to what he found, might have told them. Mother’s hair began very early turning grey. She used to sit on the front veranda, twisting the wedding-ring on her finger. It was pleasant for all of them to be together there, particularly after the southerly had come. Once when the southerly was blowing, Dad jerked his head in the direction of the wind, and said: “Just about the cheapest fulfilment of anybody’s expectations.” It was the kind of remark which appealed to Mother. For touches like that she had Married Beneath Her.

  So the boys were taught to wait for the southerly, and after Dad had grown disappointed in Arthur the southerly even helped improve the situation. Mother never grew disappointed to the same extent, because, if she wanted to, she could dare the truth to be the truth. For a long time after everyone realized, she persuaded herself Arthur was some kind of genius waiting to disclose himself. But Dad was not deceived, Waldo even less. Waldo didn’t believe it possible to have more than one genius around.

  Arthur was certainly born with his gift for figures. He did not need coaxing to help out with weights and measures. He liked also to fiddle with the butter and the bread, finally even to make them himself. Dad was disgusted. He said it was nothing for a boy, but Mother approved, as though Arthur’s head for figures were not enough; she seemed to be trying to turn the butter-making and bread-baking into some sort of solemn rites.

  On occasions when he asked whether he too might squeeze the butter or knead the dough, Waldo was told: “No. That’s something for Arthur. He has a particular gift for it.”

  Once Arthur, who was watching the buttermilk gush out from between his fingers, laughed and said: “It’s my vocation, isn’t it, Mother?”

  Waldo was more jealous of that word than he was of Arthur’s privilege. He wondered where he had got it from. Because words were not in Arthur’s line. It was Waldo who collected them, like stamps or coins. He made lists of them. He rolled them in his mouth like polished stones. Then Arthur went and sprang this vocation thing of his.

  One evening Dad, after
he had stumped down to the old butter-coloured, barrel-bellied cow they kept tethered round the place, said between pulling out the milk:

  “Now this is a job for a boy like you, Waldo. It’s time I taught you to milk Jewel. What would you think of that?”

  “I think that’s part of Arthur’s vocation,” Waldo said.

  Then he took out the bull’s-eye he was sucking, and found it had run interestingly, and went away.

  As it happened, Arthur, who was bigger and stronger, learned quite naturally to milk Jewel, and was proud to struggle back through the tussocks with the awkward slopping pail. All the jobs peculiarly Arthur’s became in the end a mystery which other members of the family accepted. Waldo even realized he was going out of his way to protect his brother’s rites from desecration. Supposing, for instance, other boys found out that Arthur Brown patted butter and baked bread. Waldo would have suffered agonies.

  As the dedicated Arthur practised his vocation Waldo used to watch him, half-guilty, half-loving. The evenings of lamplight, with the smell of bread and the white sweat of butter, were not less mythical than some golden age of which Dad read them from a book.

  When they were building the house — not them, the Browns, because the boys were too small, and Dad’s affliction prevented him, and none of them could have, anyway, ever — but the men who had been coaxed to do it, cheaply, and strictly under direction, Dad announced:

  “I know it’s no more than a bloomin’ weatherboard, but I want to suggest, above the front veranda, something of the shape of a Greek pediment.”

  Mother was standing by, in support, though nervous with her beads.

  “Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?” Dad asked the men.

  Fear that they might be as stupid as he more than expected shrank his lips, turned his skin to porous lemon.

  Even after he produced the illustrated book everyone else remained paralyzed by doubt.

  “You must see, Mr Allwright,” he appealed, “what I want — what I mean — a pediment in the classical style?”

  Because the storekeeper, whose wife had owned the land, encouraged them from the beginning, and used to drive them down to the site.