The Solid Mandala (34 page)

“Well, Arthur, may I show you a few first quality Oriental rugs?”

Altogether Arthur felt too large, too shy, drifting sideways amongst the piles of rugs, which the merchant was preparing to turn over as though they had been the pages of a book.

“No, thank you,” Arthur said, and giggled, “Mr Saporta. I'm really only wasting your time.”

However often he had been invited to drop the “Mister” in favour of “Leonard”, Arthur had not been able to — something to do with the respect in which he held the merchant's solid foundations.

Not that Mr Saporta was particularly rich in goods, it seemed, and his appearance was undoubtedly what Mother and Waldo would have described as “loud”: the suit too flash, the shoulders too broad, the teeth too gold, the moustache too clearly parted under the great curve of his nose. Yet you could not have caught the merchant's eye without suspecting him of gentleness and honesty. Perhaps, also, he was slightly, if only very slightly, stupid. For Arthur sensed on his way through life that only the very clever and the very stupid can dare to be dishonest.

On this occasion the merchant went on turning over his rugs for the pleasure of showing them off, only occasionally straightening
his back on account of the twinges caused by the shrapnel, when Arthur started pointing with his toe.

“That! That! That is it!”

“That,” Mr Saporta agreed, “is a very fine Turkish rug. From Panderma.”

Arthur scarcely heard, and certainly he did not need the name.

“It has the mandala in the centre! But don't you see, Mr Saporta?”

“Don't know about the mandala,” the merchant said.

He obviously did not want or need it.

“Have you seen Dulcie?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Arthur, looking up.

He was suddenly certain this was a secret he would not mind the merchant sharing.

Mr Saporta's glistening eyebrows looked very grave, as though he could not make up his mind how much depended on him personally, and how much could be expected to happen in spite of himself. Fearing his friend, at this, if only at this point, might be in need of assistance, Arthur began to chatter on what probably sounded too high, too irrelevant a note:

“One morning — one Saturday — I'll come down from Sarsaparilla, Mr Saporta — to give us more time — and you shall show me all your rugs.”

But Mr Saporta hesitated.

“Not Saturdays,” he said. “Saturdays I am otherwise engaged. I go to the synagogue,” he reminded. “And my family expects me afterwards.”

He sounded sombre, but a sombreness of such rich dark colours and vibrating harmonies, Arthur was at once reassured.

Seeing his friend thus enclosed he went away soon afterwards, and in the street realized for the first time that the Star of David was another mandala, and that Dulcie's marriage to Mr Saporta would be arranged.

In his joy and distress he sang one of those shapeless songs: joy that the person he loved most — after Waldo — would be made round, as he saw it, distress that he could not relieve Waldo of his ignorance. Waldo could only relieve himself.

All the way down Terminus Road Arthur's twitching throat kept up a shapeless, practically a wordless singing.

And then the Peace came. He had always loved the excuse for singing in the streets. He bought a rattle. He bought a blower which unravelled as far as a pink feather on its end. He went to Sydney, to the streets for which celebrations are created, and for the occasion he composed a song:

“Fuckun mophret!” A man spat.

And a girl shrieked: “Don't let him touch me! That orange nut!” before disappearing as fast as her new button-boots and the crowd would allow.

But many of them kissed Arthur Brown. They seemed to want a mascot of some sort. They got him drunk. Who blew out his blower with the pink feather on the end, to stroke suddenly familiar features. In particular, he enjoyed the retreat of the sterner noses. Always when his blower had recoiled, again, there was someone to kiss him on his large face, slobbery with the joy of fulfilment, of recognition. Everybody was being and doing.

When things had settled down again he heard that Mrs Feinstein was dead. Although she had been his friend he didn't exactly grieve for her, realizing that she had in fact died on her last trip to Europe. But again he went to the city, this time in search of
Dulcie, in the house at Centennial Park. Some woman relative told him where she was, and that Mr Feinstein was too disconsolate to receive even those he knew intimately. Arthur found Dulcie sitting on an upright chair, on the edge of a room, wearing the black dress.

She smiled at him, and he saw that grief had destroyed her face, all except the bones, which were a polished yellow. Even so, she shone with a grave ivory beauty of her own.

“Sit down,” she said, in someone else's voice. “Was the train full?” she asked, as though he had arrived for some other purpose.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, Dulcie.”

“They always are at this time of day.”

That seemed to upset her. She would obviously have liked to cry, only she had dried up inside, there was nothing there but a rack of coughing.

He sat comforting her by stroking the back of her hand with one of his forefingers.

“Hasn't Mr Saporta been?” he asked.

“Oh, I think so. Yes. Of course.”

If he had not known her to be genuine, her manner could have appeared false. Perhaps, it now occurred to him, Dulcie herself had not yet realized. Otherwise, she must surely have found the means for grief out of her love for Mr Saporta.

It was then he conceived the idea of giving Dulcie Feinstein one of his solid mandalas. Supposing he had been wrong, that she was not intended to marry the carpet merchant, that she would never sit down with her children at that over-crowded, over-laden, family table after the service at the synagogue — then without his help she would have no means of relieving her continued drought, of filling her dreadful emptiness.

They sat together for a little. They talked about the price of flowers, and in greater danger, the migration of birds. The room had been abandoned by all those ever connected with it.

Dulcie leaned forward at last, and wiped his mouth with her handkerchief. Perhaps her kindness was to soften an expression which suggested she wanted him to leave.

When he had got up, she said: “I shall let you know when you
are to come. Probably at Sarsaparilla. Daddy, I expect, will sell “Mount Pleasant”. There is not what you would call point in it now.”

She kissed him when he left soon after.

Then — he did not want to think it — she forgot.

Even after it was known they were at Sarsaparilla to collect their belongings and sell the house, he hardly dared wonder at the reason for Dulcie's neglect. Waldo even had found out Feinsteins were there, though naturally Waldo made no mention of a death. Waldo had begun looking at himself in the glass. So Arthur decided not to delay. He went up to “Mount Pleasant” uninvited.

Dulcie said: “Oh, Arthur, I am so glad! We made an arrangement, didn't we? I forget exactly what. But now you've come. So perhaps I'm not so much to blame.”

If Dulcie had been different, again he might have suspected her of putting it on. She was still dressed in black, though. She was standing amongst the packing cases, in the smell of dust from a dismantled room.

“Why, Dulcie,” he said, in his excitement over a genuine discovery, “I didn't know we have the same colour of eyes!”

“Yes,” she said — like that.

Whereas on the previous occasion Dulcie Feinstein's face had been whittled down to the yellow bone, this afternoon she was restored to flesh, out of which the eyes were shining, not, he saw, with the dry fever of wordless grief, not inward-looking, but steady with a lovely confidence.

“Come and let us sit down,” she said, pushing aside a packing case.

So that Arthur, too, grew confident.

When they were seated on the sofa, knee to knee, Dulcie could not suppress a little, passing, unexpectedly humorous whimper.

“My poor darling mother,” she said, “it has turned out exactly as she always expected it to!”

With her hand she might have been smoothing Mrs Feinstein's perpetual earth.

“I mean, she predicted I would decide to marry Leonard Saporta,” Dulcie said, looking straight at Arthur.

There was now no need, he saw, to offer the mandala, but he would, because he still wanted to, because they were all four, he and Dulcie, Mrs Feinstein and Leonard Saporta, so solidly united.

“I want you, and Leonard has agreed — ” said Dulcie, “I want you to come to our wedding, Arthur.”

“Oh, no!”

He had to sit back. She could not have been more astonished.

“Oh, no!” he repeated. “Waldo would be far too — far too
shocked
.”

She drew her mouth in rather uglily, against her teeth, down against her gums. She could have been sucking a lemon the moment before.

Then she said, averting her face: “Waldo is only your brother, you know. At least he's no more than that to me. Arthur's brother.”

“Oh no,” said Arthur, “he's more than that.”

She hung her head.

“It's necessary to escape from Waldo.”

“Necessary for you. Not for me.”

It was too obvious. But Dulcie had made her own escape. For the moment at least she did not see very clearly.

“I know you'll be kind to him, Dulcie.”

“Oh,” she said, “by nature I'm not
at all
kind!”

Shaking herself with a little frilly movement he would have loved less if it had meant more.

“Yes,” she said, biting her lip, still not looking, “I know I shall be kind because you want it.”

Then Arthur took the mandala out of his pocket. It was the blue taw which Norm Croucher had traded for liquorice straps. The mists rolled up, to be contained by the perfect, glass sphere.

“Dulcie,” he said, “I brought you this.”

Scarcely moving his hand he worked it into motion on the open palm.

“It's one of the solid mandalas, the blue mandala,” he explained.

“Oh,” she cried, lowering her head.

He had always known the blue mandala would be the one for Dulcie. Her beauty would not evaporate again.

Though first she had to denounce herself, saying: “I have always
been — particularly lately — hideously weak. You,” she said, gasping for breath above the glass marble, “were the one, Arthur, who gave me strength — well, to face the truth — well, about ourselves — in particular my
own
wobbly self.”

Then she was laughing for the riddle solved. She was holding up her full throat, the laughter rippling out of it.

Exactly when Waldo walked in, perhaps neither of them saw. Dulcie, on noticing, tried to strangle her laughter, but she couldn't.

They both sat looking at Waldo, who had put on his blue serge, and was wearing one of the butterfly collars. He must have been working on his glasses with the shammy for them to shine with just that expression of enquiry. His smile was tight. It had almost reached the point where the twitch began.

So Arthur decided to say the one or two necessary things, and go. He, who could not help himself, could not have helped his brother now.
Arthur is the backward one
. That was the way the relationship had been arranged. Of the twins. The twin brothers. Waldo had wanted it.
Waldo is the one who takes the lead
. Joining them together at the hand. And because Waldo needed it that way, only the knife could sever it.

Like Mother's breast.

The year the Poulters came to live down Terminus Road Mother had gone into hospital at Barranugli for the operation Waldo would not talk about.

“What operation?” he hedged, and decided almost at once: “It's something that isn't mentioned, do you hear?”

So Arthur had to tell Mrs Poulter.

“Our mother has lost one of her breasts.”

“That need not be so serious,” said Mrs Poulter, herself a serious and kindly woman.

“But a breast!” he said, wrinkling up.

He could not help looking at their neighbour, so full and firm.

“I expect women are pretty attached to their breasts,” he said.

Mrs Poulter looked the other way. She began to tell about her sick turkey.

Because of its firm whiteness, its generosity at least in theory, he
would have liked to discuss the breast with their mother, but as though she knew what to expect she always quickly silenced him.

“Mrs Poulter says,” Arthur said.

“I can't bear to hear the Name,” said Mother.

“Why?”

“Repetition becomes monotonous.”

He was considering that.

“Besides,” she said, “a grown man — nearly twenty-eight — surely I don't have to tell you, Arthur, where your thoughts should and shouldn't lie?”

“I can't help it,” he said, “if she's started to live here.”

“Oh, no, it can't be
helped
,” Mother agreed. “But one does wonder — why
here?
”

Soon after their arrival he had gone across the road to speak to the woman in the iron hut, to ask her among many other things, why they were living down Terminus Road. If her answers varied, he accepted the variety; there were several answers to most questions. He took it for granted he would be allowed to squat outside her hut yarning, and eventually, when it was built, he used to barge into her kitchen, though only when her husband wasn't there. The reason for that was too obvious. Mr Poulter didn't like him.