Free The Restless Supermarket by Ivan Vladislavic Page A

improved over the years.) The forcemeat philosopher. A rush of irritation, as quick and queasying as a spurt of saliva in the mouth, as he jabbed my Bratwurst with a fork and it spewed grease onto the grille. Bloody Germans. From Germany out und so weiter .Hungarians, Italians, Scots. Immigrants. Foul-weather friends. Slobodan would be hurrying back to where he came from too, no doubt, Wessels would search for him in vain … although he was so much at home here, living off the fat of the land. I felt fat too, schmaltzy and bloated. Stuffed with change, like a piggy bank or a parking meter. The mustard got into my cold sore and burned. I left half the Bratwurst on the plate and crossed the street. The wurst is still to come, I thought, in my Toppelmann twang. Nein, nein, the wurst is behind us. The opposite pavement was crowded with curio-sellers and their wares, wooden animals and idols shamelessly displaying their private parts. I was tempted to march through these hordes like some maddened Gulliver, trampling them underfoot. I escalated, like tensions in the Middle East, like the incidence of armed robbery on the Reef, and issued into the Café where, for the first time in many a long month, my eye was caught by the silver trophy gathering dust among the bottles. I’d been meaning to take it down and give it a good going over with Brasso. The brave little figure, tiptoe on the summit, clad in nothing but a wisp of lacy tarnishing, brought a lump to my throat. The proofreader’s cup, the floating trophy for ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’.
    ‘How ya doin’?’ said Tone.
    ‘How am I doing? If I was the frivolous sort, my managerial friend, I should affix a sign asking that question to the seat of my pants. And a telephone number.’ Then, resorting to sign language, tapping my larynx with the edge of my hand, ‘I’m up to here.’ Perhaps it wasn’t a lump after all, but a bolus of change, half-digested, sour, swimming in bile, bumping against my epiglottis. My little tongue.
    ‘I know what you mean,’ said Tone. ‘I’m also gatvol. But you’ve got to take the punch. Have a drink, man, it’ll make you feel better.’
    Everything will stay the same. Everything will change. A football match was on one screen, and Joseph Slovo, the communist kingpin, on the other. Day or night, rain or shine, in some corner of a foreign field, someone was playing football. While in Kempton Park, at the World Trade Centre, they were levelling the playing fields and shifting the goalposts. As if the negoti-haters, as you-know-who used to call them, were nothing but glorified groundsmen.
    My mouth was still burning, but my throat was dry. Perhaps I needed a drop of the damp after all. Moçes was lurking behind a potted palm, its fronds stirring gently in a breeze off the Bay of Alibia, dallying with some young woman, didn’t look like kitchen staff, too dolled up, lips as red as paint. Helen of Troyeville, or some Carmen from the Quirinale, the sort Herr Toppelmann came along with. Moçes was so enamoured of her, I practically had to stand on my chair to attract his attention. I started the lecture on service, abridged, but I really didn’t have the energy, and he looked so down in the mouth, I felt it necessary to be conciliatory.
    ‘Who’s the girl?’
    ‘She’s my nephew.’
    ‘Ha! You mean she’s your niece.’ Needs the talk on customer relations.
    ‘No, sir. She’s my nephew.’
    ‘Is she your brother’s daughter? Yes? Then she’s your niece .’
    Looks baffled. Then deliberately: ‘She’s my nephew.’
    For crying in a bucket. Whiskey, pronto. The nephew stilted out in her high heels.
    Errol, on his way to the Gentlemen’s room in a hurry: ‘Hoezit bra. Checking out the chocolates?’
    I wouldn’t eat what Tone calls a pastry if he gave them away. As for ‘bra’, I had voiced my objection to the term repeatedly, which only made them use it more.
    I took out my files, but before I could set to work, Wessels