Free The Folly by Ivan Vladislavic Page A

himself with grace and composure. An image came into his mind – a match, like a tiny rocket, blazing an arc through space – and this godsend saved the day and impressed it on his memory as one of beauty and balance. His hand found exactly the gesture that was required to scrape the head of the match along the side of the box and propel it on its journey; the match, igniting as it entered the atmosphere and burning ever brighter as it flew, found precisely the triumphal trajectory that would bring it, when it was at its brightest, to the heap, which was by now embroiled in a miasma of volatile fumes; the heap sucked in its breath, soured with the smell of petrol, its tangled limbs shuddered, it gasped – and blurted out a tongue of flame so huge and incandescent that it turned night into day and extinguished the stars.
    Nieuwenhuizen could not have been more astounded if Malgas himself had burst into flames. He pointed weakly at the stone next to him. Malgas lowered his bulk onto it and the two of them gaped in speechless wonder at the burning mountain.
    At last the flames died down, the mountain began to collapse onto itself, squirting sparks into the insurgent darkness, and Nieuwenhuizen found his tongue.
    “Pull your stone a bit closer and I’ll tell you a story.”
    “Which reminds me,” said Malgas. He reached casually into the shadows and brought forth the beers. They were still icy. Nieuwenhuizenpunched Malgas’s arm and chose a Castle, Malgas followed suit, and they popped them open.
    “Cheers!”
    They drank.
    Malgas wiped the froth from his lips lavishly with the back of his hand. “Tell me about the old place,” he prompted. “What made you tear up your roots and come all this way to start over? Do you have a dream? Tell me everything, don’t leave out a single detail, I’m an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Also, I need facts, to win over the doubting Mrs.”
    These lines struck Malgas as among the finest he had ever uttered; there was no question that they were the most inspired he had addressed to Nieuwenhuizen so far. Nieuwenhuizen appreciated the speech too, and there was a touch of admiration in his expression as he tilted back his head, creating an oblique play of shadows across his features, stared into the fire, where a mass of twisted tongues were wagging, and murmured, “The Mrs.”
    “My wife.”
    “I remember.” Pause. “Where to begin … Yes.” He scuffed a burnt rib from the ashy edge of the fire with the toe of his boot. “Take this rib here, Malgas.”
    Malgas spat on his fingers and picked up the bone.
    At that moment lights blazed in Malgas’s lounge, a window burst open explosively, and Mrs Malgas was heard to shout, “Put out that fire at once! This is a smokeless zone! Give Him hell, Cooks!”
    “She’s gone too far this time,” Malgas muttered, leapt to his feet and plunged into the darkness. As he fumed across the stubbled field,pressing his beer tin to his sunburnt neck, a broth of angry phrases seethed up in his throat, but the mere sight of his wife’s trembling silhouette was enough to make him swallow it down. All he could manage as he hurried up to the wall was, “Put out that light! You’re spoiling the fire.”
    “He’s getting soot all over everything,” she whined, and flustered like a paper cut-out against the window-pane. “The pool’s turned black as ink. Look at your clothes! What have you been doing?”
    “Haven’t you done enough damage for one day?”
    “This is a residential area.” But the hurt note in his voice had disarmed her, and she rustled away and put out the light.
    “He’s coming out of his shell,” Mr whispered urgently to the open window, “but one more insensitive intrusion could drive him back in again for good. Is that what you want? By the way – are there any biscuits in the house?”
    There was no answer.
    “Marshmallows?”
    Silence. She had deserted her post.
    For want of something better to do, he