Free The Folly by Ivan Vladislavic Page B

meandered back to the camp. In the distance the crooked figure of Nieuwenhuizen lay like a black branch beside a mound of flickering embers.
    Mrs turned the TV set on and sat down in Mr’s La-Z-Boy. The chair smelt of aftershave. It embraced her and made her feel small. The violet light from the screen, on which two men were swilling Richelieu brandy while they discussed money matters, lent the room the atmosphere of a butchery at night, glimpsed from a moving car. Pleased tomeet you. She studied her thin forearms: her flesh looked bloodless and cold. “The pallor of death,” was the phrase that came to mind, and it occurred to her to shout it out of the window.
    “She sends her apologies, it won’t happen again,” said Malgas, seating himself on his stone and holding up the rib. “You were saying …”
    “I was saying —”
    “The pallor of death!”
    “Then He danced around on the top, as if He was trying to trample the juice out of it, and He doused it with petrol, as if it was a tipsy-tart.”
    “For crying in a bucket, will you please stop telling me what he did! I was there, you know.”
    “Of course you were. I just thought you’d like a fresh perspective on events.”
    “I wouldn’t. I’d like to forget the whole thing … I’ve never been so ashamed.”
    “You’re still cross with me.”
    “We were getting on famously. He was opening up!”
    Whether or not Mrs was to blame, Nieuwenhuizen lost his sense of purpose once again and went back to mooching on the plot.
    His indolence did not bother Mr at all. “He’s taking a well-earned break. He’s in training for Phase Two: the actual building of the new house.”
    Mrs scoffed. “Break my eye. He’s turned the environment into a wasteland, and now He’s beating it senseless, pacing up and down inHis clodhoppers. You may think that nothing’s happening, but I tell you, He’s busy. Nothing will ever grow there again.”
    “Unless we want it to.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Nothing.”
    Even so, her allegations came back to him the next evening when he saw the huge heap of ashes left over from the bonfire and the flat earth signposted everywhere with crosses and arrows by Nieuwenhuizen’s soles.
    Every night Malgas joined Nieuwenhuizen at his modest new fireplace on the edge of the ash-heap; he no longer found it necessary to manufacture excuses for his visits, but he sometimes brought a small gift – a bracket or a hinge, a packet of screws or a brass lug, a plastic grommet or a fibreglass flange – as a token of his desire for constructive effort. Nieuwenhuizen stowed each one away with a smile.
    Whenever Malgas inquired about the building operations, which was often, Nieuwenhuizen would chide him for his impatience. “All of this has been surveyed and subdued,” he said, flinging out his arms to encompass his territory. “That in itself is no small thing. I’m not as young as I used to be. I need time to regain my strength.”
    “For Phase Two?”
    “Of course.”
    It was after one of these routine exchanges that Nieuwenhuizen decided the time was ripe.

T hey were waiting for the pot to boil when Nieuwenhuizen went into action. He raked a red-hot nail as long as a pencil from the coals, elevated it with a pair of wire tongs, dunked it in his water drum, waved it to disperse the steam, inspected it meticulously, approved of it, and held it up by its sharp point. “Do you stock these?”
    A tremor of foreboding ran through Malgas. He knew at once that a critical moment had been reached and he rose to the occasion like a fish to the bait. He narrowed his eyes professionally, took the nail, weighed it in one palm and then the other, tapped it on his thumb-nail and held it up to his ear, sniffed its grooved shank and pressed its flat head to the tip of his tongue. “Unusual. I could requisition them for you … but surely you won’t be needing such giants? If you were laying down railway lines or building an ark I could see the