Free The Brooke-Rose Omnibus by Christine Brooke-Rose Page A

exchange, for instance, with a salt solution like soil water, which releases the insoluble potassium and makes it available to the plant. The feeling is one of autotrophism. Mrs. Mgulu sits graciously at her dressing-table in the sand behind the large-leafed red poinsettia, having her hair brushed into sleekness. Mrs. Mgulu takes more than an interest.
    That is how the malady begins. The onset is insidious, well advanced before diagnosis. Anaemia, progressive emaciation, fatigue, tachycardia, dyspnoea, and a striking enlargement of the abdomen due to splenomegaly and hepatomegaly. But the spleen remains smooth and firm on palpation and retains its characteristic notch. The black fingers tap the flaccid white flesh, the wrist emerging dark from the white sleeve of the doctor’s coat. The imagination increases in size progressively and usually painlessly until it fills most of the abdomen. The gesture is one of careful investigation . Enlargement of the lymphatic glands may occur in the later stages of the disease, with a general deterioration to a fatal termination. Humus has an exchange capacity roughly six times that of clay, it’s important to know these things.
    Mrs. Mgulu steps out from behind the poinsettia, wearing something diaphanous.
    – You must come at once, she says, it’s your wife, she’s very ill.
    No. Mr. Marburg the butler steps out from behind the poinsettias.
    – Mrs. Mgulu has sent for you, he says, will you kindly step this way.
    – What is it? What’s happened?
    – It’s your wife. I’m afraid she’s fallen ill.
    Mrs. Mgulu steps out from behind the bedroom screen, wearing something diaphanous.
    – I’m very sorry. My husband is doing all he can.
    – Of course.
    – I have to tell you that it’s the acute, fulminating type. Nothing can be done.
    – What, the monocytic? Or chloroma?
    – Oh, I wouldn’t know, you’ll have to ask my husband. Are you a doctor too, then?
    – I once studied chemistry.
    – Oh, I see. It’s terrible, she looks quite green. Would you like to see her?
    The gesture is one of invitation. Behind the screen the black fingers tap the flaccid white flank. The eyes and gums are bleeding. The gums are maroon or purplish.
    – Lilly. Lilly, it’s me.
    Lilly is deaf.
    – The leucocyte count is 700.000 to the square millimetre.
    – Doctor, how long?
    Dr. Mgulu is not a medical doctor but a Ph.D. (Tokyo), Economics and Demography. This fantasy is therefore ruled out of order by the Silent Speaker. The Silent Speaker’s gesture is one of benediction between the two mauve flowers above and the unborn plants below the humus which yields carbon dioxide that dissolves in soil water. It is important to fill the body’s reservoirs with minerals like potassium or carbohydrate complexes found in seaweed, so that radioactive minerals of a similar type are then absorbed and passed straight out.
    – What exactly is the cause, doctor?
    – The aetiology is unknown. It could be a neoplastic disease. Or due to metabolic disturbances. Or toxic factors. Chemically treated food and such. Has your wife been taking any sulphonamide derivatives? Some doctors still prescribe them.
    – You know very well that she is Colourless.
    At the moment, the fantasies are under control. Sooner or later, however, they will pervade the blood-stream and increase at a striking rate, paralysing the skull with tumorous growths. Sometimes it is sufficient merely to imagine an episode for the episode to occur, though not necessarily in that precise form.
    At eye-level, through the window, about four metres away, and to the right of the fig-tree which overlooks the road, there is Mrs. Ned’s shack. The windowless clapboard wall immediately opposite is dark with age and the cunonia on the corner is dead, its red spike withered away. To the right, at the front of the house, the verandah looks dilapidated and the straw shed over the wash-tub at the back is crumbling down. The wash-tub has a bar of new yellow