Observatory Mansions Read online

  The day of the arrival of the new resident was during school time and the sad bus was full of children. Some of the children were inevitably female. And some of those female children were inevitably pubescent. These girls would usually sit by the bus driver and stare at his hairy arms and talk to him, lift their skirts, make him laugh, encourage him to pinch them.

  We passed the shops, the burger restaurants, still quite new to our city, with their clean plastic signs. We passed the large supermarket, one of three we have here, each of which employs an army of pathetically thin, pale girls with peroxided blonde hair. What exotic delights there are to be found there: ostrich steaks, pulped papaya, a drink called Sex on the Beach. En route to my work that day I saw a curious sight, something new. A vehicle moving slower than our bus was blocking the traffic in the opposite direction. This vehicle was cleaning the streets. It is a fact that our city is dirty and repugnant. It is a fact that dust covers every object moving and stationary. This vehicle was in its slow but methodical way attempting to remedy the dirt of our city. I had never seen a vehicle designed to shampoo streets before and neither, judging by their reactions, had the other inhabitants of our city. The vehicle was new, it glistened. People stared in wonder at the machine and carefully stepped over the clean path it left behind.

  After the school exodus and peace came the library. The poet and I descended. There is no darkness but ignorance, said a stone above the library’s portal. And by this threat bent people’s backs and kept the opticians in business. I walked to the door in the library labelled GENTLEMEN, for such a type am I, and behind the locked door of a cubicle, readied myself for work.

  The work.

  There is, in our city, in the centre of our city, that part of our city most populated by people with a little excess money, that part of our city where people who are not from the city are most likely to visit, a plinth. A statue plinth. A statue plinth lacking a statue. A statue plinth which once had letters on it naming the statue that once stood upon it. The statue had gone, the letters on the plinth had been erased.

  It was on that statue plinth, in the centre of the city, that I worked. The words erased on the plinth could perhaps have said my name, for no one else used it but me. Had it said my name, it would have said: FRANCIS ORME. What was the work that I was employed in whilst standing on that statue plinth? I was a statue, I pretended to be a statue. For this occupation I earned enough money to feed myself, to feed Mother, to feed Father and even occasionally, when I felt the need, to feed a man named Peter Bugg.

  I wore white. White cotton gloves, as has already been admitted, these I always wore, but, when busy at my employment, I wore whiteness everywhere, not just on my hands. White linen shrouding my body, a white curled wig to conceal my not-white hair, white trousers, white shirt, white waistcoat, white tie, white face. I painted my face white every day before work commenced. I blotted out all those little moles, freckles and the swollen bottom lip that signified Francis Orme. I stood without identity, a statue of whiteness.

  I stood two feet from the ground, elevated by my plinth. Beneath me was a tin box in which coins were placed as the day’s work progressed. One other thing is necessary to mention: in my right hand I held a white enamel pot. In that pot was a small stick of white plastic with a wire hoop at its end. In that pot was a soap mixture. I stood still, holding the pot, with my eyes closed. When I heard a coin drop I would open my eyes, take the plastic stick with the wire hoop at its end from the enamel pot and blow out soap bubbles to the person who had dropped me the coin. The soap bubbles were an annoyance that I had to put up with. If people part with money they demand some compensation. Soap bubbles were the cheapest compensation I could think of. After I had blown out a soap bubble I would close my eyes, resume my pose and remain absolutely still until I heard another coin drop. Then I would open my eyes, move and blow out another soap bubble.

  When I opened my eyes I saw in front of me many people. People who had never before seen a person keep so still. People who were confused, wondering whether I was made of flesh or of plaster. Until I opened my eyes. The white of my body was so precise in its whiteness that the whites of my eyes looked dirty by comparison. Dirty, but alive. When I closed my eyes I resumed my perfect stillness, and the people around me, who only a moment ago had seen my living eyes, began to wonder all over again whether I was of flesh or of plaster. That was how perfect my stillness was. How had I learnt to achieve such inanimacy?

  The art of stillness.

  As a child I often played a game with my toys. I would place them all in a circle, leaving a space for myself. We would sit together. I would look at them all, each in turn, for exactly the same amount of time. I would consider what it could be like to be an object. These objects – a teddy bear, a tin soldier, a clockwork robot, a stuffed fox and a plastic frog – had all at times been given voices by me, I had temporarily made them live in the games of my childhood. I considered it only fair that since I had made them feel what it might possibly be like to be living that I should in turn try to discover for myself – but with help from them – what it was like to be an object. I kept still. I felt my heart slow down. I closed my eyes.

  When I grew up I was given employment by the waxwork museum in the city. This was a popular job, the waxworks was a popular place. For my interview I was informed that I had to stand still amongst wax dummies. Five of us interviewed for one job. The job was stillness. The art of keeping still. We were informed that if none of us were still enough no one would be employed and the job would remain vacant for another year. It was a popular part of the museum that housed wax models that pretended to be people to also employ people who pretended to be wax models. When the public perused the objects they liked to guess which ones were wax, which ones were flesh. Often they made mistakes; this was because the army of flesh dummies were such experts, masters of stillness. When a dummy that was presumed to be made of wax moved, the public was astonished. They gasped and then they laughed. This was considered entertainment. In the interview we had to prove that we were capable of holding a pose for a very long time. Five of us were interviewed with five wax dummies. We all wore different costumes from different ages. I was given a white shirt with frilly cuffs, breeches, a gabardine, white stockings, black buckled shoes and a curled white wig with a purple ribbon at its back. I remember this costume extremely well, not only would I wear it for my interview at the waxworks but I would also wear it for my subsequent employment there. In fact, after my employment was terminated, I kept the costume and used the shirt and the wig (with the ribbon removed) whilst standing still on my plinth. Once costumed, we five interviewees were shown our places between the five wax dummies. We selected our poses. The interview began. A fat man walked in wearing a cream three-piece suit, who I later discovered had come all the way from the largest of all the wax museums, in the capital city of our country, to take the interview. He walked up and down the line of wax and flesh dummies, pausing for a long time in front of each. He sat down and watched us from a distance. He took out his fob watch and waited. In half an hour three flesh dummies had made themselves known. They had moved. They were dismissed. We were now seven. Three quarters of an hour later a fourth flesh dummy fainted. We were now six. After an hour the fat man in the cream three-piece suit took a plastic box from one of his pockets. It was full of flies. He opened the box, the flies flew around us, landed on our faces, walked around our noses. But we did not move.

  After an hour and a half someone else made himself known. But it was not me. One of the waxworks had really been made of flesh.

  The fat man said (to the wax dummy who had revealed himself as a flesh dummy), I’m afraid we must dismiss you, thank you for all your work. The flesh dummy said, But I have been working here for three years, how will I feed my family? The fat man said, Get a movement job.

  We were now five.

  After nearly two hours the man in the cream suit clapped his hands, he said, Very good, that will do, pleas
e step forward. But I did not move. Another trick. After two hours and a half an employee of the waxworks entered the room carrying a food tray. Roast pheasant, roast potatoes, broccoli, claret, lemon tart, stilton, port. The employee left. The man in the cream suit gradually consumed his lunch. Pausing between courses, eating everything, watching us as he ate and drank. After three hours and a quarter, the fat man fell asleep, or pretended to be asleep, to this day I am not sure whether it was another trick or not.

  It was not until I had been standing there for nearly four hours that the fat man shook himself from his sleep, or pretended to shake himself from his sleep, and left the room, closing the door behind him. Shortly after, another man came in, he said the interview was now officially over and that Francis Orme would be employed by the waxwork museum. But I did not move. Then the man said, Thank you everyone, and all of the waxworks moved forward and walked out of the room. Unassisted. There had been no wax figures. The man came up to me. He said, Thank you Francis, that will do, don’t boast.

  I was by far the youngest flesh dummy ever to be employed by the waxworks.

  The job was more complicated than it may sound to the uninitiated, and we who were employed in our jobs of stillness were a very proud group of soldiers. We believed ourselves half flesh and half object. To achieve that standard of professionalism it was important to gain not only outer stillness but also inner stillness. Inner stillness was an art I learnt from my father.

  My father and his (inner) stillness.

  Father is not a famous figure of today, will not be one of tomorrow, and his yesterdays were as eventless as an unfilled diary. Father will never be a famous figure.

  Father considered himself a parenthesis in his own existence. Convinced that he was the essence of insignificance, he determined to live his days out of the light, in shades of darkness that might discourage people from confusing him for a piece of life. He felt comforted making friends with all that never answered back, with all that never moved, with all that others disregarded or simply never noticed.

  Father kept his young body still to observe all about him. Keeping his body still helped him to see what was around him with patience and with consideration. Father was the friend of gradually changing levels of light, of a snail’s odyssey, of dust’s snowfall. One day, though, Father was caught in the light. One day mother drew open the curtains and marched Father to church. One day Father looked terrified and fragile. He was forced into the outdoors. Father caught a suntan (caught in the way that other people catch a disease). In time his wife stopped playing with her new toy and he was discarded. His short term of significance was over and he calmly sought the shadows again. The suntan ran away.

  Then Father was alive and not alive, Father was dead and not dead, he lived and died still. Still. He kept his old body still. He kept time still. Time is movement, and Father and movement treated each other with caution. When Father, in his more active days, decided to move, the decision would only be acted out after great tangles of exhaustive internal considerations. Later when Father moved he was either being moved by someone else, or his body was involuntarily moving him. Don’t be fooled, that was not Father moving, that was Father’s body. The pair, though they had known each other all each other’s lives, were not one. Father’s body twitched without warning Father. It was an old creased rebel. Father, inside Father’s body, watched his body moving with surprise, admiration and a quiet terror.

  For larger sorties into the world of activity, we operated his limbs. Father was our own, grown-up, ugly dolly. We pulled his strings. Our mannequin made of flesh. Years ago, Father made a decision. Father’s decision was to keep his old body more motionless than his youthful body. Thereafter he lived in a chair, a large red armchair made of leather. If I had not introduced him as my father, then he might have been called a man in a chair – or a chair with a man on it, since the chair was at first sight more significant than its occupant. In this way, seated in his chair, death forgot Father. Death paused for a moment in front of stationary Father and then moved on thinking his business had already been accomplished. Father’s decision was not made out of a fear of death. Father’s decision was made out of convenience. It was convenient for a man who loved stillness, who sat in a permanent state of torpidity in a comfortable chair, to remain motionless. Father’s decision was made out of a love of stillness. Father was a genius of the stationary. Father was an enigma.

  However.

  However, on the day that the new resident arrived I was unable to perform my perfect stillness. I was able to achieve outer stillness, but not inner stillness. I was unable to concentrate because I knew by then that surely the new resident had taken possession of flat eighteen. My stillness was not perfect and it being imperfect made me feel wretched. Without perfect outer and inner stillness I was no better than any of the other city buskers. What made it worse was that once, when coins fell into my tin, I opened my eyes to blow out the bubbles and saw Ivan, one of my former colleagues from the waxworks, one of the proud group of half-wax-half-human dummies, and I could see how ashamed he was of my performance. When I opened my eyes the next time a coin was dropped, he was gone.

  We half-wax-half-human dummies that were still left were by that time no longer employed by the waxworks. Our roles had been taken over by electronic dummies, deemed in the long run cheaper than us and also, the shame of it, more impressive to the public. The art of stillness had become a forgotten art. It was then still possible to see some of us half-wax-half-human dummies about the streets, walking dolefully through the city, pausing to look with envy at some statue or pillar. And it must have seemed to Ivan, my former colleague, as if I had forgotten my art, as if I was betraying it, as if I was a has-been still pathetically trying to earn money from a half-remembered trade.

  I left work early that day.

  Peter Bugg.

  For my first visual pictures of the new resident I had to rely on the reportage of Mr Peter Bugg. Mr Bugg lived in flat ten, which, when our building was still in the countryside, was part of the nursery rooms, its bedroom and classroom. Peter Bugg, retired schoolmaster, retired personal tutor, retired person, lived, if it could be called living, off a small pension rewarded him by the father of one of his former pupils. Peter Bugg bald as an egg. Peter Bugg dressed in his two-piece black suit with its flared trouser bottoms. Only the second suit he ever possessed and certainly the last. This suit a gift from former pupils. But not out of gratitude. Out of obligation. The pupils had ruined the first suit he owned. They had painted the white seat of his classroom chair. White. Peter Bugg’s first suit, which had also been black, had sat with Peter Bugg inside it on the classroom chair and had become, in and around the region of his skinny bottom, white. A white and black suit. The pupils bought him a new one, under obligation. They wasted all their pocket money on Peter Bugg’s skinny bottom, an action which further reduced his popularity. But he did not care, not then, for then the ever-changing tides of pupils seemed to stretch out before him, an horizon filled with educational possibilities. He was a cruel teacher. But he was, in his way, fair. He handed out his cruelty to the brainy and the brain-dead. He allowed himself no favourites. He was feared and he smelt that fear, breathed in that fear through a sommelier’s nose. Then Peter Bugg found a favourite and something went wrong. Something went unspeakably wrong. Peter Bugg decided to leave his precious school and become a private tutor. For twenty-two years.

  One day this stern man noticed that he was crying. For no discernible reason. He surmised he was suffering from conjunctivitis. But no matter what medicine he poured into his eyes, Peter Bugg continued to cry. The doctors could not explain the crying. Peter Bugg cried on. Some people, he was known to say, cry. They cry, he was known to say, for no apparent reason. They are not sad, he said, they just cry all the time, without the tears letting up. It happens to some people, he said, it just happens and there’s nothing they can do about it. A year or two later Peter Bugg noticed that he was sweating. Almost co
ntinuously. All over his body, whether he was moving or stationary. He called that sweating hyperhydrosis. But no matter what medication he took, whether taken internally or externally, Peter Bugg continued to sweat. The doctors could not explain the sweating. Peter Bugg sweated on. Some people, he was known to say, sweat. They sweat, he was known to say, for no apparent reason. They are not unfit or overweight, he said, they just sweat all the time without the sweat letting up. It just happens to some people, he said, it just happens and there’s nothing they can do about it. Peter Bugg stocked up on anti-perspirants, foot deodorizers, body rubs, aftershave lotions. He smelt of a hundred different smells. Peter Bugg noticed that he was sweating most on or near to those regions of his body where hair grew. So he shaved himself. He shaved off the hair on top of his head. He shaved off his eyebrows. He shaved off the hair in his armpits. He shaved his legs, his chest. He shaved between his legs. He did not let any of the hair grow back.