24.

Mr Malek

As they leave the house of Mr Van Rijn behind them they hear a voice, soft, but grumbling and argumentative. All three, Vic, Rita and Michael, suddenly swing round to the source of the sound. Standing at his front gate, in his best suit, tie and shined black shoes, is the short, square figure of Mr Malek. He is drunk already, muttering at his front gate and swaying from side to side, but he is not talking to anybody in particular. He is drunk on the clear liquid that he makes himself in his back yard.

His hands grip the iron gate as he leans forward, staring down to the dirt pathway, muttering something indistinct, possibly arguing with himself or with an invisible presence. The three of them try not to stare at the Polish gentleman swaying by his gate and carrying on an argument with increasing passion. He is repeating the same phrase over and again, and the three have slowed discernibly in their pace, concentrating now on what he is saying. At first it is utterly foreign. It could be German, an old Polish phrase or something in Russian. A place, a name. It is difficult to tell. Then he rattles his gate, raises his voice and everybody hears.

‘Get fucked,’ he says, rattling the gate again, but more furiously this time. ‘Get fucked.’

Michael begins to laugh, but his mother stops him. Quiet, she says. Let him be. And in that still, soft summer night Mr Malek rattles the gate again and again, as if shaking the life out of somebody. The shaking increases and the rattling of the gate can now be heard all along the street, and all the families walking up the dirt footpath to the Englishman’s house now turn to observe the spectacle of old man Malek, who is staring down at his feet in that deeply, private world he inhabits, shaking the life out of his front gate, oblivious of the street. He speaks little English and nobody really knows him. Any of the stories the street tells could be true, that he was a resistance fighter in the war, that he was captured and his mind went funny. That he was just a potato farmer who went broke and whose mind was always funny. That he lost his memory when a bomb went off and now he doesn’t know who or where he is. The street believes the first story, is used to the sight of old man Malek rattling his front gate and lets him be.

His voice rises with the racket he is making and is now clearly audible to everybody.

‘Get fucked,’ he calls. ‘I know what get fucked is. You think I don’t know what get fucked is. I know it. You get fucked,’ he suddenly calls, raising his head to the sky, amid a spasm of gate rattling, as if addressing himself to the setting sun or some face in the low, streaked cloud above the pine trees of the school.

Then just as suddenly he drops his head, the rattling of the gate slowly subsides, and his address returns to mutterings.

‘And you. And you,’ he says, nodding back down to the footpath now. Almost inaudibly, he adds, ‘Everybody, get fucked.’

In his best clothes, he is dressed for the party, and like everybody else in the street he will have been invited. But he is already a tired figure. Silent now, with his elbows leaning on the gate, he is staring down at his shoes, shining in the twilight. He swivels his feet, from his heels, moving them backward and forward in an arc. He is almost dancing. His shoes swing from side to side, reflecting as they move the last of the sky’s peach glow.

Soon, he turns those shoes around, faces his house, and takes the small stone pathway back up to his front door. It is early in the evening but he is already exhausted. He is stooped and every now and then there is a slight stagger, a stalling in his progress, a swaying from side to side as he negotiates the pathway.

Those families who are out in the street and who have been observing old man Malek’s antics, now turn back to their conversations. Malek stops halfway along the path to his porch. He raises his hand to his chin, suddenly lost in thought and turns back to the street as if he really might join that pilgrimage down to the Englishman’s house at the bottom of the street. Why not? The invitation is on his mantelpiece, he is invited after all. His suit and shirt are pressed and his shoes are luminous from having been polished all afternoon. Why not? But he suddenly drops his hand to his side, as if dropping the thought as well, and walks back to the house.

Inside he stands before the mantelpiece with the invitation to the engagement in his hands. He runs his fingers over the gold embossed card, then puts it back. The walls of the room are lined with photographs from another time and place, all family shots or country scenes. Through the lounge-room door his wife, dressed in her everyday clothes, looks up from the kitchen table and stares at him. She watched him polish his shoes that afternoon in readiness for the party. And when he asked her, she pressed his shirt and his suit. She even watched him dress, knotting and re-knotting his tie until it sat just right, and she started to believe that he really might go to this engagement after all. Then she watched him sit down to drink in his good suit and shoes and she knew he wasn’t going anywhere.

She studies him, swaying before the mantelpiece with the invitation in his hand, says nothing, then returns to her task. She is making doughnuts. Rich European doughnuts, with four eggs and butter. Later, when they are ready, she will take them to the party and offer the plate to the Englishman as a gift for his daughter’s engagement, but she will not stay.

As she stirs the mixture she tells her husband, in Polish, to sit down before he falls down. Old man Malek slumps into an armchair and loosens his tie. It may yet be early in the evening, and he may well have been dressed for the party since late in the afternoon, but he will be asleep in his armchair before it has begun.

While he is sleeping his wife will place his good shoes on the wooden rack in the bedroom before slipping out into the warm, summer air and delivering the gift of her plate. And when they ask her to join the party, she will thank them without speaking, shake her head, clasp her hands together, and hurry back into the warm scented air of the street.

At home she will stir old man Malek from his armchair and guide him to bed. When the house is cleaned, she will join him. She will lie there, unable to sleep, listening to the faint sounds of the gramophone music coming from the party, and the occasional bursts of laughter and cheers.