But Spilkin cast another light on things. He said she was trying to get to know me. ‘That is what people do,’ he said, ‘they share their interests. Isn’t that just what you and I did when we met?’
‘But this isn’t the same at all.’
Fact is, the more Merle and I ‘shared our interests’, the more I realized how different they were. My Records had a serious practical purpose: nothing as meanly instrumental as Spilkin had once implied, but a sincere wish to document, so allowing for comparison and improvement. Above all, they were exempla. Lexical gymnastics, although they had a recreational dimension, were aimed at maintaining the highest levels of skill and fitness and therefore at improving the quality of the Records. Even in my more frivolous pursuits, such as crosswording, I sought completion, while at the same time enriching my vocabulary and deepening my philological understanding. I never lost sight of my main purpose, which was to hold up examples of order and disorder, and thus contribute to the great task of maintaining order where it already existed and restoring it where it had been disrupted.
Merle’s lists were no more than pretexts for games. She was always inventing, always trying to create something new, seeking entertainment. But fantasizing, simply for the sake of it, had never struck me as a constructive way to pass the time. When I said so, she had the temerity to call me ‘dry’.
‘It’s not dryness. It’s rigour.’
‘Of the mortis variety.’
‘That’s rigor,’ I said, to put her in her place. ‘We’re not in the Land of the Free and Easy. You won’t catch me in Noah Webster’s leaky ark. Onions is my man, for fullness, and the Brothers Fowler for concision. I mean Henry and Frank.’
‘There, it’s the worst case of dryness I’ve ever encountered. But just you leave it to me. We’ll get the sap flowing in no time.’
Fun and games. One quietish evening — card games in progress at a few tables, conversation at others, Spilkin perched on a stool at the piano to watch the strings rippling like water over a weir — Merle piped up: ‘Want to play Wellington in plimsolls?’
‘Is that like playing Hamlet in tights?’
‘It’s a game. You have to think of eponyms and their progenitors and put them together. Like Wellington and Plimsoll. That was the first one I came up with.’
‘Tell me the rules.’
‘There aren’t any. They’re just amusing combinations — I could have made Plimsoll in wellingtons too, but that’s not so funny. Mind you, they shouldn’t have to be funny.’
I really was at a loss. When she scooped up my Concise, without so much as a by-your-leave, I didn’t even think to protest. She tossed aside my bookmarks and began to leaf.
Then she said: ‘Wellington in bluchers. That’s nice, they were both brass hats. Old Blücher’s lost his umlaut, I see. Pity. They’re like a couple of eyes for laces. Blücher in wellies, on the other hand, or rather foot, is an historical impossibility. But we don’t want to get bogged down in footwear.’
As I’ve said, games hold the barest interest for me at the best of times. But games without rules? Then again, there might be some etymological capital to be gained. I called for another example.
She blew on her tea, stirring up a little tempest, said pensively, ‘Mae West in a macintosh,’ and then laughed so uproariously that Spilkin came over to see what he was missing. Mevrouw Bonsma let him have a ditty for his trip across the room. He had to stop at a couple of tables along the way to exchange a friendly word or two — as if he were the manager rather than Mrs Mavrokordatos — and that gave Merle a chance to sip and ponder.
I racked my brain for eponyms. But my moisture content was lower then than it is now, although I am a good few years older and brittler in the bone, as you would expect. All that would come into my mind was Boycott! Boycott! Boycott! The newspapers were full of it.
Spilkin took to it like a bufflehead to water. ‘No bloomers in the jacuzzi. By order.’ It came out of him just like that.
‘Leotards are fine,’ Merle countered.
Watching the pair of them giggling like teenagers, I couldn’t help thinking that the joke was on me. I tried to laugh along in self-defence, but my face was stuck. It had gone all stiff around the mouth, as if my risorii had seized up, and I tried massaging them from the inside with my tongue.
‘What a long face,’ Merle said. She had taken off her spectacles and her eyes were streaming, making furrows down her powdered cheeks. I have always found the notion of laughing until one cries repugnant. One wants to preserve the boundaries between emotions, I think, or they lose their value.
‘Sandwich …’ Spilkin began.
‘This has gone far enough.’
‘… with sideburns!’
‘Not allowed.’
‘Stop being so silly.’
‘A bit of silliness never harmed anyone — except a stuffy old cardigan like you.’
Monsoons of laughter. Enough. I marched out and didn’t slacken my pace until I had shut my own front door behind me. To think that she would speak to me like that. Stuffy? Sinuses were clear. Lungs as capacious as ever. I’ve never smoked — a dirty habit for an untidy mind — and always walked. I went out onto the balcony to breathe some night air. The lights of the city stretched away to the south. No diamonds and velvet here, but wampum and brushed nylon. Strings of cheap yellow beads showed where the motorways ran, while those blocks of tawdry marcasite, marred by empty sockets, were the South Western Townships (‘Soweto’), or so Gideon, the Lenmar’s nightwatchman, assured me. The black holes belonged to the mines. Some people thought the most cosmopolitan touch on our skyline was the Hillbrow Tower: the flats that offered a view of it were actually more expensive. When I was flat-hunting, the caretaker at Milrita Heights had presented it as a feature, flinging back the curtains in the lounge with a theatrical gesture to show the smooth grey shaft plunging past the window. How was she to know I found it vulgar? Like an enormous parking meter. I’d settled for a place on the south side of Lenmar Mansions, with a view of the southern suburbs.
I went back inside and sat down at the dining-room table, where my notebooks were piled. The tips of my fingers felt dry. I had to keep licking them to turn the pages. Was I as dry as all that? A bent old stick, a twig, a broken reed. Perhaps Merle was right: I had no sense of fun. What were all these facts for? I had lists of every description: street names, buildings, shops, taxis, T-shirt slogans, books, sandwiches, orchestras, species of violence. I even had lists of lists. Here was my list of portmanteaus for residential blocks: Lenmar, Milrita, Norbeth, Ethelinda. It was clear enough what it captured. But what had I hoped it would reveal? Merle might turn the whole thing into a game. Test your knowledge of the city: match the constituent part in Column A (Len) with its mate in Column B (Mar). I would never have thought of that. Was setting an example enough? Or did one also have to enjoy oneself? Perhaps it was time I cultivated the sense of fun I seemed to be lacking.