Dennis A House in Order

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-32094-3
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 120 Seiten

A House in Order was Nigel Dennis's third and final novel, first published in 1966. 'A quizzical pleasure... This civilized conundrum is about a nameless man captured in a timeless war in an anonymous country who manages to survive in a greenhouse, where he is most protected as well as most exposed... An antiseptic little man, a cartographer by profession, a horticulturist by avocation, he spends a first night in an abandoned, mucky greenhouse and is very happy to be permitted to stay on there, tending his 283 plants... However he lives in the fear that every day will be his last...' Kirkus Review 'A parable of human anguish raised to an existential level.' Time 'A haunting allegory that has influenced my writing.' Diane Johnson (Lulu in Marrakech, Le Divorce)

Nigel Dennis (1912-1989) was born in England and educated variously in Rhodesia, South African, Austria and Bavaria. He wrote too little but for all that there were three novels (and one that was disowned), four plays, a volume of poetry and three works of non-fiction. For twenty years he was the lead reviewer for the Sunday Telegraph. His study of Jonathan Swift, one of his heroes as his own mastery of satire suggests, won the Royal Society of Literature award. Faber Finds is reissuing his three novels: Boys and Girls Come Out to Play, The Cards of Identity and A House in Order.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dennis, Nigel

Leseproben

‘Take me, take me! I am a prisoner too’ – I kept calling this out as I ran down the road, with other absurd words of the same kind and tears of terror. But it was one of those long, foreign roads that run forever up and down hills and valleys, and as fast as I panted to the top of each rise the long column of prisoners in front strung over the next rise: I would never catch them up, and their uniforms, so clear and recognizable, were beginning to blur as the light of the evening went. Not one of them looked back, nor a single one of their guards, though I cursed them and shouted until my lungs split: ‘Don’t leave me! I am a cartographer. I am an enemy. I am a prisoner’ – and so on, until I had lost so much breath that my legs gave up and left me choking and crying in a dusk that terrified me. A soldier stepped out suddenly from the side of the road and held up one hand, to stop me: I was never more thankful to obey though certain he would shoot me on the spot. ‘I am a prisoner too – I am with those in front’ I called as he came closer; and keeping my arms raised above my head, I tried wildly to show where I should be. But he didn’t understand a word, and wasn’t interested in understanding: he just looked me up and down in such a hard way that my miserable legs gave in completely and dumped me in the middle of the dusty road, a heap of tears and fright. He gave a snort that was contemptuous but sympathetic enough, and putting down a large, scarred hand, he pulled my glasses off, folded them carefully and put them in his shirt pocket. Then, he made me get up and walk in front of him, which I did, feeling stronger in the legs now that there was more hope of going to prison safely. I could see nothing of the column now, without my glasses: even the trees that lined the verge passed me only one by one and the road surface turned into littered patches of dusty, broken metal. My escort trudged along behind me at a farm-hand’s pace and whistled as he went – an ordinary, stupid creature, as his whistling showed, but a comfort to me whose terror was of brutes who would beat me to death. But I left well alone and never looked round, so I never saw his face again. It was soon dark and I could see nothing any more except an occasional tear in the road under my feet and the trunk of a poplar when I wandered too close to the verge. We walked for hours, my escort and I, with only his stupid whistling for company and the beat of his big boots. I was horribly tired, but fright kept me moving: I felt that so long as we plodded on I would be safe from shooting. What’s more, one can’t feel terrified every second; each time I felt safer, my nerves rested and my brain stopped imagining new ways of being murdered. What I pictured most now was my companions – or whatever you call people who were never your friends – reaching, and standing outside, some laager or wired camp: while they waited, I would catch up with them; a gate would open, and we would file in. It happened differently. On coming over a rise, I saw a huge light suddenly, shining on a gate in a high wall. I had hardly seen it when the gate slowly swung to, the light was cut off in an instant and I was in total darkness again. I guessed at once – and I was quite right – that the whole column was now inside that wall and that nothing in the world would open that gate again tonight to admit me, or bring on that huge white light to see me in. While I shook and trembled in the loneliness of being shut out from safety, my escort showed worry and puzzlement too. He shouted to one or two dim, passing figures, but got no helpful answer from them. Then, he held me firmly from behind by one shoulder, and shouted again; but getting no answer at all, he pushed me forward, making irritated gruntings, and we passed away from the wall and up what appeared to be a good gravel track. I could vaguely see a wide verandah ahead when he stopped me, and shouted again: but when there was still no answer, the poor booby began to mutter and swear, as if he had no idea what to do next. At last, putting his hand on my shoulder again, he pushed me onto my knees, shook me a few times with threatening noises – which I well understood were about what would happen if I moved one inch – and shuffled off and left me. I stayed exactly where I was, as still and stiff as a piece of furniture. I heard a lot of men passing to and fro along the verandah, sometimes one person’s quick walk, sometimes a group, talking, laughing and humming. Doors opened and closed giving sudden flashes of light, but otherwise everything was completely dark and I couldn’t see more than a foot from my eyes. It was like this for ages, except that soon no more steps sounded on the verandah and no lights flashed any more. The autumn night got cold (temp, approx. 40 deg. F.) and a light wind, coming in from the east, made sure of frost before dawn. I could not imagine anybody arriving to march me into prison at this hour, but as I could see no sign at all of any substitute for prison I felt miserably alone and frightened – particularly as I found it physically impossible to go on kneeling: I had to pump my legs and arms simply to keep my blood moving. I got a bad fright when a light suddenly appeared: I thought it was the first light of morning, which frightened me with thoughts of what would happen when I was found. But it was only the half-moon, coming up as the frost came down, and though it was too weak to light up more than steps leading up to the verandah, it did show me that the gravel under me was a garden path and that just to one side of me there was an object which gave off reflections of the moonlight. I must have been in a semi-stupid state as well as half-blind, because it was a long time before I managed to make sense out of this object and recognize it for my favourite place – a greenhouse. God knows, I was frightened to move from where I was, but the greenhouse was only a few feet away, and the more I thought the matter over the more I felt that I had better creep into it. It might keep me from half freezing to death and it would serve as a temporary prison at least. No man who wanted to hide would choose to do so in a greenhouse: when they saw me there in daylight it would be clear that far from trying to run away I was showing plainly every hope of being shut up. I got up very cautiously and when the blood was back in my legs I got to the greenhouse door in a quick crawl. It was a job to open it, but I managed and found myself in a frightfully neglected place that had obviously not been used since the parent house was commandeered. There were huge spiders-webs in the faint moonlight, and there was cracked and broken glass lying everywhere with the east wind blowing in at the empty panes. There were some filthy old pots strewn over the floor, and on the staging nothing whatever except one wretched little pot full of mouldy earth and a Mediterranean house-leek sprouting out of the top of it, its rosettes just starting to shine in the mild frost. It was a very small greenhouse and a door at the far end opened into a little shed – the perfect attachment to a greenhouse, as I had been telling ignorant people for years, yet this was one of the few times I had come across it, which struck me even in my shivering state as surprising and strange. I closed the door that led into the shed, so it would be clear that I had not the slightest intention of trying to hide, and then sat down on a dirty old wooden chair to wait for my arrest in the morning. I remember thinking two things: that it would be a shame to lose the house-leek when a sheet of newspaper would be enough to keep the frost off it (I found a piece under the staging and laid it on) and that I could never get a wink of sleep with the frost falling and the east wind blowing through the empty panes. Then I went fast asleep at once. I was woken up in the morning by noise and sunshine. The sun was already pretty well up and beginning to warm the greenhouse: the noise came chiefly from the verandah, only five yards away, where the business of last night was starting up again. Officers, looking very trim indeed, passed up and down with the fast, gliding walk that all their soldiers had, and from time to time an NCO or private soldier swept by even faster, as if he had been ordered to deliver a message. When I looked the other way, I thought I could see very vaguely the prison-camp where I had hoped to pass the rest of the war, but without my glasses I could only suppose. I was very hungry, very stiff and still very cold. I was also well frightened all over again because my position – an enemy soldier sitting unguarded in a glass house – was so unlike a correct military situation. At first, naturally, I noted every soldier who went down the verandah as one who might come and arrest me, and tortured myself, as I stared at him, with fancies as to what sort of brute he would turn out to be and how savagely he would pounce on me. But after a few hours of this, it came home to me that I was simply not being seen by anybody at all. Nobody could have been more obvious than I was, stuck up miserably on my wooden chair, and yet not a soul ever threw an eye in my direction, or, if he did, picked me out from my surroundings. One young officer jumped down the verandah steps and went off down the gravel path at speed, but he never so much as glanced into my greenhouse, nor did half a dozen others who came up or down the same path. By noon, I was feeling desperate, because it was clear that the next move ought to be mine: I had only to get up and shout when the next soldier passed and my arrest would come at once. But...