Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey Read Free Book Online Page B

the traffic and returned to the building signed:
OBSERVATORY MANSIONS
Spacious Apartments of Quality Design
    Stepping into Observatory Mansions, cramped apartments of inferior design, I met a person.

A sphincter muscle named Porter .
    The man with many keys. The stoic. The Porter, busy about his cleaning business, busy trying to kill all dust, busy breaking his heart. He saw me but made no greeting. Not even a hiss. As I passed him he turned his back to me, walked out to where I came in and re-entered the building, crawling forward with his dustpan and brush, rubbing out my footsteps. The keys jangled. The teeth of his brush scrubbed the grey, faded carpet that was once blue. The dirt and dust of the city had added its own colour, but first the Porter scrubbed out the blue, cleaned it away, swept it up. In this manner he tidied away all colours. He broke everything down to a ubiquitous grey. He would have preferred white. But white was not possible. White does not last. White, he wondered – probably – are you a myth?
    I held the colour white in my hands, my gloves, but the Porter thought: Whiteness has gone from the city. He thought, it packed its bags years ago, leaving behind one, sad,orphaned boy, orphaned by cleanliness, who climbed the stairs every day, Sisyphus like, with his dustpan and brush, leaving a trail of only slightly cleaner carpet behind him, like the antithesis of a snail. Be not like the slimy snail and leave behind a litter trail – those were the first words he said to me.
    But for a long time I had not heard the Porter speak – the last time he broke out of his word-fast was during his attempt to expel Twenty from twenty. Two years before. She paid no rent. She bit him.
    The Porter lived below us. In the centre of the dirt, in the basement. Amidst the dust and dirt was an oasis, amidst the dust and dirt was a three-roomed cage of undiluted tidiness. I saw it once. I came down to inform him that the Mansions had again been burgled. I came to inform him that this time the burglars had not got so very far. As far as the entrance hall, as far as the cupboard in the entrance hall. The cleaning cupboard where the vacuum cleaner was kept. It’s gone, I said. Stolen. No one can afford to replace it, I said. With a smile.
    The Porter used to help me clean Father once a week. But once, the last time, while we were lifting Father from his red leather chair on to a neighbouring pine chair, a single drop of spittle fell from Father’s mouth and found temporary lodging on the Porter’s right cheek. The Porter dropped Father. Father fell on the floor. The Porter scrubbed his cheek. He never cleaned Father again. He never vacuumed again . I took the vacuum cleaner. No fingerprints were to be found on it. I wore gloves. White cotton gloves.
    The vacuum cleaner has gone – I said. Stolen – I said. Translation: Your best friend … is deceased (lot 802). And then, in that moment of vulnerability, I saw what no one else had ever seen before: the Porter’s flat. As the Porter rushed up to the entrance hall, leaving his flat door open, I went inside and found …
    The three-roomed cage of undiluted tidiness that had declared enforced exile on cockroaches, slugs, flies, spiders, moths, silverfish, ants, bats, mice, rats and intimate ephemera. Though, under the bed, away from light and vision, was a trunk. The trunk was secured by four latches and two large padlocks. What was entombed inside it? I made a guess: nonregulation togs, untyped dispatches, extra-curricular manuals and photographic portraits – in short, collections from an average human life. Of the Porter before he became a porter, of a man who once had a name before he became a job. The trunk had a dual purpose: first for suffocating fragments of biography, the second for providing extra firmness to the already hard mattress above.
    There was a bathroom. I do not suppose the bath had ever been used. That is not to say that the Porter did not ever