Читать онлайн «The Artful Egg»

Once, when he was about twelve years old, his father and mother, after a frantic search of the bottom end of town, had found him seated in the midst of the temple elders, under a sacred fig-tree. “Ramjut,” his mother had cried out, “don’t you know how worried your father and I have been? Just what are you up to, child, with these wise old men?” To which he had replied: “Eating figs. ”

The front door to 8 Jan Smuts Close opened before he could slip the mail through its letter-slot.

“I wondered if—” began blowsy Mrs. Trenchard, her green eyes darting to the mail in his right hand.

He knew what she was after. All last week it’d been the same, the constant hope against hope that her son had written to her from army camp. “You keep hearing these stories,” she had explained to him, “that they’re no sooner given their boots than they’re sent to fight in the bush in Namibia. ” Indeed, her motherly anguish would once again have been pitiful to behold, were Ramjut Pillay paying the slightest attention to it.

Instead, he was slyly stealing a look at seventeen-year-old Suzie Trenchard—he’d delivered her recent birthday cards in their unsealed envelopes—who was languidly descending the staircase, engrossed in a glossy magazine. The white girl’s legs were bare all the way up to the frilly-edged panties she wore beneath a shortie nightie. What legs! Broad thighs, smooth knees, calves with a truly heavenly curve to them. The full breasts were also quite exquisite, a pair of bobbing sweet melons which jutted the sheer fabric and gave it a delicate shake each step she took. Several split-seconds passed before he could reluctantly collect himself.

“You were wondering, madam?” said Ramjut Pillay, fanning the mail like a conjuror and suggesting she picked the postcard.

“Blast,” said Mrs. Trenchard, hardly glancing at it.

“The picture is most pretty and informative,” Ramjut Pillay pointed out.

“Don’t be cheeky!” snapped Mrs. Trenchard. “What I want to know is, haven’t you anything else for me?”

There was really no need for her to be so rude, so he indulged a simple pleasure by handing over the bills one by one. Then, with a final forbidden glance at Suzie Trenchard, whose delectable bottom was giving a ripe jiggle as she disappeared down the passage towards the kitchen, he turned and went on his way.

“Suzie!” he heard Mrs. Trenchard shouting out, a moment before the front door was slammed shut. “Suzie, will you come downstairs this minute for your breakfast? And see you’re decent, do you hear? Don’t forget the servants. ”

Two letters, an electricity bill, and a small packet of colour prints went sliding through on to the hall carpet of 10 Jan Smuts Close.

“A hen is an egg’s way of making. …”

But his uppermost thought had changed.

It was always so when Ramjut Pillay felt a stirring in his loins. A condition, moreover, that tended to elevate his thoughts still further, reminding him of his deep affinity with the Mahatma.

“Brahmacharya. …” he whispered reverently, not noticing that he’d given 12 Jan Smuts Close the mail for numbers 14 and 16 as well, so great was his preoccupation at this moment with Higher Things.