The Love Songs of Nathan J. Swirsky

Christopher Hope

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781782399667
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

It is the early fifties in Badminton, Johannesburg, where all the street-names recall British kings and queens and where retired soldiers relive the desert war in their dusty gardens. This small-town dreamscape erupts with the arrival of Nathan J. Swirsky, a pink volcano with an extravagant moustache; a magical pharmacist who speaks of exotic travels to faraway, forbidden places. In alarm and delight, the children of Badminton observe his unlikely resurrection...

BRAVO!

ERIC saw him first. He’d been sitting on the pavement outside the Rug Doctor’s when a big car pulled up. Eric stuffed his book down his shirt and ran to tell us. Sally put the tennis ball in her pocket and Tony dropped his cricket bat. We ran all the way to the pharmacy, but when we got there we felt strange, so we hung back across the road and waited to see if he knew us. I reckon Swirsky must have been away for a couple of years. But it felt like for ever.

Sally did not wait. She dashed across the road and kissed him. Swirsky had always filled his clothes tightly. Now he was wearing yellow shoes, blue trousers and a yellow leather coat that matched his shoes. His clothes seemed fuller than ever. Sally hugged him and cried on his dark green tie.

‘Whoa, girlie!’ Swirsky lifted her into the air. ‘Any more water and you’ll melt my moustache.’ He put her down carefully and mopped his moustache with his handkerchief. Then he waved his handkerchief at the dark green car parked outside his pharmacy. ‘That’s the new 1954 Opel Olympia. Straight out of the box. South Africa’s most modern car. And that, in the front seat, is the new Mrs Nathan J. Swirsky.’

Tony, Eric and I went on hanging back. Eric had pulled his book out of his shirt and was pretending to read. Tony and I pretended to be watching his reading. His book was called My Eight Years With The Congo Pygmies.

‘Morning men,’ Swirsky called. ‘Let me tell you something for nothing. When you next meet a Frenchman, say to him, “Bonjour, mon ami” – and you’ll have a friend for life.’

Papas from the Greek Tea Room wandered outside to see what all the noise was about.

‘Get away with you!’ Papas shouted when he saw who it was, grinning all over his face, and hugging Swirsky.

‘Get away yourself!’ Swirsky shouted back. ‘You old Greek shyster!’

And together they began taking down the rough planking they’d used to board up the pharmacy when Swirsky left Badminton.

I felt a bit giddy. As if I’d spent a long time on the merry-go-round and stepped off too quickly. Nobody had believed he would come back. Not even Sally who had written to him at the Leopard Rock Motel. But now he was back and it seemed no time at all had gone by. What had happened to ‘for ever’?

While the men worked and we watched, the new Mrs Swirsky sat in the car. Her skin was very pale and smooth. Her hair was rich, red and full. When the sunshine touched it, it flashed flame. Now and then, she would lift one hand and flutter her finger tips at us in a feathery little wave.

‘I suppose he’s been around the world and I’m going to have to hear what they eat in foreign places,’ said my mother when she heard about Swirsky’s return.

‘Fancy old Swirsky finding a wife,’ my father said. ‘And I’d always thought there was a touch of the nance to Nathan.’

‘A touch of the what?’ Each of my mother’s words seemed to wear a hairy sock over it.

‘Must I spell it out for you, Monica?’

My father put one hand on his hip and stood on tiptoe, waving his hand over his head. He looked like a dancing palmtree.

‘For Heaven’s sake, Gordon, Martin’s watching you! Martin, try not to screw up your face like that. Gordon, if you don’t care what ideas you put into the boy’s head, at least think about passing natives.’

‘I have better things to think about,’ said my father, ‘than passing natives.’

We could not understand why Mrs Raubenheimer and Dr Moishe, from the Jewish Old Age Home, didn’t buzz around to Swirsky’s pharmacy the moment he got back. My mother had been saying, ever since Swirsky left, that they were all sure to have been very good friends.

‘Can they have forgotten him?’ Sally asked us. ‘He’s been away for such a long time.’

‘He’s married now,’ said Eric. ‘They always look different when they’re married.’

I was in Swirsky’s pharmacy when Mrs Raubenheimer met Ruthie. I was looking at Swirsky’s latest attraction. A mediaeval castle with battlements and turrets built of boxes of Sylvania ‘Superflash’ flash bulbs. ‘Blue Dots for Sure Shots!’ The moat around the castle was cut from dark blue crêpe paper and thumb-tacked to the carpet.

Swirsky told Mrs Raubenheimer that Ruthie came all the way from Wimbledon, England. Mrs Raubenheimer said she believed Wimbledon was very wet.

‘No wetter than anywhere else in southern England,’ said Ruthie.

‘Good old England,’ said Swirsky. ‘Where would we be without its blessed weather?’

And Mrs Raubenheimer said – ‘Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle, what’s so blessed about that?’

I stood in the middle of the dark blue paper moat and wondered how they could have been such friends once, as my mother believed.

When Swirsky came back so suddenly his moustache was at its best. It was a pair of black bat-wings beneath his nose. His white coats were so crisp you could almost taste them. Where the starched V of his icy lapels framed his perfect green tie you were looking at an oil painting you could eat.

His wife Ruthie, with her creamy skin and red-hot hair, was like nobody we’d ever met. She roundly spoke out all the sounds to be heard in a word and left them ringing in your ear. It was the first time we had heard English spoken by an English person and it was almost embarrassing. She talked as if she did not care who heard her. She called him Natie.

‘You should travel,’ he told my mother. ‘I can recommend it.’

‘East, West, home’s best,’ said my mother firmly. ‘Some of us are very happy where we are, thank you.’

Swirsky bought a black motorbike and painted ‘Swirsky’s Pharmaceutical Supplies’ in red on the white carrier box and scooted around the estate in a pair of flying goggles from his Air Force days, straps trailing in the wind.

In his first week back in the pharmacy he built the magnesia wall. A wall of dark blue bottles, six feet high stretching across his shop from nappy pins to barley sugar. The wall was a game you could see through. Bottle art. Glass painting. Looking at people through the dark blue magnesia wall turned them into glass ghosts at midnight. Soft edges and lots of depth. Afterwards it could be quite a pain to see the originals in the harsh sunlight of Henry Street or George Crescent, bleached back to nothing interesting by the African glare, all sharp edges again, and dark tans. Just plain Mr Strydom or old Harry Hawksley or boring Gus Trupshaw.

No rains fell in Badminton for weeks and it got ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• CONTENTS
• NATIVITY
• DRAGONS
• PINK
• BUNNIES
• PRECIOUS
• ARRIVEDERCI!
• PATTERNS
• BRAVO!
• MAUNDY
• CHUMS
• LOVE SONGS
• ALOFT
• About the Author
• Also By Christopher Hope
• Copyright Page