Clutching the whatsit, I attempted to appear knowing - always a challenge. "You might need that," said the plumber who, moments before, had handed me the entrails of the toilet.
It had begun in the small, dark hours of the morning, that quiet time when the buzz of a mosquito penetrates the brain like the whine of a dentist's drill and the diesel roar of a council bus carries from a far, distant ridge. It was a low hiss, that sound which cisterns make when they are almost refilled. In a few seconds the flow of water will cease and silence will again fill the bedroom. But it doesn't. You lie there knowing that the moment you throw back the sheet, place your feet on the floor and rise from the bed, the hiss will stop. You know this because it has done it to you 28 times in the past four weeks. Sometimes it waits until you are at the bathroom door before it stops. It depends on its mood. If you are steadfast and refuse to budge, then it will continue to hiss until dawn as you lie there with both hands clutching the mattress, eyes fixed on the ceiling as your brain boils with rage. One of the disadvantages of sleeping alone, apart from the more obvious one, is that debates as to who will get up to attend to these annoyances tend to be one-sided. So I'd lie there and argue the plus and minus aspects of rising or remaining supine until I realised that dawn was breaking, I'd had a total of three hours sleep and that in half an hour I'd have to get up anyway. Then I noticed a leak. It wasn't a big leak, but it existed. It's the lack of certainty that eats at you with cistern leaks. You know it's only water, but you can never be sure. There's only one way to find out and you know that you're not going to perform that particular test, so you just watch the trickle dribbling across the tiles and running into the drain and hope that it's water. So I lie in bed and, in between wondering if the hiss would stop or continue, wonder at the consequences should my optimistic assessment that it was water prove to be misplaced and the leak be more sinister. I could, I guessed, die of cholera. Dysentery was surely another possibility. Or perhaps beri-beri or yellow fever. The entire suburb would be quarantined. As I lay in the darkness, I imagined the bodies being laid out in neat rows outside my apartment block as a plague of contagion swept through the building. The city would be ravaged because I had failed to get a plumber to fix the leaking toilet. Given that there was every likelihood that I'd be one of the bodies, it occurred to me that worrying what the neighbours would think of me was probably one of my lesser problems. I rang a plumber the next day, the only one in the city who turns up when he says he will, give or take an hour. Don't bother asking for his name. Another person gave it to me and I have sworn to keep the secret of the punctual plumber. It's a tradeperson's thing to imagine that you have some basic grasp of their speciality. Perhaps they feel the need to share the toilet-fixing or washing machine or dishwasher-fixing experience. I am content to play the game, nodding and chin stroking as required as the intricacies of the toilet flush were explained in the naive belief that if I show some interest, they won't charge me as much. This has never happened, but I continue to nod in the blind belief that one day I will get a head-nodder's discount. Had I comprehended a single word, I may well have found it fascinating. A number of years spent in social research is, however, an excellent grounding for pretending a comprehensive grasp of subjects of which you possess a sweeping ignorance. "Ah yes," I said as his voice floated up from behind the pedestal. I'd no idea what he was saying, but I sensed that it required my agreement. Then he stood up and handed me the innards of the toilet, still dripping with what I hoped was water.
"Thanks," I said, standing there as liquid trickled down my hands and on to my shoes.
The toilet, for the moment, has declared a ceasefire and the hissing and leaking has stopped. Should hostilities recommence, I am prepared and have placed the whatsit in the bedside drawer and memorised the instructions for its installation: "Rip out the old one and slip in the new one." No worries, mate. |
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