Void Deck (2)

Mid-afternoon weaving through the shadows of the blocks taking as much grass as possible en route to lunch. Patches of tree cover and sharp angles from some of the towers that were followed like a tight-rope. Up the top end it appeared to be the regular karung guni down on the deck out for the count. Beneath him the man had spread wide some of his product, turned his head to one side and no pretense about the matter, freed from all the troubles of the world. In passing automatically one tried to take the degree of softening from board like that: two thin sheets with the rippled inner between them provided a mattress of sorts; a not insubstantial comfort. Otherwise the men would not pounce on the material as they did, the China boys up the road, the Indian and other foreign workers. These chaps sometimes beat the karung guni to the goods; one often saw the sheeting carted under-arm up along the gutters in the night especially. Figure here almost certainly the local who rode through these streets with his cart behind, grisly kind of hombre with sharp canine features. You could bet the man knew some good cursing and rasping put-down. Bare-chested and perhaps it was bare-foot too usually; a fellow who always maintained his deep jet mop. The latter was a distinct marker, a glossy tone that suggested regular weekly application; never once had the man been spotted patchy or with any hint of gray or fading. Earlier in the afternoon a chap had come singing up the stairs with some kind of short musical accompaniment. As the door had been left open his call had slowly risen from the lower floors and was aimed directly into the room when he stopped on the landing. Later Doreen, who had not moved from her kitchen chair, said it was the karung guni; whether the same caught on the deck an hour later beneath Block 11 was uncertain. Coal-coloured head to one side resting on a small bundle pillow of some kind which from three metres could not be properly sighted. Coming out for dinner it was the card game that took one’s notice further along from D entryway, the concrete round-table gathering that side which collected the women and a single younger man with turned eye who was a regular interested observer. This man and two or three other older men occasionally joined late mornings for a game at a smaller, fold-out table in a corner up against an inner wall as if they were hiding themselves. A wee wager likely either side in order to add pinch of spice. Almost certainly it was an American designation going back to earliest pigeon-holing of a populace in another new world, immigrants again in a more optimistic era who had left the old behind.

NB. For an earlier "Void Deck" posting see October 2013