by Martin Amis
He went out into the passage . .. Nothing. Just the boys. He could hear them writhing and whispering away in there. And this was very bad: Marco was supposed to be ill. Richard entered, and told them what time it was. They countered with a demand for a story-the new kind of story he had, he thought, unwisely introduced them to. Twins stories: stories in which the twins personally appeared-and invariably distinguished themselves for their ingenuity and valor. He felt uneasy as he told these tales (Marius suddenly realized. It was Marco who), while the boys lay on their backs, clutching their boyhoods, with drugged eyes. No story, he said. But he told them one anyway. In which they bravely rescued their daddy-rescued him, then tended to his wounds.
He leaned back against the cold outer wall and the window frame. And he thought: the Man in the Moon looks younger every year. It used to be a joke face he wore: a clown face. No longer. He looks pretty mainstream now, like a contemporary: I know people as fat-cheeked, people as pale, people as bald. He looks like me. His face used to smile. Now it pleads. He's sorry-about how he looks. When I'm old, that face will pout. And the Man in the Moon will look like a baby-like the god of babies.
Why cars? Why stars? Why pounds and pence? Why fog, why clouds? Why cold and gold, why dust and rust? Why tramps and vamps and dukes and nukes, why fucks and fights? Why planes? Why trains? Why jobs? Why nickel and dime? Why time? Why mire? Why fire?
I will arise … I will arise and go now, to the callbox, with a suitcase. A phonecall will I make there. Who to? Balfour? R. C. Squires? Keith Horridge? Gwyn, his oldest-his only-friend: Gwyn had never been a candidate. Ever. Richard realized that it had always been Anstice at the end of the line (waiting, in her urban bird's nest with its dust and trinkets, and ever eggless), but Anstice was already dead.
He turned away from the window. The twins were asleep. More than asleep. They looked like figures on a battlefield, arrested, abandoned. They too looked already dead … Richard didn't want to be telling them these stories; these stories about themselves. They were bad for the boys. They reminded him of pornography.
But pornography was surveillance on the act of love.
If he had climbed into his weepship and reared up over Calchalk Street, over Westway and its speed checks and electric eyes, and come on down over Windsor Court, and moved past night porter and night camera and tracked the cable to the apartment-to the Club World-of Steve Cousins …
"I have no words for him," said Steve. "As for him, I have no words."
He sat naked in his black leather chair, finding out what he wanted to hurt. He was conducing surveillance on pornography, which was itself surveillance on the act of love. He was watching others watching others. And it was all up in the air: because if what you were seeing didn't remind you of something, then you really shouldn't be watching it. You really shouldn't be watching.
Pornography, which could wear down the brake linings, releasing you forward . . .
This was so important to him: that he chose to do what he did. Others thought they had chosen-chosen, for instance, a life of crime-just by the hangdog repetition of a hangdog cliche. "You're on your own in this world." "Nobody's going to look out for you in this life"-in this life of crime. But they didn't choose it. It chose them.
What you never wanted to do was fit the profile. You never wanted to be put together like that. No, he wasn't abused by his father. Yes, he had tortured animals as a child. No, he was not in the habit of recording his illicit actions on camera or camcorder. Lifelong hypochondriac: yes. Latent homosexual: no. Stay clear of the profile and work from left field. Left field: the obstetrics nurse who takes to smothering newborns; the millionaire who sends his daughter's ear to the house of the known kidnapper.
Although he believed it contained the information he sought, Steve hadn't found it in pornography. Pornography of the visible spectrum: the red, orange, yellow, the green, the blue, indigo, violet. Boy-and-girl or girl-and-girl and boy-and-boy: this hadn't told him what he wanted to hurt. But tonight he found it. He was ready.
And it came from nowhere-from left field. He wasn't one of those people who watched things and then went out and did them.
Steve sat there naked on the black armchair. Unfolding before his eyes was something completely average. American, hard-core but heavily and vandalously edited. Called?… Called Test Tube Babes. According to the story, the women in it were one minute old. Made by the men, scientists: to their own specifications. They mixed the DNA in a test tube. Then under the microwave or whatever. And then they were born. Withbig hair and big jewelry, tattooed and tit-jobbed, ankle-chained and nipple-ringed-and one minute old. The inter-sex sections were meant to be funny. Reminding whoever was watching that the people in pornography had no sense of humor. It was a necessary condition. Absolutely everyone in pornography was absolutely humorless. Steve never quite got this.
Test Tube Babes. He was about four fucks in when it happened. Scientists and scientist's creation: they're on the lab floor, just finishing up. And a kitten wanders in. They're on the floor, covered in sweat, and a kitten wanders in. Actor smiled, and actress smiled back: the kind of smiles that expressed full confidence of mutual forgiveness. And the kitten (ginger. Do they call it tortoiseshell?) just tiptoes in between them, curiously, with one back paw raised in exquisite tentativeness-having no idea, being an animal, of the prevailing reality. The ergonomic reality. And Steve knew what he wanted to hurt.
It made him do something he couldn't remember having done before-maybe he'd done it long ago, when he was one minute old. He tried to cry. Kittens taken from the newborn litter and kept all alone are immune to the pain of fire and will stand there with their whiskers crackling as the flames come ever nearer. He didn't have the lungs, he didn't have the ducts; the cobbled muscles of his naked belly-each of them hardened and bulged. But it didn't work out.
What he wanted to hurt had something to do with himself. Not himself now. But himself. Himself then.
He raised a hand to his eyes. "They're doing me all over the gaff," he said, just to delay it a moment or two. "They're doing me all over the gaff," he said, just to buy a little time.
It was spring: the season of comedy.
In comedy, in the end, all is forgiven. All obstacles are surmounted, all misunderstandings resolved. Everyone is gathered into the festive conclusion. Warped schemers, incorrigible pedants: they are banished. And everyone attends the nuptials of hope.
But we haven't had much luck with our seasons. Not yet, anyway. We did satire in summer, and comedy in autumn, and romance in winter.
And this was spring. The season of comedy.
But comedy has two opposites; and tragedy, fortunately, is only one of them. Never fear. You are in safe hands. Decorum will be strictly observed.
Marco Tull hurried down the Portobello Road, hand in hand with Lizzete. Unless he was being directly entertained, Marco, on the street, always wore a leer of settled skepticism. You could see his two-sized upper teeth, anxiously yet resignedly bared. He didn't seem frightened so much as overloaded: too many lines of inquiry, too many sense impressions, too many narratives to pursue and complete. Today was Friday: the end of a week of mild illness. Lizzete's pace was brisk. To keep up, Marco didn't jog or trot but walked and ran, walked and ran.
They approached PriceSlash. This was the first shop Lizzete aimed to visit. Gina had called her up the night before. Friday was her day off and she wanted a little peace: a working mum. She offered Lizzete the usual truancy bonus as well as the flat rate for three hours with Marco. But Lizzete was planning to play hooky anyhow, and get some shopping done.The truancy bonus she had fair-mindedly waived. She looked down at him. He looked up at her. She said, "All right? You've got a Megabar coming your way." 13 was watching them from the confines of the orange van, which was currently impeding access to Lancaster Road. He looked completely sick. Not like he looked after a night at the Paradox or on the M25. Being black, he couldn't look green, or gray, or white as a ghost. He just looked complete
ly sick.
"PriceSlash is it."
Steve Cousins said, "There's this mouse driving through the jungle in his Porsche. Hears this cry of Help! and pulls up by this pit. Gets out of the Porsche, looks down-there's this fucking great gorilla. Trapped in this pit. 'I'm trapped, mate. Can you help me out?'
"So the mouse grabs a-grabs this vine. He slings one end down the pit and ties the other to the tow-hook on his Porsche. 'Hold on tight.' He jumps in the Porsche and starts revving. And sure enough. Bit by bit … Hello? I said hello? Are you with me?"
"With the Porsche or whatever," said 13. He looked completely sick.
" 'Thanks a million, mate,' says the gorilla. 'I'll do the same for you one day. Shake.'… Five years later the gorilla is walking through the- through the prairie. And he hears this little cry. Help! Help! There's this pit. He looks down. It's the mouse! 'Where's the Porsche? Don't worry. We'll soon have you out of there.' And the mouse goes, 'How, mate? There's no vines round here.' And the gorilla says, 'It's okay. I'll use me cock.' So he slings his cock down the pit and the mouse scampers up it. And he's free."
Steve waited. He said, "Don't you want to hear the moral?"
"Uh?"
"And the moral of the story is: If you've got a big cock, you don't need a Porsche. Park in Basing Street. In the garage that went bust. Do it."
Marco's father was fifty yards away, in Kensington Park Road. He shook his glass like a maraca at the waiter and said, to Rory Plantagenet,
"Stumbling on Melons, by Thad Green. It came in a plain brown envelope. London postmark. No covering letter. Copyright 1954. I didn't even look at it for a couple of days. And when I did I just thought wow."
"I can't understand," said Rory, "why they put us downstairs."
"Plot, characters, location. He's changed some of the names of course. There are whole pages that are word for word."
"It's too dark down here. And there's a kind of pissoir smell. Can you smell it? Sorry. Go on. Waiter!"
Rory Plantagenet wasn't his pen name. It was his real name. And it suited him. He looked cornily patrician. And altogether vestigial. A generation ago he would have been living in Cap d'Antibes with a mature ladyfriend called something like Christabel Cambridgeshire. He and Richard were schoolfriends, or schoolfellows. For several years they had simultaneously attended the worst and most paranoid public school in the British Isles.
"The thing with plagiarism is," said Richard, "-it always comes out. It's just a matter of time. And that's why I came to you. You know what a novel is. And how much a novel can matter."
This was news to Rory Plantagenet. Agreeable news, on the whole. He was Richard's age. After nights out during which he had attended three or more parties, Rory often found himself wondering about his place in the larger scheme of things.
Richard said, "I want to control all this. Damage limitation. The one / feel sorry for," he added, briefly pondering the wisdom of that third gin-and-tonic, "is Lady Demi. Considering everything else she has to put up with."
"Women?"
"Don't ask me. Ask Audra Christenberry. Ask Mercedes Soroya. You know he even has a … But that's another story. Look. The last thing I want to do is make this any worse for Gwyn than it has to be. He's my oldest friend for Christ's sake. I fucking love the guy."
Marco's godfather, and the object of Richard's love, was also but a block distant. Gwyn was walking west up Ladbroke Grove. He had not informed Phil of this excursion. Actually, it wouldn't have been Phil anyway, so early in the afternoon. It would have been Simon. Boldly he walked on, past the tube station, past Mick's Fish Bar, past Westway. If anything was going to happen, it would surely happen under Westway. That black cavity, where the very walls and pillars were drenched in eel juice and snake's hiss, and tattooed with graffiti. If something was going to happen, it would surely happen under Westway. But nothing was going to happen. Gwyn was clear.
The night before, Phil had told him, in the kitchen (Simon and Jake were also present, tacit, collusive, sloped over their Gold Blends), that all this "nonsense," all this recent "rubbish," all this "silly-buggers," would presently be "sorted." Presently: like tomorrow. "Who is he?" said Gwyn. "What are you going to do about him?" From Phil, a quick shake of the head and a downward glance; but Jake, without raising his crushed, Rugby League face from his coffee mug, simply said, "bu don't want to know." And Gywn didn't want to know. Gwyn was clear. The universe loved him again. He was clear. He walked on.
When he reached the turning into Calchalk Street he paused and then entered the Adam and Eve. His expression was timid, tolerant, with anthropologist's protuberance of eye. And his voice sounded more Welsh than usual when he ordered his drink . .. Barry would often strollthe streets and sit in simple. Sit in rude. Sit in simple. Sit in unpretentious pubs enjoying a "jar" with the common. With ordinary. With the. Just like anybody else . . .
Gwyn confirmed the presence of his wallet with the inside of his wrist and then glanced masterfully at his watch.
In PriceSlash children on tautened reins pressed ahead of their guardians: little rickshaw runners, leading the way to the millennium.
To save money, or because the shops had all sold out, many parents had improvised with washing-line cord and roof-rack grapplewire. These children had enemies and these enemies were everywhere and everyone. Marco was not on reins. Lizzete usually kept a hand lightly resting on his hair. And Marco liked to grip you: by the waistband, by the jacket pocket.
Lizzete was singing a song as they moved up and down the strip-lit canyons of PriceSlash. At present they were in the domestic-hygiene section with its plastic and polythene and all the colors associated with the spick and span.
13 was across the street, in Ultraverse. Ultraverse sold second-hand comics: X-Man and She-Hulk, Count Zero and RoboBabe. Donnama-trix meets Dr. Strange.
"I'm dead," he whispered, and steadied himself against a comic rack. Aquavixen v. Animalman. "I'm dead."
He reckoned he was dead ten times over. Crash would kill him for this but not today and not tomorrow. Crash wouldn't kill him today because Crash was in bed eating hospital food. Even as things stood, Crash wouldn't speak to 13 or even glance his way. All 13 knew was that three men had done his brother, wanting information. It was Grievous Bodily Harm, no argument, as opposed to Actual. In his bed at St. Mary's, Crash seemed to be contemplating the letter G. Grief was what he seemed to be full of. His eyes didn't blink. They stared inward with childish and narcotic melancholy-staring at the grief of his wounds.
On top of everything else 13 had parked Giro in Crash's flat in Keith Grove. Pining, and scratching the doors.
Grendel and Cerebus, Venom and Magma. 13 looked through the dark glass of Ultraverse, across the market street: PriceSlash. As instructed, he had left the orange van in the yard of the dead garage in Basing Street.
"Who is this Tad Green?" said Rory Plantagenet.
"Thad Green. Thaddeus, presumably: American. I can't find any record of him anywhere. The publisher's long defunct. Which all figures. Oh I think we can trust friend Barry to have thought this through pretty thoroughly. He's not going to claim he wrote Hamlet.''''
"It seems so out of character. From what I know."
"Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief. Taffy came to my house-"
"This isn't some kind of hoax, is it? I've got a sixth sense about these things. When I'm being used."
"I swear on my wife and kids. Come on. Don't you see how hard this is-for me? We shared rooms at Oxford. I love that fucking guy."
"Well the more I think about it, the more I think that Smatt will want to whale on this," said Rory-Smatt being the office nickname for his editor (a Cumberland cruiserweight called Sir Matthew Druitt). "It's perfect for him."
"Why, particularly?"
"Because Gwyn's Labour. And Welsh. Let's get on to the women."
When the bill had been called for Richard left the table and made for the pay phone. Rory wanted to inspect Stumbling on Melons and take it
away for the weekend; he would read it, alongside Amelior, and, if everything panned out, he would splash on Monday-the same morning, the same bright dawn that would see the publication of Amelior Regained. Richard had his head bowed over a palmful of change. It was his intention to warn Gina that he would be stopping by. That afternoon he was due-was overdue-at the Tantalus Press.
He dialed his own number.
At 49 Calchalk Street, Flat E, Gina was sitting naked in the bath, her hair all gray and greased with some glutinous unguent or elixir. She stopped her ears with her forefingertips, and lay back. Only her breasts and her caligulan nose were visible in the steam.
Next door, the telephone started ringing. It rang and rang and rang. It stopped ringing.
Gina's head and torso surged up from the water.
Space-time was not on Richard's side. The universe was definitely through with him.
Gwyn came out of the Adam and Eve and walked down Calchalk Street. Although his work conjured up an idealized vision of humankind, hehimself remained. Robustly individual, he went about things in his own. No one could accuse. He always . . .
On the steps of Number 49 he rang the bell marked Tull. He waited. He looked at his watch, and at his fingernails.
"Hello?"
"It's me."
There was a silence. The buzz sounded and he went on up.
Gina was waiting by the door at the top of the stairs in her pink towel dressing gown. She said,
"Are you going to stop?"
Lizzete released Marco's hand as she stood on the street checking her change.
"Hey."
It was 13. Marco was pleased. He liked 13. And he sensed the cool of black. Lizzete was black, but she was a girl. 13 was black, but he was a boy.
"Where've you been, man?" said Lizzete.
"Angela wants you." He pointed with a bent finger, meaning: round the corner. "In the Black Cross."
