The bitter fights which had developed over graveyard and Bonefield rights and boundaries, the eagerness with which some borough councils exploited their new resource, the unseemly trade in what was, after all, human remains, the corporate involvement, the incredible profits, the hypocrisies and politics around the Bone brought us the outspoken disgust of Europe. We were used to that. In fact, we tended to cultivate it. But that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that our own public had had enough.
When the elections came round, the voters systematically booted out anyone who had supported the Bone trade. It was like the sudden rise of the anti-slavery vote in Lincoln’s America. They demanded an end to the commerce in London Bone. They got the Boneshops closed down. They got work on the Bonefields stopped. They got their graveyards and monuments protected and cleaned up. They got a city which started cultivating peace and security as if it was a cash crop. Which maybe it was. But it hurt me.
It was the end of my easy money, of course. I’ll admit I was glad it was stopping. It felt like they were slowing entropy, restoring the past. The quality of life improved. I began to think about letting a few rooms for company.
The mood of the country swung so far into disapproval of the Bone trade that I almost began to fear for my life. Road and anti-abortion activists switched their attention to Bone merchants. Hampstead was full of screaming lefties convinced they owned the moral highground just because they’d paid off their enormous mortgages. Trudi, after three months, applied for a divorce, arguing that she had not known my business when she married me. She said she was disgusted. She said I’d been living on blood-money. The courts awarded her more than half of what I’d made, but it didn’t matter any more. My investments were such that I couldn’t stop earning. Economically, I was a small oil-producing nation. I had my own international dialling code. It was horrible in a way. Unless I tried very hard, it looked like I could never be ruined again. There was no justice.
I met Bernie in The King Lyar in Old Sweden Street, a few doors down from our burned-out office. I told him what I planned to do and he shrugged.
“We both knew it was dodgy,” he told me. “It was dodgy all along, even when we thought it was mastodons. What it feels like to me, Ray, is—it feels like a sort of a massive transformation of the Zeitgeist— you know, like Virginia Woolf said about the day human nature changed—something happens slowly and you’re not aware of it. Everything seems normal. Then you wake up one morning and— bingo!—it’s Nazi Germany or Bolshevik Russia or Thatcherite England or the Golden Age—and all the rules have changed.”
“Maybe it was the Bone that did it,” I said. “Maybe it was a symbol everyone needed to rally round. You know. A focus.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Let me know when you’re doing it. I’ll give you a hand.”
About a week later we got the van backed up to the warehouse loading bay. It was three o’clock in the morning and I was chilled to the marrow. Working in silence we transferred every scrap of Bone to the van. Then we drove back to Hampstead through a freezing rain.
I don’t know why we did it the way we did it. There would have been easier solutions, I suppose. But behind the high walls of my big back garden, under the old trees and etiolated rhododendrons, we dug a pit and filled it with the glowing remains of the ancient dead.
The stuff was almost phosphorescent as we chucked the big lumps of clay back on to it. It glowed a rich amber and that faint, rosemary smell came off it. I can still smell it when I go in there to this day. My soft fruit is out of this world. The whole garden’s doing wonderfully now.
In fact London’s doing wonderfully. We seem to be back on form. There’s still a bit of a Bone trade, of course, but it’s marginal.
Every so often I’m tempted to take a spade and turn over the earth again, to look at the fortune I’m hiding there. To look at the beauty of it. The strange amber glow never fades and sometimes I think the decoration on the Bone is an important message I should perhaps try to decipher.
I’m still a very rich man. Not justly so, but there it is. And, of course, I’m about as popular with the public as Percy the Paedophile. Gold the Bone King? I might as well be Gold the Grave Robber. I don’t go down to Soho much. When I do make it to a show or something I try to disguise myself a bit. I don’t see anything of Bernie any more and I heard two of the stoodies topped themselves.
I do my best to make amends. I’m circulating my profits as fast as I can. Talent’s flooding into London from everywhere, making a powerful mix. They say they haven’t known a buzz like it since 1967. I’m a reliable investor in great new shows. Every year I back the Iggy Pop Awards, the most prestigious in the business. But not everybody will take my money. I am regularly reviled. That’s why some organisations receive anonymous donations. They would refuse them if they knew they were from me.
I’ve had the extremes of good and bad luck riding this particular switch in the Zeitgeist and the only time I’m happy is when I wake up in the morning and I’ve forgotten who I am. It seems I share a common disgust for myself.
A few dubious customers, however, think I owe them something.
Another bloke, who used to be very rich before he made some frenetic investments after his career went down the drain, called me the other day. He knew of my interest in the theatre, that I had invested in several West End hits. He thought I’d be interested in his idea. He wanted to revive his first success, Rebeccas Incredibly Far Out Well or something, which he described as a powerful religious rock opera guaranteed to capture the new nostalgia market. The times, he told me, they were a-changin’. His show, he continued, was full of raw old-fashioned R&B energy. Just the sort of authentic sound to attract the new no-nonsense youngsters. Wasn’t it cool that Madonna wanted to do the title role? And Bob Geldof would play the Spirit of the Well. Rock and roll, man! It’s all in the staging, man! Remember the boat in Phantom? I can make it look better than real. On stage, man, that well is W.E.T. WET! Rock and roll! I could see that little wizened fist punching the air in a parody of the vitality he craved and whose source had always eluded him.
I had to tell him it was a non-starter. I’d turned over a new leaf, I said. I was taking my ethics seriously.
These days I only deal in living talent.
<
~ * ~
THIRTEEN VIEWS OF A CARDBOARD CITY
BY WILLIAM GIBSON
ONE
DEN-EN
Low angle, deep perspective, establishing Tokyo subway station interior.
Shot with available light, long exposure; a spectral pedestrian moves away from us, into background. Two others visible as blurs of motion.
Overhead fluorescents behind narrow rectangular fixtures. Ceiling tiled with meter-square segments (acoustic baffles?). Round fixtures are ventilators, smoke-detectors, speakers? Massive square columns recede. Side of a stairwell or escalator. Mosaic tile floor in simple large-scale pattern: circular white areas in square tiles, black infill of round tiles. The floor is spotless: no litter at all. Not a cigarette butt, not a gum-wrapper.
A long train of cardboard cartons, sides painted with murals, recedes into the perspective of columns and scrubbed tile: first impression is of a children’s art project, something choreographed by an aggressively creative preschool teacher. But not all of the corrugated cartons have been painted; many, particularly those farthest away, are bare brown paper. The one nearest the camera, unaltered, bright yellow, bears the Microsoft logo.
The murals appear to have been executed in poster paints, and are difficult to interpret here.
There are two crisp-looking paper shopping-bags on the tile floor: one near the murals, the other almost in the path of the ghost pedestrian. These strike a note of anomaly, of possible threat: London Transport warnings, Sarin cultists... Why are they there? What do they contain?
The one nearest the murals bears the logo “DEN-EN.”
Deeper in the image are other cartons. Rel
ative scale makes it easier to see that these are composites, stitched together from smaller boxes. Closer study makes the method of fastening clear: two sheets are punctured twice with narrow horizontal slits, flat poly-twine analog (white or pink) is threaded through both sheets, a knot is tied, the ends trimmed neatly. In fact, all of the structures appear to have been assembled this way.
Deepest of all, stairs. Passengers descending.
~ * ~
TWO
BLUE OCTOPUS
Shallow perspective, eye-level, as though we were meant to view an anamorphic painting.
This structure appears to have been braced with a pale blue, enameled, possibly spring-loaded tube with a white, non-slip plastic foot. It might be the rod for a shower-curtain, but here it is employed vertically. Flattened cartons are neatly lashed to this with poly-tie.
The murals. Very faintly, on the end of the structure, nearest the camera, against a black background, the head of the Buddha floats above something amorphous and unreadable. Above the Buddha are fastened what appear to be two packaging-units for Pooh Bear dolls. These may serve a storage function. The mural on the face of the structure is dark, intricate, and executed (acrylic paints?) with considerable technique. Body parts, a sense of claustrophobic, potentially erotic proximity. A female nude, head lost where the cardboard ends, clutches a blue octopus whose tentacles drape across the forehead of a male who seems to squat doglike at her feet. Another nude lies on her back, knees upraised, her sex shadowed in perspective. The head of a man with staring eyes and pinprick pupils hovers above her ankles; he appears to be smoking but has no cigarette.
A third nude emerges, closest to the camera: a woman whose features suggest either China or the Mexico of Diego Rivera.
A section of the station’s floor, the round black tiles, is partially covered with a scrap of grayish-blue synthetic pile carpeting.
Pinned eyes.
~ * ~
THREE
FRONTIER INTERNATIONAL
Shot straight back into what may be a wide alcove. Regular curves of pale square tiles.
Four structures visible.
The largest, very precisely constructed, very hard-edged, is decorated with an eerie pointillist profile against a solid black background: it seems to be a very old man, his chin, lipless mouth and drooping nose outlined in blood red. In front of this is positioned a black hard-sided overnighter suitcase.
Abutting this structure stands another, smaller, very gaily painted: against a red background with a cheerful yellow bird and yellow concentric circles, a sort of Cubist ET winks out at the camera. The head of a large nail or pin, rendered in a far more sophisticated style, penetrates the thing’s forehead above the open eye.
A life-sized human hand, entirely out of scale with the huge head, is reaching for the eye.
Nearby sits an even smaller structure, this one decorated with abstract squares of color recalling Klee or Mondrian. Beside it is an orange plastic crate of the kind used to transport sake bottles. An upright beer can. A pair of plastic sandals, tidily arranged.
Another, bigger structure behind this one. Something painted large-scale in beige and blue (sky?) but this is obscured by the Mondrian. A working door, hinged with poly-tie, remains unpainted: the carton employed for the door is printed with the words “FRONTIER INTERNATIONAL.”
Individual styles of workmanship start to become apparent.
Deeper in the image, beyond what appears to be a stack of neatly-folded blankets, is located the blue enamel upright, braced against the ceiling tile. Another like it, to its right, supports a paper kite with the printed face of a samurai.
~ * ~
FOUR
AFTER PICASSO
Shallow perspective of what appears to be a single, very narrow shelter approximately nine meters in length. Suggests the literally marginal nature of these constructions: someone has appropriated less than a meter at the side of a corridor, and built along it, tunneling like a cardboard seaworm.
The murals lend the look of a children’s cardboard theater.
Punch in the underground.
Like so many of the anonymous paintings to be found in thrift shops everywhere, these murals are somehow vaguely after Picasso. Echo of Guernica in these tormented animal forms. Human features rendered flounder-style: more Oxfam Cubism.
Square black cushion with black tassels at its corners, top an uncharacteristically peaked section of cardboard roof. Elegant.
The wall behind the shelter is a partition of transparent lucite, suggesting the possibility of a bizarre ant-farm existence.
~ * ~
FIVE
YELLOW SPERM
We are in an impossibly narrow “alley” between shelters, perhaps a communal storage area. Cardboard shelving, folded blankets.
A primitive portrait of a black kitten, isolated on a solid green ground, recalls the hypnotic stare of figures in New England folk art.
Also visible: the white plastic cowl of an electric fan, yellow plastic sake crate, pale blue plastic bucket, section of blue plastic duck-board, green plastic dustpan suspended by string, child’s pail in dark blue plastic. Styrofoam takeaway containers with blue and scarlet paint suggest more murals in progress.
Most striking here is the wall of a matte-black shelter decorated with a mural of what appear to be large yellow inner-tubes with regularly spaced oval “windows” around their perimeters; through each window is glimpsed a single large yellow sperm arrested in midwriggle against a nebulous black-and-yellow background.
~ * ~
SIX
GOMI GUITAR
Extreme close, perhaps at entrance to a shelter.
An elaborately designed pair of black-and-purple Nike trainers, worn but clean. Behind them a pair of simpler white Reeboks (a woman’s?).
A battered acoustic guitar strung with nylon. Beside it, a strange narrow case made of blue denim, trimmed with red imitation leather; possibly a golf bag intended to carry a single club to a driving range?
A self-inking German rubber stamp.
Neatly folded newspaper with Japanese baseball stars.
A battered pump-thermos with floral design.
~ * ~
SEVEN
108
A space like the upper berths on the Norfolk & Western sleeping cars my mother and I took when I was a child. Form following function.
The structure is wide enough to accommodate a single traditional Japanese pallet. A small black kitten sits at its foot (the subject of the staring portrait?). Startled by the flash, it is tethered with a red leash. A second, larger tabby peers over a shopping bag made of tartan paper. The larger cat is also tethered, with a length of thin white poly rope.
Part of a floral area-rug visible at foot of bed.
This space is deeply traditional, utterly culture-specific.
Brown cardboard walls, cardboard mailing tubes used as structural uprights, the neat poly-tie lashings.
On right wall:
GIC
MODEL NO: VS-30
QTY: 1 SET
COLOR: BLACK
C/T NO: 108
MADE IN KOREA
At the rear, near what may be assumed to be the head of the bed, are suspended two white-coated metal shelves or racks. These contain extra bedding, a spare cat-leash, a three-pack of some pressurized product (butane for a cooker?), towels.
On the right wall are hung two pieces of soft luggage, one in dark green imitation leather, the other in black leather, and a three-quarter-length black leather car coat.
On the left wall, a white towel, a pair of bluejeans, and two framed pictures (content not visible from this angle).
A section of transparent plastic has been mounted in the ceiling to serve as a skylight.
~ * ~
EIGHT
HAPPY HOUR
Wall with mailing-tube uprights.
A large handbill with Japanese stripper: “LIVE NUDE,” “TOPLESS BOTTOMLESS,” “HAPPY HOUR.” Menu-c
hart from a hamburger franchise illustrating sixteen choices.
Beneath these, along the wall, are arranged two jars containing white plastic spoons, a tin canister containing chopsticks, eight stacked blue plastic large takeaway cups, fourteen stacked white paper takeway cups (all apparently unused, and inverted to protect against dust), neatly folded towels and bedding, aluminum cookware, a large steel kettle, a pink plastic dishpan, a large wooden chopping-board.
Blanket with floral motif spread as carpet.
~ * ~
NINE
SANDY
A different view of the previous interior, revealing a storage loft very tidily constructed of mailing-tubes and flattened cartons.
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