Lurid & Cute

by Adam Thirlwell

  THEN MORE BLOOD

  but catastrophes do recede

  But also it was true that as often as I perceived disaster it somehow also receded. Mornings over this maritime city often began powdery and blue. Even as I drove to the hospital, Romy’s breathing became deeper and more regular and I therefore thought that, while unpractised in medical signs, surely this had to be better than nothing. It surely indicated life, rather than death. And this habit of life returning was not for me unusual. All my fears were undone by day that I had woven in the night. I liked to fall asleep considering the moment of my death, but whenever I tried to think what it would mean to be able to say the sentence I am dying, as in some baroque tragedy, the truth imposed itself on me that in order to be saying such a sentence it would have to be just ever so slightly in the future to be true, and therefore, at the moment of its saying, not true at all. Madama Morte! I die, I die! You see the basic problem. Everything I ever thought might be irrevocable somehow beautifully dissolved. Just as in the end I left Romy – sedated, true, but definitely alive and out of mortal danger – in the care of trained professionals, and my subsequent getaway from the hospital was very stately and unperturbed. As usual the world was powdery and blue, like a rococo miniature. I was driving underneath the tree canopy and behind those trees were mansions and their many vehicles, gently arranged on the drive. It was the world as I always had known it, when being driven by my parents to music lessons or football practice or the first ever parties of my youth, the ones that ended at dawn with everyone staring at each other calmly in a field, feeling tired. That was how I always lived, out here on the outskirts of a giant city: the world occurred to me as a series of impressions seen from the windows of a car. Previously, there were chauffeurs: in this landscape, we made do with parents instead.

  MY MOTHER ON MY FATHER

  He’s not a chauffeur, cookie. He’s your father.

  That atmosphere probably makes the world overall a very difficult place to enter. If everything is happening with the sound cut out, it probably makes it easier to imagine that scenes can be deleted and rearranged, when in fact they maybe possibly cannot. Further out were the motorways and warehouses and the hypermarkets with their empty parking grids painted onto flat surfaces of tarmac. This was the landscape in which I made my getaway, a getaway which did not resemble any frantic speedchase I had ever seen on screen. Because according to the cinema theory, as recorded in those films with the dash-mounted cameras and synthesiser music, a getaway is where the reflected lights slide up and off the windscreen and you go careering through the zigzags of the street lights of LA – ballooning and bursting security fences, upending squad cars, and all that. When in fact getaways are much quieter than anyone thinks. You just move on out of the hospital car park in the early morning having left a girl at reception, while still worrying a little for the state of your steering, and no one wishes to delay or blame you at all. And I was glad of that because while I would have been happy to have stayed with Romy if she had been in any major danger, like certainly I would have done that and taken the consequences as any other hero or giant-slayer, still if I could avoid those consequences then I definitely would take that opportunity. What I wanted was this unusual situation to entirely and totally subside, just melt like a vitamin tablet fizzing in a glass of water. And in one way it was definitely possible to argue, in the manner of some warehouse supervisor with her clipboard and radio mic, that so far everything had gone very well. On my way from the hotel to the hospital no police or other spies had stopped me. At the hospital itself, there had been no insistence on any exchange of names. This all seemed very promising and like the ideal state was possible. Absolutely, I would be monitoring Romy’s progress and doing everything I could to make her happy. In secret I would visit her with the glossies and other treats, and definitely we would be discussing our history and future. Right now, however, I wanted to reduce my life back down to something no bigger than a tape cassette, or memory stick. Although of course to do this I had a final task and the execution of this task was making me perturbed – for while I may have looked like I was calm, inside me I was as ever like an undertow in the big deep dark sea, like I had grand glowing jellyfish and floating fish skeletons of anxiety. I was trying to imagine the conversation I would have with Candy – because I have these internal gifts of hyper-vision, like I have this gift for imagining other ways in which a scene might happen, even when it has happened, or is happening – and yet somehow it seemed difficult to imagine how precisely I would offer explanations. I could not quite envision it, and this absence of any explanation made me anxious and also a little furious, not only at myself for creating such a problem, but also at the world for always demanding so many confessions. I wish confessions did not ever need to happen. Confessions, it seemed to me, were a total illness of our time.

  until blood pauses him once again

  Before I could continue in this way of thinking, however, these anxieties were overtaken by a single and present anxiety – and that anxiety was blood. I was bloodied, totally. When I’d parked the car at the hospital I’d looked across at Romy and in that one moment of quietness I noticed that while the bleeding from her nose or mouth seemed to have stopped, which I assumed could be only good, still there was a selection of bloods sort of smeared across her face. And the reason I was now considering this image once again was that the only way of getting Romy into reception, after which she could be tended by doctors and nurses and surgeons, had been to gather her under the shoulders and lift her out of the car, because although she was breathing and conscious she was still very much in a narco state – and as I did this it was once more very obvious that a body was a larger thing than anyone can reasonably be expected to manoeuvre, which meant that in the end we kind of shuffled tenderly and gracefully, cheek to cheek, on the pavement of the forecourt towards the gently opening and closing electric doors. We performed this stunt until a paramedic, who was smoking a single cigarette of leisure, in what I imagined was a state of opiate paradise, very generously – because I know how much such minutes of leisure must be prized, in the middle of a busy work shift among the saws and bones and pulleys and all the other ambulance accoutrements – helped me to locate some stretcher, on which Romy then entered the hospital. But therefore these few difficult moments had meant that there was now blood not only on my cheek where it had rested against Romy’s but also on my hands and teeshirt – and it was this gunk that was now worrying me, in so far as I was overall worrying how it was I could return home to my parents and to Candy, my adored wife, and resume everything that I had left behind. Because while simply not returning until the morning is one definite sign to be explained, this is going to be much more difficult if also you return with blood sort of steeped in your clothes. That’s what I mean by catastrophes being endless. Every time you think the day of judgement has been averted, it returns. And yet, however, you can still avert it, after all.

  & so he detours to a superstore

  For there are advantages to living in the modern world, and in particular the suburbs of this modern world, and one of them is that the suburbs everywhere are an expanse of buildings for shopping. Also these stores are very welcoming, you do not even need to seek them out – instead they announce themselves with the crazy bright joyfulness of a collection of very tall signs, that’s all you need to see to know that soon you will find some business park, or collection of inflated stores. The graphic sign in space – that’s basically the architecture of this landscape I call home. And in these buildings there’s really nothing you can’t discover if you just try hard enough, you only need to enter them with the appropriate strength and determination to succeed. In fact this task is often made easier for you than this might imply because inside there will be men and women who are pleased to help you, who may even approach you with a smile – and it’s definitely true that a smile brightens up any day, that’s just a fact of life. They will come up to you and ask you something like Ma
y I help you, sir? And underneath these lights I did think as I stood there locating the aisles for clothes that the best way for anyone to help me would be to ignore the fact that just possibly I had gouts of a woman’s blood on my otherwise also crumpled clothes. But then again, they did – because that’s how they’ve been trained and it’s very useful. That’s what it’s like inside these superstores and I think that they are responsible for some of the happiest moments of my life, whether it was in the toy stores where there were so many games that the innocent kid had no idea what to do with them all, or the hypermarkets with imported food where all the sauces I could ever want were lined up for me, waiting. Because I like sweet things very much, and especially I like the sweet sauces – the red ketchup and the yellow mustard, and other liquids and suspensions – but suddenly there did not seem enough difference between the red of blood and the red of red sauce and so with purpose I moved among the aisles, which is an easy thing to do because these places are like geometry, they are very organised and patterned – as if someone has taken one mini bodega, the type where the window is a flat arrangement of many cereal or cracker boxes or candy, and then multiplied it zillionly until it’s gigantic. Then also the objects talk to you very much – Let me tell you the story of how I am made! they say. Let’s consider ways to be kind to our surroundings – and I appreciated that, the way each object is its own sign. I appreciated the way they had of advising you and hoping for a better world. In that caressing state I bought a grey marl teeshirt and a very blue bright pair of jeans. By which I suppose I also mean that just this once the usual effort to curate the way I looked had to be for a moment abandoned. Because I try very hard to care about my clothes, even if lately, if I wanted new clothes, then Candy had to buy them – and while I know that at this time so many people have unusual household arrangements, still, I did care about this, after all: I did feel that my identity was in doubt. But in the end the desire for style was greater than the desire to be me, because to style yourself, I sometimes think, is the only way of proving to yourself that somehow the future will be OK. But for now the future was this pair of jeans and grey marl teeshirt which could have benefited, let’s say, from at least some quirkiness in the stitching. I left the superstore and returned to my waiting car where I undressed, which isn’t easy when you’re sitting with the wheel in front of you – you have to wriggle and do strange shimmyings which to an outside observer must look comical indeed. Yes, there I was in the midst of an endless grid for absent cars, and as I paused with my teeshirt off that I used to wipe my cheek with the cosmetic aid of the rear-view mirror, I was struck as I always was by that sad look your torso has when you’ve only got jeans on – a sadness I suppose made more sad if you’ve just left a girl whom you care for very much in hospital, but equally you do care about your wife, as much as if not more than this girl who is currently in a hospital bed, and now you are sitting alone in a car park with your wife almost definitely waiting for you, in the company of your parents. I suppose this is reasonable, to find the situation sad. I don’t know if I any more knew. Picture a blue expanse, then double it, that’s where I wanted to be. I had this image of a place that had no humans in it – as if you pinned up a flag or sail against a wall like a windjammer and then let yourself look into it, as into the deep blue disorganised sea. That’s how tired I was, how woebegone – but also I could see the cosmic argument. Even at my moments of great pleasure, always I could sense a coming insurrection and revenge and punishment. Because one thing I do believe is that people should rise up against me. They should overthrow me, like they would overthrow some psychopathic plantation heir. Had I been able to exist in two places at once, I would have carried out the punishment myself.

  before returning home & lying to his wife

  If this ability to live with her husband’s parents has made you assume that Candy was a quiet girl then I assure you this is not correct. My wife is very cool – and I think it shows in a certain downbeat sarcasm. Her vibe is tough. Candy trained every morning with a punching ball. She had dumb-bells which I could not lift. And I thought then and still think now that this was very cool. That’s basically all you need in the way of a description. She is tall, and her beauty is austere. It is high cheekbone, and delicate eyes. But when she does drunk she also does a kind of lowborn hair-flipping in the kid-from-a-movie manner, which always is good for amusement. Easily she could go to some party in a slap bracelet and rag dress and flats and also some pastel plastic rosaries like she was the queen of the supernatural, a white chick Pamyu Pamyu. She has this smell about her which is like if you imagine the most carnally elegant thing, a sort of lubricant stink that’s also patchouli or rose. For Candy therefore the atmosphere in our house was definitely more old-school than she would have liked. She no more wanted a dauphin for a husband than she wanted recipes from my mother, or to be stared at very quiet by my father, in his ancient pop-star glasses with their yellow lenses. What I’m trying to say is that I had no high hopes for this conversation with Candy. I saw no tearful scene of forgiveness. My only hope was to invent another world. Therefore as soon as I had passed through the fake white pillars guarding our ancestral suburban house, and I was standing there in the hall where Candy was also standing, I began to talk very fast, partly because I think without fast talk we are nowhere always but also because whereas Candy was standing there saying something ordinary like –

  CANDY

  Where were you? I had Hiro call you too but he –

  I had my own plans for how this thing between us would now be scripted and I felt it was important to immediately begin with the absolute invention. You have to, I think, if you want to succeed in these sometimes difficult situations.

  ME

  So I was at this party, but I felt just really down so with some other people we went to another party but I left that also because it was making me sad too, and on my own I went to a cafe and just sat there, like in some cafe, and had a coffee.

  CANDY

  All night?

  ME

  I didn’t know if I’d wake you and I was just: sort your head out, bro, keep cool.

  CANDY

  You didn’t think I’d be awake already if you weren’t home at like six in the morning?

  ME

  Dude, I truly am sorry. You are totally in the right. I was just like feeling totally I don’t know benighted.

  CANDY

  Benighted?

  ME

  That not a word?

  That was how I tried to preserve the plausible and the real and I don’t think it was so bad. I’m not saying at all that this was perfect but in the end there are always limits to one’s inventions. Each invention is followed by another, and that’s very tiring. Next, for instance, she was asking about my change of clothes – for these of course were not the jeans in which I had left the house the night before and she was always sensitive to such things.

  ME

  A superstore?

  CANDY

  Sorry what?

  ME

  I thought it’d make me happier.

  CANDY

  What superstore?

  ME

  Out on the motorway, the twenty-four-hour one.

  CANDY

  So you are currently kind of freaking me out right now because –

  ME

  But why?

  CANDY

  Because – if you just let me finish – either you are lying like some crazy person or you are in some kind of breakdown situation.

  ME

  Is it really so bad? Like really?

  CANDY

  You know it, no?

  ME

  Know what?

  CANDY

  This cannot happen for ever.

  And it was like the way a wave uses the water in the sea – the way the wave moves but the water doesn’t. That was how Candy stood there and was overtaken by her painful thinking. It passed through her, like a wave. And I felt for her because it’s always pai
nful when you doubt your confidence in other people. If she didn’t actually say anything it didn’t mean I couldn’t imagine what it would have been if she had.

  for lies are one way of inventing another world

  But I was also thinking that nevertheless it was undeniable that such silence had its beauties. I had noticed this before. In my infancy I liked stealing from my mother. She used to keep a supply of stickers featuring international footballers and other treats in her handbag, as bribes for her difficult son – which then meant that one day I realised that since she bought in bulk she wouldn’t notice if gradually I removed a chocolate bar, or single packet containing the portraits of my favourite soccer stars, the Brazilians, with their single names. Or I realised that even if she noticed she would never mention this out loud. I wonder if always this is what happens in the families of dauphins. There Candy was and she was willing me to find the tone or story that would allow us somehow not to mention my strange behaviour, or examine its real causes, to exist in a world beyond the actual, and I wanted to be worthy of that performance. At last I came out on –

  ME

  I’m just not happy. I think that’s what this is.

  And I was pleased because at that moment I could see she was relieved. Yes, I could see she was thinking that if we played it at that pitch then she could play it too, like we were in the nineteenth century and I had performed some difficult transposition of a bassoon piece to the trombone, or some such tour de force. I do mean tour de force. It’s often not acknowledged how lying needs such total impresario talent. The problem with lying is that you are told not to think about the truth while you are lying, to believe the lie completely, but what else will you ever think about when you are lying except the fact that you are lying? There’s really nothing else to think about, it imposes itself, absolutely, so that even as you begin your first speech you are considering its shadow speech, in which you tell the truth, and when you are then embarked on your second speech the shadow first speech is still there, but now accompanied by its twin, the shadow second. And that Candy understood it was a tour de force needed no more proof than that she was looking at me with such love. It occurs to me that in my family history there were other such performers, I mean people who could bend the world to their desire, like those hypnotists bend spoons. By this I do not just mean the strongmen like my father, who could found business empires, but also the more devious strongmen like my many uncles, among whom were those who found it useful to present themselves as kooks. And if this coincided with your wife discovering one of your secretarial affairs and preparing to leave you as in the case of Uncle Marvin, or that your wife, in the case of Uncle Milo, wanted another child, or other sundry catastrophes, then this couldn’t be helped. In a similar way therefore in this conversation with Candy I very simply became the person I needed to become in order to make the lying plausible, which was therefore someone whose life was not going so well and who was depressed, which wasn’t after all so difficult because in the end this is not a role that’s unavailable to most people. And in particular it was available to me: being (a) unemployed and (b) often seething at home in my pyjamas with all the rank smells you care to mention. I think you can see how easy it is for such a subject to lie to his beautiful wife, to tell the world that he is in a deep unhappiness when really all along he is also contemplating the picture that is a naked girl bleeding from the face, or that same girl’s face not bleeding but looking up at him with sweat on her nose and above her lips and the light beginning to filter through the curtains as she comes.