Lurid & Cute

by Adam Thirlwell

  as an avenger

  The end of guilt! If I had a battle cry, perhaps this could be it. For was I not going to pay back the money? Was I not also preoccupied with the demise of my marriage, the death of my dog, the happiness of my friends? Not that I did not think I deserved dark punishment. I was very much aware that punishment was my due, as just one more of the powerhogs and warmongers. But at the same time I would argue that I always tried to act from the best of motives – I really do dislike harm in all its forms, and surely that’s a form of purity, even if what happens seems to have this impure tone? – and if unintended consequences ever occurred that were shameful, then surely this was not the only way to judge a person’s life? Totally, I had entered a world I did not understand and when that happens perhaps you will have to accept some violence as your due, and it was true that the violence used against me had been quite small, involving as it did only one member of the animal kingdom, and not for instance the severing of my wife’s ear, or clubbing me in the legs with a metal baseball bat. From that perspective, sure, the violence was quite delicate, but then I think it’s important to remember how vast such smallness feels. And why should it be our dog to suffer? Our dog was the most innocent creature I had ever known, the kindest, with the saddest eyes. I began to lift him up, just very gently take him in my arms, and as I did so it was like my arms remembered what it had been like when he was miniature and a puppy, when I would take him in my arms so that he could go outside into the garden, for the single step down to the patio was too much for him and alarming. It was really not to be endured. Everyone had disappeared. Everything had gone. But therefore I would face this situation with some kind of grace. I would face the violence with grace out of love. Because to be a dog is a terrible situation, you are dependent on the protection of other people and always I had taken this protection very seriously. Absolutely, I had done something wrong. But did that mean the punishment itself should be so grotesque? If they thought that it was easy to be fearsome, then they should surely be taught that this was no way to behave. If I had to, I would defend my territory with aplomb. Whether such a decision constitutes a spiritual life I have no idea, but for me it was enough – like if now it were the día de muertos I could acquit myself with bravado. Suddenly I understood the material, the way the best movies are the ones where at a certain point you can see where the film-maker has understood what she is doing, a moment of pure clarity, and that is when she transforms the whole shebang into something live and fragile and unfamiliar. I would face violence with style. And surely that’s something? Surely in the history of the saints there is one who does not seem so saintly, whose saintliness does not take the form of performance pieces like sleeping on a bed of nails, and so on, being tied to a wheel and spun? And if so, then maybe I was one of these less obviously saintly saints.

  together with his sidekick Hiro

  Very softly I laid our dog down, then went inside to talk to Hiro. Because if you are in the business of revenge, you generally need weapons, and a sidekick.

  — You still with me, yeah? I said.

  — This is crazed, said Hiro.

  — It does seem so, I said. — But this is what we are going to do.

  Probably it was good we had already entered a narcotic atmosphere but I also think my plan was justified. For what I was proposing was no mayhem and multiple murder, it was only something very simple and not necessarily violent at all. I wanted to bury our dog out in the fields, in the woods, where he so liked to roam. But first I wanted to go to the nail salon and return their money – because although we had spent that money and although the idea of stealing from my parents did not excite me, still, I knew where my mother kept a fat pile of notes in the freezer, for emergencies, and surely this did count as an emergency. But also I thought it was important to do huge violence to the nail salon’s premises: not to anyone personally, but just an act of vengeance that would show I was not going to be perpetually accused.

  — That your plan? said Hiro.

  — It is, I said.

  — OK, said Hiro. — OK.

  And I was very pleased that this operation would be conducted with Hiro, because angry as I was, I still understood that maybe this plan would not succeed, for many things can go wrong when you introduce violence to the world and are not practised in it, and that worried me, but I tried to keep that worry as small as I could. It existed in my mind like a patch of sunlight through a window on a floor. I mean it does and does not belong to the floor you’re looking at.

  — Then, said Hiro, — we only need ourselves a hammer.

  — A hammer? I replied.

  — Sure, said Hiro.

  A hammer, he continued, was very frightening to people and you could pick it up in every home, which is an advantage if you are new to the business of revenge. And of course he was right. We have this category of weapon, whereas so many domestic things are weapons if you use them differently: knives, forks, hammers, hooks, tongs, shovels, spades – these are all you need to behave completely manically. And that, he concluded, was how we would manage this conundrum. It was all very neat and very intelligent, the way Hiro planned it out. We just gathered up our dog, the money from the freezer, two hammers from a cupboard in the kitchen, then took the keys to my mother’s car, and drove up to the parade. That’s how easily things can happen when you’re thinking clearly. Just as also thinking clearly has its advantages of complication, too – because as we drove Hiro suddenly said: The spade, and I had to admit he had a very good point. Because it is not possible to dig a hole among leaf matter or mud with your own hands, it’s just not possible at all. For a moment we terribly paused, and I worried that all my planning would disintegrate – but then, in one of those moments of inspiration that must mark the biography of a person destined for great things, if they were not often forestalled by circumstances and practical details, I remembered the warehouse emporia, out by the motorway.

  a revenge from which they are briefly sidetracked

  For something noir can still be very bright. And so we drove back out past the vacant apartments and chop shops until we found the home-improvement store. It was opposite the hypermarket where ever so long ago, or so it felt, I had sat in the car park and felt this encroaching doom. And maybe after all doom was not so wrong. But I did not want to think like that. The light inside was even brighter than the bright blocks of cars. It was made of plastic multiple chandeliers, teardrops, copper wire, with a fragile tinkling when the distant air-con fans approached them. But me I was making for the garden section, with such opposite softness, such scent of wood in the air, of garden twine. And it was only maybe now that I was discovering that terror is a drug, terror is an atmosphere you acquire. I was on a mission to buy a grave-digging spade for my beloved dog, this dog who had been killed in revenge for my own misdeeds, with hammers concealed on my person. And perhaps one reason why it was so enticing was that to the outside observer there was nothing fearsome visible at all. And so it was occurring to me, because I am always given to seeing myself in or as other people, that the woman beside me, testing a range of ornamental garden forks, was maybe buying a fork to bury the bloodied root of her husband’s penis, or that the man looking at urns for shrubs or herbs or other foliage was in fact assessing if it might be large enough to plant his child’s beheaded head. That was how I thought, with maybe wild eyes but still a softness in the sneakers, while I contemplated the garden tools. The spades that I had been thinking about it turned out were very big. They glistened and were stainless steel and so heavy that I wasn’t sure if I could wield one. But nevertheless, I bought one. I had no choice. And so we went back on our way.

  before executing this revenge with miniature violence

  Of course I wasn’t sure exactly who had threatened us from the salon, and it was possible that in fact neither of the choppers who had attacked us were employees of the salon itself. I knew that my revenge might not have the perfect symmetry that the usual revenge should poss
ess, but I couldn’t help that: I had to make do with what I had and I think in the end that’s enough, or at least it often has to be. And so we entered the salon like some nightmare scenario, bearing hammers, and a spade, and a dead heavy dog. I was surprised by this, but now it could not be altered: Hiro had perhaps inadvertently – since the dog had been lying on his lap, in its shroud – just brought the dog in with him. Certainly it was interesting to notice the effect – where the single customer just stood there with her mouth open, then

  — Scram, said Hiro, cradling the dog, and she did go – and the receptionist who owned the lovely portrait of a saint began to tremble, very fast. There was deep fear on her face and I must admit I liked that. Once again I was having a miniature glimpse of the power that maybe gang leaders feel or mad dictators, the total power anyone can have if they can abandon all their restraints, just take them down like dismantling a Lego castle – if, I suppose it needs to be added, they can also do this without any fear at all. Fear of consequences, I think, tends to obfuscate the picture. If that’s something you can reconcile, then it really does allow you a tremendous range. And so with that power deep inside me, I began the scene, while Hiro placed our dog very gently on the floor. In moving him some blood had slightly squeezed out from his wound.

  — The fuck? said another girl.

  — Shut the fuck up, said Hiro.

  — Here, I said, — is your money.

  I placed the notes carefully on the desk, because I did not after all want to lose any. I wanted them to see that we had paid them back in full. And it seemed to me obvious that it was the right place, that this was indeed the correct object of our vengeance, by the very fact that they said nothing. It was exactly, I was thinking, as if they expected it. And therefore with this doubt resolved I smashed the hammer down onto the receptionist’s desk. I was exulted. I was very large. The silence that followed this tumult seemed very long, and I understood it was because no one knew how to respond, and that did please me, very much. Also more kinds of liquids were emerging from my dog’s body, and the effect was very gruesome and upsetting. Then I smashed the telephone with the hammer and it slightly broke but mainly slipped to the floor, where it fell noisily and with some impact. The receptionist bent to pick it up and I understood that she seemed to be testing or using it, just talking very softly or at least seeming to do so, but I did not quite understand this because at this point the violence inside me was totally huge and I was not sure how I would stop it. There was a small hand mirror and I smashed that too, and it was making me wonder if I could smash the mirror in front of each customer’s chair. I had no idea how much violence that would require. I did regret now that we had no real gun. If I could have fired bullets into the ceiling, and made holes in every possible surface, I would totally have done that. But then slowly, very slowly, with this grace in her movements which I now noticed for the first time, the receptionist moved from out behind her desk, and into the middle of the salon, where she kneeled down beside my dog. Then she took a towel from a pile in front of one of the mirrors, and wrapped him, and she did this very gently, and I appreciated that gentleness very much. It was like something now was understood, even if perhaps she did intend it as rebuke. Her face was very grave. Then she handed me my dog, and he was totally swaddled and ensconced: only his black nose was protruding, the way it used to protrude from the bedclothes when he was sleeping under the duvet. And suddenly I felt no power at all. I felt very sad and very tired. All I wanted to do now was bury my dog somewhere, quietly. I understood that people were staring but I did not care. A fine rain was falling, very faintly, at a slant, like the most invisible curtain, and in this rain we made our fast escape.

  that is surely our hero’s right

  In the street, happy people among the damp palmettos were shopping or speed-dating and were delighted. In a parked car a man was sitting, listening to some cool jazz, tapping drumsticks on the steering wheel. Whereas here I was, with a dead dog in my arms, and Hiro sparkling and beeping beside me. It saddened me how I could not be absorbed in the verdant scene at all. There I was, in the same street, and I had forgotten what happiness was. I hugged this thought to me, as if it were some hot-water bottle to soothe me in the dark. The only possible conclusion was that a cruel injustice had been done to me. Why had these last few months been so exceedingly complicated for me? If you thought about it long enough, it was all incredibly unfair. I really did deserve, it seemed to me, a small vacation, perhaps panning for gold, or exploring the South Seas. I owed myself, I thought, at least that much. It did not seem unreasonable. For perhaps, I wondered, as we slammed the car doors shut, it was possible to do good in different ways? The effort that is necessary to create a better world! No bravo in a mass brawl in a pastiche hostelry had it worse than me … I looked at Hiro beside me in the car, holding the dead dog very tenderly, and I felt so tenderly about him too, just as I tenderly also remembered the similar way in which Candy had carried our dog home, in the car, when he was only a month or so old, and she looked into his eyes with love.

  THE CUTE

  or so it seems

  To drive at high speed in a built-up area is a very specific thrill. To complete the mafiosi picture, we only needed to be shooting out the windscreen from inside so it crumbled up, like icing sugar. And if in the annals of history other children have been transformed by time into drug baronistas, or hit men, why couldn’t I be transformed too? I felt like an outlaw and in many ways, I reflected, I think I was, if by outlaw you include those excluded from their normal world. I was so grand I was benevolent, and it occurred to me that in this matter of trying to restore some calm, before I went out to the woods I could take this sorry car, whose paintwork might well be briefly stained with canine blood, to the car wash. And this was especially generous because that kind of situation is never one I like – to be served by sad waterproofed people who do not disguise how unhappy they are to serve you. But still, I will let myself be served, after all, even if this kind of practical situation always perplexes me with the various things I do not know. Behaviour is difficult, and perhaps the difference between those who can do things and those who cannot is one of the hidden divisions of our time – much more than capitalists and workers, or blacks and whites. Like for instance people were tapping on the bonnet and asking me to open it, while looking concerned at some miniature piles of sodden leaves that had gathered in the well in which the windscreen wipers sat – but I had never opened the bonnet before and did not know how it might happen. So I gave a gesture that was intended to mean that really I did not care, but they did seem still to care and I cursed this obsession with professional appearances. So to indicate how unimportant these leaves were I tried to move forward but this only made them shout, and therefore I tried to argue that it really was no bother but they were implacable and so finally I admitted that in fact the task was beyond me, and with this admission I thought that this would disarm or charm them, because in general such honesty is to be admired, but instead a man just opened my door, a gesture I found perhaps intrusive, especially in my nervous state, then leaned down beside my leg where the catch was, and in obedient unlikeable response the bonnet gave its miniature sprung spring. I did a gesture of thank you but it was possibly too late, if by that gesture I intended to imply a kind of level between us, a sort of flatness of equality as men. Silently they opened the car doors and then vacuumed the inside edges. Then silently they were putting the bonnet down and telling me to be on my way, and in good-bye I raised a confident hand. For I was trying to maintain a careless blissed-out mood, the kind of equable excitement that makes you basically divine, according to some philosophers and sages – even if, talking of such sages, what I was about to discover in the environs of Toy Town was how many more depths and darknesses in reality existed, as the talmudic sages have known all along. But then, to understand the workings of Fate, it needs no study of the ancient texts. You can do it with that cartoon – where the cat relaxes and is all happ
y before being malleted by the mouse. I think such cartoons should play on endless loops in every high school and other college.

  even if Fate seems also to be lurking once again

  For the wisdom of such cartoons is the only wisdom that might prepare you to survive such terrible things, as when for instance you are driving out to the woods in the suburbs of a giant city, in order to give your beloved pet a decent burial, and are in your mind just trying to maintain a small bouquet of happiness, and then in the rear-view mirror you minutely notice that one car seems to have been on the same journey as you – the same mini roundabouts and traffic signals, the same views of tennis courts and funeral parlours and vegetable markets – and while I suppose in every city there are people mimicking each other’s journeys, that’s just one feature of a giant city and its mania for multiple coincidences, this one did seem strange to me. Not perhaps so strange that I had to consider it a threat, but still, it seemed of let’s say interest. I could not after all forget that we had just done much violence, and I suppose no act of violence can be assumed to exist without its consquences, possibly no act at all. Although to be chased still seemed a little exorbitant, for surely in paying back the money we had done what we needed to do? So that it was also possible, I had to admit, that if we were the object of a pursuit, the range of our pursuers could be much more vast than I had first considered. And I would argue that in such a situation the best thing to do next is to do outlandish things, like explore a train station forecourt or make a reconnaissance tour of the area’s business parks. And if the same car keeps on following you then perhaps the chances of this being a giant coincidence are maybe slightly diminished. With such thoughts in mind I drove zigzaggingly and disordered, with Hiro just slightly querying the general sense of direction and my possible concentration.