The weeds are scattered all over the scorched earth. They have to be raked up into the pile. The heat beats down. The green hose slithers in the dried-up grass towards the brass tap in the wall, the water spurts and flows into the blackened ashened earth. The fire crackles like rain on a stone pavement, the falling water patters. The funeral pyre of human hair smoulders gently on the marble floor. The banisters weave circles round it, unfurling its minute particles over the dried-up grass. It is important to hold the instrument like a conventional weapon and to aim correctly. You cannot bend a jet of water but you can make it go round the corner in a way. You can hold the weapon like a microphone and answer into it.
That is how it all began. There is a secret but it is not a story. It is not possible to witness the beginning, the first ticking of the metronome, because all you are entitled to assume is that it would have been as now described if it had been seen by minds with the kind of perception man has evolved only quite recently. Those that cannot grow with it must die.
The fire leaps up bright orange, with a yellow shower, circles of red, oh, close your eyes, relax but grip the instrument and hold it up, well up, let it gush forth from the deep sphere of our being and reach up for the sky before it turns to spray its dust over the fire that crackles, leaps up bright orange, open your eyes, the sun hits the back of the neck, the dust fills up the head, bombarding the cells that run amok, emitting helium particles until the human element disintegrates and radiates into the huge consciousness of light, under the eyelids a gold triangle, a yellow shower, circles of orange and the head goes leaden, grey in a hundred and sixty micro seconds, three million two hundred and thirty one thousand six hundred and forty two years one hundred and seventy three days point nine. And a billion more besides. We are merely marking time and time is nothing, nothing. A moment of agony, of burning flesh, an aspect of the human element disintegrating to ash, and you are dead. But that’s another story.
Silence says the notice on the stairs and the stairs creak. Or something creaks in the absolute dark, the notice having come and gone like things. Someone creaks, levelling out nails perhaps with the pronged side of a hammer.
The coffin lid creaks open. Voices hang on a glimpse of five moons, five planets possibly. The layers of my atmosphere, however, distort the light waves travelling through it and upset the definition.
–Yes, well, you go too far. I mean you exaggerate.
–I draw the line as a rule between one solar system and another.
–Can’t you see the notice on the stairs says silence?
–I can. I collect silences. This one has a special creaking quality, as of a coffin-lid opening.
–Get up then, and climb out.
The five moons unless planets perhaps hang about anxiously as the stairs creak out of the grave. The planets move in their orbits and the orbits surround me like meridians in slight ellipses. One of them says lie down, I shall dissect you now.
They force me gently on my back, head down the stairs. The heavy woman sits on my chest with her huge buttocks in my face. Her skirt rides high and she sits reading a book propped up on my thighs. The men and women go up and down the stairs that creak and she says don’t worry, they only play at going up and down, like actors. Soon the curtain will fall.
–You don’t have to choke me! Get off! Help! Help!
–Good boy. You didn’t cry. I’ve found out all I want for the moment.
–What, for heaven’s sake?
–Oh, nothing for heaven’s sake. But you have an interesting excrescent scar in the middle of your belly, beautifully shaped, perfectly round and flat, just like a little flan-pudding. An individual flan-pudding. I checked it with the book. You may go now.
Between each desk of the amphitheatre the floor sinks like a blanket of interstellar cloud. The silence has a creaking quality.
The girl-spy on the outer orbit stretches her right hand.
–Quick, step out here. I only have one hand.
On her left spiral arm she carries a row of quintuplets.
–They opened up my knee, and found a hard-boiled egg inside. I scooped it out, it hurt, and I flung the slices away like discs, but they came back in their orbits and now I have to carry them.
–Can I help you? You helped me.
–Well you could help me to hide them. If the journalists find out I won’t be able to do my work.
–What work?
–My secret work as a girl-spy. I couldn’t have helped you without it.
Three of the planets shift, one onto my right arm, two onto my left. She keeps the other two.
–Shouldn’t we get them baptised?
–Oh names, she says, what do names matter? I can tell them apart.
–Don’t you have a name?
–Do you need to tell me apart?
–No, but I’d like to call you something.
–All right then, call me Something.
–Wouldn’t you like to call me something too?
–Oh, no, we’d only get confused. Besides I can’t call you by your name, not yet, you see, it frightens me because it means you have to go back.
–But I don’t know my name.
–You will. In the meantime, if you insist, I’ll call you Someone. Since we help each other.
–Thank you, Something, thank you.
–Don’t mention it.
–All the same, I think we ought to get these baptised. You never know.
–But I do know, I always know, remember that, Someone. Still, if you want it, Jonas will do it for us. We’ll find him by the Travel Agent’s swimming-pool.
We do. Jonas and his Jovials play primitive jazz on the opposite edge of the pool, which slopes down to the deep end, quite empty. We step in at the shallow end, walk across diagonally and climb out by the ladder at the deep end. The men and women all around us cross the pool, go up and down the ladder and the steps. Don’t worry, they only play at going up and down, like actors.
–What shall we do without water?
–Stop fussing, Someone. Jonas does it with music.
He does. He places the first planet on the end of his trumpet, lifts the instrument to his big mauve lips and sobs out Gut Bucket Blues to the rhythmic counterpoint of clarinet, bass sax, trombone and drums. Gut Bucket moves off into his orbit. Jonas places the second planet on the end of his trumpet and plays Potato Head Blues, then, with the third, Tin Roof Blues, then Dippermouth Blues with the fourth and finally, to change the style, Really the Blues. Really follows his brothers into orbit.
–You see? I had a good idea. Now the journalists needn’t know about them.
–Oh, they’ll come back. Things do. Tin Roof first, I think, then Potato Head.
–When do you expect the journalists?
–Any time. They ask all the wrong questions.
–Like what?
–Oh, things they don’t really want to know, like how did it feel exactly and what did the fat woman say?
–What did she say?
–Don’t you start, Someone. I mean, I wouldn’t trust you if you told me all your private scars and pimples immediately on first acquaintance. And you wouldn’t trust me if I told you mine.
–But you did tell me. About the egg.
–Don’t mention it.
–And the slices and nevertheless I trust you.
–I could hardly hide the evidence. I mean, I had to explain its origin.
–Ah, but I hid it for you. By having it baptised.
–You don’t hide things, Someone, merely by giving names.
–But Something, baptism doesn’t just give names, it gets rid of the original cause.
–Only for a time, Someone. The original cause comes back. You don’t understand much, do you?
–I understood more inside the coffin. The five geometries of the human psyche, for instance.
–Yes, well, I must go about my secret work before the journalists come.
–Oh, please, take me with you.
&
nbsp; –No, no, I can’t do that.
–You can do anything, Something.
She looks at me with astonishment.
–All right then, on one condition.
–Yes?
–That when the journalists put their questions, you will remember everything I’ve said, and represent me truly.
–What, everything? But I thought –
–You think too much, Someone. Just listen. And use your eyes. You must admit you haven’t seen anything yet.
–I don’t admit, I agree. But you told me –
–I’ve told you a few things. I shall tell you more. But you see, when the journalists get at me, they ask all the wrong questions, and so of course they get all the wrong answers.
–They may ask me the wrong questions too.
–Oh, not of you, Someone. You know the five geometries and the language of orbits.
–But you do secret work as a girl-spy.
–Precisely. I can’t even elicit the right questions. And so you see, they can’t possibly understand. You’ll have to translate. You have the right equations. We’ll go and see the Travel Agent now, he’ll fix it all up for us.
–Who do you spy for, Something?
–Just keep your promise and your eyes and ears open.
The Travel Agent surrounds himself with pamphlets, maps and thin red lines in zigzags, parabolas, irregular pentagons. You didn’t have to make all that primitive noise. I deal in local colour only. How do you expect me to work out my percentages?
–Smile, Mr Travelogue, smile.
–That won’t help me. I never go anywhere, I just fill in the vouchers and you have to make primitive noise. See the Universe, says the notice above his head. The Management accepts no responsibility.
–We didn’t make the noise out of necessity, Mr. Travelogue, but from freedom of choice. What have you to offer us?
–It depends what you want to see. You can select any medium from infra-red to ultra-violet. Or a number of permutations.
–I’d like to use them all.
–Oh, you can’t do that, sir. You’d have to pay all the percentages from .01 to the twentieth power per cent.
–A thousand million million million!
–Where did I put the spectroscope? Ah, here. Now this shows some lovely colours. Black light –
–What about supercosmic?
–Very steep, sir, very steep. Outside the range.
–And infrasonic?
–Outside the range.
–Oh, Someone, you know nothing. Just keep your promise and your eyes and ears open. Didn’t you see the notice on the stairs says silence?
–Yes, but the notice here says –
–Listen to me, I do the knowing around here. Either you play it my way or I leave you to your own desires.
–We guarantee to smoothe out marital quarrels through our tours, sir, look at our motto behind your head: Time heals, spacetime heals faster. Your money refunded if not entirely satisfied.
–How can you satisfy money?
–Oh, money satisfies itself, sir. Only itself.
–You strike a safe bargain, don’t you?
–Stop quibbling, Someone. If I had known –
–Smile, Something, smile.
–Well … you smile first.
Outside by the swimming-pool Jonas begins the Blues again.
–Good God! Confirmation already.
–No, no. Listen before speaking. He plays Basin Street, not my responsibility at all. And don’t say Good God like that.
–Like what?
–Such a primitive noise, oh dear. I suffer and endure, all things and civilization considered.
–Come come, Mr. Travelogue, smile at the gentle sound, so sad, so melancholy, it should cheer you up.
–You come come. I haven’t got all day, you know.
–Oh, I thought you had a spacetime continuum. I apologise. What can you offer us?
–Well, you could select this simple tour through the canals. By private punt. You just follow the zigzags, though you may find the T-bend here a little difficult to negotiate. The white monks from the monastery in the meadow, however, provide a canal-pilot if desired.
–Don’t waste my time, Loguey dear, I can’t carry on my secret work with white monks breathing down my neck. Besides, we want to go further afield.
–Ah, yes, well, I do have another field for your research, speaking extragalactically, a whole range of fields, as I said, anything from ultra-violet to infra-red. Let me see –
–Why can’t we go supersonic? Above words I mean. I collect silences and after all the notice on the stairs does –
–You have a point there, Someone.
–Thank you. Besides, black light turns my stomach.
–How about it, Loguey?
–Well, if you insist, I could manage something, by special arrangement, just above ultra-violet. At fifteen to the fourteenth power per cent.
–A thousand million million!
–The excess profit goes entirely to the Save the Appearances Fund, I assure you. Just put your money in the box here and I’ll fill up the vouchers.
–Oh well. Just this once. For you, Someone.
–Thank you, Something. Thank you.
–Don’t mention it.
–Where do you get all that money, for heaven’s sake?
–I work for it, Someone, I told you. And don’t say for heaven’s sake. But you have a point. Thank you for your point. When do we go, Loguey?
–The vehicle will come in to land very soon. Expected time of arrival, let me see, lamda equals h over mass times velocity, why any minute now, unless it has arrived already.
–Oh good, in visible light, I want to photograph it.
–Put away your camera, Someone.
She touches my individual flan-pudding so that I feel naked and ask Why.
–Because you can’t photograph means of communication. You’d break the law.
–What law?
–Thou shalt not photograph means of communication. Secret means I mean.
–How do you expect me to tell the journalists all I’ve seen and heard without evidence? They won’t believe me.
–You’ll have to use your equations. Now, have you got everything? We’ll need the trolley, Loguey.
–What for?
–Food and drink of course.
–You get that on board.
–And words. We must take words with us.
–No excess luggage.
–But Something, surely if we go supersonic –
–We must have a book of rules, if only for reference. Come on.
Something starts loading the iced shelves along the top of the trolley with tins and bottles and packets of frozen peas. The bottom shelf she stacks with books.
The huge plane drowns Basin Street with a huge noise as it comes in to land in total darkness on the tarmac behind the Travel Agent.
–You see, you couldn’t have photographed it, Someone.
–Don’t forget your route-map. You’ll need some latitudes, here, and some longitudes, here. And you too.
Mr Travelogue measures us up and down and sideways quickly, expertly. He embraces us up and down and diagonally with meridians, tropics, and elliptical orbits. We look almost spherical, except for our flattened poles and my individual flan-pudding which hurts under the ligatures.
–You don’t have to choke me. Help! Take them off.
–Good boy, you didn’t cry.
All round us the men and women spin about as flattened spheres, pushing their trolleys in the ultra-violet light towards and from the plane.
–I suppose they only pretend to come and go, like actors?
–Good boy. You have another point.
–Don’t mention it. I can’t move.
–You haven’t tried.
The meridians, tropics and equators stretch like elastic. We roll the trolley and ourselves, through the actors who pretend, to roll, and up the gangway of the p
lane into a hole in the end of the tail. Inside, a large cafeteria greets us.
–You see, we didn’t have to bring all that food.
–Stop quibbling. Look at the notice.
The notice on the wall says silence. The stewards and the air-hostess pretend to come and go with trays between the empty tables and don’t really exist. Framed in the small round window Jonas and his Jovials play inaudible Blues on the tarmac.
Something looks anxiously along the books at the bottom of our trolley next to the table. She picks one up, leafs through it quickly and opens it at the letter T. Not finding what she wants she turns to the letter P. Then D. Then G. At last with the sigh of a person losing a point she turns to R, and gives a little sideways nod with raised eyebrows to signify both recognition and surprise. Then she passes me the book, her fingers pointing at the sentence: Really will come back first.
Marital quarrels can occur above or below the verbal level as well as within it. In a pressurised hum of silence Something picks a tin from our private trolley and hands it to me for punching. In the same pressurised hum I shake my head, replace the tin on the trolley, beckon to the air-hostess and transmit my order with a gesture into the pressurised hum of silence. The air-hostess inclines her head with courtesy and a pleased look as if receiving a compliment. Something shakes her head and wags an index finger negatively. In my collection of silences this one takes the prize for sheer pressure. The atoms of our will-powers collide in the pressurised hum, and a long drawn battle ensues. Bombarded atoms whirl around each other, emitting particles of pain, withdraw, get reinforced with fresh electrons, re-enter, begin again. I win. Someone always wins. The air-hostess brings glasses and a long red drink and Something meekly sips at it. My silence says I have proved my point, her silence says don’t mention it, my silence says smile, Something, hers says you smile first, my victor’s silence does it easily, her vanquished silence ruefully but smiles. I put my meridians around hers and we merge into one almost perfect sphere, despite my excrescent scar, my individual flan-pudding in the middle of my belly.
The Brooke-Rose Omnibus Page 19
