The Brooke-Rose Omnibus

by Brooke-Rose, Christine

  –Close your eyes. Try to remember. He said I should, I mean, that, with me you might …

  –So you still follow secret instructions?

  –Not secret, darling, not against you. For you. Nobody –

  –I must … exercise my … meridians.

  –Yes?

  She writes things down in a small book. She dials secret numbers and works out the laws that I have bent and broken, the shock will counter, mass times velocity, time heals, and things like Larry, it all came as such a shock.

  –Pressure.

  –But the man said he couldn’t sleep, he swore he’d seen you breathing.

  –I breathe all the time, unbeknown to you.

  –I know, darling, you did, you do. I gave you the … kiss of life, Larry. But he said you’d breathed before. You looked so dead, darling, so very dead. Three days. It came as such a –

  –shock.

  –And then they didn’t believe me.

  –No, they wouldn’t. Not without photographic evidence. But she wouldn’t allow me. Breathe in, she said, madam, you shall not sit on me.

  –Sorry.

  She removes her hand from my arm. She dials secret numbers and listens to the laws transmitted from the centre. Who do you work for now?

  –Who? Larry, I work in the same place, for Professor Head. In the automation room. Don’t you remember anything? Oh yes, the little orange lights flickering like stars on the big grey control panel, each over clear white lettering that says Hot Spots, Erase, Inhibit, Alarm Reset, Auto Man, Emergency Off, Next Instruction and things like that. And the face in the round window of the door leaves a trail of anxiety bleeping across the dial in flattened lines that bulge suddenly into peaks like the nervous handwriting of distant nebulae. It comes from way beyond the visual range, in which the layers of my atmosphere distort the light-waves travelling through it and upset the definition. But something creaks, the coffin-lid opening, Larry, can you remember that? You see, the man said, the man from the hospital morgue I mean, he said he couldn’t sleep. He’d let you go and they’d nailed down the coffin. So he went to see the doctors but –

  –Those hands …

  –Yes, they’d signed the certificate. So he came to me and, well, they thought I’d gone out of my mind with grief. But I had my rights. I insisted … Oh Larry. I nearly had you cremated.

  –Now, now, my dear, you promised. I thought I could trust you.

  –I couldn’t help it, doctor, he wormed the story out of me. Surely, surely, well, what difference does it make?

  The strip-cartoon of cubic rooms with the gall-bladders in them slips to the left. You could raise the cubic room to the fifth power simply by letting A run down and B wind up and adding the pyramid numbers. Then the strip story would end to be continued in our next life where I have no name but darkness. They have removed the scaffolding of tubes around me, out of mouth, throat, wrists, belly and private parts. I must have died since then. They have removed the great big chromium drum that gurgled to the left and the dials behind, where someone read the nervous handwriting of all my atoms and jotted down their infinite calculations. But what do they accuse me of? Why me?

  –My dear Laurence, everything has a reason. You won’t understand it now, my boy, so pass it over, as Arago said to a pupil long ago, when you don’t understand something, continue as if you did, things will come clear later. Mathematics works that way. You should know that, Laurence, even in your own weird geometry of human nature from which we all benefit here. Yes, yes, we miss you. Dekko, and of course your wife. Good girl, good people all. She came straight back to work, you know. Said she couldn’t –

  –Dekko?

  –Yes, Tim Dekko, my junior colleague, once a patient of yours I believe. Good man, all things and civilization considered. He said he’d come and see you as soon as … well, as soon as you can take it. I must admit, ah, no, I don’t admit, I agree as he would say, yes, well I confess I discouraged him a little. Difficult man to talk to, in your condition, or in any condition really.

  –When do you think Really will come back?

  –Hard to say, Laurence, hard to say. A long time, probably, I mean, really to come back. You must build up your strength. Above all sleep, Laurence, I hope you can sleep all right. I suppose they give you pills, well, no, you can’t take anything, can you.

  –I don’t know what they give me. I think I sleep.

  –Yes. Yes. Of course. The doctor said you do nothing but sleep. Very hopeful. Very hopeful. Yes, build up your strength. People will take advantage of you, without meaning to, of course, thinking your resistance has returned, but knowing full well below their thoughts that it hasn’t. You understand what I mean by resistance, don’t you, Laurence? Yes, yes, take your time. We miss you, of course, we scientists tend to edge on the brink of madness without our resident psychiatrist. But physician heal thyself. And life has a way of proving no one totally indispensable. Don’t take offence, you know what I mean, energy works that way, it gathers itself up to fill in holes.

  –Professor, please, will you drag Really out of me with your strong hands?

  –Yes … yes … of course. Well, I mustn’t tire you with my old man’s chatter. Dekko sent his regards. Yes, close your eyes, Laurence, blindness has great advantages.

  –How do you feel, she says. Forgive me for, for last time.

  How did she get in through the darkness? The cubic room has moved to the left again. She spies on me. I don’t want to forgive my wife for anything, I want her to go away and leave me to my sinking heart. She talks in strip-cartoon, standing inside a square with accusing remarks attached to her deceiving smile like a gall-bladder. They float like stones inside it and each stone falls out and down into my darkness, making great rings that widen and lasso people with names I have never heard of, Stanley and Tim and Martin, Patricia and something, Tin Roof, Potato Head, Gut Bucket, Dippermouth, I wish she would move to the left and take the cubic room with her. She does.

  The patients wait expectantly for solutions in the round auditorium. Bright cepheids, Blue Giants, Red Stars, White Dwarfs and filaments of gas that may ultimately become young stars. But I have lost my geometric series. I must have left it on the plane, in the pocket of the seat in front with the route-maps in red zigzags. The clock ticks round full speed ahead as the moment stands shock still around the heart for minute after minute in the regulation fifty. The chairman steps up to the podium with a folder in his hands, which says District Surveyor in large print.

  –I have surveyed the minutes of your time, doctor.

  –But my dear sir, I haven’t had my time yet. Give me a moment, things will come back to me.

  –Yes, yes, things do.

  –Well then.

  –A small point arises. You see these two smears on this page?

  –What about them?

  –I have completed my laboratory analysis. I have found your wife’s imagination quite fertile. Yours on the other hand has no chromosomes at all. Fifteen hundred per cent sterility.

  –Fifteen hundred! But I have fathered five sons.

  –Really? Do you know their names?

  –Well … let me see.

  –You don’t see much, do you?

  –Something comes back to me.

  –Thank you, Someone, thank you.

  She comes up slowly out of the auditorium.

  –Don’t mention it.

  –Oh but I must. I always mention it when you do me proud. I even write you little notes to say so, it happens rarely, I admit, and I don’t suppose you read them.

  –Laboratory analyses don’t lie, my dear. I knew you had cheated me. The District Surveyor says –

  –Yes, but what district, Someone?

  –The district of my time. Why, the clock has almost done my regulation fifty minutes for me.

  –Dippermouth, stop that.

  –Hi, dad.

  –Good God. I thought –

  –You think too much, Someone, and you take nam
es in vain.

  –Well, if you’ll excuse me. I must continue with my demonstration. Things will come back to me.

  –Oh yes, things do. Can you remember their names?

  –Let me see … Dippermouth, for one. And – er –

  –Dippermouth, where have you put your brother?

  –Under the podium, ma, to catch dad’s guts falling.

  –They won’t fall out just yet. Gut Bucket, come out of there at once.

  –Hello, pop.

  His round face or the round auditorium rumbles, then opens out like a tuba blown from deep below. Such a primitive noise, sighs the District Surveyor, and it snorts out a rhythmic grunt like Stance love-making to my wife as the podium at its centre moves away and we move away with it, Dippermouth, Something, Gut Bucket Blues and I.

  It drives heavily from bump to bump, holding the road well with its thousand hundredweight. The driving depends on perfect co-ordination between Something and me. I watch the fuel, manipulate the gears, she keeps the speed steady and handles the steering wheel. The little orange lights flicker like stars on the grey control panel, each over well-lit letters that say Erase, Uninhibit, Shift Count, Pot Drawer, One-shot-trigger and things like that. We thus have no need for a back-seat driver and our two sons can sleep behind the tarpaulin, unless perhaps they watch from the opening at the rear the bumps that move away behind us like horsepower waste along the endlessly straight track.

  –Do we make the bumps as we go? They don’t appear before us in the headlights.

  –How observant of you, Someone.

  –Well –

  –It certainly helps to know we do.

  –A little consciousness, as you say –

  –Yes and I don’t have to steer with such concentration. I like talking to you, Someone.

  –I like talking to you, despite having to shout. I don’t understand why we need low gear Inhibit on this perfectly flat straight track.

  –I suppose energy works that way, or doesn’t it?

  –You’ve changed, Something. You don’t do so much knowing and you talk less priggishly. I like it.

  –Perhaps we’ve both changed a bit. Marriage does that, it mellows people.

  –When did I marry you, Something?

  –Oh, a long time ago. You wouldn’t remember. Men tend to forget anniversaries.

  –We have infinite divergencies on our minds. Talking of which, when did Gut Bucket return from orbit?

  –On his sixth birthday. Didn’t you know? You must admit he has a nice round face.

  –I don’t admit, I agree. A sort of double face, in fact, a face within a face.

  –So you noticed that too. Oh, yes, he has depth, has Gut Bucket.

  –He takes after me.

  –Well. You do look cylindrical, but one can’t see into you. I mean you still resist with your opacity. Dippermouth has a cylinder too, but shallower, naturally. We all have cylinders, when you come to think of it.

  –They don’t resemble each other much, do they, for twins?

  –Oh, but they do. Only you can’t add much to Dippermouth, except time. Gut Bucket contains more, to save the appearances at least.

  –What, for instance?

  –Well, he has more guts. Dippermouth ticks away quietly, but with a highly-strung mechanism he tends to dip his mouth at the slightest hurt sensibility and yell his head off like a child of three.

  –I know.

  –So you do.

  The tarpaulin lifts behind us and Dippermouth’s dial peers through.

  –Hi, dad. We’ve arrived.

  –Not quite yet. You haven’t dropped your brother out of the back have you?

  –No, he hasn’t, hello, pop.

  –I don’t altogether fancy that name, Buck.

  –Gut Bucket, pop. Double face, double name.

  –Well, we’ll compromise. If you insist on calling me pop I insist on forgetting your double name, I’ll stick to Buck.

  –Call me Gut and you’ve got a deal, pop. But you’ll fancy my double face when you go pop.

  –I don’t make a habit of going pop, I assure you.

  –Okay, pop.

  –Well, I think we really have arrived.

  –No, we haven’t, Someone. I said we’d turn right as we entered the forest but you would go left.

  –Left? I didn’t even see a fork. How do you expect me to see in this pitch dark?

  –I told you, but you didn’t listen. As usual.

  –Didn’t listen! I couldn’t hear a thing. Anyway you have the steering-wheel for heaven’s sake.

  –You jerked my arm, Someone.

  –I jerked it! How could I?

  –Well, you did.

  –I didn’t.

  –You did, pop. During all that talk about my double face. You had your arm on mom’s and –

  –Oh, dry up.

  –Okay, pop.

  –Well, you’ll have to go into reverse, Someone.

  –No, I won’t. I never go into reverse.

  –You’ll have to on this narrow road.

  –Shut up, you bitch, the lot of you, I’ve had enough.

  The door of the truck opens easily and slams behind me as I jump and fall through the dark into soft sandy ground up to my ankles, knees, thighs, hips, howl, help, help, and the bucket bangs against my head, hold on to me, pop, hold on to the edge of my top face. I grab the edge of his top face and slowly feel myself pulled up out of the sand which creeps down like a million ants or asteroids as I find a foothold on the truck and hold Gut Bucket tight, climb in, pant on the driving-seat with cold sweat prickling on my forehead and retch my guts into the double face the outer edge of which I hold in a paternal hug. The stench mingles with the smell of fuel.

  –Thanks, pop. Empty now? I’ll just go and wash if you’ll excuse me.

  Something lifts the front screen for him and he steps out onto the bonnet in the dark. A clanking follows and a soft flung thud and a swishing and hiss of steam. He steps back with a clean and shining inner face right to the rim.

  –Well now –

  –Just a moment. I want to get this straight. Who wins this point, who takes the blame for this?

  –It doesn’t matter, Someone.

  –Oh, but it does.

  –We don’t win points any more, Someone, we travel together, we win and lose them together.

  –Oh no we don’t. We had an agreement. I did the power, you did the steering.

  –We both lose and win, Someone. You jerked my arm. I lost control.

  –I didn’t jerk your arm.

  –All right.

  –God, I feel sick.

  –I’ll make you some tea, pop. If you stop quarrelling with mom. And Dippermouth chimes four.

  –I don’t quarrel, she does.

  –I thought you’d emptied yourself, pop.

  –Well, run along, Gut Bucket, less words, more action.

  –Action! I like that, I saved him. I contained him. With which last word he vanishes behind the tarpaulin.

  –Meanwhile I think perhaps we should try to reverse. If you feel strong enough I mean.

  –Reverse! In this pitch dark?

  –I’ll switch on the backing lights. Besides, I do the steering. You only supply the power.

  –But how will you keep to the road? If you diverge one inch we’ll fall into the quicksands.

  –Well, I’ll try. We’ll have to risk it, anyway. The road stops at the end of the blue zone. Look.

  She switches on the headlamps on an army of blue trees that block a road without issue. She switches on the backing lights and floods the road behind us in the rear mirrors. The little orange dots on the control panel twinkle like stars over Hot Spots, Erase, Pot Drawer, Next Instruction. Slowly we make our reverse way and she steers well I must admit, I even agree as we move on a moonbeam through the dark.

  We park in a bright clearing as the sun rises. Gut Bucket calls us, gonging flatly on his thorax so we step out and gratefully empty him of tea, drinki
ng in turn from the top edge of his face as the sun shoots up the Good people! Sitting in the dawn. How goes my patient? I must see your scar, pull down your trousers, man.

  –Madam, you shall not sit on me.

  –Sit on you? Why should I sit on you? I only want to see, I have my rights, you know.

  –Don’t touch my dad, old grandma.

  –My, how you’ve grown, dear boy, since I pulled you out of him. What do they call you now?

  –Dippermouth Blues, you stupid old woman.

  –Charming. How you do wind your way up and down and around my affections. One keeps a bond, you know, I delivered you. Why, and your brother here, he came in useful for the placenta, didn’t you, Bucket boy, my, how you’ve grown.

  –I delivered pop, fat gran, he clung to the edges of my top face in agony. Then he had early morning sickness into me.

  –So he did, so he did. Trust a man to get it all the wrong way round. No sense of timing, none at all. Well, if you won’t let me see your little individual flan I can’t insist, but I’ll have to charge you for the space.

  –What space?

  –The parking space here on this ridge. You don’t think you can have it free, do you, not in the Blue Zone, why, you need a disc. We have to cope with a great scarcity of space and time, you know.

  She sits on me, her two enormous buttocks in my face, and makes a primitive smell. Her hands rummage between my legs, Dippermouth lets off his alarm. Gut Bucket jumps about sonorously thumping his thorax, do something for God’s sake, so he gives a great big somersault and lands upside down on her head. She yells a sonorously muffled yell inside Gut Bucket and thumps her enormous buttocks up and down on my chest like a thousand hundredweight as her hands leave my private parts to grasp the bucket and free her head from the darkness that envelops mine as I choke and splutter inside the echoing bucket maaa – maaa – ah, breathe away she says to her distant self, laugh, I think he’s died.

  Professor Head, friend and radio-astronomer asks no questions of these wide-awake eyes that hurt as they see people in the map-like shapes of their radiating coronas, inner meridians, latitudes and spirals. He has small eyes himself, one of them almost blind, the other watery, through which he peers at calculations held an inch away from it, wearing five-dimensional glasses. He merely says it depends, really, what one expects to see, and the scientific principle of perfect doubt works well with him. He teases the university’s non-scientists at dinner. Nurturing doubt needs much more care than nurturing spiritual life, he says. Scratch any humanist and you will find at least five quite irrational principles held perhaps unconsciously but as rigidly as any dogma, which nobody can question without causing total or partial collapse. You should know that, Laurence, in your own field. He teases interviewers on the screen. Ah yes, it takes a lifetime’s training to doubt everything, even one’s own observation, to treat each infallible proof as merely a working hypothesis which explains things until it has outlived its working usefulness and so ceases to explain them. Such as your eyes, Laurence, men get unsettled by your eyes.