The Brooke-Rose Omnibus

by Brooke-Rose, Christine

  –I suppose men find it easier to move in space and time than in effort.

  –Do you mean men or man, sir?

  Stance quibbles the professor with oppositions and Bermuda smiles remotely behind the whirls of smoke. Surely man, as such, puts tremendous effort into moving through both space and time. Indeed, look at him, reaching the moon, bouncing his codes against the planets.

  –Yes, look at him, says Bermuda less remotely, and the words rebound from inside the map-like contours emanating from her, filling the room, the street no doubt, the entire sky. Their internal combustion has pushed her out of their banal untender story that throttles her. Stance’s wife sips her drink and looks with glazed eyes out of an angular attitude in the depth of the sofa.

  –I meant something a little different, the professor says gently, or pretends to say inside the latitudes and longitudes he shows to men. Let’s put it this way: below the visible to the naked eye you have infinite degrees. Any amount can occur between mineral matter and nothingness. Why not above the visible?

  –Any amount of what?

  –Oh Stanley! Why do you pick on words with a pretence of sharply pursuing an argument you merely clog?

  –Come, come, Brenda. What do you mean? As a mathematician you should define your terms.

  –I speak with perfect clarity.

  –I have noticed that when people say a thing has perfect clarity they merely wish it had. Brenda, what’s got into you?

  –Any amount of shock and pressure, the professor continues, ignoring the opaqueness between them. Despite his small eyes, one of them almost blind, the other watery, he has an undoubted presence on the screen of social intercourse that flickers its arpeggios like harp-strings up and down our subliminities. The elasticity of shock should equivalate the elasticity of pressure. The mass of matter resists. You could call matter resistance.

  –Quite. Yes. I suppose you could.

  Stance looks into his glass darkly, holding it distantly at the level of the nice little individual flan through which his sensibility photographs the world. You scientists talk of things, and matter, and energy, as if divorced from people. Well of course even I know you can’t detach energy from matter, but still, you go too far, I mean, you exaggerate. I have no interest in things as such, I like people.

  –Do you, Stance?

  –Stance? My dear Larry.

  –I beg your pardon, Stanley. For some reason I find it hard to remember people’s names.

  –Well, not to worry. What do names matter?

  –I think they do, as a matter of fact, wouldn’t you say so, Laurence? We of course use mostly symbols and infinities of calculations. But you give names to the dead satellites in the complex geometry as you called it, of the human soul. They tell a story, given to people at birth.

  –I have a name but no story.

  –Nonsense, my boy, everyone has a story. A tender or untender story.

  Remote Bermuda looks out with her naked eye, suddenly in an anguish only I can see. And Professor Head perhaps, who closes his blind eye and cocks his giant telescope to catch the radiation of the bursting galaxies. But Stance’s wife sips her drink and looks with glazed not naked eyes. She cannot hope for an eternal quadrangle, though she bombards the square room with the particles of a vague discontent. Don’t you remember anything, no dream even?

  –No, I never dream.

  –Darling, everyone dreams, even those who don’t remember, you of all people should know that.

  Remote Bermuda, Brenda, there, her name returns, fills out the square room with her naked eye and honest vulnerability. She wastes herself, and thinks that I waste her, but energy works that way. I don’t know what wastes me. My second life, my death, my amazing recovery. If you had infinite time, professor, I toy with scientific trivia to avoid the issue of my silence, wouldn’t energy degrade itself in the natural way it has, and level itself completely? Then you’d have no shocks, no movement, no life at all. As in a White Dwarf, you told me.

  Dr Tim Dekko and his plump virtuous wife sit side by side, she trying frequently to engage remote Bermuda in domesticities, taking her curt impatience with a pleasant smile, he holding his expensive decoy blonde tightly inside himself, wrapped up in layers of mathematical appearances.

  –But we don’t have infinite time, Bermuda quips determined to reject her working self from which I have borrowed findings and put me in my place with pure feminity. What has that to do with us, with me?

  –Ah, trust a woman to ask such a question. Come, Brenda, you can do better than that.

  She both flinches at and revels in his smirking banality. I like life, she insists straight into him, I like shocks and movement.

  –Yes well, you have a point, he concedes lethargically. I like life too.

  –What do you mean by life? How dare you talk of life to a man who – who –

  His wife’s stuttering accusation, thrown sharply out of her angular attitude in the depth of the sofa, bombards the square room with the particles of her anxiety. Stance shrugs.

  –I think we should forget that. It has a perfectly good scientific explanation, as Larry of all people knows very well. Wouldn’t you say so, Dekko? You must admit –

  –I don’t admit. I agree.

  But his wife’s anger still disturbs the flickering harp-strings on the screen of social intercourse. I wish I could remember her name. They call each other of course darling in a deep hate that has degraded itself like energy to indifference and of-course-darling suits them both. She says of course darling you’d say everything has a scientific explanation, although you have no science, you lap up other people’s. Well, yes, why not? unruffled. Scientific facts never hurt anyone, whether visible or invisible to the naked eye. I mean, until the politicians get hold of them. Surely you make, put me right, professor, you make suppositions merely as working hypotheses and curled up in the opaqueness of his unradiating complacency I see or hear the whole argument in advance that will lead him into self-contradiction, stop, and discard them with no love lost between you when they outlive their working usefulness. You can’t do that with personal survival.

  –No, you can’t.

  –I mean, of course darling, you can and do, but the personal element may torment you. Don’t blame me.

  –Nobody blames you, Stan. His wife’s anger has restored Bermuda’s calm. May I have another drink? But she has a point, you know. Professor Head says even equations have a personal element, and operate through people too, well, in a chemical way of course they do, but –

  –Quite. You can’t detach energy from matter, can you, professor?

  –But you can’t call people matter! Mrs Dekko pipes bravely out of her plump attractive simplicity and Stance looks at her with sudden sexual interest. Even Tim as a scientist would admit, I mean agree, that people have minds, emotions, mystery, something unique, well, an essence.

  –You see, Sally my dear, you have to use the word something. People’s essence, as such, bores me. We all communicate through things, superficial things mostly.

  –I thought you had no interest in things. You like people, you said.

  Now that it has come, I feel for Stance as my wife, quick on the verbal uptake for lack of deeper satisfaction, wins her point. He flounders out of her contempt with an echo that has bounced from her before, merely to watch how they operate through people, he says.

  The scientist works wonders with the precision of his language. He arabesques his way through the equations of energy contained until the chemistry of anger and hurt pride lies quietly balanced in the test-tube, on a dial, on a page that turns a new leaf full of squares and lines intersecting, circles, tangents and cubes, curves too, and the light turns the days into a fifth dimension. It hurts. How do you feel? she says.

  –Ghastly. I think I died.

  –You seem to make a habit of it.

  –I can’t help it. It happens all the time. It hurts.

  –You had an omen, Someone. Think about it, ab
sorb it. Didn’t you take down the inscriptions?

  –Good heavens, here I lie half-dead and you expect me to sit up and interpret omens. In my condition.

  –Get up, Someone, you haven’t even got a scar.

  –I feel choked –

  –Dippermouth swallowed his bubble-gum. All his machinery’s got clogged and time has nearly stopped. You must act fast.

  –Why me?

  –You’ll have to operate, quickly, Someone. You know the five geometries.

  –Do I? … All right. I’ll need Gut Bucket then.

  –Okay, pop.

  –Stand still, Gut, and wipe that grin off your outer face. Now, let’s lift him up, gently does it. Pliers. Scalpel. Screw-driver. Forceps. There, you can see the gum between the teeth of the wheels. Spittal. Smooth it in. Gently does it. Pliers. Scissors. Out it comes, whoops into the bucket. Spittal. Oil-can. Screw-driver. Needle and thread.

  –His heart has stopped, Someone.

  –Oh dear.

  –He said he’d die before his time, you great big clumsy oaf.

  –No. No. I’ll manage it. Fingers. Where did you put my fingers. Ah. Gently does it. Slowly, slowly. Touch and press and touch and press. Lightly dip not too deep, lift the tip. From a long long way away the heart-beat moves back into consciousness like a clock tick heard again after a clockless time of heavy concentration. Needle and thread. Wipe sweat. Screw-driver. There all done.

  –Oh thank you, Someone. Thank you.

  –Don’t mention it.

  –Oh but I must. You’ve done him proud, hasn’t he, Gut Bucket?

  –You’ve done okay, pop. You’ve sure done him fine. He looks pale, though, and Ms mouth dips right down.

  –Twenty-five to five. Not bad going for a beginner. My first operation.

  –Oh, Someone, thank you. I thought I’d lost the square root of my time.

  –You love Dippermouth best, don’t you, Something!

  –I love him … as the first born.

  –What about Gut Bucket?

  –I love him too.

  –And me?

  –Of course I love you, Someone, you know I do. But love has different aspects.

  I love Potato Head. The only child of mine so far I have actually felt reborn, she fills me with a tenderness that brims right out of me whenever I see her. At twelve years old she seems remarkably small, but Something tells me this comes from her weaker sex and she will grow in effort, rather than time and space. Gut Bucket stares anxiously, as if ready to receive her death inside his shining depth at any moment.

  The café looks remarkably large for the edge of the town. Perhaps the centre lies at the circumference, or in the left focus of an ellipse. The people come and go, good people, or pretend to, meeting professional friends who can count and therefore know them better than those who merely profess friendship but can’t read inscriptions or secret laws like momentum equals mass time velocity. Hands shake, smoke wisps, voices swim for dear life. Some sit in corners writing the story of their death and amazing recovery but they don’t include me because the patterns in the table’s dark grey marble makes no sense and time has chipped the edges so that I pour the molecules of my tenderness into Potato Head. May I wish you a long life and many good years after. I thought I recognised you. Thank you for coming back.

  –Thank you for recognising me. A little recognition can do a lot for a man with a wife and three children.

  –Three? Only three? Tut-tut, the rich live young. I deal in local stuff. I never go anywhere, I just fill up the buckets and do the irrigation around here. The cistern doesn’t work, you see.

  –Couldn’t I help? You helped me. I have acquired a little surgical talent since I saw you last. So I climb on the lavatory seat and lift the cistern lid. The water trickles loudly in to fill the tank and never stops, and never fills the tank. Let a stand for the tank’s cubic capacity, c for the speed of light, and in no time at all you have eternity or thereabouts. The ball has got unhooked and dropped right down into the empty bladder which explains the gurgling sound. Pliers. Scalpel. Fingers. Wire. Needle and thread. A simple operation. Out it comes. But what, no ticking? His heart has stopped, Someone. Oh dear. No, no, I’ll massage it. Fingers. Ah. Thank you. Gently, now gently does it. Touch and press, lightly dip, not too deep, lift the tip and touch, press, dip, lift. The gurgle leaps back like a clock-tick heard after a heavy concentration, wire, needle and thread. The water trickles into the empty bladder and the ball rises slowly on its surface. I pull the chain, the lavatory flushes full, I flush with pride, the attendant with overwhelming gratitude. I step down from the podium and he shakes my hand. You’ve done me proud, he says. Gut Bucket dances with delight and thumps his thorax, you’ve done it pop, oh pop, look, listen.

  The whole town flushes with delight. The streets move quickly full of signs and wonders in mass morse. Somewhere up in the centre Base Headquarters disgorge the twisting teleprinter tape that flows its messages, commands, instructions to the citizens. Lazarus check known as quote Larry unquote has restored repeat restored the flow of energy stop read communication unread despite some degree of clogging in the system still three cheers hip hip for Lazarus and his daily friends good people all stop new para without end.

  The ticker tape whirls its welcome and the streets move fast with people in mass morse. The jerking rhythm smoothes itself into canals and I help Something with Potato Head in her arms onto the punt. Dippermouth still pale from his operation ticks away quietly on the front cushion and Gut Bucket jumps in after. They trust my navigation for I can’t go wrong on the punt-wide canal with houses hurraying on each side.

  When we come to the T-bend in the meadow we can’t turn without breaking the punt in two. We’ll have to call the canal-pilot. Something says what a bore, I don’t want white monks breathing down my neck. But the white monk patters down the white monastery steps and doesn’t breathe at all, he belongs to a silent order, good, I collect silences, and takes a flying leap into the back of the punt so that the front, with Something, Dippermouth and Potato Head rises up dangerously. He steps left a little to steer the front over the T-bend then steps right a little to steady it. Then he runs down the punt and dips it over the T-bend and into the canal again, a bit too steep, for the punt fills with water. Something grabs Dippermouth but in the shock loses Potato Head who falls into the canal. Quick, Gut Bucket, bale as fast as you can.

  I dive for Potato Head who has sunk like a stone. I grope blindly about, find her and swim for dear life up through the murky water, where furry caterpillars crawl, stones float in gall, green horse-flies flurry past my lips and ears, I hand her dripping to her distraught mother. Something bends over her, whispering or breathing perhaps the kiss of life. Will she die, dad, Dippermouth ticks anxiously as Potato Head’s transparent shape absorbs the sap. She mustn’t, she mustn’t. Let me see her, dad, I haven’t seen her yet. And he smiles his ten to two smile at Potato Head who splutters, coughs and breathes. She has small eyes, one closed, the other oozes an unseeing tear.

  –They’ve blinded her!

  –No, Someone. She came blind to us. Or almost blind.

  –But –

  –You never noticed. I didn’t like to tell you.

  The punt drifts on up the canal. I let it drift. Gut Bucket sits alone, baled out, on the flat prow. Dippermouth ticks away with his mouth trembling at twenty to four, twenty past eight, who knows, like the lock-gates we come to sailing into their open arms. Something calls out, Jonas, Jonas, we’ve arrived again.

  Jonas has lost his horn, his voice, he says in gravelly tones, Ah’s keep nothing, Ah sure done swallow an oceanful of sand crossing Jordan in dat big big fish.

  –You do keep things, Jonas, I know you do. Try, Jonas, try, just enough to let us through.

  Jonas gives a big sigh, then clears his throat with a great grinding wheeze that closes the lock-gates behind us. In his gravelly tones he sings the blues of life as we sink imperceptibly with the surface of the water in the
punt-wide lock until the bar of sky seems far, very far up, Jonas peering over the brink like a harvest moon.

  –You will tell posterity, won’t you?

  –Tell them what, Something, how my heart sinks?

  –About yourself, Lazarus, yourself and me.

  I said to my soul shut up.

  At last the second gates open their inverted arms and I pass out into the lower canal. My wife lies quiet beside me. Her left arm accolades my chest and her face burrows into my right arm. Awake she doesn’t come so near, she flinches from my breath that smells of my decay. I crumble internally, my inside body feels like a giant horse-fly falling into dust.

  I fear a second death. The first came easily unawares, but to have to do it all again, and without quite remembering just what, except a certain blindness, deafness, inability to speak perhaps through a cleft palate or something, fills me with terror. And yet I fear a second life more than I fear my death. Why me, I fear those fumbling, healing hands, why couldn’t you let me lie in my silent decay and darkness? I have acquired a painful sensitivity to noise, to radiation and to the taste of love degrading itself away in men and in myself until it levels itself completely and no shocks occur, no movement and no life around my staring eyes and I work out the square root of my time.

  My wife lies at my side not flinching from me in her sleep, but I can hear the poison of his unimaginativeness race round like gall and choke the permutations of her chemistry as the little orange lights flicker above the programming of her basic urges with Erase, Shift Count, Inhibit, Pot Drawer and things like that during and after the banality of their untender story, so that she snarls more and more nastily as nothing radiates through the layers of his atmosphere, the high density, low luminosity of degenerate matter, as in a White Dwarf me? Impossible, I belong to the main sequence. Or, more likely, what did you expect, a Blue Giant?

  I wonder if the taste of love on other planets degrades itself away until no shocks occur, no movement and no life. Their handwriting reads nervously on dials, but then it all depends what you expect to see or hear, for the world cocks a posterior horn at distances, blocking its blood vessels, nerve fibres, muscle spindles, tendons and ganglia with primitive acts and noises. Sometimes I think that during my death I became Stance. Stance? I mean, you know. I had to perhaps, in order to understand the half-baked men you choose. I don’t choose them, they chose me. Well. I should feel flattered, and do in a way, that you never give me a rival I can take seriously. Yet in another way I would feel more flattered if you did. Rather than waste yourself. You, with your, what? well, energy, imagination quite fertile and experience, oh, experience, she says, the full scepticism of the scientist in her, flattery, education, and things like that, they teach us nothing, we start with zero each time, treat it as something and in no time at all we have an infinity of humiliation or thereabouts, which perhaps we need in order to start back at zero. Something always comes out of nothing. And I remember, what, out of time somewhere I have a daughter.