The Brooke-Rose Omnibus

by Brooke-Rose, Christine

  –How did you get in?

  –I rang the bell, the landlady let me in.

  –Oh. The fat woman, you mean?

  –I suppose so. I wouldn’t call her fat either.

  –What do you want, Martin?

  –Just to see you, father. How goes it?

  –She shouldn’t have sent you.

  –Who shouldn’t?

  –Your mother. She should know better than that.

  –She didn’t send me. I just came. I mean, Mr Mellek wrote to me at school, at the end of the term, and told me of your, well, how things stood. He gave me your address, in case.

  –In case of what?

  –In case … I should want to see you. I’ve just come off the train. Just passing through, you know.

  He sits surrounded by his languid charm, radiating diffuse gas unintensively with the beginning of a concentration that may ultimately form something, entering the main sequence perhaps fairly low down in the spectral levels, unless already degenerate matter, just passing through, you know, can I think with you, dad? No, I don’t want you. But you’ve got me, dad, though sometimes, of course, I’ve got you. I don’t care who’s got whom, go away. So I just thought I’d come and talk to you.

  –Talk to me? What about?

  –Well, my future, for one. Mr Mellek says I may have to take matters into my own hands, whatever he means by that. I know what I mean by it.

  –Oh?

  –Well, he says you can’t pay my school fees any more, want to retire or something. That suits me, father. I want to retire too.

  –The alarm may go off at any minute.

  –What alarm?

  –Sorry, I thought I heard a noise. You’ve grown, Martin.

  –Yes, father. Don’t you recognise me, then?

  –Of course I recognise you. But – well, I didn’t realise – it sort of pushes one into the grave.

  –You had a narrow escape, didn’t you, father? How did it feel exactly, to come back? I mean, do you remember anything, dream anything?

  –No. I never dream.

  –Like me. I never dream either.

  –Do you like noise, Martin?

  –Noise? What sort of noise?

  –Well, young people seem to love noise these days. A sort of roar of adolescence. I wonder whether I –

  –Oh you mean motorbikes and sports-cars. No. But how clever of you all the same. Mother warned me I’d find it difficult to get through to you, but you’ve hit the nail bang on the head.

  The needles oscillate violently, swing round with a loud creak, the alarm shrieks then goes suddenly silent, except for the loud ticking of something or other in non-natural impulses to the furthest region that may send a reply such as what do you mean, you want to retire?

  –From school, father. I hate school.

  –But you know nothing, Martin. Your reports –

  –Precisely. I hate work, you see, that kind of work, history, Latin, Shakespeare, biology and all that.

  –Because you don’t try to understand it. But it all counts later. Someone used to say to me, I forget who, when you don’t understand something, go on as if you do, it will all become clear later, and useful, too.

  –Useful in what?

  –Mathematics works that way.

  –But father, I don’t want to do mathematics, or science, and become one of those lunatics we live among, like Dr Dekko, and Professor Head, and –

  –Oh, yes, Head.

  –He died, didn’t he?

  –I believe so.

  –Oh come, father, don’t you know?

  –Yes, yes. It all seems such a long time. Infinite space exhausts me.

  –Or medicine for that matter. You didn’t, want me to follow in your footsteps, did you, father?

  –No. Oh no, don’t do that.

  –Well then. Good. We agree. After all if you can’t afford it, and I have no capacity for it –

  –What have you capacity for, Martin?

  –A good question, father. Quite frankly, nothing. If I could do exactly as I liked, I’d do nothing at all. I’d get around on pure charm. You see, I’ve discovered how to do it. Just listen to people and smile, pretending a deep interest, well, not even pretending, after all, one learns a lot that way. But it flatters people and they start giving out, giving out diffuse gas unintensively, faintly, like the beginning of a concentration that may ultimately form a star, and enter the main sequence somewhere low down in the spectral levels, unless, perhaps already degenerate matter of high density, its luminosity decreasing with its mass like a White Dwarf in the final stage of its long life, or with some others, expanding, cooling, increasing in luminosity and moving out of the main sequence as Red Giants high in the spectral level, in elliptical orbits at the nucleus of a galaxy, or towards the spiral arms, bright cepheids, Blue Giants, colliding with another galaxy and filling the whole room, bursting its walls, the street, the sky. But then, you see, I realise one can’t quite rely on that. Most people have nothing to give, unfortunately.

  Most people find him charming and he sits in it lazily, gracefully, saying nothing, I’d do nothing at all. Except, the noise begins, racing around the orbits or along the square of the hypotenuse, surely you must have noticed it, every circle has its square, I drove into the wrong one first, hence the time I took, and the noise, moving in total immobility against the ultra-violet light, producing no vibration except noise, since you hit the nail, well, a new noise, in fact. These hands –

  –that heal –

  –instruments, father, not human innards. I have miraculous hands on the notes of a jazz trumpet. And good lungs. And a good ear. I learnt to play at school. And at home too, though you didn’t seem to hear. I can create a new noise, father, one doesn’t need higher education for that.

  –But you have an artist’s hands.

  He stretches them out, long and lanky, feminine perhaps, but then you never noticed them, father, you never allowed for that.

  –I did, Martin, I did. You had your collection. I gave you enough pocket-money for your collection of records. Primitive jazz, you called it.

  –Oh, that. I’ve grown out of that.

  –Yes, I even liked some of it, genial stuff. I took an interest, surely. But I thought, well, at first your school reports showed promise.

  –Anyone can show promise at what he thinks will grip him, give him something, well, but you might have known, since you began as a physicist, mother tells me, and found you had no capacity for it –

  –What else did she tell you?

  –Oh, lots of things.

  –Things?

  –You sounded just like Stanley when you said that. Things? I have no interest in things, I like people.

  –You seem to know a lot.

  –Mother says people consist of things. Do they, father? Do your patients? I mean, you sort of live on people consisting of things, don’t you?

  –That sounds like Stanley too, if I may say so.

  –Yes, well, she goes for the same type. Silly girl.

  –So. You think your mother silly? Have you any such outstandingly original views on myself?

  –Oh come, father, I have a high regard for you. You know that.

  –Do I?

  –Well, haven’t I proved, by coming here, and talking –

  –to your satisfaction, yes.

  –Oh dear. She warned me I’d find it hard to get through to you. She said she couldn’t communicate with you at all, that you said nothing to her, nothing that made the slightest sense, during the whole time, two years or more, since –

  –I died.

  –Yes, well, I know, you had a ghastly experience but what about her, she went through hell too, father, besides, time heals and all that.

  –I thought, that we … communicated … a great deal.

  –You used to sit there, even during the holidays, and say nothing, nothing at all. Mother had to send Patricia away, so that she wouldn’t see.

  –Did you, come hom
e, during the holidays?

  –Yes father.

  –I had thought, that we communicated. Brenda and I. But perhaps I dreamt it.

  –You never dream.

  –No.

  –I wouldn’t say that death and recovery, however amazing, justified …

  –What? My behaviour? Or hers?

  –Well, all this, mess. And your crazy notion of retiring.

  –So she did send you?

  –No, of course she didn’t. She never wants to see you again if you care to know the truth. Not in your present state.

  –So you came, like a great clumsy oaf, to change my state.

  –No. I came – how did we get on to all this? Oh yes, noise. What shall I do, father?

  –You have a crazy notion of retiring, you have your charm, your lungs, and your miraculous hands, take matters into them.

  –Well, a fine father you make, I must say.

  –What do you want, money? A push, a start, an introduction to a drug-taking, long-haired jazz musician? I don’t know any.

  –Jazz musicians don’t have long hair, you should know that by now.

  –All right, you’ve made your point. You may keep your hair short.

  –Thank you.

  –Don’t mention it.

  –Oh father, don’t let’s go on like this.

  –You haven’t answered my question. What do you want?

  –Only a little interest, encouragement. Affection perhaps. A father’s blessing they used to call it. But you never gave me that. If I showed any enthusiasm for anything, you’d nip it in the really? Surely not, how can you remember, mother told me, oh, did she, and what else, well, what do you expect, a Blue Giant, emitting a high luminosity from the outer spiral of your galaxy, in the top level of the spectrum, but you chose the transit drink, surely you know about the red shift which together with the degradation of intensity as speed increases means that less and less of the light actually emitted reaches us? The layers of atmosphere distort the 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, yes I know, but wait, after sunset the degree of ionization in the lower layer falls off and the higher layer then reflects, I assure you, with fewer collisions. Wait, wait a little, Martin, have patience, I’ll manage your school fees, of course I will, I don’t want you to grow into a half-baked man who gets around on charm alone, though you have plenty of that, I know. But you’d only regret it later. You can still do what you want, son, thank you for calling me son, but even charm works better with an informed interest. Yes I know, life provides all the information you’ll need. I admit, I even agree. But wait a year at least, things will come clear very soon in fact, when I’ve decided one way or the other, why, perhaps you could come with me, to wherever I go, if I go, for a while at least, See the Universe, time heals, but space heals faster. I’ll make it up to you. Have patience with me. Wait, wait for me, Martin.

  The conversation thunders across the metropolis, hoots through dark tunnels, crashes into grand canyons leaving everyone maimed under a maze of twisted steel, driving below the headlines that girdle the world in black and in bright lights of letters to the citizens, good people, in flashed imperatives such as drink Inter-Air, fly The Daily Sphere, Say it with Brandy, eat infra-red and See the World without end, red, amber, green against the invisible ultra-violet and the magnified noise, why did you shoot the lights, son? I didn’t father, I shot the policeman in a vibrant hum of total immobility that crawls to my dear Larry, how good to see you. Come in. You know Elizabeth, don’t you. She knows you.

  –Elizabeth?

  She looks with glazed eyes out of an angular attitude in the depths of the sofa. Oh yes. Yes. Hello.

  –I must apologise, Larry, for crashing in on your long-last reunion. I called on Telford by chance and he told me he expected you. So I said I’d go, but he insisted on my staying a little while, to help break the ice, he said, so let’s break it quick.

  –Well, er –

  –I believe you frightened him out of his wits last time you met.

  –Come, come, Liz, you exaggerate.

  –Oh please, don’t say come – come like that, Telford, you remind me of Stanley. Anyway I’ll go in a minute.

  –No, er, please, don’t, feel you have to.

  She bombards the room with the particles of a nervous energy that solidifies into zigzags of tremulous precision within her. I – er – came down to do some shopping. Oh, dear, Larry, those eyes of yours haven’t changed a bit, do switch them off or I can’t lie to you.

  –Why should you want to? I didn’t ask anything.

  –No. No. Quite right.

  –Have a drink Larry, you look washed out. What would you like?

  Drink – The Daily Sphere in colour. Say it with –

  –What?

  –Brandy, please.

  –Good. Now, let me see where did I put – ah, here. That’ll perk you up.

  –Thanks.

  –Well.

  –Yes. Well. Nice to see you, Telford. You – er – don’t really look much like your image.

  –Oh, that. Who does?

  –I must – er – apologise, I mean, for not recognising you, at the time of –

  –Nonsense, Larry, why should you, in that state. Besides, let’s face it, we none of us get any younger. And I acquired that idiotic public name. But then, what do names matter?

  She still bombards our conversation with those particles of anxiety that spiral at high velocity around the lightning zig-zag of her magnetic field, her eyes trying to intercept the pain behind the starless coalsacks which, however, radiate nothing back and remain obstinately fixed on Tell-Star, but then do I look like my image? I mean, the vague image you have of me, if any?

  –I don’t, really, know you well enough. Elizabeth.

  –No. Of course. Quite right.

  –How, er, did, Stanley come down with you?

  –No.

  –No. I didn’t think he had.

  –You asked me, Larry, why I’d want to lie to you. Quite right. Good question … I don’t. I came to town, not for shopping as I said but to see my lawyer about getting a divorce.

  –Why?

  –Why not? Anything you can do … Oh, I don’t mind the petty infidelities, in fact I prefer it that way, though his clumsy lies bore me. If anything he hurts the women, not me. He does it all with so little enthusiasm, interest, affection even.

  –What do you mind?

  –The personal destruction by petty verbal victories. If it hadn’t been for Telford I’d have ceased to exist.

  –I see.

  –No you don’t see. You don’t see anything.

  –Cigarette, Liz. Let me fill your glass.

  –Yes. Quite right, Telford. Thanks.

  Tell-Star masturbates and picks his nose in his unscreened existence when he can’t make love to men or politely pick at the squirming worms in the framed head of his victims. He sits surrounding this inner image with a rectangle of straight horizontal lines like a harp recumbent plucked in a non-natural impulse, held, however, in the tremulous space of the rectilinear room by a confident control, acceptance or resolution out of his strange profession built on the weak performances of men. Her lines cross his in swift arpeggios saying anyway, Larry, you can’t talk. Like I said, anything you can do, in that field anyway –

  –You seem to know a lot.

  –Oh yes, I know a lot, one way and another. Besides, I’ve lived there, since you left. Things get around.

  –Yes. Things do. Does she, I mean – does she, still –

  –See him. Oh yes. He went through a banal stage of cutting her dead in corridors, but then, with your departure, the convenience of it, you see, compared with Sally, yes, convenience always tempts him more than anything. The predictability of his responses, bang on cue, freed me quite early on, so that the same sense of irrelevance fills the room around the business in hand if any as she bombards it with partic
les of nervous energy, her eyes trying to intercept the pain behind two starless coalsacks that radiate, however, no interest, and remain obstinately fixed on nothing, nothing at all except a long habit of merely professional listening to the failures of men which sighs why now, I mean?

  –You don’t really remember Elizabeth, do you, Larry?

  –But … of course.

  –From your present university? Or from … Cambridge?

  –Cambridge?

  –Oh, Telford, you promised.

  –I know, Liz. But I find it hard to accept that a man can forget to that extent.

  Drink Inter-Air, Fly World without End. Read Tell-Star in The Daily Sphere. Say it with bright imperatives to the citizens, and don’t forget to tell the journalists that she bombards the rectilinear room with the particles of a furious relief that spiral round the zig-zags in a magnetic field emanating the fact that I have changed, to that extent, just as you say I have. Let’s say no more about it.

  –Elizabeth.

  –Yes, Larry. You loved me. You wanted to marry me. And then you didn’t.

  –You read … English?

  –Yes. Useless thing, English. I never use it.

  –What do you use?

  –Oh, I got along on charm while it lasted. But Stanley quickly trampled that away. I don’t communicate much in any medium these days, except waves. Waves of unhappiness. And people shy away from those … Oh, don’t pity me, Larry, or feel guilty. I asked for all I got. One attracts it, you know, as an idea attracts another. But it doesn’t help to recognise it.

  –A little recognition always helps. Not too much though.

  –So you do remember something of me.

  –Forgive me, Elizabeth. But our odd social encounters –

  –I know. I do know. And you had him on your mind rather than me. Besides, after your –

  –My death.

  –Yes. That shook me, Larry. It really did. Telford can tell you.

  –Telford?

  –Liz and I have remained very good friends, ever since –

  –I remember. You rather took her over, didn’t you?

  –Don’t put it like that, Larry, you sound like Stanley sometimes.

  –I know.

  –I turned to Telford at the time because I knew he loved you. I wanted someone with whom I could talk you out of my system, yes, in English even, and who, well, who had no sexual interest in me and who wouldn’t get me entangled on the rebound. Though I must say I’ve often secretly also wished he could have. Then I wouldn’t –