by Beauman, Ned
‘Yes. Bailey. Dynamite, he used. Pounds and pounds of it, police are saying. Enough to blow up this whole plaaa—’ And then Gorge rolled like a commando over the side of his armchair and lay on the ground with his hands over his head.
Loeser was now so well trained in the psychopathology of ontological agnosia that it took him only a moment to work out that the tycoon had begun to make an expansive hand gesture signifying the hypothetical destruction of the mansion, caught sight of that hand gesture, mistaken it for the actual destruction of the mansion, and attempted to take cover. ‘That wasn’t an explosion, Colonel, that was just your own hands.’ An expedient as crude as dynamite, thought Loeser, was a poor tribute to Lavicini on Bailey’s part, although perhaps not incompatible with the New Expressionism.
Gorge returned to his seat. ‘Hands! Right. Beg your pardon. Anyway, seems to run in the fucking family, theatres falling down. Not all bad. Still get the tax break. And none dead. Got you to thank for that, Woodkin says?’
‘I take full credit, yes.’
‘And vanished, Bailey, they tell me. Last we’re going to hear about his Teleport Gizmo. So: verdict. Out with it. Real or not?’
‘Bailey certainly hadn’t perfected it. And now there’s no one to continue his work.’
‘Not the point. Told you before. Doesn’t much matter, Bailey’s Teleport Gizmo in particular. Works, though? Means anyone could make one. Means they will, give it a year or two. Means I don’t have to bother about squashing Plumridge and his damned streetcars. Well?’
Loeser thought back to his argument with Blimk that afternoon. If he really did have responsibilities to the place he lived, then he ought to assure Gorge that teleportation was possible. That would mean Los Angeles might still get its streetcar network – might still become a tolerable place to live. But that would also mean Blimk might lose his shop. So what was he supposed to do? Betray his adopted country, or betray his friend? According to that English writer in The Nation, he ought to pick the former. But in this case, his friend had specifically instructed him to be patriotic, so he was betraying his friend either way.
And then he thought of the empty envelope from Blumstein, and he made up his mind. Blimk might be right, up to a point – a man did have responsibilities to the place he lived. But Loeser was beginning to think now that a man’s ultimate responsibility was a lot simpler. Don’t be a total prick to the people who try to be nice to you.
‘Bailey’s Teleportation Device was a fiction,’ he said. ‘His assistant was faking the results. I saw no evidence whatsoever that teleportation is possible.’ The lie tasted briny on his tongue.
‘Not what I hoped you’d say,’ said Gorge. ‘Still, can’t be helped. Like rotten skunk, by the way. Stink on you. Not to be rude.’
Loeser realised this might be his last chance. He’d seen an old acquaintance killed today – he could manage one awkward enquiry. ‘It is, indeed, rotten skunk. Now, Colonel Gorge, I spent more than two years at CalTech watching Bailey on your behalf. I don’t expect to be paid, because you’ve been generous in so many other ways, but there is just one thing . . .’
‘Stop there, Krauto. Know what you’re going to say.’
‘I don’t think you do.’
‘Book of mine that you want. French. Very rare.’
Loeser was astonished. ‘How did you know?’
‘Not hard to guess after you asked Woodkin about my books. Probably why you came to me in the first place.’
Loeser was even more astonished. ‘Yes, it was.’ Had Gorge smelled that on him too?
‘Told myself I’d never part with it. No use to me now, though – books with words. And no son to pass it down to.’
Loeser was about to point out that the text in Midnight at the Nursing Academy amounted to no more than a few suggestive captions, but he stopped himself. He could hardly believe that after all this time he was now only a few ticks of the clock away from that holy hour.
‘Woodkin?’ Gorge shouted.
The personal secretary came into the billiards room. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘Take Krauto to the treasury. Then call Clowne and tell him he can have Mildred.’
‘Yes, sir. If you’d follow me, please, Mr Loeser.’ They took the stairs down to the mansion’s wine cellar, which didn’t, of course, contain any wine. ‘This is a fortified room containing all the items that Colonel Gorge would most wish to protect in the event of a burglary or anarchist insurrection,’ said Woodkin as he unlocked a heavy door, and Loeser was half reminded of the teleportation chamber and half reminded of Slate’s storage locker. At the same time he realised that in this, as in everything, Gorge was showing good business sense. If the rule of law were ever shattered, perhaps after the big earthquake, then so many people would already have had the idea of stockpiling gold or shotgun shells or tinned peaches that those commodities would be badly devalued in the resultant barter economy. But hardly anyone would have thought to hold on to books. Not Berlin Alexanderplatz or Ulysses or The Sorceror of Venice or even Assembly Line – all those would be worthless when everyone forgot how to read. But there were certain types of printed matter that would never lose their intrinsic value. The wisest shop to loot, in those first days, would be Blimk’s.
Except Loeser now saw that the treasury was not lined with bookshelves, as he’d expected. Instead, the room was dominated by two old sedans with broken windscreens and twisted fenders, parked there underground like escapees from a wrecking yard.
‘Why are these here?’ said Loeser.
‘Colonel Gorge acquired them in 1925 after hearing of an accident that had taken place in Nevada. It was a warm Sunday afternoon, and by coincidence both drivers had spent the morning industriously polishing their cars with Sky-Shine. They were driving in opposite directions, and as they drew near, each was dazzled by the reflection of the sun on the mirrory hood of the other. There was a swerve and a crash. Both drivers survived uninjured, and Colonel Gorge intended to use the cars as part of an advertising exhibit. Later, however, he decided against it.’
‘Why?’
‘Three small girls and a terrier were killed in the accident.’ Woodkin continued the tour. ‘This is a signed photograph of the actress Marlene Dietrich. This is the coyote whose glands were transplanted into the Colonel by Dr Voronoff. This is the authentic skeleton of a Troodonian cantor. This is a flagitious puppet from the Colonel’s great-great-great-great-grandfather’s puppet show, discovered last year in an attic in New Orleans. This is a drawing made by the Colonel’s daughter when she was five. And this is the book that the Colonel wishes you to have.’
It was French, and it was rare, but it wasn’t Midnight at the Nursing Academy. It wasn’t a photo album at all. It was a much older, smaller book, bound in dark red leather like that copy of Dante’s Inferno that Loeser had bought in the Marais, entitled Un rapport de la confession sur son lit de mort d’Adriano Lavicini comme elle a été dit à son ami Bernard Sauvage en l’an de grâce 1691 – a record of the deathbed confession of Adriano Lavicini as it was told to his friend Bernard Sauvage in the year of grace 1691.
‘But the Teleportation Accident was in 1679,’ said Loeser.
‘Yes,’ said Woodkin. ‘Lavicini survived it, however. And when Auguste de Gorge, my employer’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, discovered this fact some years later, he became determined to have his revenge on the Venetian for destroying his theatre. But at that point his resources were meagre, and by the time he found out where Lavicini had been hiding, Lavicini was already dead, so de Gorge’s sole consolation was a copy of this book. Bernard Sauvage had printed only a dozen, intended for his closest associates. It is one of the very few inherited possessions that has survived all the changing fortunes of the Gorge patrilineage. No other copies are now known to exist. All Lavicini’s secrets are here.’ Woodkin paused. ‘Is something the matter, Mr Loeser?’
‘Oh, no. Not at all.’ Loeser knew that this was probably the most extraord
inary gift he could ever hope to receive in his whole life. He did his best to conceal his disappointment. ‘Did Lavicini really plan the Teleportation Accident? I think that’s what Bailey thought.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of a woman,’ said Woodkin. ‘He went to Paris because of a woman. He perpetrated the Teleportation Accident because of a woman. He went back to Venice because of a woman. So the testament states.’
‘He really killed all those people because of a woman?’
‘That is not precisely the case, no. I hope you’ll forgive me for suggesting that it would be best if you read the truth for yourself, Mr Loeser. Now, I imagine this has been a demanding evening, and it occurred to me that you might not have had time to attend to your own needs. I understand that Watatsumi is preparing a light supper for the Colonel’s daughter. Perhaps you would like to join her. And perhaps before that you would like a bath and a change of clothes.’
Loeser had never met Mildred Gorge, but when he was shown into the dining room later that evening, he recognised her at once: here was the redhead who had been sitting in the audience at the Gorge Auditorium – forced to attend, he surmised, by her father, who could not go to his own theatre for obvious reasons. Woodkin introduced him. He sat down. She barely acknowledged his presence. And within half an hour, Loeser had decided he was in love.
As prolegomena to an explanation of this surprising turn of events, there now follows a partial list of subjects covered in Loeser’s conversation with Mildred Gorge that night that failed to arouse even the smallest perceptible quantum of approval or interest from the heiress. The delicious seared tuna steak and artichoke salad prepared by Watatsumi; any of Watatsumi’s cooking; any meal she’d ever had; food in general, and also drink; the weather in Los Angeles; the weather anywhere; sunshine in general, and also shade; the generous postgraduate scholarship she had been offered by Cambridge University to study moral sciences; learning in general; rationality in general, and also madness; Britain; Europe; the civilised world; travel in general, and also staying at home; the Gorge mansion; her family fortune; money in general, and also anything bought with it; hypothetical boyfriends; romance in general; human company in general, and also solitude; theatre; art in general; her lucky escape from an explosion that could have claimed her life and the lives of hundreds of others; her continuing survival in general, and also her death; sailing boats; tiger cubs; daffodils; cinnamon; laughter.
She really just didn’t like anything. And although this might almost have sounded almost like an illness, the truth was that Mildred Gorge didn’t seem to be depressed or morbid or arrested in adolescence: her opinions on the world didn’t derive from a mood or a temperament or a pose, but rather from a rational evaluative position. There was nothing to rule out the possibility that at some point in the future, perhaps in only a few moments’ time, she might be girlishly surprised and delighted by some notion, event, object, or human being, but it happened that, just now, everything still bored her. In other words, although one might have supposed that a conversation with Mildred Gorge would have been like auditory ketamine, to Loeser she was the opposite of tiresome. There was nothing more attractive than a girl who was difficult to impress. And he’d never met a girl more difficult to impress than Mildred Gorge. She was a perfect negation of the city in which she’d been born, a pearlescent kidney stone that California had grown in its own gut, one shake of her head enough to shame a million nodding, nodding, nodding oil derricks. He thought of that drawing he’d seen in the treasury: rain falling on a crippled old man alone in some sort of quarry. Five years old, living in Pasadena, and that’s what she’d drawn.
Loeser had never wanted to marry anything so much in his life.
‘It’s strange we’ve never met before,’ he said as a maid cleared the plates. Woodkin still stood in the room, presumably as a chaperone, but Loeser had known skirting boards that were more obtrusive.
‘Not really,’ said Mildred. ‘Since I left Radcliffe I’ve been going to stay with my friend Goneril quite often.’
‘I’m sorry, did you say Goneril?’
‘Yes. Why? Do you know her?’
‘No, but my parents are psychiatrists, and they once had an American patient who called one of his daughters Goneril, and she would have been about your age by now, and it’s such an unusual name . . .’
‘She has a sister named Regan.’
‘Yes, that’s the one.’
‘And he named his yacht Titanic and his company Roman Empire Holdings.’
‘To prove he was the master of his own fate. What happened to him?’
‘The yacht sank, the company went bust, and his daughters had him certified insane.’
‘Oh.’
‘Luckily Goneril got some money from an uncle.’
In parallel with his realisation that he wanted Mildred Gorge to be his, another new knowledge was now surging within Loeser: that this city, to him, was his bungalow, the Gorge Theatre, his longing for Adele, his monthly cheque from the Cultural Solidarity Committee, parties at the Muttons’ house, the definite absence of Bertolt Brecht . . . But now he couldn’t rely on any of those things. California was a patient who had never left Dr Voronoff’s operating table, who had accepted transplant after transplant after transplant until its limbs bubbled with moist grapevines of every imaginable foreign gland – but after five years of dribbling sour juices into his new host, a xenograft called Egon Loeser had finally been rejected. And he didn’t know what to do next. Except that when Gorge shouted for Woodkin, and Woodkin left the room for the first time since Loeser had sat down, he knew he had to say something.
‘Your father’s going to make you marry Norman Clowne,’ he blurted.
‘Who’s that?’
‘The Secretary of the Los Angeles Traffic Commission.’
‘Why is he going to make me marry the Secretary of the Los Angeles Traffic Commission?’
‘Because I told him teleportation isn’t real.’
‘Oh,’ said Adele, apparently satisfied by that explanation. ‘I don’t want to marry the Secretary of the Los Angeles Traffic Commission.’
‘I don’t want you to either,’ said Loeser boldly.
‘I guess I don’t have a choice.’
‘You could run away. You could get out of Los Angeles.’
‘And go where? Cambridge?’
Loeser thought back to Dames! And how to Lay them. ‘If you’ve got the fever hots for a velvety piece, but the egg timer’s running out, you may need to put your balls in your mouth and just straight up swing for an elopement. You might think it’s a one in a million shot, but sometimes the lady’s so surprised her brain will flip upside down and she’ll say yes and kiss you. That, see, is how God made her.’ Could that actually work? Could the gland skip off and take with it the kidney stone, no anaesthetic required? Of course, if Mildred wasn’t around to marry Clowne, then Clowne would have no reason to stub out Plumridge’s streetcar scheme, and that would probably mean Blimk would lose his shop. But it was lot easier to stick to tiresome rules like ‘Don’t be a total prick to the people who try to be nice to you’ when you hadn’t just fallen (mostly) in love. And if Lavicini could kill twenty-five people over a woman, or whatever it said in the book he hadn’t read yet, then this didn’t seem so bad in comparison. He’d never tried anything like this in his life, but he knew now that he had to leave Los Angeles whatever happened. He had nothing to lose.
‘New York,’ he said. ‘Come to New York with me.’
Mildred regarded him for a while and then shrugged. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘It’s not as if I have anything better to do.’
Part IV
Zeitgeisterbahnhöfe (four endings)
8
Venice, 1691
The gondolier wore the mask of a plague doctor, with a long white beak, and when he shook his head the gibbous moon flashed in the red glass of the mask’s eyes. ‘You don’t want to go to Vignole.’
>
‘Why not?’ said Sauvage.
‘It’s nice enough on a warm afternoon, but there’s nothing much there. I haven’t been across for months. I’ll take you to Murano instead. Much more pleasant. Much more to do at night.’
‘I have business on the island.’
‘Are you in negotiations with an old lunatic to buy a dead vegetable patch?’
‘Perhaps I am.’
‘You really don’t want to go to Vignole. If I don’t talk you out of it now, you’ll just blame me afterwards. And rightly so. You’re a Frenchman, aren’t you? In Venice we look after our visitors.’
Sauvage, who wore an ordinary gilded bauta that left his mouth uncovered, took two gold zecchini out of the purse at his belt and pressed them into the gondolier’s gloved hand. ‘In that case, please indulge me.’
The gondolier was silent for a moment and then gestured for Sauvage to step down into the boat. As they pushed off into the lagoon, Sauvage looked up at the two guard towers that rose to the west above the ramparts of the Arsenal. Often since coming to Venice it had seemed to him that the city was not an island but a great loose raft, tied together only with bridges and washing lines and the complacency of pigeons, ready to cut loose and float off south if at any time it began to lose interest in the mainland.
‘Why do you wear that particular mask?’ he said.
‘Plagues come into Venice by sea,’ said the gondolier. ‘Not for a while now, but they will again. We in the boats live in the kingdom of plague just as much as any doctor.’ He rowed fast but there was no exertion in his voice. ‘Also, my nephews love it.’
When they got to the other shore, a wolf sat there watching them like something crystallised in an alembic out of the reflection of the moonlight on the surface of the water. For a moment the beauty of it made Sauvage’s spine ring like a xylophone, but then the gondolier banged his oar several times on the side of the boat and the wolf rose and trotted away, unhurried, on its surprisingly spindly legs.
