The Hope

by James Lovegrove

  Buds and petals and shoots.

  He fell into a woodland world where thick-bracketed branches blotted out the sun, and life – mammals, birds, insects – thronged in every bole of every trunk and every tussocky hole in the earth. He was in a dark glade and at its centre, framed by the intertwining trees, was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  Tennyson, he thought, you randy old bugger.

  The singing died as she saw him. In her fine spun-thread hair was twisted a gold tiara and clinging to her was a dress of translucent material that, in covering up her body, drew attention to that which it hid, breasts, nipples, the curve down towards her thighs, the shadow where they met, oh Christ!

  The woman fell at his feet and kissed them, crying: “Trample me, dear feet, that I have followed through the world, and I will pay worship. Tread me down and I will kiss you for it.”

  The librarian groaned and exploded into his Y-fronts, nearly fainting with the ecstasy.

  The vision was gone and he was sitting on the floor, spent, sticky, shamed, guilty, embarrassed.

  But at last he understood what was happening.

  The librarian began giggling.

  A few people, not many, were puzzled by the new and erratic opening hours of the library. Although they were regulars as such, they had grown used to the place being open without fail 09.00 to 17.00 and now it irritated them to have to plan their visits to accommodate the two hours a day, not consecutive, during which they were allowed access to browse and at the end of which they were unceremoniously hustled out. Complaints to the librarian brought only stubborn intractability, a blank stare, sometimes downright rudeness. It was none of their business and if they didn’t like it they could start up a library of their own. Gradually they stopped coming altogether. Nothing could have pleased the librarian more.

  Every day he ambled along the shelves choosing his read for the day. Spotting a book he wanted, he would stand by it and concentrate, not too hard because it didn’t work that way, but hard enough to winkle the story out of hiding. Usually he got what he wanted but the library could make up its own mind and often chose something else from the same section that suited his mood better. The story would live and he would live in the story.

  Feeling bored? Try one of the thrillers: cars, girls, guns, chases, girls, more girls.

  Feeling depressed? Tumble into Tom Jones and a simpler era when love conquered all and Tom conquered all women.

  Feeling frisky? Lolita.

  Feeling bright and witty? Engage in the intellectual cut-and-thrust of dinnertime conversation in Peacock’s funny little novels.

  Feeling a bit too bright and witty? Travel up the sombre Congo towards the heart of Conrad’s darkness.

  The librarian fought the greatest warriors, feasted on the finest food, fucked the most beautiful women. It did not matter whether he lived or died, whether he was one character or dozens, for at the end he would wake up, the day’s adventure done, the back cover shut in his head, exhausted and content.

  He was living the books he had read and all their tastes, sensations and pleasures were his. The world of the Hope became as much a dream as the world of books. He had to eat, sleep and shit in the real world, but these were minor inconveniences and barely registered. He didn’t notice when strangers started to wrinkle their noses as he passed them by, either on the way to or back from the library, but he didn’t much notice the need for a shower or a shave either. Sometimes a stranger might wave in greeting and he realised it was someone he knew and he was compelled to grunt something back, but he took to going around without his specs on to prevent that sort of thing happening too often. And that was another blessing, because he didn’t have to ruin his eyes by reading Lilliput print now. No more headaches and unsightly red pressure marks on the bridge of his nose.

  Pretty soon he was sleeping in the library on a narrow camp bed so that he could start in on another book as soon as he woke up. It was a pity he could only live books he had already read. He tried a Gothic novel once to see what it was like – Frankenstein was supposed to be tolerable, wasn’t it? – and found it was no use. Nothing happened. No matter. As the doctor had said, he had read all the books he wanted to read, and some of them were worth reading several times over.

  He woke one morning in the library with his face cold and his back tender. He would have to do something about getting a decent bed down here. Sometime. Maybe.

  The only decision he made that morning, apart from the decision to piss in a corner instead of in a toilet, was to close the library permanently. What good was an open library if none of the ungrateful bastards came any more? Screw them. He scrawled a sign saying “Closed for Good” on a piece of scrap card and tacked it to the door. He turned the key and put it in one of the desk drawers. There.

  All that remained was to choose the book of the day and get stuck in. He decided to try for Robinson Crusoe as he felt like a little sun, sand and sea air, man back to nature, that sort of thing. He made his way to the D section, recalling how this was where it had all begun. Since his encounter with Magwitch, he had been back to read Great Expectations all the way through, right to its eloquent and bittersweet ending. He selected Defoe and relaxed, concentrating as hard as he needed, not too hard.

  He was in a forest. There was a leopard, a lion and a she-wolf, and then he met a great poet whom he was to follow as the evening thickened.

  This was not Robinson Crusoe. The librarian was not unduly worried. The library had chosen something else. So what?

  A city. And there was weeping here, so much pain it filled the air like a colour in the sky, red or purple. The air was electric, thunderous, crackling with the cries and the wails. He was being led somewhere. Downwards. Into circles.

  He knew this place.

  The promiscuous. He belonged there, all right, but they were going further down and all he wanted to do was return to the daylight, bask in it just one more time, but the air was black now and the crowds all around were vague, tortured outlines.

  He knew this place.

  The gluttons. He belonged there too, but the descent continued, his guide – Virgil – explaining and cautioning in an elegant, poetic tongue as they trod spiral paths. The librarian began to choke on the air and it tasted of sin and stank of putrefaction.

  Virgil said, “Here,” only that wasn’t in the book.

  Strange.

  The sullen. The librarian’s feet would not move and looking down he saw he was knee-deep in slime and the slime was rising. No, it wasn’t rising, he was sinking and it was up to his thighs. Around him the surface heaved and bubbled. There were faces straining to stay above it, hands breaking free now and then to claw in supplication before being dragged under again.

  The slime was at his crotch.

  He belonged here. Yes, he could admit that. He deserved this for ever.

  But he did wish he had finished reading Dante.

  The library was empty and quiet. On the door hung a sign, letters scrawled on scrap card:

  Situation Vacant

  Apply Within

  THE RAIN MAN

  Hey, you. Got any spare change? No? Got a minute, then? Let me tell you about the Rain Man.

  No, wait, hear me out. I’ve got all the time in the world; haven’t you? I wasn’t always a stopper, you know, although I’ve stopped here now and I quite like it. I once had a good job. I worked hard. In the kitchens, yeah. I was a chef and a damn good one too. Head chef. People used to come into the kitchens after a meal sometimes and they’d thank me like I’d worked a miracle or something. It’s very confusing if you do your job well and people come in and act like you’re a new messiah or whatever. Food of the gods, they’d say. Manna from heaven.

  Well, I began believing my press, so to speak. I began to think there was more to it than a thousand and one things to do with fish, maybe God had smiled on me and said, “Thou art the best thing in cooking since sliced bread and thou shalt cook the most divine meals ever.” I
was on a mission from God.

  There was this man used to hang around the kitchens every so often, asking for food, leftovers, bit like I do now, so it’s a sort of poetic justice, isn’t it? Because I treated him like dirt and told him to piss off and take all the crusts he could and never come back, only he did come back every so often, and I sent him packing each time with enough food for a bird to survive on … just. He was an odd-looking sort, bony, bent, old floppy hat and always so sad, a big runny nose and big bags under his eyes, like he was about to cry any minute.

  One time he came back and he had a bag under his coat. I had gone out the back to throw out some rubbish and the seagulls were hovering overhead waiting and the flies were pretty bad because it was a warm day after a wet night, and he came up and showed me the bag.

  “Special fish,” he said, and I’ve only heard that sort of excitement in children’s voices when they’re about to get a present. You know, “Pleeeeease, pleeeeease”.

  “What’s so special about it?” I asked. I was thinking about chicken Parisienne, wine sauce, melons from the greenhouse ripe to perfection, so ripe they crushed cool on your tongue, was thinking about anything except this moron’s special fish.

  “Tastes like heaven,” he beamed, “and it’s all yours. To thank you for being kind to me.”

  “But I haven’t…” I began, then decided I hadn’t anything to lose so I took the bag from him and gave him the sack of rubbish to sort through. Fair exchange, no robbery.

  “Take what you want,” I said, feeling generous. The seagulls were dead pissed off.

  I left him and went back into the kitchen and laid those fish out on a slab and they were like no other fish I’d seen in my life. I don’t want to know where he got them from. There were two of them and they were bright orange and they were fish-shaped, and after that any resemblance to fish was purely coincidental. They had bits sticking out here and bits sticking out there, stalks and fins with no obvious purpose, as if nature had had a laughing fit the day she threw them together or else she’d been playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey blindfold thirty times on each fish and missed every time.

  I set to work with my gutting knife and took off all the bits until I had a small pile of them and I thought they would make a nice garnish, then I slit both fish open, and guess what? No guts, no organs, no stomach, nothing. Just a white flesh and even raw that flesh looked delicious. It was so white it glowed.

  What’s this got to do with the Rain Man? Everything and nothing. Let me tell you about me before I tell you about him, OK?

  It was getting near rush hour and I had to decide what I was going to do with Mr and Mrs Fish. You ever been in the kitchens? Let me tell you about it. The rush hour starts just before dinnertime. There’s steam everywhere, the ovens are blazing so hot they singe your eyebrows if you stand too near, cauldrons of food all come to the boil at once. The entire kitchen is a seething mass of cooks running backward and forward like crazy to get things done, because it’s the most important people on the boat eating out there – they’re the only ones who can afford that kind of food, unless the Captain’s treating some of the less well-off at his table and when was the last time that happened? – and they’re eating what we make for them. That’s power, I can tell you. In the kitchens we get into this state of panic because it’s the only way we can operate. Four hours pass like four minutes.

  I was getting wound up in it myself and I was desperate to serve up these fish, since I’d never seen anything like them, and I was sure no one had ever eaten anything like them. I went for grilling them lightly, butter on one side (they still have a mountain of butter down the stores) and maybe chestnut sauce. I had some chestnut sauce left over somewhere.

  Sorry. Thinking about food like that makes me come over all funny. I sliced Mr and Mrs Fish finer than fine so that as many people as possible could get a taste and I grilled the slices lightly. They went this brown-gold colour that made my saliva spit into my mouth just looking at it. I was tempted to try a piece then and there, but that selfsame moment the two Portuguese who work there got into an argument about whose turn it was to stir the soup. They speak perfectly good English but they pretend not to because they’re a lazy, shiftless lot. If you ask them to do something, it’s “Don’ unnerstan, don’ unnerstan”.

  And then the diners started filing into the dining-hall and I didn’t have the leisure as all the junior chefs were asking me questions at the same time.

  “Should I take the parsnips off now?”

  “Do we want aubergines in the ratatouille?”

  “The chicken’s nearly ready!”

  “No salt, no salt!”

  “We’ve got courgettes instead of aubergines.”

  “Chicken’s ready!”

  “Have you written the menu yet?”

  “Actually, I don’t like aubergines myself.”

  “Chicken’s burning!”

  I really believe they couldn’t take a dump unless I told them just where to do it, how to take their trousers down, how to sit, don’t make too much noise.

  I called the fish “Poisson specialité de bateau” on the menu. Everything sounds better in French, don’t you think? I keep a pocket French dictionary in the kitchens for just that purpose. I can make dogshit sound like a new brand of caviar.

  Twenty-three portions I made. Every one was ordered. I suppose people like a surprise. They certainly got one.

  How was I to know it was lethal? I mean, take the puffer fish, that’s in my recipe book as a delicacy, only it’s got to be prepared exactly right or it’ll kill you dead. I don’t know if there was a correct way of preparing Mr and Mrs Fish, but if there was I hadn’t found it. I sometimes wonder why I never tried it myself. I wouldn’t be here talking at you if I had, and maybe I’d be better off.

  I’ll give you some idea of how lethal that fish was. One of the waiters nicked a tiny piece off one of the dishes as he took it into the dining-hall, a piece no bigger than a coin. He came back in and told the junior chef how it tasted amazing, slightly scented and it sort of crumbled in your mouth. Nectar, he called it. We found him out the back three hours later, his face black and swollen like he’d been hit a hundred times and blood all down his shirtfront and the legs of his trousers. Just crawled out back, lay down and died. The seagulls had started in on him already.

  The Captain sent me his compliments. He didn’t have the fish himself because he doesn’t eat fish. Isn’t that peculiar – a ship’s captain who can’t eat fish? But so many people had said how wonderful it was that he sent his compliments, told me to come out so’s he could congratulate me personally. Well, I went out and they all clapped and I felt better than a miracle-worker. I felt like God.

  And three hours later twenty-three of those people who’d applauded me turned black and died.

  It started towards the end of the meal. A couple said they weren’t feeling well. A woman fainted. Dr Chamberlain was called, which was about as much use as calling an arsonist to put out a fire. He said something about swollen glands, not much he could do, but he would prescribe some pills if they came to see him in the morning.

  I knew something was wrong and it was something to do with Mr and Mrs Fish and I was scared, dead scared. Going out back and finding that waiter, that nearly blew my head. I went from being God to being a murderer in the space of a few hours. The juniors, they didn’t know what had happened, but they knew something had gone wrong and they thought I’d done it on purpose, put rat poison on the fish or something, and the way they looked at me, I couldn’t stand it! Even the Portuguese! They looked at me like I was a mad animal, slobbering and growling, and in the interests of public safety I should be kicked and shot dead.

  Well, I saved them the trouble. I put on my coat and I got out of there. I’d been up at the top, right up, so the only way left to go was down. I spent that first night huddled up on Z deck or even lower, if you can get lower than Z deck, just crying and shivering and too scared to show my face in cas
e anyone saw me and said, “Hey! There’s that psycho chef who murdered twenty-four people!” Crazy, of course, because no one on the lower decks gives a toss what happens on the upper decks. A few of them die, so what? It’s the same the other way round too. But I didn’t know that then, so I wandered from place to place down here, crawling over rubbish tips by day, sleeping under walkways by night. It always rains down here and it’s always dark, you noticed that? Don’t see how you can’t notice.

  I wasn’t too good at getting food, though, and I was on my way to starving to death when I met Money. Yeah, that was his name, Money. He hadn’t got any, of course. It was a joke. I think. He’d wink and say, “I’m called Money so that if I’m raped, the guy who rapes me can say he’s come into Money”, and he’d wheeze like mad because that was how he laughed. Wheeze, wheeze. He wore about six layers of clothing, you know, vest, shirt, another shirt, jumper, cardigan, this great big coat, and he never took any of them off. I hated to think what he might have growing under his armpits. Me, I try to wash now and again, but you tell me where a stopper can take a bath. I usually waited for a rainstorm, then I’d strip off and run out starkers and dance around freezing my nuts but getting clean. Well, less dirty. Don’t do that so much nowadays.

  Money found me when I was on the point of jumping off the side of the ship, or on the point of thinking about jumping off the side of the ship. I’m a coward, really. If I’d had any guts I’d have jumped overboard when those twenty-four people turned black and started spewing blood. That would have been the decent thing to do but I had too much self-respect then and not enough later. Either way, I would never have got round to topping myself. I’d simply have sat and starved, waiting for my bowels to pack up and all sorts of gross diseases to set in.