‘I have no idea, no and hell no. So?' The manager bridled. To be told that a person who, when all was said and done, was a man, and hence, de facto, inferior to her, was more sexy than her and her forty-seven body piercings, that a man with a first-class degree in English Literature was better than her, with her mail-order diploma in Cultural Studies, it was too much. Even being sex on legs, being so desirable that she could feel her lust as something almost palpable, could not justify such insults. So she made another of those wide gestures of hers (with the usual result, and a plaintive request from Nina to the effect that 'Could you let us know in advance next time?') and pointed to the door, as dramatically as she knew how (she believed with a sense of drama and passion the equal of anything ever committed to celluloid by Bette Davis, but actually somewhat in the manner of a three-year-old peeved at been deprived of a favourite toy) and said,
'Out. Out I say. You are not welcome in this bookshop.'
Unity, as was to be expected, ignored her. She had noticed something. Reaching out to the disarranged books that lay where she had committed her great feat of loving, she said to herself, entirely oblivious to the fact that she had been given her marching orders,
'Now what have we here?' She picked up a book and, with a cool detachment that raised the manager to a height of gobbling fury usually found only in turkeys and politicians seeking re-election, studied the cover. 'The Unnameable, a novel by Samuel Beckett. I forget, is he the one that Hubert the second had offed in Chartres Cathedral?' Now, that stunning statement was enough to make the manager forget her fury, for here was a chance to exercise her first love: showing how clever she was by putting down other people for their ignorance.
'I think you'll find,' she said, in a suitably condescending tone, 'That it is actually by the famous Belgian Walloon playwright, author of Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, amongst other great plays. It's terrible passé, but we keep it in stock for the students. Everyone's heard of Beckett.'
'Well you've just learned something new,' said Unity in a friendly manner, 'Actually it's everyone minus one, and I'm willing to bet that Daddy hasn't either, not to mention Uncle Dagon, Auntie Shubbie and, hells help us, Azathoth. He hasn't heard of anything. So up yours, Miss Snootypants. I want this book.'
'Well,' said the manager, between gritted teeth, because a sale was a sale, however offensive the customer, 'You'll have to pay for it. That's . . .'
'Ah yes, but you don't understand. I'm the daughter of a Great Old One, and that means I don't have any money.'
'In which case you can't have the book. It's very simple.' Unity looked thoughtful.
'Well if it's simple you want . . .' she turned her gaze on empty space and said, 'Sorry to interrupt your contemplation of my iniquities, Nina, but I fear I'm going to have to kill someone, so do you mind . . .' Nina, being Nina, leaped immediately to the wrong conclusion, and said,
'No, you can't have him. Do anything. Fornicate with him again. I don't care, just don't kill him.' Unity was touched.
'Well, sister, that's a very kind offer, and I may take you up on it some time, but I was going to say that I hope you don't mind if I kill someone else.'
'Oh. Right. Fine. Be my guest.'
'Thank you.' Unity returned her attention to the frankly puzzled, and hence angry, because things she didn't understand made her angry, manager, and said, 'So let's run over this again. I want this book, but I don't have any money, and you say that if I don't have money I can't have the book. Is that right?'
'Yes.'
'Oh good. So, now, let's try a compromise.'
'No compromise is possible. If you can't pay, out you go.' She gestured again to prove it.
'Oh but it is, it is,' said Unity. 'What I was going to suggest was that if you give me the book, I'll promise not to kill you. There, how does that sound?'
'It sounds like total nonsense. You kill me? Don't make me laugh.' Unity sighed, which almost put the manager into lust mode again, and said, 'I do hate having to do this. It seems somehow rather like type-casting. But needs must. Right then, here goes.' At least overtly, nothing happened, but suddenly the manager saw in front of her not the sexiest woman in the world giving her a view of approximately one hundred percent of her bare naked bosom, but infinite depths of horror and known that at their heart was a mind utterly vast and inhuman that was even now turning its thoughts to the matter of her obliteration, not angrily, not with passion or dark evil, but with simple indifference, and with that came madness: she screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed. The darkness receded, and where there had been a terror worse than mere eternal torment, there was only the sexiest woman in the world, smiling at her in an unpleasantly knowing way, who said,
'So, now do you think I might be able to have the book without giving you money?' The manager couldn't speak. What she had seen was too terrible. But, after several seconds in which she was shaking too much to even move coherently, she managed to nod. 'Right then,' said Unity, 'We'll be on our way. This is clearly hot stuff, but I'm blessed if I can understand it. I need someone clever to tell me what it means. Come on, Nina, we're going.'
'Oh, but what about my one true love. How can you separate us at a time like this? You're cold. And heartless. And . . .'
'Fine, he can come with us.'
'Oh Unity, I do love you really. You'v always been my best friend. I'm so grateful that I'll do anything, anything just to make you happier. Name it, I'm yours.'
'How about you shut up and let me arrange the transport?'
'Well, I was thinking more along the lines of . . .'
'Nina. Your big sister Unity has to do something very hard and needs to concentrate. So shut the fuck up.'
'Sorry.'
'Thank you. Here goes.' She cleared her throat and said, to a different patch of thin air, 'Two to transport, please. We need you to send us to a scholar. One who knows all about,' she consulted the book, 'Simeon Bucket. Can you do that please?' Which obviously they could, for after a brief pause she said, 'Thank you. Just a moment.' And then, terrifyingly she cast an appraising eye over the manager and her forty-seven body piercings, and it was clear to the manager that even those in her most intimate places were visible to this – what exactly? And she realised that she didn't want to be transported to heights of ecstasy by this woman, she didn't even want to get mildly happy with her, for, with an insight entirely atypical of her, she realised that making love with a goddess would be pretty much akin to being eaten by her: more pleasant, but ultimately just as ego-destroying. And her ego was all she had. So she quailed in terror as that cool, not entirely human gaze evaluated her, and then, to her relief, Unity shook her head and said, 'Nah. Bad personal hygiene,' and shuddered, which might have once angered the manager, but not now. She watched in relief as Unity squared herself up and said to nobody, 'Right, so when you're ready can we go?' which they did, for she vanished, together with the assistant manager, leaving the manager alone, completely at a loss as to how to react, whether to thank Derrida for her escape, to mourn unrestrainedly in that now, having met the goddess of love, she would never find anyone else sexually attractive ever again, or to commit herself to a mental hospital. She had always thought religion was the crutch of the mentally unsound, but now, with a faith of such profundity that it startled even her, she believed that she had truly met one of the rulers of this cosmos, and had only narrowly escaped being consumed. It is, after all, very disturbing, when one has dismissed a proposition thoughtlessly for all ones adult life, to discover that it is, in fact, true. And to pass from scorning the mere concept of a god to knowing that one has met one in just a few minutes is more than many people can bear. So it is not surprising that the manager compromised by finding a fourth option: she fainted.
(iv) Disarray in Academia
Professor Hopkins was not having a good time. For a start, he was giving a tutorial, and as he was convinced that he was congenitally allergic to undergraduates, and had some very telling ci
rcumstantial evidence to back up his assertion, including a very nasty rash that was a topic of heated discussion whenever medic met medic in the senior common room, contact with two of the species, even if he did insist on their keeping at a distance of at least four metres at all times, was preying on his nerves. And, though he loathed and despised all undergraduates as a matter of principle, these two in particular were his especial bêtes noires. They both belonged to that dreadful class, the lifestyle-choice undergraduate, who clearly saw the purpose of attending university as being to make contacts and, in the case of the female specimen, find a rich husband – though not until she had slept with every person of the male gender with sufficient gumption to chat her up, which in her case generally went something along the lines of: Him: 'Hello', Her: 'Do you want to take me up the ass?' (she had a touching faith that so long as she didn't actually use the, as it were, main entrance, then she would technically speaking remain a virgin), Him: 'I beg your pardon?', Her: sticks tongue down his throat.
And so, here was Professor Hopkins, world renowned authority on the works of Samuel Beckett, listening to these two feather-brained dullards struggling with the idea that Godot never would come, and the play was not about how inconvenient it was to be stood up for a date (on which the girl spoke most forcibly), but existential despair, and the ultimate futility of life. Which, he thought, these two ought to understand if anyone did. But no, he just knew that at some point one of them – probably the girl – was going to ask what Estragon meant. And yes, he saw a tremor pass through her exquisite, too exquisite in fact – she looked like a Barbie with extra breast implants who had gone slightly over the top on the personal grooming front – frame, and he thought to himself 'here it comes' and prepared to summon up all of his moral fibre, so that he didn't bite the poor thing's head off.
And then there was a loud 'pop' and suddenly the room was full of people. Well, two people: a woman who looked like, well, looked like the sort of woman that academics only get to meet in their dreams, or very occasionally when a more enterprising than usual undergraduate came up with what she thought was a jolly original wheeze for getting straight As, only those women – the ones in the dreams, and the ones who tried to persuade you that their sexual favours were worth the sacrifice of your integrity – were nothing compared to this one. Oh yes, and a man, a weak-looking, sort of handsome-ish man, who seemed puzzled; very naturally, it seemed to Professor Hopkins. The woman wasn't, though. She took a quick look around, spotted the girl, said in a voice the mere sound of which made Professor Hopkins break out in a sweat,
'Wow. The plastic woman. This I have to try.' And the next thing anyone knew the – not entirely convincingly – protesting lady (if that is the right word) undergraduate found herself being forcibly initiated into the joys of sapphism. While a previously unheard female voice spoke, apparently, from thin air, and addressed the male undergraduate thus:
'Hello. I might have tolerated you once, but now I have found my true love I can be honest. You seem really boring. Is it through choice, or just an unhappy accident?' And, by the time he had recovered, because he wasn't used to being addressed by disembodied voices, or realised that the women who clustered round him and offered him their bodies were actually lying back and thinking of his trust fund, and worked out how to answer, the mystery woman’s whirlwind romance had come to an end and, pulling away from the shattered wreck that had once been an immaculate simulacrum of womanhood, she said,
'My, that was even worse than I thought it would be.'
'So why did you do it?' said the voice.
'Because I've always wondered what it would be like to do it with a Barbie doll, and I reckoned that was the closest I was going to get. Azathoth, she was crap. Well, there's only one thing for it: you've found your true love, and I'm sure that Daddy would agree that this is a service to humanity.' With which there was a crash followed by a nasty splashing sound and a hail of something warm and damp.
‘Now why did you do that?’ said the disembodied voice, as Professor Hopkins sadly inspected what had, until a few seconds ago, been a pristine Saville Row suit. The woman said,
‘Well, she’s never going to use her brain, so I thought I’d relieve her of it. There was nothing in there she’ll miss. And I’m always saying I'll make people’s heads explode. I thought I might as well do it and see what happened. It was fun, you should try it some time. So, who's next?'
'I think,' said the voice, 'That you should go for the other one. He's not very nice.'
'Yes, I can see that.'
'And I’m guessing the older one is the Professor person you want to talk to.'
'Good thinking that woman. Hey, you,' she addressed the Professor. 'Are you the Bucket man?' Professor Hopkins double-took. Did she think he was a plumber? Did he dare disabuse her if she did? So he said, cautiously,
'Bucket? Are you sure you're in the right place?'
'Well, unless those bloody cultists have screwed up again, which is more than likely. I'm looking for a Professor Hopkins who knows all about Bucket. You know, this guy,' she waved a copy of 'The Unnameable' at him and light dawned.
'Oh you mean Beckett. Well yes, I suppose I am something of an authority.'
'Beckett, Bucket – I was nearly right. Right then. Stay there for a minute or so, there's something I have to do first.' She turned to the male undergraduate. 'You. Smarmy-chops. How's your love-making?'
'What?'
'Oh hells, do I have to spell it out. What are you like in bed? In the sack? Doing the horizontal mambo?'
'Well,' the poor boy actually smirked as he thought of all the nice things those girls had said to him, or rather to his current account, 'I'm generally considered pretty good.'
'Okay, so a woman comes up to you and demands that you satisfy her. What do you do?' The fool fell for it, and, not realising where this was leading, or rather, having a wholly erroneous idea of where it was leading, said smugly,
'Hey, making me happy is enough pleasure for them. If I'm satisfied, they're satisfied.' The woman seemed appalled, which was, Professor Hopkins considered, not entirely unjustified. The voice appeared to agree, because it said,
'There, I told you he was nasty, didn't I?'
'Bloody fucking hell. I had no idea. No wonder the girls hate you and only tolerate you because you're rich, and then only because they reckon that if they marry you, you'll be too dumb to realise what's hoping on even if you do catch them in bed with the milkman.'
'What?'
'Oh, didn't you know. Such things are transparent to we higher beings. Beware, for I am the child of a Great Old One, and I can see into your future. And it's not looking good.'
'Oh yeah,' he said with under the circumstances was quite insane bravado, but then someone stupid enough to have not realised that a woman who willingly returns to the bed of an exponent of the wham, bang, thank you ma'am school of thought probably has an ulterior motive is also stupid enough to be cheeky to a woman who has just detonated his cohort's head. He continued, 'Life's looking great. What can go wrong?' The woman stared at him for a few seconds, then said,
'This,' then there was another bang, another shower of damp pink bits, and another headless corpse sliding to the floor.
Now, on the whole, the Professor applauded this course of action. He wished that he had thought of exploding undergraduates’ heads. He was sure someone in the engineering department could devise a machine to do it. But there was one fly in the ointment, one dead mouse in the salad, one lingering doubt, viz was she going to do it to him next? Apparently not, because, after rearranging her dress, so that instead of looking stunning, she looked indescribable, she returned to the Professor and said,
'Anyway, this Bucket bloke. If I'm right, this,' she wielded the book, 'Should tell me where Hastur's gone. Now I tried to read it and it's bloody impenetrable, but then I'm a goddess, while you're paid to read this sort of thing. So what does it say about Hastur?' Professor Hopkins didn't know what to say. He had al
ways thought that the novel was about despair and the disintegration of personality. That it was philosophical. And who on Earth was Hastur, anyway? Well, he could sort that out easily enough. After all, it was clear that he had a dangerous lunatic on his hands, so he had to humour her or – no, he didn't want to think about that. So he said,
'Er, who, may I ask, is Hastur?'
'Oh come on, surely you know who Hastur is? Hastur the Unnameable. See. It's in the title. He was the fourth Great Old One, along with Daddy – that's Great Cthulhu to you – Dagon and Shub Niggurath. And he's gone missing. And,' now she began to sound doleful, 'I can't have an orgasm until I find him.'
'What?' The Professor had never heard anything so insane, and he had been in academia for forty years.
'You heard. I can't have orgasms, and I've found out that if I discover what happened to Hastur, then I will. So I want to find him. And this,' she brandished the book, 'Tells me how. Or will, if you decode it for me.' Professor Hopkins found himself in a quandary. He didn't want to be headless. He really didn't want to be headless. But could he, in all conscience, tell this apparent lunatic (orgasms – as if orgasms mattered compared to literary criticism) what she wanted to hear? Whatever that was, which he wasn't too clear on. So, he tried his best to temporise and said,
The Daughter of the Night Page 13
