Babylon

by Richard Calder

  Introduction by KJ. Bishop

  PS Publishing 2006

  Babylon

  Copyright © 2006 by Richard Calder

  Introduction Copyright © 2006 by K.J. Bishop

  Cover

  The Course of Empire: Destruction, 1836 (oil on canvas) by Cole, Thomas (1801-48)

  © New-York Historical Society, New York, USA

  Published in March 2006 by PS Publishing Ltd. by arrangement with the author. All rights reserved by the author.

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN

  Deluxe slipcased hardcover 1-904619-58-4 Trade hardcover 1-904619-57-6

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  Design and layout by Alligator Tree Graphics

  PS Publishing Ltd

  Grosvenor House 1 New Road Hornsea, HU18 IPG ENGLAND

  e-mail:editor@pspublishing.co.ukInternet:http://www.pspublishing.co.uk

  Introduction

  I met Richard Calder under the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus. I had suggested the statue for our rendezvous partly because it was a London landmark I knew that I as a visitor could find without difficulty, but mostly because if Calder has a patron deity it is surely Eros (with Thanatos riding shotgun).

  Having seen a grainy snapshot of Calder on the internet, I recognised the benignly handsome man in the tweed jacket. Some writers look as if they might actually hail from their own fictional worlds; Calder is perhaps more like William Burroughs in his ‘banker’s drag’: someone who knows how strange, and how riddled with fictions, normality is.

  In person, Calder is charming, dauntingly well-read, a world traveller, fiendishly intelligent, and informed on a staggering variety of subjects; he is also deeply decent. By that, I mean that he’s one of those mentally industrious people who, when most of us are content to receive at least a few conventional opinions and call them our own, question absolutely everything and go looking, through the midden of fictions we live in, for truth. That day, we went to West End pubs where I soaked up, along with gin and tonics, the bordello-like ambience produced by dark red embossed wallpapers, chandeliers and Victorian etched mirrors; then onto the tube and across to the East End, where he showed me around streets that still retain a Dickensian quality, satisfying my desire for the romance of the abject after the morning spent enjoying the romance of luxury. This was how I found myself thinking; in Calder s company one starts to become as self-reflective as a character in one of his novels, and as aware of the projections which one’s own imagination throws on the world.

  Calder is a creator of beautiful, lavish, surfaces, in imagery and in language. He works with the allied, often playful aesthetics of excess—the rococo, cyberpunk, fin-de-siecle decadence, the postmodern, dark eroticism, pulp sci-fi, Victoriana, and the idea of the exotic. But rather than try to make us believe in his fabulous creations, he deliberately underlines the artificiality of the worlds in which his romantic heroes and heroines—flawed, Byronic/ bionic males and their wanton, fairylike, fille-fatale muses— perform their passionate cabarets. The result is less a collapse of the fantasy, I find, than of the reality I think I am living in. If that world is bogus and camp, what about this one?

  Since his first book, Dead Girls, in which the unwitting desires of men interfered with the quantum machinery inside deluxe automata—‘living dolls’ that looked like beautiful women—and created a plague that turned human girls into dolls, Calder has explored the theme of how imagination acts in the world. It doesn’t, of course, require quantum machinery for thoughts to affect reality: it only takes words, actions, a sticky web of social pressures, for we as individuals or groups to start imagining ourselves as others would have us be. Calder is an explorer, particularly, of the deep down desires, the sex and death drives, which in society at large are acknowledged cursorily, if at all, for their roles in public life—in politics, in religion, in war. When some- aspect of the human psyche shames or frightens or confuses us so much that we don’t want to look at it, it of course becomes dangerous, because we can’t see what it’s doing. It is this world of the libido, and the dark libido where sex and death go hand in hand, into which Calder often gives his characters particular insight. More aware of their own fantasies than most real people are, if we look to where their torches point we may see some hitherto unsuspected regions of ourselves usefully illumined.

  In Calder’s novels up until The Twist (1999) there was a central romantic couple in which the male had the narrator’s role. In a way he was one character incarnated many times, a man whose heart was really the heart of a Peter Pan in a modernised Never- Never Land, playing such roles as cyborg avenger, stouthearted undead warrior, alien executioner—and, always, lover. His relationship with his Wendy—his beloved and muse—is best summed up by Raul Riviera, the hero of Impakto (2001): ‘When I was a boy, you see, girls seemed so unattainable, that they might have been almost from another planet. And the more beautiful they were, the more alien they seemed.’ To project alienness on another is, however conducive to baroque scenarios for the fantasising mind to play with, not the way to lasting love. Calder certainly recognises this. It is typically through magical acts of re-imagination—of the world, and, crucially, of himself—rather than the action-man violence of the stereotypes he resembles, that the hero achieves his victories and achieves a true union, a sacred marriage, with the female. There the story has to end—until, as must happen with artists and muses if creation is to occur, the two separate so that another universe can be born and the Lover search for the Beloved again.

  In The Twist, we saw a change in the pattern. The romantic couple were still present, but viewed from outside by a third person, a young girl who wanted to become like the glamorous, inhuman woman in the pair. Calder proved uncannily adept at portraying the mind of a girl, and proves so again in Babylon, with its complex young female narrator Madeleine Fell, bluestocking schoolgirl in an alternative Victorian London. Through Madeleine, he addresses a problem which is generally consigned to the too-hard basket, namely the problem of girlhood: a girl will become a woman, and as such her place in the patriarchal world will be, to a great extent, a place prepared for her by a male imagination. What selfhood and what world would she create, if she could? Does she, in fact, have an imagination of her own, or do her thoughts always, in the end, belong to men? Who is her muse, and is the paradigm of Lover and Beloved altered at all? I found myself asking these questions as I read Babylon.

  Babylon is a dark book. In its chief villain—who embodies two famous villains from real history—readers already familiar with Calder s work might see a malign incarnation of the boy-man hero, with his fantasies of violent action, when he leaves the pages of a comic book and steps into the real world, with his perception of the female as alien turned from a loving fascination to a hating one. He is a study in both the power and the failure of imagination.

  I will leave you to discover the love story in Babylon, and content myself with saying that it is beautiful, valuably unusual and touchingly real. I, for one, am hoping for a sequel.

  K J. Bishop

  Revelation 18:6 Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double

  unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled

  fill to her double.

  Revelation 18:7 How much she hath glorified herself, and lived

  deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her

  heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

  Revelation 18:8 Therefore shall her plagues come in one day,

  death, and mourning,
and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire:

  for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.

  Revelation 18:9 And the kings of the earth, who have committed

  fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and

  lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

  Revelation 18:10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment,

  saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in

  one hour is thy judgment come.

  —The REVELATION of St. John the Divine, The King James Version

  I still don’t really know what made me do it. Whatever people say, I’ve never wanted to die. The pink mist is terrible. And so are the memories, however tinged with wonder and love. But that day I simply had to raise my hand. Die ? No. I wanted to live.

  All that follows is an attempt to understand just how much ...

  PART

  ONE

  Chapter One

  ‘Yes, Madeleine?’

  ‘Please, Madam, I, I, I—’ I sweltered under the collective gaze of my classmates. ‘I’d like to volunteer, too’ I said. I heard a few stifled giggles. ‘If it comes to that, th-that is,’ I continued, unable to rein in my stutter or force the blood out of my cheeks. ‘If—if it’s not too late.’ Oh God, I thought, what am I babbling on about? I lowered my hand, exposed, at last, for what I was, and feeling very, very foolish.

  Miss Nelson, our teacher, smiled. And then her mouth set, paralysed, I think, by the effort of concealing her own embarrassment. An expectant silence followed. But I had nothing more to say. I had made my confession. It was too late to retract, and too early to offer excuses.

  ‘Good. That’s one more, then,’ she said. Her smile had gone, to be replaced by an expression that, though more severe, seemed thankfully natural. Standing up, she looked over my head towards the girls at the back of the class who had likewise volunteered. ‘Scarlett, Cliticia, Faye, Vanity, Narcissa, Séverine, Omphale, Fellatia.’ She counted them off on her fingers. ‘And Madeleine,’ she added, gazing down at me, who sat at a desk abutting her own. ‘Nine of you.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘Fifty years ago, that would have been a poor showing. But in these perilous times the selection committee will be more than pleased.’ She rubbed her hands together, as if striving to warm herself. ‘Now, girls, listen: you must consolidate matters by submitting a formal letter of consent from your mothers.’ She shot me a glance. ‘Or fathers, of course.’ Again, I heard the snorts and little choking fits that indicated desperately suppressed laughter. There was a saying. A saying I’d heard too many times as I’d passed the men gathered outside The Roebuck on my way home from school: Shulamites are good for two things, and the other is the begetting of bastards. ‘Only after consent has been given,’ she continued, ‘will you be eligible for interview. Do you understand? It’s very important. Without that letter, there can be no interview, and thus no chance of entering the novitiate.’

  My own ‘Yes, Madam’ was too loud, too polite, especially against the background noise of perfunctory grunts emanating from the back row. I looked over my shoulder. Ignoring the girls who sat directly behind me, I focused on Cliticia, her chair tipped at forty-five degrees so that her shoulders leant against the classroom wall. She returned my gaze with sulky indifference. Snubbed, I turned around and stared at the desktop, still hot with self-consciousness, but determined not to recant. Lizzie, my best friend, who sat by my side, would, I knew, offer me a shoulder to cry on. But she wasn’t the ally I had hoped for.

  ‘I expect you to get those letters to me first thing tomorrow,’ said Miss Nelson. She continued to wring her hands, like Lady Macbeth fretting over a last, indelible spot of blood. ‘Now, before we finish for the day we shall, of course, recite the Lord's Prayer. But before we do, I think it appropriate that I read a few verses to bid our brave volunteers Godspeed.’

  She opened the Bible that lay on her desk.

  ‘I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Look well upon me, because I am black, because the moon hath looked upon me. Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return that we may look upon thee. Oh Babylon, set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy as cruel as the grave... ’

  Therefore do the virgins love thee, I thought.

  She closed the Bible. ‘Girls, we live in an age of polluted ideals. An age of racial and cultural degeneration. We can only hope that the days of terror will soon be at an end and that Babylon will be restored to her former glory. Now let us pray.’

  We bowed our heads. I didn’t believe in her God—the simpering One, the wet lettuce leaf of Nazareth. I was a whore of Babylon. Or at least, I soon would be. And that meant I believed only in the Goddess. But I knew it was the genius of my adopted home, and race, to trim and dissemble. For thousands of years, we had pretended to be Christians, Muslims, Hindoos, and Buddhists. We had parasitized their rituals, doctrines, and texts. And even now, when no other religion, government, or civilization, really mattered, except that of Babylon the Great and her representatives on Earth, habits still died hard. And so I prayed.

  ‘Class dismissed,’ said Miss Nelson, when we had finished.

  I rose, curtsied, opened the lid of my desk, put away my slate and reader, and then retrieved my canvas reticule. ‘Are you going home the usual way?’ I asked Lizzie. The best thing to do, I decided, was to try and pretend that nothing had happened.

  ‘You’re bonkers,’ she whispered as she collected her own things.

  I shrugged and got up. ‘What if I am?’

  She opened her mouth, but her reply was drowned out by the hubbub of fifty girls scraping chairs and banging desktops.

  ‘Quiet!’ snapped Miss Nelson. She picked up her signal. Its sharp, insistent clicking brought an immediate silence.

  I held my reticule to my chest and walked towards the door, easing my way through the crush of bodies. My bravado did little to conceal my distress.

  ‘Such zeal,’ said a girl to my right. ‘How very commendable.’

  ‘Trollop,’ said another, somewhat more forthrightly.

  ‘Trollop? Naw. Madeleine Fell wants to be a pet.’

  ‘Yeh. Teacher’s pet wants to be another kind of pet. Meow!’

  ‘Shut up, Aimee Porter,’ said Lizzie, who had caught me up. She looped her arm around mine and hurried me into the corridor. ‘You really are bonkers,’ she continued once we were out of earshot. ‘And I reckon you know it too. But it’s nothing on what your Mum and Dad’re gonna be. They’re going to give you a right barrikin.’

  I don’t think I could have replied even if I had wanted to. My cheeks still hadn’t cooled; I felt that I might at any moment burst into tears. But guilt was rapidly giving way to a sense of pure excitement. And it was that excitement, I think, more than anything else, which sealed my lips.

  I didn’t need a shoulder to cry on, and I didn’t need Lizzie. Filled with self-delight I wanted only to hug my reticule and commune with the secret dreams I would no longer have to hide.

  ‘I think I’d like to be alone,’ I said, a goose girl resolved to try her hand at playing the prima donna. Lizzie’s eyes grew big with surprise. Sensing that surprise would at any moment give way to peevishness, I disengaged my arm from hers and walked away, drifting through the open doorway that led into the playground.

  I was a boat that had slipped its moorings. Soon, I would be carried out on a blood-dimmed tide, far out into the world’s voluptuous seas and oceans.

  But escape wasn’t to be so easy.

  ‘So how was school today?’ said Mum.

  ‘All right,’ I said, looking dispiritedly at my dinner. I sometimes entertained this strange fantasy: Mum and Dad weren’t my real Mum and Dad at all. They were foster parents. My real parents were—well, I couldn’t be sure. I wasn’t from this world, I told myself. I was from China, or the Moon.

/>   How was I to find my way home? A little more than an hour after I’d put out to sea I was adrift and in danger of being carried back to shore.

  Is anything the matter?’ said Dad, pricking my thought bubble so viciously that I almost heard it pop.

  I wondered how I should ever explain matters. Dad still had his job at Poplar shipyards. It was a good job, too. He was a foreman. And Mum was teaching at Toynbee Hall. Unlike most people, They didn’t hate, or fear, Shulamites. But the continuing burden of newcomers from Russia and Eastern Europe meant that they were not as free from prejudice as they liked to believe.

  ‘I don’t think I heard you, my girl.’

  ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ I said, my voice breaking. ‘It’s just that—’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ said Mum. ‘She’s in a tizzy about something or other. You know how it is.’

  I continued to stare at my food. Dad fell silent. But a bashful acknowledgement of ‘the curse’ was writ large across his face. And I was tempted to tell the truth, the whole truth right there and then: that I was indeed accursed, but not in the way that he suspected.

  ‘The nights are drawing in,’ said Dad. ‘You make sure you come home as soon as you finish school. Understand?’ He looked at my mother and sighed. ‘The funeral’s Monday week.’

  ‘The funeral?’ said Mum.

  Dad’s eyes became darkly meaningful.