The Paper Eater

by Liz Jensen

  Rigged to the far end of the longest jetty there’s a massive screen, showing flickering scenes from the crowd. My heart’s jumping about this way and that, a rogue organ come loose inside my chest. I can’t think straight. I can’t see straight, either, because when the screen suddenly fills with something moonlike and grey, with blobby craters and weird protuberances, I don’t get what it is. The jeering gets louder, angrier. Then something twists inside me and I realise. The grey thing is a human face. Mine.

  – Smile, Handsome, says Fishook. You’re on TV.

  In her tilting apartment, the Vanillo bottle by her side, Tilda Park sits rapt as Craig Devon continues his hushed live commentary: This is Harvey Kidd’s daughter Tiffany …

  Tilda watches the big girl. She’s the shape of a lumbering caravan. She steps forward and offers her father a fumbling embrace.

  It’s a poignant moment for her, of course. She’s one of many people who’ve had to take the difficult but brave decision to Hotline their own parents …

  Tilda sips her Vanillo. Stares, trembling, as the camera zooms in on Tiffany Kidd who looks miserable and scared. She’s shaking, and there’s a pretzel stuck to her collar like a brooch. Her eyes are red from crying. Poor girl, thinks Tilda. It can’t have been easy.

  – Tiffany, mumbles Harvey Kidd. He’s trying to smile, you can tell. But it isn’t working; his grey moon-face twitches and his eyes skid about not settling on anything.

  And this is his ex-wife, Gwynneth Kidd …

  The smaller of the two women takes Kidd’s hand. You can’t see her face because it’s covered by a veil. I’d do the same in her shoes, thinks Tilda. How else could you cope with the shame?

  – Gwynneth, says Kidd. The name reverberates around the dock. – It was … kind of you to come. His voice wobbles.

  – A pleasure, she musters. Her voice is wobbling too. It’s a ghastly moment – almost too intimate for television, really, if such a thing’s possible. Tilda gulps.

  – Well, er. Goodbye, Gwynneth, says Kidd. His grey face is turning a shade paler and he’s sweating. – All the best.

  Then Gwynneth backs off, to be consoled by her new blond husband. You can’t see his face very well behind the dark glasses, but he looks quite a catch. Familiar, somehow, too, thinks Tilda – but she can’t place him, and now the shot has changed back to Captain Fishook who is ushering the condemned traitor towards the raised platform by the prow. It’s a small space, the size of a boxing ring. The chair in the middle. When they reach the fenced entrance, Fishook takes Kidd’s arm, like the father leading the bride.

  Quaking with a terrible anticipation, Tilda pours another Vanillo and takes a deep swig.

  A hush descends, flattening itself like a thundercloud on a prairie as Harvey Kidd sleepwalks his way to the electric chair and sits. On the dockside, the crowd jostles to look at the giant screen which shows his face, blank with shock and fright. A fat woman has brought her own step-ladder and she’s bustling to erect it. Others have binoculars, and are trying to focus on the deck itself.

  There’s no padding, of course, murmurs Craig Devon in the hushed whisper reserved for snooker commentary. We see here the functional arm-rests with clasps, and the straps there with leads emerging. Note too, the microphones at head height … Ah, as you see, Kidd is now reaching for his blindfold, hand-crafted, apparently, by his cabin-companion … now here comes the ship’s doctor, Manolis Pappadakis, originally from Greece …

  Dr Pappas’ gentle voice seems to come from far away, but he’s right next to me.

  – Now please, Voyager, we will roll up your sleeves and I can apply the jelly, he whispers. For conductivity.

  I can see from the red puffiness of his eyes that he’s been crying. The jelly’s a horrible gloop. Slowly, taking care, he straps my wrists to the arms of the chair.

  – And now the ankles, we do the same.

  I’m trembling all over as he annoints them, and locks the metal clasps. I’m freezing and I feel sick.

  Now, ladies, gentlemen and children, says Craig Devon. His voice reverberates around me. I must ask you for complete silence, please, until after the Final Adjustment. Will Dr Pappadakis please now blindfold the voyager.

  There’s a show-biz drum-roll, and Dr Pappa reaches for John’s sequinned oeuvre. It glints in the sun.

  – I do not want this job, murmurs the doctor. Do not blame me, Voyager.

  I nod, and he slides the blindfold over my eyes.

  Darkness.

  We will now begin the countdown, says the meaty voice of Craig.

  That’s when the panic kicks in. I’m shaking, shaking – the fear flops across me in shuddering freezing waves. What if – what if they don’t – I don’t want to die. I’m not ready, and I’ll never be ready. I’m human.

  – Ten, nine, eight –

  Oh God! It’s so slow! So slow! Please hurry up!

  – Seven, six, five –

  And now it’s too fast! It’s happening too fast! Everything rushing in on me, screaming at me, my mind a blur, a tidal wave of noise. I can picture Fishook’s finger poised above the console. His head leaning down.

  – Four – I squeeze my eyes shut.

  – Three – I groan.

  – Two – I tighten up my arse.

  – One –

  – STOP!

  A woman’s voice. Small and firm as a bullet.

  The crowd goes ape. After a split second of shocked silence, they’re yelling and screaming, tugging this way and that in a drunken Mexican wave. They came to see a man finally adjust! What’s going on?

  What’s going on is this: Kidd’s ex-wife has whipped off her black veil and snatched the Captain’s hand away from the button. The blond man has grabbed him from behind and handcuffed him, fast as a magician’s trick. A sudden whirl of movement, and the woman’s drawn a gun from her handbag and she’s pointing it right at Fishook’s head! Another flurry and the Greek doctor has ripped Kidd’s blindfold off, and he’s swaying numbly in the light.

  – Am I still alive? I mumble. The air seems to whirr around me. It’s the crowd, screaming.

  – Yes, says a woman’s voice. And so am I.

  It can’t be. I look up, and nearly faint. It is.

  – Hannah! Alive. Dizzy, I close my eyes again. Then open them. She’s still there. Smiling at me like in a thousand dreams. The joy of it floods me in a rush, like I’m suddenly drunk, or drugged, or both, and I feel my smile stretch and stretch until my face aches with it. A thousand dreams.

  Just kill me now.

  Wesley Pike doesn’t recognise Benedict at first. Focusing, dazzled, he thinks simply, he looks familiar, he looks –

  Then the feverishness kicks in again. Benedict. Pike groans, reaches for a chair, and sinks into it. The puzzle hasn’t fitted into place yet. Next to him, the Liberty Machine’s cool body hums. He shifts his glance back to the screen, still not taking it in.

  Can that actually be Hannah Park, handing the gun to Dr Pappadakis – he seems to have offered to take over – and unstrapping Harvey Kidd, and – embracing him?

  Pike licks dry lips. Tries to breathe steadily and evenly. Can’t.

  Benedict is looking straight at him, or so it seems. He must know exactly where the cameras are. His face is like a coin flashing in the light. Pike recoils from the terrible, treacherous intimacy of his glance.

  Fuck you, it says. I’m Benedict, and I know best.

  Pike feels his own face go white. Hadn’t he known this about Benedict, right from the start? Hadn’t he said as much, in the People Laboratory? Made the boy blush?

  The crowd is losing control, rage and frustration sweeping through it like a crackling bushfire.

  – Wait! says a voice that reverberates across the harbour.

  With the sudden swiftness of a snake spitting venom, the blond man has puckered his lips, shot a bright ball of green chewing gum from his mouth, taken the microphone, and put a hand in the air for silence.

  – You came to se
e a Final Adjustment, he says. The crowd stops. Hushes. – So here’s an offer.

  The amplifier picks up his voice, and scatters it. They’re listening now. The hush thickens and fills.

  – Give us a few minutes of your time. If you’re not convinced by what we say, the Final Adjustment will go ahead. But if you are – Harvey Kidd will go free.

  A murmur washes across the crush of people as he gestures the prisoner forward.

  – Mr Kidd, he says to the grey-faced figure, who is grinning like a maniac. You have one minute in which to tell the customers of Atlantica the truth about the Hoggs.

  The Final Adjustment will go ahead … My heart spasms and tumbles.

  I should be prepared for this, but my instructions in the rhino shit were brief and anonymous and it was all a bit last-minute and – well … The truth about the Hoggs is suddenly feeling like a pretty tall order.

  The big scary emptiness down below jolts me back. They’re waiting.

  I clear my throat, an ugly barking noise that vibrates around me.

  – The fact is, I stammer, the Hoggs aren’t what you think.

  But it’s a bad start.

  The microphone throws my voice into the air and echoes back, sounding fake and wheedling, as though I’m begging for my life. Which I suppose I am. The ugly yells are starting again. The customer doesn’t like it. He wants something more, or something else, you can hear it from the way his voice foams and froths upwards, curdling in the zinging wind. He came to see a man die. He wants his money back. I’m just a bloke, I think. How’m I supposed to – Five million pairs of eyes on me. Five million pairs of ears waiting.

  – I always wanted a family, I babble. I didn’t have one, I was an orphan.

  I’m shaking now.

  – And so –

  I shut my eyes.

  I can’t do it. The Hoggs are still my family. If I tell the truth about how they came to me, I’ll lose them again, and for ever. And then what will I do? And who will I be?

  I’m lost! Just kill me now!

  When I open my eyes, there’s Hannah. She’s guessed my thoughts, because there’s a pleading fierceness on her face, and in that split second I know I have to do it for her, for me, for the customer, for all of us. From nowhere, the energy’s exploding inside me like a potent capsule, and I’m speaking in a new strong voice I barely know.

  – I made them up.

  From down on the dock side the crowd’s foaming voice deepens with a raucous menace, but there’s no stopping me now.

  – They don’t exist! They’re inventions! I generated them on a computer, and that’s all they are. They’re not real, they’re not real, they’re NOT REAL!

  I’m smiling. Smiling because it’s out, escaping like gas from a balloon whooshing high and invisibly majestic into the bright air. Something lifts within me: a huge weight’s gone; a heaviness that I didn’t know I carried. As my words float out across the harbour, I can almost see Mum and Dad, Uncle Sid and Cameron and Lola flying with them, in V formation, like a flock of birds migrating to a warmer place, carried on the peppermint breeze, up and away, joining the dancing molecules, leaving me behind. It gives me the strength to say it louder. In fact I’m shouting now, swept by a tingling, unfathomable euphoria. The blond man’s nodding at me eagerly. I see the relief break on Hannah’s face and she smiles the most dazzling and beautiful smile I’ve ever seen, and so I yell it again and again and again, I yell out the whole story, the whole nub of it, because I’ve found my true voice now, the voice that comes from deep inside me, from where my inner self hides.

  – The Hogg family were just my FANTASY! They don’t EXIST! They NEVER DID! They were people I invented! They were a bit of me that got out of hand! I was LONELY, that’s all!

  Out. Gone. I shut my eyes and feel something die and be born at once.

  It’s then I know that I am free.

  * * *

  On the dockside a small dark figure, thickset as a keg of explosives, makes its way through the massed throng, looking for a vantage point from which to watch events on the giant screen. When he finds a small space near a couple busily unfolding a step-ladder, Dr Crabbe stops and strains his neck to watch. His eyes are on Hannah Park.

  It was a year ago that she arrived on his doorstep in Groke. She needed to hide. The island was in danger. She’d be taking over his surgery, she told him. He could help her, or he could get busted. An easy choice.

  The fat woman has carefully climbed her step-ladder and now stands at its top like a bulky statue, a frankfurter in each hand. Her mouth hangs open. Below, her husband holds the ladder steady. Their eyes are fixed on the giant screen.

  Benedict Sommers has taken the microphone again.

  – You have heard the truth, he says slowly. Now would you like the Final Adjustment to go ahead – or would you like to hear more?

  There’s a short silence.

  – More, blurts the woman with the frankfurters. The mustard is dripping down in ochre gloops.

  – More! cries Dr Crabbe.

  – More! call the customers, one by one, until their voices are melded into a single shout. More, more, more!

  When Hannah Park steps forward, the cries die down again. They are ready to listen.

  – I worked for Libertycare as a psychologist, says Hannah Park. The Corporation took all five Hoggs and re-modelled them as scapegoats. I know this because I was involved. The idea was for the family to take the blame for the ecological crisis on Atlantica.

  – Ecological crisis? breathes the fat woman. What ecological crisis?

  She drops her frankfurter; it rolls over Dr Crabbe’s foot and down the sloping tarmac and then stops, blocked by the wheel of a little boy’s tricycle.

  – What’s a scapegoat? asks the boy.

  – Shhhh! snaps his mother, her candy-floss poised like a pink cloud. She squints at the screen.

  – The leaks at the purification zones aren’t due to sabotage, Hannah Park is saying. They’re due to a failure of the system. Libertycare has known for years that the cleansing programme was breaking up the island’s crust. All the surveys showed it. But instead of calling a halt to the whole thing – she pauses. A rush of voices ripples its way out across the harbour. – They adjusted the geologists and carried on. The murmur swells. – The Corporation knew that if you were aware of the crisis, you wouldn’t vote for them again. After the Festival of Choice, the system went into damage-limitation mode. The Hoggs were launched to deflect everyone’s attention from the real problem, while the United States voted.

  Now, the crowd is shifting and stirring like a great cloud-mass. They’re all straining to watch, some of them jumping to get a better view.

  – But the problem’s still here, says Hannah Park.

  Benedict Sommers waves a brown envelope at the cameras.

  – If you want proof, we have it. The document in here was generated by the Liberty Machine itself.

  The fat woman, trembling, reverses her way down the step-ladder as he reads from it aloud in a firm voice:

  Libertycare’s global strategy calls for balance. And in some cases, for rationalisation to ensure that balance. Atlantica has served its purpose well. But in order to welcome new projects, it is necessary to – he pauses – bid others farewell.

  The silence that follows is total.

  If betrayal has a smell, that smell is wafting across the harbour now. As the customers begin to sense it, they feel suddenly, lurchingly sick. The eerie silence stretches as the truth sinks in.

  – Well then, says the woman with the frankfurters.

  – Better pack up, says her husband.

  They become oddly practical. They fold their step-ladder. They check their belongings. Next to Dr Crabbe, a man’s voice says – Fuck! I don’t believe it! and an elderly woman faints, crumpling to the ground like a discarded piece of clothing. Behind him, a woman starts up a high, shrill moan. An obese family of five starts to nudge its way towards the ship. – Come on, urges th
e father. Let’s get the hell out!

  The crowd is stirring in all directions, as though caught in a whirring food-mixer. They’re screaming and yelling now. It’s starting to sink in that it’s the beginning of the end.

  Captain Fishook clears his throat, and murmurs something to Hannah. She hesitates, then signals at Dr Pappadakis to lower the gun.

  – This is a Class One emergency, says Fishook. Over which I have the honour of presiding at this time. In accordance with nautical protocol, I am issuing an SOS. Calling all ships in the Atlantic Ocean. Please tune to channel 16. Calling all air bases …

  As Captain Fishook speaks, a sudden sense of being part of history overwhelms him. He can see how this scene might become the stuff of legend. His voice deepens and swells with gravitas.

  – Mass evacuation required, repeat, mass evacuation required …

  In St Placid, Tilda watches. She knows it’s too late. Her eyes are round with shock. She lets the tears trickle. She doesn’t care.

  Hannah! Hannah, alive! Hannah, looking at that man, that grey-faced Hogg criminal, her face wide open with love!

  And Benedict! Benedict, who told her she was dead! He’s there too!

  Tilda clasps her pill-box to her stomach. Her body shakes with a terrible, painful, uncontrollable joy. The pills rattle.

  From everywhere and nowhere grows a great rumbling voice of anger, a voice that swells and heaves, filling the harbour and the sky above with the terrible heart-rending sound of human dismay. Picking up the faint strains of it, Wesley Pike exhales slowly. Now that the United States has voted for the system, this surely is the moment the Boss has been waiting for. It was she, after all, who dictated the schedule for the day. It was she who launched them all on this wild trajectory.

  As if on cue, the Boss’s purr begins to alter subtly to a vibrant hum, and then a slow, deep whirring. Wesley Pike smiles, his heart soars. At last! As he waits impatiently for a sign from the strategy screens, he is only dimly aware of the faint clamour going on outside, the screams and shouts of panic, the urgent calls, the running footsteps.