The Inflatable Volunteer

by Steve Aylett

  ‘In a dungeon enquiring whether they really suppose he’s guilty.’

  ‘White with mishap.’

  ‘What do you think.’

  ‘What’s the charge?’

  ‘Walking on the ceilings of their gravity.’

  ‘What exactly did he do?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  What I told Ruby Thunderhead

  Moscow I suppose was where it really began. Veal was the most important thing in that town. Basements were full of it—those that weren’t full of my nose-steam and the entrails of bears I’d brought there under false pretences and dispatched with a jerryhammer—arthur and peter and the gas meter smiled at my entry, dragging these spoils and others which are still too recent to mention without risk of arrest. Place me where you will in the canon but don’t fire till I’m done.

  Three times I provided veal for the community, and each time I had no memory of the event. Bakers and lechers winked and made remarks—but it was only later, when I left and received letters from a sweetheart with photographs and accusations, that I knew or believed that I had killed anything more substantial than a few tiresome waiters. Veal, it seemed, was a delicacy, and I’d bring it into the tavern on the corner, my coat exploding with crusted snow as I hauled the carcass on to the bar. ‘There’s your demon,’ I said, ‘and the antlers are the so-called horns. So don’t let me hear your superstitious nonsense till you see a real one.’

  Serve me right, of course, they did see a real one—the very next day. Bellowing and ramming children in the nursery. Teachers in tears and folk in the police station with rakes and rifles and a tracking dog for shouting through the woods and hunting the terror down. The only thing I knew about demons was what I’d read, and I was filled with a fear that gripped me, lifted me into a car, and drove me two thousand miles in the opposite direction to a stranger’s house, where I related the hunt in perfect detail. I’ve always been marginal, me.

  Oilskin-clad artists walked down the three short steps to my next local and broke wind at each step, so that everyone began punching them and reciting the rules. They said it was victimisation and everyone told them it was like hell. It was exactly. Grand old masters burned their own works and scratched their beards with both hands until the blood flowed. Ghosts pretended to be window glass and eavesdropped on our every conversation. The wise bailed out, cursing those they left behind. It usually ended with something like ‘and I hate you all’. There were times when I believed this was the only way to address a member of the artistic community. Later I sold a spicy doughball in the street for eighty quid because the fool thought I was someone else. There was my first lesson in how to progress in this world.

  And when entering a new neighbourhood I was careful to take with me my face and, hung behind it, my opinions. These concerned an apple-size brain lost in paradise, nerve surveillance, comic united money, morality guarantees, applause outworn, herbicides stroking the garden, blood-covered definitions, mechanical whirring fossils, batwing prams, poverty, drear shade, crow blossom and infant chains. Catch elves and weep—woe to worms in disguise.

  Nobody was coerced into frightening me regularly as I tried to settle in—people seemed to do it of their own volition, testifying in detail as to their very specific reasons. I hate you because…and the rest would be so personal and idiosyncratic I would weep at the diversity of mankind. Hate, I told them, is a poor fruit for such a rich branch.

  These taunts were worth all the fun I’d had in the past—these jabs of knives the spice I’d brazened my life for seeking.

  As a token of my esteem I gave a stare of malicious intent to everyone in the town.

  Eking out a living from beetroot and eyeshadow in the darkest alleys I could find, I told people I was a leper and that was good enough for them. I heard every variety of shriek in the first year, every kind of laughter in the second. Scorn and abasement go hand in hand when a nation comes to rest in its own guilt. Gnashing at the bit they were, to run off and tell no one. Nick their evasions and in five minutes they’re barking like dogs and secreting gob-foam to beat the band.

  Little did I know Bob was a few miles under the sink, a castaway with a squirming beard. That was the manner of his home back then. Dangles of nerves betrayed the subway roofs to a sensitivity no one suspected. An entire ganglion system tangled the roots and shrieked with pain amid the screaming trainbrakes. There’s the true living city for you. Trickles whisper in abattoir drains and all’s well with the world.

  Score and number were loosed in a spray of phlegm as Bob counted his arrests. ‘A thousand reasons more and conspiracies are no longer necessary,’ he said the first time I met him, and he viewed the galore of allegations with pride. Sat there relating a plan to starve the destroyer by lack of targets. ‘Notice the ears on either side of that apple? Now tell me the world’s not collapsing.’

  ‘So how’d you come to be here brother?’

  ‘Educated in a cave by the white daughter of cannibalism, bled and saved by a doubting priesthood, I ran like buggery as soon as I saw an opening—flood and firestorm couldn’t stop me as I undertook that journey—went to Eddie’s crypt. There were rows of heads and concealed traps along the quiet aisle. Under no circumstances was I going to ask his help, just hide there till the storm had blown over—or Eddie caught me and I had to punch out to show what a mistake I’d made. Some roaring sound at the back of the chamber but I ignored it. What a fool I was. That day was the last me and my priest would spend apart.’

  ‘Didn’t mix then?’

  ‘My brain and teeth struggled to fit, caked with textbooks. Deafening blast as I said hello. Shocks ran up my arm as I tried to salute. We are bones in disguise.’

  ‘Tell me about this Eddie fella.’

  ‘Bastard. Wore gym shorts to a funeral. Berated him later and he said “Yes I wore shorts—that’s why I understood the jeering.” Useful bloody lot he is as a pallbearer or whatever he calls himself.’

  ‘Is that how he sees himself then?’

  ‘As a bastard? Certainly. And nobody has done it better. With a blank face he froze everyone by leaving the fridge open and wielding a fan—speculation was no longer needed in determining the depth of his evil.’

  ‘Well now, what shall we do with you?’

  ‘Stab me if you can enjoy it—but not if it feels like a duty. Stab me vertically if I’m lying down and horizontally if I’m running.’

  And so I was introduced to one and all. Fred was a simple man but a complex woman. ‘I take it you’re armed?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You heard. And are going to tell me no. Your kind make me sick.’

  And he walked away with one fist out in front of him like a Dalek. There’s a strange one, I thought.

  ‘And here’s Eddie—he’d be using his halo for a cock ring if he was broad enough.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you Eddie,’ I said. There was a piece of brain coral on the table. ‘What’s this when it’s at home?’

  ‘A mandate to destroy.’

  ‘Well…then.’

  And within weeks we were best of friends.

  ‘By your ocean-floor standards we’re all of us heroes Eddie. From baptism font to wrist-bloodied basin eh? If I were you I’d be climbing my own face for worry.’

  ‘Now explain that statement.’

  ‘Your fate Eddie. Jostled in a plain van and all sharps confiscated. Look at him lads. Eddie was unmoored from coherence in his early years—weren’t you Eddie?’

  ‘You bastard I’ll kill you.’

  ‘Dent my stovepipe neck will you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have me digesting my teeth.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll need more help than you’ll get.’

  And he flung himself at me with all the wit he could muster. At the time I couldn’t have told you what he wanted to achieve, but with the wisdom of years I see he was trying to do me harm. It was in his yelling bloody murder an
d punching the front of my face. There was even gore—a sure sign something’s amiss. His reflection in the pub mirrors moved at exactly the same rate he did. That’s the clincher for me, in looking back on it. He was an angry man, and more than that I could say if I knew it.

  Bob had a habit of articulating what was on everyone’s minds. He knew I hated clowns and gave me a rifle. There was no doubt as to his meaning. He was always doing that sort of thing. Then when he met old Minotaur at the Shop o’ Fury he returned with the tale—something about a demon. ‘And seaweed made of elastic,’ he snorted.

  ‘My nerves wouldn’t stand it,’ said Fred.

  ‘Your nerves?’ Bob shouted. ‘You weren’t there, tomb addict. The bumps of my spine scraping in its jaws…’ he remembered, shuddering.

  ‘My nerves wouldn’t stand it,’ said Fred.

  ‘Have you been listening to me?’ bellowed Bob, grabbing Fred’s ear and making another loud noise which contained no words. This was done for the purpose of making Fred jump or react, though he appeared to be falling asleep like the bastard he was. ‘Need these bones and you’re defeated.’

  ‘Hello,’ sneered Fred, ‘he’s off again.’

  ‘I mean it. You’ll pay for your nonchalance—when randomness lashes your dream.’

  ‘Oh it’ll lash my dream will it—just like that. Scenic disaster and just deserts-a-go-go. As you look on unsurprised.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘With one nose facing west and the other dripping like a main.’

  Bob stayed stock still, a riot of responses clashing behind his stony face.

  ‘So why don’t the limp silhouettes of entering phonies trip and fall if there’s a god and justice?’

  ‘You ask too many questions comrade.’

  ‘Yes Fred,’ I said, ‘why d’you rush in without thinking?’

  ‘I’m being timed.’

  Good answer, I thought, despite myself.

  At the gallery Eddie catalogued his experiences. Failure, ice cracking, violence, a colourless tomorrow. A fresh outpouring of tears greeted the recollection.

  ‘It permeated your nasal passages I suppose,’ I said, not really listening. ‘Listen, are these paintings really necessary? Maybe a monocle would make the monkey look more graceful.’ A massive migration of ideas occurred from my gob to Eddie’s brain, where they instantly died.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said.

  Argument. Shouting. Punched him and he rolled up with bulging, ghoulish eyes. True colours.

  I still couldn’t understand the scam. Look at the picture over there of a gilly fiend—who’d pay for that? Walked up to get a closer look at the thing without realising I was approaching the reflection of the painting in a huge mirror—by the time I was stood an inch from the fiend I’d passed through the mirror and blown the whole thing.

  Well you’ve guessed the rest—alternate reality, the fiend was real, the devil himself, cellars of wrenched hungmen, glass hands of steam and thought, a havoc angel tending his creep in a scabby cavern. The devil was no more than a tense, contentious lattice, at the front of which, like a bride fronting a wedding train, was a monster like a fish on its haunches, picking martyrdom thorns out of his teeth. ‘Your hopes?’ he asked.

  ‘Groundless.’

  ‘So far so good then, after a fashion. But which fashion, I wonder. Creeping despair?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see. Mooning toward the end of a life which is, in all senses, a waste of time.’

  ‘Nail on the head, sunshine.’

  ‘And loving it I suppose.’

  ‘Of course. I’m not one to gash my wrist in an ice cave and carve my features in the frozen garnet. You know better than that I hope.’

  ‘Learn what you know and forget what I told you,’ said the demon, ‘polarities are for the birds. But one is left to wonder how long you’ve been this way.’

  ‘Long enough,’ I said, ‘to know its value.’

  But the answer was, of course, from the very beginning. I was pushed into the world wrinkled as a walnut—couldn’t they see I wasn’t prepared? Sputed into the dirt of this century. Monosodium glutamate and cynical laughter. And there didn’t seem to be any doubt I’d be dead again later, bones picked sky white. Doomed as a jubilee hog. A bonemaker.

  Couldn’t believe what I was expected to do. Breathe constantly. Talk to those who addressed me, merely because they addressed me. This was life? What could I do with these legs and this face except kick and curse those I encountered?

  The devil heard the thought and his eyes rolled up like punters at a carnival. ‘Really —“I didn’t ask to be born.” A new skull’s routine argument.’

  ‘You’ll believe me when I’m finished—and more.’

  ‘Much more?’

  ‘Well it’ll have to be won’t it?’

  ‘Tell it then—and make it charming.’

  ‘Charming? Oh well then—here’s how it all began.’

  What I told the devil

  Red memories thick with ambulances. My father. Through his beard came a century’s worth of wisdom and not one coherent word. But he conveyed by some means that a man should stand still and take everything he was dealt. I hit him so hard he forgot his own name and the nature of our relationship, at which I found myself penniless and stark in a town they don’t even talk about on maps. Salty streets, cobbled faces, ladles in the drains, beaks in the gutter, chefs with whips and the pig-ignorant peering down chimneys. I told them they were on the wrong track, they sneered and pelted me with tar and thatch, fat and kelp, lard and marge, absolution and pity, and a kind of religious feeling of cleansing and purification I hadn’t felt since I was an infant. Sacks of stale charm were left in doorways and everyone knew what it meant for those inside—brats gathered it up before the postman could shoot a single round, delivering the bales to old women in the keelhaul quarter, who would eat it slowly, chomping and never getting any bigger. This sort of blear enterprise was considered the spice in that conurbation.

  Flammables were treated the same way, except that dough was placed in the eyesockets of those who left them and later retrieved and fired in an oven, at which everyone would gather to warm themselves. The flammables themselves went into the river with all the other trash.

  My first lesson in the matter of death was when a man below my window in Felt Street shouted out and I ran to look—there he was strangling a hen, and as I looked closely I saw that it was only because the hen bore the man’s facial features. I shouted out—‘So what if it’s identical?’ and he was so surprised that he ran—but took the hen with him.

  I realise now, years later, that the hen was in fact a mere extension of the man’s body, and the man, knowing for the first time the full horror of this, was wrestling against all likelihood to rid himself of the protuberance.

  But back then I reacted like the callow youth I was. There was no order to my thought or face as I entered the barracks and mounted a guard dog, exciting the troops and provoking bets and insult. I heard one man add the term ‘Holy Man’ to the front of my name—or thought I did. Which was the last thing I needed in m’darkness, I can tell you.

  Sometimes in those early days there was a fair full of sleepwalking clowns and beard-eating men and fiery women flirting with the dogs and punching the workers. One of the clowns stole a horse and had to be shot twice before he’d slow down.

  And there was a giant which the children set alight. When the giant burnt it left a helterskelter skeleton with fleshrind and eyes here and there—and it was surprising how soon everyone lost interest. Flames were the rage round there as I’ve said and once that was done I think everyone wanted to drink or kill. Flirting with danger, they called it.

  Slippery dogs left the scene with the guilt we human beings were no longer able to feel.

  In the square, caged monks yelled at the top of their voices till they were sure they were alone, then fell to gambling. Someone had to do something practical round here. But I wouldn’t ke
ep away. It was from these monks that I learnt about my earliest ancestor, Gibby. Axing the tabulations of a medieval scientist was the one thing he was remembered for—that and his attempts to charm the birds out of the trees with a bow and arrow. ‘I’ll make them respect me if the lord allows,’ he said loud enough for the mayor to shout an opinion which contradicted the trend of these actions. My ancestor was so proud he hid his face against the taut string of the bow, letting fly an arrow at the mayor’s good heart. Everything—and I mean everything—fell to pieces for his family in the dark days which followed. Bargains were struck in the dank hallways outside Gibby’s cell until he was informed he’d be strung on a branch and made to stay there.

  ‘The tree hasn’t been sprouted that could hold me,’ he laughed, breathing heavily through his mouth, and died the next day trying to kick the spectators from a lofty height.

  Killings were not uncommon in that age—rather more common than today in fact. Proven crimes were less frequent because aliens tended to fry the meat and dispose of it through their gill arches. Digging for bones would create nothing but great heaps of earth and red-faced, angry diggers with spades and near-broken spirits. Nothing worse than a man who’s dug all day and found his own reflection in a shallow pond.

  So anyway having got the information from the monks I was about to leave but one of ’em grabbed me arm, thrusting his boiled face through the bars. ‘Sin and elements, abyss weather, serpents of human blood, drugs of the great master, timed generation, the burden of chickens, in the morning everything a cop hates wakes and takes the crowd, not a crime was committed to calm the frenzy of the imagination. Not until you, that is. And how did you do it? Eluded a barrage of facts, propagated tourists, ballooned the map, moved the horizon like a chain-link fence, your head tight as the inside of a baseball, neighbourhood eaten alive. And those who understood not, they said: stone the advantage, demand nothing, appear simple, explore defeat and roar public compliments. Vanity is leafless neath its own garden, background stars fastened like flystuds. But we know the truth eh boy? Have frogs home and flick jello snot at your mother. Wound general grant hard in the front, just for starters. Your spine needn’t be compromised—soon you’ll belong in permanent collision. Promise me boy, you’ll leave this place with a better plan than you joined it.’