Jason thought — So it is not your notes! Then — So it may be true about the little bottle?
The Professor said ‘There are also my notes.’
Jason took off his jacket. He leaned forwards to touch the cables, which were greasy.
He thought — Should I take the rest of my clothes off, like a cross-channel swimmer?
The Professor said ‘And I’ll buy you a new pair of trousers.’
Putting a hand on to the cables, Jason thought — It is true that symbols exist in the outside world: there are forces like angels with flaming swords above rooftops —
Then the Professor said ‘In order to get money, you have to say you’re enquiring into the nature of disease.’
Jason thought — Did he really say that? Then — You mean this is what he really is or is not doing?
The Professor said ‘Turn left. Go along the corridor —’
Holding on to the cables, Jason leaned out over the drop.
He thought — You mean, annihilation might in fact be about to be loosed on the world?
Then — Only a few feet to the bottom.
He stretched out a foot over the chasm.
— Oh where is that backdrop! those wings —
— That old man in the sky — A middle-aged man who can rise again and take his bow at the end of the third act —
— That bird for which they stay alive —?
He kicked off with his other foot; launched himself down the lift-shaft.
8
Eleanor entered a long low room lined with bookcases in which were gathered men mostly middle-aged, some dressed in outdoor clothes and some in overcoats over what looked like pyjamas and some in dressing-gowns. They seemed knobbly and slightly out of shape, like rejects of seed potatoes. They were peering out of windows; as if in a hall of comic mirrors. A few turned to look at Eleanor as she came in: then turned away, as if she might be normal. The talk and the excitement blew in gusts: there were cries and exclamations. Eleanor thought — Is it this fire, which is in the jungle, that is drawing human beings up out of the sea? There was a police officer holding his hat which was like his head underneath his arm. there was what seemed to be a dwarf propped up in gum boots.
Eleanor went to the window and looked out. There was her own head, then a lawn, then a chandelier behind her: then the fire above rooftops.
She thought — This comedy — we call it comedy — is the bustle of things coming up through the earth: the opening and shutting of mouths like penises: if it stopped, we would die.
Beyond the window — in her head — containing the chandelier, the fire, the lawn — she thought — I will sit in the dust and with my finger will draw patterns of this strange tribe.
There were these substances or planes, depending upon what degree of accuracy or activity you required: the framework of the building; the men talking in the room behind; the figures moving on the lawn carrying boxes. She wondered — What will they choose to rescue from the fire? not what will survive: that will work for itself. These members of the tribe — in the common-room behind her or in the burning night — from these would be rescued — who? — she began to laugh — she had just seemed to pick up, with her smile in the window, an old man with a bald head and a body like a genie in the room behind her; and deposit him, closer to the fire, at her elbow —
He was saying — with his long bald head, his neck, his mouth opening and shutting like a penis —
She thought she might explain — I am slightly drunk: I have not been eating toadstools.
She tried to take a handkerchief from her skirt to put to her face to hide her laughter. She found she had got hold of — underwear, nightdress, holy shroud. She thought she might explain — I am not laughing at you: it is myself: why should I not move, sometimes, like a genie in and out of a bottle?
Or — I have sat so long at nights in countries where the only company is myself —
A pillar of smoke had risen above the rooftops.
She thought — The column, drawn by six white horses, rose to a height of several thousand feet —
The people in the room behind — the fellows and guests of her college — were talking, excitedly, about the fire beyond the lawn: as if it were about food; their mouths opening and shutting; the food being this excitement which gave them placement; identity —
The man like a genie was talking to her.
She could say —
— We’ve introduced a strain into a culture —
He was talking past her, as if through the window, into the night. She could not hear what he was saying.
— To test whether or not in laboratory conditions —
— You do it yourself it hurts you —
— You do it to yourself it kills them —
She thought — Supposing all the sound were shut off on a stage?
When she had been in her room in college earlier that evening and had switched on Anderson’s film which he had set up, she had sat in the dark and watched the images flickering against the wall and there had been sirens and bells outside and she had thought — But if there is a connecting principle — beyond placement, beyond identity — It would be something with which our instruments, which are to do with placement, could not deal —
Anderson had said — Words themselves are the enemy?
In the room behind her, the policeman who seemed to have his head tucked under his arm was standing directly underneath a chandelier. The chandelier had a sharp glass point hanging down.
She thought — If I concentrate, can I make that chandelier fall on to the space that would have been his head so that his whole contraption will light up and play a tune like a juke box?
Her husband Max, the Professor, had said — One of these days there may be the escape of some substance into the atmosphere —
She had said — Or the escape of some substance from the atmosphere into oneself —
He had said — That’s witty.
On the lawn outside there was a body being carried past on a stretcher. The stretcher seemed to be a furled banner. Some boys and girls were following it, as if in mourning.
She had said to Max — What exactly are the experiments that you are doing?
He had said — Do you want me to use the jargon? or to say nothing about it instead.
She had thought — All words are a protection then?
In the room in the quiet night, with the pillars of the university coming down like those of the Philistines, she thought — But if there is some message — like lightning; like music; like the result of football pools in Andromeda — we could put ourselves in the way of it — that huge head — the glass in front of me containing the fire, the room behind, my own features —
The chandelier that had been hanging so pointedly above the policeman’s neck had not fallen: she thought — This is a sign: perhaps I should go out.
She found she had moved away from the window towards the door. The man who was like a genie was watching her. She thought — If he comes after me I will pounce, turn him inside out, him and his bottle, like an octopus.
She was out in the night.
She seemed to remember — Derivative strains from components of human intestinal flora —
Then she thought — I will make my mind a blank: throw seeds up into the air to see which way the wind is blowing.
She had wanted to ask — If they got out, they could destroy — who? — some, or everyone — ?
Or — There is no creation without destruction.
She thought — But can you think this, let alone say it!
Then — I am tired. I have not eaten much today. When I was in West Africa, in Borneo —
— Things happened just outside the limits of consciousness. People dressed up and came in from the jungle: they pretended; and it became real. There were figures that waved above rooftops like Petrouchka. You held on, and watched, till they went away.
There were bits of broken glass on the pavem
ent.
She thought — I will follow it; like arrows; like bits and pieces of DNA —
— There is no such thing as human cancer virus: there is only the failure of mechanisms which prevent it —
She was moving towards a bridge. The current in the river seemed to be moving sluggishly both ways.
— Something like a map —
— In the mind —
— A needle turning.
There was a woman on the bridge. She was carrying a baby. Eleanor put a hand to her head.
— Hullo —
— Hullo —
— I wondered if you remembered me —
There had been a time when she and Max Ackerman had first been married and no young girls had yet come in —
In making her mind a blank, what she had hoped would come in would be —
The woman was coming towards her.
‘Hullo —’
‘Hullo —’
‘I wondered if it was you.’
Eleanor put a hand out to the baby.
Had she never wanted to kill such a girl as this: to take her by the hair; to hit her; to drag her on to a landing —
‘Hullo, my lovely —’
‘I can’t get in to my house. The windows have been blown out’
Eleanor said to the baby ‘And how are you getting on, my angel?’
She thought — I last saw you in those huge hands —
She said ‘Where’s Jason?’
‘I don’t know.’
She had said to Max — And what do you know of the mechanisms that prevent it?
He had said — Prevent what?
She had thought — You don’t want to prevent sickness?
She had not wanted to drag her —
She said ‘Would you like to come to my place?’
Lilia said ‘That would be terribly kind.’
— Something open —
— Like a hook —
— That goes both ways —
He had said — People would find, if it was necessary, their own ways of survival.
She said to Lilia ‘How old is he now?’
‘Nearly a year.’
‘Hullo, sunshine!’
She had said — Some people. Then — And what is it that would be necessary?
Lilia said ‘He thinks everything’s lovely. He thinks everything exists for him, and he is good.’
Eleanor thought — Then it is you, as his environment, that has made him good.
They had turned down to a towpath by the river. The water moved sluggishly.
Eleanor said ‘Can I carry him?’
The baby held out his arms to her.
She said ‘That huge head!’
The baby had bright dark eyes. When she held it, it seemed to search for something within her forehead.
Lilia said ‘On my way here, I thought I heard someone shouting above rooftops.’
Eleanor said ‘I thought I saw something like a body floating in the river.’
9
Anderson had moved through streets with the can of film that he had been showing under his arm; had seen the fire above the rooftops with its arms up like Petrouchka; had waved and called as if in sympathy; had crossed some cobbles, past a clock-tower, to the edge of the green by the Old Science Buildings; had seen, in the entrance, the rubble like roots and concrete earth; had thought — Or like a cancer, O my children and my children’s children. He had come to the rope of the cordon: had seen a policeman turning to send him back.
By standing still, and by peering into the half light as if to try to recognise the policeman personally; then by straightening, pleased, as if the recognition had delighted him; he thought he might make the policeman come towards him as if on the end of a piece of elastic and then fire him off, like a stone from a catapult, on his way round the universe —
He said ‘Ackerman: Professor Ackerman’ quietly, as if it were a password; while the policeman was still almost out of earshot.
He thought — Perhaps I have got my can of film under my arm just so that I can say —
When the policeman was close to him he patted the can under his arm and said ‘I’ve been sent to get this. Or we’re all in trouble!’
The policeman watched him with no interest or understanding behind his eyes.
Anderson stepped over the rope. Going past the policeman, towards the entrance to the basement with its iron roots and rubble, he thought — Do they shoot you in the back? Or am I covered by that figure flying above rooftops —
When he came to the edge of the rubble, he had to climb over it to get to the entrance. He thought—Have I been clever? or am I now like Napoleon at Moscow. There were some firemen with crowbars and torches. He thought — The stage has collapsed; the orchestra is buried. He had to put his can of film down on the ground to get a hand-hold: he thought — Perhaps they will think it is a bomb. Or — I am preparing to be lowered down a cliff-face?
It was beyond the building that there had been the bells and lights flashing. He thought — Is it true, it is luck, that the scene of the fire is just elsewhere?
He climbed down steps, over rubble. No one stopped him. He thought — You act: no one jumps up on a stage —
— We know each other so well in this small world: but what of the audience?
He was climbing with difficulty down through a hole in the rubble. There were lights from the engines outside. He wondered — Perhaps acting is with one half of one’s brain to the other, which is watching.
Bits of the ceiling had come down and were festooned like cobwebs. He was now on the level of the basement. The firemen with torches had moved away. He thought — You go along a corridor, in the dark, with your hands out; like one of those mad, confident statues —
There was a door, and a smooth surface, then another door, on his right. Somewhere, in his memory, was the door, at the end of the corridor, to the room where he had been keeping the main part of his film. The film at the moment was hanging in strips from the ceiling like cobwebs. Or like chromosomes, he imagined, waiting to be joined —
There was a faint light playing as if through a peep-hole somewhere along the passage.
He thought — But there would be no discovery, if you knew what you would find?
A quiet voice said ‘I can’t’
A voice from far away said ‘Why not?’
— The first voice from the tomb —
— The second voice from a mountain-top —
Anderson thought — Or seeds that fall, like an apple, or like droppings from a bird, in a laboratory.
The light from behind the pinhole elongated and faded and disappeared. From this, Anderson constructed — I am in the small hallway in the basement which, I remember, contains the door to the lift.
‘You’ve got —’
‘What —’
‘The inner —’
‘But not the outer —’
The voices were, again — far away, and then quietly: far away, then quietly. Anderson thought — If you laugh, does it make the whole network light up?
He made his way to the outer door to the lift-shaft. There was what seemed to be a crack in a rock. He put his ear against it. He thought — Or it is a woman, and I am listening for a baby.
‘Can you get back?’
‘No.’
‘Dear God —’
Anderson said in a sepulchral voice ‘You’ve got to go on.’ He thought — Or you are carried away, screaming, in a strait-jacket.
The voice from far away said ‘Who’s that?’
‘It seems unlikely —’
‘Can he get you out?’
Anderson thought he might say— Some grandson, I think, in Australia —
Then the voice which came from within the lift-shaft said ‘There should be a little key, in a glass case, somewhere on the wall, I think, to the left.’
Anderson thought — But did I not, a short time ago, want to kill you?
He said ‘I h
aven’t got a torch.’
Jason’s voice from within the lift-shaft said ‘Well I’d lend you mine, if you had one to get me out with.’
Anderson thought — That’s witty.
Then — It is just men, and not women, who get themselves stuck in a lift-shaft?
He began groping round the hallway.
The voice from within the lift-shaft said ‘You put it into a little slot, that is shaped like a smile, at the top left-hand corner of the right-hand door.’
Anderson thought he might say — Doesn’t putting into a slot mean some other thing?
Then — But did he sleep with her?
The voice from far away said ‘Is it really him?’
Anderson said ‘It depends, right or left, which way you’re facing.’
Jason said ‘Well which way are you facing?’
Anderson’s hand touched a small box on the wall of the hallway.
The voice from above said ‘What’s he doing here?’
‘Looking for a key.’
‘Can he find it?’
‘I think so.’
Anderson thought — Should not God on a mountain-top speak to me directly?
— Is that not the orthodox position?
He opened the glass door of the box. He took out the key. He came to the door of the lift with it.
Jason said ‘There’s a little opening —’
‘I know —’
The Professor said ‘How did he get in?’
Anderson said ‘I climbed.’
He thought — No one’s ever climbed —
Jason said ‘I thought it was blocked up.’
‘Perhaps it was. But now there’s an opening.’
He was feeling for the keyhole on the top of the door on the right.
He thought — So with one great jump —
‘Can he —’
‘What —’
‘Pull sideways —’
Anderson thought — Ah, I could leave you both trapped! He banged with the key against the slot and tried to pull the door sideways.
He thought — You go out of a door, along a corridor, in through the same door —
— You can tell the difference?
The door opened slighdy.
Catastrophe Practice Page 27
