Phone

by Will Self

  Friern … my enkies! performing a wildly intricate ballet in one of

  the old airing courts – There they are! in their twenties togs, tripping

  and dipping to some seventies jig … I’m an ape-man, I’m an ape-ape

  man … Apish they are – as nimble-footed as chimpanzees,

  what with their compulsive ticcing, their wildly unpredictable

  movements and their jazzy fulgurations, which fling their brittle

  bodies up into the air, only for them to fall back to the desolate

  ground. This much Busner readily recalls: That brilliant summer,

  during the era of the moon landings, when he’d awakened the post-encephalitics

  from their marmoreal half-century-long slumbers –

  and begun to see symptoms of their malady everywhere … In the

  festination of football players flocking round goal mouths – in the

  echolalia of politicians interviewed on the radio … now the problem

  is happening now, problematically, and in the city itself, taken in

  toto, which even forty-odd years ago seemed to be on the point

  of either catatonic dissolution or speeding up and up until it all

  flew apart … But what’d been her name, the old and eloquent

  enkie who he’d awakened with some of his precious ounce of

  L-dihydroxyphenylalanine? This much he definitely does remember:

  It cost a thousand pounds! While … for the life of me, I can’t …

  it’s on the tip of my … Anyway, one minute she’d been wholly

  trapped – a sparrow-like woman enmeshed by the bizarre neural net

  of her malady – the next she’d spread her wings … Compos mentis,

  she’d regarded the craven new world with a certain Edwardian

  pomp and detachment. She’d been, he thinks, really rather remarkably

  trenchant – a scientific socialist in her distant youth, she’d been

  delighted by humankind’s apparent progress. She wasn’t in the least

  discomfited by the wholesale transformation which had taken place

  while she Rip-Van-Winkled. The voices of her youth – whether

  meek and mild or admonitory and hectoring – torn from pulpit,

  lectern and platform while she slept, had been transformed into this

  great scritch-itch-itch … He peers down at the mobile phone lying

  in his hand: Milla will try again soon enough – and next time

  he knows he’ll feel compelled to answer … something might be

  wrong … with Ben … If only she could be more like the old enkie:

  stoical, and quite unable to … get any reception. I’m a coward,

  Busner thinks, and I ought to confront her but it’s awfully ticklish!

  He snorts – merriment provoked by this anachronism, accessed

  from his memory banks by another: All change, please! Muswell

  Hill – the Broadway! All change, please! The driver-operator has

  acquired, he realises, a third role, that of the master-of-ceremonies

  in the Good Old Days, whose announcements, Busner recalls, had

  a stagy, cockneyfied feel: Leddies an’ gennlemen, I gives you …

  Muzzerwell ‘ill! So strong is this impression that, descending the

  stairs and stepping off the bus, he half expects to see arrayed

  before him the top hats and ostrich-feathered toques of a music-hall

  audience … When the vision fades, he’s standing on the two

  thousand and ten pavement in front of an internet café. Plastic

  decals stuck inside its windows advertise LEBARA with African

  faces wreathed in smiles – joy occasioned, Busner assumes, by the

  coming of modern electronic communications systems, for this is,

  he gathers, a service which allows far-flung Swazis, Rwandans and

  Gabonese to call home for … mere pennies a minute. He sees their

  uncles in jungle clearings, lifting the receivers of coin phones bolted

  to baobab trees. He hears the shhhk-shhk as they fumble in their

  pockets, then come up with cowrie shells, which they feed into a

  specially adapted slot: Poosh de Button A! Poosh de Button, man …

  Poosh it! What, he wonders, can these happy exiles be saying as they

  yak away for hour upon hour, their wordstream coursing around the

  world? The old world … the old cold world … the grey sunken cunt

  of the world, full up with cold-old women, their flea-bitten terriers

  and their cold-old calcium-whitened turds … give-a dog-a … Full

  up, most especially, with Africans – one of whom exits the café at

  this point. He’s wearing a spiffy, maroon-leather jacket, and, as

  he reaches into its unzippered side pocket, Busner’s groin throbs

  sympathetically – goes on throbbing, as the African answers his

  phone and without any formalities launches straight into vous n’avez

  pas l’autorisation pour gagner … a blatant soliloquy he si vous

  souhaitez poursuivre, while old women keep trundling by with

  their wheeled wicker … tumbrels. And still Busner’s crotch throbs –

  and still the African francophones: un projet de loi pro-forma

  connaissement peut être téléchargé notre site of special schizophrenic

  interest – because it’s next to impossible nowadays, Busner thinks,

  to distinguish between neglected psychotics who hurl their voices to

  the carping winds – and those, such as this import-export merchant,

  who only wish de vous informer, cher monsieur, que nos conditions

  sont tout-à-fait standard et entièrement concurrentielles –. The

  African turns away abruptly – and, bereft, Busner reaches into

  his tracksuit bottoms to release his own diddle-oooh-doo-doo!

  Hello … Hello … Gramps? Issat you … ? Standing in the beeswax-smelling

  hall of his own mind, with Milla calling to him,

  Busner feels no anxiety: there’re no buttons for his daughter-in-law

  to push … besides le mien. So, he identifies himself – and, as he

  begins walking towards the Quadrant, it all comes squeaking out.

  Much of it the same as he’d heard the previous Sunday, but with

  new and improved anxiety: I’m worried, Gramps … you’ve always

  been worried. Ben’s been behaving pretty strangely … he’s always

  behaved pretty strangely … I didn’t want to say anything last

  Sunday … you couldn’t stop talking last Sunday … but he’s barely

  been out of his room in weeks, now … he’s barely been out of his room

  in twenty-one years, now … I can cope with that, Gramps, but what

  I can’t cope with is the stress of not knowing what he’s getting up

  to … none of us know what he’s getting up to … I think he may

  be mixed up with that computer-hacking collective, Anonymous.

  He’s got hold of one of their masks – the one with the moustache

  and goatee … he’s got scores of masks – his own face is a … mask …

  I’m worried to death, Gramps – what if he’s hacking into government

  computer systems and stuff like that – what if he’s doing stuff

  like that other autistic man – Gary McKinnon – I’ve read all about

  him in doctors’ waiting rooms. On she talks, onanon, the pulsion of

  her plosives pushing him onanon, until he finds himself in the

  Quadrant, blankly observing the buses butt and bore, and only semiaware

  Milla has shuffled between the objects of her affection, and

  it’s now the orfer whom she wishes him to talk to: He’s heard ofr />
  you, Gramps, he admires your work – he’s giving a reading next

  Thursday in Camden Town. If you went along you might be able to

  grab a few seconds with him, explain to him that I’m not some sort

  of cyber-stalker … but you are! and then things would … les choses

  seraient quoi, exactement? Proceeding up Duke’s Avenue towards the

  brown pile slumped atop the hill, Busner, only paying the slightest

  of attention to this museum audio-guide, marvels at the contemporary

  world: cloudy castles rise up above Alexandra Palace, the

  same impossibilist battlements and vaporous curtain walls he

  remembers from earliest childhood – yet at ground level he observes

  this: an old man clutching the side of his head, passing a young

  woman clutching hers. In the near-distance there are two or

  three others, all, so far as he can tell, similarly afflicted by the toothache

  of conversation … it’s good to talk. But listening to Camilla is

  tooth-grinding as well as tooth-aching: He writes a lot about

  psychiatry, and stuff – that’s how I got involved, I read this story he

  wrote about an autistic kid, and I think he really sorta gets it …

  Maybe he does, Busner thinks, maybe the orfer does get it, which is

  why he’s so very determined keep the poor soul at arm’s length:

  That’s what I’m trying to do with my emails, Gramps, tell him all

  about me … and Ben, every last detail of our lives – ‘cause he

  gets it, he really does, and one day … he’ll realise I’m sincere, and

  we’ll be together – not that I’ve any thought of it happening in this

  lifetime! she yelps – the self-deprecatory bark of an old sheepdog,

  too doddery now to round ’em up, and he says: Don’t say that,

  Milla – you mustn’t talk like that … which is the soured milk of

  human kindness – although she laps it up … I mean it, Gramps –

  I know you don’t believe in kismet, but I do – I really believe we’ll

  be together eventually … not in our human bodies – and not in

  heaven, that’s just silliness, but somewhere … On she goes –

  onanon. She must realise, surely, that he isn’t listening? Busner has

  reached Ally-Pally, and stands looking up at its gaunt superstructure,

  barnacled with satellite dishes and weedy with antennae.

  The Bhagavad-Gita has little to say on such matters – but from

  a magazine he’s read recently in a dental surgery Busner gleaned

  this much: a sightline to a communications mast enormously improves

  mobile phone reception … which must aid the penetration of those

  carcinogenic waves into the delicate tissue of the brain, such that if

  the two of them keep on like this, soon enough tumour will speak

  unto tumour … Nevertheless, there may be a more providential

  way of regarding his tethered predicament – walking round the

  other side of the building, Busner gains a peak perspective, and

  can descry the entire north-east quadrant of the city, from the Parnassus

  of Totteridge right round to the Elysian Fields of Epping

  Forest. Meanwhile the surrealistic commentary continues: If only I

  could know what he really thinks, Gramps – what he really thinks

  about … me … Which is indeed the very nub of it, Busner

  concedes, making his way towards a bench. Is it, he wonders, the

  mobile phone that’s brought him here by some occult means? Busner

  reflects with some irritation on his first attempt at the aimless

  wandering of a Hindu holy man: he’d left Kentish Town with no

  preconceived plan or route, yet wherever the way had divided he’d

  received a techno-nudge … He thinks of Ben’s thumbs, nudging at

  the controller – thinks of Ben’s avatar, its burly, burnished torso and

  brassiere of bandoliers. For Ben’s still gaming – still toggling his

  way along the virtual road to nowhere. Sitting behind him, in the

  frigid light of his serried monitors, Zack had watched as this buffo

  figure explored the cavernous interior of a ruined building not unlike

  Ally-Pally … Bounding over acres of rotten flooring, kinking to

  avoid the fire-resistant tiles crumbling from its lofty ceilings. It’s

  like there was a nuclear war sometime in the mid nineteen fifties

  and this is what the world’s like years later … and this is what the

  world’s like years later. True enough, Busner ruminates, but if the

  entire wandering world had received such a techno-nudge, it wasn’t

  then but a few years later, during the Missile Crisis. What’d

  been the name of the Soviet submarine commander? Ah, yes! Arkhipov

  – he refused Khrushchev’s order to fire his nuclear missiles, so

  preventing almost certain Armageddon. Well … the world’s still

  here, and Milla’s still here, and my swollen feet are still here … He

  collapses on to the bench and begins unlacing his training shoes,

  ruminating the while: Preventing an apocalypse, why … that’s

  tantamount to creating a world – this world. Yes, this Arkhipov was

  a god – or, more likely, a demiurge, and yes, this is indeed what the

  world was like after his act of special creation … AyAy Forty-Eight

  to be precise: a dystopia of discontinuous technologies populated by

  mutants created in a selective breeding programme presided over

  by the blind-bloody watchmaker! Y’know about Wikileaks, don’t you,

  Gramps? Ben had asked and asked again: Y’know about Wikileaks,

  don’t you, Gramps? the words chucked over his shoulder had fallen

  heavily in his grandfather’s lap. Then he’d hit a key, and the

  computer’s alternative world had been replaced by a jerky view of

  flat-roofed concrete buildings and mud-brick hutments. Tiny figures

  were dish-dashing about … running scared from the eye-in-the-sky.

  Then the whole scene shivered, shook and disappeared into buff

  puffs … Gunsight footage from a YouEssEmm Apache, Gramps,

  Ben had said, and said again: from a YouEssEmm Apache, Gramps

  – it was an airstrike in Baghdad three years ago … three years

  ago … Whole load’ve civilians – including some journalists – were

  killed … were killed … The Pentagon’ve consistently denied it – but

  here’s the evidence … here’s the evidence … There indeed had been

  the evidence – and apparently there was a lot more: These Wikileaks

  people, Gramps, they’ve hacked into some secret sites – but

  that isn’t how they get most of their stuff, they get most of their

  stuff from leaks … they get most of their stuff from leaks … Hence,

  Zack had drily observed, their name – but Ben, as ever, had failed

  to register any irony, and simply kept on scrolling down … and

  down. Zack may’ve been a little disconcerted by the political turn

  his grandson’s enthusiasms were taking – but he’d thought nothing

  of it until … now: I can’t explain what it is about him, Gramps –

  I s’pose with someone you meet socially, you get to see them in

  all sorts of … social situations when they’re … socialising … The

  fingers leeched … lifeless … bone-white catkins on the unfunny bone …

  Busner thinks of Pierson Minor, a fellow pupil at Marples’

  Indepen
dent Academy, who’d been struck down by polio and disappeared

  glamorously into an iron lung. When he returned his arm

  was strapped to his head – which worked well to straighten out the

  rigours of the disease. Agony for the kid, though – unable day or

  night to lower his arm. Zack thought he’d been sympathetic at the

  time – I’m far more so now: I can sorta socialise with him, though,

  Gramps – I check his Facebook account and stuff … look at clips of

  him on YouTube … then there’s his writing – you can tell an awful

  lot about someone from their writing, can’t you, Gramps? Innaway

  it’s even more revealing than the stuff they reveal in real life …

  Busner thinks the two phenomena are undoubtedly related: Milla’s

  new love and her newborn anxieties for her … big baby and his

  virtual activities eyearrdoubleyou … Because that’s Ben’s version

  of Milla’s real life: the real world he enters only to eat or take a

  shit, before returning to his alternative realities. You ought to ask

  yourself, Gramps, why it is they want so much data, Ben had said,

  and then he’d shown his grandfather the stark outlines of this

  ulterior realm. Flow charts, block and Venn diagrams, standard

  deviations, and all sorts of other graphical-statistical representations

  came flying back towards them from the prow of Ben’s inner-spaceship.

  Being of an age, Zack’d thought of nine-out-of-ten, and

  ninety-nine, and nine per cent compounded on gilts – but this data

  wasn’t selling anything. Ben had said: I’m not going anywhere near

  any government systems, Gramps, I’m not a total mong … I’m not

  a total mong … Zack had sensed then – and Busner feels certain

  now – that his grandson hadn’t meant to imply he was a partial

  mong, but that he isn’t a mong at all – it’s us who’re the mongs … An

  entire society of amiable Downs folk, wandering about hugging

  each other and responding beautifully to music, while the others –

  the cooler, more calculating others, such as Ben – got on with

  reaping these digital whirlwinds: You ‘n’ Mum, Gramps – you think

  all the gaming I do is a waste of time … a waste of time … But it’s

  taught me loads … taught me loads … taught me that one person –

  a person others call disabled – can not only beat the system …