by Will Self
My objective isn’t pecuniary, Mister De’Ath – and nor do I have any
connection with the world of espionage … and nor do I have any
connection with the world of espionage … Really? he speaks aloud,
just as he imagines he’d speak if it were ten years in the future,
and the ship of state was – titularly at least – helmed by an expolitical
researcher with a face as smoothly pink as a baby’s
just-smacked bottom. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose isn’t
the sort of hackneyed phrase we’d expect a man of Jonathan
De’Ath’s stripe to come up with, but he might well come out
with it, sat in the Bardney bed and breakfast he’s been penned up
in this past decade, watching the world turn only at a remove.
– Really? – Yes, really, Mister De’Ath, although you’ll’ve realised
my cyber-capabilities must be considerable simply to have located
you in your retirement … simply to have located you in your
retirement … Yes, he’d’ve been sitting there this past decade, hopelessly
strung out and mired deep in the stasis horrors he always
feared more than any possible violence or exposure. Sat there,
shrunken, watching his son grow. Would he love little Gawain?
Might the perverse choice of name engender or hinder his
affections? And could the fact that Gawain took after his mother
result in this sort of freakishness: that as Sally takes him to the
Lincoln Equestrian Centre for larger and larger jodhpurs, little
Gawain comes uncannily to resemble his namesake rather than his
father: blond-haired, round-hipped – his expression, when caught in
repose, sweetly baffled? On his infrequent trips up to town – which
he’d undertake to see his accountant or solicitor, one imagines,
rather than his tailor, the mundanities associated with his entail
preoccupying Jonathan rather more now than the profundities of
his shirt-tails – he’d walk through town from King’s Cross. He can
be pictured, can he not, stopping by the railings of a park on a misty
October evening, and hearkening to the sound of a former Sergeant
in the Green Jackets – a man he’d probably fail to recognise – shout
at twenty or so podgy office workers, Orlright! C’mon, you lot –
drop and give me twenty, and keep your backs straight! Seeing the
slogan printed on the T-shirts that cover those arched backs might
give the man formerly known as the Butcher pause for thought:
British Military Fitness, mm, I’ve skinned that hump … Yes, skinned
it – which is why, years after the event, he’s having to dig deep and
provide plenty of help for cowards … We can hypothesise that in the
decade following the death of Amir Ali al-Jabbar at Camp Val in
Ali al-Garbi, Maysan Governorate, southern Iraq, a number of
similar cases might come to light – it’s not a matter of allocating
blame or a human rights-induced hissy-fit, simply a statistical
likelihood that … shit happens. A case might be brought in two
thousand and five concerning the shootings of five Iraqi civilians by
British soldiers in Basra in two thousand and three, and the death
of a sixth in detention. By two thousand and ten the number of
allegations of unlawful killing and other abuses made against the
British Army might well have ballooned. A turn of phrase Jonathan
De’Ath – ruefully recalling the unkind words he spoke in the
mortuary tent in the Divisional Detention Facility at Shaibah
Logistics Base – might well find a touch ironic, recalling how eager
the dear silly old sausage … had been to see … the balloon go up.
With pushing one hundred and fifty cases of unlawful killing and
serious abuse registered with the British courts, lawyers involved in
taking depositions and examining evidence might be expected to
find that the various techniques used in the so-called harshing of
Iraqi detainees – techniques which, in one case at least, would’ve
been proven to’ve led directly to the man’s death – had also been
applied across no fewer than, say, fourteen British military facilities
– leading to the fairly plausible claim that this represented systemic
abuse rather than a few bad apples … an idiom much hated, it can
be predicted, by a man who’d previously delighted in a rather
less fructuous sobriquet: And the steaks – don’t forget the steaks,
Jonathan! Listening to the distance sough down the line – looking
at the small print of Caistor Sheep Fair circa nineteen hundred,
which Sally might well have hung above the telephone table,
Jonathan could be forgiven, surely, for despairing of this provisional
reality he’s stumbled into. What the fuck d’you have on me, or
him – you can say right now, or simply get off the line and leave
me in peace! is what any normal person would say, and, inasmuch
as Jonathan De’Ath would by then be a householder, a parent and
mein poofy host, it seems reasonable to accord him this prospective
normality. To which Ben Whitehouse-Busner – sat in his Kilburn
bedroom, with its impressive computing power and large quantities
of stuff – would, no doubt, respond accordingly: The audio- and
videotapes of the tactical questioning sessions at Camp Val that
took place in May two thousand and five while your ex-lover was
in command have, following my acquisition of your large data-set,
also come into my hands … also come into my hands … Oh,
yes. They have. Then fa-ancies flee a-way … I’ll care not what men
sa-ay … I’ll labour night and day, To be a … Walking is what a man
might well do under such circumstances – especially if he’d a golden
retriever called something like … dunno – is Bonnie plausible? Yes,
Bonnie: a silkily supple dog, always smarming round legs and fence
posts, then dashing across the flooded furrows of winter fields.
Come along, now, Bonnie! Heel, girl … Morning, Jonathan … Morning,
Margaret … Dreadful weather, I’m glad to see you’re wrapped up
well … Oh, I’m only going for a short walk, Margaret – over to Collow
Abbey Farm … He’d think often – one assumes – of his father
(Hard not to, really, if he’s somehow completely internalised his
notion of my psyche), think especially of the long walk Kins had
taken during the late summer of nineteen forty, down through the
Lincolnshire fens, then the woodlands and fields of Hertfordshire
and Cambridgeshire before eventually reaching London – travelling
by night, and arriving on September the seventh, just in time to
witness the onset of the second mass raid. He’d told Jonathan that
as he gained the summit of Pole Hill, the Luftwaffe’s bombers were
circling over the East End, round and round, again annagain – like a
chair-o-plane. This image of his father, as a latter-day John Wesley,
undertaking a strange un-evangelical progress – avoiding the towns,
preaching not the Good News, but keeping to himself the shameful
truth of his conscientious cowardice – would quite possibly strike
deep with eldest son. Out there in the fields, where a crow lies dead
/> in a cattle trough – and the seepage from a silage hopper stains a
stony path a toxic green. Or so they say. Bonnie! Bon-nie! Bonnie!!
Look at her run – you’ve that good a visual imagination, surely?
If not, you could feed the words golden retriever running into the
search bar and soon enough be seeing those gambolling legs and the
fur … fly. Out there in the beet fields, stopping by a five-bar gate
and leaning over it to examine the lumps of old masonry sunken in
the turf – evidence of long-gone sanctity. Then undoing, quite possibly,
your leather belt and slipping your corduroy trousers down off
your hips. You wouldn’t be wearing expensive Swiss underwear any
more – Sally’d buy you sensible boxer shorts in packs of five from
EmmandEss. You’d tuck your tiny nubbin of a Ritalin-shrunk penis
back between your legs and scream out to the dead crow – and the
live pigeons which in all likelihood would wheel about the winter
field – I’m Chelsea Manning! Holding the pose for as long as you
dared: shirt, pullover and jacket hoiked up – pants and trousers
down, as a small child does when … pissing in public: I’m Chelsea
Manning! screamed with all the well-paid conviction of Issur
Danielovitch playing Kirk Douglas screaming, I am Spartacus!
Back at Church Lane, at the bed and breakfast known as Wagon
Wheels, Jonathan might give Bonnie a rubdown, since she’d quite
likely be drenched – both from the dew and because she probably
leapt into duck pond. That’s retrievers for you. The old, thatched
house would be called Wagon Wheels not because of the ancient
association with the land, and the high farm carts they used to
bring the harvest in with thereabouts – but because these were the
premises of a garden-ornament business that limped along for a
few seasons in the late nineteen eighties, before succumbing to the
harsh economic reality. It’s conceivable. Just as the soil in this part
of north Lincs was too infertile for profitable agriculture in the era
before artificially synthesised fertilisers, so it might’ve been unable
to sustain much garden ornamentation in the days before … teak
decking, a phrase that conceivably could’ve stayed with Jonathan
De’Ath for a decade and a half now – and might well be echoing in
his head, back in the vestibule, sitting once more beneath the print
of Caistor Sheep Market as he waits to be rung again by the man
who’s acquired his large data-set – a man with a breathy voice, who
repeats the last few words of every phrase … the last few words of
every phrase – a quirk, which in the few minutes Jonathan has
already spoken to him, would’ve struck him, n’est-ce pas, as having
an uncanny resonance with his own (internal voice? I hardly think
so, Johnny – what I have to say may often seem like old hat to you,
but I hardly think it’s a mere echo of your own thoughts), which fall
away to the carpet, to the skirting board, to the phone line pinned
to that skirting board, to the Dulux Timeless silk emulsion with
which that phone line has been coated – and to the small blobs
and flecks of that Dulux Timeless silk emulsion, which, if you were
to peer very closely, you’d find trapped in the carpet’s pile … you
just can’t get the staff nowadays. Yes, his thoughts might well fall
away, but his awareness would remain – his awareness of his former
lover’s baffled expression as he removes the soiled towels from the
hopper in the men’s changing room. Strictly speaking, a menial
task far outside his remit as Facilities Manager, but Bryn is off sick.
Possibly. This awareness is a faint, violet-coloured luminescence –
you’d never spot it, unless you knew what to look for – and where to
look. When the phone – an ugly contemporary appliance, the
receiver of which could well be propped up in a sort of socket or
cradle – eventually trilled into life, he’d answer it with this query –
or one very like it – already prepared: What do you want? To which
Ben Whitehouse-Busner’s reply not could, or might, or possibly, or
likely, or probably, but very definitely would be: I’d like to add you
to my professional network … I’d like to add you to my professional
network … If there were any other way of doing this, without being
quite so manipulative, I’d privilege it … I’d privilege it … a way
of putting this Ben knows will pique the curiosity of the spook he’s
managed to hook … on the end of my line. Have you met Ben
Whitehouse-Busner? No, really, have you made his acquaintance?
The question needs to be posed, because he doesn’t, as such, have
any social life. We could go further: he doesn’t, as such, have any
social existence, preferring to tread water a little bit abaft as the ship
of time sails on … as the ship of time sails on … You may’ve seen a
film about an autistic savant calculating betting odds in fractions of
a second – or read in some fiction or other descriptions of a lummox
of an autist: pen-portraits of him at different ages, and viewed
from different perspectives – his mother’s, his grandfather’s –
and wondered at the egregiousness of their stereotyping … and
wondered at the egregiousness of their stereotyping … No, no! Don’t
worry – I’m not going to repeat everything: on the contrary, I’m
going to explain about the, frankly, wilful palilalia and much else
besides – including the reason my much loved father refers to me as
Mandinkulus, and believes me to be his deep-penetration agent.
But first: some toast. Some prefer nettles … the title in Japanese
can be phonetically transcribed as, tade kuu mushi mo sukizuki,
and written in Japanese characters as – pretty,
aren’t they? And a logo-syllabary points the way, does it not, to our
own emergent universal grammar of sounds, images and text?
A language that, when piped through fibre-optic cabling and hosed
on to the inside of the screen, bears a strong resemblance to this,
arguably the most complex writing system ever evolved by humankind.
Young Westerners who become obsessed by Japanese culture –
usually as a result of their absorption into the comical milieus of
anime and manga – are called weeaboos, which sounds as derisorily
silly to the Japanese ear as it does to the occidental one. Each to
their own – which is the English equivalent of the Japanese idiom
Tanizaki used for his novel’s title. One that’s translated literally as
Water-pepper-eating Bugs Will Eat It Willingly, but was rendered
by the eminent Japanologist Edward Seidensticker as Some Prefer
Nettles – and what I prefer is the heel of a standard Hovis loaf.
Always have preferred it – always will. Each to their own. A style of
life is determined, I feel, as much by these sorts of decisions as by
any major aesthetic – let alone ethical – ones. The choice of foodstuffs
and their preparation: the application of the butter, smoothing
it out to the edges of the bread as an expert plasterer plies his hawk.
The great advantag
e of the heel is that it has a sort of inbuilt
rim, such that, once the jam or marmalade has been added to the
butter, the by now semi-liquid morass can be sufficiently contained
to enable me to raise the heel to my mouth and take a large bite
without its disintegrating into crumbs, buttery blobs and spatters of
confiture – which would upset Milla. Here she is, leaning into me
for a brief hug as she squeezes past to half fill from the kitchen tap
an old mug which came to us, two Easters ago, with a Cadbury’s
Milk Tray egg laid in it … Aaaah! Your mother’s smell, they say,
you never forget – on your death bed it’ll return to you, performatively:
odours of breast milk, lipstick and Avon Skin So Soft each
playing their unfaithful role, betraying your high, loving purpose
with this low and fatal blow. Getting angry ain’t my style – nor
am I the empathy-free zone beloved of dualistic psychologists,
who autists believe incapable of realising the inner worlds of
others. What inner world? What others? Pah! I embrace Milla –
she snuffles into the hollow of my shoulder – I hear the faint spatter
of water drops on the lino at our feet. I know she’s sublimated
her love for me into her romantic obsession with the orfer these
past five years, and, being Marshall’s child quite as much as I am
Mandinkulus, I understand the message: her sexual feelings are
now so much digital scrim, leaving her nestling in my arms …
Mm-hm, just having a bit of toast – dunno, round five, maybe? She
frees herself, turns, heads back out of the kitchen and along the
corridor to the front room. Freed, she turns – along the corridor
she heads, from the kitchen to the front room. To the front room
she heads, freed from the kitchen along the corridor. Chiasmus
mirrors semantically the rubric of public key encryption used for
secure internet communication: consider each clause as a prime
number, multiply them together and not even the most powerful
quantum computer conceivable could factor out what it really
means … The actions of humans – wildly unpredictable despite
their instinctual basis – are like this. Milla and Gramps have always
seen me as stimming – whereas from my vantage it’s them who’re
ever attempting to manage chaos by doing the same senseless things
