Phone

by Will Self

  over and over again annagain … It’s dusty throughout the flat – and

  greasy in the food-preparation areas. In the bathroom the war-without-end

  between sepsis and antisepsis has long since been

  fought to a standstill in trenches of congealed soap topped off by

  the barbed wire of our shed hair. Yet for me it’s still being fought.

  I once heard a woman on the radio – a theoretical physicist, I

  assume – explain how we might perceive Einstein’s relativistic universe

  by analogy with the way a picture plane of only two dimensions

  can nonetheless represent three. I’ve no idea whether this is a good

  analogy, having been able to see four dimensions in two, three or

  however many – or few – others, for … well, predictably for as long

  as I can recall … I love Camilla aged twenty-two, holding the little

  ball of balling Benness to her heavy, milk-filled breasts – I can still

  taste the brassiness of the buttons on her bib-and-braces, which I

  suck upon frenziedly as she struggles to unbutton. I love Camilla

  aged twenty-six, clasping a bigger ball of threshing Benness in her

  aching arms – and I love Camilla aged thirty-four, driving our

  clapped-out old Vauxhall along Kilburn High Road, while I hunker

  down in the back seat, counting up the raindrops speckling the

  car windows and multiplying the total by the number of times

  the bald old tyres revolve between the junction with Cricklewood

  Road and the turn-off for home – because that’s what the flat is:

  home. Profoundly so. I mention the prodigious calculating only in

  passing – I’ve no wish to contribute to egregious stereotyping. Not

  that it matters much, but … well, I can admit it: I’ve allocated a

  name to every prime number up to and beyond the largest currently

  identified by human computing – which, if you’re not exactly au

  courant with such matters, I can tell you has seventeen million, four

  hundred and twenty-five thousand, one hundred and seventy digits.

  I call it Meat Blanket. I can factor this prime as easily as a teenage

  girl does French knitting. I see them in the afternoon – I’m seeing

  them in the afternoon, standing at Camilla’s window … Oh, whatever

  you fancy – I had a pizza earlier … the curtains bunched in one

  of my hands. See them coming down the road on their way home

  from Saint Augustine’s Church-of-England High School. Funny

  a craze like that should come back again: weaving plastic thongs

  into multicoloured plaits … Camilla says they did it when she

  was a girl – I’d like to’ve done it with her, but, while the capacity

  of humans to slide along their own timelines is far greater than

  they realise, it’s not possible to slide along just anyone else’s. For

  that to be possible you need the forensics: the notes on torn scraps

  of spiral-bound pads, and the letters beautifully calligraphed on

  Smythson’s bordered writing paper – the emails composed on the

  tedious certainty of the Outlook Express grid, then cut and pasted

  into standard word-processing files and saved on compact floppy

  disks. I’m seeing the French knitters on the brilliant winter afternoon,

  standing at Camilla’s window – seeing them float along the

  road in a succession of billowy after-images – their beautiful youth

  frozen in space and time, À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs …

  Everything was tightly and chronologically packed into Secret

  Sam’s attaché case when I picked it up at the stall on Brixton Station

  Road. Jesus! That’s heavy, mate … I know, young man – couldn’t get

  the bleedin’ thing open – you’d think those old combination locks’d be

  easy-peasy to crack … We-ell, some of ’em are, but these are proper

  Manifoils – same kind as spooks use … You seem to know your stuff –

  anyway, there it is: a locked-up-tight attaché case – sorta lucky dip, really.

  Yours for twenty shitters … I’ll give you a tenner – if I break the

  locks opening it, it’ll be worthless … Oh, for fuck’s sake! I can’t make

  enough at the moment to buy a fucking bog roll – now you’re gouging me!

  Maybe – maybe not, like you say: it’s a lucky dip … C’mon, young

  feller – be reasonable. I can see you’re innerested – giss fifteen … At the

  bottom were passwords for anonymous email and cloud accounts,

  all written out in a mock-crocodile-skin-covered notebook, also

  from Smythson’s. The upper middle classes are as restricted in

  their shopping for luxury brands as the underclass are in our lucky

  dip of discounted stock at Lidl: Oh, no, Mum – not Black Forest-fucking

  gateau again! Sorry, Ben – but that’s what was on offer …

  again. It would, of course, be ridiculous to imagine I’d been searching

  for something of this sort ever since I began collecting stuff in

  earnest – because, of course, I already knew it was there, lying

  beside a pair of red, polka-dotted Doc Martens and … a pink

  oboe. The human distinction between events which are determined

  and those adjudged contingent evaporates from this perspective –

  while the minute variation between the official Pikachu figurine

  and a knock-off one manufactured in Hong Kong remains as acute

  as it was, is and always will be. I admit it: I am a little bit of a

  chameleon – what does Gawain’s Uncle Rodney say? There’s a

  soupçon of the peacock in all army officers à mon avis – while

  Jonathan would concede there’s a soupçon of the sociopath in all

  good intelligence officers. Carefully rearchiving his large data-set,

  I’ve come, if not exactly to admire him, at any rate to feel at home

  with him – his waspishness, his snobbery and his exaggerated sense

  of his own pantomimic … Milla – you’ve a bit of cottage cheese on your

  chin … here … let me – I have a hanky … derring-do. Inevitably,

  I’ve found myself incorporating elements of his persona into mine,

  since, having no social existence of my own beyond interactions

  with eBay vendors and flea-marketers, I tend to use whichever mask

  is lying to hand. In this respect, the rise in autism diagnoses during

  my lifetime has played to my advantage, providing me with an off-the-peg

  set of characteristics – the stimming, the food-pickiness,

  the eye-avoidance, the palilalia – with which to play, in turn, to

  the gallery of my family. Not to Milla, though – oh, Milla! From

  this angle your dear face looms: a Mount Rushmore of a woman

  you are to me, in all your maternal splendour. I grab for your

  breast – you grab for my hand … Oh, Ben! C’mon – Be-en … and

  place your own behind my head, cupping it, drawing it closer …

  and closer … Oh … until my mouth suckers on … Ben! to your

  nipple … chupp-chupp-chupp-chupp … a steady, rhythmic siphoning

  off of these: a casein homologous to bovine beta-casein,

  alpha-lactalbumin, lactoferrin, immunoglobulin, lysozyme and

  serum albumin – the essential amino-acid pattern which is optimal

  for human infants … chupp-chupp-chupp-chupp … She manages

  somehow – bless her – to read a few lines of the newspaper folded />
  on the table next to the ashtray in which my father’s hand-rolled

  cigarette smoulders, and, saint though Milla undoubtedly is, she

  cannot help experiencing relief – bordering on Schadenfreude – that

  we’re in Camberwell rather than Khorramabad, where dead children,

  plastic-wrapped, are the subjects of the grainy black-and-white

  photograph which accompanies the article. They’re being laid out

  in an improvised mortuary, bodged up from breeze-blocks. The

  Zagora Mountains have always been an earthquake zone – always

  will be, but Missus Thatcher will only resign as PeeEmm once, and

  Milla, who has a little badge on her bib ‘n’ braces with the familiar

  tight-bouffant hairdo silhouetted on it, and the slogan, DITCH THE

  BITCH, is happy enough today, only to be mildly revolted when …

  chupp-chupp-chupp-chupp-mmmm-hn’! I let her nipple flubber from

  my sharp-edged little gums, rise bow-legged – the way toddlers

  do – and, looking back down into the plastic arena, call her attention

  to … that great big poo what I done, Mummy … Oh, Ben, darling …

  Oh, where’re the Wet Ones … One thing you can say for the realm of

  the senses is that there’s no irony in them whatsoever – no saying

  what is not in order to call others’ attention to what manifestly is:

  which is that we’re not in on the cosmic joke forever being whispered

  behind humanity’s back concerning the terms of our own existence.

  We know each other for who we really are – Milla and I. We were

  raped in a rape field – has she told you? And a traumatic experience

  like that will force some together – while others fly apart. Gramps,

  bless him, has never been able to remove his pathologising spectacles

  and see me for who I truly am – and at least that, I can

  concede, is truly ironic – given he’s spent his entire career critiquing

  the validity of just these diagnostic criteria, together with the

  aetiologies and outcomes they wilfully predict. Anosognosia is the

  sort of word old Zack likes to drop into conversations – he understands

  his colleagues have it, just not he himself … there’s still half

  that pizza in the fridge, Milla – I’ll have that … He certainly doesn’t

  get that almost all of humanity is afflicted with a chronic form of

  anosognosia – he, Milla, my many and variously fucked-up uncles

  and aunts and cousins are all labouring under the same overarching

  delusion. Not Mark, though … think I’ll go and see Dad tomorrow,

  Mum … I’ll give you a tenner to get him some tobacco … A patient

  diagnosed as schizophrenic by the celebrated psychoanalyst

  Winnicott once said to him – or so he reports: We schizophrenics

  say and do a lot of stuff that’s unimportant and then we mix

  important things in with it to see if the doctor cares enough to see

  and feel them … Extraordinary to think Mark’s been mixing all

  this important stuff into what he says for decades now, but his own

  father – his own father! – an eminent psychiatrist with thousands of

  hours of exposure – hasn’t understood a word of it. We should be

  charitable to dear old Gramps, though – especially now he’s sundowning.

  It won’t be long before the neurofibrillary tangles and the

  amyloid plaques completely choke his cerebrum. The French idiom

  is revenons à nos moutons – and we can see Zack trying desperately

  to revenir to his, but the one he most needs to pen is out there

  on the hillside, baaing pitifully, caught up in a neurofibrillary

  tangle – caught the way a poor little lambkin might be in the tangle

  of barbed wire atop a tumbledown drystone wall somewhere in

  the Ettrick Forest. Click-click … Baa-baaa … click-click … the

  stonechat dips its head, flicks its wings, clicks out its nominative

  destiny and flies away, but Zack’s little lambkin of a thought remains

  hopelessly trapped – will I be able to free him in time? It’s late

  January and I phone Jonathan again: I’d like to add you to my professional

  network… – Either you’re insane, Ben, or you’re a very misguided

  young man … – I’m twenty-seven, Jonathan – as you presumably

  already know – because you’ve contacted your former colleagues, and with

  their assistance put a trace on this line … – You’re asking me? – No,

  Jonathan – it’s a statement of fact… – Aren’t you at all worried, Ben?

  This is a matter of state security: you’re asking me to give you back-door

  access to the entire EssEyeEss and GeeSeeAitchQueue internet – and

  through that to the YouEss systems as well. By comparison, hacking into

  the Pentagon would be a mere misdemeanour. I’ve only to put one call in

  and there’d be a Swat team landing a bloody helicopter in Mowbray

  Road in minutes … – I’m well aware of that, Jonathan – but what

  we really have here is a Mexican stand-off, isn’t it? It’ll take time –

  I realise that. I’ll need to talk him round – convince him of the

  case intellectually, to a degree – but also establish an emotional

  relationship with him. Despite the inversion of our ages, I need him

  to feel that I’m a wiser, older brother. His father used to sing: Put

  your head on my shoulder, you need someone who’s older … But he

  was no Billy Eckstine – mine’s the shoulder Jonathan needs to put

  his head on, so I can give him a little rub with my velvet glove.

  Really, my evolving relationship with him is exactly the same as the

  ones he used to cultivate with his various assets and field agents.

  Jonathan’s no fool – he gets it. It’s a Tuesday afternoon in February

  and Dad and I are in the chain coffee outlet at Heath Hospital.

  Dad hasn’t been on a section for a while – but if he gets a

  little wiggy they’ll let him come and stay on the acute ward at Heath

  for a few days, really out of respect for Gramps, who, whatever his

  other failings, was always a supportive colleague. Dad’s going

  on … positional ataraxy – take it up, then drop it much harder so

  it crackimup twice – once in the fons, once down the box part … about

  the repositioning of the transuranic galvinator, which needs to be

  brought into Mercury’s orbit so that its beam will connect to all

  human consciousnesses simultaneously, drawing every single individual

  on the planet into a vast neural net … interleaved with

  plates of burlap and grease tied to the back of a milk floating on my

  bread, Benny dearest … Winnicott’s patient was right – but it’d be a

  profound mistake to think the important things Mark says are

  metaphors of some kind: there’s nothing less analogic than the

  world of the schizophrenic, in which everything is entirely and

  absolutely like … itself. You try living with captious voices bickering

  in your brain, which get louder and louder throughout the day, until

  their very howls are the fact of your own dissolution streaming,

  screaming through the cosmos. Oh, I’m forgetting – you already do:

  for that’s the fundamental insight afforded by schizophrenese –

  that’s the thing my father and all the other street soliloquisers are

&nb
sp; ever attempting to tell us anosognosics: we share their malaise – we,

  too, labour under the compelling delusion there’s a voice being

  piped into our brain which orders us to do this, go there, feel that

  and think whatever it pleases us to think. You call it your self – the

  hectoring voice which calls you. Wouldn’t you like to be rid of it –

  to take a pill or recite a prayer, spin the wheel again and again, and

  have the silence descend on you, fine as silica, silky as sand – or

  Bonnie’s coat … Bonnie! Bo-nnie! Gramps used to think – when he

  could still think clearly about such things – that Mark’s transuranic

  galvinator bore some resemblance to James Tilly Matthews’s Air

  Loom – the celebrated subject of the first known case study of a

  paranoid schizophrenic. Confined to Bedlam in the first decades

  of the nineteenth century, Matthews wrote painstaking technical

  descriptions of this strange contrivance, which, when operated by

  malevolent agents, skilled in the science of pneumatic chemistry,

  emitted the rays that tangled up his mind: inducing the magnetic

  fields which paralysed his circulatory system and concentrated

  the blood in his brain. Matthews thought there were numerous

  agents scattered throughout London, all of them equipped with

  air looms – all under the control of a mysterious figure known as

  Bill, or the King, who identified their targets. And, as I say: there’s

  nothing in the least bit metaphoric about schizophrenese – unlike,

  say, classical Persian … Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing

  there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in

  that grass, the world is too full to talk about … It’s perhaps difficult

  for us to understand quite how central the poetry of Jelal al-Din

  Mohammed Rumi was to Iranians of Amir Ali al-Jabbar’s generation

  – he once told Jonathan he couldn’t remember ever visiting

  the mosque as a child, whereas classical Persian was taught daily,

  and mostly through the medium of the works of Shams Tabrizi.

  Shams, the Sufi mystic, threw Rumi’s scholarly works into a pool of

  water … Bonnie! Bon-nie! Oh, you ridiculous hound! but when the

  poet retrieved them they were still dry. I bet you wish the same

  would be true of your mobile phone, once you fished it out of the