by Geoff Ryman
Billy smiled too. ‘The nicest for the nicest,’ he said.
Michael went into the bathroom as himself and came out with Tarzan. He wore Tarzan, Tarzan was his costume. Weissmüller loomed over him, loose-limbed, brown, sprawling, barefoot. Michael wore a concealing leopard skin that crossed his chest and hid his belly, as if he were plump. If anyone asked he would say he had come as Boy.
Billy looked a bit confused. ‘Two herbal teas, then.’
‘Yes, thank you.’
Tarzan approved. ‘Tea good. Tea come from jungle.’
‘This is … uh … Johnny,’ Michael explained.
‘Hello Johnny.’ Billy was young enough that a beautiful body was nothing special. But he kept glancing back towards the front door. How did this person get in?
‘Woman pretty,’ said Tarzan. ‘Nice moustache.’
There was a broad staircase leading upstairs. The host must have heard voices, for suddenly he descended. He was a huge man, big in every direction, with a pregnant potbelly and a devilish goatee. He wore a sari, and from out of his back, four extra blue papier-mâché arms.
Tarzan drew his hunting knife.
‘Hello, hello, and welcome. I am Zoltan … and you?’ He extended a hand towards the knife. He had style.
‘Tarzan. Boy,’ growled Johnny, hand on knife. Zoltan’s smile thinned somewhat.
‘Well, I am Kali. For the evening.’ Hungarian was the lightest possible seasoning in the thick soup of his Oxbridge accent.
Michael said who he was and his name seemed to evaporate even as he said it. He didn’t hear it himself. Tarzan was engaged in a traditional movie-monkey greeting, making Cheetah-like noises and sniffing Zoltan’s extra blue arms.
‘Will your friend keep this up all evening?’
‘Day and night,’ said Michael.
‘You’ve sought help for him, I hope.’
Michael said without thinking, ‘No, I love him just the way he is.’
‘There are some trees upstairs,’ said Zoltan, speaking to Tarzan as if to an idiot. ‘Figs. On the trees. You’ll like figs.’ He turned back to Michael. ‘Harry is the gardener, you’ll have to talk to him not me. Perhaps your friend would like to swing in them.’
It was a cue. Michael said thank you, and walked upstairs without his host, both of them grateful to be spared more conversation.
The room was full of mythology and mirrors: a sphinx in gold foil with turquoise eyebrows, or a fourteen-foot-high statue of Liz, portraits of the famous on mirrors so you could see yourself as them. Much of it was beautiful. Michael wished he had managed to stay the distance with Zoltan, this far at least. He would have liked to know more about the glass buddhas, the holographic eyes. One whole wall was clear glass, and beyond it, huge-leafed plants.
‘What a fantastic place,’ he said and sipped tea. Fancy Philip knowing someone who lived in a place like this. Michael wondered what other places Philip had visited without him. What else, indeed, did he not know about Philip?
Tarzan was unimpressed. ‘Crazy place,’ he said. ‘Boy go. Tarzan go.’
Why, wondered Michael, am I always playing somebody’s father, or somebody’s son?
‘We’ll stay for just a little while, OK?’
The room began to fill with people: ageing psychiatrists in beards; a filmmaker who had just done a documentary about Zoltan. As Michael approached them, summoning a smile, their eyes drifted off to his left or his right. A very nice woman from the corner shop wore a blue chiffon dress in folds and was far too butch to be intimidated by anything. Michael liked the look of her, and was grateful for fifteen minutes’ conversation.
‘Zoltan buys mangoes from me. They’re hard to get this time of year, and he’s very particular.’ She shook her head as if to say: you know what I mean. Her eyes gleamed up at Johnny.
There was a roar of greeting from downstairs and a sound of cheeks being kissed. An actor who was one of the glass faces had arrived. Zoltan whisked him up the stairs, holding his arm. ‘Everyone, Adam’s here!’
‘Oooh, Adam!’ said the shop owner with enthusiasm. She turned back to Michael with narrowed eyes. ‘He owes me money.’ She joined the surge forward.
Michael stood alone. I am here because of Phil, he remembered, to show him.
Phil arrived an hour late. He was wearing bandages and a headdress hung with daisy chains of decapitated dolls’ heads. He looked like a serial killer’s chandelier. It’s all right for me to try too hard, Michael thought: I’m a nerdy scientist out of my depth. But you are supposed to be an artist. You are supposed to be cool.
Michael met Phil’s new friend. At very first glance, there was not much to see. He was a skinny young man wearing a brown sweater with holes in it. There was something familiar about his face; maybe he was an actor.
‘This is Henry,’ Philip announced, his eyes flicking back and forth between him and Tarzan. The dolls’ heads kept clacking against each other.
Henry looked up. He had large brown eyes that engaged Michael directly with a pre-emptive warmth and kindness. The eyes seemed to say I know this can’t be easy for you, but hi anyway. They shook hands, and Henry chuckled. God, he was handsome. His smile was sweet and broad and his skin was perfect, very pale but with flushed pink cheeks and a complexion as unblemished as shaving foam.
‘Nice to meet you, Henry,’ Michael said. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Why?’ Henry asked. His voice was surprisingly resonant, rumbling.
‘For not being bullied into thinking you’ve got to keep up with the rich and outrageous.’
‘I don’t have any money,’ Henry said, and smiled and shrugged. Educated, Michael decided, old family, possibly dropped out. At a guess, I’d say you were the son of someone landed with a big farm in Norfolk, that you live in the country and possibly have a pair of tame jackdaws that sit on your shoulder.
Michael liked him. ‘I don’t think you’re the type that would dress up anyway.’
Henry gave a very gentle bow of acknowledgement. ‘Probably not, no.’
Michael fancied him. It was the same old mystery. Even Michael didn’t think Philip was good-looking, but his boyfriends were always gorgeous. I’m forever fancying your boyfriends, Phil. Michael felt a thin strain of regret for his old marriage.
‘Are you going to introduce me?’ Phil asked, nodding towards Johnny.
‘Him Tarzan,’ said Michael. ‘Me Boy.’
‘Is Tarzan a paedophile then?’
‘He’s my lover, if that’s what you’re asking.’ Michael kept his gaze steady and open. He found how little it mattered to him.
‘Does he speak?’ asked Phil, who suddenly looked frail.
‘Not much. He’s Romanian.’
Tarzan spoke. ‘Tarzan loves Mikey.’
‘I hope you and Mikey are very happy. Maybe you’ll have a chimp together. Incidentally, Mikey, Henry is my lover too.’
‘You couldn’t find a nicer one,’ said Michael. ‘Really. Lucky old you.’ Michael couldn’t help reaching out and clasping Henry’s arm. ‘He’s very nice.’
Philip stared back at him with the strangest expression in his eyes, ringed round with red: tense, resolved, heartstricken, angry. ‘Henry is an animal rights activist, Michael.’ He swept off.
Henry walked away backwards, holding out his arms as if to say sorry. Michael apologized to him. ‘Sorry if we embarrassed you.’ Henry shrugged his shoulders, which could have meant anything from nothing embarrasses me to sorry, I can’t hear you.
‘Tarzan not understand,’ said Tarzan, standing alone.
‘Angels wouldn’t,’ said Michael.
Well, he had come here in order to assist Phil in the wrecking of their marriage. If that was accomplished, was there any other reason for him to stay?
He worked his way slowly through the crowd to where the booze was being served. A woman in a beige dress, with beige hair and beige fingernails said, as he passed, ‘I found the colour scheme of that film so irritating. All those reds.
’ Her eyes trailed off to Michael’s left.
‘But Monica, it was in black and white!’
‘Oh, you know what I mean.’
It was strange. People looked distracted, even slightly out of balance, looking past him or around him. Michael began to be aware of something out of kilter, beyond his own unease.
The barman wore a turban and tossed the glass up in the air and caught it, like Tom Cruise, except that his eyes were fixed on something just to Michael’s left. Michael followed the barman’s gaze and finally understood.
People were staring past Michael at the same object. They were staring at Tarzan. The beige woman was intent, a cuddly woman carrying a tray kept turning in their direction, even the mango woman kept glancing through him. Michael himself was vapourware, but he was with the most overwhelming man in the room.
Right behind Johnny stood an old man. He was intent and pale and looked shaken as if he had seen a traffic accident. Cords of loose sinew hung down his neck. He wore a glass bow tie, blue with mirrors and a blue eye where the knot should be. He didn’t move, transfixed.
‘Hello,’ Michel said to him.
The old man’s face quavered like a flower in a breeze. Someone else out of balance. ‘It’s a miracle,’ the man insisted, as if someone had contradicted him.
Michael felt careless. ‘It is,’ he agreed.
‘It really is him,’ the old man said, in the hushed voice of someone visiting Chartres.
‘They’re both Romanian,’ said Michael. ‘Family resemblance.’ He realized he knew the old man from somewhere. Some old actor; some old impresario.
Very suddenly the old man wilted. He seemed to sink from the knees, and Michael had to catch him. There were further steps, a spiral staircase up to another floor. The old man shifted awkwardly like a collapsing ironing board. Michael lowered him down to sit on the steps. The old man took out an embroidered handkerchief.
‘Do you want some water?’ Michael asked.
‘Please,’ said the old man.
The turbaned bartender already had a glass of water ready. ‘Is your friend OK?’ he asked, American, concerned.
‘I don’t know. I think so,’ said Michael.
The old man was sweaty, his elegance outraged. He mopped his brow. Elegance was what he had left.
He took the water and sipped it, and sighed. ‘You keep thinking, you can just turn a corner, and you’ll find us all there, like we were.’ His rumpled old eyes suddenly went clear as if made out of glass. ‘Beautiful and at the height of our powers. Like all of you now. Tuh. It seems more real to me than this.’ He held up his hands. They were blue and crisp in patches and looked like melted candles. Eighty? Michael thought. Ninety?
The old eyes strayed back to Johnny. Johnny was standing tall, and still and distant, forgetful of himself. He was staring at the fig tree behind the glass wall.
‘Did you know him?’ Michael asked. ‘I mean, the real one?’
The old man shook his head, without moving his eyes. ‘Oh no. No. But I wanted to. People of my generation, you know we had never seen anything like it. For only a very few years, he was … It. A sensation. People don’t remember that now.’
He closed his eyes and shuddered. ‘The past is a chasm it’s as well not to look down,’ he said.
Michael sat next to him on the steps. ‘How old were you then?’
The old man’s eyes looked as if they ached. ‘I was twenty-two when I saw the first of his films. Of course in those days you thought you were the only one in the world, and so you dreamed. You know what I mean, I don’t have to spell it out. You lived in dreams, because you knew that you were a good person, or good enough, but you wanted things that everyone else said were evil. It was difficult. You ended up loving dreams.’
He shivered, gathering himself up. ‘You’ve been very kind,’ he said, and offered a hand. ‘I’m so sorry to have a been a nuisance. I used not to be. But age hits you, you know.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to meet him. His name is Johnny.’
A pause for about a beat. ‘It won’t embarrass him?’
‘I think you’ll find he is beyond embarrassment.’
Michael helped him stand up. The old man rose with a sudden fluidity that hinted at what he had been when young. ‘The terrible thing,’ he said, casually, as if making a general observation, ‘is that we feel more as we get older. Not less. The heart really ought to diminish along with everything else. Don’t you think?’
His eyes were ice-blue and not at all weak. At one time those eyes would have presided, gone flinty with the hard bargaining and constant politicking of putting on a show. He would have been cagey, cunning, enthusiastic, wise and probably indelibly handsome in an etiolated London theatrical way.
Without meaning to, Michael sketched with his own hands and eyes how the old man would have moved. In the joints of his hips, he embodied the way the old man moved now. Michael felt the bargain he had made with ageing, with the death of colleagues, the death of his world. Michael had seen that bargain collapse, because of him, because of the miracle.
Michael was moved by pity. He suddenly felt that something might be in his power. I know I can make them do what I want. Can I make them do it when I’m not there? With someone else? He stopped the old man and asked, in a low voice, ‘Do you know this place?’
‘Oh. Zoltan? He exhibits me as a piece of camp history, but it is good to receive invitations.’
‘I mean, do you know if there’s a bedroom. You can go there.’
The old face went limp, flesh as confused and blank as his understanding.
‘I mean,’ said Michael, ‘you and he could go there.’
‘What an extraordinary thing.’
Michael felt a full heart. Full of victory perhaps in part and also guilt for hurting Phil, but full of what … abundance, too. These episodes, wherever they came from, were an abundance, a superabundance that ached to be shared.
I create them, Michael thought. I make them. He told Johnny what he wanted him to do.
Tarzan turned and climbed the steps, perhaps without even knowing why. Michael hoisted the old man around and helped him up the steps. Outside the bedroom door, the old man turned still in disbelief, and Michael had to give him a gentle shove. Then Michael stood guard. He sat on the top step, looking over a party at which he did not belong. He wished that he smoked. At least smoking would have occupied his hands.
Someone dragged open the big glass doors to clear the air, and the party moved out into the sheltered garden. Suddenly you could hear air move in trees.
He gave them twenty minutes.
Then the old man blurted out of the bedroom doorway like a coltish teenager. His glass tie was askew; his smile was wet and broad. It was a grin. He looked foxed, as if a shaft of God-light had blazed its way back into his life.
Michael had time to feel happy for him.
Then he saw Tarzan’s face. Tarzan was innocent no longer.
His face had curdled with disgust and outrage. His look said to Michael: I want to kill you.
He gave one animal growl and then hurled himself over the banister of the landing. People screamed. Tarzan landed catlike on his four padded feet. Then he jumped up onto the bar, bounded over the heads of the people.
Don’t hurt anyone! Michael commanded.
Tarzan jumped up into the fig tree, and gave one long backward yodel, the Tarzan cry. He scampered up the branches. The main trunk bent under his weight, then sprang back and he leapt up and over the brick wall. It was as if he were suspended for just one moment, against the stars.
Then he sank from view. Everyone in the room applauded.
Michael tried to leave.
‘But he was magnificent! Who was he?’ the beige woman asked. Michael thrust his way past her and through the crowd.
Billy stood back for him at the head of the stairs. He knew something was wrong. ‘What happened?’ he asked, walking with Michael down to the kitchen.
‘I made h
im do something,’ said Michael, and heard his own voice: shaken, sick at heart.
Billy’s high heels made a sound like Carmen Miranda, as he ran on ahead to fetch Michael’s coat.
‘Does he have any other clothes?’ Billy asked. ‘He’ll freeze out there.’
Michael stopped and turned and faced him. ‘He’s the real thing, OK? He’s not in costume.’
Michael stumbled out the front door. In the brick street, he could hear the murmuring of the party. It was cold and he felt lumpen and foolish in his leopard skin. It was a bleak place of old brick warehouses and a single closed pub with lights on and street lamps throbbing yellow like the aftermath of a burglary.
Yes, I can make them do what I want. I can violate them.
‘I’m sorry,’ Michael said, to the shadows and street lights. ‘Johnny? I’m sorry.’
‘Not Johnny,’ said a voice. It was fierce with pain, affirmation. ‘Tarzan. Me Tarzan.’
Michael stood and waited. He could see nothing. He walked forward, out of the light, to the side of the house, in shadow. Tarzan stood there. He hugged his arms and shivered and the top of his head was pressed against the wall.
‘I’m sorry,’ Michael said again.
Tarzan threw off his hand. ‘Tarzan want woman,’ he said, accusing.
Michael had made Tarzan let himself be sucked off by an 88-year-old man. It would have been the first time he had had sex, the first time in his fictional universe that sex had ever been present. Love for him had been sexless: kindness, tickling and caresses. It had been the sensuality of childhood. Michael felt the full crushing weight of what he had done.
The physical reality of sex is always a jolt. How much worse if it is the wrong gender, with loose jaws and crumpled flesh.
‘Sick. Old. Man,’ said Tarzan. All three things were out of kilter.
‘He loved you,’ Michael tried to explain.
Tarzan snarled in rejection. That? That was not love.
‘It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know.’
Johnny glowered at him. ‘You want that too.’
This was pushing certain buttons from Michael’s past. Those buttons pushed deep. ‘I didn’t touch you. I left you as you were. Did … did you want to do anything with me?’
