The Book of Dave

by Will Self

  The mushers had been ordinary Hamsters – dads with kiddies of their own. The Drivers were queers – men who had no desire to father children. Such a strange inclination, which, if known at all on Ham, was suppressed, made these dävines still more alien and imposing to the simple peasants.

  If little Sy was disposed to give any credence to his mother's tales, then it was only a semi-belief. For every fourth day Changeover would come, and he'd be sent across the stream with his cousins to stop at the daddies' gaffs. Here a rigid Dävinanity held sway: the runs and the points were ceaselessly called over whenever the dads were not at work or amusing themselves with the opares. For little Symun – as much as for the other kids, who were not so exposed to the ancient lore – their mummies' influence was eclipsed entirely. It was as if when they were with their daddies the kids were other people altogether, with different natures, different likes, different fares even. Yet none more so than Symun, because, while the other kids ran to their daddies at Changeover, he had no dad of his own. Peet Dévúsh had fallen from the Sentrul Stac to his death before his only son was born, so Symun was the lad of all the dads, making him still more of a daddies' boy when he was under their care and control.

  Although the last Driver to be dropped off on Ham had been picked up five years before Symun was born, his influence remained strong among the dads. The most dävine among them would not talk or look at the womenfolk, and avowed that they did not even recognize the mummies of their own kids. Had these fanatics prevailed, they would have wrapped all the mummies up in their cloakyfings from top to toe. If the dads were to be believed – especially the two or three of them who could read – the Book was all the understanding any Hamster needed of anything. The Book stood outside of the seasons and of the years. What Dave had described he had also foretold, and what he had seen in his own era would come again – for it had never truly gone. Dave's New London was all around them, trapped in the zones and the reef, a hidden yet still tangible world. Just as the roots of the herb pilewort resembled piles and so were good for the treatment of this malady, so the Daveworks were tiny pictures and fragmented legends of a transcendent city of Dave – Dave the Dad and Carl the Lost Boy – that had been deposited there, by Dave, at the MadeinChina. The problem for the Hamsters was not to build a New London but only to prove themselves worthy of realizing it by their Knowledge.

  In the time of the last Driver all Daveworks had been rejected as toyist, and the practice of garlanding the gaffs, wayside shrines, the island's pedalo – and indeed themselves – with the plastic amulets had been forbidden. The mummies – who were, of course, denied the rituals of the Shelter – continued to believe in the ancient lore. Their Knowledge was of the Mutha, not Chelle, and of the lost Ham, rather than the Lost Boy. Denied their kids for half of each blob, they cleaved to the motos, and they looked to the knee woman and her anointing for their absolution.

  As the years passed the less dävine of the dads allowed their faith, once more, to become softened by their temperate and isolate home. Even the Guvnor, Dave Brudi, began to speculate on such things. In his own youth he had travelled to Chil, and he told Symun that the giants' ruins were greater in their density here on Ham than in any other part of Ing; and, try as he might, he could not help but give credence to the legend that this was because the Book had been found, as he put it, rì ear on Am.

  Symun Dévúsh grew to dadhood. He was a charismatic young bloke, attractive to both sexes – taller than his peers, finer boned, more open of countenance. His fingers were quick and dextrous, his eyes blue and dancing. His light beard was golden and curly, while the Hamsters' barnets were mostly a lank, dun brown. If there had been any reflective surface on Ham besides still water and dull irony, Symun might have been vain; as it was, he was aware of his appeal to others, without knowing precisely what it consisted of. Although he was popular with his posse and a good holder of the Book, there could never be any question of Symun reaching the first cab of the Shelter. He was an orphan, his mummy the knee woman. This meant that, unlike his best mate, Fred Ridmun, he was destined to be always a waver-upper, never the fare.

  The autumn he and Fred turned fourteen, the two lads changed over for the last time and took their permanent place in the dads' gaffs. Then a peculiar thing happened to Sy. While he was still growing up he had never thought to question any of the kids about what they felt at Changeover – mummytime was for mummies, daddy time for daddies. He knew that, like him, they left their mummyselves on the east bank of the stream and that even their most recent memories of cuddleup and snuggledown were as half-remembered dreams.

  Yet, when he changed over for the last time Symun Deviish took his mummyself with him – not entire but enough of it for him to feel marked out from the other Hamstermen. Unlike Fred, Sy couldn't prevent himself from looking at the mummies and kids when he saw them together – he even had eyes for the old boilers. Fred noticed it and teased him, saying, If U wanna lookit byrds, vares plenny uv opares on vis syde uv ve streem. Although Sy became more circumspect, Effi noticed his gaze as well, and when she returned it, Sy saw in turn that she knew what had happened, she understood what she had done by seeding his fertile imagination with such potent lore. She smiled at him often and strangely. However, he couldn't detect much love in these smiles, only fear.

  – Eyem gonna go onna bí! Symun called to the rest of the gang, C if vairs anyfing bettah ovah vair!

  And Fred called back:

  – Yeah, orlrì, but nó 2 fa.

  – Eye ear yer, Symun called back, while to himself he said, Sillë gí.

  He shouldered his mattock and pushed his way between two banks of pricklebush that scratched him through his shirt. It was an overcast day in SEP and a year since Symun's Changeover. Foggy rags snagged at the soaking foliage and the screenwasher was on. This was good weather for gathering building material, the soil loose and yielding. If they found a pile of brickwork, beat back the undergrowth, then wedged and wielded their mattocks efficiently, the morta would crumble away and the individual bricks tumble from the earth – Dave's bounty for the young dads of Ham.

  At Council that first tariff the five young dads had asked if they could go to the edge of the Ferbiddun Zön and fetch some brick to repair the pedalo gaff. It took most of the rest of the tariff for consensus to emerge, for each of the nine older dads had a view, and they all had tremendous affection for the sound of their own voices. There were moto gibbets to be built, fowling equipment to be repaired, the pedalo needed caulking – however, eventually permission was given. It mattered that it was Fred Ridmun's idea. The whole community understood that despite Fred's youth he would be the new Guvnor once Dave Brudi was dead, and the way the old dad retched and hawked blood that couldn't be far off. It was an important liberty for the five to be alone together for a shift. In the next year duty would bear down still more heavily upon them. Caff Funch, old Benni's daughter, was already knocked up by Fred – more of them would become dads soon enough. Meanwhile the older generation was passing into the shadows. Ham, as was the way every thirty years or so, stood on the cusp.

  The posse had worked hard and soon amassed sufficient brick, so Sy's desire to press further into the zone wasn't governed by any necessity. The impulse puzzled him – he felt the place's aura as strongly as any of his companions did – perhaps even more. He had been among the most enthusiastic of the Hamsters when the bounds of the zone had been beaten that buddout. He had lashed at the sawleaf and fireweed with such frenzy that the granddads had muttered among themselves: Eye rekkun ees earin Dave on iz interkom. Now, the impulse to go further in, further than he had ever ventured before, was provoked as much by the need to be alone with his secret mummyness as by any thought of what he might find there.

  Beyond the clearing in which Symun found himself the true zone began. The yellow-flowering pricklebush was the plant of the zone margin; in the interior it ceded to glossy-leafed rhodies that clambered over the hypogean brickwork, cracking it with their wood
y roots. These dense shrubs had enormous white flowers, exuding a heady aroma that kept the insects away from the zone. In turn, there was nothing for the landfowl to eat – not that there were many of these on Ham anyway, certainly compared to Chil or the rest of Ing. Only handfuls of toms and bobs nested on the island, together with the ubiquitous flying rats.

  An occasional green ringneck whirred over Symun's head, and he could hear, higher up in the clouds, the unceasing lament of the gulls. At ground level the zone was eerily quiet – even the voices of his mates, scant paces away, sounded muffled and distant. The motos also found rhodies unpalatable, while in the very heart of the zone there were Utrees poisonous to them. The granddads also claimed that the rats – which the motos kept down elsewhere on Ham – had colonies deep in the zone, vast and labyrinthine nests from which they would emerge to gnaw to the bone any Hamster fool enough to breach taboo. Symun doubted this – what could such rat colonies live on? There was no wheatie hereabouts, and, while gulls nested on the rocky bluffs of the eastern shore, even massed rats were no match for aggressive oilgulls and blackwings. Besides, posses of Hamstermen often went along these bluffs, netting prettybeaks in season; if there were rats there he would have seen them for himself. No, the rat colonies were intended to frighten off anyone brave or foolhardy enough to penetrate too far into the zone; they were part of the mystique of the place.

  As if the zone needed any more mystique – to Symun it was thickly permeated by Dave's prophecies of the world that had been and the world that would come again. He pushed on past the thicket, feeling the waxy rhodie leaves cool and damp on his exposed arms. The cries of his companions came again as Symun shouldered his way on into the zone, but he ignored them. Another ringneck flew whirring overhead in a greenish blur – and he took this to be a good omen, an excuse to push on still further.

  After another hundred paces Symun sat down on a mound and lowered his head between his knees. He breathed deeply, inhaling the atmosphere of the place, its brooding silence redolent of ancient abandonment. Muttering to himself he scrabbled in the mud: Vare ass 2 B sum, vare awlways iz, awl U gotta do iz dig. Sure enough, he soon exposed a corner of brickwork encrusted with a rough rind of morta. Holding his mattock close to its blade, slowly and deliberately Symun bludgeoned the earth, until the beginnings of a substantial course were revealed. London bricks: the very stuff of Dave, created by Him, the material that old London had been built from and out of which New London was rising once more – or so Mister Greaves assured them. When the Hamstermen dug up courses of these sacred artefacts from the undergrowth, most were too cracked and weathered to be of use. However, if they broke off the outer layer there were almost always one or two inside that retained their vivid redness, their sharp edges and their incised legend: LONDON BRICK.

  Here, alone, deep in the Ferbiddun Zön for the first time in his life, Symun Dévúsh allowed what had, up until now, been only stray intuitions and inchoate thoughts to coalesce. How could it be, he wondered, that his mummy's account of Ham and that of the dävine dads were both true? Where the other Hamstermen remained credulous, he sensed a profound jibing between the old natural religion of the island and the doctrine of the Book. What was the truth? The answer – if there were one – must lie here.

  Then Symun heard a rustling in the bushes behind him and leaped to his feet, staring wildly about at the rhodies. Scuttling into his fevered mind came all the sharp-toothed fears that infested the zone, protecting its secrets. Symun's curiosity vanished, swallowed up by terror – he'd been crazy to stray this far in, he must get out. His throat constricted, his breath bulged in his lungs, he felt himself losing consciousness. Then, a blunt, pink muzzle parted the glossy leaves and he was staring straight into the baby-blue eyes of Champ.

  – Thy-mun, sing-songed the moto, Thy-mun, wanna wawwow wiv me?

  Symun let out a peal of delighted laughter and lunged forward to embrace the beast's great bristly head. It was like this, still hugging, that the two of them emerged from the thick undergrowth of the zone a few units later. Man and moto, together under the suspicious eyes of the other young Hamstermen, who were resting on their mattocks, the pile of newly mined bricks at their bare feet.

  – U bin a wyle, Sy, said Fred Ridmun, his narrow grey eyes piercing under his ragged fringe.

  – An nuffing much 2 show 4 í neevah, put in Ozzi Bulluk, who stood with his brawny red arms held loosely at his sides. As ever Ozzi looked ready for a fight. If any Hamster was too long alone it caused disquiet – and to seek solitude within the zone was more subversive than eccentric.

  At first tariff of the next day the Council of Ham assembled. It was a breezy autumnal day, the clouds scudding across the screen, the foglamp casting an ever-mutating pattern on the tawny land. Wrapped in their cloakyfings, the four granddads propped themselves upon the highest piles of bricks. These greybeards were all bent and pained, racked by all the cracked bones and wrenched muscles they'd acquired in a lifetime of risky endeavour. The four older dads took their positions sitting on lower piles, while the seven of their lads who were of an age to join in deliberations lay at their feet, sprawled on the turf by a smouldering fire. It was only three months since the Hack's party had left the island and there were still a few fags and plenty of gum to go round, so the granddads puffed and squinted out from the drifting smoke with benign, abstracted expressions.

  – Yeah, wen we wuz vair vay layd anifyng we wannid on uz, said Ozmun Bulluk, who was standing in for Dave Brudi and so led the discussion. Eye tel U wot, vo, vey wuz ryte moodë if we gayv vair opares ve wunceovah. Ozmun settled back on his pile, stroking his thick, reddish-brown beard with an equally hairy hand. He was a heavy-set dad, quick to anger like all the Bulluks. When he was shouting – which was often – spittle flecked his beard. Yet he cooled as fast as he heated – and for a granddad was unusually tolerant.

  – Meenin? his son, Ozzi, queried.

  – Meenin booze, fagz, anifyng á awl. Eye diddun fancee vair byrds much ennëway, dodji if U ask me, awl spillinahtuv vair cloff dressis.

  – W-w-wots cloff? stuttered Sid Brudi, one wiry finger twining his ginger hair, his freckled face full of stupid awe.

  – Yeah, wel, nah yer Lundun cloff iz prittë bluddë smart, Eyel grant yer, said Ozmun, settling into his yarn. Seams í cums from viss bush, rì, iss a froot aw sumffing, sorta wyte bawl uv fluff, wych cums in bì ferry from dahn souf. Ennë wä, vey gé a bit uv vis geer an sorta teese í aht, lyke cardin vool, rì?

  – O Dave! Symun suddenly exclaimed. U gonna go on lyke vis awl fiikkin day! He spat his gum out and stood up. Ow mennë tymes av Eye erred all vis bollox abaht Chil – iss gotta B a fouzand aw maw. Eyev erred abaht vair cloff, Eyev erred abaht vair traynors an vair barnets, an vair beefansemis an vair fukkin opares. Wot Eye wanna no iz, wy didunchew ask em abaht fishin aw farmin, or sumffing – anifyng vat myte B an urna eer on Am!

  The other dads coughed and stared pointedly at the ground. They waited for Ozmun to administer a drubbing – which he duly did, leaning down from his pile and striking Symun hard with his cudgel. Symun shook more with the effort of repressing his fury than with the pain. He groped for his discarded gum, stuck it back in his cheek, then sat cross-legged, staring out through the blisterweed at the lagoon, with its glaucous tinge of subsurface algae.

  – Sorrë, Dad, he said to Ozmun, Eye juss sorta lost í.

  – Vass orlrì, Ozmun replied, í appuns.

  Then he resumed his account of the voyage the Hamstermen had made to Wyc, to the Bouncy Castle of the Lawyer of Chil – a journey that had taken place over thirty years before, when Ozmun was himself a young dad of twenty-three. This was the last time the Hamstermen had visited Chil as a group. Isolated individuals had been taken away by the Hack, either because of wrongdoing, or because they were opares fancied by one of his party. However, these emigrants never sent back any news of the outside world; for that the Hamsters had to depend on the Chilmen, and they were usually too ill and too overawed by
the strangeness of the island to be effective informers.

  Over the years that he had been Hack, Mister Greaves himself had been reluctant to remedy the islanders' deficiency. His own view was a conflicted one. To begin with he considered that the business of the island, ensuring its continuing productivity of moto oil and seafowl feathers, would be impaired if the Hamsters understood the commercial value of their products. However, latterly, as the value of these products declined in the rest of Ing, and Mister Greaves found himself having to subsidize his own tenants some years, he inclined to the view that the Hamsters' ignorance was a large part of what made them the happy, healthful, seemingly naturally dävine folk they were.

  Furthermore, the Hamsters' hunger for information was difficult to assuage, so utterly ignorant were they of the world beyond their shores. The last King of Ing of whom Ozmun and his contemporaries had heard was David I, who was on the throne at London in the time of their own granddads. Try as he might, Mister Greaves could not convince them that this monarch was long dead, for the meter was not well calibrated within them. As for the last Driver, while he had spent seventeen years among the Hamsters, his vocation had been to awaken them to the world to come, not enlighten them as to their place in this one.

  So this decades-old visit to Chil, which had lasted a scant few blobs, remained the most comprehensive picture the Hamstermen had of the lands beyond. In the intervening years, at Council after Council, its tapestry had been picked over and over again, until in some parts it was worn threadbare, while in others it had been fancifully embroidered. Although not much, for the Hamstermen had encountered a peculiar fact about themselves when they tied their pedalo up to the landing stage at Wyc, and, doffing their caps, shuffled into the awesome presence of their Lawd. This was, that while when they left their own island they had spoken in their usual, competitive babble, by the time they came to address the Lawyer of Chil they found that they spoke in complete unison: twelve dads with a single, polyphonic voice. This curious unanimity – born, perhaps, of the intense harmoniousness of their secluded lives – extended to their vivid impressions of this outer world, so that they also recalled it as one, in a sole, unanimous remembering.