The Book of Dave

by Will Self

  Benny's death changed Dave the way a father's should, for, like so many families, the Rudmans were wrongly geared, the slow maturation of this generation and the speedy ageing of the last leaving them out of sync. In his grief Dave saw clearly the beauty of his son and the massive forbearance of his wife. He apologized, he curbed his resentment – he did what was necessary to save the marriage for the next few years, so that when it failed it could do so spectacularly. They let go of the bovine au pair. Dave dropped her at Euston and off she clopped on pointy hoofs, fresh meat for an unsavoury boyfriend in Droitwich.

  Carl became Dave's main fare. It made sense: Michelle was earning four times what he could. Leave on left Fitzjohn's Avenue … Comply Finchley Road … Comply Avenue Road … Left Adelaide Road … Dave drove Carl to swimming pools where they squirmed in the urinary waters. Leave on left Kensington Gore … Right Queen's Gate … Left Cromwell Road. He drove the kid to museums, where they goggled at animatronic dinosaurs. He drove him to playground after playground after playground, where they swung and slid and see-sawed. Boarding the roundabout, Dave pushed it with one foot on the rubberized surround – 'eek-eek, eek-eek, eek-eek', building up speed until the little boy was screaming with intoxication. Feeling his blood pound in his temples, Dave leaned back and watched as the clouds overhead revolved on the axis that was him.

  Yes, he was at the centre of it all, and the Knowledge was Dave's Kaddish for his grandfather as well as his son's birthright. It named the God of the city, and prayed that His Kingdom be established, a New London, run by run, point by point. 'I'm sorry for your loss,' people said, but how could Benny Cohen, of all people, have got lost? It was inconceivable to Dave that even when dead his granddad would be disorientated.

  In the dark of winter Dave succumbed to depression, a winding down, the numb indifference of a mind that couldn't stumble … to … the … next … thought. Each morning the comb had a full head of hair, while this dumb slaphead looked back at Dave from the mirror. 'Get out,' Michelle urged him. 'Go do something anything. See your mates, get pissed – I don't care.' Yet Dave couldn't; instead he watched TV, or hobbled up Fleet Road to Two Worlds, where he sat reading the Daily Express while Faisal dished up curry. Every week or so Aunt Gladys called: 'Come dahn the Tabbanakcle wiv me,' she urged. 'It'll make you feel better.' Eventually, to get her off his back, he did.

  He picked her up in Leytonstone early on a wintry Sunday morning, and they drove across town to South Kensington with the Fairway's wipers sucking bits of road from the aqueous city. Gladys sat bolt upright in the middle of the rear seat – she wanted to go back twice to check that the cats were alright, but Dave wouldn't let her. He must have passed the Mormon Tabernacle a thousand times or more since he got his badge – Exhibition Road was on the tourist loop – but he'd never noticed its elegant golden spire or smooth stone facade.

  They were late and the service had begun, so they stood waiting in a vestibule decorated with a panorama of Mormon life. A Nordic baby was born and raised. He studied, married, was gifted with his own baby. The family grew as the Mormon did construction work, then more work – now white collar. In old age the snowy-haired Saint, fulfilled, instructed a granddaughter, before dying a peaceful death on white pillows. The soft hands of a sky god reached down to gather him up. The Mormon go-round was lived out in a city of wide boulevards and spacious, modern dwellings. The Mormon Knowledge was a simple grid pattern, while beyond the 'burbs green hills rose to bluey mountains. Heaven was a ski resort in the Rockies.

  An apple-cheeked Mormon youth came over to where Dave and Gladys stood and offered them each a plate of white bread chunks and a tiny beaker of water. If this was the Saints' sacrament, their Saviour's body was bland, his blood tasteless. When the double doors to the church eventually swung open and the latecomers were admitted, they found seats among frumpy Mormon families. The men's suits were a shade too antiquated, the women's dresses three inches too long. The children were very well scrubbed.

  From a blond wood lectern, under the exposed engine of organ pipes, a big-framed man with a blond crewcut and the solid, leisurely hands of an engineer was preaching a sermon on marriage and family values. 'As a man and a woman's spirit are ee-tur-naal,' he nasalled, 'so may the family's spirit become ee-tur-naal through obedience to the laws and principles.' Tall windows sliced with vertical louvres illumined the gently smiling Elders. The preacher continued: 'One of the most beautiful of the principles is marriage "for time and eternity", through this sacred covenant and principle wo-orthy couples may be joined together not just 'til death but for-evah.' Strange things were happening in the back alleys of Dave Rudman's consciousness. He stared around at the detoxified Mormons and gulped down his own tarry cud. No booze, no fags, no coffee or tea … They look good on it … He noted that the children were neither sinisterly attentive nor disrespectfully unruly. They're listening … He glanced sideways at Gladys: she was wholly absorbed in the service, her eyes clear, her expression bright – among the Saints her dowdiness was not out of place. She has found something, she's not kidding . . .

  The preacher held up a D of metal. 'This is a caa-raa-bin-eer,' he drawled. 'One of ma hobbies is mountaineering and I use these little things all the time to attach ma-self to a rope. Through the power of the priesthood, families can be linked and then sealed. The only people who can unlock them are you and me. If we don't honour our co-mitt-ments, we unlock them; if we don't take our troubles to our bishop, we unlock them; if we don't tithe or attend church meetings, we unlock them.' He cast the metal metaphor to one side, and it fell on a desk with a 'clack'. 'Observe family prayer,' said the devout mountaineer, 'observe a family home evening and family scripture study and our links will remain sealed.'

  They sang a hymn without organ accompaniment, and the women kept time by raising their forearms up and down … yanking slot machines. Dave thought back to the one or two church services he'd attended with his father. Paul Rudman had dragged his three children along to suburban churches with sparse congregations out of a perverse need to acquaint them with a faith that he lacked but had been born into. Blokes in white dresses sortuv singing … and wandering about. . . Stifling boredom, fidgeting so intense that, aged nine, Dave had thought his entire hand would disappear up his nose. On the rare occasions Benny had taken him to shul it had been different yet the same. A beardie-weirdo in black robes banging on in Hebrew, while the Jewish men discussed the price of fish. He wasn't as bored – but the religion was a pointless drone, faith muzak.

  The preacher introduced the missionaries, neatly pressed young men and women who smiled and bobbed. 'These are but a few of the 60,000 of our brothers and sisters who are carrying the good news of Joseph Smith's revelation . . .' Joseph Smith, that's the geezer who found the book. Except it wasn't a book, was it . . . Dave clawed in his memory. No, it was golden tablets and he dug 'em up. Great stack of metal fucking tablets that he copied out before this angel took 'em back. 'Coz it stands to reason that no one but Smithy ever clapped eyes on the things. What a load of cobblers – still, you gotta give this lot credit for being getters …

  They wouldn't get Dave Rudman, though. After the service and the announcements the congregation split into groups for scriptural study. Dave had had enough. He arranged to pick Gladys up in an hour and drove down to South Kensington. He left the cab on a rank and went into Dino's. Here he ate a pizza and drank a Coke. Religion … any fucking religion whatever … it ain't for me . . .

  9

  The Lawyer of Chil

  Kipper 523-4 AD

  Heaving up from the fierce grip of the frothy surge, streaming freezing curry water, the motos suckered on to slick stone with their flanges, and their fingers and toes scrabbled for purchase. In that moment, poised between elements, they looked more at home in the heavy swell. Then they were wading in the shallows, mounting the jumble of shattered crete and twisted irony which was Nimar.

  The first two beasts were slung about their thick necks with changingbag
s, moto oil tanks and evian skins. As they shook the water from their bristly coats, these banged and batted their jonckheeres. The second pair of motos were yet more encumbered, for clinging to their folds with white hands were drenched scraps of humanity, the fugitives, the flyers. Antonë Böm and his pupil Carl Dévúsh. They slithered off and dropped to the ground. The northeast wind honed its knife edge on their exposed flesh. The thick coat of moto oil they'd both slathered on before setting off from Ham had preserved them from the worst of the cold – without it they would have been dead. The northern sound was far colder than the placid waters of the lagoon, and half a tariff in the heaving, open water had frozen them to the marrow. Man and lad were too stunned by their passage to speak, and it was the motos who, gathering round, licked them with their leathery tongues and so roused them to self-preservation. G-g-get yer kit orf, Carl urged Antonë, get í orf!

  Peeled, one was a whittled sapling, the other a warty puffball – their genitals were as small as motos'. Bloke and boy slapped at one another with open hands, bringing blood to the surface of their skin in pinkish blooms. Then they lay down on a flat crete slab and were bracketed by Sweetë and Hunnë. The floppy dugs and sagging tanks of the motos enfolded the two humans and the heat surged from them.

  When they were dry Carl and Böm draped themselves in cloakyfings pulled from their bundles and thankfully still dry. Antonë got out his lighter, and with kindling gathered from the underbrush beyond the outcropping Carl started a fire between the rocks. They spread out their jeans and carcoats to steam in its heat. Arncha wurryd baht vat Ió seein ve smoke? Carl asked. No, his mentor replied, you know as well as I that it will take the dads a long time before they decide on any course of action, and with the Driver injured they will not have his direction to rely on.

  While pursuit exercised Carl, the Beastlyman bothered him still more. Antonë had a bottle of jack and some fags – Carl was amazed to see such luxuries, yet even while swigging and puffing, he cast fearful eyes towards the teetering piles of brick and twisted limbs of irony, expecting the Beastlyman's head to pop up, his mouth gaping, his stump of tongue waggling, uttering his dreadful gargling cries. But there was no sound save for the plash of the waves and no movement except the gulls skimming by and surveying the intruders with their yellow eyes.

  The motos were quite unmoved by their transition beyond Ham. Comfy in their cosy child-worlds, they had little recollection of the traumatic past and no thought for the hazardous future. When Carl was convinced that the Beastlyman was absent, he told them they might forage what they pleased. They picked their way between the rocks into the undergrowth, where they browsed spiky chrissy-leaf and waxy rhodies. Nerved up by fags, warmed by the booze, Carl told Antonë of his anxieties. How might they go on from here? Where would they go – and, more importantly, who would they be? Ignorant that he was, even Carl knew that no gafferless dad might travel at liberty in Ing.

  Böm had, it transpired, given all these matters considerable thought:

  – We must march by night, avoiding all human habitation – for the motos would terrify and amaze any Chilmen we met, and they would alert the Lawyer's chaps. We must disguise ourselves – I shall be a stalker, returning from the southern isles where I've been bringing the Wheel to ignorant folk. You will be my butterboy, on your way to London to make your final appearances. See here – he pulled the appropriate robes, mirrors and trainers from his changingbag – I've got the right clobber.

  Carl fingered the garments reluctantly – the soft, cotton pile felt alien after Ham bubbery. The mirror he let fall to the ground with a shudder. Eye – Eye doan fink –

  Carl, Carl! Böm said, grasping his hand, we must do this chellish thing, we must! Otherwise we have no hope of travelling unmolested – this is a far harsher climate than that of Ham! Your mummy and granny risked their all by sewing us this stuff – when we reach the mainland of Chil, we must wear it. And Carl, from now on we speak in Arpee only, even between ourselves. In this way our imposture may – Dave grant us – become more natural.

  Antonë showed Carl the A2Z and the traficmaster he'd managed to get hold of. I have determined on this route, he said, however, there are two further stretches of open water before we reach the main island of Chil. Once we're across them, perilous as they are, the real dangers begin. They sat, contemplating the way ahead while staring across the sound at Ham. Dave powered up his demister – 1, 2, 3 – and the clouds swept up into a screen that tinted first grey, then mauve, then violet, before night fell like a black cloth cast over the world. They kept the fire banked up against the cold night air and coaxed the motos to lie so that their bodies would block the clefts in the surrounding rocks. They chewed on curried moto meat washed down with jack and evian. Eventually, exhausted as much by foreboding as by the crossing, Carl and Antonë fell into an uneasy slumber.

  Carl woke at first tariff – the foglamp was coming on in a banded screen. Long shadows striped the rubble, and the ubiquitous gulls were perched on bricks, crete – even the sleeping motos. Carl sat up and the rime on his duvet crackled. The noise startled the Beastlyman, whose hairy head hung above the rocks. He gargled, Graaarghlraarr. Carl shot upright. Tonë! he cried, iss im! Böm roused at once, and together they confronted the grim apparition. The Beastlyman was still wilder than Carl remembered, the greasy hanks of his hair strung with shells and bones, his cloakyfing a rag, his emaciated body covered in welts and bruises. W-ware2 guv, Carl said hesitantly. The Beastlyman gargled again – Hurrarghrerh – then swarmed over the rocks and fell on Sweetë's neck. His hands went to her neck folds, and his battered, weathered face butted the moto's pink muzzle. Instinctively, Carl started up and pulled the skinny wretch off the moped. The Beastlyman grovelled before the lad, a stick of arm thrown across his fanatic eyes. Gedderwä U! Carl cried. Gedderwä U, Beestlimun! The starveling scuttled into the bushes. When the commotion of the seafowl had died down, Sweetë could be heard lisping, Eeth nó beethlimun – eeth nithemun.

  They packed up their changingbags, filled a moto bladder with fresh evian and, loading the motos, made ready to leave Nimar. As they were on the point of moving off, the Beastlyman came back and tried to gain their attention by darting at them, then away towards a mound of rubble that Carl realized was his gaff. The fugitives ignored him until eventually the Beastlyman came right up to Carl, grabbing his arm he tried to pull him in the direction of his hovel. I wouldn't go with him, Antonë said, you don't know what he might have in there.

  Carl, beset by curiosity, was on the verge of ignoring this injunction, when the Beastlyman let go of his arm and darted across to where Antonë stood, inscribing phonics. The Beastlyman tried to grab both notebook and biro. That's enough! Böm cried, pushing him away. We must go, Carl, now. We must go in good order, and you must speak Arpee. If we don't go now we are doomed! With that he slapped Hunnë's withers and the moto started, then clambered over the rocks. Sighing heavily, Carl hearkened to this manifest good sense. He slung the changingbags around Tyga's neck, grabbed his neck folds and followed on behind. So it was that the journey to London began, in haste and in sadness: the Beastlyman left lying at Nimar, gulls lunging down to peck at him, his black mouth open, his red nubbin of tongue struggling to form the most significant words.

  The underbrush of Barn was far thicker than the most impenetrable portions of the Perg and Norfend. The fugitives found themselves driven back by dense pricklebush, whippystalk and rhodies. They heard rats scuttling away at their approach, and the gulls followed them from Nimar, harrying the motos. To cut a trail was impossible without sharp tools, which they lacked. The motos, especially Sweetë and Hunnë, could be coaxed into taking the lead, but after a few hundred paces their muzzles were scratched and bleeding. So the party kept to the shoreline, blundering westwards on narrow beaches of stony rubble. When these disappeared, they were forced to take to the water, the humans once more astride the motos' broad backs.

  They were fortunate with the weather – the day was cold bu
t clear. They could see back to Ham, and after a tariff both Böm and Carl accepted – with considerable relief – that there would be no pursuit. The Hamstermen might well have set out by pedalo to accost the fugitives at Nimar; however, they feared the hinterland of Barn and would not venture much beyond the fowling grounds.

  Carl, in himself, was torn between the fear of this unknown place and wonderment. Alien species of tree and shrub jostled the shoreline. The dwarfish smoothbarks, silverbarks and crinkleleafs, familiar from Ham, were interspersed with larger trees with deeply grooved, ash-grey trunks and others that were like glossier, greener versions of the pines at Wallotop. There were also flitting birds Carl had never seen before, smaller than crows or flying rats, less garish than ringnecks. They were brown, mottled, red-breasted – their piping and trilling filled the screen. He pressed Antonë to identify these exotics, but the Londoner was unequal to the task.

  The coastline described a curve away from Nimar, so that, looking back after a few clicks, Carl was presented with a great sweep of a scene: the wild main they were traversing and, in the distance, beyond more open water, the hills of Chil itself, where swathes of woodland glinted under the foglamp. In the last couple of tariffs he had walked, splashed and ridden several times the length of his homeland, yet Carl seemed not to have moved at all. Truly, he thought, the world was a vast place.