Absolute Zero Cool

by Declan Burke

  Tommo sounds far too lucid for this to be true but the smoke floods my lungs as if they were those of an infant, new and pure. Though smooth going down, the blowback causes my brain to pulse like a mushroom cloud. The effect is one of immediate bliss swiftly followed by gut-sucking paranoia. Then a wonderfully mellow sense of sensory disorientation.

  Acute dehydration ensues. I go to the kitchen for water. I come back from the kitchen thirsty, having somehow failed to locate either sink or fridge. Austin appears to be comatose in the armchair. Tommo says something about how every language ever invented has been a failed attempt to discover a means of expression by which mankind might communicate the full extent of its ignorance. He says ‘kill your babies’ is a metaphor for eradicating metaphors. He says it’s an irony, rather than a tragedy, that most people experience their lives as metaphors for how they would have preferred their lives to be. He says the real tragedy is that most people already know this.

  Tommo says lots of things but I’m not really listening. Irony isn’t half as clever when you’re thirsty.

  People, you can carve this one in stone: you will seek in vain for irony in the vicinity of a cacti patch.

  •

  ‘Not bad,’ I say. ‘I like that you’re not diving straight into it, have Austin walk off a roof stoned, thinking he can fly.’

  ‘It’s useless,’ he says, then tries to light the filter end of a cigarette.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. It might need a bit of tightening up here and there, but mostly it’s––’

  ‘I was on a bit of a buzz last night,’ he says, ‘after writing that. So I brought it up with Cass, about having a baby.’

  ‘She’s not into it?’

  ‘For one, I’m a hospital porter. She says it’s not the job, it’s the salary, but I don’t know.’

  ‘You need a promotion?’

  ‘It’s not just that. She says she’s not having any babies until she gets married. And she says she’s in no hurry, she’s only twenty-six.’

  ‘Women are having babies later these days, Billy. That’s natural.’

  ‘She’s thirty-one, man. She thinks she’s twenty-six, but she was twenty-six back when you wrote the first draft. And if she waits another five years, she could be getting into all sorts of complications.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why don’t we just make her thirty-one?’ I say. ‘Get her clock ticking.’

  ‘And wipe five years off her life?’ He shakes his head. ‘What we could do,’ he says, ‘is just swap her pill for folic acid, like I said.’

  ‘I already told you, I’m not doing that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s immoral. I wouldn’t do it to Debs, I’m not doing it to Cassie.’

  ‘Hey, you look out for Deborah, I’ll look out for Cass.’

  ‘And getting her pregnant on the sly – that’s looking out for her?’

  ‘I’m trying to get a life going here, man. The means justify, y’know?’

  ‘Who am I talking to here?’ I say. ‘Billy or Karlsson?’

  ‘That’s fucking low,’ he says, stubbing out the smoke on the table. ‘That’s bang out of order.’

  ‘You tell Cassie about this conversation,’ I say, ‘and then ask her who she thinks is out of order.’

  He leans in, taking off his tinted shades. I try to ignore the eye socket, the sucked-out prune. ‘I only want what’s best for her,’ he says, straining to keep his tone civil.

  ‘She’s told you what’s best for her.’

  ‘Except she doesn’t have all the information,’ he says.

  ‘So why don’t you tell her?’

  ‘What – that she’s not real?’

  ‘You seem to be coping okay.’

  He stiffens, then slumps back in the chair. ‘You know what it is?’ he says, a sneer brewing. ‘I’m real enough, alright. But you don’t have the imagination to believe in Cassie.’

  ‘Maybe that’s your job,’ I say. ‘I mean, you’re the one who wanted to write the Cassie parts, right? How’s that working out for you?’

  He savours that like it’s fresh-cut lemon. ‘Smug bastard,’ he says, ‘aren’t you?’

  ‘I thought we were cutting out the swearing.’

  ‘If you’re not good enough to do this,’ he says, ‘just say so and stop wasting my time.’

  ‘I’m no Lawrence Durrell,’ I say, ‘but I’m good enough to write you.’

  He nods, then stands up. ‘Maybe I’ll go home and write a story about you,’ he says, ‘fuck around with your life. How’d you like them apples?’

  ‘I’ll rent a tux,’ I say. ‘Booker night is always black tie, isn’t it?’

  No Billy this morning. A pity, with the garden coming into full bloom now, the early morning sun lying across the lawn in fat yellow diagonal stripes.

  Oh well. Back to the grindstone . . .

  No Billy for three days running now. Maybe he isn’t coming back. Maybe he’s holed up in some garret, feverishly rewriting my life, consulting the story of Moses and Pharaoh for inspiration.

  Is this how God felt when Einstein started doodling in the Patents Office? No wonder He struck Hawking down.

  •

  In brief, the story of Prometheus is this: he stole fire from the gods, gave it to mankind, and was eternally tortured for his troubles. Thus he was the first great martyr to intercede with the gods on man’s behalf.

  This simplistic version of events allows us to bask in the vanity that has plagued the latter part of our miserable history. That a Titan should defy the gods on our behalf is in itself proof of our exalted status in the universe. At least, it does in that part of the universe administered by Titans and gods, although in doing so we ignore the inconvenient fact that man was merely a pawn in a deadly game being played by Prometheus and Zeus, and that the gift of fire was simply a spiteful aftershock in the wake of a cosmic civil war.

  A question or two:

  Now that we no longer worship the Greek gods of Olympus, is Prometheus still being tortured?

  Does the vulture still tear at his liver?

  Does he still freeze every night, chained to the rock, as his liver grows back, or has his version of eternity come to an end simply because we have forgotten his sacrifice?

  Has Prometheus’s version of eternity slipped out of our version into another, like a stream draining underground?

  Incidentally, we should probably note in passing that Prometheus was not staked out in sand or subjected to repeated drownings, nor nailed to a tree. He was chained to stone.

  We should also note that, previous to the gift of fire, Prometheus had bestowed on mankind architecture, astronomy, mathematics, navigation, medicine and metallurgy. The smug narcissists who believe that we are the Chosen Ones by virtue of our innate intelligence should bear in mind that we couldn’t even devise a hot spark or two from that little lot.

  Finally, Zeus had his revenge on mankind by dispatching the beautiful Pandora to earth with a jar containing the Spites that might plague mankind: Old Age, Labour, Sickness, Insanity, Vice and Passion. There she opened the jar, freeing the Spites to roam the land, shutting it again just before Hope escaped.

  Thus, or so the story goes, despite everything, even the malevolent intentions of the gods in general and Zeus in particular, mankind will always have Hope to sustain him. Which would be fine, except that Hope was one of the Spites and her full name was, and remains, Delusive Hope.

  We may no longer believe in Zeus. But Zeus believes in us.

  •

  Friday morning, still no sign of Billy, I decide that I’ve earned a weekend off. The idea is to surprise Debs, take Rosie off her hands, give Debs a couple of badly needed sleep-ins.

  That evening, by the time I get home, I’m already aching. A twanging in my guts. The desk is a black hole. Even at this distance it exerts a remorseless gravity.

  But I won’t be sucked in. Not this weekend.

  I sneak a
round the side of the house to find Debs in the back garden, hugging Rosie tight as she rocks back and forth on the patio chair.

  She shrieks when I touch her shoulder. Actually shrieks.

  Then she starts babbling.

  ‘Take a deep breath,’ I say. ‘Slow down.’

  ‘She was in the shed,’ she wails.

  ‘Who, Rosie?’

  ‘I had her down on her play-mat doing her stretching exercises when mum rang. But the monitor was there, right there, so I should have heard her moving. But when I went back in she was gone. Ohmigod, she was gone.’

  I am as terrified by her frantic tone as by what she is saying. Debs is not a woman to panic unnecessarily.

  ‘But she’s okay now, right?’

  The garden shed is, as most garden sheds tend to be, chock-a-block with blades, poisons and sundry materials unsuitable for consumption by infants.

  ‘She could’ve crawled into the pond! I asked you to get it covered, didn’t I?’

  ‘Hon? It’s okay. She’s okay.’

  Rosie is a precocious little girl, but even she shouldn’t be able to crawl that well at six months old, and certainly not all the way out to the garden shed.

  The shed, incidentally, is never locked. But the bolt is always drawn.

  It’s late evening, two Ponstan and half a bottle of red before Debs finally calms down. I give her a backrub and accept the blame, meanwhile plotting an assassination.

  ‘I thought only Nazis burned books,’ Billy says, slouching around the stand of bamboo and up onto the decking.

  Monday morning. With a childish pang of regret I find myself wishing it were Tuesday.

  I squirt some more lighter fluid on the manuscript.

  ‘Just so you know,’ I say, ‘I never liked Karlsson from the start. That’s the only reason I could stomach a redraft. But at least Karlsson wasn’t a sneaky cunt. Karlsson had the balls to stand up and be who he was.’

  ‘Boo-fucking-hoo,’ he says, sitting down.

  ‘He was only ever an avatar,’ I say, ‘so I could purge all that nasty shit I didn’t like about myself. You haven’t realised yet?’

  ‘Realised what?’

  ‘That I started that story when I met Debs. I mean, I knew straight away she was the one, that if I got my act together we could go the distance. And somewhere in the back of my head I knew I had to straighten up and fly right, get rid of all the poison, so I wouldn’t infect her or any kids we might have.’

  ‘That’s noble,’ he snickers.

  But I won’t be deflected. I’ve had all weekend to prepare my speech.

  ‘You’ve never wondered why Cassie sticks around when Karlsson is such an asshole, why she doesn’t just dump the sociopathic fuck? I needed someone to sit still for all that shit I had to vent.’

  I flick the Zippo to life, hold it over the manuscript. ‘Any last words?’

  ‘You’re wasting your time, man. I already told you, I’m your evil genius.’

  ‘Evil, sure. But genius?’

  ‘You’re not getting it,’ he says. ‘I’m not just any old evil genius, I’m your evil genius. Descartes’s evil genius.’

  ‘Get around a bit, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m your illusion of the world,’ he says. ‘You said it yourself, I was only ever an avatar.’ The sly grin tugs at the corner of his mouth. ‘Burn me down, you’re burning yourself down too.’

  ‘I’ll take my chances.’

  ‘Really? Then why haven’t you done it already?’

  ‘Because I want to watch you burn.’

  ‘So let’s do it.’ He takes one of my pre-rolled cigarettes from the table, then relieves me of the Zippo and sparks it up. When he exhales, he lays the still lit Zippo on the manuscript. A bluey-yellow flame ignites, fanned by the mild breeze.

  Together we watch it burn. ‘Oh, what a world, what a world,’ he croons.

  II: spring

  I only have to tell my supervisor once that I know where he parks his car. He immediately finds a new parking space. This displays tactical awareness. This suggests that he has, in fact, been listening. I am pleasantly surprised.

  It takes a full twenty minutes to locate his new parking space. It is in the middle of one of the smaller car parks on the eastern side of the hospital, which is bounded on three sides by manicured shrubs. The Ox Mountains round-shouldered and skulking in the distance.

  He chooses this location because his office window, three floors up, offers panoramic views of the entire car park. This suggests that he is a thinker. This suggests cunning. This suggests that he is the kind of strategist who presumes his foe also clocks off for lunch.

  I loiter at the end of the corridor until he emerges from his office, locks the door and saunters towards the elevators. I take the stairs to the basement floor. He is sitting at the far end of the canteen, eating in the company of two other supervisors.

  I make my way out to the car park on the east side and smoke a career-threatening cigarette. When the cigarette is finished I thread my way through the lines of parked cars to his Opel Corsa. I drop the butt at the driver’s door and grind it flat.

  Blood roars in my ears. Tomorrow I invade Poland, etc.

  ‘I know you probably won’t be interested in this,’ Cassie says, ‘but . . .’

  We are in Zanzibar, a coffee bar on Old Market Street, seated at a counter beside the plate-glass window looking out at the pigeon-soiled statue of Lady Erin. While Cassie tells me what it is she thinks I won’t be interested in, I ponder on how women start out trying to fuck their fathers and wind up fending off their prepubescent sons.

  I wonder if the waitress, who is Polish, might inadvertently yelp something containing guttural vowels at her moment of climax.

  I despair at how a woman’s sexual peak arrives just as her visible feminine attributes begin to sag, expand, wrinkle and dissipate.

  Lady Erin was erected to commemorate the insurgents who rose against British rule in 1798. Over the years, the descendants of said insurgents have vandalised Lady Erin, by repeatedly breaking off her upright arm.

  I sympathise with her, as I sympathise with Diana, who still peers down horrified from Olympus as Herostratus burns her temple to the ground in order that posterity might afford him a footnote.

  I think about how women who are enlightened enough to realise that men probably won’t be interested in what they have to say have mined a nugget akin to a glass diamond.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Cassie says.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You weren’t listening, were you?’

  ‘Not to you, no.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘Diana.’

  She blinks, then cocks an ear to the stereo. ‘Diana Ross?’

  ‘Diana. The goddess who had her temple burned down by a man who wanted to be remembered.’

  ‘What has that to do with anything?’

  ‘Isn’t that why we’re together? So I can eventually destroy your temple and be remembered?’

  ‘What’re you talking about, temples?’

  ‘The body is a temple, Cass. A child’s passage through the vaginal canal is an act of destruction. Hips crack, abdominal plates split. There is sundry ripping and tearing. All so my name can percolate down through the generations.’

  I use the word ‘percolate’ because we are in a coffee shop.

  Cassie stares at me for a long time, then turns away to gaze out at Lady Erin. She spoons the cream in her cappuccino and says, ‘K, how come you have to make everything more difficult than it really is?’

  ‘Nothing’s more difficult than it really is, Cass. The myth that something can be easier than it really is was invented by Hoover salesmen.’

  ‘You know your problem?’ She shakes her head despairingly. ‘You don’t have the imagination to see how things can be better.’

  Cassie’s problem is that she thinks I only have one problem.

  My line for today comes courtesy of Dame Iris Murdoch: You can li
ve or tell; not both at once.

  •

  ‘If you’re aiming for reverse psychology,’ I say, ‘you’re laying it on a bit thick.’

  ‘What’s the best way to get a woman’s attention?’ he says, putting down his sheet of paper.

  ‘Pretend you don’t care.’

  ‘Treat ’em mean,’ he says, ‘keep ’em keen.’

  ‘There’s mean,’ I say, ‘and there’s being an antisocial bastard.’

  ‘Relax, it’s a first draft. I can always go back in and kill any babies you don’t like.’

  The quality of our entente cordiale is somewhat strained. Billy is adamant he had nothing to do with Rosie crawling into the shed, that he would have nothing to gain and everything to lose.

  ‘Put it this way,’ he’d said. ‘You’re a bit fragile about the writing as it is. How would you feel about it if anything happened to Rosie?’

  ‘Writing wouldn’t come into it. I’d be struggling to get out of bed in the morning.’

  ‘Exactly. And where would that leave me?’

  ‘In limbo, I know. All I’m saying is, it’s a bit of a coincidence that something happened to Rosie after we had that chat about killing babies.’

  ‘You’re reading too much into it, man. Besides, if memory serves, you’re the one who was up for killing babies.’

  ‘Only as a metaphor. You’re the one planning to blow up a hospital.’

  ‘Only as a metaphor.’

  ‘It’s not the same thing.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  Billy believes that I am Neville Chamberlain, waving the pages of the latest manuscript around to convince myself that he and I have peace in our time.

  I prefer to think of myself as Churchill in the early months of 1940, boozing away the phoney war and wishing the Japs would hurry up and bomb Pearl Harbour.

  I’m under no illusions. It’s only a matter of time before his blitz begins.

  The Big Question: which of us will get to split the atom first?