Our Tragic Universe

by Scarlett Thomas

  Libby sipped her drink and made a face.

  'I thought about throwing myself under a train the other day.'

  'What train?'

  'The steam train.'

  'Why?'

  'Because it's closest.'

  'You'd have to get a winter timetable. Those tourist things are very haphazard. I thought about walking into the sea recently. The sea's always there.'

  'You don't need to walk into the sea. You're a well-known writer.'

  'Lots of writers drown themselves. Anyway, I'm not well known.'

  'You are around here.'

  'This is a small town. Everyone's well known in a small town.'

  I looked around the pub. In one corner, Reg was demonstrating the size of something with his arms. Reg hated seagulls and was working on a device that would get rid of them. He was now talking to Joni, who was known for his oysters, and Rob, who was known for always winning the event in the regatta where you build your own raft and cross the river on it. Tim had settled, alone, in another corner with a pint of Guinness and a book. He wasn't known for anything yet. Libby was known for her knitted shawls, socks and blankets, which she sold in the delicatessen along with the jam and marmalade I made, and driftwood sculptures made by Bob's mother. She'd briefly thought of selling jumpers and hats that Mark made too, but decided that would lead to too many questions from Bob. I may have been known for my writing, but nobody let on. People in the town always asked me when I was next going to make rhubarb jam.

  'It would be wet and cold in the sea,' Libby said.

  'I know. That's what I thought. A train would be noisy and messy. Why were you thinking of throwing yourself under a train? It doesn't sound like much fun.'

  'I've really fucked things up,' she said. 'It's over with me and Mark. As of yesterday. Killing myself might be the only option.'

  'God. Oh, Libby. Shit. I thought you were joking...'

  And he's still coming for dinner next week. But that's a long story. And I'm so in the shit over the car as well.'

  'Why?'

  'The policeman came back yesterday and said that this woman at the Royal Castle Hotel reported seeing someone push a car in the river on Sunday night. She didn't have her glasses on, so what she saw was a bit blurry. Then he said that most cars don't wash up at all, but when one does the police usually find it was the owner who pushed it in so they could claim on the insurance. Ha, ha! How we all laughed about the idea of that. I pointed out that my car was too nice to push in a river, and that I don't exactly need insurance money, and I gave him some biscuits, but I'm fucked if it does surface.'

  'Why? I thought the story was that kids pushed it in?'

  'Yeah. But apparently Devon and Cornwall Police are piloting some new way of getting fingerprints from objects that have been underwater. It's been very successful so far. The policeman said it was very exciting because if the car surfaces they'll be able to work out how many people pushed it and probably even who did it. I said it sounded great and very hi-tech, but I was shitting myself.'

  'I'm sure it won't surface. Even if it does, I bet their technique won't work. Just stick to your story. Anyway, what happened with Mark?'

  'It was because of the car as well. Sort of. And the ring. We had a big argument.'

  Mark had saved up and bought Libby a silver and black mother-of-pearl ring for Christmas, which she hardly ever wore. She bought jewellery for herself, but never rings, and she knew that Bob would find it suspicious if he saw her wearing it. So she left it in the beach hut, and planned to wear it only when she was with Mark. He had ended up throwing it in the river one stormy Wednesday night after he'd brought it to Dartmouth thinking she'd forgotten it.

  'Do you think I should have left Bob?' Libby said.

  'I can't answer that,' I said.

  'Mark said I should have. Rather than...'

  'The car?'

  'Yeah.' She frowned. 'What was that story you told me about the horses?'

  'Horses? Oh, the one about blessing and disaster.'

  'Yeah. Exactly. Tell it to me again. I think it might help, but I can't remember it.'

  'OK, so this is the story of a Chinese father and son and their best horse. The horse runs away, for no reason, and lives with some nomads across the border. The son is very upset that the horse has gone, and the father says to him, "What makes you so sure this isn't a blessing?" Then the horse comes back, a few months later, with a beautiful nomad stallion. The son is thrilled, but the father says to him, "What makes you so sure this isn't a disaster?" The son loves riding the new horse, but one day falls and breaks his leg. Everyone is sad for him, and his father says, wait for it, "What makes you so sure this isn't a blessing?" At some point the nomads invade, and every able-bodied young man has to go off to battle. The nomads basically wipe out all the men, but the son is safe because he is lame, and so he and his father live on and look after one another.'

  'It would piss you off, having a father as smug as that,' Libby said.

  I laughed. 'Yeah, I know.'

  'I like it. I'm not sure it's as useful as I thought, though.'

  'What, in helping you decide whether to leave Bob?'

  'Yeah. The more I think about it, I realise I can't just let things happen by themselves. Not now. That's what Mark said. He was so pissed off about the car. He said he couldn't believe that I'd go to such lengths to avoid facing up to everything. He said it was the ideal opportunity to come clean and just tell Bob everything and go and move in with him.'

  'Move into a beach hut?'

  'Yeah, exactly.' She sighed. 'I guess we wouldn't stay in the beach hut, though. But if I split up with Bob I'd be poor. Not that it matters. Or it shouldn't matter.'

  'It can come to matter.'

  I'd never really said much to Libby about my financial problems, but I guessed she knew I had them. Whenever we went out for dinner, she would say, 'It must be my turn this time,' even though she always paid. I'd been out on the yacht a couple of times with her and Bob, and they always brought a hamper from the shop and told me not to bring anything. She happened to have a 'spare' life jacket that I could keep and Bob claimed to have found a dog life jacket somewhere in the boat, 'perhaps from the previous owners', although there hadn't been any previous owners because his father had designed and built it himself.

  'How would you be poor, though?' I said. 'It doesn't make sense. You own half the house and the shop, don't you?'

  'Yeah, of course, but if I left Bob I wouldn't ask him to sell everything so I could have half of it. I just couldn't. You know when we went to Italy recently? We were at this big market, and Bob was tasting some sun-dried tomatoes. He turned around and looked for me in the crowd, and when he saw me he smiled in such a happy, comfortable way. He looked, well, like Bob, with his baggy jeans and stupid red lumberjack shirt, and his crazy beard, and I thought about how I never, ever, wanted to go to bed with him again—the thought of it made me sick—but that I loved him, intensely, the way you might love a brother. At that moment I realised that I never wanted to do anything to make him cry. I never wanted to be sitting there facing him, with his face all crumpled up and everything in tatters because of me. He just doesn't deserve it. I can't fuck up his whole life and take away everything that means something to him just because I think I've found my soul mate.'

  'Yeah, but...'

  'Yeah, but. I know. Having found my soul mate, how cruel is it for me to stay with Bob, pretending I feel more for him than I do and preventing him from going out and finding someone who loves him the way I love Mark?'

  'You can't be responsible for other people's feelings,' I said. This was something my mother used to say a lot after leaving my father. I wasn't quite sure what it meant, or whether it was even right.

  'If you threw a brick at someone you would be responsible for them feeling pain, presumably,' Libby said.

  'But if you do the right thing and it makes someone feel bad, isn't that their problem? Then again, how do you even know what
the right thing is? Who decides?'

  'It's so confusing. I am sure about Mark, but I was sure about Bob before that, and Richard before that. Maybe Mark isn't for ever, I just think he is now when I can't have him. I have to face up to this about myself. I fall in love like that.' She clicked her fingers. 'I always have. For other people, love is like some rare orchid that can only grow in one place under a certain set of conditions. For me it's like bindweed. It grows with no encouragement at all, under any conditions, and just strangles everything else. Good metaphor, huh?'

  'Maybe you should write a novel,' I said, smiling.

  'Oh, well, I can teach you to knit socks now,' she said. 'I'll have plenty of time.' I'd been bugging Libby to teach me how to knit socks since I'd got back from Scotland. 'I think Mark's right. I'm not ready, and I'm not committed enough. But when I think of being with Bob, only Bob, for ever, I just want to kill myself now. This is great, isn't it? I'm only thirty-eight. I can't have ruined my whole life already, can I?'

  'I think maybe this is one of those things where time will help, whatever happens, whether you end up with Mark or Bob.'

  'We'll knit socks,' she said. 'It'll take my mind off everything. It's really hard.'

  'Yeah. Maybe I was a bit hasty with that. I'm still not sure I'll be able to cope with four needles,' I said. 'I can't even cope very well with two.' I was wearing my turquoise scarf, and I fiddled with the end of it. I had made a slipknot to cast on, and then, when I'd finished, woven in both ends of the wool just like Vi had shown me. But the knot was still there, sticking out like some sort of fabric scab. 'Mind you, I'm a dab hand with the knit-stitch now, and purling. But I should probably try something else first that has increases and decreases and stuff—and an actual pattern to follow. I'm going to get new wool tomorrow, and a pattern. I'm very excited. After that I will do socks.'

  'Why exactly do you want to knit socks?'

  'Originally I was going to make them for Christopher, but I'm not so sure now. I know it takes ages, but I still like the idea of it. It just seems like something you can always be doing, and it seems quite compact. I saw someone doing it on a train, and it looked soothing. I like the idea of knitting a whole thing at once. Maybe I'll go into business knitting designer socks and I can compose novels in my head—or even onto a Dictaphone—while I do it. Then again, I flicked through a book in the library and there was lots of stuff about picking up stitches, which I didn't like the look of. I'd like to have sock-knitting in the novel, ideally. Maybe include a pattern or something. I'd probably have to have a man doing it so it doesn't seem too mumsy. I'm just going to practise a little bit more first before you teach me. I'm no good at fixing mistakes, yet. I should probably make some on purpose so I can fix them. At the moment I'm just very careful, because I know if I fuck something up I'll have to abandon the whole thing.'

  'I can fix mistakes in knitting,' Libby said. 'Just not in my actual life. I'd like to start again, ideally. Any idea how to do that?'

  'In my experience you just pull at the end and watch the whole thing unravel, ping, ping, ping, and then it's very complicated trying to get the crinkly stuff into a ball again.' I laughed. That was how my turquoise scarf had started. 'Sorry. If it's any help I did just read a book that says that we're all immortal, only we don't realise it, and that we have lots of chances to live a perfect life. But I'm not sure that would be better. Who says what a perfect life is?'

  Libby asked about the book, so I summarised Newman's argument in the same way I had in my review.

  'That sounds a bit improbable,' she said.

  'The science is right,' I said. 'Well, as far as I know. It's like having a knitting pattern for something where all the instructions are correct, but the actual thing you make is awful, because it traps you.'

  'Like knitting yourself into a big sack.'

  'Yeah, exactly.'

  'But if I did kill myself I'd get another go, and then when I got it right I'd end up in heaven?' she said. 'Which would seem lovely even if it is a big sack?'

  'Well, sort of. It depends whether the theory is true, of course.'

  'Christ. This is what I think will happen: I'll leave Bob because of, basically, sex, and lose everything, and he'll be magnanimous but heartbroken, and he will cry, and me and Mark will run away and get bored with one another and we'll have nothing to talk about once the whole situation is resolved and he'll end up watching football all the time with his mates and I won't have any mates and we won't have sex any more and then I'll get PMT and go and throw myself under a train. It's totally Anna Karenina. Maybe I'm a tragic heroine. But I bet that doesn't count. So maybe I should just throw myself under a train now and get it over with.'

  'By that logic we should all kill ourselves now. Anyway, I don't think Tolstoy implies that Anna has PMT.' I'd given Libby Anna Karenina for her birthday a couple of years before, wondering if she'd get into it, considering all the terrible SF, fantasy and horror books she liked reading. But she'd already read it twice and was always coming up with new theories about it.

  'Honestly, Meg, that's total PMT. Read it again. She is irritable and "senselessly jealous". She hates the smell of paint. Then there's all that stuff about hating everyone and everything, and desire being like "dirty ice-cream" when she's on her way to the train station. Don't tell me you don't feel like that before your period. Oh, well, I suppose if this Newman guy is right, then if I threw myself under a train now I could start again with a clean slate. New life, new disasters. Maybe I would get it right if I started again.'

  'My mother rang me yesterday with more news of Rosa, by the way. She's going to be playing Anna Karenina in a big Hollywood blockbuster. Maybe I'll email her with the PMT tip.'

  'Don't worry,' Libby said. 'It'll probably be a big flop.'

  'Oh, I don't want it to be a flop exactly. But why my favourite book, of all things? My mother thinks I'm jealous, and she's probably right, I suppose, although I don't know why I'm jealous of something I don't want. Who's to say that Rosa, with all her success, is getting life any more right than anyone else? Her brother's an accountant at a charity and I bet no one makes a fuss over him, but maybe in his quiet way he's making a better job of life. Who knows? I think getting it right is a total mystery.'

  'Anna Karenina certainly didn't get it right.'

  'Didn't she?' I raised an eyebrow.

  'What do you mean? How could she have got it right?'

  'I don't know exactly. But she sees the light,' I said. 'At least she sees the light, just before she dies. Her passion gives her some sort of insight that the other characters don't have. Mind you, then it goes dark for ever.' I sipped my drink. 'God. I wouldn't want to be Rosa trying to act that.' Or me, trying to write something with half as much depth and weight.

  I'd first read Anna Karenina at university, but had re-read it about three years after we'd moved to Devon while I was having a brief flirtation with Christopher's brother Josh. I'd thought it would warn me off. He had just turned twenty-eight, and couldn't find a girlfriend. He kept saying everything would be great if he could find a woman like me who played the guitar, and was happy to have a kick around with a football in the park, and read books. 'I need a writer,' he'd say, and I'd respond that most writers were weirdos who never did anything physical at all. I told him he probably needed a yoga instructor, or someone on a gap year. He hung around with us a lot in those days, and it was nice having someone to confirm that Christopher had not really spoken for the previous twenty-four hours, or that his reaction to spilling a cup of tea was unusual, or that he would often disagree with an opinion if I expressed it, but not if the same opinion was expressed by someone on television. Where Christopher was mercurial and irrational, Josh was highly rational, or even beyond rational. He carried a tape measure with him, partly because he couldn't buy a book that wasn't the same size as books he already had, but also because sometimes, if no one was looking, he would measure walls and doorways 'just to know' how high or wide they were. He told me o
nce that he had to count to thirty-two every time he washed his hands. If he lost count, or didn't switch the tap off in time, he'd start again. When he made tea he would squeeze the tea-bag in the cup exactly eight times. He would wear only an even number of articles of clothing at once. If he was reading a book, he couldn't stop reading on page 6, or 15, or 23, because these were bad numbers. He wouldn't read page 13 of any book, or page 36, and he said this meant he never missed much, usually. Once, he hadn't been able to read any prime-numbered pages, but this meant always missing the beginning, and he'd got over that.

  I was convinced that Josh had had OCD since he was a child, especially after he told me he'd had to go to the Steiner School because Pi made him throw up in normal maths lessons, but the rest of his family believed it started properly after his mother died. I'd once found him exhausted and close to tears, switching the light off and on in his bedroom. He'd done this 1,200 times already, he said, and still had to get to 5,000. I couldn't make him stop. Later, when I asked him why he'd had to do this, he said that if he didn't do it, then someone would die, or become very ill: perhaps his father, perhaps even me. I was flattered that he'd switch a light off and on 5,000 times to save me. Once I'd become convinced that there was a burglar in the house and Christopher had refused to switch the light on even once. Josh didn't quite believe that it was anything like 'God' that was planning to harm me or his father, but rather a complicated network of energies and cosmic checks and balances. He'd picked up on a vibration that something bad would happen, and switching the light on and off was a form of focusing his energy in order to stop the bad thing from happening. Josh had been an excellent footballer as a child, and had been selected to play in the under-13 team of a London club. But his mother hadn't wanted him to live away from home and grow up as a footballer; she'd wanted him to be a writer or a painter. He'd been unemployed for as long as I'd known him, because he still wasn't stable enough to hold down a job. I'd begun to fantasise that I could help him somehow, and we'd spent quite a lot of time together.