a rational man

by J S Hollis

  and if cecil was only incentivised by power, why did he join the green party when it was a political joke with only a few seats in parliament? this didnt suit the portrait of a strategic mastermind.

  and while S could see how his parents relationship had been strained, cecil must have loved clara once. otherwise why choose clara and try to mould her into a dream woman rather than look harder for the dream woman in the first place?

  the material tanya had sent S was imbued with pseudo psychoanalysis and barely disguised misogyny. clara was a sand dune formed and swept away by cecils whims. she stumbled into a successful career at mind games, while cecil achieved political success through cunning. she threw her wild teenage years away because she was duped into loving a fraud.

  S saw how each story of the murder, including his own, was a patchwork design of his parents lives that suited the taste of the author. a glimpse became a “murderous glance”. a logically arrived at opinion was “cold blooded rationalism”. words stitched together to say something. readers were swayed by the authors superior command of the information. S could see the reverse engineering but his comments on the murder were compromised in the eyes of the public.

  S reacted against the mass of storytellers and their certainty. he began to forgive cecil and even watched cecil preaching. cecil stood tall and broad in the middle of his prison bedroom, dressed, as he always was, in stone grey trousers and a dark blue shirt. his feet were bare, the image of reform. S found that he had to watch cecil head on and close up otherwise he appeared to be a man talking to himself in a cell. from wider angles, the stationary cecil could have been the protagonist in a computer game, jailbreak perhaps. cecils face had to be the focus. and as he spoke about the problems of the world, the face drew the viewer in. the face was shorn of all attempts at deception. the mask had dropped, like someone carried away with their own thoughts. he spoke in a calm conversation with himself, a monologue that lacked the deliberate cadence expected from political speeches. the watcher felt invited into cecils mind and found it inspiring.

  cecil spoke common sense. “how can it be right that the land is owned by so few?” he asked during one sermon. “we can increase the wages of nurses and labourers but if the majority of their earnings disappear in rent, what is the point? the landowners are in control of this country. they have the one commodity that cannot be replaced by technology. they take it for granted that there is nothing wrong with owning more than their fair share of land and that they have a right to charge for the use of it. we have accepted this. internalised the hierarchy of wealth. once you own land, you are free, but until then space is an expensive commodity. and so in this time of plenty, we have people so poor the government needs to feed them, or people who have so little their only source of joy is to escape into virtual worlds and watch the very people who are denying them a chance. if there is a solution, government intervention isnt it. we need to change our own demands and expectations.”

  S nodded along to what cecil was saying. ariadne was already complaining about the meagre wages and dorm room that faced her if she went into psychiatry. S wanted to help her and others like her, even if doing so would make him conspicuous. the fear of standing out had plagued him since florence but the steak incident had been different, an adolescent scream for attention. he hadnt been motivated by beliefs. or had he? S didnt dwell on it. this time was different. other students in his halls felt the same way. this was the next revolution. a twenty four seven smear campaign against the pursuit of land and wealth. “we have been reluctant to criticise,” cecil said. “we have confused liberalism with passivity.”

  entry 14

  protests

  the november sun smacked down on Ss cream neck. he had gathered with the other cashkills protesters outside the house of ladybird rex, the communIT founder. unlike his neighbouring protestors, his hair curled upwards and failed to provide shade. S didnt notice the slow burn. his back kinked in the tide of the crowd. his feet grappled the crumbling lawn in blind searches for grip. his eyes whirred between streams of images.

  from outside the house, S watched ladybird rex and her daughter attempt a performance of lunch while the crowd chanted outside their home. he was unconvinced. the food bar in ladybirds kitchen had only ever been used for quick breakfasts and the day demanded lunch outside with the backdrop of ladybirds acres of vegetables patches. and yet the rexs remained cooped up. trying too hard to appear like everyone else by having the familial “how was your morning” kind of lunch nobody ever had. screens were off and ladybird told her young daughter about how, as a child, she had spent a whole week inside eating only frozen pizzas.

  “the thing i really remember,” she told her, “was how the top of my mouth felt like fur.”

  the girls eyes were wide.

  “the cheese gets much hotter than the pizza dough. so you can get it on your tongue but then the cheese burns the roof of your mouth.”

  the crowd surged up against the gates of ladybirds house. ladybirds moment of intimacy and allusions to her destitute past couldnt fool a mob raised on posturing. their chants crescendoed in response.

  “tosher, tosher, tosher,” they sang, sailing their voices into the drive. the chanting crowd crashed against the gates of the house and retreated. then the leaderless protesters all silently agreed that the chant should change. oblivious to the mysterious workings of the hidden hand that pushed them in that direction.

  “ditch the rich, down the flush, ditch the rich, down the flush.”

  ladybirds daughter, sophia, lost track of her mothers story and looked at the door expecting the crowd to come charging in. the crowd was not aggressive but its collective voice contained the menace of dogmatism. there was no reasoning with the voice. you were either with it or against it. and if you were against it, the absence of compromise was a threat.

  tales of frozen pizzas couldnt stop sophia from turning after each yell from the crowd.

  “just ignore them, sophia,” ladybird said.

  sophia flicked her eyes towards the door.

  “its nothing.”

  “are we rich, mummy?” she asked.

  “well, yes,” ladybird said, “we are sort of.”

  and then the crowd intersected, “yes youre rich, filthy rich.”

  “but that is not necessarily a bad thing.”

  someone shouted in Ss ear. “she shouldnt have said that.”

  S nodded but he didnt agree. what was her alternative? her house was swarmed by a vocal group of students demanding she give back her wealth. she did what anyone in her position would have done: bunker down and wait for it to pass.

  S had found himself in this position a few times. nodding along while protesters shouted down his ears like artillery and often with accompanying globs of spit. S was beginning to question the motives of his fellow cashkillers. if they really wanted to change people, why did they cheer when they reduced someone to tears and ridicule anyone who apologised for their actions?

  “its all an act,” the same person shouted again.

  again S nodded but he wasnt sure. when ladybird looked into the mirror, she probably saw the same young woman who learnt programming during break times at school. her face a little thinner and less spotty but still plain. she had created communIT to bring fraying societies back together. so what if its advertising profited from the users unattainable dreams? she had to fund it somehow.

  “its about how you make your money,” she told sophia. “its not bad to be rich.”

  sophia picked up a pistachio and licked it.

  “these cashkillers forget, i gave loads back. that was the deal,” ladybird said. “convenient how it all changes when the women start to get rich.”

  ladybird had failed to see that the mood had changed. cecils pentonville preaching had captured the students imaginations. the students feared the path that awaited them. the prospect of endles
sly studying and living like saints so they could belligerently compete against each other for a handful of jobs and then see their earnings disappear on rent. cecil offered an escape. “the rich are not a symptom, they are the problem.” “social rewards, not financial rewards.” “enough is enough for all.” “why do we need the market when we have W?”

  the protesters turned their heads up to the sky and released a collective wail, “aaaaaaaaaaaah.” this was Ss favourite bit. the scream of the people demanding change sent a shiver down his spine. in seconds they would have to dissipate as quickly as they had clustered. S looked at the crowd from above and saw himself as part of a giant organism. his lungs were full of the sour smell of sweat and he breathed in more deeply, forgetting his petty disputes with the other protesters. the crowd was one, even if he had to morph to allow people to come past so they could reach their friends, the shoves followed by “excuse me”. for a few minutes, they were a community with a collective purpose. then the crowd broke and they exploded out like a beautiful pus back to wherever each of them had come from.

  S began to walk away. he had come alone. most of his friends had already lost their enthusiasm for the fight.

  “hi, sebastian,” someone shouted from behind. S was used to this. his morbid fame was on the increase. after the last protest, a couple offered to show him their apartment so that he could see the conditions they were living in. he accepted and they took the tube to a block on the outskirts of london. adverts scrolled along its sides into the low lying cloud. they took a lift up to the seventeenth floor, where the couple shared a room with three other couples. they had worked hard on the design, to give a sense of privacy, but the room felt even smaller as a result and smelt warm, like a towel on a radiator. one of the walls had cecils face beaming out of it.

  S asked the couple if it was true that they received basic services. “sure, we have enough to survive,” they said. “we get food, water and a place to sleep. but what is the point in surviving? we have no space to exist. not even real windows. just W and mind games.”

  S turned his eyescreens off for a moment and the designs fell away. he was in a square white room with a bed in each corner. the three other couples lay on their beds, coning. the couple gave him a stall to sit on while they sat down on the edge of their bed. they told him how cecil would bring about the revolution. he was the only person willing to take the risks necessary to achieve a better world.

  on this occasion, S could see that the person greeting him was a “media agent” called lydia.

  S turned around. “hi,” he said.

  “im lydia.” she held out a tanned hand with cherry red fingernails. S shook it and took a quick look at her face. she looked like clara (was that an intentional W profile?) but with almost more purpose to her features. it was a face that had to be doing something, like a woodpecker. she motioned for them to continue in the direction they had been going.

  “how can i help?” S said.

  “ill keep it short. i want you to be in a programme in which you explore your fathers motive for claras murder. interested?”

  S giggled through his nose like he had forgotten how to laugh. “im not really interested in that kind of thing.”

  “i know you have been thinking about it lately and i think you would find the process cathartic. we would pay you well.”

  S looked for an escape but the rurban hedgerows lasted for another mile or so in all directions. “i doubt we will get anywhere.”

  “you are best placed to assess that but, if im right, youve not yet watched the murder. you can hardly say you have looked at all the evidence.”

  “im not really the chatting in front of a camera kind.”

  “youre in front of cameras every moment of every day. there is nothing to it.”

  S and lydia both stopped and so did everyone else in the street. time itself appeared to have paused. Ss eyescreens had taken over his retinas. he was looking at the scene of a collapsed bridge. there were many people amid the mash, bodies were floating away. there were people screaming down into the river but all that could be heard was the crescendo of the emergency services taking notice. it was tower bridge. the south tower remained upright, teasing the weakness of its northern twin, which had crumbled, taking part of the drawbridge with it and revealing some of the mechanics beneath. the cogs appeared like disneyfied versions of industry, harking back to another universe. the nineteenth century brickwork had piled up in the feeble stream of the thames and a thick cloud of dust hovered over the bridge and the tower beside it. S perched on the curb and began to scan those involved for friends and family.

  “i better go,” said lydia, “but think about it.”

  S grunted.

  the bridge dominated attention for the next couple of days and commentators competed to explain it.

  * * *

  “City Cuts” Delayed Bridge Inspection

  Botched cog change caused “stress”

  confirmed! england rotten

  to its core

  Seismologists say bridge collapse was “natural disaster”

  Engineers blame low water levels

  the day of judgement is here

  * * *

  the howl of opinion swelled and swept through eyescreens. W was pored over for evidence. when it settled down, the howl had briefly liberated 15 million londoners from their own futility.

  S and the people in his corridor were no different. they watched the collapse over and over again. it was strange to see such a stout building disintegrate. each time, they were surprised when it happened. they looked for some prior warning. there was nothing. the victims were covered in falling bricks before they could scream.

  in between dreams, S drew a link between the falling bricks and his mothers murder. they were both unexpected, inexplicable and catastrophic. S was sure there was some hidden mechanism determining them both. if he could understand the Event, perhaps he would be able to understand the bridge and a million other unsolved mysteries. he decided to watch the Event for the first time. he got dressed and sat at his desk like he was preparing for a test. he then wondered where to start. where did the Event begin? he had never thought about it that way before. he had restricted it to the kitchen, to a single scene in a single space. there was the Event and the rest of his life. he would keep it that way for now, lest the Event dribble out like one of dalis clocks.

  S turned to the kitchen. he felt like he had never seen it before. it was a perfect square. walking into it from the hallway, the opposite wall was a matrix of thin white strips and eighty-one glass panes that turned the garden into a mosaic. the door to the garden sat in the middle of the matrix, evident from the small lock at the bottom and the hinges on the outside. embedded in the wall to the right of the window, and hidden from view by white doors and shutters, were the cupboards, appliances and the long alcove containing the sink and the work surfaces. it was a testament to the human achievement of making things disappear.

  there was no suggestion of the possibility of dirt. there was no hint of beetroot slapped on a chopping board oozing into the wood or of oil evaporating and seeping into the walls to slowly deep fat fry the place. it was a white cube. not offwhite or cream, just white. maybe the limestone floor had turned slightly grey but S didnt notice that until later.

  in the middle of the kitchen, cecil sat at the granite table, lost in thought. he always took some time to consider the day that had passed when he arrived home. he took up an awkward position, spreading his arms out on the granite like a sphinx and looking intently at the matrix window like he was trying to interpret a kaleidoscope. the scene didnt surprise S. although he found it strange that cecil had left his coat on.

  cecils eye was caught by something on the table. it was a small pink line, seemingly drawn by crayon (the remnants of Ss juice). cecil felt the mark with his index finger. he then licked his finger and tri
ed to rub the colour out. it didnt work. then he scratched the table, unable to let the slight mark remain.

  he didnt notice clara arrive. she had been there for about twenty seconds when she said, “i know i have already told you this but im proud of you. you did the right thing.”

  he immediately withdrew his hand and turned around with an innocent look. “thanks, but id rather not talk about it.”

  he got up and embraced clara in his typical way. they didnt kiss. clara planted her head in cecils breast and turned to the left, her hands crossing just below the small of his back. cecil leant his head on her wet hair and then released her.

  “were there any journalists outside?” cecil asked.

  “nobody there.”

  “good. how was your mindchitecture?”

  “can you sit down? youre making me feel awkward. and why is your coat still on?”

  cecil shrugged his shoulders and sat down. “ill put it away in a minute,” he said. ”how was your class?”

  clara opened the alcove where the sink was hidden, poured herself a glass of water and then leant against the side. “to be honest, i think i am done with it,” she said and took a sip. “i need to let my thoughts go rather than develop them. i keep getting these headaches.”

  cecil felt his hair and, finding it damp, he turned to the window. when he squinted, he could see the rain coming down. “maybe your brain is tired of avoiding thoughts,” he suggested.

  clara opened the recipe for dinner. “what thoughts are there to avoid?”

  “you are constantly trying to clear your mind. yoga, meditation, iron woman, whirling, mind mapping, skydiving – and im not sure it has changed you one bit.”