by Exurb1a
“But she might not be coming back.”
“But you are incapable of being without her.”
Are we done? I said to the thought.
Not yet, the thought said. It's not just your relationship with your wife that benefits from punctuation. What about life? Imagine if the days of your life were all fantastic. Imagine if there wasn't a single drop of boredom or despair, every ice cream delicious, every fuck explosive. They call that paradise. In fact the word is hell. The world would cease to mean anything. It would all be fantastic, and as a result none of it would be fantastic.
Imagine, likewise, that death was abolished. Would there be anything left to fear? Would there be anything left to enjoy? Eating is dull without first being preceded by hunger. All spontaneity and risk would be empty without the constant looming cloud of death in the future-distance. Be glad Polly is gone for now. You'd never have loved her quite like this otherwise.
Yeah, I thought. That's true. I never have loved you like this before, except maybe for those days when we lived in different countries, but we hardly knew each other then.
The weed kicked me again. Another notion turned up at the party:
Is it possible to love someone for being less than the myth you expected?
There are the early days aren't there, of courting and screwing, of kissing goodbye for ages and growing obsessed. You studiously watch this other human for hints of their deep-psychology. If they're nice to the waiter, maybe that means they're a nice person etc. But if you stick it out with someone long enough, if you make it through all that, if you live with them, if you watch them go through a bereavement or some horrible disease, then they'll give you a peek or two at their true face. If the conditions are right then it is possible to love that face, but quite improbable you will like it. You've killed the myth. You've come up close to a harsh truth: people are ugly, all of them. They're bitter and mad and insatiable. Whether they tell you so or not, there will have been days when they regretted meeting you or getting close, just as you will have those days regarding them. They will consider choosing their own self-interest above yours. They will fantasise about other men or women. They will be joyless for weeks. They will squeeze the toothpaste from the middle of the tube.
But if you can watch the myth die before your eyes, if you can accept that your lover is disgusting and petty at times, if you can accept this of everyone you ever meet, then everything will almost certainly be fine.
I saw your myth die and I met the monster inside on occasion. She was even prettier than the myth.
A few hours passed and I sobered up. I felt all right. I got off the roof and laid on the kitchen floor and the cat curled up on my chest. She is easily pleased and her loyalties are questionable at best. She misses you though. She told me.
I'm bored of this emotional bollocks. Shall we talk about the Great British Polly Hunt instead?
Interesting development last week. Lambert wasn't lying. She really is working on something to do with computers and geometry, or topology as she put it. I read one of her early papers. Back then she seemed to think the future of computing was in what she called high-dimensionality. As far as I can tell that has something to do with wibbly geometry.
Actually, I can see why you two got on. Her whipping boy for years was a thing called 'Moore's Law', which as you may recall I once did a bit of research on to impress you. It's a sort of rule of thumb for computers getting exponentially better every year or so. This only works as far as silicon goes, some smart types are arguing. And when silicon runs out, what then? Topology computing, Lambert thinks. Whatever that means.
This isn't of much interest to me. Sorry. I'd rather just know why you were interested in it. What a Bulgarian mathematician's theory of everything and a physicist's pet computer project have to do with each other is somewhat lost on me at the moment, or rather I can't see why you were taking such a keen interest. From what I can tell, Lambert's ideas are almost universally shunned by people who know what they're talking about, and your crackpot theory is so abstract it will never have anything to do with the real world anyway. Sorry again.
And then I remembered Tamala Road.
Let me just take a run-up for this one. In the unlikely event that you ever do read this, you're not going to be terribly impressed.
Here goes then.
A few years ago you were acting a bit distant. This wasn't unusual for you, but it sent me a little nutty. You started coming home later than normal. I think I vaguely poked at it and you said something about having loads on at the university. That sounded like bullshit. One night around six I phoned a secretary at another faculty and asked her to see if she could find you as it was urgent. She said you'd left around four, same as most afternoons.
Shame and dread. Dread and shame.
What's a husband to do?
I drove up to the uni the next day, waited for you to leave, then tailed you. You drove out onto the motorway, past Wilthail, past Croftbury, and turned into a tiny hamlet I didn't catch the name of. I lost you a few times, but a bit of aimlessly driving about and there was your Peugeot sitting on the drive of some massive manor house. I parked at the end of the road, distant enough I hoped, and just watched. Nothing stirred inside for a while. Then I noticed something in the garden. I drove around the house to a dirt track behind and peered in through the bushes. Very, very vaguely I could make out your slim frame on a chair, nodding and looking at the ground. A figure sat opposite and did most of the talking – I couldn't see their face. You two didn't touch or anything, just sat and talked for hours until the sun started to set. You stood up to go and I drove off and didn't ask you about it when you got home.
As far as I can tell, the only secrets you ever kept were the ones that needed keeping. That is sort of a comfort.
Like when you ate the last of the toast because there wasn't enough for the two of us, and called it “secret breakfast”.
Like when we chose wedding rings and then you went off and had another one made for me instead, inscribed with the equations of the Lagrangian of the Standard Model.
Like when you had that abortion.
I was sorting papers in our bedroom and found a sheet of medical jargon, if you remember. Not all of it was jargon though, and I guess I caught a few keywords like “scheduled” and “termination”. So I went and found you in your study and asked about it.
“Want to tell me what the fuck this is?” I said.
“I would prefer not to.”
I left the room. I stood in the hall for a bit. I walked back in. I think we were shouting for around two hours.
It started as a little spring at first; we kept to the main issue of how in God's name could you do in our unborn child and not think to mention it to me. And I guess that got me ranting about how you never tell me anything anyway and you think you're so fucking aloof and clever. You are fucking aloof and clever of course, but still. Well I'll tell you a thing, now you might never hear it. I wasn't really angry you had the procedure done without telling me. I wasn't even angry you'd done it in the first place. I was angry because I think we could've had a nice kid together. Your smarts and beauty and goodness, and my inability to handle finances or the most basic of life matters; the little thing would've been set for life.
In all seriousness I just imagined you as a mother sometimes, usually during gross and quiet moments. When you came in from planting the roses and you were covered in dirt and you didn't even wash your hands, just started making lunch. When you pushed a strand of hair behind your ear once on the bus and you looked more beautiful than I could ever possibly hope to put into words. When we went to meet my baby niece for the first time and she opened her eyes and smiled up at you and you smiled back and caught yourself and stopped smiling.
Well that's all beside the point now I suppose.
“I don't want a little parasite,” you said, and you started to cry and got your coat and drove off to stay at Emma's place for a few days. Then you came ba
ck and we didn't talk about it again. So, yes.
We both know that isn't the full story though. As the custodian of the Museum of Your Life, I feel it might be my duty to preserve the next exhibition in writing. You probably don't know I'm even aware of it. But I know lots of things now. I wasn't sure whether to write this one out, but it seems important; Dimitar trusted me with it.
Your parents came from a small village in the middle of Bulgaria, only a few hundred people. Your mother didn't really display any talents, but your father had an aptitude for painting as a boy. His father before him had been a fairly well-renowned artist too. Your father was loved in the village and he spent most of his teen years pissing about in the mountain and painting landscapes. A few villages nearby noticed how good he was and he made an okay living selling his stuff.
A little girl from the same village called Tanya Kadysheva was late home from school one day. That wasn't so unusual, sometimes she went to a friend's house. By nine o'clock her parents were getting worried and the alarm was raised. The village was combed by the locals, then the fields around it. She had vanished.
Three days of searching later her body was found on the bank of a small river. From the marks on her wrists and legs she had clearly been tied up. The cause of death was strangulation. The village was in shock. No credible perpetrator was found after a fairly lengthy investigation, nor was a motive discerned. In the end the whole affair was blamed on passing vagrants, leaving Tanya Kadysheva's parents no hope for retribution. They presumably lived with the thing, or tried to live with the thing, grew old, and died.
Your mother and father married young and your father was offered a position studying at a good university in Sofia. After the incident with the little girl they were glad to get out of the village; the population never really recovered. Your father graduated after several years of hard work and got a decent job in the communist government working with the deputy secretary of the party, which was a pretty big deal at the time.
He became a household name in months and was well-loved by many Bulgarians and considered a softening influence on the deputy secretary himself. The couple bought a house in the expensive part of town and you were born at 5 pounds and 8 ounces with brown eyes and a little hair. Life was good. Your mother grew used to the parties and money and occasional bit of western contraband that found its way into their home. They hosted their own parties and high-ranking members of the Bulgarian Communist Party attended. Journalists followed their exploits with benevolent interest and the two of them were often to be found beaming from the second or third pages of newspapers.
Sometime during his third year in the post your father floated the idea of stepping down, quite out of nowhere. When asked why, he responded he wanted to get back into painting. He enjoyed life in politics, but hated all the pretension and pomposity. He didn't want a more prestigious position. He wanted to paint. Still, your father remained in his position until opting for a slightly less impressive post as a high-ranking bureaucrat. The money was still good and your mother appeared happy with this.
Communism fell and your father moved into chemical engineering. Ever talented, he worked his way up the corporate chain and sat on the board of directors.
One evening, back with your parents for Christmas, you overheard a conversation between your mother and father from their bedroom.
Once again he floated the idea of stepping down to pursue his art.
Old age was looming. He wanted a quiet life, no doubt.
Your mother kept her voice low and calm and dismissed the thought. Your father persisted. Your mother informed him that if he continued to cling to such stupid notions she wouldn't hesitate to link Tanya Kadysheva's death to him. She mocked crying for a little while to demonstrate the point: Oh it was horrible, he said he'd kill me if I told. You heard all this too, of course.
Your father was quiet after that and then the bedroom light went off and your father stayed at the company another five years.
He hanged himself in a wardrobe on May 3rd, 2008. He left no note behind, nor gave any warning that he intended to end his life preceding the event. Tanya Kadysheva's name was probably never brought up again until now.
It's funny, I noticed that you treated your mother forever with kid gloves, but would never have imagined this might be why. How long was the old man being ridden by that sociopathic trout? His entire life, presumably.
His last painting was a self-portrait, the only one he ever made. You showed it to me on your phone once. His eyes are deep and dark and hollow. His lips are cracked. He appears an old used up sponge, sucked dry and made to work even after that.
You distrust women, you always have. You distrust mothers especially. You would've been a good one though, whatever you think, whatever you were afraid of, whatever kernel of horror your mum planted in you with her years of acid and lies.
Anyway, that's why I was angry when I found the medical documents. I'm not so angry now I know why you did what you did. I'm still a bit angry though. Angry at your mother, angry at small minds who ride big ones and milk them for talents they themselves couldn't fathom, let alone imitate. Angry at whatever line of code your mother inserted into your program: IF CHILD THEN ABORT. IF LOVE THEN RETREAT. DO NOT BECOME LIKE HER.
One night, decades ago, some twisted fuck murdered a young girl for no more than the perverse kick of doing so. Neither Tanya Kadysheva nor her killer could have imagined that the event would, in its own strange way, also take the life of your father forty years later, and the potential life of our child some years after that. What a strange web.
I have known both men and women like your mother; people with nothing left but the desire to take what little you have remaining. They are spite engines.
All decisions must be like that, a little ripple at first, then flattening out into infinity. Electrons rubbing on electrons in the brain, pushing monkeys about to wreak damnable savagery.
I wonder if your mother knew what she was doing to your father?
I wonder if you knew what you were doing when you left?
If you chose to go missing darling, if you knew what you were doing and still did it, I only hope you were being so single-minded that you shut the consequences out of your head. The idea of you knowing what this would do to me and still doing it anyway is a feeling I can't find a word for or a limit to.
All that Hollywood rubbish, all the saccharine bullshit about self-sacrifice, about losing yourself in someone else, about your life taking on some new meaning, I was convinced it was all bollocks for years. Well I found it in you; in your smell, in your breath, in the way you slept during the tiny hours, in the way you put on your coat and drank your tea and picked your nose when you thought no one was looking, in the way your sweat smelled when you'd been to the gym, in the way you seemed to see through maths without even bothering to look at it, in the way you were so effortlessly yourself. I just loved you so truly.
Tomorrow I'll drive out to the house I followed you to that time on Tamala Road. I'll bet my balls whoever you were meeting there had something to do with your little world-solving project.
The cat sends her love. I do also.
B x
16.
They flew for hours in silence. Lambert had offered to materialise them wherever they wanted to go, but Argie declined. Traditional travel felt like a better way to get a feel for Lemuria, even if this was only a simplified representation.
She thought idly of Benjamin Hare and his letters, of his Logic Beach, of all the gorgeous artifacts of mathematics and geometry that would litter the sand. The principles of reality laid out in the wake of the path of the encroaching tide. Plus, he was the lover of Polly Hare no less. That in itself was enough to grant Benjamin Hare a godlike position in Arcadian history.
Finally they spotted the tip of an enormous mountain in the distance, and what appeared to be a portal stretching up into the sky, much like the one through which Argie and The Navigator had travelled through from the Ap
e Cellar. They approached. A gigantic crowd had formed at the base of the mountain, arrayed in a line. Close now, they could make out some kind of wall of crystal blocking the crowd from the mountain and the portal.
Argie and her companions descended. Men, women, and non-genders fought for room on the ground, some cheering, some yelling, but all wild and animated.
A few fairly sapien-looking denizens noticed Lambert and fell silent. Soon enough the entire throng was gaping.
“What is the meaning of this?” one yelled. “Why is she walking free?”
“Friend…” Lambert said softly.
“No one here is your friend.”
Argie stepped forward. “I released Lambert, the choice was mine and mine alone. I have that privilege. I know she has tortured selfsense clones of herself, I know you don't approve. But she's offered us her help and we need it.”
A little boy stepped forward, not three feet tall, but he spoke with the booming voice of a god. “Selfsense clones? Is that what she told you? That's the least of it.”
“What are you talking about?” Argie murmured.
An old woman approached Lambert and Lambert kissed her hand. More came, heads bowed, and Lambert kissed their hands also. The crowd began to diverge, those close to Lambert, and those who drew away with bitter faces.
“What are you all doing here?” Argie yelled.
“They want to kill themselves and Arcadia in the process,” the little boy roared back. “The fools, they'll get us all eaten.”
“What?”
The little boy pointed to the tier portal at the tip of the mountain, leading to Indigo. Above it, the great black mass was clearly poking through, intersecting the sky. “Lambert advocates joining the Mergerment, giving ourselves over. All these idiots, they're trying to travel to Indigo to jump right into the thing. Someone has put a wall up to stop them though, probably the Glass King.”
“And what did he ever do?” the old woman yelled back. “Ignored us for millennia. Fuck him.”
