Hamish Hamilton Presents Five Dials

Number 28 Heroes / Heroines / Other Part 1

Katherine Angel On Kate Bush Greg Baxter On Alban Berg Paul Ewen On Sonic Youth (Eating Their Breakfasts) Matthew De Abaitua My Old (Will) Self Badaude What If Didion Could Fly? Tom Basden Fancy Some Hot Moon?

. . . Plus: Peter Stamm, Sunita Soliar on rich of west London, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg getting down to it, new fiction from Lee Henderson and a poltergeist story by Matt Suddain. And the hidden, inner lives of some of the characters killed by Bruce Willis, Arnie and Harrison Ford. Plus more, including young jurors in love and AUSTRALIANS. Why? Because we’re in AUSTRALIA. CONTRIBUTORS Katherine Angel is the author of Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Josephine Rowe is a Melbourne-based writer of fiction, poetry Most Difficult to Tell. She holds a research fellowship at the Centre and essays. She is the author of the short-story collections How a for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary, University of London, Moth Becomes a Boat and Tarcutta Wake. and is collaborating with experimental theatre group The Black- Nikesh Shukla is the author of Coconut Unlimited, shortlisted for burn Company on a performance version of Unmastered. the Costa First Novel Prize; an ebook about the 2011 riots, ‘Genera- Bronwen Armstrong lives and writes in North London. tion Vexed’ (with Kieran Yates), and the Channel 4 Comedy Lab, Kabadasses. His stories have appeared on BBC Radio 4, the Book Tom Basden has written episodes of the television programmes Slam anthology, The Moth magazine and The Sunday Times. Peep Show, Fresh Meat and Plebs, which he co-created. He is also a member of sketch group Cowards. He has twice been nominated Sunita Soliar lives in London. She is the short-story writer for for a BAFTA, and has won a Fringe First and an Edinburgh Come- quarterly newspaper Fitzrovia News, and her reviews have been dy Award. He hosts a literary cabaret night in London called ‘The featured in a variety of publications, including the TLS. She holds Special Relationship.’ a Masters in English Literature from UCL and a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. She is currently work- Greg Baxter is the author of The Apartment, a novel published ing on a novel. by Penguin, and A Preparation for Death. He was born and raised in Texas, and he currently lives in Berlin. Adam Sternbergh is the Culture Editor of The New York Times Magazine. His first novel,Shovel Ready, will be published in January William S. Burroughs is the author of, among other novels, 2014. Naked Lunch. Matt Suddain is an author, journalist, playwright, satirist and Luke Davies is the author of three novels, including the cult best- minimalist composer. His first novelTheatre of the Gods will be seller Candy (filmed, to Davies’s screenplay, with Heath Ledger), published by Jonathan Cape in June 2013. He lives in London and and more recently God of Speed; Magpie, a children’s book; and five his website is at suddain.com volumes of poetry. In 2012 he won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry for his book Interferon Psalms. Cheryl Taylor’s work can be found at cheryl-taylor.prosite.com. She has been featured in the AOI’s Best of British illustration Matthew De Abaitua’s cult science fiction novelThe Red Men annual Images on three occasions. will be republished by Gollancz in June. Shynola’s short filmDr Easy is based on the first chapter ofThe Red Men and will be avail- Paul Tucker is a writer and music journalist. He contributes able to watch on Film4.com from late June. regularly to The Quietus and has also written for Clash, The Line of Best Fit and the NME. In 2012 he co-edited Peninsula, a 3-AM Paul Ewen is a New Zealander. His writing has appeared in the Magazine of the Year nominee published by the University of British Council’s New Writing anthology, Dazed & Confused, Tank Exeter. magazine, Landfall and in The Times Higher Education Supplement. He lives in London. Joanna Walsh, aka Badaude, is a writer and illustrator. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, the Times, the White Review, Jamie Fewery lives in London. His blog can be found at and the Idler, amongst others. London Walks!, her book of visual bottledandshelved.wordpress.com essays about the city, was published by the Tate in 2011. This year Mia Funk won a Prix de Peinture 2009 from the Salon d’Automne her writing will be published by Granta and Union Books, with de Paris, a Thames & Hudson Pictureworks Prize 2010, was nomi- a short story collection from 3-AM Press. nated for the Guardian’s London Lives Competition 2010. She Editor: Craig Taylor exhibits internationally and teaches art and creative writing at École de Dessin Technique et Artistique SORNAS in Paris. Publisher: Simon Prosser Allen Ginsberg is the author of Howl. Assistant Editor: Anna Kelly Ashley Hay’s latest novel, The Railwayman’s Wife, was published in Five Dials staffers:Noel O’Regan, Marissa Chen, Sam Australia in April 2013. It will be published in the UK in 2014. Buchan Watts, Jamie Fewery, Ellie Smith, Caroline Pretty, Jakob von Baeyer and Emma Easy Lee Henderson is the author of The Man Game, which won the 2009 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. His short-story collection The Thanks to: Jenny Fry, Matt Clacher, Jemma Birrell and Broken Record Technique, won the 2003 Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Renee Senogles He also curates the Attaché Gallery, a non-profit commercial art Designed by: Dean Allen gallery found inside a black, hard-shell briefcase. Unless otherwise noted, illustrations by: Cheryl Taylor Caleb Klaces’s first collection of poetry,Bottled Air is out now. @fivedials Cethan Leahy is a writer, film-maker, playwright and illustrator. Animosity, a play he co-wrote with Erin Hug, was staged in La Cath- @hamishh1931 eral Studios, Dublin, Ireland, in November 2012 and his novel Moor Subscribe: hamishhamilton.co.uk was shortlisted in the the Guardian/Hot Key Books Young Writer’s Prize. A Letter From The Editor great primers on modern art, The Shock of the New, and presented the accompanying documentary series, and we’ve been told On Heroes and Convicts that if you watch the series before embark- ing on The Fatal Shore, you will hear, in your head, the narration of Australia’s bru- e’re going to attempt this next bit and Peep Show, to finish a few chapters tal beginnings in Hughes’s inimitable voice. Wby memory, so we probably won’t from what could be the greatest adven- We’re coming to it afresh, so instead of his get all the details right. Here’s how it goes: ture ever written if he could only find a cadence, we’ve been hearing the voices of the dazzling sun is shining on a crowded way to make said chapters join up into a his source material, in particular the prima- bazaar and eventually the crowd parts to cohesive whole. One of our best illustra- ry sources he consults, including the few reveal – what is he? – a master swordsman, tors, Badaude, sent in a drawing of her remaining letters from the convicts. Like flinging his swords about in an aggressive favorite women in the literary firmament, those forgotten on the fringes of block- manner. He confronts the beleaguered but done up like superheroes, so that Lydia buster films, these letters offer a swiveled American, who looks worried for a Davis and Joan Didion look ready to stop viewpoint and hint at the millions of small moment, and watches the demonstration, a bank robbery. Lee Henderson takes us to tragedies that unfolded below deck as the then shrugs and draws his gun, shoots the the arctic ice with his valiant climatologist; grand narrative sailed forward. swordsman, and finally walks away as the Matt Suddain’s characters – let’s face it – It’s difficult to imagine anyone fearing melee erupts around him. We’ve seen this are anything but heroic when a poltergeist life in this lovely city with its monorail and scene many times, not in dreams, but on enters their well-tended lives. We also glittering harbour and nearly maniacal lev- various VHS cassettes back in the 80s and invited a trio of talented writers – Greg els of friendliness, amidst all these healthy, then eventually on one of those remas- Baxter, Katherine Angel and Paul Ewen – broad-shouldered Australians, all of whom tered DVDs, where a technician somewhere to write about individuals who make them seem to be walking towards or away has made the blue sky above the bazaar shudder with delight or question their def- from a yoga class. Walking around with even more dazzling and the audio of Den- inition of heroism or become respectfully Hughes’s book feels like an initiation to a holm Elliott’s cut-glass English accent even quiet: in turn, Alban Berg, Kate Bush and secret society. It does what good books do crisper. It was while watching this film on the members of Sonic Youth, who we’re and reopens the casing of the world. What a DVD one evening not so long ago that sure still remember their encounter with is sunbaked expensive property now was someone else in the room said – just as Ewen in a restaurant in New Zealand. And blood-soaked dirt and rock then. As for Indiana Jones shot the master swordsman then there’s Matthew de Abaitua, author the letters, we were most moved on page in a pat gesture that never fails to provoke of the excellent The Art of Camping, who 130 by one written in April 1831 by a con- a laugh – ‘All those years of sword train- recalls a different sort of challenge when, vict from Wiltshire, Peter Withers, who ing. And for what? He didn’t even get a years ago, he acted as an amanuensis for was anchored at Spithead on the ship Pro- fair fight.’ the writer Will Self. Yes there are drugs, or teus. He writes to his wife, Mary Ann, and When we decided to put together this at least poppies involved in this story. Try the results hint at his own struggle to sur- issue we asked some of our favorite young as we might we can’t force everything in vive, to stay afloat, and, most importantly writers to explore the other side of scenes the issue to adhere to our theme. It’s prob- to him, stay faithful. Withers writes: such as the one above. We know the heroes ably better that way. As always, there’s of these films, but what about the second- some fine writing on our hometown, Lon- it is about 4 months sail to that country ary characters? What about the henchman don, and some poetry. Does Caleb Klaces But we shall stop at several cuntreys in Die Hard who displayed, at least once, a poem ‘Funeral’ have anything to do with before we gets there for fresh water I fondness for chocolate in between shoot- our theme of ‘Heroes’? Probably not but expects you will eare from me in the outs? What was he thinking? Or the young it’s a gorgeous piece of work. That’s reason course of 9 months…you may depend German soldier assigned to an unlucky enough. upon My keeping Myselfe from all convoy in another scene in Raiders of the As for the issue itself and the pressing other Woman for i shall Never Let No Lost Ark? Or a cop just trying to do his job of the button that will deliver it to you, other run into my mind for tis onely on the Mars of Total Recall? Or even a man the subscriber, we’re here in Sydney for you My Dear that can Ease me of my in New York who took a left and ended in the launch, and like many who visit this Desire. It is not Laving Auld england a lane Jason Bourne needed to use at high city we’re engaging in clichéd behavior, that grives me it laving my dear and speed in a stolen NYPD car? We dedicated which in our case has meant buying a copy loving Wife and Children, May God part of this issue to the untold narratives. of Robert Hughes’s The Fatal Shore and be Mersyful to me. You can find the resulting stories inside. reading it in different spots around town, We’ve surrounded these voices with an warmed by the winter sun, during a series Hughes doesn’t provide an outcome array of characters who might also be con- of aimless walks. (Winter sun that outdoes in his six-hundred page book. Voices like sidered heroic, depending on the criteria. London’s summer version, by the way, that of Withers flit in and out. Like most Tom Basden, who is making his first con- and makes us wonder what sort of sweat- of these untold narratives, his strand isn’t tribution to the magazine, took time from soaked Armageddon occurs here in sum- so easily tied. Enjoy the issue. writing for the television shows Fresh Meat mer?) Years ago Hughes wrote one of the —craig taylor

3 Our Town

‘I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?’ — Charlotte Brontë, Villette

Place: Embankment Date: May 1, 2013 Time: 2:40pm

This issue’s itinerary: Connaught Square; an Egyptian tomb; bodyguards.; my mother’s Bentley; the Backstreet Boys; fraud and petty robbery; Lordship Lane

4 W1 Sunita Soliar on an international friendship

hen I was fourteen a new girl joined my school from a even Princes William and Harry had such an all-enveloping Wcountry that none of us had heard of, and the news soon security detail, and these bodyguards added a strange blend of spread that her grandfather ruled over a former Soviet Republic. comedy and threat to the otherwise sedate street. She was shy, plump and a little clumsy; I was a loner with my As we snaked down the road in twos, passers-by would note head buried in a copy of Jane Eyre. We had the same form tutor the two foreign men who walked behind us, glancing from them and soon became friends. I called her Aika. to our teachers. As we turned a corner the bodyguards would When Aika first came to London she lived in a rented house frown, perhaps assessing whether this were the designated route, in Chester Square, Belgravia, then her parents moved her to getting their bearings. Hampstead, where she lived with two bodyguards, a driver and The bodyguards also controlled who Aika could go out with, an ancient lady who unconvincingly wore the title of nanny. and the only reason that I can think of for them sanctioning our Later Aika’s newborn brother would join them. I was struck by friendship was the way their eyes widened when they saw my how utterly different this house was from my home. I grew up mother’s Bentley. At the time I didn’t register what this meant, in a Georgian town house, just off Connaught Square, in central that the car’s stodginess ticked the right box. All I knew was that London. White and tall, it nestled up against the other houses on we both felt alienated from our peers; we were two forlorn little the terrace. Like all Georgian houses, it was designed for living: girls, and what we had in common was our double lives – most on the first floor, we had two bright reception rooms that we people easily accepted the sunny exterior I projected of the used as a music room and a drawing room; the kitchen adjoined privileged, clever girl, and it was one of the unsaid rules of my the study, so that I could do my homework and chat to my house that I was obliged to play this part in a charade of happy mother while she cooked – or at least this was the peaceful life I families. In many ways this was easier than admitting the truth wanted to believe we had. Across the city, Aika’s house loomed of my stepfather’s abuse of my mother. Similarly, only I got to up behind heavy gates, which opened towards it, as though mag- know what a lonely, circumscribed existence Aika faced, and netized by the structure. The house had a sweeping entrance like when we went out together it was a holiday from our lives; the a hotel: a marble hallway, a central staircase, each room deco- world outside was not reality but a fantasy landscape. rated in a blur of cream and gold. The air was still and unruffled, We always went in her car, which was fitted with T.V. screens and engulfing shadows flickered across the walls of the indoor and headphones. We never walked or took public transport so swimming pool. It gave me an eerie feeling, like being inside an that places seemed unconnected. We were alongside the Serpen- Egyptian tomb. tine, then suddenly at Leicester Square, then Knightsbridge, and Aika often complained that the house was in the middle of it was almost as if these places appeared for us, summoned by the nowhere, that it took an hour to get to school, and there was faintest of whims. nothing fun to do in Hampstead. Yet she possessed a strange We used to go to a Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant in power within its walls. She was boss of the adults who took care Mayfair called Kai, where most of the diners were foreign busi- of her, and I marvelled at her life: she ate when she wanted to, nessmen, and where it was so quiet that laughter seemed inap- commanded the bodyguards to take her out when she felt like it. propriate. We must have looked a strange pair, two little girls In some ways this seemed like a paradise to me: I hated parental out for dinner alone at a chic restaurant, playing at being adults, authority because my stepfather terrorized my household with when really the truth was that neither of us knew where young violent rages, and I longed for escape. But I soon realized that people were meant to go. The bodyguards would sit at a neigh- Aika was entrapped too, and in many ways, this formed the basis bouring table, within earshot, barely speaking, and without of our bond. menus. I asked Aika if they were going to eat. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I The bodyguards went everywhere with her. One was thin and will order for them.’ At the end they produced the cash for the tall, the other stocky, and they would smoke, leaning against bill, as though pulling it from a top hat. a black people carrier, and wait outside our school for the end We would also go to the Tate Modern because Aika was doing of the day. At 4.15 p.m. they would spring towards the school Art GCSE, or to the Trocadero, where we went on the Pepsi Max doors, suspicious and hungry as a couple of wolves, as though ride, the highest indoor, vertical drop. The bodyguards looked they expected one of the other students to pull a gun on Aika. up at the ride then frowned at each other before reluctantly From everything she told me, it seemed like she was under con- strapping themselves into their seats. When we got off, Aika said, stant threat in her country: I had heard that her family’s regime ‘Again!’ and their faces withered, but I have a photograph of was heavily criticized by Amnesty International for human Aika, me and the bodyguards, mouths wide open as we grip the rights violations, such as the torture of dissidents, and had also bars, all of us smiling. been accused of serious corruption and vote rigging. Here in Sometimes Aika would become quiet on the homeward jour- W1, the bodyguards would clutch their charge and bundle her ney, staring out of the window, her hand pressed glumly against into the vehicle. I was fascinated by the spectacle: I don’t think her chin. She was in such a mood as we drove down Sloane

5 Street one day, and suddenly she jounced in her seat, and called scowls. Of course there was no telling off, and my anxiety gave ‘Stop!’ She spoke in Russian to her bodyguards and they pulled way to the humour of the situation. But it was a kind of comedy over outside Knightsbridge tube station. She leapt out of the that was always on the edge: their blunder put them in a black car before anyone had time to follow her, and the next moment mood, and at the time I didn’t think of the real terror they would she was picking out yellow flowers from a stall. They were tulips, face if they lost her. I think. She got back in, flushed and beaming, and I asked whom As we got older, the bodyguards relaxed their control of Aika: they were for. ‘For me,’ she said, her voice like embers. ‘I like they allowed her to walk from the school door to the car by her- flowers.’ At this point she was beginning to go dreamy-eyed over self. ‘I don’t know what they do all day,’ she said. ‘Just smoke. If boys (and boys were obviously forbidden), and I felt how much she I were them I would have learnt English.’ Perhaps this frustration wanted a romance, or if not that, at least the romance of receiving reflected her own predicament: she loved painting and hoped to flowers. My uncle had recently visited me and brought me some go to art school, but her mother started to visit and made her bunk purple ones for my room; I forgot for facials and manicures. One day, I met to tend them and the water went her mother. I had been expecting a Jackie scummy and black in the vase. As we O type, all knee-length suits and 1950s drove back, I thought I should have glamour. She was folding some clothes bought Aika’s tulips for her. in Aika’s room, her hair piled high on her Over time the bodyguards head like a bird’s nest, and she was wear- became friendly to me, and when ing Aika’s combat trousers and one of her we were out the shorter one would tops. I felt relieved that my own mother carry my bag. But every now and did not dress like that, even at home. I again as we walked through Pic- suppose Aika’s mother enjoyed the free- cadilly Circus to Haagen Daaz for dom of not being photographed, as she dessert or through the children’s often was in her own country, where she department in Harrods, there would was idolized as a fashion icon. As Aika be a clatter, or Aika would be jos- watched her mother folding clothes, she tled, and they would pounce on her, looked sadly at her and later she showed eyes darting for the threat. I saw the me a photograph of herself where she quick, metallic flex of their biceps, was round as a hamster. ‘I was so fat,’ she and got the sense that they could kill said. ‘My mum says I have to be careful or inflict great harm with even the what I eat.’ Aika’s appearance was cer- smallest of movements. They would tainly a talking point. One day after the check that Aika wasn’t hurt, and as holidays she caused sniggering at school: I caught up with them they would who gets fake boobs at 15, the other girls look at me with a dim recollection wanted to know. I tried to tell myself that of my presence. I studied them with it wasn’t true, that she’d changed her way new fear, wondering if they were of dressing and that was why her chest armed with knives or even guns. Slowly, they would retreat from appeared more prominent. I felt hurt that my friend was being her, and I would be allowed back into the circle. Suddenly I felt ridiculed so unjustly, wanting to believe that she wouldn’t do that completely unsafe. sort of thing. They nearly lost Aika when we went to a Backstreet Boys con- As I settled down to revising for my GCSE exams, Aika began cert for her birthday. The tickets were my gift to her, and I think to skip school. She started wearing make-up, and experimented she must have bought the extra ones for the bodyguards. I don’t with clothes, but she never got it right and you could hear the think they minded going as much as they might: they had some others giggling, asking what on earth she was wearing around her affection for her, but that was always a distant second to their waist, calling her a fashion victim. I was in Harvey Nichols with fear for her safety. I suppose they weren’t prepared for crowds of my mother one day looking at hair accessories, when I saw Aika unruly, screaming teenagers waving pink batons at Earl’s Court: gazing at us from the other side of the display. I knew that she in her home country, cordons and armed guards kept back crowds had always adored the image of my mother – she had once said, on ceremonial occasions. Aika once told me about a public concert ‘your mum is so pretty and perfect. You are so lucky.’ I liked this in honour of her grandfather where everyone was screaming, but idea too much to tell her the whole truth about my life, besides, she was kept behind the stage with her family. ‘It’s very boring to I didn’t dare. We had hardly talked recently and as we stood over watch from there – you can’t see anything,’ she said. After the con- the hair accessories, I didn’t know where to begin. Her nanny cert the lights came up and we found our way back to the driver, was with her, smiling but unable to speak any English. Aika and and he phoned the guards, who had forgotten their mobiles in the I looked at each other, and as she fiddled with a clip, she said, ‘I car. We circled the streets and Aika rolled her eyes; the driver, who saw a nice belt for you the other day.’ was English, was swearing under his breath, and I was nervous, I changed schools at the end of my GCSEs, and after univer- somehow expecting that we would get into trouble when they sity I heard that Aika went to a business school in Regents Park, reappeared. Eventually we found them at the entrance. They had known for its Ferraris and Berkin bags. Since then other friends a short exchange with Aika in Russian then got in, suppressing have filled me in: Aika married rich, had children. I recently

6 heard an anecdote about how a famous hairdresser visited her than before, with car showrooms sealed off from the public, apartment in Knightsbridge and she tried to tip him with a fifty- accessible only by the residents of expensive apartments. The pound note. I have also read that she has near monopoly control glossy surfaces of shopping palaces – Harrods, Harvey Nichols, of key industries in her country. A friend once told me, ‘The Selfridges – bounce their light back and forth so you don’t ever Russians hate her because people from her country who live in have to see what you really are. It is for those who, as Edith Russia are the rich ones, but even outside of Russia everyone Wharton might say, exhibit a ‘reverent faith in the reality of the laughs at your friend.’ I have seen her in photographs with what sham’ they have created, for those who desperately want to be I take to be a vacant, tranquilized expression. I would much consumed. Perhaps this is why I cannot find the world that Aika rather see her as a girl who has been displaced by wealth, a girl and I shared: that London no longer exists for me; it is a phan- who occupies an uncertain position – the first generation of chil- tom, unreal city. ◊ dren of oligarchs – and a girl who is still trapped in a double life because I want to think that she is still like me. I suspect that this is wilfully naïve. And when I seek our London, I find that Park Lane is slicker

N22 Jamie Fewery on the juries of Wood Green

et back from the road and fronted by a set of never-used gar- ment to survive a six-hour shift. Sdens and well-trimmed hedges is Wood Green Crown Court. We, however, are waiting for our trial to finish. Robed lawyers smoke outside, their wigs resting on the knee- high wall that separates the court entrance from the grass. Along- A jury is said to be a cross section of society. Twelve are picked side the wigs sit their folders and loose piles of paper – docu- because between us we will have enough common sense, experi- ments that could easily be swept away on a strong wind, suggest- ence and knowledge to reach a decision that represents justice. ing that the cases they relate to aren’t very important. Fraud and Our jury, then, should be a cross section of London, or at least petty robbery, rather than anything grisly and truly newsworthy. the part from which we have been summoned. Before getting inside we must first pass through a metal detec- We are eight males and four females. Five of us are young, tion barrier. Leaving coats and phones in the boxes provided, two old (though over-seventies can’t serve), the rest middle-aged. jurors, lawyers, family, friends and witnesses filter through. Most One of us is black, one Asian, one Mediterranean. Everyone else set off the alarm and have to lift their jumpers to prove a belt is white. There are no regional British accents, no one with a dis- buckle was the cause. Entry to the court is egalitarian. Whether ability, no one with a speech impediment. One of us is bald, one you are there trying to prove guilt, or to discover if your son or overweight, one heavily tattooed. daughter perpetrated a crime, the same door awaits. But when Before entering court we are left in the deliberation room, a everyone else turns right, jurors turn left, where a list of the private space away from the busy waiting room. It’s quarantine day’s cases is pinned to the white brick wall of the waiting room, for jurors. No one speaks. We have one thing in common and it next to a collection of art from a local primary school. is the only thing we are not allowed to talk about. The subject The room is not dissimilar to an airport departure lounge. seems to have sucked all the life from the room. We know what Banks of green-cushioned and metal-framed chairs are placed in happened, or at least a couple of versions of it. And we are all horizontal lines and against every wall, interrupted occasionally leaning towards a verdict, promising to remain open to new evi- by small tables piled with out-of-date magazines. dence until the last. Nevertheless, we remain silent. The chairs are important, finding a good one vital. If not Bored of waiting, a young Asian girl pulls out of her bag a called for a trial, this is where we will spend much of our time. Doris Lessing novel. She is the first to break rank. But following The most sought-after spots are those near a plug and not her, three others do the same, revealing an Edward St Aubyn, an beneath an air-conditioning vent. iPad and a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey. Is this a cross section? Our chairs are connected to one another, so if the person at The judge enters. After he has given us a twenty-minute sum- the end moves with enough force, everyone moves with them. mary of the trial, reminded us of our role as jurors and told us The chairs are comfortable for roughly half an hour, after which that he will not consider a majority verdict, we are told by him time we find ourselves shifting around every few minutes, trying we may talk. It’s only then that the twelve of us hear what each to get into a position that will sustain us until something hap- other’s voices sound like. Then we return to the deliberation pens to break up the day, like assignation to a trial or the order to room and wait for the voice that will start the discussion. go home early. It comes from the man who wants to be foreman. He revels The waiting room is tolerable. There is Wi-Fi and a canteen. in the power, the ability to rein in a discussion that is getting out A book, a magazine and a computer provides enough entertain- of control, to make sure that everyone has had their turn. He is

7 the tattooed guy. On his knuckles the motto of Chelsea Football ‘Is your person ginger?’ she asks. Club, written above a pair of birds. He smiles. ‘Yes.’ ‘Why me?’ he says, tacitly asking for compliments on his tone, She flips down everyone, bar one man, who remains like a sin- force, enunciation, whatever. gle tomb in an empty graveyard. After his acceptance of the role the deliberations start. Some ‘Is your person Roy?’ of us reveal where we live, if we are familiar with where the He nods. She clenches her fist. incident was said to have taken place. A girl points at the Google ‘Five–four,’ he says. ‘To you.’ Map, given by the clerk of the court. Before they begin their next round, the Jury Officer picks up ‘I live there,’ she says. the pointless microphone she uses to address the room. The discussion doesn’t last long. The evidence given by the ‘Hello. Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes, if I could just have your attention, prosecution is so overwhelmingly accurate and corroborated by please.’ each witness that soon we’re done. Everyone stops whatever they are doing. Some place their ‘Shall we have a show of hands then?’ the foreman asks. Every- open books on their thigh and turn to face her. one nods. ‘I’ve just been informed that we have no more trials today. ‘Guilty?’ You’re all free to go and be back here by ten tomorrow morning.’ ‘Not guilty?’ The assembled jurors begin talking, mostly about how nice it is to be able to go home at half past three. No one mentions When we leave we are friends. Laughing and joking with one they’ll have to return to pass judgment on another trial tomor- another, asking about jobs, plans for the rest of the day, the row. evening. The bald man offers a lift home at the end of the day to Like a schoolteacher fighting to be heard over the general hum anyone heading towards Muswell Hill. We have a shared experi- of an excited classroom, the Officer raises her voice. ence now. Two hours ago we were twelve individuals, stuck in a ‘If you could all leave your lunch cards in the office, please!’ room because we had to be. Now that we have all revealed a little She places her microphone down and wanders back to the of ourselves there is a new-found camaraderie. office, while we collect together our bags, coats and scarves. The Jury Officer lets us back into the waiting room, to the At the table the Guess Who? players tidy the game away like smell of the limp broccoli and starchy sausage rolls of the can- kids taught to at the end of play. The rest of the jury is watching teen. We take seats next to one another, instead of trying to find them. They are laughing at one another and, as they stand up, ones where there will be no one either side of us. there is an awkward moment when he tries to let her leave the Two jurors break away from the group and walk to the back table first. of the room, where the communal books and board games The two of them collect their bags and walk together out of are kept. They pick up a game, take a table in the canteen and the waiting room, down the corridor lined by primary-school art unpack the box. They had been looking at one another through- and back through the metal detector, which goes off again, but out the deliberations. And after half an hour, when the rest of no one cares because they are leaving. us have exhausted all we have to talk about, the two of them are Outside it is snowing. They stop for a moment to look up still talking and playing. and remark on the weather. She puts up the hood on her blue ‘Four all,’ he says. ‘All to play for.’ duffel coat and he moves the wrap of his scarf up to cover his ‘Right.’ She resets her board in readiness for the next round. chin. They start off again, past the wall where the lawyers smoke, She looks up at him, wondering if he is thinking that this through the gardens and bare hedges, on to Lordship Lane. might become one of those stories. We met on jury service. Both of them are getting the Tube from Wood Green, so they ‘Is your person wearing a hat?’ she asks. turn right out of the court complex. Their conversation contin- ‘No,’ he says. ‘Does yours have a beard?’ ues as they walk past the leisure centre across the road and the ‘No.’ blind-drawn houses with gardens used as skips, past the newsa- ‘Does yours have a beard?’ gent that still sells the Evening Standard for 50p and the cinema/ He smiles. ‘Yes.’ Nandos complex. ‘Ha!’ she yelps, eliminating the clean-shaven members of the Before they climb the few steps to the station, they stop and board. exchange numbers. She is going north and he south. They hug, ‘Is your person a man?’ and separate. ◊ ‘No.’ He flips down two-thirds of his board.

8 Poem Funeral by Caleb Klaces

At the latest version of my funeral,

a queue of mourners curled

around the block and then again around itself.

Polite conversation amounted

to a picturesque ruin

that friends, relatives and others no one recognized

were tourists in, unsure how to appear

solemn not solicitous

as they pressed their hot hands

to the cold arms and cheeks

of those encircled or encircling,

a tidal hierarchy – they had all been

where the others had been; would all be

where the others were currently –

which turned wheels

which turned wheels and

the bodies that later thanked their occupants

with sex, anger and the dyed black distance

collapsed into the single clean

conscience of two

emptied into one another

and the other, bigger, shapelier emptiness

that surrounded them:

vortices expiring in Jupiter’s eye.

9 A Serial Four Extracts from My Novel By Tom Basden

I’ve been writing my novel, which is called Hot Owen’s fingers buckled on the big but- had to scrap several chapters about Blunkett, for Moon at the moment, for about five years. On tons of his cardigan. Arg! he let out. example. However, cleverer readers will notice and off, obviously. Sometimes I go weeks with- ‘Chill out, honey,’ Rose calmed. She that I manage to discuss some topical stuff in out doing any of it because of holidays or getting stroked his quivering fingers. ‘Don’t get among the action. This chapter also references caught up in the Jubilee celebrations or not being jittery now.’ Gravedenko, who’s the main villain of the piece able to open an old document after upgrading ‘I hate these bloody buttons!’ Owen and Russian and would ideally be played by to a new version of Microsoft Office. Other exclaimed. He grabbed a grapefruit knife Terence Stamp in the film version of the book, times I can literally write as fast as I can think from the compartment for knives in the depending on Terence’s health /availability as and I’ll do about twenty-four chapters over a drawer by the sink and carved the cardi- and when the film gets made. It takes place in weekend. I might change the title once I figure gan up. Rose watched in awe as Owen the cellar of a farm in somewhere like Hungaria out if it’s relevant or not. At the moment it isn’t worked. Three minutes later he was free or Cairo.) really, although there is a chapter where Owen, of his woolly prison. the main character, describes the sun as a ‘hot ‘Wow,’ Rose said. The bullet wound in Palmer’s stomach moon’ for no real reason, which I gather from ‘Where were we?’ Owen asked sud- was spreading, if that’s what happens, as that programme with Brian Cox (the one from denly suavely. Rose reached into her bag of medical D:Ream, not the one from the Bourne films) is Rose slid open his belt, yanked down implements: scalpel, stethoscope, splints, a bit of a fudge. his trouser legs and started licking his etc. She took out some large tweezers. Also, I’m not writing it in order, which in thighs. Owen helped himself to the Palmer yelled with pain. Owen retrospect maybe I should have done, but – and remaining pistachio nuts in the ashtray- shushed him very forcefully, spraying this isn’t really an excuse – I’ve only recently cum-nut bowl. Rose was now visibly them all with spittle. managed to get a whiteboard. Ideally, the book grinding. ‘Gravedenko and his goons are upstairs, would be a page-turner. The chapters are mostly ‘Take my hat off!’ she urged. Owen Palmer, for God’s sake be quiet,’ he com- pretty exciting and almost all of it is climaxes. obligingly knocked it off her head like a manded. Owen, the main character as I say, is a kind of coconut off a shy. ‘I don’t think I can, O,’ Palmer said superhuman everyman figure who takes it all in ‘Don’t get cute now,’ Rose whispered, breathily, ‘I’m in incredible amounts of his stride, apart from the chapter where he gets as her golden hair unravelled and rippled pain.’ very badly burned by acid and then fire. There like a curtain, becoming a lighter hue ‘It’ll be from the bullet,’ Owen said. are also some love stories, twists, celebrities, against the black gown she had worn to ‘No, I know that,’ Palmer said as well, fights and metaphors in it throughout. the funeral. afterwards. Any publishers who are interested in it should She was now inside his shirt. Rose plunged the massive tweezers contact me on [email protected]. Any I shouldn’t be doing this, Owen into the hole in Palmer’s stomach approx- who aren’t interested in it could also contact me, thought. What would Palmer say? He imately the same size as a pocket on a just so that I know not to bother with you in my looked over at Palmer’s urn. And I’m get- child’s snooker table and fished around mailouts. ting married to Miss Reed in two hours. for the bullet. What am I doing? His body jolted as ‘Crickey, that’s deep,’ she informed Chapter 441 she impaled herself onto him. Oh sod it, them/remarked. In which Owen and Rose get it on. Owen thought. Owen had a brainwave. ‘Could we use magnets?’ he asked. (I wrote this one very early on, even though Chapter 407 ‘No,’ Rose said. it’s probably near the end of the book. It’s quite In which Palmer’s been shot. ‘OK, forget it then,’ he said. sexy, although I decided against putting in ‘We don’t even have any magnets.’ any descriptions of the actual ins and outs of (This chapter is sort of the sister/companion ‘I said forget it!’ Owen was tetchy now, it because I think it’s a bit unnecessary, and piece to the previous one where Palmer is in an because he hadn’t slept for twelve days. ultimately boring after the first few thrusts. My urn, because in this one he’s been shot and he’ll ‘I’m going to make an incision into his initial go at this chapter went into much more soon be dead. I’ve not yet written the funeral. abdominal,’ Rose told them, ‘and then detail about the actual business-end and used This chapter’s good and, if you read it carefully, lift up the liver and intestines with this a lot of words like ‘again’ and ‘etc.’, which I satirical. It’s also prophetic in a way, but that’s wire apparatus and scoop the bullet out gather is frowned upon among better writers. mainly because it’s set in the 1990s. I’m not a with this doctor’s spoon.’ The following chapter is set in a budget hotel political writer particularly, because by the time ‘I didn’t know doctors use spoons,’ chain that I’ve invented in case of legal action, you’ve had something published, the politics Owen said, intrigued, tilting his head called ‘Premiere Inn’.) you’re talking about ends up being out of date. I in the way that people do when they’re

10 intrigued. down too well with the sub-editors and then, puttanesca, and a Caprese salad on the ‘Yes. They do,’ Rose said (echoing what when they read it, the actual editors, and now side, dabbing the dog bite on his head my friend Ed Fallow, who’s training to be my mum and Angela don’t speak any more. In with a napkin from the napkin dispenser a surgeon at St George’s, told me some- my defence, the main reason I did it was because on his table. He liked it when you could time happens, so you see this part of the whenever I met a publisher outside their offices take as many napkins as you wanted, so book is very much based on medical fact). or houses they’d tell me to get some of the book was already inclined to approve of this ‘They are allowed to use medical spoons.’ published because that would help them and place. It’s just one of the many welcome ‘Did you enjoy medical school, Rose?’ other publishers take it more seriously. This touches that tell you that La Cucina Owen probed. struck me as, and still strikes me as, bananas doesn’t take itself too seriously. ‘I loved it, thanks,’ Rose answered. ‘We and ironic, given that the publishers are the Suddenly the door opened and got really pissed and worked fucking hard people who are meant to publish it anyway, and Gravedenko’s main henchman, Solomon, and had a great time, even if we subse- once it’s been published I won’t need them any burst in to the cosy, well-laid-out trat- quently became jaded about the efficiency more. It’s like being told you can’t get a job in toria and calmly made his way inside, sit- of the NHS.’ the army until you’ve gone out and done a few ting down opposite Owen. They stared at ‘I hear that,’ Owen said. ‘Every medi- skirmishes on your own, which I know from each other silently for a few moments, in cal authority I know says it’s a nightmare my friend Neil’s experience in Iraq is very a way that’s very tense if it’s in a film and these days.’ much frowned upon and illegal. Anyway, as a less effective when written down. ‘But then privatizing it ‘We have you surrounded, Mr would be a catastrophe,’ De Silva,’ he said coolly. ‘I sug- Rose went on, ‘and we gest you give us the map right can’t allow people to go now.’ without health care as Owen said nothing. His wine they do in many other was delivered and he took a parts of the world. No, slurp. It was a nice full-bodied on balance, it’s a good wine, with hints of fruit, espe- thing.’ cially grape. But at £5.20 for ‘Yup. Agreed,’ Owen a small glass it was a bit pricey. said. ‘Let’s hope any Owen looked up at Solomon future governments after and sneered. this one headed up by ‘I don’t have the map. It’s in Tony Blair don’t go mess- a Big Yellow Storage place. So ing around with it and swivel.’ (Despite saying ‘swivel’, slashing budgets.’ Owen didn’t give him the finger ‘Exactly!’ Rose said. because, owing to their locally Palmer was losing con- renowned children’s menu, a lot sciousness now. of the clientele of La Cucina are ‘I’m still in great deals families, so it didn’t feel appro- of pain!’ he shouted over. priate.) Owen took another swig But Owen hushed him of his blood-red wine. again, spitting on him a Solomon hissed like an air- bit again, because foot- bed being deflated, but not for steps were approaching. as long, and suddenly yanked Russian ones. out his bloody gun. Because of his training, Owen was ideal in these situations and jumped Chapter 220 first ditch attempt to get something in print, I up wrestled him to the floor. The gun In which Gravedenko’s goons set upon Owen as decided to turn one of my reviews (my last, as went off and killed a waiter. Bullets from he’s having a bite to eat. it turned out) into part of the narrative in way more of Gravedenko’s goons outside then that I thought and still think is quite skilful.) sprayed into the restaurant from all angles, (This is the only chapter of the novel that has killing three-fifths of a family (not the actually already been published. Essentially, Owen looked around the restaurant, wor- mum and middle son). Owen hid behind this is because I used to have a job through my ried that Gravedenko might burst in any his flipped-over table, using the menu as mum’s friend Angela Boson doing restaurant moment. He was hungry after getting a shield because it was so thick. In fact, La reviews for the Les Routiers Magazine in 2009. into a fracas with and killing that nasty Cucina has so much on the menu that’s I took the opportunity to combine some of my Doberman dog and the four Russian guys. it’s a bit disorientating and very difficult novel with a review I had to do for a place in It was an Italian restaurant, La Cucina to know what to order. I’d recommend Kennington. This chapter is the result, and I on Kennington Road. He ordered a small asking what’s on special. Owen grabbed think it’s largely successful, though it didn’t go glass of Nero d’Avola red wine, a penne a fork and threw it like how you’d throw

11 a knife at Solomon. It lodged in his neck chapter it meant a lot of things had to be includ- bloody hell it was. It was spectacularly and clearly hurt like hell because he ed both before and after in order to make sense ugly. flailed around like a fish does when it’s of it, which, in the main, I’ve not yet managed Owen followed the thick grooves along drowning in, ironically, air. to do. By hook or by crook, at some point I will the west shell, looking for an entrance. In the middle of this the food arrived. write all the explanation and story that’s needed Miss Reed bit both of her lips at the same The penne was ‘al dente’ – as it should to make it work. Or it’ll be a dream sequence. time. be – and the sauce was a little overpower- This chapter also features Miss Reed, Owen’s ‘What do we tell the academy?’ she ing and clearly contained canned olives, on/off fuck buddy. I should stress that neither asked. which was a disappointment. The Cap- he nor she nor I ever describe her that way in Owen shrugged. rese salad was made with buffalo mozza- the book, so there’s nothing offensive about her ‘What do we tell the academy, Owen?’ rella, which was a plus, even if the toma- or the way that she’s treated. If anything, she’s she repeated, having not seen him shrug. toes weren’t as flavoursome as they should a sassy female icon like Beyoncé or Elaine from ‘Oh – I don’t know,’ he mumbled. A have been and, if I’m quibbling, rather Seinfeld. This chapter is either really imagina- burst of sulphury moon wind buffeted too thickly sliced. tive or confusing, depending on your taste/intel- against their sturdy, newly fashionable Once he’d hastily eaten he returned to ligence. It’s psychological too. In a metaphorical Barbour jackets, and Owen suddenly real- the matter in hand, keeping the goons sense it’s about two people in love not knowing ized that they were holding hands. Their away from the door by throwing condi- what to do about it. In a literal sense it’s about eyes met each other’s eyes. Miss Reed ments at them or shooting them. alien technology/eggs. I was pushing myself at shyly pulled her hand away. Owen tutted. Eventually, Owen made a run for it via the time and drinking a lot of isotonic drinks.) Out of the corner of his eye, Owen the kitchen, where he said hi to the head saw another batch of alien eggs. Yes! he chef/owner, Paul McGuin, who’s been Owen and Miss Reed stood before the thought. He began to trudge away from running the place for five years now, hav- alien object in horror and wonder and her. ing previously worked in the kitchens of matching Barbour jackets. It was huge. ‘I’m going to go stamp on those eggs several well-known restaurants, includ- Owen had never seen anything like it over there!’ he called out against the high- ing the one in the Oxo Tower. It’s nicely before because it was made by aliens, and pitched kettle-like whistle of the whitey- decorated and has a rustic feel, and, while he didn’t believe in aliens until about two yellow wind. fairly expensive, is a great place for a hours ago when he had stamped on about ‘You don’t need to keep doing that!’ romantic meal for two or an office party. four hundred alien eggs. What a workout! Miss Reed shouted back to him. Owen bounded into the Gents and out What the hell was this thing, anyway? Owen pretended he hadn’t heard her. the small ceiling-level window into the It was made from a material he had never ‘Owen!’ she shouted again. ‘The aliens backyard away from his Russian pursuers. seen before, obviously, and didn’t so are peaceful and kind. You don’t need to He casually surveyed the poorly lit toilets much have a colour or a texture, because keep stamping on their eggs!’ as he shimmied out. The loos were a bit it didn’t have a surface. His brain strug- Owen thought about this, tilting his run-down and the soap dispensers didn’t gled to take it in. It was almost impos- head slightly to the side, in the way that work, which they could really do with sible to describe, but here goes. There Orlando Bloom does when he acts in a sorting out, given that they encourage were struts, I guess you’d call them, film where his character is thinking about you to eat the bread and oil with your which linked up countless prongs to a something. hands. I give La Cucina three chef ’s hats large band that looked like it was made ‘Yeah,’ he hollered back, ‘may as well out of five. from hard paint with no colour. Was though!’ it a weapon? It was wide, and covered Owen began wandering over to the Chapter 75 or 124 or 500 in the alien equivalent of leaves, which cluster of eggs, big emotions turning In which Owen and Miss Reed are in space. didn’t move despite the ferocious moon inside him that he didn’t understand. He wind. It lit up. Each prong ended with a forced himself not to think about them (I thought it might be useful to include one of perfectly spherical dark dome, which was by humming the Ski Sunday theme and the chapters that’s set in space, because I can’t somehow incredibly sharp. Owen broke focusing on the rows of eggs lined up stress enough that this book is very varied and a bit off in his hands like you would with ahead of him on the grey moon floor. that while sometimes the action takes place in a a poppadom. It was powdery and cool. ‘Please, Owen! Don’t!’ he heard Miss cellar or a restaurant in Kennington, at other The piece he had snapped off was the Reed call out behind him. But by now it times it’s on the Moon or China or literally exact shape of the Nike tick, but that was was too late and he marched purposefully anywhere. This chapter is also the first one a coincidence. forward towards the fragile, octagonal that I ever wrote, so it’s got a special place in ‘Maybe it’s some kind of lair,’ Miss eggs. Without breaking his stride, he my heart, even if its place in the book is still Reed ventured, but, to be perfectly began to tuck his trousers into his thick unfixed. Essentially, once I’d committed to this honest, neither of them knew what the socks. ◊

12 Our Scattered Correspondents but I am certain that my awakening came about with a sudden surge of interest in the Viennese composer Alban Berg, Sch- Wearing the Suit oenberg’s most famous disciple. On a December morning in 2010 I was Greg Baxter hears Alban Berg in Berlin driving by myself in the west of Ireland on an icy road after several days of snow, nce or twice a month, between For the last few years, I’ve found heading out to Achill Island. I was going OSeptember and June, I go to the myself drawn most irresistibly towards to spend a few weeks there and finish revi- Philharmonic here in Berlin. I travel atonality and twelve-tone music. I attend sions to my second book, The Apartment. by underground from my apartment concerts that feature, predominantly, I was listening to the radio. I was alone. in Prenzlauer Berg to Potsdamer Platz, composers working with these methods, The road had not been gritted – much of which takes about half an hour, and and I listen to this music on my head- rural Ireland was iced over, thanks to a from there it’s a five-minute walk to the phones and at home, increasingly, but grit shortage – and I was driving an old car entrance of the Philharmonic. I wear the not wholly, to the exclusion of other that didn’t handle the conditions well. I only suit I own, a black one, with a white music I like – and I like all kinds of music. couldn’t drive more than twenty miles an shirt and a black tie. I search the train Perhaps I’m obsessed. Perhaps a true and hour. Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto came on. for other men in suits, and for women penetrating esteem for twelve-tone music I took my phone out and filmed the road smartly dressed, because I know they will requires a degree of obsession, because it’s as I drove; I recorded the music. During be going to the Philharmonic too. naturally less pleasant, less recognizably my time in Achill, without television or I have lived in Berlin for a short time, emotional, less discrete, less resolute than internet, I watched the recording many not quite two years, and I’ll be leaving harmonic music. If one were to speak of times. again in two years. The thing I do with euphony and appeal as equivalent, then I had heard of Berg before, and I’m greatest regularity here – aside from one might say that the twelve-tone series sure I’d heard parts of the Violin Concerto dropping off and picking up my young preternaturally lacks appeal. Neverthe- a number of times already, but from that son from kindergarten, which is a ritual less, it arose as a historical necessity. Serial point onward I would be differently aware that inhabits a different part of my imagi- music, or twelve-tone music, or dodeca- of the composer and his music– the sud- nation – is make this journey to the Phil- phonism (or chromaticism1), devised by den fascination seemed to signal an impor- harmonic. The rest of my life is strangely Schoenberg, is the pre-eminent (classical) tant moment in a shift that had occurred unbound by urgency – a need to be in musical method of the twentieth century. within me following the completion of places on time, a life of deadlines and pro- Boulez said, ‘We assert for our part that my first book,A Preparation for Death. I ductivity. I am out of contact with the any musician who has not experienced had, all at once, lost my stomach for the people I know. I do not read any news- – we do not say understood, but experi- violence of autobiography; I felt exhaust- papers. I don’t watch television or go to enced – the necessity of the dodecaphonic ed by the thought of confrontation; and I the movies. I ignore the post I get. Paper- language is USELESS.’2 no longer felt driven by the zeal to speak work and bills get lost. I spend no time I came quite late to a real engagement in conclusions, or to coerce my mind to on the internet: I avoid crowds, both real with twelve-tone music, and I sometimes resolve uncertainties with assertiveness.3 and virtual. Between the hours I drop off wonder how it is that something so seem- This path had been necessary, but it would and pick up my son, I rarely speak a word. ingly essential to the life of my imagina- no longer yield anything of value. In con- Once in a while, I go for long runs, or on tion, so inextricable from my sense of templating a return to fiction, however, I hot, sunny days in summer, I go swim- dignified and feasible expression, could faced the same problem that had driven ming at an outdoor pool not far from my have remained mostly immaterial to me, me, in the first place, to autobiography, apartment. On rare occasions, I go to a even, at times, objectionable, for so long. which was the perfectly reasonable but museum, or I run an errand. I translate, I cannot quite explain why this is the case, also thoroughly polluted relationship for pleasure, a little bit of German – less, between the imposition of fantasy and the 1 The term 'chromaticism' is commonly however, than I did when I first arrived. – which is to say, in the vernacular – presumption of its need to appeal. In my I don’t look forward to books in the way used interchangeably with the other mind, the relationship was not intrinsically I once did; although I read those I like terms, but this isn’t entirely accurate. flawed, merely exhausted, and it could more carefully, I read far fewer books, A piece of twelve-tone music uses all no longer be honoured, it could only be and less often, than I used to. twelve notes of the chromatic scale exploited. When I am not reading and I am not (as opposed, for instance, to the har- Though I cannot remember what it was monic or diatonic scale), and therefore writing, I listen to music. I mean classi- is ‘chromatic’. However, a piece that 3 One realizes, also, as one composes cal music. Usually I listen to whatever is chromatic is not necessarily twelve an autobiographical book, even one I’ve heard recently at the Philharmonic. I tone or serial. And Schoenberg did not written in the midst of the events it is walk around, if the weather is agreeable, devise chromaticism. depicting, that the autobiographical wearing headphones. If the weather is 2 This quote comes from The Rest is method, while constructive and sub- disagreeable, I go home and sit in front of Noise by Alex Ross, the extraordinary stantively different from the fictional my speakers. book on classical music of the twenti- method, produces objects that are as eth century. fictional as novels.

13 I liked so much about the Violin Concerto making dishonest stylistic concessions . . .4’ twelve-tone music is based, is not, by that morning on the way to Achill Island, Atonality might be broadly described nature, harmonious, and our ability to and though everything I’ve learned of as any music that lacks a central key, or sense the emotional states of sounds is Berg since makes me misremember aspects music that lacks harmony as its primary disturbed – major and minor keys are no of that morning, I must have felt that I structural element. Dodecaphonism is a longer true indicators of feeling. Instead had arrived at a destination – the way a method by which composers can systema- of eight euphonically related whole and traveller, at long last, comes upon a city – tize atonality. Though atonality has of half steps ascending or descending from a one my fatigue had always inhabited, even course always existed, and has always been key, the chromatic scale contains twelve before I recognized it in myself. Berg’s used within larger tonal contexts to pro- equidistant half steps, or semi-tones. The music is highly dynamic, rich and unpre- duce changes in mood, a deepened sense of best illustration of the difference between dictable. But these characteristics belong confusion, contemplation, loneliness, fear, the diatonic and chromatic scales is to to a broader context of dissolution, an sadness, rage, defeat – think of atonality as compare them on a piano. To produce a C urge toward self-annihilation. In it, the a musical distance from the comfort of the major scale on a piano, simply start at C, link between composition and appeal familiar – it lacks, without systemization, and move up by white keys only, until you vaporizes: the music expresses the will to coherence over long durations. By system- reach the next C. Conversely, to play the exist and the will to vanish simultaneously. izing atonality, Schoenberg produced a chromatic scale that starts from the same Every expression of desire or hope or curi- way forward for musicians, a seemingly position, or the same C you chose above in osity arrives at its own annihilation – every pure, and highly adaptable, space for new the diatonic scale – you simply strike every utterance is self-affirmation that escapes and variegated innovations to thrive. key – white and black – on the way to the from, and is swallowed by, self-negation. By its nature, tonality is inseparable next C. It is easy – and by this I mean lazy – to from harmony, because harmony is insepa- The chromatic scale is full of useful but perceive or portray this music as a study of rable from the diatonic scale (i.e. both the challenging non-harmonious relationships, emptiness. It takes energy and humility to major and minor scales of a key). Every and by systematizing it, Schoenberg made perceive its subtleties. note you play along the scale has a har- it possible to sustain a music of non-har- Berg’s music never, despite its strug- monious – a mathematically euphonic5 monious relationships for longer durations, gle to be faithful to serialism, becomes – relationship to the key, and to each other. which made large-scale atonal composi- monotonous. It is instead radiant, elusive, Tonality also implies plot and resolution. tion possible. In his model, all half steps in seductive. It is also plain-spoken. It con- If the central key of a piece of music is C the scale must be struck before moving to tains no cloying or floribundant chords, major, for instance, the meaning of the a new starting position.6 The notes of the no hard-charging lyricism. By its restraint piece is linked to its plot – the distance composition are not arranged in relation in that regard, it indicts such character- the music travels from C major (from the to a central key, but in relation to each istics – such base and gluttonous faith familiar), the sense of conflict it attains in other. The destination of chromatic music in euphony, flourish, layering, style – as its travels, its dissonances and consonances, is not resolution – whether we arrive back evidence of degeneration and cliché. (Cer- and more – as well as its sense of resolu- at ‘home’ is irrelevant; and its means of tainly, twelve-tone music arose out of a tion. Will it return to C major in its final travel to the destination is not plot – we need to cleanse degeneration and cliché moments? Will it end with a homecom- have no point of familiarity from which a out of music, to reverse the damage done ing? Will we leave the concert hall (or plot might begin. Yet it can contain per- by the overlathing of orchestration in late close the book, in the unavoidable literary ceptible trajectories. Romantic music, to disturb our sense of analogy) feeling fulfilled or despondent? The great violinist Yehudi Menuhin, in what noises mean, and where feeling in Our feelings are also affected by the major conversation with Glenn Gould,7 called music comes from.) and minor scales, which have predictable Schoenberg’s method ‘curiously clumsy’. Berg’s is a music of profound indistinct- emotional states – major is generally a ‘The sound is always the same,’ says ness, and its value lies not in its ability to happier sound, minor is generally a sadder Menuhin. ‘There isn’t great contrast – articulate solutions to uncertainties, or to sound. intervallic contrast – between dissonance resolve conflict by imposing its assertive- The chromatic scale, upon which and consonance . . . So the only contrast ness, but in everything it withholds, in its 4 Theodor Adorno, Alban Berg, Master of 6 This is, of course, an injurious over- absences, in its restraint and its melancholy. the Smallest Link. simplification, and what Schoenberg’s The Violin Concerto is probably his most 5 This is an inaccuracy I’m commit- method allows, by the creation of tone popular piece of music: his last, and his ting for the sake of expedience. It is rows – rather than simple scales such most accessible. Berg’s other major works wrong to call the relationship purely as I’ve described – is the possibility for are the Piano Sonata (his first), the First mathematical. The mathematics doesn’t essentially infinite transformation of quite work. Interestingly, mathemati- the chromatic scale, while still in the String Quartet, the Three Orchestral Pieces, cal ratios are compromised by the well- context of a rule-based environment Wozzeck, the Lyric Suite and the unfinished tempered piano (the modern piano). where twelve tones comprise the tone Lulu. The piece I listen to most is probably However, our ears have grown so row. the Lyric Suite: ‘. . . there is no music imag- accustomed to the well-tempered piano 7 I highly recommend this fascinating inable that shapes its resources with more that the relationship between notes on and short conversation (searchable seductive power and yet without once a harmonic scale sound mathematically by ‘Gould Menuhin Schoenberg’ on pure, or at the very least, we cannot Youtube): http://www.youtube.com/ hear the impurity. watch?v=av2XTNgA72w

14 there could be is between sound and no music is unique because it is infused with people lean forward. I cannot understand sound, and that is probably where there elements that are alien to, and seemingly a desire to bop one’s head. If you have are so many pauses.’ incompatible with, twelve-tone music. a runny nose, bring some tissues with He continues: ‘There is a curious dis- Perhaps one of the things I like so much you, don’t sniffle. If you have a cough, do crepancy between the gesture and the about Berg is the fact that he has not come not attend the concert. Do not read the words. It’s as if you’d taken the words to this method as an inventor but as an programme while the music is playing. apart of, say, a play like Hamlet, and mere- inheritor who understands its necessity, Do not applaud in the pauses between ly strung together an arbitrary sequence and therefore he must fight his instincts, movements. Do not laugh if somebody of syllables that had no meaning as such, restrain himself, to the cost of his very does so by mistake. Do not fucking whis- but the rhythm and the gesture of the play identity. We are not merely listening to per. Do not suck on a throat lozenge. Do were copied absolutely, so that the per- sounds, but to a universe of struggle that not, at any time, film the hall with your son who knew the play would recognize underlie the sounds. smartphone. Do not cross or uncross your where the love scene takes place, and the I have season tickets to the Philhar- legs – whatever position you are in, stay ghost, and so on.’ monic. This allows me to attend six there. Sit still, even if you are uncomfort- Gould calls it a ‘marvelous analogy’, but large concerts each season at a consider- able. Show some respect to the conductor, he perceives far greater dynamism, com- ably reduced rate. The season tickets to the musicians and to your neighbours. plexity and ingenuity in Schoenberg than are arranged into several different series, And try to understand that the most dig- Menuhin does. Where Menuhin hears and each series tends – at least as long as nified response you can bestow upon a caricature, Gould hears genuine original- I have lived in Berlin, which isn’t long great performance is restrained applause ity. In the end they agree to disagree and enough to make authoritative generaliza- and a mild or acute sense of disappoint- play a piece by Schoenberg together, but tions – to have a slightly different empha- ment in yourself. not before Menuhin says, ‘But I admire sis. This allows the people who prefer If you want entertainment, go to the you and know that you have a greater Brahms to hear a lot of Brahms, and the ballet. understanding of Schoenberg than per- people who prefer Berg to hear a lot of The structures of the Philharmonie are haps anyone else, and I have always had the Berg. I also buy tickets to the chamber echoed across the street by the strange motto in my life that anyone who liked hall – the smaller hall, where smaller, and beautiful national library – also gold something knew more about it than some- non-symphonic concerts take place – and and asymmetrical, though with a little one who didn’t . . .’ these tickets are extremely affordable. bit of blue in it – and are accompanied Though I admire Schoenberg, and The building itself – the Philharmo- by an equally ambitious building not too thoroughly enjoy his music – unique for nie – is a marvel. The large hall, which far down the road, the sleek, black, low its extreme dynamism, its severity of light seats about twenty-five hundred, and the New National Gallery (Neue Nation- and dark, and the subtle power of what chamber hall, which seats about twelve algalerie), designed by Mies van der Menuhin referred to as the discrepancy hundred, are two large, gold, asymmetri- Rohe. These buildings are between the between gesture and word, I have never cal, Expressionist – almost extraterrestrial Philarmonie and the Spree, the river, in warmed to it the way I’ve warmed to – tentlike structures linked by a common a westward direction. In the other direc- Berg’s music. I’ve always preferred Berg’s lobby. The structures – what you see as tion, towards the former East Berlin, you vaporous continuity to Schoenberg’s light- you approach – are actually organic out- face Potsdamer Platz. Until reunification, ning extremity – though I wouldn’t claim flows from the acoustic qualities of the Potsdamer Platz, destroyed in the Second to know enough about Schoenberg really interior – a pentagon-shaped centre, from World War, was an empty, neglected, to categorize his vast body of work, and I which the rows of seats rise in irregular derelict space. Since reunification, it has would at once defer to anyone who disa- directions and uneven heights. Every- been the site of rapid development, and grees with the above portrait. thing has been subordinated to acoustic almost all that development has been According to Adorno, Berg never really priorites. It is not an exaggeration to say abominable. The Sony Center is at the severed ties completely with tonality, and, that, even in the large hall, you can hear heart of it. Its domed rooftop is a repre- most importantly, the transitional qual- someone all the way across from you, at sentation of Mount Fuji (yes, it is). There ity to his music – the double-movement the very top, nervously clear his throat if are American diners. There are beer of arriving and expiring, of the imposi- the rest of the hall is silent. halls with 101 brands of beer. There is tion and obliteration of self – softens the When I sit in my regular seats, I sit an English-language cinema in the Sony radicalism profoundly, so much so that beside a silver-haired man who hardly Center, and when Batman or a new James audiences often thought of Berg as the ever moves. He achieves a stillness that I Bond movie opens, they shine spotlights moderate among moderns. For Alex Ross, always find astonishing and try to emu- with the film’s logos on buildings. There the contemporary music critic, Berg’s style late. He claps very little. I clap very little. is a gigantic shopping mall. A flash casino. is the product of his faith in the twelve- I hate it when somebody begins to clap Outside the casino, you can always spot at tone structure (and in Schoenberg) that is before the music has settled, before we least a couple of Lamborghinis. There are both contradicted and strengthened by his have collectively had a moment to weigh miniature skyscrapers: in an effort not to fondness for elements of Romanticism and the experience. I hate to hear somebody overly damage the skyline, they’ve built a impressionism, and for his inner Mahl- whistle – which is rare – or shout Bravo! – replica of a Las Vegas replica of a big city. erian. For Ross, in other words, Berg’s which has happened once. I hate it when Tourists eat at the handful of overpriced,

15 forgettable and mostly desolate restau- but is more than merely wish-fulfillment Here in Berlin, years later, I hurry away rants with white tablecloths. Except for for a style, a book that subordinates, for from Potsdamer Platz after concerts. By the underground and the commuter rail genuine reasons, all other considerations ten in the evening, or ten thirty, it’s weird- station that runs underground, as means to the considerations of contradiction ly vacant. The lights are on – the Deut- of escape, nothing redeems the square. and mystery. sche Bahn building is brightly aquamarine My father was born in Vienna, and we I was lucky enough, when I visited in the windows; the Mount Fuji roof is still have plenty of family there. I have Vienna, to always catch a concert or two changing colours, and these colours spill made several prolonged visits in the last at the Musikverein, where the Vienna over all the buildings in the Sony Center; twenty years. Some of the visits have Philharmonic plays. The Goldener all the restaurants are open. But every- been so prolonged that it seems entirely Saal – or Golden Hall – of the Musikv- body is gone. The only human beings you accurate, to me, to tell people that I’ve erein, where large concerts are played, is will find are the bodies flowing from the lived in Vienna. I know Vienna by sight a traditional, rectangular space known Philharmonie towards the underground. and by street names. I know the nicest for the mystery of its acoustic brilliance. The platforms get crowded, but a new places to get coffee, eat or get a drink. I The audience, for the most part, sits in train comes every eight or nine minutes. I always feel at home there. Certainly, my straight rows within the rectangle. The get a beer in the station, and I drink it on affinity for Berg is tied up in the sense of room is spacious and ornate. The build- the u-bahn, in my black suit, as though I integration I feel in Vienna. But it is also ing, erected in the 1860s – one century am an exhausted Philharmonic musician. linked to the fact that Berg’s style, for me, before the Philharmonie in Berlin – is It would be something wondrous to know contains the most fruitful and intriguing Neoclassical, and it’s very near the inner what that was like. Invariably, I have come possibilities for literature, relative to his ring road, in the first district. In Vienna, from a concert that has featured one or contemporaries. I could, perhaps, I think, after concerts, I used to stroll up from more of the following composers: Berg, under his spell, produce a book of transi- the Musikverein to a small bar in the Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky, Scriabin, tions, wholly, a book devoid of assertion, Kumpfgasse called Santo Spirito. They Hindemith, Boulez, Lutoslawski, Szyman- a kind of writing that grows organically only play loud classical music there – owski, Dutilleux, Spohr, Faure, Shostako- outward from its rejection of the need to sometimes so loud you cannot have a vich. So I’m in a mood that’s both cheerful appeal, a kind of writing in which each conversation – and every hour or two a and apocalyptic. See how the world has sentence has meaning, not in relation projection screen scrolls down so patrons dismissed us. See how we have prophesied to a mood or an idea, but in relation to can watch a short film of Herbert von our own extinction, an extinction that the act of dissolving the bond between Karajan conducting. I went to concerts goes unnoticed in the spaces we have built the composition of a sentence and the that predominately featured old masters, to contain our new desires. I have one last exploitation of all we know about sen- and when I enountered music of the drink at a cafe just down the road from tences – a book that eases out of exist- twentieth century, or atonality, I did not my apartment – it’s usually crowded, very ence as easily as it comes into existence, press myself to sympathize with it. dark. Music plays. Then I go home. ◊

16 Five Dials Collectible Poster Heroines! by Badaude

17 The Hidden Lives of Secondary Action Movie Characters get their weird German references, and not let on that really you only just figured out, like two days ago, that ‘va schnell’ A Eulogy for Uli means ‘go quicker’’ But his philosophy was, Hey, I’m here By Adam Sternbergh to do a job, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun. You’re sitting by a candy Film: Die Hard well, they’re going to ‘slip’’ Guys like counter waiting to ambush a SWAT team? Time of death: 1 hour, 40 minutes and 12 Marco and Fritz? Are you kidding me? Why not grab a Crunch bar? He just liked seconds Heinrich? Those guys are plain nuts. Can- to recognize those kinds of gifts when f course the first thing anyone wants not resist the kill-shot. But Uli wasn’t life presented them to him. And isn’t that Oto tell you about Uli is that Uli had about kill-shots. He was about getting the something we could all learn from him? a hell of a sweet tooth. Well, sure – guilty job done right. We can miss him, and we can mourn as charged. The man liked his candy. So maybe he kept to himself. It’s not him, but he knew the risks. That’s what Crunch bar, Snickers, Baby Ruth, Mars that he wasn’t social—– he liked to laugh, this job is. One moment you’re enjoying a bar, Twix, Almond Joy, Bit-O-Honey: if and he could tell a good joke, and he sweet treat, or herding a bunch of scream- there was a candy bar within reach, Uli loved to talk about his moustache. But it’s ing hostages on to the roof, then the next was reaching for it. But don’t let that hard when you’re in a gang of high-stakes you open a door, and bam. Or, rather, define him. Uli was a lot more than that. international thieves posing as terrorists, bam bam bam bam bam. All because one aA lot of people don’t know the whole because hey, sure, it’s kind of a mixed bag cowboy cop decided to run around with Uli. For starters, he was a bit of a loner, of people—– a few Americans, a lot of bloody feet and shoot every person who despite the line of work he was in. Don’t Germans, maybe one Italian and one guy happens to open a door and not really get me wrong, he was always up for a job, who looks a lot like Huey Lewis—– but bother to say, Hey, who is this guy? liked to be part of a crew, and he could most of those guys, let’s face it, guys like Who is Uli? always do what was asked of hi—, wheth- Karl, his brother Tony, Heinrich, Kristof, Maybe he’s just trying to do his job, er it was stringing explosives cable across and, of course, Hans Gruber, they’re just like me? a roof, or corral and herd the hostages, or always talking to each other in German, Nope. Just bam bam bam bam bam. just, you know, shooting to wound. A lot and really, if you’re Uli, you’re kind of Well, Uli, old friend, grab one last of guys—– and we all know thi— – you left on the outside. You’re kind of always Crunch Bar, on me. Then get your ass to instruct them ‘Just wound them,’ and, trying to laugh at their German jokes and heaven, buddy. Schnell. Va schnell.

The Hidden Lives of Secondary Action Movie Characters ‘I had a dream last night.’ Wilhelm said to the group. Dieter stood across from Wilhelm, his The Recurring Nightmare of Wilhelm hands steadying the crate between them. He sighed loudly. By Cethan Leahy ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to hear about your dream.’ Film: Raiders of the Lost Ark stony road, and the men guarding it, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ Wilhelm Time of death: 1 hour, 20 minutes and 55 save for one, flinched with every shud- replied over the roar of the engine. ‘I seconds der. Each was, in his own way, troubled didn’t realize it was a crime to initiate a he small army contingent rumbled by the contents. Intellectually, they conversation with a colleague during the Tto life. Made up of several cars, a knew there was nothing to fear from work day.’ motorcycle and a canvas-roofed cargo an artefact – they were members of one ‘Initiating a conversation is fine. The truck, the convoy was in possession of of the most powerful armies in the his- problem is that you initiate the same a great and terrible secret, which lay tory of the world – but this remnant of conversation each day. Every day this inside the belly of the truck, resting the old world disturbed them. Far from week you’ve described whatever gibber- within a large and unfastened wooden home, in the heat and sand, they were ish entered your head while you were crate. It was vital to remove it from the susceptible to the potent superstitions asleep the night before.’ site immediately. The desert had become that seemed to float in the warm air. ‘That’s true,’ nodded Heinrich. He inhospitable to its European visitors. The remaining man, Wilhelm, was was crouched to the left of Wilhelm, Seven men were charged with pro- also uneasy, but his mind was troubled picking a fly out of his teeth. ‘It has tecting it. not by what lay inside the crate but by proven to be very annoying.’ The crate rocked as it passed over the lingering thoughts of his own. Wilhelm was quiet for a moment. He

18 looked out on the road. He was posi- hit, tumbled over the edge and fell to feeling uneasy, clung to his gun. tioned at the head of the crate, which sat your death.’ Clunk! at the open end of the truck. He could ‘Have I told this before?’ A hand made a brief impression on feel the hot desert sun on his face and The soldiers laughed. Confused, Wil- the trunk’s canvas roof. taste the sand in the wind. helm tried to solicit an explanation for ‘That lunatic is climbing up the side.’ ‘Anyway, last night I had a dream . . .’ this hilarity. Wilhelm heard a scream and saw ‘Oh God,’ Heinrich said. Wiping away a tear, Edvard, who had Heinz rolling out on the road behind ‘Let him speak,’ said Karl, a soldier not said anything up to now, explained, them. He had been sitting in the pas- positioned at the end of the crate, eager ‘Wilhelm, all your dreams end this way.’ senger seat. Wilhelm steadied himself. It for distraction. ‘I quite enjoyed yes- ‘You even make the same scream each was not the same scream that he himself terday’s dream, the one with the man time,’ added Karl. ‘Arggh!’ had emitted those countless nights. He dressed up as a bat, punching clowns.’ ‘How did you know about the terri- placed his finger on the trigger. ‘Fine,’ said Dieter. ‘Wilhelm, go ble scream?’ asked Wilhelm. There was Nothing was going to make his ahead.’ indeed a scream. He remembered it well, dream a prophecy. Now the centre of attention, Wilhelm his plaintive and unmanly final note. Smack! Pow! Umph! knew he’d need to engage his fellow sol- ‘Each time!’ Edvard exclaimed. ‘You The sounds of a fight. It was impossi- diers. He drew in a deep breath and said, have some strange dream and each time ble to tell from the grunts and slaps and ‘We were standing in a strange corridor. it ends the same way! You get shot or pounds who was winning. The truck We all wore this odd uniform, gleam- punched or knocked or something, you swerved on the road, narrowly avoiding ing white armour with a helmet that make that same scream and fall from a a passer-by with a camel. covered our faces and made us look like great height.’ The truck braked, causing the crate bugs. It was difficult to see out of the Wilhelm narrowed his eyes at Edvard. to slide towards the front of the truck. helmet, I recall. I was holding a strange He never had liked him very much. Unable to stop in time, the car tailing gun with two hands. It shot fatal beams ‘I guess it’s similar,’ Wilhelm admit- the truck rammed straight into the back. of light.’ ted, and stared down the road. He had In response, the truck accelerated again, ‘A strange gun that shot light?’ asked noticed a passing similarity within his sending the crate hurtling backwards. It Heinrich. dreams, but until now had not been flew past the men and, with a mighty ‘Yes, it was in the future, maybe. I struck with the obvious symmetry of thud, connected with Wilhelm. remember now. We were in outer space the endings. He began to consider the Launched into the air, Wilhelm in a floating ship. We heard that there possible meanings when he was inter- watched a grim realization flicker across were intruders in our spaceship so we rupted by the sound of a whinny. his mind. He had done this before. He had to run to catch them.’ ‘Is that a horse?’ Edvard asked. The knew what came next and it frightened ‘Oh good, we are in this dream too,’ men looked out and saw a man in a hat him. He didn’t want to die in such a said Dieter. ‘Why don’t you ever dream appearing from the tall rocks on a white pointless, almost comedic way. He of girls?’ horse. It was the archaeologist everyone released all his fear and dread into a ‘One of them was a princess. She had had been warned about. He had been noise. really funny hair, like a pair of Plun- in charge of looking for the contents Wilhelm screamed. dergebäck. Anyway, we ran into this room of the box for the Americans and was He fell forward on to the bonnet where there was a massive gaping chasm. not pleased with the National Socialist of the following car and his head con- There were only two platforms. One Party’s attempts to hinder him. nected with the windscreen. The glass was higher than the other. We were on He shouted ‘Giddy up!’ at his horse shattered. the higher one. Suddenly the intruders and attracted the attention of the entire For a few moments, Wilhelm lay . . .’ procession of Germans. Hans, stationed motionless. Then he shook his head and ‘Wait!’ at the mounted machine gun perched brushed the shards from his cheek. The ‘Yes?’ said Wilhelm. atop the car, began to shoot in the driver screamed at him to get off the ‘What is the purpose of this room?’ direction of the archaeologist, who was bonnet, but all Wilhelm could hear was asked Dieter. ‘Why is there a room with advancing alongside the truck. his own voice whispering ‘I’m not dead’ a great hole in it?’ Crack! Crack! Crack! – three words he repeated with increas- ‘Dream logic, I suppose,’ Wilhelm The bullets popped through the air. ing speed and joy. said. There were images that recurred As Hans was a poor aim, they pierced He had a second chance. He was not in his dreams. He knew he would never the canvas of the truck. A hot chunk to be the victim of some cosmic joke. question the dreams, just as he knew he of metal whizzed past Wilhelm’s ear. Wilhelm would live to see another day would never stare down into the chasm. A fear ran through him. He had felt and not be another forgotten fatality. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘the intruders this high excitement before; not in the The car swerved and Wilhelm slid off appeared on the lower platform. They battlefield or on missions, but in his the bonnet. As he dropped under the saw us and ducked behind the wall. One dreams. wheels, he felt the scream rise up again shot at us.’ ‘He is catching up,’ shouted Edvard as but his head was crushed before it had a ‘At which point,’ said Karl, ‘you got the archaeologist disappeared. Wilhelm, chance to escape. ◊

19 The Hidden Lives of Secondary Action Movie Characters sits on the bus on the way home from the victory, scarf in hand, asking him- self: Maybe we didn’t win? Maybe the New York Traffic outcome was different? What proof do I have now that I’m far from the crowds? By Bronwen Armstrong ‘Maybe,’ he said next to me in the dark one night, ‘it happened. Maybe I Film: The Bourne Ultimatum memory, if it could be a memory, of died in one of those accidents and this Time of death: 2 hours, 3 minutes and 42 his head as it bounced against the wine- is my reward.’ (This would be on the seconds red ceiling. He seemed to rediscover nights he wanted sex, so the assumption e didn’t exactly cheat death as a the dimensions of the Dodge (he didn’t of death was a compliment: his pleasant Hchild, but still. The two car acci- remember the first car), and the absence afterlife consisted of lying next to me.) dents happened so early in his life that of fear at the time. Why shouldn’t eve- Or else he’d make the same claim neither brought forth feelings of mortali- rything be fine? He was twelve. His pla- during one of the good moments, even ty at the time. It made sense that he sur- ones I classified as inconsequential. vived them. Why not? Why, so close to The last time was when he bought the beginning of his life, with all four a Mountain Dew slurpee from a grandparents still alive, plus both par- 7-Eleven in upstate New York a few ents, and with an unbroken faith in the weeks before the third accident; his world, would he not crawl out of those first slurpee in years, he said. I didn’t two cars, each of which had flipped on believe him. I took a long sip from to their roofs, and each of which were the straw and held a mouthful of icy left with a glass-toothed empty space grains, sitting with him out on the where the back window used to be. concrete step next to the store, and After crawling out of the first wreck, I agreed that it was a reward; it was aged eight, he looked down and saw good, though it didn’t necessarily a spattering of blood on the Velcro mean he’d died in a car accident as a straps of his shoes. ‘Blood,’ he thought child to deserve it. (and he often recounted this story), ‘is ‘You can have it, anyway,’ I said. dripping from my head.’ But even ‘This doesn’t have to be heaven, or a at that moment his confidence in life heaven.’ was so intact that he could watch the ‘A heaven of sorts,’ he replied. dripping blood staining his shoes as he ‘Of sorts,’ I said. watched art lessons on public television From what I heard, the third acci- – the colour spreads, the canvas reacts dent, aged twenty-nine, happened to the liquid. fast. The car that hit him didn’t stop. The second time, aged twelve, The driver reversed immediately, he was in shock. One of the police dragging his battered bumper, and officers at the scene handed him his drove away again. The NYPD repre- copy of C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the sentative told me that the individual Dawn Treader, as he was five books driving the car was being pursued, into the Narnia series for the second but he couldn’t disclose much more. time round. Gravel was dug into the The individual had not been a police space between the first page and the officer, even though he was driving cover, embedded into the gum of the a police car. There were gunshots spine, and he remembered, he said to at the scene, but my husband wasn’t me, thinking how much that must have cidity had been disrupted only when his killed by a gunshot, thankfully. In some hurt the book, even though none of the father showed up at the hospital hours ways, I’m glad the driver of the car, the pages were ripped. They told him he’d later and raked his fingers across his son’s man who was being pursued, the man need a single stitch on the top of his skin and rubbed his hands up and down driving the stolen NYPD car, didn’t stay head, one stitch, while the car was taken his son’s arms as they stood in the hall- at the scene. I didn’t have to see him for scrap. way. ‘There was very little comfort in when I arrived there amidst the glass Sometimes, at night, never in a my father’s touch,’ he told me one night. and lights. I didn’t have to look at him car, never while we were driving, but ‘He had been testing for solidity.’ sitting in the back of the ambulance with sometimes in bed, he’d describe to me It’s only now he’s scared of those a reflective blanket over his shoulders. what it was like when the Dodge rolled two accidents from long ago; or he was There was no eye contact. The man kept over, and he always mentioned the inner scared of them, like a sports fan who going. He had momentum. The job – if refusal, the soft no, and the disbelief, the can’t believe everything worked out and only the man knew – was finally done. ◊

20 The Hidden Lives of Secondary Action Movie Characters They always seem forced. I’m trying to get off the phone with my section leader but he’s giving me the unnecessary details ‘Get Your Ass to Mars’ of protocol, i.e. the ones I already know. He has the ability of making everyone By Nikesh Shukla feel like a slacker. With his over-explain- ing and disregard for subtlety. So I’m Film: Total Recall up until the removal men came round trying to rush him off the phone, because Time of death: 44 minutes, 11 seconds with their hovering tea crates and packed call waiting is displaying my wife’s name he day starts quiet, the day starts up our lives to relocate us to Mars. She and she doesn’t respond well to being Tslow. I wake from a blissful dream looked at me as we loaded a box labelled kept waiting beyond the fourth ring. where I’m floating in space: space with ‘Ella’s dolls’ on to the truck and said, ‘Dad, ‘Hello,’ I answer tentatively, knowing oxygen and I can breathe. I’m weight- I hate you for doing this to me. I hope there’s no way she’s not going to be pis- less and smiling. My head is fizzing from you die.’ She was calm, understated, sed off. She tells me that she’s withdrawn the heat. The thermostat’s been broken almost malevolent, like it would be by her money from our account and she’s head- since we moved in. My wife likes it hot. hand. ing down to the green for two weeks. She says it reminds her of Malibu, where I was too old for this shit. ‘Two weeks?’ I ask. she grew up. I can hear Ella’s listening to ‘Two weeks . . .’ she responds. some angry, thrashing guitar. This usu- I ask my wife what time it is and she tells She says she misses her family and ally signals her mood change from teary me it’s 5 p.m., MMT. I smile and close my wants to see them. But I know the real and hateful to angry and hateful. I pull eyes as I let the lukewarm water of the reason. She likes a particular brand of myself out of bed and head to the shower. shower shiver me as it hydrates my poor cereal and you can’t get it up here on My wife is lounging in the bath, bub- air-conditioned pores. I make a passive- Mars for love nor bribery. I know she’s bling is popping around me already – her aggressive comment about her using up going back to stock up. I know this greatest luxury is to have a bath first thing all the hot water, again, and she makes because she tells me so. She’s so predict- in the morning. The frivolous trappings a passive-aggressive comment about her able. Maybe a third tit will make her of a housewife. I smile at her, her two boredom, and I make another passive- nicer, I wonder idly to myself, then panic playful breasts are bobbing in and out of aggressive comment about our hateful I’ve said it out loud during a quiet bit in the suds. Don’t ruin the ravine between, I daughter and she makes a passive-aggres- our conversation. I feel like the whole think to myself. She looks up at me, paus- sive comment about her pocket money, transit train is looking at me so I end the ing the television and taking a swig of and then we’re at 2–2, so we silently call call. Two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks red wine. Frivolous. She barely looks at it a draw. I slip into my uniform, crum- of bliss. Two weeks of . . . mmmm . . . I me. I ruin her luxury with my ablutions pled on the floor where I left it a mere six could head out into town, check out the as I pee endlessly, loosening my morning hours ago. My limbs are wet with exhaus- strip bars, see some real three-breasted dishevelment. tion, cold and I am unappreciative of the girls, see what the fuss is all about. I could Then it dawns on me. red glow outside our window. stay at home and try and find my daugh- I’m on nights this week. Breakfast is dinner and I can afford ter’s diary, see what the little shit’s prob- Fuck. myself a slice of last night’s pizza. Head- lem is. I could do anything I want. I’m too old for this shit. phones in, I head for the transit train. Two weeks. I listen to some pastoral soundscapes At the security entrance for work, Get your ass to Mars, they told me. You inspired by Martian carvings, I flick Winston looks up at me and says I look gotta get your ass to Mars, or you’ll get through a paper from the ‘green’ from like hell. I complain about working left behind. Jobs down in the ‘green’ were two days ago and my mind wanders nights and he laughs knowingly. He welling up. The airport securities union around a lot. Reminders of war, famine, buzzes me in. The locker room is empty. had been on strike for a few years, after death, pestilence from the ‘green’ makes Maybe we really are on high alert. I’m scientists had developed Johnny cabs to me feel better about this new life here. I putting my music player and lunch in work at departure gates. ‘More jobs for think about sending my brother an email, my locker when my pain-in-the-ass boss humans’, we said, and we striked. But we telling him to ‘get his ass to Mars’. bursts in, screams at me for being late (I’m couldn’t survive on the lowly union subs I get a phone call about some new not – I’m always fifteen minutes early for we received. Food was expensive, air was high-alert security protocols that have my shift) and orders me to my post. This expensive, my wife wanted a third breast come down from the top. Some dick guy coming in, Quaid, he’s dangerous, implanted – times were tough. So I got called Richter, a Cohaagen heavy, is I’m told. Richter wants him alive. I snort my ass to Mars. throwing his balls about. There’s gotta be and take my sweet-ass time locking my My wife was the easiest sell – cosmetic more to life at this. I’m too old for this stuff up. surgery laws were more relaxed on Mars. shit, I think. I close my eyes and try to My boss’s walkie talkie crackles. My daughter refused to give me an easy reimagine that feeling from my dream, There’s a new shuttle just disembarking time. She bawled, she screamed, she that weightlessness. You can never repli- and Harry’s on lunch. He looks at me and kicked and she refused to talk to me, right cate dreams in your waking closed eyes. I complain that I’ve still got ten minutes

21 of me-time. I’m off the clock. He calls I’m at my post, with my boss and Leon- that coming. me all sorts of names and threatens to fire ard, who never washes his uniform, and My boss, star outfielder in our softball me. Richter must be leaning on him. I we’re watching everyone come through. team, is the one who catches the head. shrug and head to my post, not before It’s Leonard who picks out the redheaded ‘Get ready for a surprise . . .’, it says laughing about it in the toilets with Win- lady with the yellow coat, but it’s all smugly. ston. Winston hates everyone. three of us who express surprise as her I close my eyes, pretending I’m floating robot head comes off. We really didn’t see in space. ◊

Memoir special cigarette. With the informalities out of the way, he lays down the respon- sibilities of the position: I am to acquaint Self & I myself with the oeuvre – not merely his works, but the works that he will be writ- Matthew De Abaitua offers his services ing about. There is a library of drug liter- ature in the study and I am to read it. Sec- n the early nineties, my employer was The opening chapter features the protag- ondly I can bring no Class A drugs into Ithe writer Will Self. We lived together onist ripping off the head of a tramp and the house, nor am I permitted to drink for six months in a small cottage in Suf- having sex with the severed neck. I don’t more than the government-recommend- folk. I was his live-in assistant, or amanu- think twice about it. ed twenty-four units of alcohol a day. I ensis, an obscure word that translates as The job interview takes place at Ter- am to do whatever I am asked. Nothing slave at hand, a person to take dictation ence Blacker’s farmhouse. Will Self is beneath me: laundry, transcriptions, and copy out manuscripts. J. G. Frazer, arrives, six foot five, dressed entirely in fetching and carrying, and even roughing the great anthropologist and author black; light bends towards him like a up literary critics in the Groucho if they of The Golden Bough, also employed an black hole or a dilated pupil. He throws a diss ‘The Contemporary Novel’. amanuensis after his eyes filled up with gunnysack of weed at me and says, ‘Make I agree to all these conditions, and the blood during a lecture. My appointment something out of that.’ I make the special job is mine. I move into the cottage. The was made after a similarly traumatic inci- cigarette. The interview proceeds in a front room is Will’s study, containing a dent: Will’s divorce, and his move out of fashion in which I cannot recall. desk, a selection of adored typewriters, a the family home. (There will be some mention of drugs wheezing Amstrad word processor and At the beginning of this story, I am in this essay, which is unfortunate. Drug printer with the special box of printer twenty-one years old and my name is talk is as embarrassing to me as flares and paper that it is my job to refill, a fax, Matthew Humphreys. I want to be a wide-collared shirts were to my parents’ again requiring its own particular station- writer so I apply to the Creative Writing generation. But then I got off lightly.) ery, and then the shelves, one of which is Masters course at the University of East The second interview is at a rented occupied by editions and translations of Anglia. I get in. The course passes too cottage in Knodishall, a tiny village near his own books. The walls are lined with quickly. I have no idea what I am going Leiston and Saxmundham in Suffolk, a Post-it notes containing gnomic images to do next. few miles inland from the nuclear power and observations to be worked into what- And then Will Self comes to town. reactors of Sizewell. Will Self collects me ever he is writing. In the six months we I have been in York for three days on from Saxmundham station in his white live together, he writes no fiction. an amphetamine-and-boredom bender. souped-up Citroën. Will no longer drives, The living room is small and bare, with Sleepless, I cross the country on a train. for philosophical reasons, but I wonder if no television. The cottage was flooded Criss-cross. Cross-criss. I arrive home to this decision owes something to the four the previous winter, and the waters a phone call from a friend suggesting I or five occasions that he nearly killed us brought with them mud that seeded the meet her and Terence Blacker, the uni- in that car. On the drive to the cottage, he walls with fly eggs. Now it is summer, versity’s writer-in-residence, in the pub. I changes gear the way a singer goes up an the eggs have hatched. Coils of flypaper should go to bed. I go to the pub. octave: as an intensifier. The car provides hang down from the ceiling, two dozen Terence tells me that Will Self is look- him with an angry voice with which he yellow gummy streamers each riddled ing for an assistant. conducts an unending and furious argu- with flies, some dead, some dying and ‘I’ll do it,’ I say. ment with the system – the system being, some opportunistic. I watch a fly hop up ‘You’ll have to live with him.’ in this case, the tedious conformity of and down the flypaper by using the backs ‘Fine.’ traffic which keeps everyone alive. of dead flies as stepping stones; when the ‘In a cottage in Suffolk. It’s very The interview is conducted on deck- feet of the free fly nudge a still living but remote.’ chairs in the back garden of the cottage trapped fellow, then it buzzes furiously ‘I’ll do it. I have no other options.’ beside the rusting frame of a greenhouse. in rape. The flypaper dangles below our As I said, this is the early nineties. Will We begin by shooting whisky bottles head height; I buy a sofa for this room, Self has just published My Idea of Fun. with an air gun, then follow up with the and study the flies from a prone position.

22 The kitchen is where Will Self list. Someone has already bled the pop- My mother calls. She doesn’t like instructs me in the importance of clean pies of their sap, and so we make a tea by to call in case she interrupts something. work surfaces. On our first weekend boiling the opium heads, mashing them, Before Will left, my mum called to ask together, he barters with the fishermen straining the resulting liquid, and serving me for help with her word processor but of Aldeburgh to buy the biggest lobster with two fingers of Scotch. I name this I was out, and so she asked Will Self if he in their catch, a baleful blue monster in brew Horlicks Plus. As the summer turns could provide her with IT support and, a tin bath they keep around the back of to autumn, the opium heads become to his credit, he did. She tells me that she the hut. We sink a few pints while they infested and bugs leap from the boiling and my father are going to visit, staying kill it for us, and then return to pick up water when I cook them up. ‘This is the in a caravan nearby. I don’t know how the dead beast, still warm and wrapped in most decadent thing I have ever seen,’ they feel about my living with Will Self newspaper; in my hands, the lobster has says my friend, when visiting. ‘You will and I never ask. They know that I am the armoured heft of a rocket launcher. see worse,’ Will growls. losing my accent and that my speech has Will’s girlfriend Victoria arrives from This period of domesticity soon comes become a lugubrious drawl in imitation London bearing fancy treats from a food to an end. Will goes away, first on a book of my master. hall, flavoured oils and cod’s roe still in tour of Brazil, then a long research trip to My parents park their caravan south the womb; I make mayonnaise and fry Australia that will later inform a section of of Orford and pick me up, feed me, and courgettes and we dine on lobster in the How the Dead Live. I am left behind in the then we drink. I am the youngest child garden by the flickering light of enor- cottage on my own for six weeks, during and so it’s no big deal that I am living mous candles. This is a good day. which time I am instructed to keep the such a feckless life. My father Eddie and I My work begins. I buy second-hand Whole Will Self Industry ticking over. I drown our differences in brandy. furniture from the local town of Leiston prepare a preliminary edit of his collected And then Eddie asks me to change my and unpack the binbags holding Will’s life, journalism. I take calls at all hours from name. each packed in haste when he left the fam- friends and colleagues and add their mes- Why? ily home. He can’t bear to open them. It is sages to the pile. Oliver Stone’s people Because you’ve got the wrong name. too painful. It is left to me to bring order call. They want to know who I am. I’m I am not who I think I am? to the possessions of a divorced man. I file Will Self ’s people, I reply. A woman calls. No, you are. But you could be some- their contents in a second-hand filing cab- It’s Victoria. ‘No, it isn’t,’ explains the body else. inet: juvenilia, receipts, bank statements, voice at the other end of the line, ‘Victo- It’s a long story, and I still don’t know first drafts. The cashpoint receipts indicate ria is Will’s mistress. This is his wife, Kate.’ it all. withdrawals on a scale I have never seen I apologize, and explain that because I am When he was sixteen, Eddie had before, in units of fifty: adult portions of Liverpudlian, all posh women sound the nowhere to go, nowhere to live, so he money, not the scrappy tenners I survived same to me. She accepts my apology, or joined the police force. The sergeant on as a student. tactfully ignores it. looked over his paperwork and said, ‘Son, Every day Will writes out a list of One day, I discover the corpse of a fly you’ve got three names. I don’t know chores for me: I am to source an enor- on a window ledge. It is covered with how or why, and I don’t want to know. mous map of London from the A–Z dust and has clearly been there for some For a start, you’ve got two birth certifi- shop in Chancery Lane, and while there weeks, evading the attention of our clean- cates: one says you are Arthur Edward pick up two cartons of filterless Camel er, who comes round every Tuesday to Langton and the other Arthur Edward cigarettes from the tobacconist. The map drink tea. Before he left, Will made a tiny De Abite-you-ah, but you put neither of must then be mounted on a flexible screen sign in the style of National Heritage and these names down on your application. so that we can bend it around us of an Sellotaped it next to the dead fly, both as You wrote Edward Arthur Humphreys. evening and sit in it, in his preferred mode memorial and as a subtle rebuke to our So which name do you want? Who is of silence, reading and drinking, until we cleaner; but, like the Hoover, it escaped going to be the copper?’ are sufficiently intoxicated for bed. her notice. Eddie chose Humphreys. He didn’t In the morning, I rise first and sweep All day, I sit in his chair, at his compu- want to go into Merseyside Police with a the fire grate. After breakfast, we retire to ter, answering mail, paying bills, writing foreign name like De Abaitua and he had the garden. The grass is long and scorched. letters and bits of fiction. At dusk, I ride no idea who the Langtons were. That’s a Will points out a single white opium out to the sea and record my observa- long and different story. poppy, drained and desiccated, growing tions and the sound of the waves on a Now he asks me to rectify the choice in the verge. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ he says. He Dictaphone. I am never bored. I take the he made as a young man. Re-establish the has come to this remote cottage to avoid axe out to the glade to chop wood. The patriarchal line. And I who have always the narcotic temptation of the city only first log I swing at leaps up and strikes me been obsessed with alternate selves am to discover its raw materials growing wild on the forehead. I have blood on my face. briefly, drunkenly, fascinated by the in his own backyard. And this poppy is Pheasants pecking their way through the idea. I am the youngest son – my older merely an advance scout for an armada of undergrowth pause to laugh at me. Then brother is too enmeshed in the world to white opium poppies growing in a hidden things get unpleasant, for the pheasants. change his name, my sister will soon get patch beside the wheatfield. The crop- Sometimes I speak to people on the married and lose the name anyway. Since ping of the opium is added to my task telephone. he retired from the police force, Eddie

23 had grown obsessed with his one great to him. ‘The boss is in bed. He’s a bit This explanation does not reassure the unsolved investigation: who is he? The worse for wear. I’d really appreciate it if gas man. He moves briskly at a crouch evidence suggested he was a De Abaitua. you didn’t wake him.’ into the garden. If I became a De Abaitua then it would – The gas man looks sceptical. The cot- ‘I have a plan to deal with my face. I for me – be like taking a character from a tage is quite remote. My warning gives am going to take the Sizewell cure. Get novel and making them real; for him, his him pause. He didn’t expect that. your trunks.’ He hands me an empty mug, son becoming a De Abaitua would be like ‘I will have to use the drill.’ retrieves clothing from his suitcase and finally catching a wanted man. ‘Could you drill quietly? I don’t want goes back upstairs. The next day, I have a punishing to wake the boss. I’d just really appreciate Four and a half miles from the cot- hangover. The hot sun makes me feel like it if he could sleep in.’ tage, the twin nuclear power stations of an ant under a magnifying glass. I do not The gas man nods, but not in agree- Sizewell dominate the Suffolk coastline. think any more about my name. Will is ment, merely in acknowledgement that Sizewell A is a functional concrete box, due back from his long trip and I am fear- he has heard me but is not prepared to whereas Sizewell B is a dome of tessel- ful and excited. While he was away we do anything about it. The waking of the lated white tiles resembling God’s com- communicated occasionally. A postcard boss is not his problem. pound eye. The waters around Sizewell from Australia, which compared me phys- Drilling, hammering, clanging ensue. are tropically warm as seawater is pumped ically to a koala bear while noting that Nervously, I pace around the living room in to cool the reactor and then vented we differed – the bear and I – in its habit listening for signs of life from upstairs. I back into the North Sea. of ‘seldom drinking’. From Brazil, his make three cups of tea in an attempt to Once Will has dressed, and the gas man fizzing glitchy monologues were amused interrupt the work. The whirring, the has been mollified with sugary tea and a at how deranged it all was. He called the banging, the blasting continue. I take a honk on the special cigarette, we under- country the Klingon Empire and held the cup upstairs. Smoke from the special ciga- take a walk to Sizewell. As instructed, I phone out of the window so that I could rette seeps from under the bedroom door. have trunks, towels, a frying pan, some hear the shooting in the streets outside. I leave the tea outside. potatoes and sausages. Will walks quickly. I heard no gunshots. Between publicity ‘You woke him,’ I say to the gas man. I stalk after him across the flatlands, try- appearances, he didn’t seem to be leaving His ponytail flicks indifferently as he con- ing to keep pace. We don’t talk much the hotel much. In Australia, he was taken tinues with the work. until we reach a house within sight and to sacred aboriginal sites where the trees Finally, he agrees to pause and we sound of the reactors. The house is empty bleed. None of it was helping. retire to the living room to drink tea. The and up for rent. From the back garden, For his return, I light the garden flares, gas man talks about surfing while I lis- the thrumming from deep inside the lay in some Scotch and stock up the ten anxiously to the creaking of the bed nuclear reactors is not merely audible – it fridge. He doesn’t arrive. I sit on the sofa upstairs and the sound of large footsteps is loud. A pylon stands astride the house. listening to the radio and watching the padding across the bedroom floor. A door Its thick wire sizzles in the damp air. The necrotic lust of flies. I am the dog that bangs open. The gas man flinches slightly. dusk is heavy with static and mad electri- longs for its master, nervously haunting But from his expression I can see that he fied thought. the hallway and wandering the front lawn, finds the situation ridiculous. To be afraid ‘We should live here,’ says Will. looking out for any sign of an approach- of waking up some man! We walk on. We try to find a short ing headlight. And then Will Self appears at the top cut through the reactor complex. Will He is not coming. Perhaps tomorrow. of the stairs, naked, apart from a towel, suggests bunking over the fence. My job I wait. No, not tomorrow. He eventually which is draped over his head. The gas as Will’s assistant requires a relentless returns at one in the morning. The flares man squeaks, a quite unexpected sound willingness to participate in the unusual. to welcome him home have burned out. to come from a man, that palpable squeak. The only way I can survive as a passenger He arrives in darkness. He is incoherent Will’s tattoos on his arms are blocky on this brief journey we are on together and has been on it in London. I am full of abstract shapes because they have been – not merely as a metaphorical passenger stories and messages but he is not inter- overwritten. But the eye is quickly drawn but also as an actual passenger during ested. His eyes turn independently of one away from his body to apprehend the his deranged bouts of driving, or that another, reluctant to focus on the place awful spectacle of his face. What has hap- time, returning from a gig in Brighton, he has returned to, the place of no fun, of pened to his face? The gas man sets his tea when he piloted the train into Victoria no interest. down on a table. He is about to make a station in return for giving the driver a ‘Don’t wake me in the morning,’ he run for it. But first, one last look at Will’s honk on the special cigarette – if I am to growls. face. It has swollen disturbingly into a get through all this without losing my Unfortunately, the next morning, the terrible topography of distorted features, nerve and without, like the Bloomsbury gas man arrives at nine sharp to move a each topped with welts and scratches. PR women, crying and demanding to gas line from the front of the house. It is Will treads deliberately, nakedly, down be let out, if I am to endure, I must have the last item on my list of tasks. The gas the stairs. the courage of his convictions. But just man is an Australian with a blond pony- ‘I’ve been scratching at my face all because I am a grunt, enlisted in a very tail. night,’ he says. ‘I had image horror. Now small and embattled infantry division ‘Please could you work quietly,’ I say it’s infected.’ in which Will Self is the sergeant major,

24 does not mean that I will break into a and Will keeps loading it on to the fire. ‘It’s Basque. I come from a short line of nuclear power reactor with a pair of Being mere infantry, I do not ask him Liverpool Basques. It should have been trunks and some sausages, and a man with to stop. Our campfire becomes a blazing my name, but it wasn’t because my dad a mutated face, just so he can take a short beacon and then I am instructed to cook changed it when he was young. Now he cut to the beach. No way. upon it. The frying pan catches fire as wants me to change it back.’ Not unless he insists upon it. soon as I place it on the conflagration, the ‘What does De Abaitua mean?’ Reason prevails. We walk around the oil burns, the sausages burn, the silver foil ‘From the land of plenty. My ancestors perimeter. fuses with the potatoes to form a sort of must have appeared well fed.’ On the beach, the waves obsessive- vegetable cyborg: there will be no food ‘It’s a much better name than Hum- compulsively arrange and rearrange the tonight. phreys, isn’t it?’ pebbles. There is a point equidistant The fire is so hot that the pebbles pop I nod. I have always hated the name between Sizewell and the sea where the and crack. Will is silent. The fire in the Humphreys. sound of the churning reactor and the night expresses his fury in a way I am too ‘It’s decided,’ said Will, deciding. ‘From noisy sorting of the beach overlap, and young to understand. I am very much on now on, I will introduce you as Matthew there I stand and sway. the outside of his story, whereas he is at De Abaitua to everyone.’ Will points to the pumping station out the centre of mine. The breaking surf is luminescent under in the water, a derelict-looking rig and a When the fire subsides, I talk about the the moon. The wood in the campfire hangout for gulls. He walks into the sea, visit from my father, and then I remem- seethes and our shadows slide over the and I follow him: we swim out to the ber, for the first time that day, that Eddie pebbles. The shadow: the ancient meta- rig until the water becomes as warm as a asked me to change my name. phor for the other self, the person you stream of irradiated piss. This is how we ‘What to?’ asks Will. He has a profes- might have been, the dark you, the dop- take the Sizewell cure. sional interest in names. A few people still pelgänger with the same face but a differ- Afterwards, we gather driftwood for believe Will Self to be a pseudonym. ent name. I say yes, that’s who I will be. I a campfire. Driftwood burns ferociously ‘De Abaitua,’ I say, and I spell it out. don’t have to think twice. ◊

Fiction nearest neighbours. There was another flash of lightning, this time followed by the murmur of thunder, the scrabble of Obsolagnium claws on the fence and finally the sound of Olav sharply closing the slat-blinds in by Matt Suddain the next room. This was strange because he could still hear the kettle being filled. ilde was in the bedroom when munities who lived there. The muscles She navigated the house so quietly. He Wthe slat-blinds snapped. It was a around his spine began to burn. He felt wondered if she was angry. Why would calm, clear night. Earlier, there had been his eye muscles strain. He imagined the she close the blinds so abruptly? If she lightning over the lake. No thunder; the creatures going about their business, bus- was angry with him about the foxes, then sound waves had crashed into the lake. tling around the bergs of dry skin. Wilde why didn’t she just – He’d looked up from where he’d been considered that if you had a powerful The blinds directly in his line of sight dragging branches to his new Timberwolf enough listening device you might even snapped up. That is to say, they changed wood chipper and saw the purple veins be able to hear the sounds of these socie- their angle from closed to open. They of energy spread across the sky. He’d ties who live unwittingly upon the heel made a sound like a fistful of bamboo pulled the canvas tarp across his beast and of a giant. switches swakking on a tree. ‘Ah,’ he heard hurried inside. He’d showered; scrubbed When he heard his wife come in from himself say. the yellowy-green tinge of lawn-cuttings the garden he sat up. The latch of the It was a peaceful night, despite the from his hands and lower legs. Now he French doors needed oiling. He heard her storms near the mountains. Their bed- sat on the edge of the bed and lifted one go into the kitchen. As the spring water room had two wide windows giving a foot and rested it on the opposite knee. began to fill the kettle he heard the fox disturbingly precipitous view across the He observed the skin flaking from his arrive, her claws chattering on the wood- bay. The moon was high and ripe. It was heel. He could slough it away with the en deck. The creature had upturned two sliced into four even pieces by the Dutch lump of volcanic rock his wife had kindly pots last night: a small fern and a baby pine slats. It was so quiet that Wilde could given him for Christmas, but every week apple tree. She’d pulled them out with her hear the high warble of an alarm from an a sequence of mysterious processes would jaws and scattered the soil across the deck. empty house across the lake. It sounded cause the dryness to return. He studied But what could he do? She came and to him as if someone were playing a loop the dead, white zone and imagined he went, as foxes do. Their house was built from an old-time horror picture. Wilde were looking down upon a wasteland. He where nature and civilization were in flux. sat upon his bed and angled his head. So. imagined leaning down as far as it would They were cut off from the busy world by ‘So, you’re back.’ he said to the seem- take to perceive the microscopic com- a lake, forests, and were miles from their ingly empty room. There was a pause,

25 then the blinds snapped down again. He to buy a boat.’ ‘Great question, Kristofer. Thanks for saw the hemp cord move, and then the ‘Did he even?’ She folded her arms. asking. I suppose I just picked up on the blinds ka-snapped in the next window. ‘Yes. And anyway this kind of thing has vibe. I mean, we hit it off immediately, Twice, up then down. With each snap been happening for days now.’ He moved and when I ask for certain things, a trade Wilde saw the full moon flash like the to the windows and let some moonlight magazine, a Phillips head, I don’t have signal from a ship. The moon was high in. ‘I’ve been misplacing things. Objects to clarify. He just gets me. On the other above the lake. Wilde put his right foot have been moving without explanation. I hand, Olav has difficulties at times when on the floor. suppose you’ll tell me there’s an obvious it comes to things like wash settings.’ ‘I’ve seen this. Why don’t you do cause?’ ‘So it’s confined to this house?’ something new?’ A beat before the lamp ‘No, on the surface this does appear ‘I think it ranges freely.’ beside his bed flicked off, then the big to be a paranormal incident. Though of The other day, Wilde was leaving for lights turned on. ‘That’s very impressive.’ what nature I’m not sure.’ Olav always an appointment in the city, but his car Wilde had a calm, controlled voice. He spoke in an overly formal manner when wouldn’t start. He’d called in vain to had spent years in his local Word-Masters she was trying to be rational. She finally his invisible helper. As he’d gone to dial group and had risen to the level of Fabu- placed her book on the bedside table a mechanic, the phone rang. It was his list. ‘Do it again.’ and turned on the lamp. Then she undid nearest neighbour, Max, calling to tell The lights began to flash in sync, slow- her gown. ‘Now, are you too consumed him that a large slip had washed across the ly at first – lamp, light, lamp, light – then with poltergeist events to get some of road, taking at least a dozen pines away. faster, until they alternated quicker than this?’ and she ran both index fingers from Later, Wilde’s car had started first time a human hand could manipulate them. beneath her breasts to just above her hips. and he left for his rescheduled meeting. Wilde stood up and tied his gown. The ‘You think this thing saved your life?’ flashes were giving him a headache. He It was a week later when their good ‘No, I think he saved me from miss- heard his wife approaching, saying even friends Kristofer and Amelie came over ing my meeting. It was a very important before she entered, ‘Our fox is back. Oh from the city. Wilde had a broad circle of meeting.’ God, what is this? Electrical fault?’ She friends, but Kristofer and Amelie were his The drinks arrived. They slid noiseless- stood by the door. oldest, and they were very close. There ly along the bar top, as if cushioned on a ‘Don’t think so.’ To be certain, Wilde was nothing unusual about their relation- millimetre or two of air. Kristofer sipped went to the small window near the bath- ship, though the couples often bathed and squinted thoughtfully. room. The other windows far across the nude together and the byplay between bay were lit. His own reflection pulsed. them was sometimes intense. Wilde ‘Now, don’t say “no” immediately,’ said Wilde turned back to his wife, whose face wasted no time in showing Kristofer his Kristofer at dinner, ‘but think carefully was madly juddering. ‘Stop it, now!’ he phantasm. about it.’ said to the air. The chaos stopped, and it ‘It’s some kind of trick.’ Kristofer was a passionate, restless man. was dark. ‘Nope. Mood lighting.’ The lights in He seemed ever in the act of scattering his ‘So, what?’ she asked. the basement den stammered, fell dark, energy. A piece of white flesh stood alert ‘Spirit.’ then rose again to give the room a honey on the end of his fork. The red liquid in He heard his beloved snort. glow. Wilde had never installed dimmers the glass in his right hand trembled. ‘I ‘Or poltergeist.’ on his lights. ‘How the heck . . .?’ want to make you an offer,’ he said. ‘I ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ ‘Gin, three parts!’ They both observed have a very important dinner party com- They were standing in the dark. He the bottle as it rose to pour the gin across ing up which might change my entire could hear her breathing. the shaker full of ice. ‘Vermouth, dash!’ future.’ Kristofer was prone to exaggera- ‘A friend of mine from Ghana had a Wilde had rediscovered a love for dry tion, but Wilde nodded. ‘I’d like to bor- poltergeist. It’s very common.’ Martinis when he and Olav were in Oslo. row your entity.’ ‘Why do you always leap to the insane?’ ‘The key is not to shake the mix, because ‘I see.’ Wilde put down his herring fork. ‘Blinds!’ said Wilde, and the moon the shards of broken ice dilute the gin. ‘I think they’re going to pull out of this winked twice. ‘Lights!’ and the bedroom You have to stir. See? I don’t even have to deal, I can just feel it, and I know that came alive again, before the man in the tell him any more.’ with your friend’s help I could put things gown lifted his arms like a wizard and They listened to the pleasant sound back on track. Don’t say anything now, yelled, ‘Stop!’ And they did. He felt for of the cubes being stirred, and the ladies’ just think about it.’ his slippers with his feet. ‘Like I said, a laughing voices floating in from the pool ‘I will, Kristofer, I will.’ friend in Ghana had one. He used it to bet area. ‘These are fine women we have.’ The four sat back and lightly pressed on football – ‘til the local witch doctor Wilde tapped his palm lightly on the bar their stomachs as the dirty dishes van- found out.’ top. Chinese mahogany. He had sketched ished from the table. ‘Ridiculous.’ Olav tightened her own the design himself on a napkin with a Later, back in the den, Kristofer and gown. ‘They don’t have witch doctors in brand-new Blackwing pencil. ‘We’ve Wilde were playing billiards. Olav and Ghana. In fact, the term is offensive.’ done well.’ Amelie were giving each other neck mas- ‘Well, whatever they’re called. I only ‘Yes, now tell me about this . . . thing. sages. The entity had not been heard from had my friend’s word. But he did manage How have you decided that it’s a ‘he’?’ in a while.‘Kristofer, how important is

26 this dinner?’ had not intercepted the call. Olav, who deal with the situation was to ignore him. ‘It’s very important, Wilde. I would say was sick in bed, stirred to hear his end of This strategy was catastrophically unsuc- that it’s one of the ten most important the conversation. cessful. The entity had pushed Kristofer parties of my life.’ ‘Hello, my gorgeous, how are you? Oh? down the stairs, putting him into a coma Wilde chalked the end of his cue. It Oh. Oh, really. Oh, no. Oh, no, that’s from which he might not wake. Amelie was custom-made from Spanish persim- terrible. Fuck. What kind of names? Oh, had dragged him to their SUV and they’d mon and had a brass joint in the middle Christ. No. I’ll be up there before the end fled the house. The media had somehow where the pieces screwed together. of the day. St Anne’s? OK, I’ll come up.’ picked up on the incident and it had ‘The thing about poltergeists is that Wilde went to the bedroom to change become a major story. they’re unpredictable by nature. You and he explained to Olav what had ‘So yes,’ said Wilde, as he pulled on a don’t know how they’ll behave.’ happened. The dinner party had been sweater, ‘I will need to go to the hospital.’ ‘I know that.’ Kristofer was one of a disaster. The poltergeist had slightly those people who felt he was an expert overcooked the duck, and in the kitchen Wilde drove his utility vehicle at almost in subjects he’d only recently begun to Kristofer had raised his voice to it. From reckless speeds along the familiar roads explore. then the poltergeist had seemed deter- that skirted the mature pine forests at the ‘I want your assurance that you won’t mined to sabotage the event. He’d spilled edge of Lake Hesitation. He had been hold me accountable for what happens wine on guests, held saltcellars out of meaning to go into the city anyway to during your haunting, and that you’ll reach, turned the music up during vital have one of his woods repaired, and to return him to me after exactly one week.’ parts of the conversation. After the guests purchase a hybrid club, as well as a new ‘Absolutely. Of course I will.’ had left (early) Kristofer had again yelled coaxial cable for his fox-cam. At the There was a noticeable chill. Wilde at the poltergeist, calling him all sorts of hospital he comforted his friend and reas- soon determined that this was because the names. sured her that he’d take care of everything. digital thermostat had inexplicably reset ‘What kind of names?’ Wilde had asked. Then he went out and spoke to the wait- itself to ‘Ocean Breeze’. ‘I don’t remember,’ said Amelie, before ing media, still with bits of wood pulp saying, ‘I think one of them was “ghost in his hair. He explained the situation Several days later, Wilde got the phone shit”.’ For a day the entity was silent, and and pleaded with them to give his friends call. He was outside with his Timberwolf, they both assumed that it had returned to space, and not to judge the supernatural so he didn’t hear the phone until the Wilde’s. Then, deep in the night, Amelie kingdom over one horrifying incident. ninety-seventh ring. He secretly loved had found herself in the grip of a power- ‘Human relationships are affected by his chipper, though he went through the fully erotic dream. She’d woken to feel conflicting personality types. Why should motions of pretending it was an ungrate- a weight on top of her. Her screams had this not be so with the spirit world? If I ful mouth he had to feed. But he thrived woken Kristofer from a dream about should judge all Thai people to be nefari- on the visceral thrill of turning thick salamanders and he had gone on another ous operators because my friend once had limbs into a woody mist. He sometimes tirade, this time calling the spectre a ‘sleep his passport stolen and was poisoned by a imagined he was a Mafia goon disposing raper’ and a ‘death slut’. He’d demanded Laksa, wouldn’t I be called intolerant?’ of the parts of an informant. His wife that the spirit leave his dwelling – adopt- His years in Word -Masters had paid had a theory – which he took pains to ing the quasi-mystical ‘dwelling’ over the off here, he thought, and he was particu- deny – that he sneaked material in from usual ‘house’ or ‘home’. larly proud of ‘nefarious’. beyond the fence, just so he would have Rather than obeying, the spirit had Then he visited the house, but found something to mulch. And she was right. seemed to regard this as a direct chal- no presence there. He did do that. lenge and for the next few nights he’d Later that night, as he sat on the edge They’d clashed over his chipper – subjected his hosts to a barrage of terrible of his bed, marvelling at the way his which gave Olav a shrieking headache – phenomena. He‘d thrown objects across knees had become as wrinkled as tissue and lately over his fox measures too. Wil- the room, and tipped beds and sofas paper, he heard the blinds flip twice. He de had ordered a special anti-climb fence without warning – once at the climax ignored it. He picked up his slippers and from China. It was made from rotating of the movie Knight and Day. He’d made put them carefully beside the bed. The maple slats. He had also installed cameras the walls in the AV-nook (which had just lamp flashed twice. to record the fox incursions. ‘And why,’ been recarpeted) run with blood. He’d ‘Well, how the hell am I supposed to his wife had asked, ‘would cameras stop taped over important family videos. He’d forgive you, Nathan?’ he asked. He had foxes?’ They simply wouldn’t, he had to compelled dozens of cats to enter their secretly named the entity. ‘You sexually admit. He just wanted to see the mother dwelling. He’d opened up a vortex into violated my friend and put her husband and her pups at work. It was not enough which he’d cast all of Kristofer’s prized in a coma. You blew it, man. There’s no to hear them in the night. albums, many from his touring days. He’d going back. You’re the reason people Wilde came into the house, removed written ‘Admit it, you wanted it’ on in this country are afraid of outsiders.’ his gloves, wiped his brow with the back the steamy bathroom mirror while Ame- His home heard nothing more from the of his arm, and answered the phone by lie was showering, and for Kristofer he’d poltergeist that night, or ever again, and the one-hundred-and-ninth ring. He written, ‘I’m the best she ever had’. when his wife came in and asked who he noticed that their machine was on but Amelie had suggested that the way to was talking to he said, ‘No one’. ◊

27 The police came to Wilde’s house to ques- he did not know all the details of their cancer, and she would report back on tion him about the accident, about his interactions since the accident, but it their progress as the city’s most unique relationship with Kristofer and Amelie, could not be healthy on any level, he family unit. ‘Kristofer can sit up by and about an incident eleven months thought, to form a relationship with the himself now.’ ‘He sleeps through the earlier when the two couples had been person who had sexually violated you, night.’ ‘If he’s aware that his attacker holidaying together in France and even if they aren’t exactly a person, but is his keeper he doesn’t show any sign.’ Kristofer had drunk too much. It was rather a disenfranchized consciousness. ‘The media have mostly gone.’ ‘Between clear that the two officers did not believe He was not sure if ‘disenfranchized’ was Kristofer’s insurance and the money the supernatural explanations, but it also the right word. Amelie got from selling her story to vari- became clear to Wilde that they didn’t He hardly visited after that. He ous media outlets, they are living very suspect him of hurting Kristofer. It couldn’t bring himself to make the trip comfortably.’ was clear that they thought Amelie had over the bridge to see her. The drive Olav’s voice would echo from the pushed the poor man down the stairs. around Lake Hesitation was far too kitchen, transmitted to him off a series Wilde visited her every week, until fraught with anger and regret. They of undampened planes. Wilde would Kristofer came out of his coma. Kristofer would chat online from time to time, sigh as he watched the crows settle on had suffered permanent damage. He was but to see her in that domestic situation the branches by the frozen lake. That able to move home, though, and Amelie made him feel betrayed and, if he were winter was particularly harsh, the worst gave him faultless care. She endured it all, honest, slightly violent. in almost forty years. It heaped the bay Wilde observed, with an unnatural grace, Also, he had got a sense that he was in snow, froze the lake, sent storms that and without once complaining brought down lines. Wilde or wishing things had turned spent three days sitting in the out differently. She was an dark alone, once in a while incredible woman, Wilde lifting a slat to see if any lights often said to himself, and once were winking from across the in a while he even allowed bay. himself the brief pleasure of In December he went imagining a world in which it down into his den and found was her, not Olav, he had mar- a still-steaming coil of excre- ried. He disciplined himself ment upon the bar top. Deep strictly to entertain this whim and brassy, almost a precise just once a month, for one match for the wood. It was not minute, and always without made by a fox or rabbit, or by guilt. It was, he thought, a any animal he could think of. healthy amount of fantasy, There were no other sign of and it had never affected their intrusion. relationship. In January he found the fox. One day, Wilde was visit- The sun was low and she was ing Amelie in her kitchen. He lying in the snow outside the complained of a neck spasm fence near the big maple. Her he’d got from hauling branch- face was set in a defiant grim- es. He immediately chastized himself for not welcome there. It was nothing he ace, gums pale purple and her paws were putting his small problem ahead of hers, could put his finger on. There was a crooked, all evoking, Wilde thought, the and it was worse when she insisted on tepid bitterness to the tea that had been way Hollywood directors portray the massaging his neck. Before her marriage made for him. When he came to start his peak of transformation from the human she had been an osteopath. car he was almost certain that the engine to the wolf. He scooped the creature up Then she said, ‘It’s time for Kristofer’s had turned over a split second before he with a spade before he realized that he feeding,’ and Wilde was shocked to see fully turned the key. didn’t know where he was taking it. He the bowl, the spoon, the greenish pulp A week after one visit his woodshed looked back across the fence to his Tim- pass across the room. had burned down, destroying part of his berwolf and for a second imagined the ‘We are together now,’ she explained fox-proof fence, disabling his camera gratifying crunch, the red mist settling quietly. ‘He and Kristofer had their dif- system, and leaving his property open to over the snow. He tried digging a hole for ferences, certainly, but he’s by far the invasion again. He had tracked the fire her, but the earth was frozen over. So he best lover I’ve ever had, and the best to a wiring fault and was certain that the stood with his spade and stared out across companion. He anticipates my needs. incident was fully explained. Neverthe- the dead, white zone until the image was Plus, he’s fantastic with Kristofer. I just less, it had contributed to his overall burned in his eyes and he felt the coldness don’t know what I’d do without him.’ uneasiness. reach his feet. He was an open-minded Wilde felt powerfully repulsed. He Olav would visit Amelie from time to man, but there were some things in life politely gave his thanks and left. Granted, time, before she passed away from liver that were difficult to fathom. ◊

28 From The Archive of intuition and empathy. He just does not have a receiving set, and he gives The Yage Letters out like a dead battery. There must be a special low frequency civil service brain wave. Burroughs and Ginsberg take all they can The service men don’t seem young. They have no enthusiasm and no conver- ‘Dear Allen, with his little cat smile. Junk is a cause sation. In fact they shun the company of I stopped off here to have my piles out …’ with him. civilians. The only element in Panama I I checked into the hospital junk sick contact are the hip spades and they are all The faint oddness of 1984’s clocks striking and spent four days there. They would on the hustle. thirteen; John Steinbeck’s straightforward only give me three shots of morphine Love, assertion at East of Eden’s outset: ‘The and I couldn’t sleep from pain and heat Bill Salinas Valley is in Northern California.’ and deprivation besides which there was a These are good starts, the opening lines Panamanian hernia case in the same room March 3 that great novels deserve. Suitably, it is with me and his friends came and stayed Hotel Nuevo Regis, Bogota piles that set William Burroughs on his all day and half the night – one of them trip. Piles, and the search for Yage, a did in fact stay until midnight. Dear Al: mysterious Amazonian vine reputedly Recall walking by some American Bogota horrible as ever. I had my imbued with healing properties (aren’t women in the corridor who looked like papers corrected with the aid of US they all?) that would go on to fascinate officers’ wives. One of them was say- Embassy. Figure to sue the truss offP AA Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg for the ing, ‘I don’t know why but I just can’t eat for fucking up the tourist card. next ten years. More than just a far-out sweets.’ I have attached myself to an expedi- Beat movement drug journal, however, ‘You got diabetes, lady,’ I said. They all tion – in a somewhat vague capacity to be The Yage Letters is a caustic travelogue – whirled round and gave me an outraged sure – consisting of Doc Schindler, two part correspondence, part collaborative stare. Colombian Botanists, two English Broom fiction – that places raging political satire After checking out of the hospital, I Rot specialists from the Cocoa Commis- alongside ethno-botany. That is, until stopped off at the US Embassy. In front sion, and will return to the Putumayo in the letters descend into something else of the Embassy is a vacant lot with weeds convoy. Will write full account of trip entirely. and trees where boys undress to swim in when I get back to this town for the third —Paul Tucker the polluted waters of the bay – home time. of a small venomous sea snake. Smell of As Ever, January 15, 1953 excrement and sea water and young male Bill Hotel Colon, Panama lust, No letters. I stopped again to buy two ounces of paregoric. Same old Pana- April 15 Dear Allen, ma. Whores and pimps and hustlers. Hotel Nuevo Regis, Bogota I stopped here to have my piles out. ‘Want nice girl?’ Wouldn’t do to go back among the Indi- ‘Naked lady dance?’ Dear Al: ans with piles I figured. ‘See me fuck my sister?’ Back in Bogota. I have a crate of Yage. Bill Gains was in town and he has No wonder food prices are high, they I have taken it and know more or less how burned down the Republic of Panama can’t keep them down on the farm. They it is prepared. By the way you may see my from Las Palmas to David on paregoric. all want to come in the big city and be picture in Exposure. I met a reporter going Before Gains, Panama was a P.G. town. pimps. in as I was going out. Queer to be sure You could buy four ounces in any drug [ . . . ] but about as appetizing as a hamper of store. Now the druggists are balky and I ran into my old friend Jones the cab dirty laundry. Not even after two months the Chamber of Deputies was about to driver, and bought some C off him that in the brush, my dear. This character is pass a special Gains Law when he threw in was cut to hell and back. I nearly suffocat- shaking down the South American con- the towel and went back to Mexico. I was ed myself trying to sniff enough of this tinent for free food and transport, and getting off junk and he kept nagging me crap to get a lift. That’s Panama. Wouldn’t discounts on everything he buys with why was I kidding myself once a junkie surprise me if they cut the whores with a ‘We-got-like-two-kinds-of-publicity- always a junkie. If I quit junk I would sponge rubber. favourable-and-unfavourable-which-do- become a sloppy lush or go crazy taking The Panamanians are about the crum- you-want,-Jack?’ routine. What a shame- cocaine. miest people in the Hemisphere – I less mooch. But who am I to talk? One night I got lushed and bought understand the Venezuelans offer compe- Flashback: retraced my journey some paregoric and he kept saying over tition – but I have never encountered any through Cali, Popayan and Pasto to and over, ‘I knew you’d come home with group of citizens that brings me down Mocoa, I was interested to note that paregoric. I knew it. You’ll be a junkie all like the Canal Zone Civil Service. You Mocoa dragged Schindler and the two the rest of your life’ and looking at me cannot contact a civil servant on the level Englishmen as much as it did me.

29 This trip I was treated like visiting ning. It was like going under ether, or cafe society is a gabardine trench coat and royalty under the misapprehension I was when you are very drunk and lie down of course suit and tie. A South American’s a representative of the Texas Oil Com- and the bed spins. Blue flashes passed in ass may be sticking out of his pants but he pany travelling incognito. (Free boat rides, front of my eyes. The hut took on an will still have a tie. free plane rides, free chow; eating in the archaic far-Pacific look with Easter Island Bogota is essentially a small town, officers’ mess, sleeping in the governor’s heads carved in the support posts. The everybody worrying about his clothes house.) assistant was outside lurking there with and looking as if he would describe his [ . . . ] the obvious intent to kill me. I was hit job as responsible. I was sitting in one of The medicine man was around 70 by violent sudden nausea and rushed for these white collar cafes when a boy in a with a baby smooth face. There was a sly the door hitting my shoulder against the filthy light gray suit, but still clinging to a gentleness about him like an old-time door post. I felt the shock but no pain. I frayed tie, asked me if I spoke English. junkie. It was getting dark when I arrived could hardly walk. No coordination. My I said, ‘Fluently,’ and he sat down at his dirt floor thatch shack for my Yage feet were like blocks of wood. I vomited at the table. A former employee of the appointment. First thing he asked did I violently leaning against a tree and fell Texas Company. Obviously queer, blond, have a bottle? I brought a quart of aguar- down on the ground in helpless misery. I German looking, European manner. We diente out of my knapsack and handed it felt numb as if I was covered with layers went to several cafes. He pointed people to him. He took a long drink and passed of cotton. I kept trying to break out of out to me saying, ‘He doesn’t want to the bottle to his assistant. I didn’t take this numb dizziness. I was saying over know me anymore now I am without any as I wanted straight Yage kicks. The and over, ‘All I want is out of here.’ An work.’ Brujo put the bottle beside him and uncontrollable mechanical silliness took These people, correctly dressed and squatted down by a bowl set on a tripod. possession of me. Hebephrenic mean- careful in manner, did in fact look away Behind the bowl was a wood shrine with ingless repetitions. Larval beings passed and in some cases call for the bill and a picture of the Virgin, a crucifix, a wood before my eyes in a blue haze, each one leave. I don’t know how the boy could idol, feathers and little packages tied with giving an obscene, mocking squawk (I have looked any less queer in a $200 suit. ribbons. The Brujo sat there a long time later identified this squawking as the One night I was sitting in a Liberal cafe without moving. He took another long croaking of frogs) – I must have vomited when three civilian Conservative gun swig on the bottle. The women retired six times. I was on all fours convulsed men came in yelling ‘Viva los Conserva- behind a bamboo partition and were with spasms of nausea. I could hear retch- dores’ hoping to provoke somebody so not seen again. The Brujo began croon- ing and groaning as if it was someone else. they could shoot him. There was a mid- ing over the bowl. I caught ‘Yage Pintar’ I was lying by a rock. Hours must have dle aged man of the type who features repeated over and over. He shook a little passed. The medicine man was stand- a loud mouth. The others sat back and broom over the bowl and made a swish- ing over me. I looked at him for a long let him do the yelling. The other two ing noise. This is to whisk away evil spir- time before I believed he was really there were youngish, ward heelers, corner boys, its who might slip into the Yage. He took saying, ‘Do you want to come into the borderline hoodlums. Narrow shoulders, a drink and wiped his mouth and went house?’ I said, ‘No,’ and he shrugged and ferret faces and smooth, tight, red skin, on crooning. You can’t hurry a Brujo. went back inside. bad teeth. It was almost too pat. The two Finally he uncovered the bowl and dipped [ . . . ] hoodlums looked a little hangdog and about an ounce more or less of black So here I am back in Bogota. No ashamed of themselves like the young liquid which he handed me in a dirty red money waiting for me (check apparently man in the limerick who said, ‘I’ll admit plastic cup. Bitter foretaste of nausea. I stolen), I am reduced to the shoddy expe- I’m a bit of a shit.’ handed the cup back and the medicine dient of stealing my drinking alcohol Everybody paid and walked out leav- man and the assistant took a drink. from the university laboratory placed at ing the loud mouthed character yelling I sat there waiting for results and disposal of the visiting scientist. ‘Viva El Partido Conservador’ to an empty almost immediately had the impulse to Extracting Yage alkaloids from the house. say, ‘That wasn’t enough. I need more.’ I vine, a relatively simple process according As Ever, have noticed this inexplicable impulse on to directions provided by the Institute. Bill the two occasions when I got an overdose My experiments with extracted Yage of junk. Both times before the shot took have not been conclusive. I do not get July 10, 1953 effect I said, ‘That wasn’t enough. I need blue flashes or any pronounced sharpen- Lima more.’ ing of mental imagery. Have noticed Roy told me about a man who came aphrodisiac effects. The effect makes me Dear Allen, out of jail clean and nearly died in Roy’s sleepy whereas the fresh vine is a stimu- Last night I took last of Yage mixture room. ‘He took the shot and right away lant and in overdose convulsive poison. I brought back from Pucallpa. No use said, “That wasn’t enough” and fell on his Every night I go into a cafe and order transporting to US. It doesn’t keep more face out cold. I dragged him out in the a bottle of Pepsi-Cola and pour in my lab than a few days. This morning, still high. hall and called an ambulance. He lived.’ alcohol. The population of Bogota lives This is what occurred to me: In two minutes a wave of dizziness in cafes. There are any number of these Yage is space time travel. The room swept over me and the hut began spin- and always full. Standard dress for Bogota seems to shake and vibrate with motion.

30 The blood and substance of many races, [ . . . ] surprised to see me? You are following Negro, Polynesian, Mountain Mon- Saw a shooting star – Aerolito – before in my steps. I know thee way. And yes gol, Desert Nomad, Polyglot Near East, going in, and full moon, and he served know the area better than you I think. Indian – new races as yet unconceived and me up first – then lay down expecting Tried more than once to tell you not to unborn, combinations not yet realized God knows what other pleasant vision communicate what I know. You did not passes through your body. Migrations, and then I began to get high – and then or could not listen. ‘You can not show incredible journeys though deserts and the whole fucking Cosmos broke loose to anyone what he has not seen.’ Brion jungles and mountains (stasis and death around me, I think the strongest and Gysin For Hassan Sabbah. Listen now? in closed mountain valleys where plants worse I’ve had it nearly – (I still reserve Take the enclosed copy of this letter. Cut sprout out of your cock and vast crusta- the Harlem experiences, being natural, along the lines. Rearrange putting sec- ceans hatch inside and break the shell of in abeyance. The LSD was Perfection but tion one by section three and section two the body), across the Pacific in an outrig- didn’t get me so deep in nor so horribly by section four. Now read aloud and you ger canoe to Easter Island. The Compos- in) – First I began to realize my worry will hear My Voice. Whose voice? Listen. ite City where all human potentials are about the mosquitoes or vomiting was Cut and rearrange in any combination. spread out in a vast silent market. silly as there was the great stake of Life Read aloud. I can not choose but hear. Minarets, palms, mountains, jungle. A and Death – I felt faced by Death, my Don’t think about it. Don’t theorize. Try sluggish river jumping with vicious fish, skull in my beard on pallet on porch roll- it. Do the same with your poems. With vast weed grown parks where boys lie ing back and forth and settling finally any poems any prose. Try it. You want in the grass or play cryptic games. Not a as if in reproduction of the last physical ‘Help’. Here it is. Pick it up on it. And locked door in the City. Anyone comes in move I make before settling into real always remember. ‘Nothing Is True. your room any time. The Chief of Police death – got nauseous, rushed out and Everything is Permitted’ Last Words of is a Chinese who picks his teeth and began vomiting, all covered with snakes, Hassan Sabbah The Old Man Of The listens to denunciations presented by a like a Snake Seraph, colored serpents in Mountain. LISTEN TO MY LAST WORDS lunatic. Every now and then the Chinese aureole all around my body, I felt like a ANY WORLD. LISTEN ALL YOU BOARDS takes the tooth pick out of his mouth snake vomiting out the universe – or a SYNDICATES AND GOVERNMENTS OF and looks at the end of it. Hipsters with Jivaro in head-dress with fangs vomiting THE EARTH. AND YOU POWER POWERS smooth copper coloured faces lounge in up in realization of the Murder of the BEHIND WHAT FILTH DEALS CONSUM- doorways twisting shrunk heads on gold Universe – MATED IN WHAT LAVATORY TO TAKE chains, their faces blank with an insect’s [ . . . ] WHAT IS NOT YOURS. TO SELL THE unseeing calm. I hardly have the nerve to go back, GROUND FROM UNBORN FEET. LISTEN. [ . . . ] afraid of some real madness, a Changed WHAT I HAVE TO SAY IS FOR ALL MEN A place where the unknown past and Universe permanently changed – tho’ I EVERYWHERE. I REPEAT FOR ALL. NO the emergent future meet in a vibrating guess change it must for me someday – ONE IS EXCLUDED. FREE TO ALL WHO soundless hum. Larval entities waiting much less as planned as before, go up the PAY. FREE TO ALL WHO PAIN PAY. for a live one. river six hours to drink with an Indian WHAT SCARED YOU ALL INTO TIME? William Lee tribe Dr Binder says are OK – I suppose WHAT SCARED YOU ALL INTO YOUR I will – meanwhile will wait here another BODIES? INTO SHIT FOREVER? DO YOU June 10, 1960 week in Pucallpa and drink a few more WANT TO STAY THERE FOREVER? THEN Estafeta Correo times with same group – I wish I knew LISTEN TO THE LAST WORDS OF HASSAN Pucallpa, Peru who, if anyone, there is to work with SABBAH. LISTEN LOOK OR SHIT FOR- that knows, if anyone knows, who I am or EVER. LISTEN LOOK OR SHIT FOREVER. Dear Bill: what I am. I wish I could hear from you. I WHAT SCARED YOU INTO TIME? INTO I’m still in Pucallpa – ran into a little think I’ll be here long enough for a letter BODY? INTO SHIT? I WILL TELL YOU plump fellow, Ramon Penadillo – who’d to reach me – write. THE WORD THE-THEE WORD. IN THEE been friend to Robert Frank (photog- Allen Ginsberg BEGINNING WAS THE WORD. SCARED rapher of our movie) in ’46 or so here. YOU ALL INTO SHIT FOREVER. COME Ramon took me to his Curandero – in OUT FOREVER. COME OUT OF THE TIME whom he has a lot of faith and about June 21, 1960 WORD THE FOREVER. COME OUT OF THE whose supernatural powers he talks a Present Time, Pre-Sent Time BODY THEE FOREVER. COME OUT OF lot, too much, about – The Maestro, as Cargo American Express THE SHIT WORD THE FOREVER. ALL OUT he’s called, being a very mild and simple London, England OF TIME AND INTO SPACE. FOREVER. seeming cat of 38 or so – who prepared THERE IS NO THING TO FEAR. THERE a drink for 3 of us the other night; and Dear Allen: IS NO THING IN SPACE. THAT IS ALL then last night I attended a regular curing There is no thing to fear. Vaya adelante. ALL ALL HASSAN SABBAH. THERE IS NO all nite drinking session with about 30 Look. Listen. Hear. Your AYUASKA con- WORD TO FEAR. THERE IS NO WORD. other men and women in a hut in jungly sciousness is more valid than ‘Normal THAT IS ALL ALL ALL HASSAN SABBAH. outskirts of Pucallpa behind the gaswork Consciousness’? Whose ‘Normal Con- IF YOU I CANCEL ALL YOUR WORDS field. sciousness’? Why return to? Why are you FOREVER. AND THE WORDS OF HASSAN

31 SABBAH I AS ALSO CANCEL. ACROSS ALL send you a copy but where to? George August 28, 1963 YOUR SKIES SEE THE SILENT WRITING Whitman says to look up his old friend San Francisco OF BRION GYSIN HASSAN SABBAH. THE Silvester de Castro in Panama City. Con- WRITING OF SPACE. THE WRITING OF nected with the municipal symphony and To whom it may concern: SILENCE. the University. Hasta Al Vista Amigo. Self deciphers this correspondence LOOK LOOK LOOK Best thus: the vision of ministering angels my AMIGOS MUCHACHOS A TRAVES DE William Burroughs fellow man and woman wholly glimpsed TODOS SUS CIELOS VEA LA ESCRITURA For Hassan Sabbah while the Curandero gently crooned SILENCIOSA DE BRION GYSIN HASSAN Fore! Hassan Sabbah human in Ayahuasca trance-state 1960 was SABBAH. LA ESCRITURA DE SILENCIO LA PS. NO ONE IN HIS SENSES WOULD prophetic of transfiguration of self con- ESCRITURA DE ESPACIO. ESO ES TODO TRUST ‘THE UNIVERSE’. SWEPT WITH sciousness from homeless mind sensation TODO TODO HASSAN SABBAH CON THE MILLIONS STOOD UNDER THE of eternal fright to incarnate body feeling VEA VEA VEA SIGNS. WHO EVER PAID OFF A MARK A present bliss now actualized 1963. When will you return – ? The Cut Up GOOK AN APE A HUMAN ANIMAL? NO Old love, as ever Method is explained in MINUTES TO GO. BODY EXCEPT HASSAN SABBAH Allen Ginsberg Which is already out in the States. I will

Fiction descent, I could see the ice shelf for what it was, how it spilled out from the eastern side of Baffin Island and floated out into Ice the Davis Strait in the Arctic Ocean like a giant snow-covered Popsicle, a twin By Lee Henderson Popsicle, twice as long as its sticks. This most famous ice shelf formed south of he ice shelf I went to study was as to its general condition, its beaches and the Iquarlirtuuq wildlife sanctuary and Talmost two thousand miles due its fragile terminus. That was all. Here the Barnes ice cap, pushing snow and ice north of a place like Manhattan, and was an even more unsacrificing environ- down between two Precambrian prongs roughly the same size. Don’t get the ment that required my attention ahead of steep granite mountain, filling in picture I requested such a remote assign- of my petty, squabbling, vindictive and the long fjords of these peninsulas with ment. I didn’t. With all I’ve got going on ultimately elusive family. And, really, solid glacier edging further and further at the Alberta branch office for Northern what did I care about my selfish problems out into the frigid seawater, year after Affairs, overseeing two dozen slatternly, at the office? All it took was a handshake year, with stunning confidence and total distractible young career bureaucrats, plus in a Four Points Sheraton and I became impassability. But it was nonetheless a the fact I’m an old man with an old man’s completely removed from all those seem- long Popsicle of snow and ice, even with point of view and a growing family of in- ingly inextricable affairs that had made its own mountains and valleys and lakes laws and grandchildren, it never dawned my life at work and home so uninhabit- and rivers; wild, slushy terrain, home to on me that out of all the other younger, able over the past few decades. fearsome, acclimatized creatures: polar more mobile, more ambitious staff avail- I knew going in that I would be iso- bears, caribou, walrus. It was something able I would be singled out to survey the lated on this 4,500-year-old frozen shelf. to behold. And now the ice was falling melting ice. I knew that the ice shelf was no longer apart. You know I’m more of an administra- needed to support any human life. The Summer was steadily inching the tem- tor these days, I explained to the commit- Inuits who used to hunt there every perature up to zero. All I wanted was to tee chairman over the drinks he invited winter for hundreds of generations now stake out a decent base camp, protected me to one evening. We were at a hotel found safer ways to get food than on from polar bears. My first day I dug out a bar in Edmonton and the wind across the the shelf. But it never occurred to me small snow shelter called a quinzee from parking lot outside was sending snow past or obviously to anyone on the commit- a deep mound of hard-packed snow and the windows at a perfect horizontal. The tee that the ice shelf itself might detach made do with that and sleeplessness for year was 2011. I told him I hadn’t been on from the continent that summer and be the time being. Then, a day or two later the ice in years, not since the nineties. set adrift, and that I would be aboard this as I was walking, I marvelled at a halo But you were our unanimous choice, strange island. of blue atmospheric light in an area of the committee chairman told me. As his Take us to the second steppe, I told the the snow up a fair distance ahead, and I hand squeezed my shoulder, he gave me pilot. shoed my way towards it. I heard what a wink of regret that I’m sure I was sup- I heard him respond in my headphones: I thought was laughter and watched a posed to interpret as congratulatory. Yep, just point to the spot you want me flock of snow geese pass overhead like The committee chairman told me the to drop this bird. men on their way to a formal ceremony. deal: spend the entire summer on the As the helicopter peaked over the As I approached this lamplight under my glacier, write a full report of my findings landscape before beginning its sidelong feet, the sound of the snow, crunching

32 and squeaking with solidity as I walked, blanket of silent white that not even the ing collisions. The crack was only the first calmed me. I came to where the snow shadow of a single goose displaced. After of many grisly noises I heard, but it was was tinged with this soft, even light, a a time I allowed myself to dismiss the the one signalling the separation. robin’s egg blue above what I took to incident and carry on with my work as if be a good cave, and fell to my knees to nothing major had happened, even as the The committee had budgeted for a two- listen. Recalling my young and tumble shelf began to drift away from the shore. way radio to be my partner over the sum- graduate school days, I thought of how Maybe I was too familiar with all the mer. It was some kind of miracle, after at that age I would have put my shovel in sounds snow can make and I wasn’t suf- my stubborn colleagues and family, that I right then and there. I was a safe enough ficiently disturbed. Nothing surprised me could charge my radio’s electricity simply distance back from the lip of the second in this ambient landscape of sere white, a by winding it up like a pocket watch in steppe, which I noted during our landing lifeless white without fault or promise, order to listen to an hour of public broad- in the helicopter was regularly calving blinding as fire at its horizons and mono- casts of classical music, or to call my man large blocks of snow down a sheer cliff chromatic in all directions. I grew up on with the helicopter if I needed supplies or half a mile high. Here, too, the terrain the northern prairies. But I knew the other assistance. was becoming craggy, but it appeared to glacier shelf was different from land after I said I would radio the pilot at the end be totally secure. With an axe I sought a the glacial retreat. This was a land that of five days to give him a status update; nearby entrance to the cave, and within was not a land. An unlandscape, more like and so not long after I heard the ice shelf the hour had found break from the continent my way down into it and I began, unwittingly, and learned of its true to sail out into the ocean, grandeur. I pegged I reached my pilot and, my tent under a because I had no idea any- beautiful vaulted pro- thing had changed, told scenium, as high as a him my base camp was Broadway stage, made coming along fine. The of firmly packed snow weather was balmy. I didn’t and ice that was shal- keep him on the line very low enough at its ceil- long. I knew, besides the ing to allow the night- helicopter, the pilot also less sky to fill the cav- operated a bar and night- ern with an incandes- club with live music out of cent blue, as though a double-wide RV trailer he my new residency had plugged in at the near- were submerged in by town of Pangnirtung. a heavenly water, Pangnirtung, with its small while all around me population of Inuits, whose curtains and pillars of ancestors had lived in the icicles glittered in the area for over four thousand shadows as the cave years, together with a few progressed narrowly government-sent carpet- down to unknown, bagging whites there for a trickling depths. season, all living in houses Fresh ice water on piles. drained idly from the Talk loud, I can hardly south wall into a small bowl at one side of a mirror of the sky. hear ya. Everything going according to the cave, which I even used like a faucet In the endless musical cycle of the seasons, the plan out there or what? the pilot shouted. and sink to wash. fermata of winter grows briefer every year over In the background on his end of the line I recall it was the day after I had my Earth’s northern composition, I wrote in my there was much laughter and conversa- camp all settled and I felt prepared to do report. There is no rest for the ice today. Poet- tion and music. some research and reportage when I heard ry? I can only say I was lonely. On a clear, Lap of luxury, I radioed back. a crack I thought was a gunshot. Noth- cloudless afternoon under the smoulder- What’s that you say? ing moved. The report was as loud as if ing sun, I alone heard the old house of the I forgot Kit-Kats. someone were right outside the entrance ice shelf creak and groan and swell and Kit-Kats, eh? That a favourite of to the cave, firing a shotgun directly at gasp and pop and whine for hours, like it yours? me. A part of me wasn’t convinced that it was being battered around. The north of Never mind, I said. I’ll radio when I was a gun, even as I climbed to the surface my youth, its barrenness and silence, was need fresh supplies. Bring a carton then. to see who was there. Naturally, nobody replaced by the agony of constant erosion, I considered writing my wife a letter was. The snow was once again a sublime of deep underlying tensions and humiliat- to send back with the pilot when he next

33 flew in:I was sent against my will to the sum- The weather was confusingly mild. The faces of the grey whales as they breached mer ice, the letter might begin, but where sky was a hot jellied azure without cloud. in the ocean seemed to swim backwards would it go from there? You left me in the I got a tan. So I saw no reason why I and forwards simultaneously as thoughts winter for a hot zone. I imagined her in her couldn’t get a radio signal. My porridge tend to do; and the fat, teardrop-shaped pashmina shawl and sandals, flanked by and other camp meals were eaten. walrus who squealed and farted and male escorts in penguin suits, standing More than the warmth of my family, swam amok along the shores, catching in the middle of a million protestors in or the climate of the office I middle-man- fish between their whiskers, were all just Cairo, mobilizing the women. aged, I found I craved a certain brand of my dirty thoughts during this brief fit of I did report on all the noises I heard, chocolate candy-bar from the dispensing poetic madness in which I believed myself meanwhile, including the false gunshot. machines at the office of Northern Affairs to be a kind of Shackleton of the mystical I reported that there was seldom ice floe that I hadn’t thought to pack. At the same North. around the shelf, just clean, clear ocean, time the helicopter with my box of Kit- which was tempting to swim in. I report- Kats would have been at a loss for where So it was unbeknown to me that I was ed on all the rivers and lakes on the sur- to land his cargo, his destination hav- aboard a giant iceberg, moving steadily face of the ice shelf and of the flumes of ing vanished, this missing treat was all I out to sea with every uncounted minute. livid bacterial water that I saw disappear could think about. This crispy candy-bar The metallic blue waves I photographed into a labyrinth of crevasses. Great lakes composed of segmented wafers coated in and reported on were not lapping at a of fresh water were said to exist under the chocolate and separable into single finger- stationary coastline, as I assumed, but the surface. I reported on the warm water in length sticks, which unfortunately found sides of an enormous ocean-going vessel the potholes where I did decide to swim, no equivalent in my dwindling food the seals were chasing after. and I reported on the occurrence of calv- rations, was what I missed most about my At the outset I knew there was no ing at the first and second steppes and the former life. To break off and eat the Kit- doubt the steppes were of importance to waterfalls that gushed down them. I also Kat sticks. Instead, I was sucking on ici- my report. There was no way for me to recalled how the sun careened about the cles and trying to slingshot a snowgoose tell beforehand in what precise way the sky. I chalked it up to summer at the pole to death. steppes would influence my report and so and how the strange seemed ordinary That second month on the ice shelf I spent much of my time obsessing over here. I hadn’t considered the shelf was made me ecstatic with the sense of adven- them, fearing them, even while my origi- turning. My compass was the landscape. ture. Cut off from radio contact with civ- nal assignment became irrelevant. Day by day I was beginning to fall into ilization was the kind of mild threat I can All I knew was that I needed to see the a kind of easy bliss that made the hard say, honestly, I almost looked forward to northern shores of the third steppe or the work feel more like a vacation, hiking for before leaving. My rifle, and the supera- committee would find my report incom- hours amid cold nothingness as though bundance of wildlife this time of year, plete. Each steppe was itself the result of in a trance, so absorbed in finding ways made a hunt something of a non-issue, an immense quake along three fault lines of articulating my impressions of this more like shopping. The ice shelf felt like that had appeared in the last decade of the colossal, atavistic ice shelf that I forgot a big vacation from my responsibilities twentieth century, going straight across why I was alone. I put aside the miser- at work and at home. I hardly needed the shelf east to west. The quake had ies, treacherous and accidental, of home, sleep. The twenty-four-hour daylight created sheer cliffs that dropped nearly family. I reported on and took pictures of on the ice shelf gave me a tireless mental a mile and, after years of good sun, ran whatever wildlife I saw, such as the birds, endurance. After long hikes of discovery raggedly and serrated and with waterfalls, and I wrote a lengthy account of a soli- during the day, I found time to read and like three chipped-tooth stairs for an ice tary polar bear stranded on a nearby ice- write in the evenings. Evenings without giant, mountains forming and vanishing berg, like an Arctic Crusoe. The look on night. Midnight would come around and at an accelerated pace. his face as he raised his black nose to the I would sit happily for hours, gulping The third and last steppe I feared the wind was beyond pitiful, I wrote, as if the back sealmeat and writing my thoughts most and avoided the longest as it was polar bear was not sure whether to swim out while the sun hung like a golden pen- the closest to sea level. Its drop into the off to safety or to continue to ride the dant in a rose sky, almost as cold as the ocean was less sheer and more sloped as iceberg as it took him further out to sea. sun was warm. To whomever, I wrote: A its terminus collapsed into a thick slushy Rereading this entry months later and jewelled sun frozen for hours and hours at the floe of sticky water called polynya, where looking at my pictures, I realized the horizon but never touching down on to the blue thousands of puzzle pieces of runaway polar bear was the one on the mainland velvet ice before making its ascent once more and iceberg loitered. On the third steppe, and I was the Crusoe. I was adrift. And touring the skies all day. The Arctic solitude temperatures in the winter plummeted to the look on this polar bear’s face was not of never-ending daylight had its thawing 70 degrees Celsius below zero. Nothing only pitiful, but also one of confusion – effects. As I watched the rivers clumped moves. The day I chose to make my first his entire kingdom sailing by, and me on with frazil and rime pour into the haptic visit I wanted the weather to be below it. sea, I didn’t see it as anything more than zero and not warmer. I did not want to By the time a month had passed I was the run-off of wild ideas passing through encounter any sinkholes or avalanches. too far out to sea to reach the pilot by my mind, and the sound was just my sobs It would have been years ago as a radio. I tried, but never with any luck. of relief. And the barnacled Mona Lisa bachelor, when I was doing field work

34 in the North, that I first witnessed the my sweaters, and, feeling determined to as store-bought biscuit soaked in tea, I Northwest Passage when it was frozen set out for the third steppe, I charged up dangled by my harness with a chance of over. Millions of acres of frozen ocean my radio and for hours and hours all I did surviving. Pulling myself up from the joined with the last steppe of the ice shelf, was listen to the waves of static or asked if chasm took the better part of an afternoon, flat and white for hundreds and hundreds anyone could hear me when I spoke into and when I got to the top I wept and of kilometres to the horizon just as I the microphone. dry-heaved for what seemed to be the first remembered winter in the prairies, where When the radio was turned off or beautiful minutes of darkness and stars I was raised. Snow-blanketed waves, fro- uncharged I often sat and talked to the since I had arrived. zen as they stood. Long, flat slabs of ice radio regardless. In time I saw more and By the time I reached the jagged, messy like billiard’s tables broken into pieces more face in that radio, and less and less terminus of the third steppe I was snow- of snow called firn. Firn like untouched radio. Two speakers like bug eyes on blind and exhausted from panic, and I children’s playgrounds. Firn like the walls either end, in between them a channel thought I might find some shelter in one of motels or prisons. Open holes in the dial that was a long mouth full of teeth, of the weather-formed quinzees. Who firn near the floe edge where narwhal and a string of buttons under a knob you knows how long I was out. I awoke and orca came up to breathe. Then, early twisted that made an almost perfect nose blearily, starved, and pushed back out spring and the first floating pancake ice, and moustache. I mused over my radio’s into the wind and sunlight to the shore then slush, the polynya gluing together face for lack of a moon in the sky. to kill something. The ground here was the icebergs. Some icebergs I saw grew Isolation provides a person with a star- sinewed by miles and miles of melt-ice to the height of skycrapers, as manifold tlingly clear picture of their own inner lakes festooned by phytoplankton in in design as military citadels, and among landscape, I told the silent, uncharged blooms as thick and green as pea soup. As their flotsam, thousands of smaller icicled radio, as we assayed the uniformly white a graduate student I came here to study snow gazebos emerged, hundreds and surface of the ice shelf from the peak of these cyanobacterial mat communities, and thousands of neighbourhoods made of base camp. my predictions for their influx sounded ice floating precariously on top of the sea. I feel comfortable around you like almost satirically dire then, but still what And for the imaginary man here to report I can tell you anything, the uncharged lay before me now was starker. Today these on nothing and able to endure the lunar radio told me. pools stretched across the ice like psychotic temperatures of winter, the narrow path- I never considered suicide, but I have stab wounds, sinking hundreds of feet ways ferruled mazelike through snowdrift dreamed of a place where I could not under the surface. Strewn along the edges valleys in a forbidding white world. A exist. Now look where I am. Nowhere of these snaking ponds were the remains of world unknown even to itself, and every and nothing, I said with a shiver. thousands of broken shells of dead ptero- year anew. By summer this elaborate People respect me, the uncharged radio pods. After my first visit I named them outer sheath of ice got dashed and broken confessed, but inside I feel like a total ‘potato chips of the sea’ for how popular apart and slushed away by the sun. fraud. and abundant these tiny winged snails were As the walrus and seals and whales and Am I better off alone here instead of as a basic food for so many ocean-going birds arrived, I watched as, like a vaga- taking care of business back in Edmon- species. bond ghetto, shattered parts of the ice ton? I used to call this place Qigiktaaluk, but floe set off in smaller and smaller groups I faint at the sight of rust, so if you now I just called it Baffin. I was standing with icebergs disappearing into the chop- see any corrosion don’t say a word to up to my knees in a frosty cove of murky ping waters until once again only the ice me, OK? said the uncharged radio. Just green waves and dead snails, all set up to shelf remained. Locked to our continent promise me you’ll do something about it shoot the prettiest little grey and white since the Ice Age, its shape has remained if you can. spotted sea lion for dinner. when a hand relatively constant until recently. Now Man versus environment, that’s what it came down on my shoulder that for all even the core was fading. all boils down to, doesn’t it? I said. my wits I could have sworn was the hand I used to still meet smiling families of Radio versus man, the radio said. of the Northern Affairs’ committee chair- Inuit who thrived off the preserves of Is that how you feel? I asked. man’s, and froze me solid. the ice shelf, camping near the areas that Don’t listen to me, the radio said, I Don’t move, he said. He took my rifle melted early and exploiting the break- don’t know what the hell I’m talking from my shoulder and turned me around ing floe. I always wondered how the about. so that I could see who I was dealing with. Inuit stayed so much in love in such small So I shut up, too, turned the radio on, You can come with us, the man said. dwellings under these harsh conditions and dialled around to various stations He wasn’t the committee chairman at all, and pitiless terrain, when my own family of white noise hoping to find anything – thank God, but nevertheless someone of still found it so hard with all our good classic rock, Russian news – until both the his seniority. We just loaded up if you’re fortune to agree where in the world we radio and I fell asleep. hungry, the man added. should all meet. My style was nothing heroic: I roped He backed away a few feet and I got a off every fifty metres as I approached the look at his sun-reddened cheeks and nose, At some hour during the continuous cliffs of the third steppe, so that when and his wild white eyebrows hung down stretch of day that was mid July on the I fell down an icy fissure hidden under over his wire-frame glasses like icicles, and ice shelf I cut off my beard and washed a layer of snow as thin and crumbling his old watery blue eyes shimmered cloud-

35 ily with grey and pink muscles like they the sun skated sickeningly low against the in palaeoclimatology. I am the plain old were fish eyes. There was a dent in his chin lip of the horizon. glaciologist around here. Don’t want to so deep it looked as though he had lost You’re not Inuits, are you? I asked. admit it, said Craig, but I still recall ’92 as part of it to frostbite. His jacket was what The old man eyed me. You expect to the year of my lucky third wedding. What he obviously thought was a cool combi- find us speaking extinct languages, talk- a sylph. Half my age with a doctorate nation of black parka and animal skins. ing about the sun as though he were our in cryosphere-hydrosphere-lithosphere He wore frayed acid-wash denim cut-off uncle. And here I go and tell you we are interactions, eh. Please imagine how shorts, and his pale pink knees had knuck- you – some of us are Aboriginal, but we happy I was. Thought I was dead in les like worn-out fists, and his feet were are all scientists. All called to report on heaven. Then came 1993 and the triple shoved bare into black spiked work-boots. the condition of the terminus on the third quake on the ice shelf gets me sent here Along with my rifle he from Northern Affairs carried his own store- to scribble a few words. bought poleaxe. Fit, hale, What a load of dung. unprepossessing, and I told him I had standing right in front come before to visit in of me, he looked my the 1970s and uttered age. He was a lot older. a few non-committal He had on a pair of self- words of my own about shading bifocals, which where I was the year of he pushed up the bridge his report’s deadline. of his nose as a matter of We all got jobs in ’93. habit. Behind him I saw Some better than others, there were another five the man said, and start- or six others, men and ed walking ahead of me, women of various ages, a good lead of ten steps dressed in similar make- with no apology. I had do wardrobes from the to follow trying not to shambles of moun- look as if I intended to taineering and hunting catch up with him. expeditions, updated On average I’d say with ragged skin and you happen twice every furs, bone and baleen. year. I come across a Carrying animals from professional trekker a hunt. And all wearing with her sunburnt nose glasses. I was wearing pointed to the third my own prescription steppe, drunk-stepping self-shading lenses. snow-blind and about Let’s go, show you to die. And did you see? the way, he said. We broke off from the I need to get my radio, mainland in June and I said, with a thumb are now drifting south- pointed to the second east. steppe. I did not know that, Never mind your I said, and took a deep radio, the man said. breath. But now that That’s old news. You’re you mention it, that here now, might as well would explain some get a last look for yourself. steppe of the ice shelf. mysterious things. At what? My name’s Doctor Gavin Stott, I said. Yes, starting with a great cracking What you’re here to see, right? The He said his name was Craig and he was sound like a canon blast in your backyard? terminus. from Minot, North Dakota. But some Yes, I said . . . and that, too. That, too. I fell in line with the others as the old of us, he said, like Lucy Peltier and Oscar man showed us all, single file, back up Weaver, are more your locals. Many hours later I was staring into the through the crag via ice switchbacks that I recognize the names Peltier and Weav- spectacle of the little fire burning inside led away from the shore, out of the cavity er, I said. Aren’t they glaciologists? Craig’s shelter, thinking about home. Our of this hulking ruin of snow and ice, to Craig said: Peltier came at glaciers via dinner had been around a large camp where I’d sheltered. Now the colours in atmospheric physics, I believe. And Weav- table inside a stretched igloo the group the ice shelf ran from blue to blood-red as er is a geodynamic modeller specializing had built for communal meals. I drank

36 a boiling cup of fish soup or two and scientists, before they joined Craig. purple bags under his eyes. I asked if he ate my fill of caribou. The conversation How much time do you figure we have was my guard and he told me I wasn’t a was all about the fact we were floating till the ice shelf melts? I asked. prisoner any more than he was. I asked out to sea, and where possibly to. Some Craig sat up straight on his bench, if he had a Kit-Kat then. He told me he of the scientists imagined us docking at crossed his arms and said: All depends wished. I have one cigarette left, he said, Ellis Island, or down the Rideau, or as where we sail. We seem to be moving at and showed me. So we went outside to far south as the Panama Canal. No one a fair clip. Third steppe is the worst for smoke it and watch the sun break out seemed to show any fear, however, that wear. Comes to it, we relocate the group from behind a foreshortened thunder- we were going to sink. After a dessert of to the first steppe where the ice is thicker. cloud. candied Arctic char, Craig invited me to The latest estimates say the ice runs more He told me he was a radiocarbon dater come join him and some others to sit by than a thousand metres deep, as in double and when he accepted the assignment the firepit in his beautifully done quinzee. the height of the World Trade Center. So, to come here he was acting chair of his These yurts, snow burrows, and firn- any predictions how long we last? department at a prestigious university in made geodomes they inhabited were all Not me, I said. the city of Waterloo. At the time of his thrown together by a fierce winter I knew Craig thumb-picked his nostrils clean. departure, he said his oldest child was a to have a recombinant power the likes of We might get lucky, he said, and moor car thief and his wife had just left him for Libeskind or Gehry. The third steppe was nearby off some other peninsula and live someone she met going to AA. a panorama of a million panes of shattered out the rest of our lives as if nothing ever I nodded my head. OK, go on, I said. firn ice, firn ice all covered in a thick coat happened. Now I get you. of rimely snow, as if a mammoth snow- That’s true, I said, and then thinking The radiocarbon dater told me how he made tower had imploded here, and of something else to say, I added: Oh, I had been assigned by Northern Affairs to under this concrete-like debris was hidden thought I might get my rifle back from come to the ice shelf and report on what a community of natural quinzees inhabit- you now. he discovered, but when he got here he ed by a dozen or more people, each hovel Craig eyed me from under his glasses, found the same thing I did: Craig. appearing behind a different entryway. not unfriendly-like. And with a voice full In college we never learned about 1978, Craig’s was a spacious 1,100-square- of a courteous sarcasm that I know us when the first glaciologist, Dr Baruch foot cabin of slabs of firn with a loftspace geoscientists save for dealing with bureau- Craig, was sent to the shelf, he told me. designed with a king-sized bed, and a crats, finally said: If I give you back your I’m Gavin Stott, I said, and put out my firepit in the centre of the living room on rifle, how can I be sure you won’t for hand. I’m a good old climatologist. the main floor. I watched single particles some reason turn it against me, or any one The radiocarbon dater shook my hand of snow fall through the man-made vent of us? and said: Stott. Oh, OK, I’ve heard of in the ceiling above the fire as though the I looked at the old man and said: you. I’m Keeling. Vincent Keeling. stars I could not see in the blue sky were Because that would be murder, Craig. I’m Keeling. The name rang bells. I looked dropping one by one from the heavens. not a murderer. I’m a climatologist. at his face more closely for the imprint of My children were spectres in the fire Craig nodded and sucked his bottom familiarity, something that might anaes- and my grandchildren the yellow and lip. The firelight and shadowplay across thetize me to the sight of that asphalt orange sparks tossed upwards to kiss the features of his face made him look blob of dread dangling off the back of his the blue-snow ceiling of Craig’s shelter, ancient and guru. I’m glad to hear you sweat-ringed neck and proposing to be and now and again I saw my wife in the feel that way, I am. But I still won’t give his hair. embers. Here was my family, without a you back your rifle, I’m sorry. It’s just too Here comes Peltier, I’ll introduce you, shared continent between us. A wife on valuable for the community to risk losing. Keeling said. She was my thesis advisor the streets of Egypt leading the charge of But it’s my rifle. Where am I going to when I studied in Helsinki. a women’s rights foundation, followed go now? But just as Keeling began to open up everywhere by her male secretaries, her The man who sat down beside me in a discussion, Peltier ran right past us, suffering lovers. Oldest child stationed Craig’s quinzee might have been forty at shouting: Airplanes! by an NGO in Lima, another consulting the outside, but he was so big and weath- Now I saw other residents of the third on pollution in Tokyo and Yokohama erbeaten he looked my age. His head was steppe ducking into the nearest quinzees and living in Seoul, a third teaching First tanned beyond expression, bald up top for cover. I heard the screams of two Nations languages at Oxford. Could I say until hair started growing again behind jets incoming and the upset climatolo- I was proud, even if none of us got along? his ears; it was styled in a dark grey gists around me only made me want to Is that your stomach? Are you still hun- beaver-tail dreadknot that flapped against smile. I wondered if my helicopter pilot gry? Craig asked me. his back and smelled strongly of road tar. was among the search party flying above Opposite. Stuffed, I said, and shifted He was tall and slope-shouldered, the us. Keeling took one last haul and gave my weight back on my haunches, looking shape of an atom bomb, and wore a Roll- me the roach end of his cigarette. Before around the large enclosed space to com- ing Stones T-shirt. His bare arms were running off he put a hand on my shoul- pliment him on the layout and the tools that prickly gooseflesh of someone who der and, with a wink I took to be com- hanging from the walls. Ice tools, which can tolerate the chill because of obes- miserating, said: Finish it off. I pictured hanging from the belts of the ity. Moreover, he was knackered, with I hid under the ice. ◊

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38 On Something that youthful Kick Inside, a repetitive background riff towards the end of the song – something like ‘Ja-Ja-Ja-mes-a- On Kate Bush hee-ya’ – in a high-pitched voice that rises halfway through the phrase to a Katherine Angel listens to a voice of uncomfortable beauty peaking, slightly disgusted squeal. It is as if she feels unwell and also has her teeth * * * * ‘Wuthering Heights’, her lifelong flirta- bared. In ‘Them Heavy People’, she sings tion with Elvis is already manifest: when ‘Rollin-a-rollin-a-rollin-ah’ and again she Heroes: defiant, individual, courageous. she sings ‘Heathcliff, my only master’, becomes, for a second, a strange creature her voice dips down and up again, and making a not quite human sound. She is * * * * she fills the cavity of her mouth with air not fully animal. But if she is fully human, to hint at that Elvis tic which was itself a she is slightly demented. Somewhat pos- I have an ambivalent relationship to the kind of flirtatious, camp reference to the sessed, though it’s not clear what by. things I love, to the heroes – the writ- swooping lines of an operatic tenor. (She The playfulness, and the metamor- ers, artists, musicians – I worship. I skirt has said of ‘King of the Mountain’, a song phoses, find their most intense fruition around them with some kind of discom- on Aerial, released in 2005, that addresses in The Dreaming of 1982. Here, her voice fort. I close my eyes to the whole oeu- Elvis, she was trying to mimic aspects of plays with persona, and with gender – for vre: I like to leave something remaining, his voice.) instance in ‘There Goes a Tenner’, where something unknown. I like to know there In that first album, she was already a girly ‘oh oh oh’ is in counterpoint with is something left over, something I have pushing her voice, testing what it could a more masculine, again Elvis-y, ‘We’re not yet encountered. do.. The Kick Inside announced something waiting’. In ‘Sat in Your Lap’ she is in dis- My hero-worship is sullen, blinkered – crucial to Bush: her voice wears its body tinctly ironic mode, dramatizing herself: a little phobic. I don’t quite know why. on its sleeve. You can hear the workings ‘Just when I think I’m king, I must admit’; It might be because I want to save of her organs, the rearrangement of her you can hear a self-mocking expression something for later – to eke a pleasure component parts. In ‘L’Amour Looks wrap itself around her mouth. This album out. Something Like You’, in her striving for sees her stretching her voice in ways that It might be because I fear disappoint- the extremities of the her voice, she lets are almost frightening: who is she? King, ment. Perhaps I have found the apotheosis you hear its workings; in the swoop- not Queen. Whose voice is this? of what they do – and so I fear the defla- ing octaves – again, the operatic Elvis is Bush was experimental with form, tion of their work in encountering some here – you can sense her pushing down with extraordinary instrumentation and inferior part of it. on her diaphragm; her voice alerts you orchestration, but also with the core of Or it might be because the currency to its physical labour. Kate Bush, from her voice itself. She is interested in what they deal in – the stuff of their work – is the very start, didn’t care how the experi- a voice is, and what it can do. She uses so challenging that I have to dispense it to ments she enacted on her voice might be her voice like an instrument to rend and myself in carefully controlled ways. registered in the listener. She just played, tear, to sometimes painful effect. There and pushed. are places where she inhabits a deeply * * * * uncomfortable space between singing * * * * and screaming – in ‘Suspended in Gaffa’, There is something about Kate Bush’s and ‘Leave It Open’, where she becomes voice – her physical voice, as well as her But then heroes can also be demigods, a rabid, masculine machine, spitting out voice in a literary sense – that has often belonging in two worlds at once (at least). the word ‘harm’. And then, just when struck me as heroic. Heroic because it is Partly here, partly elsewhere; made up you think the song has become as strange reckless, stubborn. She seemed to emerge, of many things, human, animal, divine. as it could be, she pushes it further; she as a teenager, almost wildly confident, Liminal, crossing thresholds. becomes animal: a donkey – and else- staggeringly daring. where on the album, a herd of sheep. Her early, young voice has often been * * * * In ‘Houdini’, she sings yet again on the described as shrill. It has a bird-like clar- raspy, uncomfortable edge of her voice, ity, but one tinged with a nasal overtone, Bush’s work is full of transformations, of before it reaches a scream. It’s painful, which makes it both beautiful and slightly metamorphoses. She is animal and bird you almost want her to break into a full uncomfortable. But from the very begin- and woman and child and man all at once. scream – it would be a release. This nearly ning, her voice – again, both her actual These things erupt out of her across all happens in ‘Get Out of My House.’ And voice and her literary, musical voice; the albums. Her voice is hysterical, mal- yet it’s not quite there; it’s profoundly the sensibility she offered up – were leable, the stuff of dreams but also of ambiguous. The threat of disintegration, experimental, and utterly indifferent to nightmares. She pushes it to the edge of however, is always there, hovering flirta- audience. In The Kick Inside, her 1978 discomfort. It is immensely playful, and tiously, dangerously. debut album, she was already playing and it’s also somewhat frightening. teasing with what her voice could do. In In ‘James and the Cold Gun’, still in * * * *

39 The kind-of-scream is something Kate it, hard. When I listen to ‘Purple Rain’, twisted round it as a handle. Then I Bush has in common with Prince, who to ‘U Got the Look’, to ‘Let’s Go Crazy’, went down to the Loire, here little worked on her 1993 album The Red Shoes. to ‘Little Red Corvette’, I see fabric being more than a stream, and sat naked in Prince loves to scream – he really loves torn, pulled, stretched; I feel something a pool cleaning my teeth. Behind me to scream – and he does so to electrifying being wrung out of something else. It’s the sun came out and the woodfire effect in ‘Purple Rain’ and ‘The Beautiful exhilarating, and it’s almost too much. smoke turned blue. I felt rapturous Ones’. Like Bush, he uses the entire scope and slightly mad. of his voice as an instrument: to play, and * * * * almost to abuse. They are both fearless In Prince’s music, pleasure becomes with respect to the strangeness and power Listening to Purple Rain and The Dream- pain; and pain, pleasure. In Kate Bush’s, of the human voice – as a physical phe- ing again, writing this, I remembered what is human is animal; and animal, nomenon, a tool that can produce sounds, some words from Richard Holmes’s Foot- human. Madness, moreover, is pleasure, but also as a means of conveying some- steps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, and pleasure almost mad. These states thing, in particular the beauty of what is where he describes his journey as a young are never far away from one another; frightening, what is unpleasant. man through France, retracing R. L. Ste- and in this alarming, demanding music, Kate Bush and Prince both do this har- venson’s own steps: the pleasures and the frustrations of try- monically, structurally, instrumentally ing to express ourselves – the unsettling and rhythmically. Their music is full of I woke at 5 a.m. in a glowing mist, my places inside us, and the transformations rupture, of abrupt shifts, of irresolution. green sleeping-bag blackened with that can happen there – are at the centre They embrace the form and want to test the dew, for the whole plateau of the of the work. It’s what makes the music and break it at the same time. They tease Velay is above two thousand feet. I never-ending, never closed, an entirely you with pure pop conventions, which made a fire with twigs gathered the open system. It’s what makes it rapturous they then pull into painful corners. If night before, and set water to boil for and slightly mad. ◊ pop is their material, they lean in against coffee, in a petit pois tin with wire

Food and Drink strips or rashers. But our American guests insisted on overcooked bacon, shrivelled up into curly bits of crunchy charcoal. The Shameful Breakfast of Sonic Youth ‘That’ll kill you, that stuff,’ I thought about saying, but of course I didn’t, no By Paul Ewen freaking way. The name of the brasserie was t my leaving drinks, my maître d’ meant even more people, more courses ‘Brogues’, which was humiliating in itself. A(who’d had a few) admitted that I and more stress. The hotel attracted My uniform included a green polo shirt really was one of the worst waiters the guests with a combination of money, with ‘Brogues’ written on it, in a style hotel had ever employed. But, she con- status and power. The majority of these similar to the logo from the American fessed, the management all agreed that had only the money part, but I suppose sitcom Cheers. I wore smart black trousers, my application letter remained the most their status was inferred by staying in black shoes (not brogues), and an olive- extraordinary the company had ever the flash hotel, and they could exercise green apron that wrapped around my received. power by reproaching service staff like waist like a cummerbund. My hair, which Noahs was a five-star hotel in Christch- me. And they did. They would scold me. was long at the time, was pulled back urch, the largest city on the South Island The most frequent reprimands came from severely for hygiene reasons. I looked and the second most populous in New the American guests. Perhaps they found rather prissy, and if any of my friends Zealand. I’d come to the ‘big smoke’ to my mild, unassertive manner not to their ever popped by, they’d say, ‘CHECK OUT study, arriving fresh from a rural town liking. My frightened eyes possibly dis- THAT DICKHEAD!’ called Ashburton, population 15,000. turbed them, and maybe I bowed too low, Folding napkins didn’t help. They had When I say ‘fresh’, read ‘naïve’. and too often. Many were of retirement to be folded in a florid style, so the cut- Shy and sensitive types will always age, travelling in package groups, and lery could be inserted inside, as if in a lit- be crushed by the service industry. Uni- they had very specific ideas about how tle bed. But perhaps worst of all was the versity may have opened my mind to breakfast should be served in New Zea- restaurant music. It wasn’t ‘piped’, like many great things, but my hospitality land: exactly like breakfast was served in muzak. Rather, it played through a stereo, job taught me a lot about human nature. the United States. If coffee cups weren’t on CDs. Those CDs were: It’s fair to say I’ve been scared of people filled immediately, their owners would Fleetwood Mac – Greatest Hits ever since. My role consisted primarily of start bubbling up like the very coffee Simply Red – Stars serving breakfast in the brasserie. Occa- pots they sought. Crispy bacon was also George Michael – Listen Without Prejudice sionally I would also be pulled on to the very important. In New Zealand it’s tra- I remember them well because they longer lunch and dinner shifts, which ditional to eat bacon cooked in large flat were played over and over and over again.

40 Sometimes now, when I see a pretty remember the awkwardness, the shame. already been collected from the door han- folded napkin, I think of those songs and But despite my admiration for these acts, dles by the time they crashed in at some I weep into that napkin. which only accentuated my anxiety and ungodly hour. Thurston Moore turned Not all our guests found me offensive. desperation, my worst heroic encounter up to the brasserie first, and the other The Japanese honeymooners were shy and was with some genuine rock gods. When members, rather than getting their own timid too. And the local nightclub staff, the members of Sonic Youth were put on tables on other sections, all joined him in arriving straight from their late shifts, my section, I almost did a wee beneath my zone. clearly appreciated the soft approach after my apron. My retired American guests were hard their heavy nights. Another sort of guest It was the morning after their gig, work, but Sonic Youth were from New was also sympathetic: the ones with the which took place on 12 February 1993, York, which I’d heard was the hardest money, the status and the power. For the some twenty years ago. The band was on town in America. A friend had recently most part, the famous guests were actu- their ‘Pretty Fucking Dirty’ tour, and visited there, and told me of an encounter ally rather lenient to the worst waiter in after discreet enquiries with the front he’d had emerging from a subway station. the Southern Hemisphere. desk, the news that they were staying Completely lost, he was relieved to see Owing to our isolation on the South with us was confirmed. This stirred emo- a NYC cop nearby and approached him, Island, on the other side of the world, tions in me of both excitement and exqui- politely asking for directions. The cop, a visiting celebrity was a massive deal. site terror. who was wearing mirrored sunglasses, Many touring acts only stopped at Auck- The Theatre Royal, New Zealand’s said, land; most never got beyond Sydney. So sole surviving and operating Edwardian ‘DO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING TOURIST those who went the distance and ven- theatre, was a Christchurch institution. MAP?’ tured all the way to Christchurch were I’d seen Billy Bragg perform there, the Sonic Youth had the word ‘fucking’ exalted all the more. The Queen and the Violent Femmes, Midnight Oil, and even in their tour name. If I messed up their Pope both dropped by, which was mas- Julian Clary on his ‘Glittering Passage’ bacon, maybe they would stab me. sive. Various overseas sporting teams vis- tour. Sonic Youth were supported by a When I wasn’t at work, my long hair ited too, although our local players were terrific Dunedin band, The Dead C, and would be my stage curtains, which I’d generally regarded as the world’s finest, understandably, the crowd were very close and hide behind. But when it was full stop. excited. A student radio acquaintance pulled back in a ponytail, the stage cur- Fortunately for me, many of the stars managed to drop from the upper tier of tains were drawn and I was exposed. Just I admired were alternative musicians, the theatre on to the middle tier before after Thurston Moore arrived, my maître modest enough to accommodate their clambering across the box seat, jumping d’ found me hiding behind the bar. far-flung fans. Billy Bragg, De La Soul, on to the huge stage speakers and then ‘What are you doing?’ The Mad Professor, African Head Charge, dropping down on to the stage, evading ‘Can we change the CD?’ I implored Pop Will Eat Itself, Pavement, Fugazi: security by leaping into the mosh pit. It her. these were some of the acts I was grateful was a most impressive feat. Later, singer/ ‘Why?’ to experience in Christchurch. On one bassist Kim Gordon had to tell those in ‘Because that guy at Table 14 is from occasion, on my way into a gig, I saw a the mosh pit to calm down after they Sonic Youth!’ sign outside which had been altered to tried to mount the stage. In fairness to the ‘What the heck is Sonic Youth?’ read: no housie tonight. faith no more. crowd, she had just played her bass guitar, ‘It’s a band! From New York! They’re My interest in alternative music was laid flat on the stage, with her stiletto heel. on their “Pretty Fucking Dirty” Tour! heightened by my other day job. After I think the song was ‘Dirty Boots’. And we’re playing “Father Figure”’! serving breakfast, in between lectures, I Who knows what time I got home, but When I approached Thurston Moore worked at student radio. Occasionally I had to be up again at 5 a.m., ready to with the coffee pot, I must have looked some of the bands would drop by the sta- start work at 6. Feeling hung-over never like a sparrow with broken wings. Plac- tion for an interview. Of course, I wasn’t did my nerves much good with all those ing his filled cup back on the table, I dis- asked to interview any of them. Not even clattering cups and spoons, nor with the lodged his cereal spoon, which went clat- the New Zealand ones. Maybe I made engine of my tinny 50cc scooter, which tering over the polished wooden floor. them some coffee, because I was good I parked opposite the hotel, beside the ‘I’ll get you another one,’ I bleated. at that. Still, it gave me a small connec- picturesque Avon River. As I pulled on ‘It’ll be fine,’ he said. tion with their worldly scene. The more my smart black trousers, I was probably But I dashed off to the cutlery drawer, established acts often stayed at Noahs, and retching at the thought of over-easy eggs. returning with a new gleaming spoon. if they happened to be on my section for Thankfully, the members of Sonic ‘Around here they like everything to be breakfast, I’d experience an even closer Youth weren’t early risers. Even though pretty fucking clean,’ I peeped. connection with them, but it was a ter- they had to fly to Wellington to perform Kim Gordon didn’t say much, either. rible one. again that very night, they still managed She had replaced her stiletto boots with Both Billy Bragg and the Violent to have a sleep-in, probably after going trainers, or sneakers as we called them Femmes have reason to feel short- ballistic at some after-gig party. If it were then. Soon afterwards Lee Ranaldo joined changed by the service of their coffee/ me, I would have ordered room serv- the table. They weren’t sitting in the same breakfast in Christchurch. Perhaps they ice, but perhaps the breakfast cards had positions as their stage set-up. Thurston

41 Moore was on the bench seat at the back, Youth, they probably thought they reflect- Later that night my parents were called by where Steve Shelley the drummer should ed badly upon the restaurant, perhaps the police to say that my scooter had been have been, but he hadn’t even turned up. later describing it as ‘shabby’ in their guest pulled out of the Avon River, just near Kim Gordon was at the back of the table comments. But for now, they were sim- where I’d parked it, but no body had been too. She should have been on the other ply feeling neglected, wondering where recovered. side, at the front, ideally with Thurston their meals were, why their coffee cups Moore and Lee Ranaldo at either end. Lee were empty. I wanted to tell them about Note Ranaldo, who was on one of the front the people on Table 14, how the Theatre On 22 February 2011, Christchurch was chairs, held his glass out for some water, Royal had thumped and heaved the previ- struck by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake that so I poured from a large jug. Just before it ous night, how they’d missed an amazing severely damaged the city and killed 185 reached an acceptable level, near the top, gig stuck back here, probably complaining people. My parents lost supporting walls a large cluster of ice tipped into the glass, about the lack of TV channels, or sleeping to their house, and my mother was hit causing it to overflow and cascade on to noisily due to respiratory problems. But by falling masonry and hospitalized. The his crotch. My attempts to dab the water instead I simply bowed all the lower, scut- Theatre Royal was significantly damaged with a napkin were politely rebuffed. So I tling between tables with an inane smile, and is currently closed until the second ran away, my forehead sweat dripping into like Manuel from Fawlty Towers. quarter of 2014 for repairs. Noahs Hotel the jug, melting the rest of the ice. Sonic Youth didn’t glass me, or spoon (later renamed Rydges) received only My maître d’ had let the George me in the guts. When I apologized for the superficial damage, but because of its posi- Michael CD play out to its natural end- music, I thought I might even get a laugh, tion in the ‘drop zone’ of less safe build- ing, and after a wondrous spell of silence, but I didn’t. There were no further inci- ings nearby, it remains closed too. Simply Red kicked in with ‘Something dents, although their serving plates rattled Billy Bragg returned to the city post- Got Me Started’. I cowered over the con- like anything when I shunted them away. earthquake, holding a benefit concert at diments dresser, silently thumping myself After my shift I left my scooter and Burnside High School. For the most part, in the face. wandered the streets in a daze. At some however, the people of Christchurch feel If the other customers noticed Sonic point I found a public bar and settled in. more isolated than ever. ◊

How It Gets Done related to the spaces in which they live. Claus- trophobic urban apartments, remote dwellings in mountain villages – in one case a forest. Do Peter Stamm your characters have something to show us about life as you observe it in particular places in Switzerland today or are their preoccupations expressive of modern life in general? The author of Seven Years on his latest story rible of questions’. Why do you write? collection, We’re Flying – plus modern life, I think the latter. Of course ‘how we beautiful sentences, and the artistic necessity of Dürrenmatt used to answer this ques- live measures our own nature’, as Philip unfulfilled sex. Interview byAnn a Kelly tion by saying ‘for professional reasons’, Larkin said in Mr Bleaney; that’s why Mr but that’s probably a bit too easy. I guess Bleaney’s room tells us a lot about himself In We’re Flying, we meet many characters there is in many people a wish or a will to and his life. But the questions and prob- whose lives seem characterized by a sort of oppose an inexplicable and often confus- lems my characters deal with are universal. oppressive mental weight, and who seem to be ing reality by using something they have I was never interested in describing a doing anything but flying. Why did you choose made themselves. Writing is a way of cre- particular place. As the painter (who is, by this title for the collection? ating order and meaning by giving form the way, Camille Corot) from ‘Go Out to a piece of reality. And then it’s also fun into the Fields . . .’ says: To me flying means not only to be free to play God, as an author friend of mine ‘You paint what you see with the like a bird, but also to be insecure, in dan- called it. That’s just three of many pos- maximum of precision, but you don’t ger, not to be grounded. So it’s a positive sible answers. care about the precision of the depiction. and a frightening thing at the same time. You try to capture the feeling, the inex- I think that most of my characters are Was that a terrible question? act feeling, as exactly as you can. What somehow detached from their lives and counts is decisiveness.’ are hoping to fly away, and also to find a No, I think it’s a question every artist is place to land. constantly asking him or herself. The The characters in this collection are often outsid- only terrible thing about it is that it’s so ers, who are unable to connect and mentally Your character in ‘Go Out into the Fields . . .’ hard to answer. isolated, even if they are superficially part of is a painter who is asked by a little boy why he a community. Are they special cases that are is painting. For the painter this is ‘the most ter- Your characters and their lives seem closely interesting to explore psychologically, or do they

42 reflect something more common about being tion it’s just boring. It’s not the sexual act gestions, but I soon realized that it made alive? that interests me but what it does to us. no sense. The translation is as much his The tension between our normal daily work as the original is mine. Sometimes They are certainly not cases for psychia- lives and this animal side to us. We are Michael asks me a few questions, but not try. The story about the girl who lives in strongly driven by sex, but we don’t talk many. There might be something that the forest is based on a real event. I met about it very often, at least not in a fun- can stay undecided in German, but not in her after I had written it – she had sent damental way. English: who is speaking a certain phrase, me an email when she heard about the for example. Then I must decide. story – and she was special, but not insane Your style is incredibly distinctive and indi- at all. On the contrary, she was probably vidual. We’re reading these stories in Michael It’s clear from your writing that the visual is more aware of things that don’t work out Hofmann’s highly skilled translation, but when very important to you, and you often write in our society. Readers often tell me that you’re writing the original German, how do about painting and architecture. Could you in my stories they read things that they you craft your sentences? Do they come out fully imagine pursuing any art form other than writ- feel themselves, but are unable to express. formed, or do you write and rewrite and polish ing? them until they’re perfect? You write as confidently from the female per- I think I could have become a painter, but spective as you do from the male. Do you have I do a lot of polishing, especially in the I took a decision to go on with writing to think differently if you’re writing from a short stories. I probably reread them some thirty years ago and want to stick female point of view? thirty or forty times when I’m working to it. Writing (and also painting) is hard on them. I don’t rearrange the mate- enough, so I try to concentrate on it. But A little bit, yes. But the sexes are not rial or make big changes, usually; most one of the main characters of my next so different after all. And as a man I’m of the time the form is there in the first novel is again a painter. much more interested in women than in draft. But as I don’t allow myself to use men, so I tend to think about them more many technical means, every word counts. Are there any Swiss authors who haven’t been often and try to understand why they do Some translators have told me at first they translated into English and who you think what they do. I would never want to be thought it was easy to translate my work, deserve to be more widely discovered? a woman, but I love to write about them but then they realized it was really hard. and imagine their perspective. So I’m very happy to have Michael Hof- I’m not sure, but I think Markus Werner mann, who is doing a wonderful job. has never been translated into English. He There is often a strong atmosphere of sexual is a wonderful author with a beautiful tension in your stories, but it often remains Are you involved with the English translations language. ◊ unrealized – or culminates in sex which seems of your work? strangely unsatisfying. Why is this? We’re Flying is published by Granta When Michael translated my first novel, Fulfilled sex is nice in real life, but in fic- I was stupid enough to make a few sug-

43 Five Dials in Australia New writing for the Sydney Writers’ Festival

44 Fiction equanimity. (On the day I first teamed up with Breezy, it was the Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris version of ‘Love Hurts’.) The Time There seemed to be very few people alive. I had had desultory conversations with Luke Davies perhaps six people in those first few weeks, and had seen, at wary distance, another he idea of actually killing had never even the tiny iPod earbuds made me feel ten or twelve. There was not a lot to talk Tbeen in my consciousness before, hemmed in, and disconnected from pos- about, beyond acknowledging (but only except as grand abstraction, but things sible danger. very broadly) something of the shared changed rapidly in those first days of rub- Nonetheless I had regularly taken to experience of numb shock. I had no incli- ble and mayhem; there came a point, in laughing: even a gust of wind, and the rus- nation to ‘team up’ until I’d gotten a better the state of heightened alertness that sim- tling of leaves along a gutter, might force idea of what, precisely, I wanted to do ply being alive now entailed, when I knew from me a spontaneous, delighted Ha! with my new life and how, precisely, this I might be capable of anything. Within Or I would slap a stick against a tree and world was going to work. I would have days of this realization (it was not, I might whoop at the sharpness of that retort. On thought survivors would have rushed to add, a time of restful sleep) I had taken a the seventeenth day I sat revving an ugly console, congregate, cooperate, and per- stranger’s life. The experience was liberat- red late-model Camry, overlooking a park haps, somewhere, this was either already ing. in Cammeray where I had played Rugby happening or soon to happen. I under- I had fallen into the habit of talking to League as a small child and in which was a stood the notion of community, of course, myself, quietly, casually. The counter of Moreton Bay Fig tree (now alas figless) full and I knew also that at some point over existence had been reset and, statistically of featherless sulphur-crested white cocka- the next months or years the dogs (assum- speaking, the aberrant might now call itself toos (now alas neither sulphur-crested ing their survival) would become a mortal the norm; it was nice to hear the sound nor white) who watched me with nerv- threat to anyone not practising safety in of someone’s voice, even if my own was ous, branch-pacing alertness. It struck me numbers. But I just wanted to be alone mostly the only one available. The silence that the restless anxiety of the cockatoos with my head and my thoughts. of the world felt not like any reproach to was due to my continuing revving of the I spent most of my time driving long that world’s now so radically and compre- motor, an act for which, in the instant of distances, following no particular algo- hensively curtailed follies: all was suddenly becoming aware of it, I had no explana- rithm of navigation other than, at times, so new that it seemed as if one’s way of tion; I had simply forgotten to cut the memories of places I’d been to – the route thinking had changed for ever, and that engine, lost in a particularly pleasing mem- so regularly taken through the cross-city grandly abstract concepts such as reproach ory of the coach telling my father I was the tunnel and across the Anzac Bridge to my were simply archaic. Cause and effect, best tackler on the under-7s. Then I cut mother’s house at Lilyfield, for instance, unadorned and exotically simple, were in the engine, and stepped from the car. All or the M4 to the Blue Mountains, where effect. I simply shouted, from the bottom of my there were a couple of stretches unimped- I didn’t listen to my iPod, for example, lungs, was ‘Helllooooo!’ I did not account ed by burnt or bombed vehicles and where and not because I knew that a charged in advance for the sudden distress of the on one occasion I reached 190 km/h for a iPod would last only a few hours and freaked-out cockatoos, nor for their comi- short period just before the Penrith turn- that such a strangely precious sliver of cally tragic attempts at flying away (now off. (Beyond that speed, I found I had no the eternity now stretching before me alas not such a straightforward or aerody- desire to go.) I returned most days to the might result in an unbearable sense of namically feasible activity). I stored a note Eastern Suburbs. I reserved a day or two music’s carrying too much moral weight. inside my head: what animals remained a week for the gradual and ongoing task Nor was it because a system of charging, would be busy finding new responses to of barricading all ingoing roads to North MacBook after MacBook, via USB cable, new stresses. Don’t pet the cats. When I Bondi. I planned eventually to be the King for the cumulative battery life of all the restarted the car, the engine backfired. My of the Ben Buckler peninsula, though in MacBooks I could freely take from the concern for the further diminishment of those first months I denied myself the Apple Store at the ruined Westfield mall the cockatoos’ collective serenity did not pleasure of actually staying there each at Bondi Junction (the doors of which I dampen my howl of delighted, surprised night, since the thunderous boom of the joyfully smashed open with a sledgeham- laughter at that clean, clear bang! waves crashing endlessly on the rocks mer freely taken from the nearby Mitre So I didn’t listen to my iPod. Nonethe- below at my favourite spot, the cliff-edge 10) – or indeed from any Apple store, or less I woke every morning bolt upright at the end of Brighton Boulevard, was even any house I cared to enter – would from sleep with a song already fully overwhelming, making one effectively be a system that would last at best a few fledged inside my head. I had no control both deaf and blind to danger, and as I’ve years, as batteries aged and failed. And over the contents. It might be The Hol- intimated, at this point in the New History not even because music suddenly seemed lies singing, ‘Sometimes, all I need is the all I was saying was give silence a chance. absurd. It was more just that the world, in air that I breathe,’ or Joy Division, ‘Walk So I hopped from apartment to apartment, its unnerving new silence, seemed so much in silence, don’t turn away in silence’; I from bed to bed, a good few blocks inland. more immense than ever before, and that learned I had to accept the day’s song with To relax, I read books. (Going for walks

45 was strictly work.) better at killing than me, since we were all this point, of course, and don’t imagine Another funny thing: I assumed that at effectively starting with the same tools and in any case it was her name in the Before) some point I would become horny again. I tricks and we were all now, you could say, was a gangly girl covered in sores who spoke briefly to two women in those first the same age. In the Old Time I had won a was being dragged into an open patch by three weeks, both of whom were in any major literary award, a not inconsiderable a man whose erection was already flailing, case ‘attached’ to male companions as we sum of money for a starving poet, and had ungainly and menacing, in anticipation. engaged in our wary and supposedly post- deposited the cheque into a term-deposit His pants were unbuckled but still above traumatic elliptical conversations and went set up by my cousin the investment banker his knees, restricting his movement, and our separate ways (and what a liberation! in the Citigroup Building. Because I loved as the two of them tumbled to the ground No more Let me get your email; no more a good jaunt up sixty-three floors of fire for the third or fourth time she belted email); but I did not as yet experience escape, and because, as I may or may not him, hard and fast, twice in the face, and absence of sex as absence. It’s not that I have said, my algorithm of navigation was staggered up, and almost got away. He was too busy laughing at my good fortune sometimes the revisiting of the even-only- grabbed her by the waist of her pants in being one of the apparent few left alive. vaguely familiar, and because I had been so and body-slammed her to the ground. I Good fortune had never been a surprise to astonished by the view when he took me winced, hearing the crack of her head on me. It’s more that the sensory world was to lunch in Citibank’s private dining room the concrete. Stunned now, she moaned, so packed with necessity that every event, the day I met him to give him the cheque, blood trickling from her mouth. She knew every minute of every day, was for now I found myself now, with high-end bin- what was coming next. I related, in this as sufficient unto itself. oculars I had freed from Georges Cameras in all events, to the fact that nothing was And yet I learned that what had been on George Street, looking about for signs a surprise any more. (In the case of rape, it experienced as, for want of a better word, of life. Chimney smoke rising from a ter- had never been.) He stood above her now ‘civilization’ – the ability of the individual race house in Ultimo alerted me to human for what seemed a needlessly triumphant mind known as mind and of the joint mind presence. I watched the building, rigidly moment, his cock like a rudder, stroking known as society to reflect on its own focused through the binoculars for more himself as, deeply concussed, she touched advancements in organizational greatness than two hours, for comings or goings. her cut lip, as if that cut were a mysterious and moral splendour – had indeed been no Someone else must have been watching quandary which needed her urgent atten- more than a glitch, a couple of hundred or too. I saw the ute that arrived, I saw the tion right this instant. couple of thousand years that had turned three men and their rifles, I saw the tiny I shot him in the head, because now out to be the exception to the rule. figures frogmarched outside, cowering, was suddenly the time. My Programme The rule was: be smart, be sharp. pleading, and shot to death. Six or seven of Self-Improvement meant that I was Because the old bodies – all the bodies people, just like that. The men so casually newly proficient with weapons-handling that had suddenly become a part of the loading the dead people’s supplies into the and that I was, albeit very much the hob- world, all at once – they were nothing, in tray of the ute. byist, an adequate marksman. Nonetheless the big picture. Hand sanitizers were my We were all already in a kind of afterlife. my hands were shaking as I cocked, aimed religion; I wore face masks, drank only Watching the killing from my eyrie, I felt and fired: not because it was wrong to kill bottled water. After the first few weeks the as if I’d just come across a particularly chal- (it wasn’t, I now understood) but because smells were not so bad, and the two prima- lenging clue in a nearly completed cryptic I didn’t know how different would be the ry visual revulsions I had been experienc- crossword. I’ve always experienced a quiet fact of action from the theory of action. ing were now minimized: insect activity and mounting excitement when nearing Cause and effect, unadorned and exoti- in decaying corpses, and the resemblance the end of a cryptic crossword. I started cally simple, would rule forthwith. Here of recently dead bodies to recently living collecting weapons, and began my Pro- is what I knew, though I no longer had humans. gramme of Self-Improvement. to think it, or think about it: while he was It was the new bodies that were the Another funny thing I forgot to men- still standing over her, in that last moment problem, because I needed to make sure I tion: it didn’t feel necessary to shit behind of his Triumph of Anticipation, I knew was not one of them. When I started kill- closed doors into a toilet any more. It that if I aimed for his head then the risk of ing, it was not as if I woke one day and wasn’t as if I was suddenly the biggest my accidentally hitting the girl would be (after expelling the morning song from my hygiene problem in a world filled with greatly reduced, for within mere moments mind) said to myself, ‘I should hunt down, decaying corpses. they would be locked down together in a and then assassinate, fellow-survivors.’ The first time I killed is also how I meatier union, and then I would surely be But someone must have started the ball teamed up with Breezy. I had become no Jason Bourne. As it was, it was a single rolling. Someone was out there proving more, not less, wary in my daily habits, shot, and a neat hole, pop!, and he crum- that, no, kindness and goodwill were not it goes without saying, since the above- pled sideways to the ground, one of the our default state as a species, and that, yes, outlined First Event and the subsequent New Bodies. that pre-emptive self-concern known deteriorations. I was sitting in one of my The story has a happy ending, for as violence would, in the absence of any shady recesses, between fallen concrete Breezy and I partnered up for a while, and structure, make its will felt in the world, stanchions, from where I had a good high exuberant succour was had all round, inso- and that there was no reason why I should view of things. The day fairly baked with far as one could connect in those troubled be defeatist and allow anyone to be any heat. Breezy (I did not know her name at times. She had become, like me, by neces-

46 sity, proficient at uncoupling the emo- felt not so much like an uncoupling as an drove away, stockpiled with weaponry, tional texture of her past life – such an easy extravagant unshackling. an adequate markswoman herself now, life, for everyone – from the immediate Eventually she took a showroom Por- towards Adelaide, to see if the city, or rawness of the present one. This made her sche Cayenne, a big black turbo-powered rather her family, had survived; and to find seem distracted at times, but it was only four-wheel drive – strangely enough, as her future. ever in fact a deeper engagement with the is the habit in the motor industry, it was We were all so full of hope in those simple pleasure of inhabiting a body, and named for the following year, as if the times. It’s not as if things truly pieced of breathing. Nonetheless, when we came act of owning such a car was a way of themselves together. But I woke each together, and our breathing increased, that transporting oneself into the future – and morning with a new song in my head. ◊

A Single Book witness to the silent, gestural language of Proust’s actual handwriting on the actual paper he wrote on’ and feeling herself Poemas ‘immediately transported . . . back in time to the very moment of its execution’. Ashley Hay meets Federico García Lorca It was a direct line to a dead poet, and it felt like a moment both intimate and was living in Sydney when I met the bookseller, might be able to help – given fortunate. I eminent Spanish poet Federico García that it was a first edition, given that it We seem geared to invest power in Lorca. It was 2007, and he’d been dead for was signed. D. was coming to Sydney objects, attributing both currency and over seventy years. I don’t mean to say the following week – where I lived and a kind of vitality to relics and rarities. this was the first time I’d heard of him; I where R. worked – and would bring the Catholic historians call it ‘mystic potency’; mean I found myself in the same room as book with him. He wanted to set up a Walter Benjamin calls it ‘aura’. Some peo- him in the way that’s possible when words, meeting. Images of the book’s spine – its ple’s sense of religion leads them to find it and their stories, travel through time. In buff binding, stamped with G. Lorca and in St Stephen’s forearm or Buddha’s tooth, those days, I was worrying at the edges of Poemas in small gold capitals – and of its while others find it in Marilyn Monroe’s my own story about a poet and a poem, pages, creamy-white and only slightly eye drops or a lock of Elvis Presley’s hair. and I was thinking about what it meant speckled with foxing, arrived in my inbox. Or a book inscribed by a long-dead poet. to be not just a writer of writing, but And we arranged to meet at R.’s place, an And so we sat; there was passing also a reader of it. Perhaps it was this that apartment full of light and overflowing between the three of us a conversation made him more predisposed to manifest bookshelves, and a view that took in the sparked by Lorca and his poems. D. talked one fine spring afternoon, but why ever it entire western face of the city, arranging about the stories he had heard from his happened, it demonstrated perfectly the its skyscrapers like the spines of more and great-uncle about his time at school with vivifying conduit of new words. more volumes. the poet, the painter, the film-maker – It began when a friend of mine, D., A hardback is a simple object – just a these three great imaginers. We talked mentioned that he was thinking of selling rectangle, but gratifyingly firm and solid about the potent success Lorca seemed to a book of poems. It was a special book: a compared to the flux and bend of its have had, of those three famous friends, family copy of the first edition of Lorca’s paperback cousin. It was something to sit in what proved to be a far shorter life. I first book,Poemas . It had belonged to D.’s and hold a first edition of Lorca’s poems; remembered an article about the ongoing great-uncle, Pepin, who’d been at college it was something to gaze at its inscription, hunt for Lorca’s remains, buried some- in Madrid with Lorca, Salvador Dalí and to enjoy a tangential frisson of ownership where in a mass grave after his execution Luis Buñuel. This foursome had been the through its message to my friend’s great- by Spanish Nationalists in the hills above core, some said, of the famous Generation uncle. Across the dedication, Lorca’s let- Granada in August 1936. And as we passed of ’27 that drove the Spanish avant-garde tering had the large-looped optimism of a the book between us too, it felt like a in the years before the civil war. Person- young man making a grand gesture: there shimmer of recovery, as if some piece of ally dedicated (A Pepin de Federico), it was was a flourish under his name and the the poet had escaped from that brutal and also inscribed with the name of the col- year, 1923, had been written so quickly, so sudden end and was somewhere nearby, lege (Residencia de estudiantes), the date and openly, that the numbers tended towards close to this high, light Sydney room, place (Primavera 1923, Madrid) and the straight vertical lines. under a familiarly blazing sun, over sev- poet’s autograph. And while those other I traced my finger across the bravura ‘F’ enty years later. three, more famous friends were all long- at the beginning of the name. There was R. talked about the value of first edi- since dead, Pepin himself was alive, living something tangibly thrilling in touch- tions, the value of autographs and dedica- in Spain and heading towards his 104th ing this, in feeling the slight indent the tions, the sliding scale of worth depending birthday. pen had made, pressed down by Lorca as on the relationship between the dedica- Now, D. was thinking about selling he wrote. It was the sense of ‘something tor and the dedicatee. He talked about the book, and he wondered if R., another almost uncanny’ that New Yorker writer whether or not the Residencia itself might friend of mine who was an antiquarian Mary Hawthorne described when ‘bearing be interested in purchasing the book, about

47 the ways such sales might be put into effect, sion of Lorca’s hand, six lines of writing; but because of its gentle wish, its vast now that everything was possible online. six new lines of writing by Federico García promise, the potency of its clear and simple His glasses perched on the end of his Lorca that were unknown to the rest of imagery. They were a gift and a revelation, nose, R. closed the book at last and turned the world. It was as if the book thickened, and I stared at the script of their words, it over. lying there on R.’s outstretched palms, and trying to press this scant and unfamiliar ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it’s fabulous.’ And when I think of it today it still makes me language, and the instant of first seeing it, he riffed a little on Pepin’s centrality to catch my breath. on to the most permanent part of my mind. the whole enterprise of surrealism, on ‘Even my mother didn’t know it was And there he was. Lorca had come into his function as the nexus, the lynchpin of there,’ said D., taking the book and the room, considering us for a moment, the group, the one who had the ideas that smoothing out the page. He frowned and just quietly, as we considered him. It wasn’t Dalí and Buñuel and Lorca then went and cleared his throat, and when he began to metaphor; it was truth. Lorca was real and explored. speak his English was a little thicker than tangible, no less concrete or compelling for ‘And Pepin didn’t have to do anything,’ usual, as if the Spanish he was translating having arrived from a confluence of ink he said at last, patting the cover again. ‘Fab- on the run was hanging on to its edges. and imagination. ulous, fabulous.’ ‘It’s something like this,’ he said. In Negotiating with the Dead, her series of ‘Every country I’ve ever been in,’ said Empson lectures, Margaret Atwood sug- D., ‘I’ve seen my uncle – on the TV, in The eternal angle gests that ‘not just some, but all writing of documentaries. He was in the Spanish Film Between land and sky . . . the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, Festival when I first came to Australia.’ is motivated, deep down, by a fear of and And he worried, in the vague yet He paused. ‘Bisectriz: it’s a geometric a fascination with mortality – by a desire engrossed way of parents, about his own term,’ he said, as if to himself. ‘Something to make the risky trip to the Underworld, small son getting at the book with scissors precise, like bisecting. Bisected, I guess, or and to bring something or someone back and crayons – or, worse, selling it when maybe cut or divided.’ Suggesting the pres- from the dead.’ And I cannot describe it he was twenty-one to raise money for a ence of one poem with his choice of one better than to say it felt at that moment as motorbike. word, and the presence of another with if the four of us – D., R., Lorca resurrected R. opened the pages to the dedication another. and myself – were passing an afternoon in a again and we sat there, the three of us, star- surprising and unexpected conversation. ing at the sliver of ink that delineated the The eternal angle The Australian poet and novelist Dor- great myth of the life and times of Federi- Between land and sky othy Porter explored the edges of this in co García Lorca, and of his shocking death. Divided by the wind her 2010 essay On Passion, her writing on The world was going on in all its spaces this differently charged by her own death beyond that room, and important things The immense angle just months after she completed it. ‘There were happening. But this moment, this Of the straight road is something very unsettling about a book,’ instant, unknown to anyone but the three Divided by a wish she wrote. ‘Uncanny. A book written by a of us, felt significant and special. dead author – and most are (indeed there D. wondered if his uncle had intended As simple as a breath; a thought; as brief will come a time when I’m a dead author for him to sell the book all along, as a as a benediction. myself ) – is nothing less than a haunted particular kind of asset or bequest. R. ‘Of course, it’s fabulous,’ said R. again. house, which lures the reader into conver- fantasized about the possibility of flying And as we stared a little longer at the sation with a loquacious, enchanting ghost. immediately to Barcelona to talk with page, the line that had brought the sense We forget how mysterious, verging on the the old man about his famous youth, his of Lorca to Sydney through something as supernatural, reading is.’ famous friends and his long life beyond procedural as his signature began to thicken We talked, we gazed, and Lorca sat with their deaths. I imagined the Pepin of years to connect two vastly separate moments. us. And then the book was closed, and before, a young man in his twenties, as he Here I was, momentarily arrested in 2007, Lorca went away. It was as if there was accepted this gift, this freshly made book, wondering at this unexpected epiphany; nothing more that could be said beyond and as he perhaps wondered, for a moment, there was the poet, permanently pinned this unexpected revelation. We might have what sort of poet his friend might go on to in 1923, concentrating as he conjured these had coffee; we might have had tea. Either be, what sort of literary life he might have. lines like a blessing for a friend. way, the air of the afternoon had changed D. sat forward a little in his chair and I thought about Filín, about the immen- by the presence of a simple rectangle of leaned towards R., who still held the pre- sity of having a poem written just for you. cover boards and paper pages. cious pages. ‘There’s a dedication to Pepin’s I thought about the way the scratch and In the end, my friend D. kept his copy brother, my grandfather Filín, in the book stain of the words must have followed each of Lorca’s Poemas, transporting it carefully too, further in –’ He reached over to take other across the page, mapping the direct when he moved back to Europe and keep- the volume, but R.’s fingers were already path between Lorca’s imagination and an ing it well away from all the scissors and flicking through the leaves. available white space. I thought of the crayons he imagined at work in his son’s And there it was: a dedication – Dedi- moment R. had turned to that spot, and hands. There was no auction, no sale; no catoria especial a Filín – and just below, in a the thrill of discovery – not just because hustle or frisson as the world assimilated tighter, more concentrated or urgent ver- this was a new thing left by a famous man, a tiny new set of lines composed by Fed-

48 erico García Lorca into the enormity of its in a novel. It’s set as far away from Spanish thank Señor Lorca for that. library of words. I cherished the potency poets as it’s probably possible to get, on Not long ago, the manuscript copy of its secret. the south coast of New South Wales, just of Lorca’s Poet in New York was sold for I still have a photograph of the book’s down from Sydney, but it has a discov- £120,000 ; it’s currently on display in the open spread pinned to a noticeboard above ered poem at its core. I imagined a whole New York Public Library. Where every- my desk, and I glance at it, hoping that it swathe of things to put into this story – one can see, in Lorca’s own hand, his last might catch, some day, the magic of the the sight of an ocean alight with phospho- message to his editor – ‘back tomorrow’ – instant when we understood what we rescence; the shock of a woman becoming as he left the papers on the man’s chair and were seeing on that page, or that the Span- a widow; the mess of a body assailed by headed home to Granada on 12 July, 1936. ish words might sink into my stubbornly a train. But I knew where I was when I Where he was killed five weeks’ later by monolingual memory. In the end, I did wrote about the thrill and the power of a death squad in the Spanish Civil War. what all shameless appropriators do, by that first gulp of unexpected words, of a Australia in 2013 in the UK. ◊ transforming the moment into a plot point new message from a now-dead poet. And I

Fiction neat bites, interrupted by dabs of a serviette and mouthfuls of the wine, which is never allowed to run dry – there is always some- The View from Pont Champlain one leaning over, bottle held expertly at the base. by Josephine Rowe Later (somewhere over Samoa, she thinks) she learns that Tema’s is a residual his is the first thing that Julia learns televisions and the in-flight paraphernalia, hunger, a ravenousness left over from the Tabout the woman in seat 11e: her the sandwiches seem somehow honest and years she spent trying to live alone, in a impossible hunger. That’s almost correct. good, vicariously comforting. city that consumes the lonely as if they are The very first thing shenotices , watching anthracite. The conversation starts easily Tema sleep beneath the red airline blanket Julia was bumped up to Premium shortly enough – the retrieval of a dropped eye- is: she has an untroubled face. Julia is not so after take-off, owing to some mix-up with a mask, followed by something off-hand, naïve as to assume that the sleeping woman honeymoon couple who were assigned seats innocuous (‘How’s the wine?’) – and soon is without trouble – only that it must have on opposite sides of the cabin. (She is not, Tema, returning from an arts festival in twisted some other part of her anatomy. she knows, an ungenerous person, but who Adelaide, is making the shape of a shoebox Perhaps she has a bad liver or low bone gives up an exit row – prepaid – to spend with her hands and saying, Thirty-five density or angina. But her face is like the thirteen hours crushed up against a window, square metres, on East 7th Street. Above view from Pont Champlain in deep winter, hemmed in by two strangers? It just wasn’t a shop that sold mannequins. These man- like the St Lawrence river bedded over with a fair trade. Hence the Premium solution.) nequins would occasionally feature in her a thick eiderdown of snow. Then Tema At meal service her special trays follow her video installations and sometimes – disqui- opens her eyes and Julia snaps back to the up to the front of the plane, to the large etingly, inevitably – in her dreams. personal screen, where Ransom Stoddard plush seats, the white linen and real cutlery, There was no kitchen in the shoebox is riding into Shinbone. Tema presses the reminding her of her initial and true status. apartment, and Tema spent nearly three call button and orders a Sauvignon Blanc Remember who you are, Ms Julia S. Barlow, says years subsisting on apples and muesli bars, and two ham and cheese sandwiches from a the paper label on the preheated foil package. the occasional hard-boiled egg cooked stewardess whose liver and bones and heart You are a diabetic vegan, and you belong in Econo- resourcefully in the electric kettle. Depend- – Julia hopes – are all in superb working my, with the bland pastas and the plastic knives. able, unmessy things that could be eaten order, because her brow tells of some lonely, Perhaps because she is a diabetic vegan one-handed so that she didn’t have to break unapproachable disaster, lines like a horse from Economy, Julia had not known, from work. She liked food that snapped tangled in a wire fence. The stewardess before now, how one might simply press loud, things she could feel her teeth on: car- brings the sandwiches piled up on a white the call button and order up some well- rot sticks, celery, almonds. china plate, and a glass filled with wine the presented casse-croûte to ladder out the hours ‘Like play-lunch,’ Julia says, and Tema palest possible shade of green. She lays it all between one meal service and the next. smiles at this and repeats the word. out on the foldaway table, and the woman There is an indignity to it, the trundling of ‘Oh, snacks,’ Julia clarifies. in seat 11e folds her blanket down around heavy carts down the sleepy aisles, ‘Pork or ‘Right,’ says Tema. ‘I thought it was good, her middle and begins to eat. Heart attack fare, beef? Pork or beef?’, like animal feeding you know, to always be a little hungry. That Julia thinks. The pink meat layered between time. There is a grotesqueness to this eat- it sharpened the senses or something like thick slices of butter-yellow brioche and ing when not hungry, to the rearranging of that. But no. This is much better,’ and she dripping a rich white sauce. Not the kind meals to coerce the belly into a new time wipes her finger round the lip of the plate to of thing that Julia could even think about zone. But Premium is a foreign country, collect the last smear of béchamel sauce. ‘To eating. Her body just wouldn’t know what and they do things differently here. She hell with the starving artist guff,’ she says. ‘I to do with it. But amidst the sick light of watches Tema with the sandwiches. Quick just want to shake that 26-year-old by the

49 shoulders and feed her a steak.’ what they burned there; hickory and show a warm curve of stomach, a flash She’d grown so thin over the three years oak were the standard. Birch was OK if of creamy lace. Julia thinks, Surely. Now in that city, in the Great Back There, that a the bark had been stripped, and any fruit that we have shared these things, traded these pale, downy hair had grown to cover her tree was welcome. Pecans were good, but splintery little histories. Surely something comes torso, almost like fur. Her body attempt- never pine cones, and Julia’s grandfather of this. We do not simply end by gathering our ing to compensate for the mass it had lost did not believe in burning corncobs. He belongings from the overhead and shuffling down to misguided artistic integrity – a primor- swore the meat would hold the memory to the miserable basement customs to be detained, dial effort to insulate her thin frame from of everything in its flavour, and would processed and finally released – sweaty and irri- the bitter East Coast winters. sometimes throw a handful of cloves or tated – to our respective parts of the continent. ‘It’s called lanugo,’ she tells Julia now, cinnamon bark into the flames to prove Though of course, this is what happens. conspiratorially. ‘Like a board game this point, though Julia couldn’t taste any In Los Angeles, Tema will be far ahead, crossed with a rare species of whale.’ difference. Once without thinking she’d wheeling a large red suitcase through Julia laughs in a generous if baffled way, uncurled a linen bandage from around a the returning citizens queue. Already but what she is thinking is, Christ, the things newly mended scrape and flung it into the being waved up to the window of a uni- people tell each other on planes. The things they’ll fireplace. Her mother caught her out and formed official, offering her finger and say to people they think they’ll never see again. she was made to climb up to the roof and thumb prints for identification while, far In spite of this, she feels a need to respond prop open the smokehouse door so that back, far beyond waving distance, Julia in kind, to make herself knowable. She the tainted smoke could drift harmlessly joins the dense, uneasy queue. Hair full could tell Tema – wants to tell her – how away and the meat would not be ruined. of deer-smoke, heart heavy as a foreign Canada has become something treacherous, Since you’re going up there, you might encyclopaedia. Julia looks at the Customs untrustworthy. Thin ice. Piney minefield as well bring something down, her moth- Declaration card. Question 10, The primary of the heart. She wants to explain her er told her. Whatever looks ready to you. purpose of this trip is . . . What. What. dread of seeing the country code appear in She had hated and feared the choking, the screen of her smartphone, that it can salty air and the smoke-blackened walls. She will go up there, after the funeral, only ever mean – as it does now, this very Her grandfather would sometimes lathe to the outskirts of Arnprior. Climb the flight – that somebody else is sick, is dying, delicate strips from these walls and bury front stairs of the little house that has will likely be dead before the aircraft them in the salt shaker, so that the salt been empty for three months, where touches down in LAX. Her life in North took on their charry flavour. This, she milkweed and fleabane have already start- America is being swept up behind her. misses, and only this. She does not miss ed to poke up through the boards of the Who is left there now to remember the the hanging deer parts, shoulders and porch, and some animal has chewed the things she herself cannot, the stories that saddles and hams. She does not miss how rattan doormat down to straws. Where have been told to her in order to round the rich, gamey smell of the half-cured the pantry shelves have been cleared of out the first obscure years, to complete her animals settled deep in her hair, skin and everything, to discourage pests, though own narrative? Falling though the ice at clothes while she worked at freeing the no one has thought to empty the shak- White Lake, aged four, the very first time meat from the rafters – the ham of a doe ers of their salt and pepper, or the red she Might Have Died. Who now remem- her father had shot more than a fortnight ceramic cruet of its oil. She will make do bers the old yellow dog from John Street, before, which had lain submerged for a with these, with whatever is left, battling the monthly drives across the border, into week in a brown sugar brine before being the overgrown vegetable garden to tri- Quebec? The brittle hymns of Aunt Chris- strung up in dreadful reunion with its umphantly pull up the last of its yield – a tine, alone for good in an apartment in neighbouring limbs. few thumb-shaped kipflers, a beetroot Mile End filled with china deer and books She’d emerged with the meat held at the size of a cat’s head, a handful of soft in French? She wants to tell Tema that her arm’s length, her muscles tensed against new herbs. face is like the view from Pont Champlain, the weight of it. She put her nose to her She will climb to the empty smoke- but knows she will not understand. Knows shoulder and sniffed. There it was: veni- house, scrape a butter knife along the old she will laugh and say, ‘What? You mean son. This was where her relationship with walls and catch the ashy rain on a painted the Montreal skyline?’ And Julia will have meat had ended. On a rooftop at thirteen, saucer. From the cellar (mercifully to say, ‘No no, looking south, towards her hair full of smoke. unplundered), she will bring up wine Sainte-Catherine. The coldest winter I can too good to drink alone and pour a remember. When the St Lawrence was …’ The smokehouse story is cut off by the glassful into cut crystal only ever seen at But still, of course, Tema will not unexpected pitch and heave of turbulence, Christmas, taking deep swallows from understand. by Tema’s wine glass toppling, drenching it while she cooks. She will set a place her blanket through to her thighs. The for herself at the table. The good silver. Instead, Julia tells her about the smoke- air suddenly acrid, like the dregs of a Red linen. A heavy, earthenware bowl house of her East Ontarian childhood. party. Together they mop up the worst of that took its shape from her grandmoth- The one her grandfather built on the roof it with serviettes, and when the seatbelt er’s hands. of the existing house, around the chim- lights blink off Tema gets up to find a tap. When the meal is ready she will eat ney, so that the fireplace would serve two Julia tucks her legs up and Tema climbs with ravenous purpose, as if preparing purposes. They had to be careful about over to the aisle, her shirt riding up to for a long, lean winter. ◊

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