Humor (6 page)

I was in a dreadful situation. The Department had got me. Usually I had been able to avoid these situations by earnestly prevaricating, feigning excitement at a new ‘project’ that I was certain would lead me to a paradise in which my Giro would be nothing but a faint memory. Never before had they tricked me into actually accepting a position of work.

Looking back, I should have known it. The man smiled at me, allowing no ambiguity about the way the corners of his eyes crinkled. I was ready for the usual questions, but I hesitated when he asked me if he was right in thinking I was an artist. I made an almost silent flopping noise with my tongue as he went on to tell me that he had ‘just the thing’ for me.

I had the horrible sensation that I was taking part in the tortured dream of some sort of prisoner. I felt a morbid chill low in my insides.

The man was almost gleeful as he opened a file and passed a piece of A4 paper into my hand. I listened to him saying something, but his words had no meaning. He may as well have been speaking Latin. I looked at the piece of paper. I was led to a small room. Somehow there was a biro, and somehow I was sitting down signing the piece of A4 paper, and my mind seemed very far away, and I
listened to the crackle and fizz of the static that erupted from the carpet.

And suddenly I was walking down the concrete steps to the street and I was employed. I had a job.

The job was, apparently, in a tattoo shop in a surprisingly smart part of the town. There were people, employed people, everywhere, all looking as if they needed to be somewhere other than where they were at that instant, apart from those who sat in the many restaurants that lined the streets. They looked as if they had been born to dine in precisely those restaurants. A wave of nausea coursed through me.

I sat on a bench between two saplings, and stared at the dust between my feet. I sank my face into my hands and began to moan quietly.

What was I going to do? I had to take the job. If I didn’t take the job, or if I got the sack, or if I left, I was fucked. The Department wouldn’t give me any more money. I either had to be made redundant, in which case the Department would reluctantly pay me my fortnightly allowance, or I had to become some sort of criminal, a life for which I lacked many fundamental skills.

I had to take the job. I had no choice.

After some time had passed, I got up and walked to the shop and introduced myself, mentioned the Department, and handed over the piece of A4 paper. I made my mouth move into some approximate smiles, and expressed a dull sort of keenness. My keenness was, however, overshadowed by the enthusiasm of the two managers of the
shop. They explained excitedly that the franchise was an entirely new concept in tattoo parlours, in that the tattoos already existed and were grafted onto the recipient. The tattoos were carefully sliced from the bodies of corpses, young corpses being preferable as the artwork would not have blurred and turned blue.

The corpses were stored in a refrigerated chamber at the back of the shop, where they lay stiffly, awaiting a wealthy customer who would take their illustrated skin for their own.

I thought back to the morning, when I had awoken at 10.30 and ambled across the town to sign on at the Department.

That life now seemed distant.

My tasks at the shop were not onerous, but I desperately missed my indolence. I was required to be at work early in the morning, when the streets were filled with strange smells and sounds I was unaccustomed to. At the shop I sat behind a desk and, when a customer entered, would talk vaguely with them, correlating their personal details with entries in a database. I saw the managers in the morning and at closing time, and at lunchtime they would leave the premises to dine in one of the restaurants.

I was not so lucky. The interruption of my routine had unbalanced my eating habits severely. A gnawing, acidic hunger plagued my belly, but the idea of eating my hastily prepared packed lunches was completely repellent. Consequently I began to focus unhealthily on what I imagined took place in the back rooms when the managers were
working on the customers. During slack periods I would stare with unfocused eyes at the computer monitor, images of scalpels and the dark blood on green latex gloves washing against the shores of my mind.

I also thought often of Giros I had cashed in the past, each one like a beautiful girlfriend who had been everything I wanted, but whom I had never really appreciated. I hadn’t much cared for the Department, but from my chair behind my desk, behind the plate glass that glazed the shop, my memories grew fonder.

The idea of the tattoo grafts disgusted me. There was no art needed here. Despite what had been said to me, this was definitely not ‘just the thing for me’. I wanted desperately to be made redundant.

After several weeks the managers asked me if I would like a promotion. The franchise was going well, and one of the managers was going to open a shop in the next town. They were going to hire a new receptionist, and offered me a position on the team.

Darkly, in a gloomy corner of my being, I clutched at my Giro, but it was further out of my reach than ever. Somehow, a piece of A4 paper and a biro had altered my life profoundly. I had no idea how to undo the alteration.

It was growing dark outside, and I was led into a room that was artificially lit.

There was much to learn, and at first it didn’t seem possible that I would ever be on the team. But the manager who had remained at the shop persevered, and eventually his sometimes-manic enthusiasm paid off.

An effect of the arrangement that I had not considered was my increased wage. Startled, I moved to a nicer flat, and began to take an interest in shop-window displays. At lunchtime I went to restaurants with the manager who had remained at the shop and I developed an interest in dining that was wholly new to me. It was only occasionally now that I felt hunger, and those times were like a dimly felt nostalgia.

I bought a bicycle, and at weekends I cycled out of the town to hills in the countryside where I would grunt and sweat my way to a summit, and there survey the land spread before me. Birds sang strange tunes in the trees, and the clouds formed distant plateaux.

The corpses never stayed on the premises for longer than was necessary. I surprised myself daily with the corpses. I learned how to push down gently with a scalpel until the skin gently popped and I was able to slice through the skin, bisecting freckles, drawing a straight line that curved acutely as I changed direction. Once the tattoo was encircled I lifted one edge and attached the clamps. The patch of illustrated epidermis came away relatively easily, needing few nicks and cuts at subcutaneous matter with the scalpel.

I developed a taste for Italian food, and gradually became known as a high-tipping regular at one of the restaurants. My favourite table, by the window, was always made available for me.

The summer drew on, and a thick, sultry heat settled on the town. I no longer used my bicycle since I found that I
was arriving at work with dark circles of sweat under the arms of my shirts, which quickly grew uncomfortable in the air-conditioned office.

I bought a car after learning to drive one. I found learning difficult, as there were three distinct pedals, a steering wheel, a gearstick, several mirrors, windscreen wipers, indicators, different sorts of lights, and a complex dashboard featuring more dials than I could hope to decipher. And, of course, there was a windscreen, the view from which required constant monitoring.

However, I eventually overcame these difficulties, and was able to drive to work in the same state of forgetful bewilderment I was sure I shared with my fellow commuters.

I still sometimes thought about my Giro, but the numbers printed in the little rectangle on the right were indistinct and smudged, and I could not quite make out the amount.

After all, I had been able to forget most of my girlfriends.

When I had been at the shop for about a year I was in the novel position of manager. I had both a professional and, to a lesser extent, a personal authority over two key workers who I referred to as my team, and two receptionists, one of whom also worked as my secretary.

In the morning I would look through the photographs of tattoos that had been emailed to me, choosing those which I considered would be quickly resold, or that were particularly artistic and would fetch higher premiums. Most of the surgery (or ‘hackwork’, as we in the team referred
privately to it) was now undertaken by my colleagues, but I still preferred to handle particularly large or prestigious pieces.

After choosing that day’s purchases and authorising money transfers, I tended to spend an hour or so with my money, moving it from one place to another, in a manner that resembled a ghost playing Patience. I had never seen my money, but I was reassured by the sequences of digits on my computer screen and drew pleasure from watching them increase.

At lunchtime I would walk to my usual restaurant. I had tried almost everything that had ever been on the menu, but my favourite remained spaghetti Bolognese, and my white napkin caught splatters of salsa di pomodoro as I ate.

The afternoons were largely occupied with administrative matters. I was now comfortable with A4 paper, but as biros still nagged at a haunted attic of my mind I preferred to use my computer and printing machine, signing letters with a fountain pen.

Quite often I would spend the evening with the receptionist who also worked as my secretary. We had sex in my new flat, where she would attach me to my bed with ties and belts before taking my erect penis into various parts of herself.

For a few frightened moments after my orgasm had subsided I worried that she would refuse to untie me, and I would be found by archaeologists of the future on the rusting iron springs of my bed, my flesh mummified on my emaciated frame.

I now regularly bought newspapers, and felt comforted by the vast prairies of knowledge that I had assimilated. Often I would dispute political matters in restaurants and at the dinner parties I attended. Frequently I found myself with words falling from my mouth that I barely recognised, but as they met with approval or enthusiasm I did not worry much.

At night, when I was not fucking my secretary, I would spend many hours in the passenger seat of my car, looking out of the window at the interior of my garage, which shimmered in my eyes, my bicycle shadowed on the bricks, interrogated by the fluorescent striplight.

More time passed, and I was being paid considerably more money whilst actually having less to do. I now often visited other people’s offices, and they often visited mine. I became adept at handling biros, A4 paper, and the use of argument and persuasion. I was pleased that many meetings proved successful if held in restaurants, particularly if we all got drunk.

I decided to extend the franchise overseas, and asked my people to arrange it. This happened easily, without my having to alter my habits very much. I found air travel less harrowing than I had first imagined, as I had a propensity for queuing.

Deluges of A4 paper were used in a deft manoeuvring of intangible properties, and the numbers I surveyed on my computer screen grew laterally. I was now rich, and wondered what my face would look like in photographs.

And then my life fell into small pieces. The letter from the Department was delivered, after being redirected four times, to my new offices. I was choosing the paint, but the subtleties of green were forgotten when I recognised the logo on the envelope. I requested that the interior designer should go away by making a gesture I had copied from television. With shaking fingers I opened the envelope and pulled from it a piece of A4 paper, folded twice.

It generically congratulated me on my new job, and had a computer-printed signature. There was also a questionnaire to fill in.
Was I happy in my new employment
?

I dropped the piece of paper, and stood in my new office, a wealthy and successful man. Something immensely sad passed through my mind, my Giro fluttering for ever out of my reach.

I walked a little way and sat down on a bench between two saplings, and stared at the dust between my feet. I sank my face into my hands and began to moan quietly.

I was somewhere south of somewhere, north of somewhere else, east of everywhere and west of nowhere at all. I had been wandering along endlessly straight roads and tracks that dissected peroxide-bright prairies of barley, which the wind lashed into yellow oceans on which long, low, black ships sailed with their unseen slave cargo of caged poultry.

I’d made some kind of mistake, I now knew. I had begun with the idea that my world – encircled and delineated by diaries, deadlines, telephones, newspapers, emails, bank statements, bills, invoices, tax demands, mortgage payments – might be a creation merely of my own. Perhaps simply by removing myself from this apparently scripted existence I could discover a species of reality that had been previously invisible to my blinkered senses.

In some ways I wished myself in an era when the known had faded at the edges, where civilisation petered out into blank spaces occupied with the superstition of the unknown: here be dragons. But England had long been charted in exhaustive detail by Ordnance Survey maps; maps that showed every building, each gradient, each brook and pond, every pylon. Useful, doubtlessly, but also somehow imprisoning.

And what happened was this: browsing the Ordnance Survey map section in a bookshop one morning, I had
first been annoyed and then intrigued by the absence of a certain sheet number. I crossed town to another bookshop. It wasn’t there either. To be certain, I checked at the library, where it was also missing. I began to feel excited. More than anything, I wanted to be off the map. I imagined the roads becoming track-like, sketched roughly over the terrain like tangled spider silk. I saw trees larger, hedges wilder, the shapes of distant mountains torn against a perfect sky. Above all I saw no people, no animals, and no birds.

I studied the map of the area just to the south of the empty zone where I determined to stake my nebulous claim. And I resolved to travel there.

By train, bus and walking I took myself to the top of this sheet. There was no road north, just a brambled gap in the hedge. I pushed through the clinging stems and looked north with a broad smile. I had told no one where I was going.

I walked for a long time.

Later, much later, I began to worry if I was anywhere at all. I had no idea when I would reach somewhere with a railway station. Or a bus station. Or a bus stop. Or a minicab office. It became so quiet I hoped for a jet to split the mocking sky. That evening I travelled into what seemed a kinder landscape; the lanes began to meander and sink between hedges as the sun sank lower and the air cooled.

My rucksack was heavy and painful on my sunburnt shoulders, and it was clear that I would soon have to find somewhere to put up my tent. At the brow of a gentle decline I saw ahead of me a dark wood massing about a mile
distant. It was there, I decided, I would spend the night. The wood began at a fork in the lane where a small cottage lay beneath the purpling shade of the twilit trees. At the gate stood what I thought was a man, bent with age, holding a scythe upright, the blade swinging idly above his head.

I walked on, into the chilly shadows of the trees that grew along one side of the lane. I walked until I was out of view before I lurched off the road into the wood. I squeezed through the shrubbish undergrowth, picked my way through a head-high tangle of brambles, and found myself alone in the wood. It was the most silent wood I have ever been in. It gave the impression of being dead, despite the verdant appearance it had given from outside. The dense leaves of the wood had been forced skywards by the burgeoning deadness of its interior. The expired leaves and twigs beneath my feet cracked like chicken bones. There were no birds. There was nothing here.

Yes, I’d made some kind of mistake. I was here by mistake. I knew this with a certainty that was shattering. But night was irreversible, my situation was irreversible. I could do nothing except unpack my tent, erect it, and crawl inside. I couldn’t do anything except that. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think of anything except the distant, faded sound of a stone sharpening a blade. I thought I heard or I heard chicken bones snapping and a rusty gate that creaked painfully on its decrepit hinges. I lay in my sleeping bag with my clothes on, with my shoes on, staring straight ahead, defencelessly conscious of the sound of my breath, horribly awake, off the map and out of sight and away from the map.

Silently I begged for the dawn. Trees, skeletal in their naked brittleness, swept down, brushing the fragile canvas of my tent. There was some grotesque sort of distant footfall, or anyway a noise I couldn’t account for. And occasionally but always, the slow, sly, shrill cry of the gate, opening and closing impossibly in the cloaking darkness of the dead of the night. Maybe a sound formed itself into the shape of my name, twisted itself and warped its voice into a terrifying parody of my name and of my ideas and of my plans and of my future. Maybe a sound slithered into my tent shaped like footsteps or knife-sharpening or chasing or a hollow realisation of the impossibility of escape. Maybe that’s where I still am, cocooned in a flimsy, fabricated defence against what it is that I desire most; a damned region that lies off the map, unpeopled, empty of birds, bereft of animals, where the sky is torn from the land, and where I am caught for ever, desiccating, last week’s insect caught in forgotten, dusty spider silk, suspended across a corner of somewhere that will never be visited again.