1982 Janine (18 page)

But I am sorry Dad did not live long enough to read about Schweik because his book is the funniest and wisest ever written. Schweik is an old soldier who pretends to obey his commanders but twists everything to suit himself and can talk his way out of any situation. His stories are as pithy as the parables of Jesus and nobody has spoiled them by explaining what they mean. In one of them Schweik crosses a public square in Prague or maybe Budapest, it is very dark, he passes a monument in the middle. A drunk man is feeling his way round and round this muttering, “I managed to get inside so there
must
be a way out.” He has been doing it all night.

I am not a true Conservative. A true Conservative has faith in some established institution which he thinks will save him: the Stock Exchange, the employers' federation, the army, the monarchy. In essence I don't give a tuppenny damn for that lot either. I suppose I am a nihilist now. Realising this, a great weight falls from my mind. Where have I left my four women and what is happening to them? Since everyone except the poor and helpless gain by increasing danger, poverty, and helplessness – and since the poor and helpless would do as we do if they had the chance – it can be no very bad thing to extract a little fun from imaginary victims.

So here comes a cool catalogue of caged beauties for me to divide, rule, tattoo, massage and variously goad into ecstasies of shameless wantonness if I manage to keep the head.

In her early twenties. Abundant dark dishevelled hair, dark accusing eyes, sulky red mouth like Jane Russell in
The
Outlaw
. Slightly smaller than most women were she not wearing high-heeled white platform-sole shoes. Slender ankles, knees, waist but plump hips in white suede miniskirt, full thighs and calves in black net stockings, plump shoulders and I will not neglect her breasts in a white silk blouse. Stroud ushers her along a softly lit brown-carpeted corridor. Opening a door he stands aside to let her through and at once she is dazzled by low lights shining straight into her face. A voice cries, “Come on in Miss Crystal, show us how you can walk!”

She feels Stroud's hand between her shoulderblades press her firmly forward. She hears the door close behind her
with a double click. She senses a great dark space on each side, and two or three figures in a pool of light in front of her, and a continuous purring noise, can it be a film projector? And she shows them how she can walk. Her heart is thudding but she would feel a completely passive victim if she stood still so with a pang of excitement the actress in her takes control. Though every muscle is tense with terror she gives a splendid performance of a woman strolling casually forward. The performance is helped by realising that the surrounding space has people in it, a seated audience which she cannot see clearly for the dazzle. She concentrates on the sound of two unfastened studs in her skirt clicking with each step she takes. “That's a sexy noise,” a childish voice says, and giggles.

‘Act calm,' thinks Janine. ‘Pretend this is just an ordinary audition.' Splendid.

A ripe housewife in her early forties. A thickish body slightly flabby in some places (stomach, forearms, thighs) but practical and sensual with dark shoulderlength hair which is straight, not curly like Janine's. The breasts I will not neglect are nude under the bib of yes, her whole body is naked under the white sweatsoiled denim of yes,
dung
arees which tightly cuddle her fulfilled cunt but are otherwise very loose and baggy and rolled up to the knees as she sprawls dozing on the fleecy flattened carseat. Charlie leans down to kiss her. He says, “We've arrived, honey.”

“I don't want to move.”

“Lie on your front.”

“Why?”

“I've a surprise for you – a present.”

She turns over. She feels him grip her right arm. Something cold clicks round it above the elbow, her left arm is wrenched painfully back and with another click she finds her elbows locked together behind her. She cries, “Hey that
hurts
Charlie!” and starts struggling on to her knees but his arm forces her down, he lies with his face close to hers and whispers, “Honey, you've got to listen or you won't understand a thing.
Will
you listen?” – and his hard hands squeeze
her soft forearms cruelly tight – “
Will
you listen to me?”

She stares at him, mouth and eyes wide open. He says softly, “Remember the night we met and I told you I could make you an actress? Remember I said on the phone this afternoon that I'd have you giving performances sooner than you expected? Well I meant every word. And your first performance will be tonight.”

He kisses her violently then says, “I'm going to tell you something that won't make much sense till you're a few weeks older. I love you, you bitch, and I'm giving you to people who will teach you tricks you never dreamed existed. But I'll keep returning to you again and again and in the end you won't want to live without me and we'll have had more fun together than you thought possible in your whole goddamned selfish little life. Understand?”

And grabbing her head in both hands he kisses her again, then sits up and touches a switch. The hood of the car rolls down. He sounds the horn loudly, twice, then gets out of the car, comes round to her side and opens the door. In one hand he holds a thick leather collar. Too stupefied to understand anything she lies staring at him as he reaches in and buckles it round her throat, then takes a chain leash from his pocket and slips it to a ring on the collar, then stands back from the car and tugs the chain hard. He says, “Walk, bitch.”

(Control yourself) trembling and aghast she obeys the pressure of the collar and struggles to her knees, extends a leg and again feels the chilling grittiness of concrete under her bare foot. The buckle of the collar is huge and sharp-edged so she must stand with her chin held very high. She is facing a closed door. He comes behind her, a hand unfastens the buttons over her right hip then slips inside the dungarees and caresses her belly while the other hand slips under the bib to caress her breasts. He presses her back against him, she feels between her buttocks his penis blunted by two layers of cloth, feels his lips kissing her between the shoulderblades. In her state of strangeness and dread these pressures are comforting. The door suddenly opens and that is enough for now. Except that this happens in a windowless garage with twelve cars parked in it and room for several more.

I don't know her age. She has a small girlish head with closecropped ash blonde hair and you have to look very close to see the fine little wrinkles of age. The head rises from the body of one of those hippo-like whores who keep surfacing in Fellini films. In my teens and twenties I found them repulsive. But what is she wearing and where is she? Since I abolished the police station sequence I have left her nowhere. I will compensate by putting her in two places at once.

(A) In the pool of light toward which Janine walks Big Momma is standing astride astride astride with her hands on her hips and a smile like the smile of a greedy little girl looking at a plate of cream cakes. But she is looking at Janine. She wears one of those conspicuously openable dresses I am far too fond of: tight creamcoloured linen with great big buttons many of them unfastened. Her flirtatiously scanty black panties and bra are obvious through it. No stockings, sensible sandals.

(B) The door before Superb suddenly opens and Big Momma walks toward her grinning like a greedy little girl looking at a plate of etcetera. She is dressed as in (A) and walks straight up to Superb who is clasped by Charlie against his body. Momma says in a coarse throaty whisper, “Gimme a taste,” and standing on tiptoe she kisses Superb quite gently. Then she says, “The leash please, Charlie. It's my turn to take her a walk. I've a pack of hot dogs back there who can't wait for her.”

Ooooh nasty.

In her mid-thirties. Of all my women she is the most athletically lovely with no sagging lines at all. She has the tall spare slender figure which unobservant idiots call “boyish”. She is not at all boyish, though her breasts are small and far apart. The nipples cover half of them and as I consider her I am disturbed by a strange feeling which has nothing to do with the story she is in, a feeling of … friendliness. Why? Friendliness is irrelevant here. I feel like a gangster play on the radio which is being interrupted by an opera on another wavelength. Dad liked opera though he pretended
not to. Sometimes mum or myself came into the kitchen unexpectedly and found him playing the Third Programme very quietly with his ear close to the set. He always switched at once to the Light Programme or Scottish Home Service and turned up the volume. I believe he sang in some sort of choir before I was born. He would have detested the nasty sexual world I have devised. I am sure he felt in his bones that sexuality was wicked. Which is why I feel in my bones that wickedness is sexy. Get back to Helga in the viewing theatre.

In her mid-thirties. She wears
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
She is wearing
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Why can't I make her
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
something inside my head is resisting the story of Helga. God, probably. I should never have asked him here. Helga is crucial, she brings all the other girls together. Forget what she looks like, what she wears. Imagine what she sees, hears, says. It may be possible to slip her past him that way. Here we go again.

watches the film of Janine's audition right to the end, then presses her cigarette carefully into the ashtray. She says,

“The editing was crap but the material is real hot stuff. She wasn't exactly acting, was she?”

“The word
act
is employed in two ways,” says Dr von Stroud whose first name had better be Wilhelm or something even more Germanic, “The proverb,
It is actions, not
sentiments which count
suggests that value is mainly in deeds. The phrase,
She did not mean it – she was just acting
suggests that deeds are worthless unless caused by a sincere, immediate feeling or desire. The actions of Janine in your own beautiful film indicated lust and terror but were caused by a desire for money and to flaunt herself.” (This Doctor is a bore.) “In our film her declared feelings and acts were directly caused by what her fellow actors did to her. Yet our film did not succeed! We who helped create the performance
were greatly entertained by it at the time, but the art by which we recorded it was inadequate. Editing, camera-work, lighting, the setting could have been improved. Which is why we are paying you to direct our future productions.”

“Who has directed them so far?” asks Helga.

“Mummy,” says Hollis and giggles, but Helga looks at Dr Wilhelm no but Adolf is too trite, Siegfried too operatic, Ludwig, no I like the Pastoral Symphony just call him the Doctor, Helga looks at the Doctor who says, “You will meet her shortly. But first let me show you some other people you will be working with.”

The Doctor climbs up to a slide-projector behind the back row of seats which are as deep as oriental divans. Max and the waitress sprawl here embracing but apparently asleep, though his right hand, inside her dress and between her thighs, sometimes moves a little. The cinema darkens. With a click the screen suddenly shows
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
damn
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
damn, damn
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
damn
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
no satisfaction. (You'll have to skip this bit.)