Nemonymous Night (21 page)

The other businessmen whom Greg had hardly examined during the first part of the journey were still nebulous figures or an undercurrent of company rather than specific hard-drawn faces of mutual communication—but they were no doubt due to share the Corporate Lounge’s facilities with him again. Hogging cocktails and anchovy munches and canapés. This time he thought he recognised one of them. At first a waft of Ogdon’s smell. But, without the cape, Crazy Lope looked quite different. He didn’t seem to be out of place. So
in
place, therefore, so basically unnoticeable that, in the end, Greg didn’t notice him at all.

He just day-dreamed of their overground City following them on, digging with its airport arms.

*

Dognahnyi had returned to his pent-flat and stared at a flatter day that welcomed him back from a short unexpected strobe-holiday: stared, too, upon an even flatter threadbare carpet, which he had not bothered to replace for years, despite being otherwise surrounded by hi-tech equipment together with what he boasted to be an original Rubens on the wall opposite to the other wall where glowed the closed drapes-on-silent-runners.

Amy, the new recruit to his level of narration, had also disappeared with the initial abrupt reality strobe-out, but, unlike Dognahnyi, she had not returned here to continue the interview. Perhaps she thought she had already passed the necessary tests, before being strobed out. However, he feared she might have been caught up in last night’s explosion in the Moorish quarter of the city—near the Bridge. However, it was more likely (he hoped) that she had already joined her alter-nemo in the tunnel’s level of narration, i.e. two levels below Dognahnyi’s own.

He laughed. The day was suddenly becoming less flat. He knew there were two main narrative levels below his head-lease narration—i.e. John Ogdon (aka ‘Hilda’) and myself (Mike). Both in intense rivalry to produce the ‘truth’ of the event-conspiracies, dream sicknesses, contaminations etc., although Dognahnyi sensed the narrator he knew as Mike was too sentimental for such machinations since Mike had already admitted he was intent on a happy ending. Little did Dognahnyi
actually
know, however.
He
was not the head-lease narrator at all. There was one level above him which pulled all the strings, including his.

However, Dognahnyi actually
suspected
that he might not be in complete control. He would not have been strobed out (albeit momentarily) if he were in
complete
control. But this suspicion was little more than sub-conscious, a synaptic undercurrent that hardly vibrated his thought cortices. However, the suspicion was subtly symbolised by his own tingle of fantastical belief that the city around him was also underground to other cities—just like Klaxon and Whofage and Agra Aska were, in turn, underground to his own city. The sky in Dognahnyi’s city was indeed filled with stars, yes, but these were perhaps pinprick apertures to a further upper world where people were as yet preparing to travel to explore Dognahnyi’s city in Drills and pot-holing expeditions. He loved fantasising. The real City itself, the one around him with covered market, Dry Dock, derelict zoo etc., was perhaps itself a living creature preparing to lift its airport arms and follow its own corpuscles’ flightpaths to the essential Core of things. But then fantasising was a thing you could take to the Nth degree and still allow the brain to survive to deal with more down-to-earth concerns such as his imminent supper…

…and such as the contaminations. Dream spam. Riots in real life between dreamers from different nightmares. Dream terrorism—where no cause was too slight to warrant dream-suicide in its pursuance. Day-dream junk of confused waking. Contaminations where animal meat and bird meat welded together, even dead bits of each shuffling together in various fridges: yearning to weave threads of sinew together into the weft and woof of new palpitating substances. Dognahnyi even speculated on giant insects. If you cut them up, would their ‘meat’ be meat as he understood the term? There was a theory that insects when blown up out of proportion were the instigators of meat-off-the-insect-bone that resembled an interpenetrative mixture of poultry and beef, interleaved with yellow insect fat.

He returned to making his supper. Fantasy, even the dream-concerns of narrative level, must take a backseat to survival, he thought, as the blue flame bloomed from his cooker-hob beneath the frying-pan.

As he cooked, he speculated on his own definition of ‘hawling’, viz. dragging truths through various levels of competing narrations towards crystallisation.

*

In the past, Sudra skipped across the grass neatly lawndered in recent days: a bright shiny carpet of green that would have done a bowls match proud.

I pointed into the sky, drawing attention—for Susan’s benefit as well as Sudra’s—where I saw a large kite being flown from outside the park by someone at the end of its tether. This looked like a huge chunky toy: a Black & Decker drill the size of a real lorry—but then there was another kite appearing along the slant of another angle: a giant real model of a toy bus... followed by a complex Meccano contraption looking far too heavy to fly. Several other over-sized toys eventually floated above in delicate needlepoint: or a raggle-taggle armada... until I realised with a shock that they were not kites at all but real flying-craft in the guise of model toys... soon to be interspersed with the sounds of clattering vanes deeper and more threatening than a helicopter’s... until that shock became real as I watched one of them accidentally clip another—with the result of both careering or cartwheeling from the sky, slowly crashing into parts of the city with sickening crunches that even my feet heard, bone to bone. Wisps of black smoke soon became billows. As if routed from an in-built rhythm of flight by the sight of the accident, others proceeded to fall from the sky—more likely however they had physically felt the previous ricochet—and I prayed that they would not crash anywhere near our own house... a strange priority as even just one of them crashing into the park itself would have threatened our lives which were far more valuable than property.

*

“The walls were red,” one of the children said, a girl with bushy blonde hair, meaning to say they were read like a book. Or perhaps she did. The Yellow Book, however, blended into the wallpaper and remained unread.

I nodded. I did not wish to approach her, because, these days, touching was not allowed, even by teachers. I pointed to a huge funnelled monstrosity in Dry Dock—not unlike the famous Titanic, only slightly smaller with rather more complex ill-matched contraptions as if some little boy had got carried away with his Meccano kit—which had long since become a fixture on the city’s skyline. Its abrupt overnight disappearance—presumably because all the work on its under-hull had been completed—was indeed the topic of conversation all over the city. This had coincided with the disappearance of many children who—despite the frantic searching by the Authorities—were still missing. Some had put two and two together and related the ship somehow to a vast metal Pied Piper…

I suspected that there was more to this trade in Angel Wine than met the eye. The girl looked as if her veins were full of it. Bulging all over like raised contours on a wall-map of a soft Antartica.

*

Crazy Lope was muttering to himself at the other end of the bar, but nobody listened then and nobody listened now, especially as he wasn’t there... but someone or something was still there with the same speech on tape-loop. Or, rather, was it a flesh-corrupted ghost... or was it a spirit-diluted body? The voice
sounded
like his own, despite the lack of mouth muscles or any possible throat/chest resonation. But the voice was clear, nevertheless.

Voice reflection:
“There was a plane doing a sort of air show near the pier. At first I thought it was an ordinary plane, but as it came nearer to us sight-seers on the prom, it turned more into a sort of model plane, with decorative fins, as if out of a cartoon manga—and I could see the pilot as a sort of Jules Verne character in ruffs and frills—and it skimmed off and grew bigger, amazingly, as it flew into the distance, and I could see a strange word: something like ‘Angerfin’ on its side. It almost clipped the edge of the pier and I was scared to see if it cartwheeled into the sea or, worse, into the prom where we were all standing….”

Tapeworm-loop
: Want another drink, Craze?

*

Susan:

My sister Beth is beautiful but she often seems bitter... or loud. I’m right ugly by comparison—but perhaps calmer. I don’t go into rages, like Beth does with Greg. Still, she’s still getting over Dog. That was a relationship and a half, if ever there was one! Anyway, when we thought the children had disappeared, Beth was a tower of strength. Just shows you. I hope she’s enjoying her weekend break with those
Jules Verne
tour holidays. I hope she and Greg are managing to patch things up. I have dreams myself. I could do with my own break. Mike is a blighter sometimes—he just leaves me alone—and when we sleep at night, I hear him snoring peacefully whilst I return to those dim dream-caverns that I can’t escape—where I dream he’s staring at Amy and Sudra cuddling each other. Dreams don’t make it untrue, I say. Just because I sense his nature by means of dreams, doesn’t mean I can’t function properly when I finally wake up. There are words I don’t understand that keep coming into my dreams. Jules Verne things—like Musketeers. Mistaken, perhaps, who knows? I was never one in waking life to know anything at all about such things. Who wrote what and whether I love music beyond the normal run-of-the-mill, but the dream thinks I love listening to quite strange things—because the caverns echo with opera and that noisy philharmonic stuff. I’m sure I’m at least dreaming
that
. I just love me old television, back home. Back home?
Big Brother, Coronation Street, Neighbours
—that’s what I really enjoy. I can’t be doing with anything like these nightmares that I can’t get out of. Mosquitos, more like—not Musketeers at all. And Minizanthi (I don’t know if that’s spelt correctly but it doesn’t matter as I’m saying these words not writing them down), things that peer round boulders, real ghosts in unreal dreams, with wide faces, having a break from hauling on the bucket-pulleys, their faces all smeared with white as if they’ve been naughtily at the cream cakes from my old Mum’s larder. I love Mike. I wish he could see that. I try to make him love me in the dream. Because I know there is no real hope when I wake up. We both seem to be covered in a stiff coat, just with armholes, and I try to share his armholes with mine, taking his mind off the two girls. Amy’s been a bit strange lately. She’s been insufferable since she made it up with Sudra. I don’t think I can trust Amy any more. Sudra has always been a worry to me, ever since her real Dad was so nasty to her. Flies, more like—not mosquitos. He stuffed her mouth to keep her quiet. I called the police, but he was little more than a cabbage when they came to take him away. I bet not many women have got their husbands put away. Most women put themselves away, I guess. I wish Sudra would not be so... innocent. But we’re all in strange times down here. All bets are off, as they say. Just recently we had a whole long period of light from that shining thing in the dream. Arthur’s ear is now growing again. No wonder he walks lopsided. But now it’s near to darkness as darkness can be without being truly dark. I give Mike a kiss. He kisses me back. And at last we snatch some sleep,
together
for once, rather than him sleeping and me waking, or vice versa. And we’re back in what I can only call real life—just for a short while at least. The sun is shining. The traffic has started up in the city. And I get up to switch on the TV. But before I can do that, I wake up again (or return to sleep?), and I’m here. I kiss Mike as he snores. He smiles in his sleep. Only his smile is there. Arthur’s earwigging us, no doubt, hoping we may give a clue as to why we’re all here and not at home in front of the TV. He never talks to his sister any more. Amy’s real strange, you see, as if it isn’t her any more. But she loved Sudra before, and she still loves Sudra, so I guess there is some thread of truth somewhere between the first Amy and the second one. People never stand still. They are always changing. I need something myself. I need Mike to come to me at the window where I look out at the city and the sun, then for him to put his arms round me… This coat is so difficult to wear. I can’t even get it off, even if I tried. I need something more than all this. I need… I thought that there were some places where it was clear if you was dreaming or not dreaming. I’m not sure I believe that any more. But perhaps I’m mixed up and I’ll soon wake up again and be less mixed up…

A waft of musky Angevin in its raw state interrupts her reverie... and eventually, having thought about it first, Susan snores peacefully for once, with no dreaming. That begs the question, however, where exactly are you when you are asleep and not dreaming? I listen to her snores which keep me awake.

*

Beth:

My Susan’s soft! I always knew she was softer than me. Twin sisters come in pairs of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, generally, and I was always the hard one, Edith. No, Clare, stop shaking your head... Oh, I see it’s the Drill shaking it! But nothing to see out there at all except damn rubble-storms, so you may as well listen to me as stare out there, ladies. And put your snobby books away. They’re full of words I don’t understand, and I’m pretty sure you don’t understand them either. Edith, stop staring at that photo of your kids. They’re grown up now and can look after themselves, I’m sure. Amy included. She wanted to be someone different. Now she has the chance. Not many of us get that chance in life.
Big Eared Arthur once drove a Big Bus
. Isn’t that an old Music Hall song? He can now drive a whole world to its centre given the chance, I reckon. Private Planet, Vehicle Earth, Private Person takes the World on holiday. See, I’ve still got some gumption, even words that
I
don’t understand I still use for some reason, despite being put away by men into this yellow cabin. Greg’s as bad as Dog, I reckon. Greg and that Captain are hand in glove to keep us quiet up here in this top flat berth, while
they
see the Corelight rise above the new cities of Inner Earth through their own windows cleared by the vanes… They little realise, at the end of the day, that the Core is just like another Full Moon above the earth, casting silken curtains of light across the black waves of night’s chilly sea (what poem, did
that
come from?). Men! They think they’re heroes at every glimpse of a new adventure. I suspect the Core is really little more than a cake, baked hard like a lump of solid carpet, a misshapen lump of tufts to gag upon. Eating that cake opens a whole vista of lost time, they say. Let them eat cake. Hope it chokes them! Susan, you ask? Well, she always used to look after wounded birds she found in our garden. In fact, I think Our Father up in Heaven meant for her to stumble on every poor creature under the sun so that she could exercise her nursing skills as a potential earth mother. I remember her once sitting in the parlour, a lump of feather-filled blood on her lap and she cooed at this lump expecting it to coo back at her. And it did. She brought it back to life. But I say—what’s the point of bringing such shipwrecks of nature back to life once they’ve been left high and dry on a crag by an egg vandal who broke its shell and left the innards to wilt stinkily in the salt winds? But Susan always rescued them. Even as a child. I scolded her for being so bloody soft. Therefore, how, dear Edith, have I allowed myself to be relegated to a backseat in this Drill? How, dear Clare, are we all so cowed by a world slipping by within men’s hands? If everything is to have a happy ending, then we need to tell someone that it is we instinctive women (soft and hard alike) who must win—who must reach out to the Core where there are no dreams at all, no confusions of truth and lie, we women who must reach out to the Core where (when we are within it) we’ll know what is true and what is false—finally and clearly and undeniably. We are just biding our time, Ladies. Don’t let submission fool you. Submission is for Susan, not me. And even Susan, I reckon will be waking up to her strengths the nearer she gets to the centre of things.