The Book of Dave (25 page)
Authors: Will Self
â I have seen New London! Then he advanced among his terrified listeners, thrusting the heavy volume into the faces of each
of the dads in turn, while he continued his rant: I have seen it, and I know it will only be restored by restitution of the
pure and original Dävinanity. Let the three cabs be hailed once again here on Ham! Let the twelve dads promulgate the doctrines
of Breakup and Changeover! Let no mummy be admitted to your Council lest you be polluted by them!
â For there must be no confusion concerning this matter, he said, striding back to where Mister Greaves stood with the cowed
Chilmen and admonishing them with a stabbing finger, there has been a grievous crime perpetrated here against Dave, a crime
that can be atoned for only by the most perfect calling over! The Driver fell to the ground and, lifting up handfuls of soil,
let the dirt fall upon his head crying:
â Thanks, Dave, for picking us up!
â 4 pikkin uz up, the dads who remembered the correct response dutifully intoned.
â And for not dropping us off.
â Anfer nó droppinus dahn.
They prepared fresh straw for the pallet and made ready the medicinal herbs. Sphagnum moss was gathered and dried, for the
fibres of this useful plant were both absorbent of moisture while keeping wounds free from infection. The mummies used it
for their infants' nappies and to absorb their own menses. Many of them believed that the happy situation of the Sphagnum
bog at the source of the spring that trickled through the village was a sure sign of Dave's providence. So the Sphagnum bed
was prepared and garlanded with special Daveworks. To ask for His intercession in a successful birth the Hamsterwomen chose
a distinctive, long thin shard of plastic with a narrow slot at one end that gave it the appearance of a flimsy bodkin. These
they strung on to long lengths of thread, and hung from the eaves of the gaff where Caff was to be confined so that they twirled
in the breeze.
This birth would be special, the first since the Geezer had been deposed. As Caff Ridmun felt new life stirring in her, a
fluttering at the sides of her taut womb, the Driver felt a new threat. He had examined both Caff and the Guvnor, and it was
beyond doubt that this was the flyer's child. If Caff had a son, he might be another Antidave, ready to spread more poison
in the world. The Driver was confronted by a paradox: the service, the ceremony whereby newborn Hamsters were anointed with
moto oil, was profoundly antithetical to this rigid Dävist, yet, if he understood the matter rightly, the odds were that Caff's
baby would not survive it. The future of Dävinanity on Ham thus depended on toyist superstition.
Caff felt no fear, surrounded by the mummies. She accepted that what would be would be, Dave gave and Dave took away. She
gloried in her enlarged body, her marbled tank and engorged breasts. The mummies called the last trimester the moto time,
and reverenced the resemblance a Hamsterwoman about to give birth had to their beloved kine. With her withered left leg, Caff
could no longer walk more than a few paces. So throughout the blowy autumn days she had sat in the lea of the Dévúsh gaff,
her aching back braced against its mossy bricks, and stared out over the sparkling lagoon. With the baby kicking within her,
she had never felt before with such intensity her own connection to the land. The foetal shape of Ham encompassed her â while
she in turn encompassed this inchoate life.
It was the middle of the third tariff when the birth pains eventually came. There had only been a dipped headlight â and it
was long since switched off. Low cloud blanketed the island and from behind it a reddish tinge suffused the screen. Making
her way down the stream bed from the Bulluk gaff, Effi Dévúsh came across the Driver, a black-clad and minatory figure. He
was muttering in an undertone, but Effi, who had work to do, did not hail him â she knew what he was doing, calling over,
countering the wavering paths of Ham with the certainty of his Knowledge.
The Driver remained there until the foglamp was switched on. In all he called over a hundred runs. Such rigour spoke of the
deep conflict within him â for did not Dave honour all new life? When at last he heard the bellows of the expectant mummy
give way to the reedy cries of the infant, he turned on his heel and lurched along the foreshore to the tumbledown semi of
the old Driver. There he fell into a fitful slumber, and dreamed that he flew with Dave over the silvery immensity of New
London.
In the days following the birth of her son Caff's fatalism foundered on the rocks of love. A savage love for the manikin she
cradled, whose twinkling blue eyes and fierce ruff of fine brown hair recalled to all Symun Dévúsh. The other mummies understood
this emotion, even if they would not acknowledge it. No infant born on Ham was even named until it had survived its service.
It was as if these first eleven days of life were only a final stage of incubation, and the thick coating of moto oil it would
then be slathered with was the final membrane through which it must pass into independent life. For inasmuch as a Hamster
was born of woman, so he was also born of the island itself.
On the eleventh day, when Effi Dévúsh came with the moto oil and loomed in the doorway of the Dévúsh gaff, Caff, unable to
contain herself, began first to whimper and then cry out. Caught between zoolatry and love, she let go of the infant and,
dragging her withered leg behind her, crawled into the far corner, where she lay sobbing on the yok flags. Effi, who was attended
by two other boilers, ignored her. They went about the ritual with steely efficiency. Her assistants removed the swaddling
and held the thrashing limbs, while Effi spread the viscous grease, paying particular attention to the raw wound of the
navel. The infant, which at first howled in protest, responded to the mysterious embrocation of the moto oil, struggling less
and less, until when it was finally released it lay silent and still in the foglight that streamed through the door, another
of Ham's miraculous and shiny fruits.
Outside the Hamsters stood in silence, the dads' shaggy heads bowed, the mummies worrying at their cloakyfings. Now began
a time of waiting. If the new infant survived the next blob, it would receive a name. More likely, on the third or fourth
day after the service, it would refuse the suck of its mummy's pap, and on the fifth or sixth its tiny pink gums would lock
shut. Then the fits would begin â convulsions, which would rack the tiny body with increasing severity â until on the seventh
or eighth day it expired. By then, such would be the mite's torment that death would seem a deliverance, even to its own mummy.
The Driver stood unregarded among the islanders. Once more he was calling over the runs and the points, for whatever the outcome
â torment or release â his faith required above all that he bear witness to the once and future London.
To call them cells would have been wrong â they were stalls rather, crudely partitioned with heavy wood beams. Wealthier prisoners,
or those who had special influence, were able to secure one of the tiny chambers on the upper gallery, but for those such
as him there was only the nightly squabble to get into one of the stalls, then burrow into the stinking straw to find some
warmth. Squabbling went on all the time and there were also full-scale fights. The other prisoners had blades and coshes,
they spat, kicked and gouged. Symun had never experienced any real violence: the cuffs of the Ham daddies were as mere caresses
compared to the savage blows traded here as a matter of course. The first time Symun was attacked, he was so shocked that
he relapsed into a vacant stupor, staring at the livid pink impress the kick had left on his leg. Without the coaxing of the
prisoner who became his mate, he would have expired then and there, because to survive in this place a dad had to fight.
The Tower was a world in its own right, with its own economy and politics, law and religion. For Symun, this was the only
realm he'd ever seen outside of his island home. He was chained in the ferry's hold for the voyage from Wyc. On the rare occasions
the gaffer allowed him to exercise on deck he saw distant estates and manors along the coast. When they docked at London,
he was taken off and driven through the streets in a sweatbox. If he peered between the irony shutters, he caught glimpses
of vast buildings, yet he was unable to comprehend what it was that he was seeing â nothing tallied with the descriptions he
had heard, and the tumult was such â of cars, people and beasts â that he recoiled in fear and confusion.
In the Tower, under the tutelage of Terri, a convicted cockney thief, Symun Dévúsh slowly came back to life. The trauma of
his birth into this frightening world, where he shared a huge yard with ten times as many men as he'd ever seen before, was
followed by a period of infancy. Symun asked questions; Terri supplied the answers. The yard was but one of three in the gaol.
There was a smaller one for mummies and a third for alien chaps, who had been taken prisoner in the continuous skirmishing
between the King's army and the wild tribes of Jocks and Taffies to the north and the west of the archipelago.
In the dads' yard all the prisoners â regardless of their offence, their sentence, or even if they had been tried or merely
remanded â were thrown together: flyers, traitors and murderers alongside petty thieves, debtors and vagabonds. Terri thought
there might be as many as a thousand fares confined in the Tower, and each day their numbers were swelled by Londoners, who
came from without the walls to ply their trades and even barter for the use of skilled prisoners in their own workshops. Thus
there was much commerce in the Tower, which was furnished with its own shops, a bakery, even the services of a notary. For
a price a dad might wed in the gaol and lie with his wife. He could engage in his own trade and reap the reward. If imprisoned
for debt, he could even fall into debt again, and so be confined in the Tower's own debtors' gaol, a prison within a prison.
He could drink and whore, cock fight and game. During the tariffs of foglight the yard was a frenetic arena, and on its beaten
earth dads in all manner of strange costumes â suits, striped and checked, jeans tight and flared, tattered cloakyfings and
formal robes â strutted and preened like caged birds.
Once he began properly to observe his fellow prisoners Symun was amazed to discover how little religion there was among them.
His automatic requests for directions from Dave were met with derision and laughter. One dad, in full view of the warders,
squatted down and broke wind, proclaiming: Eye fart on yor polstrë, O Dryva! They took no action against him, but then this
dad was not held on a charge of flying. The warders, Symun soon learned, interfered little in the lives of the prisoners,
except to take bribes for services given and dole out privileges for those rendered. The prisoners themselves ran the gaol
while their gaolers merely looked on â only in the matter of flying were they truly vigilant. The flyers â who numbered a
few score â were distinguished by the large, two-spoked wooden wheel they were obliged, on pain of beating, to carry about
their necks. Symun Dévúsh had never seen a real wheel before coming to London â to him it was a sacred symbol. Now one hung
around his neck, galling him no matter how carefully he moved.