The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (37 page)

Tim Dekko turns his tight-wrapped face towards Brenda at the control-panel and yells his head off in the dumb-show of the silent film framed by the door’s round window which becomes oval, replaced by a narrow shaft of sound and the long rectangle of their conversation in twinkling orange lights, Alarm Reset, Next Instruction and the clatter of binary arithmetic, oh hello Laurence, how did you get in?

–Brenda, I must talk to you.

–Not now, Larry, not now.

She pulls down switches quickly, competently and jots down her comments on a pad in a column called Narrative, figures in the column called Location, a tick under Next Instruction.

–Brenda –

–Won’t it wait, Larry?

–I’ve remembered something.

–What?

–Something … of the narrative, the location.

–Oh, go away, Larry. Can’t you see we must finish this programme.

–What programme?

–Track, eight four two one. Syne shot. Block Prime Pulse Mesh.

–When did I marry you, Brenda?

–Oh go away, Larry, for heaven’s sake, go.

No doubt Stance would have watched the operation and shrugged, his grey eyes veiled with knowledgeable labels at my poor performance. He would have done much better in the circumstances, but then, circumstances do not touch everyone with their enmeshed meridians. He has one stance to adopt and with it he lassoes my wife, Tim’s wife, and they come like mares. They like one-stance men, they read them from afar, then having deciphered their one stance get angry and embittered at their own lack of love. Remote Bermuda dies with me vicariously as she moves out of the one stance that melts away from my enmeshed meridians. But if I had really died I would have had, surely, a flash of something that would not translate itself into indifference. I have lost the equations that enable people to move through people easily without love. I hear, see, read all the
inscriptions
that emanate in waves from the radiating coronas of all their little solar systems, unless they only pretend to emit, like actors. And underneath the hearing, seeing, I have corked ears, blind eyes, unfeeling hands, I speak through a cleft palate, break my promises, I have let something go.

–But you don’t suffer the children to come, if I may say so, sir.

–Forgive me, Tin Roof. I couldn’t bear the noise.

–Or the smell either, sir, or the glugging of
communication
, or the ticking of your time.

–What shall I do, Tin Roof?

–Recognise me, father. A little recognition can do a lot for an unprodigal son.

–You mean, you remained at home all the time, while I expected the other?

–You expect him all the time, father.

–Really.

–Yes. He will come of course, he has never stopped coming.

–At forty-eight.

–Congratulations.

–How shall I recognise him?

–We all look alike, under the differentials.

–Yes well, the infinite divergencies confuse me.

–You confused us too, breaking the laws, altering our orbits. But look at it this way. If a film-director wanted to make a film featuring quintuplets, he’d never find five child actors, or actors of any age, looking exactly alike, unless he chose quintuplets, and the law of probability against their all having both acting talent and the required physique would work out at a thousand million million to one. So what would he do? He’d use illusion, and camera-tricks, and silhouettes and stand-ins.

–Why did we crash, Tin Roof?

–We had to. The rails got twisted.

–How did she, I mean where, will she … Tell me, son, have I divorced her or something?

–I got her out. Thank you for calling me son.

–Thank you for getting her out. Did it take long?

–That depends on your second life. You can begin it any time, she told you that once.

–You mean, you listened all the time?

–We didn’t move in time, father.

–But you said I expected Really, all the time.

–During your life, father, your first life. And now also.

–And in that district you remained with me?

–We all remain. You can’t get rid of us merely by giving us names and sending us into oblivion. Oblivion has its orbits, like everything, you know that.

–What shall I do, Tin Roof?

–You could, if you’d like to I mean, and don’t mind the noise, climb on my pinion.

–Yes, I’d like that.

–Right. On you get.

–Go gently with me, Tin Roof. I mean, I know you find me tiresome, but the noise, well, it does give me such a pain inside my head.

–I brought you a crash-helmet, father.

–Oh, thank you. Thank you, son.

My arms in orbit round his waist, ourselves in orbit round the district of my time, we move in total immobility against the ultra-violet light, producing no vibration, no hum of silence even, until the circular steel house made out of our ellipses rises like a hemisphere above us and around. We land on the flat slice of its inner equator, surrounded by innumerable slices that diminish in space towards the rounded roof and this in spite of the curved door to the right. Alalala – pa – pa like a bent doll. My sweet Potato Head. Her hand gropes out for mine, her strength moves into me out of her double shape and back and into me again. The silent hum of the inner equator vibrates under our twelve feet as if they all belonged. Gut Bucket stands in quiet double meditation, his handle in my other hand and an ecstatic smile round both his inner and his outer rims. Something bends over Dippermouth and dials his needles as he ticks away in impulses that bounce back from her secret source as a girl-spy. They say you love me, Lazarus, she says.

–I do love you, Something, you know I do.

–But you have to go back.

–I don’t want to go back.

–We’ll have to clear out of this vehicle, father, it’ll get pretty hot if that door shuts.

–Out where? Into empty space? No, we can’t, we can’t, can we, Something? I like it here.

–Well, it depends on you, really.

–Really? Will he come now?

–He’ll come at the expected time of arrival, if you want him, Lazarus, and I know you do, you must. But I do so hate to see you suffer.

–I won’t get out. Not through that door. I must pace out this radius, and square it, and divide it by the height, and multiply it by the number of slices, and then you see I’ll know exactly how it works, quick, help me, keep busy, count the slices, yes, I accept them all.

–You must get out, Lazarus, you must.

–Don’t panic, Something. A girl-spy doesn’t panic.

–I know, I know, I have no future, but I must tell you, yes, I must. The house, Lazarus, the steel house. Someone designed it so that the door would close up automatically at maximum entropy and everyone left inside would die of absolute immobility from sheer heat.

–Entropy? What entropy? Who designed it, for heaven’s sake?

–You did, Lazarus. You have a complicated brain. Oh, I know you can’t help it, but it does make things difficult for a girl-spy with all those innumerable slices of you.
Sometimes
I wish I had married a poorer man –

–Oh cut that out, Something, you’ve never stopped saying I see nothing, understand nothing.

–But you do, Lazarus, you will. If you don’t forget me.

–I’ll never forget you, Something, because I won’t leave this place. I don’t believe in maximum entropy.

–Pa – pa, like a bent doll. Dippermouth’s needles oscillate more and more weakly and very slowly the door closes. Quick, get out. The heat becomes immeasurable. Gut Bucket starts melting into a pool of red hot metal. Potato Head crumbles like a giant decaying horse-fly. Something bends over Dippermouth as the atoms of total waste whirl around his dial and his impulses tick slower and slower. Only Tin Roof still roars round, drowning the vibrant hum, consisting now entirely of exhaust into which he picks me up, propels me with a jet into my belly, backwards into the closing door. I don’t want to go back, I don’t, I don’t, pushes me, squeezes me through it as Something bends over Dippermouth and I fall, fall, fall to the loud ticking inside the district of my time. 

Inside the mirror on the landing towards the lawyer’s office the shape stares back the map-like contours of some unknown region, continent, galaxy perhaps with two craters or starless coalsacks radiating nothing. Something however creates the wavering outlines and if not the eyes then some faint memory, surely, behind the eyes, filaments of gas in violent motion or two extragalactic nebulae in collision, four or five hundred million years away. But the eyes close to avoid the issue of their death and amazing recovery. The closing resolves the optical image like a change of lenses, so that inside the mirror the tall thin man stares back, as before death, before recovery, as when life took its normal course through blood vessels, nerve fibres, muscle spindles, bones, flesh and such.

These ache, and comfort in the aching. Their returned presence mocks the wavering outlines that grow suddenly monstrous before vanishing as if they had not wavered there at all, round undulations doubling, trebling each other’s trebles on a map of ocean depths, filling the entire mirror, or, with some others, the whole room, bursting its walls, the house, the street, the square and the whole sky. The blood-vessels, nerve fibres, muscle spindles form some sort of presence, something to hold on to at least, such as a banister gripped by the hand towards the next landing and the door marked W. E. Mellek, Solicitor, which opens to the touch or to the words come in of the well-living swarthy, my dear friend, how good to see you.

–Too.

The well-living and the redying easily merge their atoms since both hasten towards death regardless, the one from genial ignorance the other from some nebulous memory of something, surely, behind the eyes that ache and then what will you do?

–I beg your pardon?

–When we’ve got you through this – er – unfortunate business.

–Oh, that. Yes. If I relive that long.

–Come, my dear friend. We mustn’t make a habit of talking in that way. Emotional blackmail, your wife, if I remember, called it. She said she couldn’t stand it, in a statement, at least, to her solicitors, Winnie & Winnie, an excellent firm, not a cause at law of course, but it has gone down as a contributing factor. And of course, as we all know, emotional blackmail only works where emotion remains.

–Did she?

–Did she what?

–Say that?

–Indeed she did. She said, now where did I put the book of rules? Now where did I put that file? Ah, here. From that day on, she says, I think she means your recovery, ah yes, up here, we must place it in context, mustn’t we, from that day on we ceased to communicate in any way whatsoever.

–I thought we communicated a great deal.

–Oh well, my dear Larry, women always say these things. Afterwards. They never loved from the start, it never worked, they always knew it wouldn’t, though they tried, by every means, and so forth, to play it our way. They forget the good moments. If any. Sometimes of course, these don’t occur, but on the whole… And then, during the good moments, or else much later, years later, they see only those, how good, after all and so forth.

–We all do that.

–Yes, yes, indeed. However, this won’t suffice in a court of law, as perhaps you know. We must exclude collusion of course, but had you agreed at all, on a cause, desertion, or something else, a little quicker, very quick in fact. The Post Office ought to deal with undefended divorce cases, they clutter the courts. But you must, of course, provide a cause, and the waves begin again, first round the
horn-rimmed
glasses that glaze the soft Levantine eyes of Wilfred Edwin Mellek, Solicitor, then out in trembling undulations on a map of ocean depths. Or perhaps they only pretend to emit, like actors, filling the space immediately around him as he sits at his mahogany desk, no more, held still in tremulous space by the well-living flesh in loose black jacket, pin-stripe and wide white collar, for we mustn’t make a habit of dying, must we, I mean once, I admit, impresses people, with such an amazing recovery thrown in for good measure but twice, well, nobody would take you seriously, a yogi trick, they’d say, some medical hoax or error, as you of all people should know. And why, they might not bury you.

–My wife told me she would have had me cremated. We communicated that much, I believe. She cried when she said that.

–And besides, it might not happen.

–Which? Death or recovery?

–Ha! My dear Larry, you always had a sense of humour, even at Cambridge, thank God you didn’t lose it somewhere or should I say some time in that bit of eternity. Though your wife says – ah well, it doesn’t matter. Of course, death happens to us all, indeed it does. I totally accept the fact, though seldom think of it, if at all. Tell me, I suppose everyone asks you that, don’t you remember anything?

–I remember … something. A little.

The waves expand into a spiralling query from a small unstable nucleus of fear hidden like the square root of minus one deep inside the charm, the well-living swarthy flesh, the soft Levantine eyes and labyrinthine knowledge of law that makes up what you as a psychiatrist should know, I mean what happens to that thing you chaps call the unconscious when the body lies in the lowest state of life, if at all, well, they may put people on ice for years, I mean, what ought to happen, you must know the theory at least, does it tick on at a low imaginative level or what, did you dream, for instance?

–No. I never dream. At least –

–So you really remember nothing?

–I remember … a sort of enmeshment.

The waves retract a little to form an island round the word like a stone thrown that widens them again to lasso some concept at an infinite distance where we can expect, I mean, something.

–My dear Edwin, I don’t know. I have no way of verifying that, don’t let it worry you. To every man his own afterlife if any.

–You mean according to his expectations? If any.

–Or deserts. Which comes to the same thing.

The pain behind the eyes resolves the optical image of the widening rings back to the gentle undulations as before, around the horn-rimmed glasses to the space immediately around him at his red-leather topped mahogany desk, no more, held still in tremulous space again by the well-living flesh and easy tolerance of labyrinthine ways, which of course as a scientist you would need to verify, before they could have any validity as experience.