The Underground Man (26 page)

I must be over-tired or in some way nervously exhausted. Something is certainly up with me, for I have recently been afflicted with what I can only describe as ‘imaginings' – brief slippages of the mind. Spent the whole morning worrying about the memories of church spires I brought back from Edinburgh and how they have been scratching away at the inside of my skull. Then this afternoon had a very bad session with that head-picture Mellor gave me – the phrenology chart with Man's characteristics laid out in tableaux of tiny men.

I had it pinned on the wall above my shrine and stood there meditating on the various rooms within the head. I went slowly from one room to another and everything was right as rain, when I thought I saw one of the little chaps wriggling in his seat. Nothing much, just the straightening-out of the back a fellow does after he has been sitting for too long at a time. When I looked back at him he was perfectly still again, but now sat, I felt, a little more stiffly, as if he was holding his breath. I waited, did not take my eyes off him until, at last, he let out a tiny sigh.

The next thing I spotted was an old lady in the next compartment who scratched her head, just as cool as you like. Then a young girl in the room above her bent down to adjust the lace of her shoe. At this point I stepped back from the
picture and saw how all the little figures had become minutely animated and how all now went about their chores. ‘How marvellous,' I thought. ‘Such harmony. Each inhabitant happy in his own four walls.'

But as I watched, the grim fellow in the room marked Acquisitiveness (a miser counting his piles of coin) leaned back in his chair and took a long look about him, until his gaze lit on Tunefulness' maiden, who gently strummed her guitar. The miser's gaze now turned distinctly lecherous. He sneaked a glance over each shoulder and got to his feet. Then, without a by-your-leave, he took up his walking stick and started to smash right through the separating wall and in no time was upon the maiden and looking her up and down in the most wicked way.

Meanwhile, the fox in nearby Secretiveness had started scratching at the wall, having sensed that on the other side Cautiousness' plump hen brooded over her clutch of eggs. The fox had soon scratched a hole for himself and squeezed right through; had got the bird by its throat and was shaking it this way and that.

And now Combativeness' burly pugilists heard Tunefulness screaming and broke their bout to listen for a moment or two and when they realized that the poor girl was in distress, began battering their bare fists towards her cries. And very soon they were through and upon the miser, one holding him down while the other struck him in the face, whereupon Benevolence's good Samaritan heard the miser moaning and abandoned the care of his patient to join the fisticuffs below.

Destructiveness' big cat caught a whiff of Alimentiveness' succulent joint of meat and started clawing its way through to it. Philoprogenitiveness' loving father, it seemed, had grown bored with his wife and child and began to look lustily across at Friendship's embracing girls.

Elsewhere, I saw Amativeness' cherub fix an arrow to his bow and train it on the fox with the hen in its mouth, while Conscientiousness doggedly held his scales in the air and looked impotently on.

The whole head was in a state of anarchy, walls were being torn down everywhere as the facade of civilization slipped aside to reveal Man's savage nature beneath.

I have been working on a theory, quite unusual and primarily to do with bones.

First of all, I must say that not nearly enough is made of bones. I reckon they are all too frequently overlooked. When one considers how every creature which walks the earth leaves behind its own set of ribs and hips and tibia-fibias, one begins to grasp just how many bones there must be scattered about the place. The world, one might say, is nothing more than a vast burial ground on which we briefly picnic.

But my thoughts have been focused mainly on whalebones, which are, it goes without saying, the biggest in the world. How many whales are there, altogether? Millions, to be sure. The question, therefore, is: what happens to all those whalebones once their owners have passed away? They cannot all of them be picked clean by tiny scavengers and left to rot on the ocean bed. If that were the case there would by now be great piles of them poking out of the oceans. Shipping would have been brought to a halt.

No. The truth is that they are somehow organized – laid out in lines to form some sort of World Bone Network. Who is in charge of the enterprise? An international committee,
presumably. No doubt the French are involved. As far as I can tell, this network consists of both longitudinal and latitudinal bone-lines, the majority of which are under the sea. On land this vast net is buried deep underground.

The purpose of this bone arrangement? I am not yet certain, but have narrowed down the options to …

I note all the above in order to prevent them drifting off into the ether, but also as a means of introducing another aspect of this whole business which has recently come to my attention …

At four o'clock this afternoon it occurred to me that Mrs Pledger is, in fact, a ship and that all the house's little gusts and zephyrs are what fill her skirts and blow her from room to room. It was only her breezing into my rooms this lunchtime with a bowl of minestrone in her hand which finally provoked in me this nautical connection. She was tacking her way around a sofa, plotting her course by way of Fowler's head on the mantelpiece to the north and the bureau to the east. As she approached I thought to myself, ‘There must be a good deal of hidden rigging to keep her so navigable and trim.'

I watched with interest as she dropped anchor on the fireside rug and placed my soup on the table by my chair. As she bent down her bosomy cargo swung into view, all splendidly girdled and packed, and when she saw how I was spying her she gave me one of her frostier looks. Things were now falling very neatly into place, so I gave her a cheeky little wink. It was my way of saying, ‘The game is up, Mrs Pledger!'
But she wasn't for coming clean. O, no. She became all tight-lipped and hoity-toity. I could see I was going to have to squeeze the truth right out of her.

‘You're a sizeable lady, Mrs Pledger,' I told her, and waited to see how this little observation went down. She stared at me but not a word came out of her, so I continued. ‘Be kind enough, Mrs Pledger, to tell me about the bones.'

She did her best to assume some incredulous air but it was quite plain I had caught her out. ‘And which bones might they be, Your Grace?' she replied, reddening.

‘Why, the whalebones that hold us all together,' I countered calmly, and leaning over toward her, added, ‘And maybe the secret ones, Mrs Pledger, which keep you so shapely-looking.'

She was properly horror-stricken. I leaned back triumphantly in my chair.

I believe I might well be the first mortal man to understand the significance of the whalebones which are stitched in every woman's corset. For all I know, Mrs Pledger is, at this very moment, down in the kitchens sending out signals to the bone organizations. Perhaps
this
is why women are so peculiar. They are all in league with the whales.

Whatever lies at the bottom of this whole business – and I must say I believe there is still a great deal to dig up – it was clear from Mrs Pledger's reaction that I had struck a nerve. A whole lifetime of bone-secretion exposed!

I gave her another big wink then watched as she marched straight across the room. She stopped by a fruit bowl, picked up an orange; turned and threw it at me. It was headed right between my eyes. I ducked down too late, it bounced off the top of my head and landed smack in the middle of my soup.

We were both silent for a moment.

‘Excellent shot, Mrs Pledger,' I announced.

She swept out of the room, leaving the whole place rocking in her wake.

Now, I have no problem having in my employ a woman who is up to her ears in bones. Mrs Pledger is a very fine woman – I have always said as much – and I sincerely hope that her paymasters do not punish her for being found out. After all, we are none of us entirely guiltless in that department; we all hide our bones away.

The orange bobbed in the remains of my minestrone.

‘Fruit in my soup again,' I said.

I have been poorly as long as I can remember. Upstairs as well as down. Long before this pain set off on its travels something nagged at me. Something has always nagged.

The problem, I am slowly beginning to understand, is that we are all prisoners of our own skin. Our bodies, with their incredible capacities, are also the gaols in which we are sentenced to languish. Our ribs are the bars of our tiny cells. We are entombed in flesh and blood.

Sooner or later our body's frailties begin to drag us down and we have no choice but to go. Illness, when it strikes, is a torture we are bound to suffer. We cannot be removed.

As often as not my own feelings are a mystery to me. Most days, the best I can hope for is to weather them, to endeavour not to get washed away. How wonderful it would be to let the mind roam freely, unencumbered by the fetters of skin and bone. To be able to come together and communicate with all the other souls.

I am, I now see, two very different people. The mind and
the bag of bones it heaves behind. The body, I suppose, is simply a vessel. The next man might regard it as a temple but, then, what a foul and decrepit ruin in which to worship.

What I long for is transcendence. To let the deepest part of me rise up and breathe the air. It is the awful separateness of life, foisted on me by flesh, which I have slowly come to detest.

All I want is to let a little light in. To let a little of me out into the world.

The razor felt strange in my hand. Unfamiliar. The scissors too. So excited that my whole body itched. Something very odd about being beardless after so many bearded years. My neck now feels absolutely naked. As fleshy as a freshly-plucked goose.

The scissors took the bulk of it off in a couple of minutes – clumps of white hair, tumbling into the sink. Small bushy balls of the stuff resting on the porcelain, then flushed away with a twitch of the tap. Me left looking almost bruised, battered. But then, after the soap and the razor, a little less fierce. My neck has collapsed while it has been hidden from view. A baggy abundance of chalky skin hanging over a pair of straining guys.

So, all in all, I must say quite a surprise, which is more or less what I expected. The chin not the one I buried under the bristles all those years ago. The dimple disappeared. How curious to be reintroduced to oneself. To find one's most intimate relationship changed.

When I first started snipping away at the hair on my head
I had a fit of giggles. Simply couldn't help myself. Like trimming away at the clouds. Felt quite light-headed and as I lathered it up (a wonderful feeling) had further giggles to quell. Had to breathe slowly and get a grip on myself. Just my eyes staring back at me. Calmness. Calm.

My whole dome a-froth, with just the odd blossom of blood where I nicked myself. The razor's rasp very loud around the ears. Shaved away from them, so that if I slipped I would not lop them off. Left the old eyebrows well alone and, before I knew it, was rinsing away the soapy-suds.

I may have missed the odd little tuft or two, around the back of the head. I will need another mirror for that. But finally, there I am – a genuinely shocking sight. No longer laughing. A withered stump of a man. Thought I might suddenly start crying, like a baby.

Talcum-powdered the whole thing, so as to cover up the tiny scars and try to distract myself. Then, for a minute or two, sat in the bedroom and busied myself, pretending to read. Rose and returned to the mirror.

Much calmer now. Less giddy. Not worried like I was before. Stood there at the mantelpiece mirror, saying, ‘Yes. The right thing to do.' And then, suddenly, I saw it. It leapt right out at me. To the right of my reflection sat Fowler's porcelain head with his usual inscrutable look and, what with my own head so white from the talcum, the two of us looked like kin. How strange. It would never have occurred to me. All I lacked were his labels and dividing lines.

Undid my gown and went over to the full-length mirror. Removed my trousers. What a white old man. Stared at me until I became a stranger. And in time I saw projected onto the flesh the
Ancient Chinese Healing
chart, with all its tributaries running up and down my arms and legs.

I imagined my belly, packed with Mrs Pledger's various herbs. Saw me stuffed full of them, like a turkey.

I saw the same organs the Oakley sisters had seen in me, the sleepy fish.

And in the middle of all this I saw the bone-tree, my very own skeleton-man.

With my white head perched on top, just like Fowler's, and those two eyes staring back at me from the void, I saw myself as some sort of living synthesis. An amalgamation of all the maps of man.

I locked myself in my bedroom and walked around awhile. Unlocked the door, called out, ‘Do not disturb,' then stood there while the words went galloping up and down the hall. I was already quite inebriated, having consumed a quarter of a bottle of brandy. Perhaps even staggered a little as I ushered me back into my room and locked the door behind. I had not yet crossed that threshold into flailing drunkenness, but was in no doubt that I was by now sufficiently anaesthetized.