The World Idiot (3 page)

Dr Neble chuckles.

“Funny you should mention that,” he says. “There
is
a place for an incompetent. Only one, mind you. Every planet needs its idiot, just like every village. Someone to look down at, to make fun of.”

Henry is bemused. Dr Neble smiles and adjusts his spectacles. He offers Henry his hand.

“Congratulations. You’re in.”

Henry recoils. Dr Neble beams down at him in a fatherly fashion. He regards Henry as the perfect man for the job. The test shows him to be a complete fool. It will be easy to tell jokes about him in the New World.

Of course, he had guessed Henry was suitable as soon as he walked through the door.

Who wears a tie these days?

Well the freak show was a disaster right from the beginning... We had a week to round up as many boobies and oddballs as we could. We did not please the management. The management was not pleased. Well we did our best... We drove up to the city and pushed leaflets through letterboxes, under doors, or scattered them in profusion from our moving vehicle. The sun was bright and children were playing. We cast bravely at the crippled ones but we were travelling too fast. The nets blew back in our bawling mouths.

Nobody responded to our leaflets, we had a poor response, so we picked up the telephone, many telephones (cheap rate) and contacted the asylums. I say... I mean, do you have any... Gimps only eh? Well when you’ve seen the head bitten off one chicken... So we advertised in the local paper and that was that. From miles around no one came. We chewed our fingernails. We balked.

The day was drawing near. The management were on our backs. How were they supposed to put on a gala without freaks? Hancock, the futures tycoon, would be there; and Grimes the natural death baron. All there for the charity night. So there would be food and drink and dancing girls (cheap rate) and fountains and music and gossip and McGuire the incest comedian (“sisters run faster in Virgin County” (not cheap rate)) and Purdy Absurdy, the actress, and her latest boyfriend, Philip Pew, pedicurist to the stars and lots and lots of needy gerbils shipped over from the islands.

So we were growing desperate. And the management was not pleased. So we took a trip to the circus and tried to kidnap Tina Wertigo, the gyroscope girl. We crept in at coma of night (one hour before dead) with torches and dark clothes and a bolas thrower from Uruguay. But she span out of our clutches and drilled an escape hole through the ground. We hurled rocks and lions after her, but nothing more was heard. We thought about following, we mulled, but decided against it, four to one.

Well the management were on our backs and time was growing short... Our numbers would be up if we failed, divided or square-rooted to nothing. Wilson regretted that time was growing short. We could make our own freaks otherwise, he said. In jars and stunted with knotgrass and blows from an iron hammer. Newby was of the opinion that iron hammers were difficult to come by these days. Grant hinted that he knew a man who knew a man who was an ironmonger. Dalton wanted to know his rates. Cheap or not cheap? I made expansive gestures.

The management sent us a memo. There was an ultimatum. Freaks or welfare... So we redoubled our efforts. We tripled them and mixed them with the cola of genius in the shaker of necessity. I visited the zoo and borrowed a gorilla. A quick bout of electrolysis and we had a missing link. The gorilla escaped up the chimney. Wilson tried to hire poverty-stricken drama students. Newby and Grant opted for the morgue. Dalton set fire to his hair.

Down in the old town, lovers waltzed to clockwork gramophones and lepers lent a hand to jugglers and usurers. There were a million candles illuminating the dusk. Well we sauntered along the cobbles... Well we overwound our hearts... From a balcony a woman cried. An asthmatic played a 12-string catarrh. We listened. He blew it. We moved on. We ate tropical fish from the pink pages of
National Hagiograph
and
Yak Hatred Yearly
. The candles died and the colours dropped an octave.

In a bar grown soiled with long exposure to drunken laughter and tall stories, we sipped vermouth and crême de la neige. A blind crooner played Gnat King Cole numbers on his dislocated trombone. I say... I mean, do you play any... Indigo blues only eh? Well when you’ve been stung once... His voice buzzed through the curved air, as warped as the beams, our vision. Posters on the walls winked tired eyes. We dropped our glasses and trod them to an adequate sugar.

Wilson wondered aloud whether it would be possible to replace the waters of the indoor swimming pool (cheap rate, Wednesday) with some corrosive mixture. A bare bones solution. A churning yearn. Newby suggested monstrous puppets, worked from behind. Grant had been won over to Dalton’s concept of self-mutilation. I procrastinated with my face in my hands, my ears full of micropolyphonic rhythms. Grant tried to win me over to Dalton’s concept of self-mutilation. Dalton chained himself to a tram while we held onto his legs. We travelled across half the city...

Well the management was firmly on my back now... The others had shirked their responsibilities. They fled one night in a hot air balloon bound for some land far away. The Svelte Veldt. I could not stop them. So I was alone. And I bore up the weight of the entire management. All alone. I picked up the telephone, many telephones, and begged relatives, friends, strangers. I tried to look a chicken in the neck. I tried to squeeze a rainbow from my eye.

(This is always the way, is it not, when deadlines cannot be met? I managed a feather-lick, but not a rumination. I completed a spectrum, but not a rainbow. Through the window rickshaws hurried to the hospital (a leprosarium that charged an arm and a leg (cheap rate)) and vendors hawked basted voles and cheese omelettes. Herders chased grasshoppers into vats of cider with long poles.)

At last, on the eve of the great event, I collected together a package of dubious merit. They included a family of migrant workers, paid in advance, and thirty-three beekeepers press ganged from a local Variety Theatre (“The Fable Of The Wannabees”, cheap rate) not to mention a couple of split-infinitives, split down the middle; very beautiful, very wise. I turned to them and waved my bamboo cane in the humid air. I say... I mean, do you have any... Amateur experience only eh? Well when you’ve experienced one amateur... How can we balk? There is life to resist yet.

What has gone wrong with the world? Do you think I could find a single freak in all the ranks of the unemployed? Not one, not a lonely boobie, not a solitary oddball. So I study my package of dubious merit, my last chance, and I weep. There is The Overzealous Lounge Lizard, The Male Female-Man, The Gigolo As Old As His Mistress, The Tallest Midget In Christendom, The Microscopic Giant. There is The Radical Reactionary and The Glummest Of Optimists. There is The Bearded Lady After A Shave. Tears stalking my lips, I dismiss them all with vigorous strokes of the cane...

So the day dawns and I make a final attempt to please. Well it is painful but I don’t complain... I don’t complain... The sun breaks its shell in the west and the fireworks crack over our heads. Hancock, the futures tycoon, is roaring; and Grimes the natural death baron. There is food and drink and dancing girls and fountains and music and gossip and McGuire the incest comedian (“you know your sister’s menstruating when your father tastes different”) and Purdy Absurdy, the actress, and her latest boyfriend, Philip Pew, pedicurist to the stars and lots and lots of needy gerbils shipped over from the islands.

And I ache. And I throb (pulse rate.)

And there I am, at the top of the hill, and I make a perfect loop with my body and I roll down, away, faster and faster, gathering momentum until I am no more than a blur. But at the same time a balloon comes into view and Wilson, Newby, Grant and Dalton are seen to be paddling furiously with their hands and I suddenly know that a change of wind has scotched their plans. And the gerbils burst into spontaneous applause and the management are still on my back, which I presented to them in a plastic bag that very morning, a tiny suited figure on each vertebrae.

After all, it was a magnificent house. They could feel no regrets as they received the key from the plump fingers of the estate agent. A large detached modern dwelling; the house of the future. One kind of future, at any rate. As a light breeze ruffled the fur on the walls, Tony smiled and opened the door. The house purred. They had been accepted.

Inside, they saw that everything was waiting for them exactly as they had arranged. The old battered sofa was there; the one they had bought for their first flat. And the little ornaments from their many travels to exotic lands. And the books and musical instruments scattered over the floor. What more could they ask for? What doubts could they have now? They would be happy here, they would be safe.

Tony turned to Claire and embraced her. “Our new home,” he said simply. And then, as if determined to wax lyrical before the wax melted, he added: “Debt where is thy sting? Ground Rent where is thy victory?”

It was essential to satisfy a few outmoded traditions. Tony attempted to carry Claire over the threshold; he grunted but could not obtain sufficient leverage. So it was Claire who carried Tony over, dumping him in a contented heap before the inglenook of the authentic hearth, on an indigo rug all knotted with abstract designs in colours that should have clashed but did not.

They spent the rest of that evening watching the television, snug beyond good taste in each other’s company, nibbling shortbread or lobes or upper lips, while some cartoon rodent raced across a landscape as harsh and surreal as any by Dali. The house began to chatter and crouched low, as if ready to spring. With a sudden flash of terrible insight, Tony reached for the remote control and switched channels. Almost at once, the house lost interest.

“It’s the mouse,” Tony explained, referring to the cartoon. “The house was getting excited. We’ll have to be more careful.”

Claire nodded vaguely, her mind too frantic with serenity to pay much attention to his words. She had already hung her needlework above the mantelpiece over the grate, and was already planning a sequel. HOME NUTRASWEET HOME would be a project worthy of a six month energy package, made up of lots of little delicate motions and more thought. The votive lights in her eyes were at once bright and distant.

They had first chanced upon the house while gliding on a picnic quest down the road that led out of the city and into the hills. There it had napped, curled up tight, tail wrapped round the trunk of an old tree that lurched out of mossy ground. They had fallen in love with it immediately; the glistening black fur with the white ruff, the delightful expression and endearing sundries. They had stopped, noticed that it was for sale and had made enquiries.

The estate agent was a large oily man with an absurd hairstyle. Arnie Troppmann had been selling state-of-the-art houses for more than a decade. His experience revealed itself every time he smiled; a gold tooth encrusted with diamonds. He mopped his forehead with a contract, shook rancid buttery hands and showed them around the building, pointing out features with an enthusiasm that was not only infectious but positively septic.

“These latest models are self-regulating. They have a nervous system based on that of the domesticated cat. As you can see, the fur covers the inside walls as well as the whole exterior, minimizing heat loss. The house is extremely sensitive to outside changes and will warn you of the approach of intruders or rain. It has a superb sense of balance guaranteed to withstand the most violent earthquakes. Also it is self-cleaning. Every Monday night.”

And now as Claire and Tony blinked in surprise, two enormous eyes appeared on the ceiling from nowhere, flooding the room with soft yellow light. This was another fixture designed for the conservation of energy: reflected starlight amplified and focused wherever it was needed most. The house, they also quickly discovered, had a wonderful sense of smell and hearing. The rose garden seemed constantly within, rather than without, the enclosed lounge and the music of the wind playing the kazoo on separate blades of grass charmed them to sleep with Aeolian lullabies.

The following evening, at roughly the same time, the fur on the walls pricked up alarmingly and the house arched its roof. Tony and Claire were instantly aware that trouble was afoot. Bounding into the kitchen, Tony snatched a garlic crusher and bore it to the front door, which he threw open with a flourish, at the same instant daring any intruder to approach closer. He was startled by a mangy hound that — though no clove — was sufficiently impressed by the unlikely weapon to beat a hasty retreat.

“Scat!” cried Tony, which was both completely unnecessary and unnecessarily complete. He pumped the garlic crusher handle a few times in sullen victory. “A stray,” he explained to Claire. “An unkempt mutt. Reminded me a little of Toasted Muffin.” And he fell into a redundant fugue, a nostalgic slice from the melon of his youth: his dog, his air rifle, the heel of a loaf, the nettle-itch and the doc-leaf wrap. Toasted Muffin, he recalled, had been run over by a tractor.

On Monday night, they decided to stay indoors yet again. It was cleaning night, after all. The estate agent had warned them to absent themselves at this time, but they were too curious to see what would happen. Besides, Troppmann had also suggested that if any problems arose they should come to see him and he would put matters right. So there was nothing to worry about. They waited for the show to begin. They waited and watched.

Thus it was that when Troppmann himself was pulled out of bed in the early hours, cursing and sweating, to answer the door, he knew that it would soon be time to start breaking promises. But at first he did not recognise the raw-red couple who leered through the glass door at him and he refused to let them in. They seemed to be covered in some sticky substance and they pounded on the door with a disturbing sort of squelch.

“Please may we have our skins back?”