They Do the Same Things Different There (44 page)

Indeed they would be. And none of us really want to die, of course we don’t. But we all know we will, it’s like a ticking bomb inside all of us, and we never know when that bomb is going to go off, and doesn’t that spoil everything, just a little? And we know too that our deaths won’t be
grand
deaths, most likely they’ll be lung cancer, or cancer of the oesophagus, or cancer of the brain—we’ll die, and it’ll be
pathetic
, we’ll maybe not even remember our own names as we stare into the abyss, the moment when we could have been special will have passed long ago and we’ll never even have realized when, and we’ll end as we began, confused, infant-like, and just the same as everybody else. But what if you could be more? What if your death could become history? Ensure that in your final seconds you’d be part of something bigger than you would ever be on your own, what if you too could be part of the 9/11 Experience? Just like Our Fallen Heroes, but no, better—cleaner, simpler, no pain, no doubt, just erased away, no need for burning flesh, no need for tears as people scream out desperately for families they’ll never see again, certainly no need to jump out of any windows! (The windows sparkle in the New York sun, and are fastened tightly shut.) Better than Our Fallen Heroes too because they died in ignorance, they never knew what their martyrdoms would represent and how they would change the world, if they could only have seen the news reports the next day imagine how thrilled they would have been!—but
you
will know, you’ll
know
, how can you resist? Be a part of history, let history consume you, and your death can never now be a trivial one, you too can be a hero, you too can be like Superman (or Wonder Woman, if that’s your preference)—and if your
death
isn’t trivial, maybe, just maybe, it’ll mean your life wasn’t either, maybe, maybe. And you’ll look just so dandy, history will become you, and after you’re gone friends will tell of how important you were, and they’ll feel important by association—“I knew a guy who died in the Towers!”—really, it’s a win-win scenario, the 9/11 Experience is a gift not only to you but to
them
, to your family, doesn’t Junior deserve a daddy who’s a hero? a mummy who bled out stars and stripes? Come to New York, take in a Broadway show, a meal at Sardi’s, enjoy the best New York has to offer! Safe in the certainty that the very next day you’re making a stand for something noble we can all believe in.

The world has changed, and we all now stand in the shadow of the Twin Towers. But who wouldn’t choose to be part of what casts that shadow?

By the time the Towers next returned, there was a box office service all ready and waiting.

One day, in Baghdad, the twelve metre-high statue of Saddam Hussein popped back into existence. American troops pulled it down immediately, and razed the ground with fire. It never returned.

And, one day, the Towers stayed right where they were.

The Towers were packed. Of course, they were always packed. But this was the height of summer, and the waiting list for summer reservations was especially long. You could get such a lovely view from the top when the weather was nice!

The complaints started only minutes after the scheduled half past ten departure time. Families who were taking hands and composing themselves for the rapture kept having to let go and recompose themselves all over again. They were so determined to keep their minds pure for the moment of deliverance: “For Christ’s sake,” they asked, “what the hell’s going on?” By noon customers were being advised to vacate the Towers. The buildings were cordoned off with tape saying “Technical Difficulties,” and “Your Patience is Appreciated.”

There was no system in operation to cope with dissatisfied customers, nobody had ever complained before. It was chaos. Overseas passengers wanted reimbursement not only for the 9/11 tickets, but also for their plane fares. Others demanded compensation for all the earthly possessions they had given away. One woman sued the Towers for mental distress—now she’d have to find some other way to kill herself. Her claim for three million dollars was rejected, but it only provoked a spate of claims for smaller sums that were more successful. Within three weeks the Towers were bankrupted. No one could now have afforded to let people die in there. Not even if the Towers had been working properly again, not even if they started winking on and off like the lights of a Christmas tree.

But the Towers implacably, resolutely, refused to leave. They weren’t going anywhere.

Nobody was quite sure now what to do with them.

It was suggested that they take on the job for which they had originally been intended. They could be rented out for office space. That didn’t sound unreasonable. And so, in preparation, a crew of maintenance workers were sent inside. The windows no longer sparkled, but were grey, and blotchy, and spattered with the bodies of bugs and birds. The water in the restrooms had gone stale. The carpets were matted stiff.

No matter how much the carpets were shampooed, they could never have restored that scent everyone had enjoyed before. The windows might be made clean one day, but the next they’d be smeared, whorls of dirt caught in the sunlight and distorting it, making each pane look as if it had been prodded hard with enormous stained fingerprints. And there was dust everywhere. You could never get rid of all that dust. The dust, it got into everything.

No businesses wanted to move into the Towers. The desks stayed bare, the memo boards empty. There was a strange film clinging to them all, and it may have been mould, and it may have been something else. It became too expensive to clean the Towers. From the outside the windows grew blacker with dirt until no one could see in, until the Towers seemed somehow to suck all light into them.

The Twin Towers squatted lugubriously into position and dominated the New York skyline.

Someone suggested they be pulled down. But whilst many privately agreed that would be the best thing, no one dared give the order. It would be an insult to all those who had lost their lives there—a casualty list that now nearly numbered a cool two million worldwide. What was needed, everyone thought, was some outside force to take down the Twin Towers for them. Some outrage that would leave America blameless. But this time no suicide bombers were forthcoming.

The decision to conceal the Towers wasn’t undertaken lightly. The cost alone was staggering. But, it was reasoned, they had built two gigantic towers before—so now they could build
dozens
of them, all over the city—and taller too, so they’d dwarf the originals! And a whole
ring
of towers could now surround them, they’d be completely encircled, and these new ring towers would be the very tallest of all, you’d have to climb to the very top of them, right into the very clouds, and peer down from the roof to get so much as a glimpse at what was hidden beneath.

And the inner windows to these towers would be made of jet-black glass, so no one could see through at the Twin Towers behind. And workers could sit at their desks quite happily, and do their accountancy, their share brokering, their telemarketing calls. And only the smell might remind them what was nearby—no matter how high the air conditioning was turned, no matter how strong the scent of domestic shampoos or bleach, there was always that smell. Rotting history, just a few feet away.

One morning one of those new towers disappeared, taking with it four thousand souls. But there were so many towers, no one even noticed.

Listen.

There was once a little boy who was in love with love. It was the first thing he thought of when he woke in the morning. It was what he hoped to dream of when he went to sleep at night. At school he’d think of love during his lessons, geography, physics, gym. He didn’t see the point of geography or physics, he didn’t see the point of gym; love was so much more important, surely, and so much more interesting, he didn’t see why they couldn’t just study that. His grades weren’t very good.

Of course, the little boy had no first hand experience of love. He was, after all, a little boy. But on his eighth birthday his parents had bought him a radio, all of his very own. He kept it in his bedroom. And after he’d done his homework, and he’d done his chores, it was to the bedroom he’d go. He’d lie on the bed, turn on the radio, and listen to the love songs that came out. And there were so many! He listened to the ones that were sheer celebrations of love, telling the world how great love made them feel, and how unashamed they were of that, they were in love and that was all there was too it—there’d be drums, probably, and loud guitars, and the songs would be fast, and it would sound as if the singers were almost laughing over the words. These songs made the boy happy. And, when he was a little older, he listened to the other love songs. The songs that were about
wanting
love, crying out for love, wondering where love had gone—or, even more despairing, about being in love that wasn’t love after all, or
was
love but the wrong kind of love. These songs were much more confusing. They made the boy sad. And, in a funny way, they made him happy too, even happier somehow than the happy songs had.

He learned what love was. A matter of getting the right notes in the right order. And hoping that the right words didn’t get in the way of those notes and spoil everything.

By the time he was twelve, after countless evenings of diligent study, the boy had heard every single love song in the world. And he liked them all. He had his favourites, of course he had. He had two hundred and eighty-nine favourites. But there wasn’t one love song he didn’t respect, and which hadn’t taught him something.

He never intended to compose a song of his own. But one night, as he dreamed about love, a tune began to play in his head. He’d absorbed so many songs, they were as much a part of his life as breathing or eating. And somehow the best bits of the best of them had got mixed up in his head, and produced something new. He woke up with a start. He didn’t know how to write music. He didn’t know how to record his voice. So he made himself stay up all night, walking around the house, singing the new song under his breath over and over again so he wouldn’t forget it. When his parents got up at dawn they were shocked to see their little boy shivering with exhaustion, the catchiest of melodies on his lips. They listened to the song. The boy couldn’t really sing very well. And he had to explain where the drums and guitars came in. But the parents exchanged glances in awe. “That,” said his daddy gravely, “is a love song, all right.”

Daddy didn’t go to work that day. He phoned a friend, who knew someone who knew someone who might be able to help. Daddy took his little boy to see this man, and for a fee the stranger wrote down the song with staves and treble clefs. “Is that it?” said Daddy. “That’s his song?” “That’s his song,” said the man, pocketing the money, “and we never met, right?” And the little boy took the paper on which his song was now inscribed, and he didn’t recognize it like that, but it still gave him a thrill of pride to see it. And then he just keeled over, fast asleep, right there and then. He really was very tired.

Daddy went to the post office for the right forms and filled them in. And the next day, as instructed, he took the little boy into the city to get his love song registered. Mummy made them sandwiches for the trip. The government buildings were stone and grey. There was nobody at reception; a notice at the front told prospective songsmiths to take a ticket and wait until their number was called. It also said that there must be no smoking and no littering and, in particular, the humming of unregistered music was expressly forbidden. Daddy and the little boy took seats. A number was called, and a man at the far side of the room got up, stretched, and shuffled through swing doors down a corridor. The little boy calculated that there were one hundred and twenty-eight people in the queue ahead of them.

There were no other children in the waiting room. Mostly men with beards and raincoats, each holding in their hands a post office form and sheets of music paper. “Is everyone here to get their song registered?” asked the boy.

“I think they must be.”

“Why do we need to get songs registered?”

“Well,” said Daddy, and handed him a sandwich. “Otherwise, it’d be chaos, wouldn’t it? Look around.” The little boy did. “Without registration, there’d be another one hundred and twenty-eight songs in the world for us to listen to.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“One hundred and twenty-eight doesn’t sound bad,” agreed Daddy. “But that’s just today! There’ll be another one hundred and twenty-eight tomorrow. Maybe more! You’d end up with a world that has so many love songs in it, we’d be swamped in them. We wouldn’t know what to listen to. We might miss out on the one thousand good love songs we’d enjoy, because we couldn’t find them amidst all the bad ones we wouldn’t.”

The boy liked his sandwich. It was tuna. It was the seventeenth best sandwich filling in the world. Across the aisle an unkempt man with grey hair glared at him. The boy didn’t know why. The boy was glad when, a few hours later, the man’s number was called. He didn’t see him again.

At last it was the boy’s turn. His daddy nudged him from his drowse. “Come on,” said Daddy, and offered him his hand. The boy was really too old now to need his hand held, but he took it gratefully. They walked through the swing doors, and down a long corridor. They only stopped when they found a cubicle that had a door open. “Come in,” said the clerk inside the cubicle. And then, on seeing the boy, “Composers only. That’s protocol. You’ll have to leave your little boy outside.” “I’m not the composer,” said Daddy. “My little boy is.” The clerk blinked in surprise, just the once, then regained his composure. “Very well,” he said, and ushered them in, and in spite of protocol, he didn’t ask Daddy to leave. The clerk held out his hand for the form. Daddy gave it to him, and the clerk read it briefly. Then the clerk held out his hand for the song. And, taking it, fed it into the computer on his desk.

“Aren’t you going to read it?” said Daddy.

“No need. The computer is wholly impartial, it’s not affected by quirks of personal taste. It measures the song on timbre, metre, rhythm, and cultural importance.” The computer whirred as it made its assessment, and the clerk smiled thinly at the little boy. “Shan’t be long now.” And then the computer made a happy little ping. This time the clerk didn’t bother to hide his surprise, and blinked repetitively.

“Does that mean,” asked the boy, “that my song is one of the top thousand in the world?”

“Yes,” said the clerk. “Yes. It would appear so. Yes. If I . . . just check my . . . yes.” He tapped away at his keyboard. “It’s nine hundred and fourteenth,” he said. “Well done.”

With a new respect, the clerk went on to explain to the little boy that the Government would now be purchasing his song and all future rights appertaining. The boy would receive a handsome stipend once a month, index linked to adjust for inflation. That he should start listening to the radio, because he’d be hearing his own song playing there soon! “But what happens,” asked the boy, “to the song that’s nine hundred and fourteenth already?” “Well,” said the clerk, “that’ll become nine hundred and fifteenth. It’ll shuffle down the rankings. They’ll all shuffle down, until they reach one thousand.” “And what happens,” said the boy, “to number one thousand?” “Quite right,” said the clerk approvingly, although the boy couldn’t see why, he’d only asked him a simple question, “I’ll deal with that right now.” And he turned to his computer, tapped on his keyboard for the shortest few seconds, and erased Elvis Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes” forever.

On the bus ride home Daddy realized that they could now have afforded a taxi. Taxis were the fourteenth best transportation in the world, whereas buses were at only three hundred and forty-seven. “Never mind,” he laughed. “Taxis only from this point on! I’m proud of you, son. Not a bad day’s work, eh?” And the little boy agreed. “I’m going to write some more songs now,” he said, “I’m already getting ideas!”

But he didn’t have time for writing for a while. The boy was famous. Truth to tell, the press wouldn’t usually have taken much interest in the story. Every few months someone or other was breaking a song into the bottom hundreds of the canon, shoving aside others that had only just been put in. And it may have been the nine hundred and fourteenth best song in the world, but it was also the eighty-seventh worst, which didn’t sound half so impressive. But the boy
was
twelve years old. That was something which caught the listeners’ imagination, and his song was rerecorded in many different styles to sate the interest: reggae, rap, a cappella. The boy was referred to as a genius in the making, a wunderkind, a veritable Mozart. Mozart was a famous composer. He’d managed to get no less than fourteen songs into the top thousand, he was really very good indeed.

At school he’d been so dreamy he’d barely made an impression. But now he was the epitome of romance. He won the hearts of all the girls, and quite a few of the teachers as well, one or two quite got into trouble over him. He barely noticed, he looked on in some bemusement as his classmates wept for his love, as his form mistress was disciplined by a tribunal and put on probation. And he didn’t stay at the school for long; he had no need for geography or physics or gym anymore, and the boy could now afford a special education at which he could focus upon his gifts. He learned how to write in musical notation, he learned to pick apart the songs he’d once enjoyed so uncritically. He wrote a few songs, and of course everyone in academe buzzed with expectation, what fresh classics might he be concocting under their very noses? But they were to be disappointed; the boy always destroyed these efforts, saying that they weren’t good enough, he wasn’t yet ready to give a second masterpiece to the world. By the time he graduated his original song had slipped down the rankings, and was now nine hundred and thirty-third. One of his fellow students at last managed to catch his attention, and then to catch his heart. She was the envy of all her friends, and received a couple of death threats from the most jealous. As they walked down the aisle, with his mummy and daddy looking so proud, and the boy no longer quite a boy, no longer quite a wunderkind, the song that was played was his own. The bride had chosen it especially. She said it was that song that had made her fall in love with him. Of course it had been. At this point it was the nine hundred and forty-seventh best love song in the world.

The fact was, the boy didn’t like the song very much. No matter how much it was digitally remastered, or re-remastered, he heard it for what it was. A melange of other people’s songs that had just got lucky. There was love in it, and it was
his
love, but it wasn’t the love it pretended to be—a love for the love that others feel is still a borrowed love, it’s no love at all. The boy knew he had to find within his heart some passion that was sincere. He dedicated himself to his wife. He knew that she loved him, and that ought to make him love her—but was it really a love strong enough to produce a good tune? He worked on it. He studied her from every angle. He’d adore the nape of her neck, he’d delight in the kink of her nose. He taught himself to feel ecstasies over the little jokes she made he knew really weren’t that funny at all. And at last he thought the preparation was over. He wrote a new song. He read it back critically. He prised it apart, put it back together, tweaked the chorus, softened the guitars a bit. He thought about destroying it. He was all set to tear it up. And then he realized how much it would hurt him, to lose even one note of it. It was finished, his second attempt at love. His previous effort was now ranked at nine hundred and seventy-four.

As a composer in the top thousand, he could bypass the usual registration process. He didn’t have to queue. He could come to the city with his post office form and his sheet music, and no matter how busy the office, the doors of the cubicles would be flung open wide for him. “Hello, sir!” said the clerk, “and welcome!” The clerk fed the new song into the computer. The computer whirred, but it didn’t ping, it grunted. “Oh!” said the clerk, checking his readout, much surprised. “Better luck next time.” And took the song from the feeder tray, and shredded it before the young composer’s eyes.

Maybe his love had been too clean, he hadn’t fought hard enough for it. He began to have affairs. Nothing major at first, just the odd grope with likely looking women in the back of pubs; he was no longer hailed as a genius, but telling a pretty girl he’d written the nine hundred and eighty-second greatest love song was always an icebreaker notwithstanding. Seeking further inspiration, he moved on to afternoon trysts, and then evening trysts, and then weekend trysts. A five-day fling with identical blonde twins provoked him to compose a full seven and a half minute ballad. The computer rejected it, as it did all his other songs. The doors of the registration office were still flung open wide to him, but with markedly less enthusiasm. His wife left him. She said that she no longer knew him. She said that maybe she never had. He wrote a song about how that made him feel. The computer didn’t care. His daddy died. Quite unexpectedly of a heart attack, there was no warning. His mummy, who had never raised a voice to him, who had bought him a radio and made him tuna sandwiches, told him that his father had been so appalled by the way he’d treated his wife that the shame had killed him. The composer cried for days. He wept it all out into a new song. The computer barely gave it a blip, let alone the much-sought ping. The clerk studied the readout and said, yes, the computer could see that the composer in question was upset, and it offered him its condolences. But that didn’t mean he’d written a good song.