Watson, Ian - Novel 10 (3 page)

 
          
Back
in the audience people were scrambling and shouting and crashing into each
other. Mayor Barnes jumped up, knocking his own chair over. Leaping down from
the dais, he knelt beside the poet, looking appalled. Dr Menotti joined him.
Resnick rose too, and began oscillating back and forth on the platform in
indecision. Alice Huron started to weep. The woman dragged her hair over her
face like some ancient mourner. In full view of everyone she wept privately, as
though her tears could wash away what had just happened. But no one was
noticing her except for Jim. Somehow, she noticed Jim’s eyes upon her. Abruptly
she calmed, seeming to freeze her feelings, and directed a quick look of hatred
at him for what he had seen.

 
          
Breaking
Marta’s grip as gently as he could, Jim scrambled to his feet. He took a few
steps towards the murderer. But what should he do? Strike him to the ground?
Pinion him? The murderer stood passively. While the murderer waited and Jim
hesitated, two Peace Officers arrived and an attendant from the House ran over.
These three men positioned themselves around the killer like chess pieces
checking yet unable to capture the king. Jim bent and retrieved the gun. Its
touch felt utterly strange, as though it had fallen from the stars. He handed
it to one of the officers, who quickly hid it in his pocket.

 
          
A
news gatherer was moving in now, filming the face of the killer — which was
like a starving animal’s, thin and worn. It wore an expression of impassive
despair — of a prey cornered by a predator. Yet the eyes were still looking for
some exit. They hunted for some crack to slip through — but not for a crack in
the real world, since no such crack existed. They looked for a crack in the
order of things itself, as though the act of killing had been a magical
gesture, a conjuration which might call up some rescuing demon out of a sudden
hole in the ground. The murderer was in his fifties, and nearly bald: he was a
field gone sterile. What little hair he had was grey. He wore one of the yellow
tunics of a resident in the House of Death.

 
          
As
the TV man moved right up to him, he addressed the camera:

 
          
“There
goes he,

           
Instead of me,”

           
said
the
killer wryly.

 
          
“You
see, I can make up poems too.”

 
          
“Stop
filming!” Resnick shouted from the dais. “Stop recording!”

 
          
The
news gatherer obediently switched off his camera. However, his colleague round
on the other side of the dais had not heard and continued to film the sprawled
body of the poet. The newsman was like a simple robot which could not tell when
the task set it had become grossly inappropriate. Noticing, and cursing,
Resnick dealt with him too.

 
          
Presently,
touching the killer as little as possible — as though he was red-hot or
radioactive — the two officers and the attendant shepherded him away in the
direction of the House.

 
          
Jim
rejoined Marta. She was on her hands and knees. Someone must have knocked her
over and now — too shocked to stand up on her own — she needed the support of
all four limbs. She seemed to be hunting for something lost in the grass — her
beliefs?

 
          
Offering
her his hand, Jim hauled her up and supported her.

 
          
“I
guess,” gasped Marta, “we won’t get out to the lake this evening. * * She
concentrated on this disappointment, rather than on the grotesque scene which
the celebration had become. This clearly restored a certain sense of reality to
her, since what had happened had been quite unreal.

 
          
She
smiled coaxingly.

 
          
“I’d
better show you your rooms in the House.” She squeezed Jim’s hand.

 
          
“Well,
I’ll be —!” thought Jim. Did she want him to make love to her, to burn out the
awful experience? He knew that death was a kind of lover to some women. But
what had happened here this afternoon had been an act of rape . . .

 
          
After collecting his
valise from the
runabout, Jim walked back with Marta to the stone bridge over the moat. Twin
sculptures flanked the way across: aluminium-winged butterflies a couple of
feet high, mounted on white marble hourglasses. Gusts of wind set these
butterflies rotating like the turnstiles of an auto-shop.

 
          
Following
the ceremony of honour, the poet ought to have crossed this same bridge to
separate himself from life in Egremont, and presently — in days or weeks, at
the discretion of Alice Huron and his own inner promptings — from life itself.
Right now the two metal butterflies looked like great sharp spinning knives to
Jim. The murder had contaminated everything precious.

 
          
The
glass doors whispered apart, and they entered a crowded foyer. At least a score
of residents had gathered here. Voices were raised, some shrill and fearful,
others angry and complaining. The whole death sequence of these clients had
been set back. But at least they had taken refuge in the House, and an
attendant and a guide were doing their best to soothe the situation.

 
          
Marta
hurried Jim through the small crowd and led him along to the elevator core.
They rose up to the twelfth tier.

 
          
This
high up the pyramid there was space for just four staff apartments, one at each
point of the compass. Jim’s new home faced west. As Marta held the door open
for him, the westering sun was flooding through the canted glass louvres,
dappling the local pine furnishings with shadows of yucca, holly, firethofn and
fuchsia that grew outside on the balcony. Perspex privacy baffles stood at the
north- and south-west corners of this balcony, and through the aerial garden
was a view of distant suburbs fading into farmland.

 
          
The
lounge opened on to a bedroom with white Venetian blinds. Jim dumped his bag on
the bed. Returning to the lounge, he switched on the TV set.

 
          
Mayor
Barnes stood addressing the camera. To judge by a backdrop of slanted glass
and rose bushes with white blooms, he was being filmed elsewhere in the House.

 
          
Barnes?
Had Resnick made a fool of himself by shouting at the news gatherers? True, the
electronic news would have been subject to a thirty second delay loop for
better editing before transmission — though the first vivid, blood-stained
images of the poet crashing back on to the turf would have gone out as filmed;
everyone had been struck dumb, to begin with.

 
          
Barnes
looked quietly composed.

 
          
“.
. . but we must not simply grieve at the manner in which Norman Harper has been
cheated of his own good death. I believe that Norman would have wished us all
to
rededicate
ourselves to the ideals
represented by these Houses — especially if we hail from the unreconstructed
era when a person’s death had no place in the social system but was something
outside of it, something alien. If we suspect that we are polluted by the false
programming of the old days — if we feel a mad ambition in ourselves to be
frozen, or reincarnated, or translated on to some astral plane to avoid the
truth of our life’s end — why don’t we all visit our local House of Death to
discover the beauty of dying at the proper time? Why don’t we sign on for a
seminar? The Houses are places of detachment, yes indeed — but they are not
outside of the community. In a real sense they are its heart. The dying
are
often happy to share their experiences ...”

 
          
‘More
work,’ thought Jim wryly: more open-house seminars for the public, in addition
to the school and TV presentations.
Conducted discreetly, of
course.
Sensitively.
Without
infringing the right to privacy of any of the clients.
But still, more
work . . .

 
          
Mentally,
he rapped himself over the knuckles for pride and selfishness.

 
          
“The
alternative is to harbour
murder
in
one’s bosom — and we’ve seen what comes of that today. The person who denies
death is someone who mentally destroys the world for others. As Norman Harper
wrote elsewhere in his
Book of Death
,
‘
You
should go gently into that good night . . .’ ”

 
          
“I
told you he could be a guide,” said Marta.

 
          
“He’s
using the event.”

 
          
“On
the contrary, he’s
defusing
it. He’s
preventing a domino effect. Don’t you realize how dangerous this is? It’s the
first violence there’s been on any screen for years! How many kids have had
their feelings scrambled by what they saw today? And how about all the poor,
disturbed people who have trouble adjusting in any case? It was a direct attack
on . . . everything.”

 
          
“Do
you think it was planned as such?”

 
          
“Of course not.”

 
          
“In
that case, you’re exaggerating. A few people still do murder other people. It
happens in the cities, you know. The murder rate is very, very low, and
falling. But it isn’t zero.”

 
          
“And
it
never
should be news. Not one
single killing should be news.”

 
          
Jim
shrugged. “This one is.”

 
          
Marta
moved closer to him, and touched his arm.

 
          
He
said gently, “I can’t banish this from you, you know? I’d be taking the place
of Death, if I tried. But Death
isn’t
anyone — neither seducer, nor executioner.”

 
          
She
drew back suddenly.

 
          
“That
may be your interpretation of my feelings. I find it rather insulting.”

 
          
“Even
so, it’s what you feel.”

 
          
She
looked down at the yellow and brown carpet-tiles.

 
          
“You’re
a clever guide,” she said. “Perceptive. I guess you must have helped one or two
women clients in your time — by proving that the Seducer is only human?
Anyhow,” she rushed on, not wanting to hear the answer, “what did you mean by
muttering ‘doggerel’ in the middle of
Norman
’s poem?”

 
          
“Nothing, really.”

 
          
“No,
tell me.”

 
          
Jim
realized that Marta had achieved a hold over him — an option on his private
feelings — which was unfortunate on such brief acquaintance, though it was
partly his own fault. It was as though the gunshots had briefly stripped them
both naked to each other; and now they remembered each other’s nakedness.

 
          
“It’s
just that so many valuable things
did
spring from our death anxieties in the past.
So much
philosophy.
So much art.”

 
          
“Therefore
Norman
’s poetry isn’t really art, because he
wasn’t anxious? What an ambivalent character you are!”

 
          
“Do
you mean ‘two-faced’? You have to identify with the people you guide, before
they can identify with you.
Even when they’re angry or
hostile to start with.
Even when they’re just
protesting.
. . at the general lack of protest.”

 
          
“Why
did they
really
transfer you here
from Gracchus?”

 
          
Jim
was saved from answering her by the warble of the telephone. As Jim switched
off the TV set, Mayor Barnes disappeared into a point of light which vanished,
just as Mayor Barnes and everyone else would when they died . . .

 
          
Jim
put the phone down.

 
          
“That
was Resnick.”

 
          
“So
I gathered.”

 
          
“I’m
to see him in half an hour. Apparently he wants me to guide the killer —
because I’m uninvolved. I’m not of Egremont. So I won’t feel any personal
bitterness. I guess that answers your question, Marta. They transferred me
here from Gracchus so that I could guide Norman Harper’s murderer.”

 
          
He
consulted his watch. If Marta still nursed the desires that he suspected, they
were not to be fulfilled this afternoon . . .

 
          
“How
very ironic you can be,” she said.

 
          
The
greater irony, he thought, was that his own brief earlier fantasy of guiding
Norman Harper had come true so suddenly, yet at one hideous remove.

 
          
Jim
walked to the door as though to open it for Marta. Once there, he merely stood
and patted its frame. He felt possessed by an imp of the perverse.

 
          
“I
wonder if Death’s doorway will let me pass when my time comes?” he asked her,
darkly. “Or might I get stuck in it?
Halfway in and half-way
out?
Perhaps the old legends of Zombies are really based on people who
get stuck in that doorway. Their conscious mind has gone through, but the
automatic mind is left on our side, still running the body — how about that?”

 
          
Surprisingly,
she joined in his humour.

 
          
“So
the freezer freaks are zombies on ice — now there’s an idea!”

 
          
“I
sometimes wonder if we guides are not the new
immortals?
Deep down in our minds, I mean. We see everyone else on their way. But we stay
here: the privileged door-keepers.”

 
          
She
shook her head firmly. “We have our time and season too. Without
that
, we’d be . . . well, we’d be . . .”

 
          
“We’d
be executioners, if.
we
didn’t retire when that
sixtieth year comes round.’’

 
          
“And
even sooner sometimes ...”

 
          
“Oh
yes, if a guide gets saturated with the seductive beauty of dying.”

 
          
“I
don’t quite understand you, Jim — but I hope we’re going to be good colleagues,
and friends.”

 
          
Jim
chuckled.
“To every guide, his own personal touch.
Or hers.
Mine may be humour, for those who need humour. It
may even be farce! It’s an approach that can work wonders with some people.
There are some clients who hate to be contemplative about their demise.”

 
          
“They
can be
shown.”

 
          
“They
still think it’s sanctimonious. And other people are actually scared. For them,
a joke can be a fine nerve tonic. What did William Blake say? ‘Mirth braces;
bliss relaxes’? Well, if he didn’t, he ought to have. He died laughing, didn’t
he? Or was it singing? Norman Harper never quite ...”

 
          
“Quite what?”

 
          
“Quite
wrote poetry like Blake.”

 
          
“
Norman
wrote for an audience of real people, not
for his own fevered, mystical brain.” Marta placed her hands on her hips
defiantly. “I wish you joy of cracking jokes with his killer!” Yet she stood
thus only for a moment. To Jim it was clear that she couldn’t tolerate harsh
words — least of all her own.

 
          
“You’re
a strange person,” she said quietly, almost caressingly. “Maybe it takes a
strange person to guide someone who did . . . what that creature did today.”