by Glenn Myers
Nope
Leopold was pacing up and down the habitat and pulling on a cigarette when I turned up.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘I just had breakfast and then I came over.’
‘Didn’t the girls pass on my message?’
‘Yes, so I thought I’d better have a specially relaxing and calm breakfast.’
‘What about your morning worship?’
‘Oh that. Sorry. Forgot.’
‘Fantastic. Marvellous. I’m getting ready for my biggest day for 200 years and people are strolling in at half-past ten in the morning.’ He had one cigarette in his mouth but started lighting another. ‘I just don’t know how we’re going to do it. Gaston says, “no, no, it’ll all be fine” but Gaston isn’t at the coal face. Gaston is busy at all the parties.’
‘How’s Keziah?’
‘I’ve been digging up memories all yesterday and all night. Nothing. She’s filing them. The cow. Twice I’ve had to go and dig up some more and I’m going to have to go again.’
‘What will you do if she doesn’t, you know, yield?’
‘She’s bound to. Nobody can take that kind of pounding. Simple mathematics.’
‘The Toad might have thought differently,’ I said.
‘Look,’ said Leopold, with such venom that his Komodo-dragon forked tongue sprang out of his mouth and his chin went scaly. He twitched like one garrotted, then fixed his eye on me. This eye turned from grey to yellow and back to grey again. ‘Animal training is what I do. Extensive research shows that everyone has a breaking point, somewhere between 1.9 and 2.6 days.’
‘Including Keziah?’
‘Now we’ve got rid of the snake. Yes. Simple laws of the Omniverse.’
‘Where is the snake by the way?’
‘Same place he was. Muttering to himself. Screaming occasionally. No, Keziah will break easily enough. It’s a kind of physical law, like digging up a tree root. It just takes time and effort. My time and effort. Which I haven’t got much of.’ Leopold threw both cigarettes on the floor, stamped them out, looked at them, sighed, and lit two more. ‘Now. Oh Jamie, we’ve got such a list of things to do. We can’t possibly get through them all. I don’t know how we’re going to be ready.’
‘Tell me your list,’ I said.
‘Build up your patchwork god,’ said Leopold. ‘Get it to a final form. Add to, and tidy this part of the habitat. Get Keziah to build her patchwork god—that’ll have to wait, obviously. Figure out exactly what you and Keziah will be doing in your performance in front of all these Powers. Hold a dress rehearsal. Rehearse some model answers for the question session afterwards. Tell them about the Three Spiritual Laws, how they make sense for you and provide a framework for all of life.’
‘Leopold,’ I said. ‘If we cooperate and come through this, what will happen to us?’
‘As far as we’re concerned,’—Leopold puffed on his cigarettes and avoided my gaze—‘it’s an ongoing experiment, which means we should keep your paradise going.’
‘What if it fails?’
‘Mockery and humiliation. Then the accountants move in, and find that our liabilities are enormous and assets are a joke. So that’s the end of my career, and the end of my home. We sell ourselves in slavery to one of our creditors. Or flee somewhere so horrible that even debt-collectors won’t follow us. All of that is assuming the Toad is in an unusually good mood. If he isn’t, we’ll enjoy some torture and corrective punishment first.’
‘No, I mean Keziah and me?’
‘You two? Oh, it’ll be entertaining for a while, I suppose. Some variation on being fought over, toyed with, mocked and dismembered.’
‘Blast the doctors!’ I said suddenly. ‘Blast and curse all doctors! Why can’t they get their act together? Don’t they know I could die up here?’
‘You’re still hoping you can get back to your body? Jamie, I wouldn’t.’
‘You haven’t seen my body,’ I said. ‘Greek gods would fight over it.’
‘Greek gods will fight over anything. That’s how they lost their empire. That and the sex-with-mortals fiasco.’
‘The point is, Leopold, I want to go home.’
Leopold looked over at me, ceasing his manic pacing as if struck by a fresh thought. ‘You don’t get it, do you? Suppose it’s true. Suppose you do go back to your body. What then? A few decades, then it’s over. And you’re back with us, Jamie.’
‘Either way I come to you?’
‘Or to my kind. Yes, and they devour you.’
‘How does anybody cope with this? How do you cope? How do we stop going mad like Stub over there?’ The pile of Adamantine that encased the snake was just visible in the woodland, moving up and down jerkily.
Leopold looked at me oddly, as if we weren’t quite two separate species, the master and his dog. Just two lost souls. ‘You have to manage as best you can, don’t you? Keep on the fairground and hope the music doesn’t stop.’
I blew some air out of my cheeks. ‘What do you want me to do first?’
‘Finish off your patchwork god. Then at least we’ve got one done. I’ve got to go back again to Keziah’s memory.’
‘Her memories,’ I said. ‘What are they?’
‘Oh, they’re good,’ said Leopold with relish. ‘She’s a garden of delights, that girl. A Paradise. Her mother’s the presiding genius, so murderous, so cold. Her dad’s depression makes her almost like an orphan. The abuse at school sets it all alight. Her rejection of her sister marinates everything in self-hate. Cook that for years in a boiling temper… she’s a culinary masterpiece. You can go down there and completely forget yourself. Which would be fine except I have so much else to do.’
‘While Gaston parties.’
‘He is not partying. He is engaged in extremely important high-level strategic networking.’
‘Why don’t you get help?’
Leopold sighed. ‘Because everyone wants their cut,’ he said. ‘Or they’re spies for someone else… So anyway, see what mental torture you’ve avoided by being compliant. Now go and finish your god and at least that’ll be one thing done.’
It wasn’t hard to finish off my god, practice the worship routine, tidy the habitat. I did that and still Leopold wasn’t back. So I thought I’d try an experiment.
I sat on the woodland floor, my back to a tree trunk, my eyes closed. I tried to relax. This Miss Bright and Jonah commute, apparently. Why can’t I?
I thought of myself tumbling from the habitat to my body. Don’t imagine it, I said to myself. Just do it. Just go. You’re tangled up with your body still. Lizzie’s voice has called you back. Now just go back.
Nothing.
Even that view, I thought to myself, of body in one place, spirit in another, memory-landscape in a third, is a simplification. Everything is tangled together. I’m one. I’m still one.
Come on. Oh, come on.
A whooshing sound in my ears. I jerked into a different position, lying flat on my back, eyes closed. Good grief.
Then I drifted out again.
Come on. Get back in. Come on. Do what you just did.
Whoosh. Another moment in my body: I trapped in a spider’s web of tubes and wires. My breathing was gentle and shallow, a susurration. A slight nasal honk also.
I sensed people around me; the heat of a lamp in my face; tension in the air. I felt something scratching at my head.
I heard a single word, irritated: ‘Nope.’
Nope, I thought. What you do mean, nope? Try harder. What are you paid for? You weren’t put on this earth to say ‘Nope’. But I lost concentration and out drifted my spirit again, up and out. The whooshing sound (my blood in my ears?) disappeared.
Again I concentrated hard, squeezing and forcing my spirit back into my body. Again there was the flapping, pushing, the sudden falling into place, the whooshing noise (I’d forgotten how noisy bodies were), the sense of being back. More digging and scratching at my head.
As I soon as I lifted my
concentration for a single moment, out I popped again. It was like trying to hold down a float in the swimming pool: one tiny movement, out I flopped.
‘It won’t work,’ sneered Gaston, making me jump.
I opened my eyes onto his fat face and his rat’s-tail moustache. He was wearing jodhpurs and carrying a whip.
‘I could see what you were trying to do because your spirit was fading out and back in front of my eyes. Your head’s too smashed up. It’s like trying to pour a liquid back into a broken bottle. You won’t get out that way, Smith.’
‘What do you suggest, O my Overlord Gaston?’
‘You’ve always had the right idea, Smith. Same as we all do. Cut the best bargains you can with the exploiters around you. Exploit all those below you. Best key to long-term survival.’
He coughed, looked around.
‘Look, I’ve just popped back for a minute. I thought it might be in all our interests if you went to see the Mordant woman and had a little chat. Does she really know that all she has to do is pretend? It’s like acting. She doesn’t have to mean it. We could make it worth her while.’
‘What do you mean, “worth her while?” I thought you were going to keep us in Paradise indefinitely? “Follow the spirits, find happiness.”’
‘Oh absolutely,’ Gaston harrumphed. ‘Absolutely. No question. But this would completely secure it going forward.’
‘I’ll go over if you like,’ I said. ‘Is Leopold—’
‘The Lord Leopold is at Mordant’s memory storage. He’s having to excavate quite deep. You probably won’t need to mention this little trip to him. He doesn’t always like me helping him out in his particular bit of the work.’
He flew away, giving himself a little smack with the whip to go faster.
I considered for a moment. It would be good to see Keziah. Better take a peace offering though. I could walk through the forest and pick some mushrooms on the way. Yes. With a little thought I created Keziah’s trug.
The trug had quite a collection of mushrooms by the time I reached the entrance marked GIRLS in the wall of the Hotel Splendide’s swimming pool. For good measure I magicked up a large bunch of flowers and an ebony slab of dark chocolate, 70% proof, and put those in the trug as well.
I phoned her up.
‘Jamie,’ she said, briskly. She sounded quite busy.
‘Hello Keziah, can I come in? I’m just outside. I won’t if it isn’t convenient.’
‘Hang on a second. I’ve just got to—’
There was a long pause before she came back to the phone. ‘Just push the door,’ she said. I turned the wrought-iron door handle, and opened the door onto Keziah’s world.
The wind was whipping rain into my face. I was standing on a mountain plateau. Down a gentle slope from me, volcanoes were erupting. Keziah herself was standing perhaps half a kilometre away, between me and the volcanoes. It was bleak. She gave me a hasty wave and I started walking towards her.
All around was rocks, rubble and ash. Small rivers ran off to either side, and another stream ran over my path down towards Keziah and beyond that to the volcanoes. Behind me, I was vaguely aware of some buildings.
Keziah was looking upward and as I walked, I saw a blob like a giant fish-egg falling gently out of the grey sky. It was the size of a small house. Inside its shiny surface I could make out giant figures arguing. It dropped lugubriously right onto Keziah’s head, and enveloped her.
I kept walking, a protective arm over the trug to stop the flowers and mushrooms being battered by the elements. The fish-egg sat on the scree, completely hiding the little lawyer. Suddenly, she burst out, back first, wiping slime off her body. A kind of goo started oozing out of the hole she’d made. This goo fizzed when it met the rocks. The fish-egg, like a tent being taken down, started to lose its shape.
As I watched, I saw Keziah kicking and pushing and half-rolling the collapsing fish-egg down the gentle slope. Goo was bubbling and pouring out now, sinking into the scree.
By the time I got within range of Keziah the fish-egg had drained itself among the rocks and stones. Keziah looked like someone in big need of a shower.
I added a hot towel to the pile of things I was carrying, plus some girly handkerchiefs.
‘You might need these,’ I yelled above the wind as I reached her. Her hair was matted. She was fighting for breath.
‘Get behind the rock!’ she shouted, cupping her hands to be heard over the howling wind. ‘When that stuff from the bubble seeps into the earth, the volcanoes explode and the earth moves.’ She wiped her dripping face with the towel.
‘Oh right,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the—’
I didn’t finish the sentence because of the explosion. It had two parts, a crack and a boom. The crack lifted everything, including many of the rocks, two feet into the air. The boom gave you time to land.
‘That was the first one,’ she said. ‘There’ll be a couple more. Then watch out for flying rocks and dust.’
‘This is—’ I started, but was silenced by the kind of explosion that knocks out birds in flight. Barely had that finished echoing between the mountains than another joined it.
‘Just be ready to jump if a big rock falls,’ she said, looking up. A patter of dust and small pebbles fell on us.
‘Ow,’ I said.
‘They don’t count as big unless they make a dent in your head.’ She scanned the sky again. ‘Good. Now we’ve got another couple of minutes till the next one. They’re coming a bit slower. I think they’re running out of the best memories.’
‘Leopold’s gone to fetch some more,’ I said.
‘For all the good it’ll do him.’
I looked at Keziah. She had a happy intensity about her—full of life.
‘I brought you some presents, though they’re a bit of a disaster.’ I pulled out the sorry-looking bunch of flowers.
‘Mushrooms,’ she said, rummaging in the trug. ‘Wonderful.’ She popped a handful in, and resting her back against the rock next to mine, closed her eyes. I watched her.
‘You’ve been crying,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well, have a lifetime of your worst memories pass in front of you and you’d cry. It’s OK though.’
‘They don’t seem to be winning, Gaston and Leopold.’
‘No,’ she said, eyes still closed, ‘they’re not.’ She recovered more breath and looked at me. ‘This landscape. It’s what I’ve been seeing in my dreams. It absorbs the memories. I hardly have to remodel it now at all.’
‘And?’
‘The landscape is me. I’ve never seen it all before, laid out like this. It’s horrible, but it’s me, and I can see it all.’
‘That’s a comfort?’
‘Better than crying in the darkness. So it’s OK. What about you?’
‘Well, I’ve built my god and everything’s ready. Gaston and Leopold are panicking at the lack of you.’
‘Tough,’ said Keziah.
‘Gaston’s sent me to persuade you to come over. He doesn’t trust Leopold. Meanwhile Leopold’s taken to smoking two ciggies at once. And I’ve been trying to get back to my body. I can get in, but I can’t stay in.’
‘I’ve got to keep an eye on that memory,’ Keziah said, looking up. ‘When it falls, jump out of the way.’ She took another mushroom. ‘These are great. Thank you.’
‘In the hospital, they’re operating on my brain. Right now. Some kind of last-ditch thing. I don’t think it’s going well. I heard one of the surgeons say, “Nope”.’
‘It’s just about to fall,’ said Keziah. ‘Can you make sure the trug is OK? I don’t want to lose the mushrooms.’ I did as asked, and moved to safety while Keziah dealt with another falling memory. After it too had rolled down the slope, fizzing and collapsing, she returned to the shelter of the rock. The rock was now dripping with the slime from the burst memory.
We paused while the volcanoes exploded.
‘Big volcanoes,’ I said.
‘The scree
is the damage done to me,’ said Keziah. ‘The volcanoes are what I do to myself.’
I stiffened. Touchy-feely.
‘I thought I could ask them to stop torturing you,’ I said. ‘I could say, “If you give her a night’s rest, I might be able to persuade her in the morning.” It would at least give you some respite.’
‘That’s kind,’ she said. ‘I’m OK though.’
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘Not when I’m having brain surgery evidently and the surgeon is saying “nope” all the time. Why can’t he be saying, “Yo!”? Why can’t he be high-fiving the nurses? Why can’t he be saying, “O Yes!”?’
‘It could be all sorts of reasons. A nurse could have asked him, “Would you like a cup of tea?”’
‘It wasn’t that kind of “nope”. It was the it’s-all-going-pear-shaped sort of “nope”. It was a tomorrow-I-quit-brain-surgery “nope”. Anyway,’ I continued bleakly, ‘I think it’s going to finish for all of us tomorrow.’
‘Good,’ said Keziah.
We paused and I moved while Keziah dealt with another memory. ‘What you are you planning to do?’ she asked when she returned, shaking goo from her hands.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Perform on my own, I suppose. Spin everything out. Hope against hope.’
‘Yes,’ said Keziah.
‘You’ve never gone back to your body, have you? Not even in your dreams.’
‘Never,’ said Keziah.
‘Don’t you want to?’
‘Not really. So much going on in my head all the time. I was sick of fighting it.’
‘Sad.’
‘Yes. There is one thing I would like to do, though,’ she continued, dropping another small handful of mushrooms in her mouth. ‘Before it all ends. You won’t like it. I’d like to show you around.’
‘Me?’
‘You’re all there is,’ said Keziah, with a little smile. ‘I don’t ask you to understand this Jamie but it’s empowering to explain this landscape to someone. Even you. Perhaps especially you.’
I scratched my eyebrow. Here was something I could do, at least.
‘I could come tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘I could tell them that I would make one last attempt to persuade you.’
‘I would like that.’
‘I’m assuming that you won’t be coming to perform… I figured you wouldn’t.’
‘Do you mind?’ she asked.
‘No. I feel bad that I didn’t defend you or anything. I meant to. Sorry.’
‘I have a bit of debt to you as well,’ said Keziah.
That’s true, I thought.
‘Can I bring you anything tomorrow?’ I asked. ‘Mushrooms on toast? I could bring a breakfast tray.’
Above us, another fat memory wobbled down from the sky.
I walked back through the forest and collected another basket of mushrooms, ready for the next day. I called up Total Javascript, gave it a head and a beak, and got it to carry the trug to the lighthouse. Then I returned to the clearing. Leopold was back and was eager to know where I’d been. I explained, omitting the part about Gaston sending me.
‘Do you think she might come over?’ he asked.
‘You never know. I might have one last effort at persuading her tomorrow. Another night of torture might soften her up.’
‘Our exhibition doesn’t start until the afternoon,’ mused Leopold. ‘You know how quickly things can get done here. Even if she isn’t at breaking point until tomorrow morning, there’s still time for her to assemble a patchwork god, and for you and she to put together a simple performance, and for all the Powers to be astonished by our ideas. Just.’
‘I think I’m ready,’ I said. ‘I’ve completed my patchwork god, I’ve tidied up the habitat, I’ve practiced a worship routine.’
‘Excellent,’ said Leopold. ‘What we’ll do on the day is, Gaston’ll be narrating. He’ll introduce me and I’ll get you and Keziah each to do your worship routines. Just be simple and slow and steady. No need to be nervous.
‘Then, you can cook and Keziah can do the garden while I describe your life together. You and Keziah can have a happy meal outside, where everyone can see. No time for much more than the house and the worship now, but I still think it’ll be OK. We can tell them we were rushed.
‘Finally there’ll be a question time. What you’ve got to get across is just a few main points. First, that you’re just an ordinary person, typical of millions. Second, that though your life was materially full, it was spiritually empty. Third, the teaching that you had a spiritual component as well as a material was a real revelation as well as making a huge amount of sense. Fourth, following your spirit guides and making a patchwork god was a perfect combination of art, relaxation, spirituality, and rediscovery of meaning. It gave you an edge in the quest for happiness. You could see it becoming a lifestyle choice for millions. You got all that?’
‘I’ll work on it.’
‘Do… and Jamie—’
‘What?’
‘I like to think we’ve got closer over the time we’ve been working together. You know, not so much pet and owner as friends.’
‘Definitely,’ I lied.
‘Whatever happens,’ he said. ‘I’ve enjoyed working with you.’ He squeezed my shoulder; I tried not to shudder.
‘Thank you,’ I replied.
Time for a party at the lighthouse for the figments and me. Bob Dylan as DJ. Really loud music. I encouraged Bob to dig up some of the most pained Blues ever written: Elmore James, Billie at her lowest. Loads of high-fat, high salt, high MSG, high-everything party snacks. Fire banked up; lighthouse pulsing with agonized music and the beam of light sending erratic messages in Morse to any passing ships: woke up this mornin’… decided to sink… get down to the bottom… that’s what I think. Of course there weren’t any passing ships. No time now to create the Titanic or the Lusitania, fun though it would have been.
The party ended with Annie having excused herself and gone to bed, Bob Dylan having packed up his kit and gone home (‘it’s late, man’), and Mel asleep on the sofa, face down, occasionally twitching with kick-boxing moves or shouting ‘penalty corner, steady girls’.
Caroline and I were sitting on the floor, backs to my wonderful gross white leather male-ish reclining armchair, next to the dying fire. Caroline was resting her head on my shoulder. She was slightly too tall for this to be entirely comfortable, but I was enduring the pressure of her boney head with manly fortitude.
I was feeling like Lizzie does when she’s allowed people to put gin in her cocktails: so mellow I was putrifying. The end of all things was coming.
‘Do you know what I fancy?’ I asked Caroline, ‘a fry-up.’
Caroline opened a sleepy eye.
‘Ugh,’ she said.
‘I fancy some of those mushrooms,’ I said. ‘I fancy wickedly and rebelliously eating some mushrooms.’
‘Umm.’
‘Obviously, if you’re having a fry-up, no point in having half a fry-up. That’s against the whole fry-up religion. You’ve got to invite the whole fridge. Tomatoes. Onion, eggs, they’ve got to come. Spot of pepperoni. Old potatoes. The odd sausage, maybe. I could be persuaded. OK, you’ve persuaded me.’
‘Hngrgh,’ said Caroline, yawning and tucking herself against me. The ideal girl for tucking herself against people would be a foot smaller than Caroline and a little more generous in the upholstered sections. Watching Caroline tuck herself against me was like watching someone trying to get flat-pack furniture back in the box, but still.
‘… Obviously, a spot of Worcester sauce and a dash of hot pepper sauce. You know the kind of thing… I’m happy to go do it myself, of course, but someone has to watch the fire go down.’
Caroline was asleep.
I sighed and gently moved myself away, still letting Caroline’s head rest against my arm. With a moment’s thought, I created a giant sleeping gorilla and carefully swapped places with it. Caroline snuggled herself against th
e hairy form and they both grunted happily.
I trod down the stairs into the kitchen, set some oil sizzling in the wok, threw in various things from the vegetable store and fridge. The mushrooms were on the table. With a slightly naughty thrill, I took a handful, brushed off the dirt, sliced them, and dropped them in the wok.
All the partying had left me hungry so when the fry-up was done I tipped the whole thing into a baguette. Then I wrapped the baguette in a napkin, tucked it under my arm, climbed the stairs past the sleeping girls and the sleeping gorilla, up to the lighthouse balcony. It was cold. The skies were clear and growing pale. As an extra touch I posted bright Venus and tiny Mercury so that they flickered above the horizon, waiting for the sun.
Perhaps this was my last night either on earth or in ‘paradise’.
I unwrapped the baguette and examined it: magic psychedelic mushrooms. They didn’t seem to have harmed Keziah—quite the opposite. I took a bite. Nothing happened. Nothing except a soft note of sadness sounded distantly in my heart, like the church bells of a long-drowned village.
A scatter of seagulls flew cawing round the lighthouse and out of my sight. Total Javascript, I noticed, had joined the flock. It looked damp, scuffed and happy. I took another thoughtful bite while the sky turned into that light emerald that you see when it’s shaping towards another dawn.
Slowly, quietly, I felt sadness creeping over my heart. It widened, steady and deep, over a few moments, like a tide filling a bay. It was so gentle and so relentless it became almost unbearable.
I stopped eating the sandwich.
It wasn’t a bitter sadness. It was soft and kindly. There was just so much of it, and it was so desperately sad, and it kept oozing in. All the friends I’d never see again, the family I’d never visit again. The bread I’d never make again, for goodness’ sake. Everything rolled in. All the Christmases of childhood that had promised so much and never quite delivered and had gone again. Childhood itself. This is getting schlocky, I thought desperately. It didn’t stop. All the delighted teasing looks of gorgeous girls, gone forever. All the crisp winter’s days, crackling fires—stop it! Stop it at once!
It was, I suddenly understood, like I was in the shade of a blazing happiness, in the negative field of sweet sadness that always surrounds the happiness to make the universe equal. The sadness was the taste of a near miss with Joy.
It slowly ebbed away.
So much for Leopold’s theories. Happiness isn’t rare. We’re just not at the right party.
I threw the rest of the sandwich over the railings and blew my nose and wiped my face and went to bed.
In my sleep, I went back to the Dome, and all was quiet, and the lights were off.