A park in spring. A tree nodding. Robin by a bench. Then Robin climbing onto it.
“—careful dar—” Meena’s happy voice behind the camera.
Robin standing on the bench, giggling. One shot of him from the other side of the path, then another much closer.
“—let me—” Robin’s hand reaching out towards the lens, the fingers huge, unfocused.
Then a shot of the gravel. The dancing spring shadows of the trees. Meena’s voice saying
“—e careful—”
“—now—”
The last shot had drifted somewhere else, got lost in another drawer the way these things always do. But Meena said Don’t. I didn’t need the photograph to hear her voice.
The palms were swaying wildly against the moon when the jeep took us back from town. But there was little wind—we had spent the evening dancing in a lamplit square and we were both very merry, very drunk.
We stumbled around the bedroom in the bungalow, falling over our clothes as we tried to get out of them.
“Today’s the last but one,” Meena said with sudden clarity.
I flopped onto the bed to watch the ceiling revolve.
“It’ll be your turn to leave first,” Meena added, her voice fading off into the bathroom. “Seeing as you arrived here before me.”
I heard the shower running. When she came back out, drying her hair, the room was still spinning. I pretended that I was asleep.
She turned off the light, shuffled and grunted, then started to breathe heavily, her bottom sticking out into my side of the bed. I could see the bright darkness of the jungle out of the window. It all looked pretty and safe. No mosquitoes, no snakes, no spiders. And even if there were any such beasts, they would be charming and eccentric. User-friendly.
There on the shadow-slashed trunk of the nearest tree, the wise-faced monkey gazed down at me. Eventually, I had to get up and close the curtains.
Escape. The lips smiled at me. Treat yourself to the one luxury that money can’t buy. I drove in silence. For once, the Volvo was lost for an appropriate tune. When the automatic gates from the estate failed to open I had to get out and do it manually, battling my way through a sleet of soot and litter. Escape. The voice was loud on the wind. Marius, it called after me. Marius. I climbed back inside and the Volvo slammed the door, getting my mood right for a change. Marius. Marius. Don’t. I froze. But, no, it was just the wind, just my imagination.
Jealousy, I decided, was like one of the pure states of the soul that the mystics used to strive for. All encompassing, it lit your every thought. Like moving underwater, or through another world, things had a different life. I realised that, for a while at least, the photograph had given my life meaning. It had helped me remember the Meena I had loved. She had twirled ahead of me on this pointless trail, flowing in bright ribbons of memory, beautiful and strange as a temple dancer. Meena, my smiling Meena. The Meena that existed only in my head. Somehow, she had led the way.
Robin ran out towards me through the sliding doors at the stasis centre. I scooped him up, gave him a hug.
He asked, “What day is it, Daddy?” He smelled like the place itself, of coffee and polythene.
I had to think. Yes, Wednesday. Another Wednesday. Seemed that poor Robin’s life was a succession of Wednesdays. Face facts; we weren’t good enough for him.
“Let’s go to the park,” I said, taking his hand. “There’s a man there I want you to meet. Or if he’s not there, we could go look for him at Toys R Us.”
Robin stared at me, mittens swinging on their elastic on the ends of his sleeves. Blink, blink. Click, click. He asked, “Was that the man at the gate, Daddy, the one who gave you the talking card?”
I managed a smile. A sweet, bright kid. Was there anything he didn’t notice?
Our last full day together on the island went quickly. The sun was as bright as ever, the beach as white, the sea as warm. But everything was pervaded with the cool melancholy that comes like a wind from nowhere on these occasions. We had planned on going out again on our yacht, but when we walked to the little cove, we found that it had gone, presumably re-allocated to one of the new arrivals. With that discovery came the awkward thought that perhaps we hadn’t been able to afford to keep a yacht for the whole of our holiday, and also of the days that it had been floating unused in the clear water, muttering sea-shanties to its ghostly crew, clocking up a bill that we would perhaps struggle to pay.
Lin came around in the afternoon. Now that I knew the truth, everything about her seemed artificial. Her smiles, her sarongs. And when she went inside our bungalow, I couldn’t help thinking that she was simply checking that we hadn’t broken anything. She asked about Meena’s foot. She asked if we’d had a good time. I sat on the veranda, listening to the sea, hardly bothering to answer. And that night on the beach, we sent the crab-robot into the sea and lit a fire just as we had done on the first night. But the fish was bony and ill-cooked, and afterwards, even Meena didn’t taste the same.
Crab-robots were dismantling the hoarding when I drove back to the flat, crawling over the silent lips like ants on a corpse. I had the tickets to the island lying on the passenger seat, so I guessed the lips had served their purpose, managed at least one sale. Everyone’s at it nowadays, selling things—even the machines. And soon they’ll be better than us, and what the hell are we all going to do then?
Through the dripping car park, the lift wanted a bribe to take me up. In an expansive mood, I gave it what it asked for without haggling. The flat smelled of toast and damp daylight, cheap wine still from the party, cheap living, cheap lives. There was a sound coming from the bedroom. Someone was groaning, going uh, uh, uh.
I stood in the narrow hall, my heart racing, the tickets going damp in my hands. Meena’s voice. Uh, uh. From the bedroom. I felt vindicated—wronged—but at the same time, my mind was a blank. Step by step, a million miles at a time, I walked towards the half-open door.
Meena was lying on the bed under the light of a tropical moon, tangled in her work clothes, her glowing laptop thrown open beside her. She raised her face and looked up at me through streaming tears.
“I thought,” I said. My shoulders slumped. “I don’t know. I just thought.”
“You know what they’ve gone and done, don’t you?” she said.
I stared at her. She was fumbling under her pillow, searching for a tissue, trying to sniff back the tears, embarrassed to be seen this way, even by me, her husband.
“They’ve given me the sack.” She blew her nose. “Say my performance has dropped below...below an acceptable level.” The tropical moon settled in the pool in each of her eyes. “Now where the hell does that leave us, you tell me that, Marius? You tell me that.”
I sat down beside her. I took her hand. My movements were slow and solid. I felt heavy with control.
“It’s alright, my Darling,” I told her.
She looked at me, wanting me to take over, to take care. Here whole face was shining, washed clean. Like an old-fashioned street after some old-fashioned rain, like something from the past.
She began to sob deeply again when I showed her the tickets, and even more so when I told her what I had done. But I sat patiently, gazing at her in the light of a tropical moon, listening to the sound of waves. My Meena. I held her hand. My Meena. She trembled to my touch, but she didn’t push me away. I kissed her face, and she tasted like the waves, of a warm tropical sea laddered by moonlight. Then I told the flat to blank the window, and for once the flat didn’t argue, and it was just the two of us and the darkness and the faint humming that lies at the background of everything, like the turning of a huge machine. My Meena. My heart was thick and slow with gratitude, control, love. My Meena. I took her in my arms, knowing at last that she understood.
Meena was up early on the final morning, putting all her lovely clothes back into their case. It had been so hot—and we’d been so much in love—that she’d had little chance to wear many of them. Would we be able to keep them?
I wondered, watching. When we get back, will we care?
“What are you going to do this afternoon?” I asked Meena after I’d packed my own things. “When you’re alone after my flying boat has gone.”
“It’s only a few hours wait, isn’t it?” she said, pulling out her drawers to check they were empty. “I’ll just wander around the town. I mean, Marius, what did you do on the first day?”
I shrugged. Quite honestly, I couldn’t remember. Inevitably, and for the all the lovely charade at the harbour, you seemed to drift to and away from this island rather than reach it with the solid bump of one moment.
“It’s a nice idea, though, isn’t it,” Meena said, holding up a final blouse. “Arriving and leaving on different flying boats. Makes everything more happy and sad... Look at this.” She fished something from the silk pocket, the photograph she’d found in her case on that very first day. “I’d quite forgotten.”
I nodded. So had I—but now I was standing at the bedroom door. I hated hanging around like this, protracted goodbyes. Although there was still plenty of time, I wanted us to leave the bungalow now, get into the jeep and away.
She held the photograph up to her face. The light from it had a different quality. It was softer, bluer. Her voice said, “—don’t—”
“I wonder how this got here?” she said. “It’s hard to imagine that it was purely an accident. Perhaps it’s some kind of message.”
“—don’t—”
“Yes,” I said. “More likely, we’ll never know.”
“Well, I’ll just wander along the beach for a while. Say my goodbyes,” Meena clicked the catches on her case. “There’s plenty of time yet. You don’t mind waiting here, darling, do you?”
She had wandered off down the steps of the veranda towards the sea before I had time to compose a reply.
The bedroom seemed to close and darken behind her. Ready now for someone else, it shrugged off our traces so easily.
Hearing a sound on the window ledge, I turned. The monkey, sitting there. Somehow, he’d grabbed hold of Meena’s photograph, and was studying it. The strange sunlight shone on his wise, nervous face. “—don’t—” Meena said. Don’t. He just stared. Blink, blink. Click, click. He put the photograph to his mouth, nibbled cautiously at the plastic the way any real monkey would have done. Then he looked at me. A challenging stare, filled with smug knowledge.
Feeling sudden anger, I ran over to him. The monkey was slow, conditioned by our affection and sultanas. I grabbed a thin arm. He was light. He didn’t struggle, but went stiff with fear—or more likely, was conserving battery power for a sudden burst of speed.
Right. I spreadeagled him with my hands on the pine floor. Right. I was sick of being watched, analysed. The sliver eyes blinked. I stared into them, seeing though and down to a control room somewhere, guys in greasy vests with their feet up, sipping preform cups as they watched the screens, saying, Hey, will you just see that lady. Right. I looked around for something hard, sharp. But the bedroom was clear and empty. I grabbed the monkey roughly by the neck, hauled it into the kitchen. The floor pattered behind me, a watery trail of ordure. Yeah, I though, how realistic, picturing the guy in the vest at the far end of the link, hitting the appropriate button.
I held the monkey down on the cutting board and reached for the nearest thing on the antique rack. Which turned out to be a meat tenderiser. Through the window, there was blue sea, palm trees, lacy waves. The monkey still wasn’t putting up a fight, which I found somehow disappointing. He just stared up at me, his tiny mouth half bared, showing his tiny teeth, his helpless pink tongue. I released my grip slightly, daring him to try to nip me. The monkey just shivered, stared at me with those old, wise eyes.
I let go, wondering if this was a demonstration of mercy or a simple failure of nerve. The monkey pulled himself up and stared, squatting on the work surface. He gave a shrill chatter and rubbed at his face. Then he looked hopefully up at the jar of sultanas. I had to smile, but when I reached for them, he started, jumped down and sprinted from the kitchen, though the bedroom door, up out of the window, blurring into the green shadows beyond.
I stood for a while at the window, but there was nothing to see but the tangled beauty of the jungle. Turning back to the bedroom, I saw the photograph of Meena lying on the pine floor. I picked her up. She turned towards me and smiled.
“—don’t—”
I smiled back, then tucked the photograph into my back pocket. My Meena. A memory. A odd kind of memento of this odd, happy holiday.
I got the crab-robot to clear up the mess the monkey had left, then carried our cases out to the jeep. Sitting down on them, I gazed around at heaven for the last time. There was no sign of the monkey, but through the gently nodding palms I could see the white speck of the flying boat as it turned along the island, preparing to touch down. Listening to the faint and somehow reassuring hum of its engines, I sat and waited for my Meena to return along the shore.
Afterword
As far as I can recollect, this story was the first time I tried out writing something which runs together two chronologically separate narrative threads—in this case the two very different lives which the protagonists are experiencing. Clearly, or at least so I thought, it would be a neat way of building up tension and contrast. So off I went… And I soon found out that this kind of narrative technique requires a much greater amount of planning, backtracking and editing than a more straightforward and purely linear approach. I wasn’t massively discouraged, but I was a little frustrated and surprised.
I was, of course, being extremely naive. I already knew (after all, I’d been trying for years) that writing is, amongst other things, incredibly hard work which requires considerable organisation, practice, determination and thought. But another part of me was whispering that writing is an art, and it should come from the heart, without all this faff and obstacles about what goes where, when and how. That whisper is still in my head: this vision of expression through writing as a climactic outpouring of untrammelled feeling rather than anything more calculated and worked-through. A line of Steely Dan’s lyrics in “Deacon Blue” from their iconic Aja album, pretty much says it all: “Learn to work the saxophone, I’ll play just what I feel…”. Of course, being Steely Dan, the tone is ironic. But, also, being Steely Dan, there’s an underlying sense of disappointed idealism; that this is what the process of creation should really be like.
HECTOR DOUGLAS MAKES A SALE
Dusk was the beginning of Hector’s Douglas’ favourite time. Up with lark might be fine and dandy for some salesman, and middays and afternoons doubtless had their advocates as well, but as far as Hector was concerned you couldn’t beat the slow slide into dark.
A puff of his cheeks. A cheery whistle. A jaunt of his straw boater, and he was off to do business with his shiny black case. He’d read all the inspirational books and pamphlets. He’d attended so many correspondence schools he’d thought of setting one up himself. He knew all the tricks and ruses. Knew that every objection was a selling point begging an answer. Knew, as well, that features must be linked to benefits and that Product knowledge is the key to success. Even knew how important it was to highlight at least one unique angle, and never to sell on price alone. As for positive thinking—hell, his thinking was so positive it went right off the Goddarn scale.
Now here comes Hector once again, he and his shadow striding the lamplit territory of these Los Angeles streets, which he thought of as his home, church, workshop and office combined, with dancing yet determined little steps. My, how he loved his work! A few kids still out running and shouting in backyards. The thump of wood on ash and the clap of leather, although it was already getting almost too dark to see. Mums in white aprons calling to their children across dim lawns. Bicycles ticking by like metal swallows heading home to roost, with plates of peanut butter and jelly waiting in bright linoleum kitchens before the final climb to bed.
Hector had worked his way up from nowhere. Apart from m
aybe icebergs to Eskimos (and he might even have to check his resume on that) there wasn’t much that, one time or another, he hadn’t been called upon to sell. Brushes—not the Fuller brand, which was all name and no product, but the Dodkins range of brooms, brushes and dusters, which really did give its lucky purchases that extra edge in the never-ending War Against Dust. Cleaning preparations to put that new-car sparkle inside your home. Permanent life and pet insurance in five no-quibble instalments. Easy-clean gutters. No-clean aluminium siding. Electrical garage doors to make your home the envy of not just of your neighbours, but your whole neighbourhood. Encyclopaedias, of course—but also the Modern Library of All the Classics of World Literature, edited for quick and easy reading, to turn you into a marvel to your friends, with an illustrated Bible thrown in. Miniature busts of all the great presidents. A different set (this was largely for Roman Catholic communities) of the major saints. The Psiclean—marvellous, marvellous invention, although heavy to carry and difficult to demonstrate—to remove all those lingering pesky traces of psychic dirt from your house. A postal laundry service that meant you never had to wash another single sheet. He’d done them all—and successfully, as well. But now—and he was absolutely certain of it—he was selling the genuine, ultimate, final product. Nothing else could ever come close.
The thing about sales, to Hector’s way of thinking, was that it wasn’t just a job. Sure, you heard people say that kind of thing about diving trucks or pouring concrete, but Hector thought of selling the way a priest might think about working for God. He’d seen too many hobos and neredowells dragging his precious calling through the dog dirt. Seen ragged men with no money, no hope, no shoes and no idea of what they were doing trudging door to door trying to sell useless clothes pegs, or washing-line-stolen rags. Sometimes, apart from desperation and hunger, they weren’t selling anything at all. To his mind, they were little better than gypsies. Or worse.
Even in the drive-in hotels and freeway bars that his fellow professionals frequented, Hector often found that the sheer wonder and excitement of the trade had often been lost. There were salesmen who drank too much, or groused about their product (and if they didn’t buy into its key features and special attractions, who else ever would?). Many others who didn’t keep themselves up to date with the latest techniques. Then there were sort who weren’t that interested in selling at all, and kept panties or who-knew what else as evidence of their filthy conquests. It was all, so very, very wrong.
Nowhere: Volume II of the Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod Page 7