by Glen Duncan
Think if it were true. It isn’t true, obviously, but there’s a masochist in here that will have his fifteen minutes. Can’t. . . cannot be true. But think if it were true. A comfortable life – Mr Mandros would do as a decompression chamber, a comfort zone, a kind of arrivals lounge facility – no real theoretical objection to living it with moderate ethical decency; plenty to enjoy in the perceptual realm that wouldn’t land me in jail or send me to the chair – you know: tulips; kissing; snow; sunsets; journeys; and so to death, the obligatory purgative stint, then home. Home.
Home? How long has that word meant anything other than Hell? Which reminds me, there is still the matter of. . . ah . . . There is still, vividly, the memory of what the incorporeal version of my existence felt like last week. In other words how much it fucking killed. Can’t help thinking that’s left me in a bit of a corner. Should have seen that coming sooner. Should have kept myself in shape with regular nights off from the body. Should have done shifts.
Course I’m going on like this as if I’m even considering it. Considering staying on, I mean. Considering being Declan Gunn. Course I’m going on like this as if there won’t shortly be wheels of a very different kind in cacophonous motion. Course I’m . . .
Well.
I’m not turning any of the lights on in the flat. The hot gloom and steady rain comfort me. Like Hydra’s sunlight and silence, they let me drift into dream. Thunderstorms since the early hours. Never really seen storms from your end. Don’t they make you doubt what you learned at school? Don’t you hear thunder and think: all that atmosphere stuff, it’s cobblers; the sky’s made of iron that sometimes shifts and grumbles, billion-ton slabs and plates forced through the same tectonic trials as earth, yielding this, this skyquake. Oh yes, it’s been up to spectacular tricks since the small hours has the weather. I watched the lightning revealed in glimpses, the sky’s shocking varicosis. The rain’s been racing earthwards as if with some religious or political fanaticism. The clouds have the look of dark internal bleeding. Surely you lot look up from Cosmo while this sort of thing’s going on? Surely you take a Playstation break?
I forget myself. Of course you don’t. Of course you don’t. I’ve put a lifetime’s work into making sure you don’t. How could I possibly forget?
In the summertime, when the weather is . . . How these minutes fly! Six minutes past six, the fifth second morphing digitally into the sixth just as my eyes focused. Little red numbers in the darkness. Is somebody pulling my leg here? Betsy’s going to have to cut this. I don’t have the time to
Here ends the writing of my brother, Lucifer, and here I begin the fulfilment of my duty.
Too formal, Raphael. His voice even now finds time for admonishment. Try not to sound like such a tight-arsed ponce.
I can’t help smiling. He must be busy, but still he finds the time to criticize my style. Well, I must try to oblige him.
I interrupted his last sentence. Despite everything he’d said on Hydra I couldn’t let him confront his dilemma alone. I came back to England on a flight that had to skirt thunderstorms all the way to Heathrow. Thunderstorms everywhere, according to the co-pilot; a phenomenon. My fellow passengers’ fear of death filled the cabin like smoke from a smouldering fire. God didn’t have His hand over us, but the pilot was skilful, and brought us down in safety. I took a taxi straight to the Clerkenwell flat. Sheet lightning flickered.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m busy’
‘You have a decision to make,’ I said to him. He didn’t look well. His colour was bad, sallow, and his right eye was blackened. A scatter of pimples around the corners of his mouth. ‘You’ve been abusing your host,’ I said to him. ‘You can’t get away with that sort of thing indefinitely, you know, my dear.’
‘We’re back to the “my dear” are we? Look, Raphael, I know you mean well but –’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘What?’
‘You heard me,’ I said – I know him enough to know the tone he best responds to. ‘What are you going to do? Are you going to stay, or are you going to go?’
He placed his hands together at the base of his spine and straightened his back, the way pregnant women do.
Better, cloth-head. Now you’re getting the hang of it. That smouldering fire simile was lame, though.
‘I’m going to run a bath, that’s what I’m going to do,’ he said. ‘A huge, deep, hot bath. Feel free to watch if you like, although this Gunn’s not much to shout about in the cock and balls department. Then again, as my dear XXX-Quisite Immaculata says, with the frequency of a mantra: “Iss wha’ joo doo with it. Thass what counts”.’
I waited half an hour, taking stock, meanwhile, of the condition of the flat. His inhabitancy, sporadic though it had been, had devastated the place: litter, broken bottles, dirty laundry, spilled food, manuscript pages, overloaded ashtrays, the kitchen bin overturned, not a dish washed . . . Who could be in the least surprised? How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, Son of the morning –
Er . . . Excuse me . . .
But I was wasting time. Worse, I was pandering to his wasting time. In less than five hours he would have to decide. In less than five hours they’d come for his answer. This was no time for idling in the bathtub. With a cursory knock, I entered.
‘Couldn’t keep away, could you? Thought you’d catch me at it, did you? Having a bit of a bathtime lube?’
He must have just added more hot water, because the tiny room was filled with steam. ‘Well, as you can see, here I am chastely bathing and sensibly reflecting. Close the door will you, for Baal’s sake.’
He was in fact smoking a cigar (not steam, smoke) and cradling in his palm a huge brandy balloon amply furnished with the golden liquor. There didn’t seem to be any sign of either chaste bathing or sensible reflection. He looked, as a matter of fact, like he’d just been woken from a nap.
‘There are prostitutes on your gland of an island, I take it?’ he said, swallowing a large mouthful. ‘I mean I would, in theory, be able to, you know, socialize with members of the opposite sex?’
‘Not of the calibre it seems you’re used to,’ I said. ‘But yes, of course – and if not on Hydra then on Spetses, certainly in Aegina.’
‘Certainly in Aegina,’ he said. ‘Sounds like some fucking Lawrence Durrell poem.’
‘I’m to take it from the profanities and the erratic observations that you’re drunk,’ I said, feeling, I must confess, desperately angry with him.
‘Liquid sanity,’ he said, raising the balloon in a cheers.
‘Liquid cowardice,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see that time’s running out for you?’
‘Time’s overrated,’ he said. ‘Money, on the other hand . . .’
I sighed and took a precarious seat on the edge of the tub.
‘It’s generally recommended that one undresses before getting in,’ he said.
I ran a hand over my face. (Mandros’s hands are sensitive, and store the memory of many things.) Tiredness – a deep tiredness of the bones and nerves – crept up from my feet. His wilful avoidance was like a separate entity in the room with us, draining my strength. ‘Lucifer,’ I said. ‘For love and life please listen to me. You must stay. Whether with me or alone or with someone else. Don’t you see you can’t go back? Haven’t you understood that it’s so soon going to be over? That you’ll. . . That you’ll be . . .’
‘Yes,’ he said, slowly, and seemingly with genuine seriousness. ‘Yes, my dear, I have understood everything. As always, I have understood everything. Now perhaps, if you could . . . the Swan Vestas there . . . I seem to have self-extinguished . . .’
‘Lucifer!’
‘Hmm?’
‘Do you want to spend eternity in the Hell of Nothingness?’
‘Of course I don’t want to spend – Ow! Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck FUCK!’
The loss of temper had had him scrabbling to get upright; a slip, and he had conked his head on the back of the tub. He lost a good deal of
the balloon’s brandy, and the cigar altogether. ‘Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus fucking cunting Christ.’
(It pains me, obviously, even to type that – but I promised a faithful rendering.) I helped him into a better sitting position – but he wouldn’t relinquish his glass. ‘And don’t think you can fool me by pretending you’re fishing for the cigar, either, Mr Mandros,’ he said, squinting from the blow to his head.
‘This is utterly absurd,’ I said.
He looked at me for a moment in silence before saying, with a compressed grin: ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is, my dear.’
It seemed the knock on the head had sobered him. He placed the stem of the glass on the tub’s rim with some care. It was then that I noticed the razor blades, all but one still in the unwrapped pack, this one within a little outline of rust.
‘Not mine,’ he said. ‘Gunn’s. He was going to slash these.’ He held his wrists up for me to see. ‘Not an option I’d have all alone in Nothingness. Not a rope to hang myself with nor a pot to piss in.’
‘Quite,’ I said. ‘I hope this means you’re finally beginning to see sense.’
‘What did occur to me,’ he said, ’was that if God were to go ahead and get rid of everything except little old me, I’d be in exactly the position He was at the beginning. I’d be Him. Rich, don’t you think? Lucifer ends up where God started.’
‘It wouldn’t be the same and you know it.’
‘How not?’
‘Because you can’t create anything,’ I said.
And that, I believe, was the closest the world came. A few moments in the wake of those words in which – I could feel his capitulation like a great tilted ghost on the ether – I believe he would have turned. If the words for which he opened his mouth had ever been uttered.
But they were not.
It was a measurement of how much of my angelic nature yet remained, that I felt the approaching presence of one of the Firstborn seconds before it tore through. Lucifer, too, knew. The walls shuddered and the bathroom’s minute window cracked; a peculiar, dissonant articulation from the building’s joists and hinges, a tightening of the room’s smoke into a queer little knot – then he was through, and the material world flowed evenly once more.
‘Nelkers!’ Lucifer cried, smiling broadly and raising a hand in welcome. ‘By gum lad it’s good to see you –’
‘My Lord, I must –’
‘As a matter of fact I’d like you to take a look at –’
‘My Lord please! Listen!’
‘Dear God in Hammersmith child what’s the matter with you?’
‘It’s war my Lord.’
The four words nailed a small silence into place. Nelchael and I hadn’t seen each other since the Fall. (Daily, my angelic sight diminishes, but at that hour the cataracts of human vision were gauzy still.) His presence wasn’t pleasant for me – but it was horribly fascinating to see the state – carious, putrid, bleeding and exuding an impossible reek of corruption – of his angelic being. I could see that even in his state – manifestly come straight from the din and fire of battle – he was astonished to find another ex-Firstborn (an unFallen one at that) at his master’s side.
Lucifer got to his feet. ‘Astaroth,’ he said. ‘I knew it. What’s he done?’
‘No my Lord, not Astaroth. Astaroth fights loyally for the preservation of your sovereignty –’
‘Then wh–’
‘Uriel.’
In the moment of silence that followed, the sink gurgled, jovially.
‘Uriel?’
‘With renegades from Heaven, my Lord. Fully half of Hell is now under his command!’
‘Lucifer, let it go,’ I said. ‘Don’t you see that this releases you? Don’t you see His will at work?’
But his eyes were alight with a flame that didn’t belong in the human realm. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Double-crossing. . . mother . . . He was supposed to . . . He was supposed to wait until . . .’
‘He came with half of Heaven under his banner, my Lord.’
‘Well, that was all we could get. Jesus Jehosophat Christ.’
‘And told us that if we joined him we would have might enough for a new assault on Paradise.’
‘And he told you the truth, Nelkers. Now here’s a pretty pickle.’
‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Oh no, no, no.’
Lucifer turned to me and grinned. He had fished out his cigar and slotted it, dripping, between his teeth. Bath foam glimmered on his head and loins.
‘Started without me,’ he said. ‘Can you – I mean can you believe the chutzpah?’
‘Lucifer stop. Please, stop and think.’
‘He told us, my Lord,’ Nelchael continued in a lowered voice (and without managing to conceal a glance at his master’s strange corporeal dress), ‘that you had . . . that you had . . . forgive me, Sire, but he told us that you had deserted Hell to live as a mortal!’
‘Do you know, Nelkers,’ Lucifer said, scratching his head and sucking uselessly on the sodden cigar, ‘it did used to be said that there was honour among thieves.’
He had got to his feet to receive Nelchael. Now, smiling, he laid himself gently back in the tub. (I’ve thought of this, since, that he laid the body down as one might the corpse of a beloved friend.) Nelchael, seeing his master apparently readying himself for sleep, misunderstood. ‘My Lord, I beg you, you must return and order the defence of your –’
‘Relax, Nelks,’ he said. ‘Go. Depart. Vanish. I’ll be at your heels in less New Time than it takes to boil an egg. Tell the faithful of Hell that Lucifer is coming and that Uriel will bow. No new campaign will succeed under him. I’ll lead the attack myself. I give you my . . . Well, just tell them that. Now go.’
What else is there to say? Useless entreaties. I’m angel enough yet to recognize inevitable motions when I see them.
So for a few moments we eyed each other in silence. I could have been mistaken but I thought his hands trembled a little.
‘You did consider it, didn’t you,’ I said. ‘You can’t deny, now, to my face, that you considered it. Lucifer?’
‘Finish my book,’ he said, swallowing the last mouthful of cognac and smacking his lips. ‘So that what little of posterity there may be left . . .’
‘This is the second time I’ve lost you –’ I began – but he closed his eyes.
‘No time for speeches. Super hols. Had a lovely time. Be seeing you.’
‘God be with you,’ I said, reflexively, forgetting. At which the eyes opened again, for a moment, in glittering accompaniment to the sudden and ravenous grin.
‘Do me a fucking favour,’ he said – then went.
I watched the body slacken as his spirit departed. The shoulders sagged, the bowels released a long and noisome fart, which bubbled up through the water as if in announcement of the kraken. The brandy balloon dropped from the lifeless hand; a cheap rug by the tub; it didn’t break. Thunder boomed and rolled
Try ‘like celestial pianos tumbling down Heaven’s stairs . . .’
In the quiet that followed, the steady breathing of Gunn’s deep sleep.
I gathered the papers together and added these notes of my own. Nothing else remains. I shall never see him again.
Except, perhaps, if I’m human enough. Except, perhaps, if there’s world enough and time.
Postscript, 18 October 2001
3.00 p.m.
Simplest if I stay out of it, I think. What is there to say? You’re holding it in your hands, aren’t you?
I got four phone messages that day. The first was from Violet.
‘Declan for heaven’s sake where are you? I’ve been trying and trying. Why didn’t you tell me he was going to be there? For God’s sake why’d you dash off with that chap in the suit? Who is he, by the way? Is he someone? Someone else? I love Trent. So much . . . energy, you know? But is Harriet . . . well . . .? She seems . . . Anyway the point is both of them couldn’t stop saying how much they loved the script. I don’t know why the fuck you
didn’t do this years ago. They want us to go out to LA. You, anyway, but I mean they are going to screen test me in any case . . .’
The second was from Betsy.
‘Declan, hi, it’s Betsy. Call me back when you get this. They like what I sent them. You have finished it, I take it? Anyway they’ve made an offer. Wonderful news. Speak to you soon, you appalling boy. Bye!’
The third was from Penelope Stone.
‘Hello, Gunn, it’s me. I don’t know. I don’t know what. It was good to see you. Do you think anything? I’m leaving my number. I don’t know anything, now . . .’
Not that there isn’t a story from my end. The drying out, the rehab, the sexual health overhaul. (Test results came back negative, by the way. Clearly, there’s no justice in this world.) Still, best that I stay out of it. Not just because the story of the last two months – from the moment I woke in the tub’s cold water, with the sense that, astonishingly, I’d nodded off on the occasion of my own suicide, to the movement of my reclaimed fingertips over these keys – is a tale of metamorphosis all on its own, but because, let’s face it: some personalities, you don’t bother trying to compete.
I’ve had some decisions to make. Some I’ve made. Some I’ve put off. It’s not easy.
I returned all three of those calls.
The fourth one I didn’t.
I guess it was made in a bar. There were a lot of voices in the background – really a lot of voices – but I couldn’t tell whether it was a party or a punch-up. Could have been anything. For a while – since the caller didn’t speak for several seconds – I thought it was a mobile mistake, Violet groping in her handbag, Betsy with her mind on something else. I was just about to delete the message when a voice – at once alien and deeply familiar – said:
‘See you in Hell, scribe.’
Outside, the sky looked exhausted. A wind had picked up. Dust blew in the courtyard. An empty milk bottle rolled around, like a past-caring drunk. The flat was a mess. I felt terrible.
See you in Hell, scribe.
Well, I thought. Probably.
But not today.