Beautiful Mutants and Swallowing Geography

by Deborah Levy

  He is shaking. Shaking. Freddie is breaking down. He weeps and laughs at the same time. He carries the scent of a thousand women in his armpits, his tears are the jewels they took off, or put on, for him, he is shaking just like his father shook before him, shaking into the moon, lipstuck Rizla spiked on his forefinger. Who will put him together again?

  ‘Lapinski.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am going to break into the zoo.’

  He disappears in the direction of the zoo, where sometimes, at night, wolves can be heard howling through the bars of their cage. I once heard a man howl just like a wolf except he was standing in a phone box in Streatham.

  It is the age of the Great Howl.

  No woman has ever fallen in love with me.

  Last year I fell for a policewoman called Chloe but in the end she married her personal trainer, a man called Rod (born in Brazil) who always carried boxing gloves and pads in his holdall so his clients could have a go at him any time they had a spare hour. I liked Chloe’s uniform and the streaks in her hair and the way she rode her horse. And she was bloody brave. She restrained (at her leisure) some fucker who sold her a dodgy endowment policy – by the time her leisure was over his teeth were no longer in his mouth. Last time I saw her, before she got engaged to Rod, she told me they were training her up to drive a tank. I said, ‘Is there going to be a coup then?’ but the tank thing was about her being posted to Wales where the miners were on strike and she was going to sort them out – that was what they were all going to do at her station, sort out the miners. She said she liked sorting things out if it paid her mortgage – and then she winked at me. I reckoned I had met the woman of my dreams. I could hear myself saying, do this and this and this and do it harder and she replying yes yes yes oh yes oh yes yes yes – but that will never happen because I don’t need sorting out.

  Last Sunday I went to a pub on the borders of West Sussex with two guys from the office. We had roast chicken with all the trimmings that made this country great and we warmed our selves by the coal fire. I gave my apple crumble to Duke who was causing trouble because I’d tied him up outside and he doesn’t like the wind. And then I had this dream that I was dead and someone had put a lump of coal in my mouth, like a pig with an apple in its gob. For the last three nights I’ve heard Lapinski crying through the early hours. I don’t know what’s happened and I don’t like to ask because she might tell me. Her cat Krupskaya made a jump for Duke yesterday. Duke gets annoyed and tries to bite her head off. So what does Krup do? Run away? Not on your life. She jumps on top of his back and sticks there like a pot of glue. Duke begins to run about in circles and whine so I have to call Lapinski up. She stomps in, leaving mud, or donkey dung, all over my carpet so I have a go despite the fact her eyes are red and swollen. She told me I should take Duke out for a walk more often – and then she starts to unstick Krup by offering her the slab of pâté I had just bought from the deli. Duke licked her horrible hands and wanted to go home with her but I gave him the look Chloe taught me and he fell into line. Another thing. My mother’s father was a miner.

  It is by the mirror, where I practise narcissism, that I summon my second demon. For it is she who wrote me letters of love, written backwards so I had to read them through the looking glass. ‘Backwards letters are my escape,’ she said.

  She is fifteen years old, voluptuous, ribbons and flowers and bits of old lace tangled in her mane of blonde hair; she wears Mexican smocks embroidered with silken greens on crisp white cotton, lips shining, a pot of gloss always at hand so that crumbs stick to her lips. She is full of fury and smells of roses.

  ‘This, Lapinski, is my family.’ She points to each of them: ‘. . . This is my father who has forgotten how to love; this is my mother who has forgotten how to think; these are my sisters who will all go into the wine trade . . . and this . . .’ she bursts into tears ‘. . . is my life.’ The aroma of freshly ground coffee lingers about the house.

  She is on holiday with her business tycoon daddy and her sisters. An oily pensive anchovy on the beach, ashamed of her large breasts and little broken fingernails, surrounded by her father’s girlfriends, film cronies, American and English exiles, models, villa owners, local boutique owners and hangers-on, she feels flawed. They swim, eat, arrange barbecues, play backgammon, strip poker, have massages, manicures, sunbathe, swap gossip. She watches them, her mouth tingling with ulcers.

  Her fists beat the burning sand.

  ‘I will escape,’ she writes.

  A glamorous model drapes her long tanned legs over the business tycoon’s lap. Gemma stares sulkily at her daddy, who playfully slaps the bottom of the model. The model turns to Gemma. ‘We’re being nice to each other because I’m filming in the Caribbean soon and we won’t see other for too long.’ She kisses the tycoon’s ears. ‘I am a very busy woman, Gemma,’ she smiles. Gemma snaps her book shut, and stands up, scattering sand and suntan lotions. ‘Your very busy life and very empty mind are what I want to escape from.’ The truth is she doesn’t really know what it is she wants to escape from.

  Gemma, who will later become The Banker, is seventeen years old; she gives me her cast-offs and I go home to my uncle’s with carrier bags stuffed full of shoes and dresses, and Charles of the Ritz lipsticks. Years later, Freddie, who has a liking for silks and cashmeres, will run his hands slowly down my body, in Gemma’s clothes, exploring buttonholes and pleats and the cut of a sleeve. And years later I will look into the mirror and see his tongue inside Gemma’s mouth as they writhe about in a bed of flames.

  Gemma stamps the floor with her high heels. We fight about money and class and privilege. She cries prettily, passionately, stops, reads me my horoscope, squeals and squeaks ‘Eeeeeeeeeek,’ calls me a ‘meanie’, flicks through magazines, works for hours in the school library. She is brilliant and sharp, asks teachers a hundred questions they cannot answer, shouts in exasperation. She loves me, she says, and asks me to trim her hair with a little pair of blunt scissors. She doesn’t like pubs because they are full of ‘sad people’. She is afraid of poor people.

  After school she buys me a hot chocolate at the bus station. I sip it very slowly and then she finishes it off for me, a chocolate moustache on her immaculate face, waving goodbye and blowing kisses.

  The morning after she has finished her Oxbridge entry exams, we sit on a bench eating monkey nuts, feeding pigeons with the shells. Her fingers are covered in ink and all the flowers have fallen out of her hair.

  At Oxford, Gemma fluffs her hair, glosses her lips and tells a swarthy Italian economist at a cheese and wine party that she despises her hall full of simpering ninnies running baths of Avon bubbles and cooking little pans of sensible soup. ‘They’re so prim.’ He smiles, offering her sausage on a stick. She eats it fast, and guiltily. ‘Even a sedate patch of blue on the eyelids is considered fast.’ He doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but her cleavage is exciting and she displays it with pride. His suit is dull but well cut, his white shirt starched. She says, closing her eyes and giggling inside, ‘I like men in suits.’

  Gemma invites him back to her room for water. She drinks pints and pints of it a day because she read in one of her glossy magazines it will make her thin. She shows him a picture of me, in a polka-dot dress. ‘This is my friend Lapinski. Don’t you think she looks like Sofia Loren?’ The economist nods (liar), fiddling with his cufflinks. ‘When I was fifteen I escaped into Lapinski’s arms. I love her passionately.’ The Italian economist leaves immediately. Tomorrow she will dine with a Panamanian economist she met in a Marx lecture. Apparently he is very rich and owns a plantation.

  The Panamanian economist and Gemma fondle each other in her single bed. He cups her face in his hands, stares into her eyes, asks her to put some ice on his penis.

  ‘Ice?’

  ‘Yes pleeeeeeeeeease.’

  But the future Banker is intrepid and creeps to the communal kitchens where she finds one of the simpering ninnies brewing cocoa in her nightdr
ess.

  ‘Hello Gemma,’ she blinks dozily.

  ‘I’m looking for ice.’

  ‘Ice?’

  ‘I’m very hot.’

  They yank out a large jagged slab of ice from the freezer and Gemma trots back to her economist trailing her kimono on the corridor floor.

  ‘Tra la la tra la la la la.’

  She throws it on to his penis and, still singing, climbs on top of him.

  ‘Aaaaaaaaaaah.’ He comes immediately. The smell of fish fills the room. Wafts between them. It reminds the Panamanian economist of the fish markets in his home town, flies swarming around piles of roe and guts, and the jokes told by men about the whores they’d had the night before. Both attribute the smell to themselves and feel humiliated. Gemma sings ‘tra la la tra la la’ and sighs. The truth is one of the simpering ninnies put her little slice of cod on to the slab of ice that afternoon, and its juices became one with the ice, and now with the Panamanian economist’s juices too. Gemma, wet, fishy, blushing and unsatisfied, sprays the room with Chanel No. 5.

  She wears her Cardin suit for her first terrifying tutorial with three boys from Balliol College. The tutor, little black hairs on his knuckles, clenches his knees and taps a fountain pen on the mahogany desk. One of the boys presents a paper called ‘Notes towards the development of a theory on the relationship between Marxism and feminism’. The tutor and the boys scribble fast little notes on the back of their folders, sometimes nodding, other times frowning, eyebrows raised. Gemma understands nothing, and when the tutor asks her to comment on the paper, bursts into tears. The men do not know what to do with this elegant glossed woman who has a reputation for scorn, strength, savoir faire, intellect, and is now squealing and squeaking like a plucked chicken behind her jasmine-yellow note pad. ‘Seems like Kapital has been your bedtime reading these last ten years,’ she weeps into her cuff. The boy who gave the talk passes her his handkerchief, shuffling his feet in irritation. He has spent long nights working on his paper and wants to discuss it; now this fat, stupid female is blubbering away all his tutorial time. Gemma cries some more and runs out of the room on her pointy heels, clattering down the corridor while the boys discuss alienation.

  In the corridor she bumps into Eduardo the Italian economist, who cheers her up by taking her up to his room where he whips up a steamy dish of pasta with clam sauce. While he cooks he tells her he hopes Oxford won’t be swamped by ‘aliens’ like the redbrick universities. They snuggle up together and Gemma falls asleep, waking up with pain that surprises her. She stares at Eduardo and wills him to take it away.

  Dear Gemma,

  Thank you for the invitation to the ball. I have a lovely dress with scarlet netting at the bottom like a mermaid’s tail. If my grandmother could see me in it she would demand I dive for beluga caviar. The only trouble is my arms and legs are covered in flea bites. Yesterday, I shampooed Krupskaya, my cat, and hope that has put an end to the central committee that debate in her fur. Is it possible for you to meet me at the station? Perhaps we can go for a drink first, I will buy you a pint of water and we can talk.

  Love Lapinski.

  Dearest Lapinski,

  It is not a good idea to come up for the ball after all. I have promised Eduardo (my Italian economist) that I’ll spend the weekend with him, and the thought of you two meeting is not calculated to send warm feelings down my spine. Perhaps you could delay the trip until I find an ideologically correct young man. Eduardo’s consciousness is somewhat intractable and I have no hope of bringing him into the bright light of socialist truth. Oh well. So long as we keeeeeeep kissssssing we don’t have to talk much.

  Love love love to you sugar plum

  Gemma xxxxxxxx

  (from a putative member of the ruling class)

  In the library which she loves and where she consumes packets of rice crackers, she follows up footnote clues and obscure details on the sociology of political parties.

  She thinks about Eduardo.

  He is cold, cold and dead inside.

  This thought, to her surprise, is very sexy.

  ‘EEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeee ee e eee eeeeeeeeeeeee!’ Gemma’s orgasms are the loudest in hall. The simpering ninnies next door have to put pillows over their head or run to the bathroom or into each other’s rooms. They do not always know whether she is screaming with pleasure or pain. She sounds like a squealing pig and this turns Eduardo on. While he fucks her he tells stories about killing deer on his uncle’s farm, other women he has fucked, the professor he thinks is a communist; he bites her nipples and thighs, leaves blue crescent moons all over her white body. Their bed is littered with condoms, chocolate, hair, peanuts, stockings, his leather belt, knickers, cartons of milk, pitta bread, taramasalata, come stains. Gemma discovers she is brilliant at economics, better than Eduardo (he finds all sorts of ways to punish her for this), and has no problem demonstrating the difference between Returns to Scale and ‘EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeee’ Diminishing Returns to One Factor.

  While my children play in the park, I am paid by men to let them put a part of their body into a part of my body. What they don’t know is they are fucking a ghost. They are fucking a ghost because my spirit and soul are somewhere else but they don’t care because my spirit and soul are not the most expensive parts of me. Most of my customers are businessmen with wives in the counties and shires; they spill a day’s worth of wheeling and dealing into me and I receive it like sewage dumped at the bottom of the sea. Some want to beat me, some want me to pretend to love them or to pretend to be someone I am not. But that’s OK, most people spend the whole of their lives pretending to be someone they are not. My names are Tremor, Gina, Ninette, Sam, Tina, Cleopatra, Iris, Suzie, Malibu, Alex, Blondie, Maggie and Stardust.

  One customer wanted me to pretend to be his wife in real life – he was part of something called a REGENERATION CONSORTIUM and his firm had an open day ‘party’ where the local people could meet the developers in the flesh – something I do not recommend. He bought me a chiffon dress with a daisy print on it and white gloves – and I took the kids, which made him bite his lip with that sharp tooth of his. The whole event smelt of melted cheese. They’d hired eight out of work actors who went around banging people on the head with foam rubber hammers and then gave out funny hats with red, white and blue stripes on them – they looked like whip marks on pale English skin. Then the magicians started to take fake rabbits out of hats while a bored jazz band played ‘Summertime’ in the corner. A woman with a broken Chinese umbrella was the only one dancing, twisting her wrists to some music inside herself, while the waiters went around with sausage rolls and bowls of orange jelly on silver trays and this bloke whose wife I was shook the local community by the hand, saying, ‘You’re in an enterprise zone now,’ to which the woman dancing replied, ‘I’ve got my spoon stuck in the jelly.’

  The highlight of the event was the free bus-tour around the area they were developing. We all trooped on to the coach and our guide was a woman in a navy blue suit called Belinda. She talked through a microphone in a robotic voice, telling us what we were passing, ‘This is a waterfront conversion,’ then she’d look at her clipboard and lose her place and not know where we were. The driver was ignoring her anyway (I think he’d got stoned to survive the day), so she would say, ‘In the 1920s produce used to be freighted here all the way from Yorkshire,’ and where she said you were, you were not – she’d point at the waterfront and it would be the railway station. Or she would say, ‘On the left you will see um, what will you see, you will see something but it’s not clear yet what it is that will be there for you to see.’ The driver would be cruising down some high street where the police were patrolling estate agents’ shop fronts because of stones being thrown at the windows, and she would tell you it was a multi-storey hotel when everyone could see it was the high street. We lost all sense of time and place and the old lady sitting behind me said she’d need a guide book to find her way home
, all the while my husband muttering, ‘We’re restoring the city and giving it back to you.’ At the end of the day he kissed me on the cheek and said loudly, ‘Hope you had a pleasant day out dear – thought it would do you good to see for yourself why I am away from home so often,’ and told me he was just off for a jog on the new track they had built where the share index flashes up on a screen as you run. ‘We all have so much to look forward to,’ he said to the woman with the Chinese umbrella who was busy stuffing six sausage rolls into her handbag. ‘Pardon?’ she asked politely. ‘We all have so much to look forward to’ he repeated. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I think it goes like this but I’ve forgotten most of the words.

  ‘sa ra bo ra

  ra bo ra sa

  sa bo bo sasa’