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And hope therefore in infinitesimals? Remainder, mystery, subjectsoul. Not likely. Still, thinking more clearly now. Arrange. No thoughts but at least a thinking thing. Thinking thin, thin thought. The attempt to encompass (no) the attempt to derive the world (more like it) but. How in all this could there be colour smell feelwarmth person, person? Moment of choice (which of these people?). Not likely. Something strange going on. Body, body, body. What needs pulling to avoid—? And in what direction? Oh no, not that. Not the power to. Really? Godlike? No. Lightness of everything so he could just conjure it. Nah. He would do it better. He. Marcus? Yes. And the man, outside the chamber. Marcus would have made significant improvements, if it had been up to him. He would have changed it all. In what way? Big question. And a fairly stupid question. But emerging into the chamber’s darkness there was this time a sense, not unpleasant, of omnipotence. Not entirely pleasant either. As if whatever matrix lay behind everything could be tweaked by the consciousness. Marcus wasn’t given to such thoughts. The man opened the chamber.
‘Smoother landing this time.’
‘Why did you send me there?’
The man had a thoughtful look on his face. ‘Have your money back if you didn’t like it.’
‘Fuck the money. I don’t know why you sent me there.’
‘It’s very popular—especially among the cybernetics enthusiasts. I kind of thought you were into that?’
‘What gave you that impression?’
‘You talked about computers… ’
‘True. True, but that—I couldn’t do anything with that. Computers seem to offer so much. They seem to be able to help… ?’
‘You know, that’s why that trip wasn’t a bad thing for you. I mean, I don’t know anything about it, but that place—’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. There are a few places like it. Like a kind of nerve centre. Honestly, if you think computers are just magical crystal balls—what you saw just now, that’s closer to the truth.’
‘How can it be?’
‘I think a lot of us who’ve travelled a bit have been through what you’re going through.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘Yeah, I do. Thinking it’s going to solve something.’
A silence. ‘I’m trying to find Pen.’
The man shook his head. More silence. What did that mean, that shake, that expression? ‘Isn’t he dead? That’s what you told me.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s not going to do miracles for you.’
‘But there must be something I can find out.’
‘No.’ The man looked at him. ‘Get changed.’ While Marcus started to strip out of the overalls he said, ‘Oh, sure, you’ll find out bits and pieces, but nothing more.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘I don’t think your search… I mean, what are you looking for, exactly?’
‘I want to know what happened to him.’
‘By plugging in?’
Marcus was silent. It was possible that the man was right. Strange, given his financial interest, that he should be dissuading Marcus. But what role had TCF come to fill in Marcus’s life? Did he need to talk to someone about it? It had become, possibly, a kind of false promise. What gap did TCF fill for him?
‘Did you really send me there to teach me a lesson?’
A laugh. ‘Nah. I thought you’d like it.’
‘… I did, sort of. And, I don’t know. Maybe it was a lesson.’
A lesson, if anything, in how to regard surfaces, in what to find in the disappointment at their fully lit ordinariness. The magic of the NERVE CENTRE had been nothing but an illusion, something to do with lighting. If the man was right that it was an important place, then certainly it was a lesson that nothing could be understood, that surfaces remained stubborn. Still, there were computer screens there, and presumably if he had known how to operate them… ? Could he trust the taste of death he had had there? Was there a special intuition to be had in such places, such ‘centres’? More likely, it was something in himself—he knew that from long experience, both with himself and with his patients. Paranoiacs who found too much significance in ordinary things—it was always because they were looking for a vessel to contain SURGES OF FEELING within themselves. It was not surprising that Marcus had been unable to contain his feelings, to corral them into their proper places, to pass them through their channels. It was no surprise that there were surges in him, somewhere undetected and waiting for expression. Had TCF been a way to run away from what was happening inside him? As if it were a substitute for sitting still enough for long enough to cope with Pen’s absence. Could Marcus, though, quite let it go? Wasn’t there still some hope of finding out what had killed Pen—a hope that must lie in Pen’s own travelling?
This was the glint of possibility that might keep him going back. Was it a danger to him?
‘Do you know what Kim has been doing? Has he been up to something?’
The Cosmonaut said, ‘Yes, I think he’s been up to something. I don’t know what, really. It’s hard to tell because he runs a TCF facility and he’s often got people going in and out.’
‘He runs a TCF?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I guess the police know about it?’
‘I don’t know. Do they know about those things? Why don’t they just go and arrest them?’
‘They tolerate it I think. But what, which one, I mean… ?’
‘It’s just Kim’s one I know about. I don’t do it. Not anymore. Not that I think it’s wrong, I just don’t do it. I don’t want to get arrested.’
‘Yes, all right. Okay. I’m not going to arrest you.’
‘I don’t want to get him in trouble.’
‘I’m not going to arrest him either. I’m not interested—I still want to find Pen Evans. I’m doing it in a private capacity now.’
‘What do you—?’
‘I’ve left the Service.’
‘Oh. Yeah? Wow. So what are you snooping around for, asking questions? You should be relaxing.’
‘I’m still doing it, as a favour to his wife. You met her.’
‘Yeah, her.’
‘I’m only aware of the facility in the old airport.’
A silence.
‘It’s that one?’
Silence.
‘Oh. Kim runs it? Kim? Does he do it alone?’
‘Yeah. Well, I think so. Don’t do anything to him.’
‘But what’s he up to there? You said—’
‘I said I didn’t know. Just from the, um, you know, the look in his eye. I know he’s up to something.’
‘The look in his eye? I don’t know if I can really… the look in his eye?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s not exactly conclusive. I need more than that.’
‘Go ask him.’
‘Ask him if I can see the look in his eye? I can’t use that. I need something more. I need some leverage over him. You know, I need something I can use.’
‘Don’t do anything to him.’
‘Oh, now I just don’t know. I don’t want him to disappear on me. I don’t have the resources of the Service any more, and he does have this habit of vanishing.’
‘You can’t take him into custody or anything.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘Do you think he might have something to do with Pen’s, with Evans’s disappearance?’
‘Nah. I don’t think he’s doing anything bad—he wouldn’t hurt anyone.’
‘I guess I’ll have to go and see him. Thanks. At least I can find him now.’
‘Can you still pay me? Now you’ve left the Service.’
‘No.’
A silence. ‘Ah, that’s cool. Just don’t hurt him? He’s still a friend of mine.’
CHAPTER TEN
Lilly said, ‘You told me once, when we first met, about why you went into psychiatry.’
‘Did I? Yes, I mean, it was just an escape from medicine, from my family, you know. I thought I could be outside that system but still in it. I could read Laing, still be a doctor… ’
‘You told me something else.’
‘Oh. I don’t remember.’
‘You said there was some kind of darkness in you.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s not the kind of thing I’d forget. You thought psychiatry, and Laing and Szasz and all those people might hold some way to think about it.’
‘Darkness? Did I use that word?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Did I really talk like that?’
‘You struggled.’
‘Oh, I know that. I struggled. I suppose it’s the same as what I was saying—family, my family and their expectations. Or of course just my internalised version of their expectations. It left a big weight for a long time.’
‘And it was then. It was all about Vietnam and South Africa, there was so much dissatisfaction. We all had problems with our families… ’
‘Yeah.’
‘Your TCF, your travelling. I mean, I guessed. I knew you were up to something.’
‘You didn’t say?’
‘You seemed okay, Marcus. I’m glad you’ve told me about it now, though.’
‘Yes. I’m worried about myself.’
‘So that darkness—’
‘You think the travelling… ?’
‘I just—I can’t believe you don’t still struggle, somewhere in there. Keeping something like that a secret? There must be something going on in there.’
‘There must be.’ Silence. Then: ‘When I meditated, back then, I used to sometimes feel this great loss. No, not loss, not sadness, just nothingness. Like there was no point in trying. It wasn’t hard to feel as if I could master all my urges. But after I’d done that… you know, I could fight hunger for a long time. But then nothing, nothing, there was no reason to do anything. And then I could just—’
‘Marcus.’
‘I felt it again when travelling. The future—God, it gave me that same sense. Why rouse myself, unless it’s to throw it all away, all the complications?’
‘Oh.’
‘You’re more driven than I am. You always have been.’
‘I think it’s easier to see things, injustice, when you’re a woman.’
‘Yes.’
‘But I do things despite myself. I have to drag myself to those abortion meetings sometimes. Try to do something, build something.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘It’s the same. Maybe? I know what you’re talking about. It would be nice on occasion just to let things lie.’
‘I said to myself, when I was going to the facility, that I was doing something—that I was helping, that I was looking for him. What did I expect? I kind of think now, I think that maybe it was just a way of removing myself.’
‘Removing yourself from your family?’
‘Oh. God. Maybe.’
‘This house is so different from the one you grew up in.’
‘I know that. I love our house.’
‘That’s why I wonder about what you said those years ago—that it wasn’t just about your particular situation, you know, about your parents and the medical establishment and Vietnam and—’
‘Do you think I’m losing it?’
‘No. I think you’re struggling. That’s not the same.’
‘Why would I want to take myself away from all of this?’
‘Would you talk to them at work about it?’
‘Talk to the boss? They tolerate me, talk to me about talking therapies, but at heart they’re all so medical.’
‘Just so they know, so someone there knows.’
‘I don’t think my work is at risk.’
‘You’ve been taking time away from it.’
‘It would be that, or golf.’
A laugh.
He said, ‘Laing experimented with travelling. Meditation too. Yoga.’
‘I thought you weren’t interested in him anymore?’
‘No. Yes, I am. But not like I was. Pen was always so dismissive. And the lectures he gave here, when he visited a few years ago… ?’
‘I remember them.’
‘Excruciating. But there’s something in his writing, in his ideas.’
‘Yes.’
‘Beyond, above and in man, the war rages on. Man is not the only place of the battle, or something, but he is one site of it. Something like that. I mean, he got at it, at this struggle. Struggle between death and birth, or something. I forget all that, but he wrote about it.’
‘It sounds macho.’
‘I know. But it’s not completely wrong is it?’
‘No.’
‘Some kind of struggle in everyone.’
‘Isn’t it just another thing we’ve got to work with? Isn’t it part of what we have to do? Get up in the morning, get going, work against every little thing in us, for whatever reason, that… ’
‘What?’
‘Weighs us down.’
The question, then, remained what part TCF played. Was it part of what weighed on Marcus, or was it a line of flight out of that?
Lilly said, ‘Maybe I should do it with you next time.’
‘With me?’
‘Why not?’
‘Can you do that? Can you have more than one person?’
‘I’ve got no idea. Remember that bathtub TCF? You could have squeezed a couple of people in there.’
‘Skinny people. Did anyone do it?’
‘I don’t remember. I wasn’t paying much attention.’
‘We were square. Weren’t we?’
‘It was bourgeois experimentation.’
A laugh. ‘For you. Me, I was just square.’
‘Not anymore.’
‘You’d really do it? It’s not still bourgeois experimentation?’
‘That stuff was clearer back then. You know, it doesn’t matter either way. What harm can it do?’
‘Maybe it does do some harm.’
‘Everything does.’
‘Yes.’
When would it happen? It didn’t, in the days afterwards, seem up to Marcus to mention it again. He didn’t want, it might be said, to appear too motivated. The secret, now that he had mentioned it, remained secret—an open secret, still unmentionable, though in a different way. Lilly had always been as surprisingly tolerant as she had been filled with indignation at the world. What was it in her that allowed her to be like that? They carried on their life much as they had before his ‘confession’. Did he need to mention it to the rest of the house? To Janet? Marcus’s weight, the darkness in him—he had, it had to be said, really forgotten it, until Lilly reminded him of it and he recognised it in the struggles he had had over TCF. In fact, ‘darkness’ was not really a word he would have used for those struggles. They were somewhere in the background, a sort of endless calculation, as if he were working out the costs of the practice—its emotional economy. But within the need to balance that budget—was that where the WEIGHT or DARKNESS could be found? What if the budget were balanced? The target of his calculation was an emotional zero point at which no action could be taken—or rather, at which all action became no action, the mere following of lines of least resistance. The struggle, the darkness, was an inertia in which everything simply and painfully departed from that zero, felt itself measured against it. This was no longer about Pen, but rather something to do with gravity and bodies, with his body’s own weight and the efforts needed to sustain himself and lift himself out of the inertia. And, in fact, did Pen disappear more thoroughly now, now that Marcus’s ‘problem’ no longer circled exclusively around him? Pen’s disappearance had thrown him invisibly
, slowly, subtly back into some perspective in which there was nothing worth fighting for. Pen’s fight, Lilly’s fight. They promised a future, something to fight for; but for Marcus the future had become a blank arrangement of objects, and the search he conducted there flipped easily, too easily into contemplation of them, transformation of them in his vision into those light insubstantial surfaces. The ease of that future. Why had Pen been so important to him, to stop this FALL? Why wasn’t Lilly, with her drive and her complex certainty, also able to sustain him now? Had he been more in love with Pen than with Lilly? She had offered to accompany him—in fact had acted, when he told her, as if it were no great surprise that he had been travelling. Perhaps he wanted more resistance, more outrage from her. No doubt he was hoping for her to mirror his own internal resistance, the outrage he hoped for in himself. It was possible that TCF drained everything, every need, even outside him, even in Lilly—. It was possible it drained—. No, but he wanted her to challenge him, impart to him her own sense of WORK—her meetings, her work with the Abortion Action Group, her desire to plan some action, her hopes of building a feminist consciousness, childcare and life and the movement, all in one.
Our Future is in the Air Page 19