The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories

by The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories (retail) (epub)

Take that woman away! he muttered. But his voice lacked conviction: like the others, he was afraid of her. She had become, in the camp, like the priestess of an oracle without a voice. She was the unconscious avenger of every sin. If only Tereus knew the barbarity she had suffered, the others guessed at it.

  She reached my side and took my hand so I could rise with new strength. Except for distant shouting outside, her silence had spread. The eyes looked at us now with fear and unease. They were waiting: waiting for me to speak.

  I turned to Tereus.

  It is for you to eat your son Itylus, I said. You destroyed us long ago.

  (How slow! Tereus’ long years of exile and grief. How quickly the years will pass.)

  * * *

  CLIVE SINCLAIR

  * * *

  BEDBUGS

  During the night I have a vision of bedbugs in congress. A concrescence of male and female. The polluted mass pulsates, masculine organs pullulate, grow into dangerous spikes that, blinded by passion, miss the proffered orifices and stab deep into the soft bellies of their consorts. While I thus dream my blood is sucked and the satiated bugs, too bloated to return to their hiding places, excrete their waste upon the sheets and make their getaway. When I awake I observe the tell-tale black stains and become conscious of new islands of itchiness erupting upon my body. Life has taken a turn for the better for the dispossessed bedbugs, homeless since the demolition of the ancient slums, with the construction of the concrete college. Here at last the flat-bodied bugs have found sanctuary in the snug crevices, and plenty of food in the beds. Even during the long summer vacation, when the abandoned beds are filled by foreign students and their teachers; the former having come to Cambridge to improve their English, the latter to improve their finances. I am among the latter.

  Some weeks previously I had been telephoned by a director of Literature & Linguistics Ltd, hitherto unknown, and been offered a job as a tutor at their Cambridge Summer School, held annually in the vacated university. He was frank. He said that they had been let down at the last minute and that someone had given him my name; he apologized for the short notice and enquired if I knew anything about the poets of the Great War, the course set by the deserter, for which books had already been purchased and despatched to the students; he added that these students tended to be young, German, intelligent, fluent, and – with a chuckle – female; he said by way of conclusion that Literature & Linguistics Ltd was a reputable company and that the salary was equally respectable. I promised to let him know the following day. Here was irony! Teaching First World War poetry to Germans, who had cut short the careers of most of the poets. Being Jewish I also felt a more personal thin-skinned irony. But was such irony justified? After all neither I nor the students were even born in the days of the Third Reich, so could I blame them for the fact that had their parents proved victorious I would never have been born at all? Easily. Then what made me take the position? Money? Of course. But even more persuasive was Isaac Rosenberg. On account of a little known biographical detail: his affair with my grandmother. He was ten and she was seven. They kissed one fine afternoon outside the Rosenbergs’ house in Stepney, a few doors down from my great-grandfather’s green-grocery. Furthermore, when Rosenberg decided to enlist he ran away from home and joined a bantam battalion in Bury St Edmunds. You can see his barracks from our bedroom window. The grotesque red-brick pastiche of a castle looms over me as I call the director to announce my acceptance. I do not mention that I have re-named the course Rosenberg’s Revenge.

  However, the German girls completely disarm me. They are charming, receptive and funny. Above all they seem so innocent. Our first class began in a tentative way, polite, giggly, until one of the girls demanded to know why we were studying such poetry. ‘The concerns of the poets are out of date, they do not mean anything to us,’ she said, ‘especially since we are mostly girls here and not interested in war one bit. So why do you make us read about these horrible things?’ Other girls snorted, to be interpreted as derisive. In that parallel course running in my head, Rosenberg’s Revenge, I rubbed the cow’s nose in Nazi atrocities, but in our Cambridge classroom I was patient, persuasive. I did not mention the pink stain on her neck which I took to be a love bite, sign of her preoccupations. ‘Why? Because the poetry transcends its environment,’ I said. ‘War becomes the inspiration. A source of destruction, but also creation. A paradox to contemplate. The proximity of death added to the intensity of the poet. Their minds were consecrated wonderfully.’ My allies moved in to attack. Women not interested in war? What nonsense! War involves everybody. My enemy was routed, isolated, leaving the rest of us clear to commence the course. In that introductory meeting relationships were established, and I was pleased to note that foremost among my supporters was the most attractive girl in the room. Vanity also is an inspiration.

  There are two tutors for the twenty students; myself for literature, the other for linguistics, with composition shared. Although Bury St Edmunds is only thirty miles from Cambridge I am expected to sleep in the college, since my duties include evening entertainment. Tonight my colleague is giving a lecture on phonemes, freeing me to telephone my wife. As I listen to the ringing tone I consider the fact that while each peal is identical, subsequent conversation gives it a retrospective value; from phony, wrong number, to euphony for a lover. ‘Hello love,’ says my wife, ‘miss me?’ ‘Lots,’ I say. So our catechism continues, a pleasant exchange of self-confidences, until I realize with alarm that my answers are counterfeit. I am not thinking about her. I do not miss her. I am a liar. Second sight suddenly reveals this peccadillo as prophetic and I foresee the wreck of our marriage. Doubtless this is a romantic fallacy to be dismissed as easily as the psychosomatic cramp that has gripped my stomach. What harm can there be in euphemism if it makes her happy? ‘Sleep well,’ says my wife, ‘sweet dreams.’

  But the belly-ache won’t go away. Back in my room I stretch upon the bed. My room is modernistic, without extraneous matter; for example, there are no handles on the drawers, just holes for fingers to pull them open. Being double the room is a duplex, and in the steps that connect the levels the style reaches its apotheosis. Granted that only 50 per cent of a regular staircase is used, since just one foot presses on each step, what does the architect do? Lop off the redundant half, of course. Leaving steps that alternate, right, left, right, left, etcetera. True the residents have tried to impress their personalities upon this chamber, by decorating the walls with posters, but in their absence, devoid of their possessions, these emphasize the emptiness. Nor are there any books on the shelves, save my war poems, and a book marked with a single yellow star. The ghetto journal of a Warsaw Jew. The diary was discovered after the war, his body never was. Actually, I did not bring the book along to read, rather as a reminder of an evil that cannot be exorcized. Nevertheless, flat out with colic I read it from cover to cover. What can I say? In class we talk of literature, but this is not art. The writer chronicles everything as dispassionately as possible, a record for future historians, until in the end he can restrain himself no longer. ‘Daughter of Germany!’ he curses. ‘Blessed is he who will seize your babes and smash them against the Rock!’

  Sweet dreams! I dream of flesh in torment and awaken to find my body in a rash. No stranger to hives I blame my brain, never suspecting the true culprits. But instead of fading the hives swell so that by mid-morning, my class in full swing, they are throbbing in sympathy with the soldiers in the trenches. Fighting the temptation to scratch I ask my enemy to read Rosenberg’s Louse Hunting. Blushing she begins,

  Nudes, stark and glistening,

  Yelling in lurid glee. Grinning faces

  And raging limbs

  Whirl over the floor on fire;

  For a shirt verminously busy

  Yon soldier tore from his throat

  With oaths

  Godhead might shrink at, but not the lice…

  And gets no further. Bursting into tears she cries, ‘You mock me! You see the bit
es on my neck and you think I am dirty! But only here have I got them! There are bugs in my bed!’ ‘She means Franz,’ says someone, referring to my only male student, likewise bitten. ‘My dictionary tells me that a bug is a ghost, a bogeyman, a night prowler,’ says another, ‘so Franz could be defined as a bed-bug.’ ‘But they are not the only ones who have been bitten,’ I say, ‘look at my arms.’ Whereupon my enemy regards me with something like gratitude. ‘You see,’ I say, ‘the poems are relevant to our condition after all.’

  Tonight it is my turn to amuse the students. So I have arranged a visit to the Cambridge Arts Theatre. Since the play is Ionesco’s The Lesson, which ends with the pedagogue stabbing his pupil and donning Nazi uniform, we have made attendance voluntary. In the event I am accompanied only by my erstwhile enemy, Franz, and my most attractive acolyte. Naturally I am curious to see how my charges will react to the drama. Franz and Monika fidget as the dead girl drops immodestly into a chair and her professor pulls on his swastika armband. On the other hand Inge is impressed. ‘Such a play explains much about fascism,’ she says, ‘and about Germany.’ ‘Perhaps Germany as it was,’ says Franz, ‘but today things are different.’ ‘Nonsense,’ says Inge, ‘we remain a nation of hausfraus who thrive on order. We didn’t like the Jews so we made them disappear. Just like dust. We were frightened by the Baader-Meinhof gang so we killed them. Pouf! No more terrorism. We adore neatness. That is why Monika is horrified by her bed-bugs. They leave marks. So she cannot forget them. She cannot sweep them under the carpet – is that what you say?’ ‘Suicide,’ says Franz, ‘they killed themselves.’ ‘That is what we are told,’ says Inge, ‘what you are pleased to believe.’ Monika looks at Franz. ‘We must go,’ he says, ‘we are tired.’ ‘Not me,’ says Inge, ‘the play has given me an appetite.’

  The Castle, an unexceptional pub on the road back to college. We request drinks and curries. The landlord motions us to a table. It is midweek and the pub is deserted save for a couple sitting in a darkened corner. The man is not in his right mind. ‘Tell me, George,’ he says to the landlord, ‘now the season is a fortnight old what do you think of our esteemed football team?’ ‘My name is not George,’ says the landlord. ‘No spunk, that’s their problem,’ he says, ‘not enough aggression.’ ‘They’ve only lost two games,’ says the landlord. ‘But how many more?’ says the man. ‘Listen, George, you know everyone in Cambridge. You tell the manager I’ve got some advice for him. A bastard I may be, pardon my French – father was killed in the war before he had time to do the honourable thing – but I’m related to lords, the highest in the land. Therefore the manager will listen to me. Did you hear about that Aussie coach who showed his team newsreels of Nazi war crimes before a big match? That got their blood up! Went straight out and thrashed the opposition. I’ve plenty of ideas as good as that. I’m counting on you, George. Tell the manager the bastard wants to see him.’ ‘Wash your mouth out,’ shouts the landlord, ‘I won’t have bad language in this pub. Not when there’s ladies present. If you won’t behave you can clear off.’ But Inge is not embarrassed. ‘That was a fine play we saw tonight,’ she says, ‘perhaps we could produce something like that in our composition class?’ ‘Good idea,’ I say, ‘but it will be difficult with so many people. You and Monika will never agree about anything. You’ll argue over every word and nothing will get written.’ ‘You are right of course,’ says Inge. ‘Maybe we could do something with a smaller group,’ I say, ‘you, me and one or two others.’ ‘But then those who are left out might become envious,’ says Inge, ‘they will accuse us of élitism.’ ‘Then we must arrange a cabaret for the last night,’ I say, ‘everyone will be invited to help. I’ll advertise for poets, singers, even stripteasers. Our contribution will be the play.’ Inge laughs. Her shoulders tremble. Not for the first time I observe the body beneath the shirt.

  Two plates of curry stand in the serving hatch growing cold. We watch them while the landlord sulks. Finally I deliver them myself. But before we can begin our meal the loony snatches Inge’s plate and scurries to his table. ‘You’ve taken our dinner,’ he yells, ‘we were here before you!’ His companion looks miserable, but remains silent. As if awaiting this opportunity the landlord reappears. ‘You have gone too far,’ he bellows, ‘apologize to these people at once!’ The man is outraged. He puckers his lips as if about to blow a kiss. ‘Sir,’ he says, ‘it is they who should apologize to us for stealing our food.’ The landlord’s wrath descends upon the lunatic who flees for his life. ‘I might be illegitimate,’ he cries into the night, ‘but I do not copulate with Germans.’ Now I am angry. But I am a hypocrite, the half-wit is a prophet.

  Brushing my teeth in preparation for bed there is a knock on the door. Foaming at the mouth I admit Inge. ‘This afternoon I purchased equipment to purge your bedbugs,’ she says, ‘I planned to tell you after the theatre but the events in the pub drove it from my mind.’ I rinse out the toothpaste. Inge meanwhile is crumbling a firelighter into a large metal fruit-bowl, and mixing the fragments with charcoal chips. The result is ignited. Flames leap from the bowl like tongues ravenous for bedbugs. ‘Now we must wait,’ says Inge, ‘until the charcoal becomes red hot.’ We sit looking at one another. ‘You are married?’ says Inge. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I am not married, though I have a man in Germany,’ she says, ‘here I am free, there I am a prisoner. You understand? Always we must do what he wants. Do you know the word “eudemonism”? It means you act for another’s happiness. It is your moral duty. That is always the role of women, don’t you think? Your wife, does she work?’ ‘No,’ I say. ‘Why not?’ says Inge. ‘She was pregnant,’ I say, ‘but she lost the baby. She is going back to work soon.’ ‘Is she – how do you say? – in a depression?’ asks Inge. ‘She is over it now,’ I say, ‘we don’t talk about it any more.’ We feel the heat from the glowing coals. ‘Let us hope the bowl does not crack,’ says Inge, ‘it isn’t mine, it comes from my room.’ As if casting a spell she pours yellow powder on to the embers. Asphyxiating fumes immediately fill the room. ‘Sulphur,’ she says, ‘the gas it makes will kill all the bugs.’ Coughing I lead her upstairs.

  We stare into the underworld. ‘Look,’ says Inge, ‘as I said.’ Sure enough, bugs are dropping lifelessly from crannies in the ceiling. Suddenly an unexpected twang! The bowl has split. ‘Oh no,’ cries Inge. Brilliant as the steps are in conception it is dangerous to descend them at speed, as Inge learns. She tumbles, hits the floor with a thump, and remains utterly inert. Spreadeagled, supine. There is no blood, but I do not know if this is a good or a bad sign. Her hand is limp. I feel for the pulse, but it is either stopped or I have my thumb in the wrong spot. Her heart. Situated, of all places, beneath her left breast. It is warm certainly. But I can feel no heartbeat, though the nipple tantalizingly hardens. However, for all I know this may be a posthumous reflex action or even the beginnings of Rigor mortis. I am no doctor. At a loss I rock forward upon my knees and part her lips with my tongue, intending to administer the kiss of life. But as I begin to blow into her mouth I feel Inge’s right arm curl around my neck. And as she presses me closer I realize that my hand is still upon her breast.

  Bugs continue to fall as Inge glides out of her pants. Possessed now, I turn out the light so that Inge’s naked body is illuminated only by the smouldering charcoal, a serpentine shape, splashed with red, an undulant stream of lava into which I fling myself. ‘Take me,’ hisses Inge, ‘here, as I am, on the floor.’ While the madness lasts I pump my body into her, aware only of our sweat and the uncontrollable pleasure, dimly conscious of the mocking parody the dying embers cast upon the wall. Spent, prone upon Inge’s salty body, I gasp for breath in the sulphurous air. ‘Please,’ whispers Inge, ‘I am not finished.’ She directs my hand down her belly to a damper place. Slowly my senses settle as I watch Inge’s spectre writhe, and listen to her ecstatic groans, which dissolve as a deeper voice fills my ear:

  Soon like a demons’ pantomime

  This plunge was raging.

  See
the silhouettes agape,

  See the gibbering shadows

  Mix with the baffled arms on the wall.

  A man emerges from the shadows. He is dressed in khaki and puttees, but looks too delicate to be a soldier. ‘Do you like my poem?’ he says. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘you were a genius.’ ‘Tell that to the Germans,’ he says. I nod. I am. ‘Do you hate them?’ I ask. ‘You cannot hate the dead,’ he says, ‘and you lose touch with the living.’ Inge, oblivious, cavorts on the end of my finger. ‘I’m doing this for you,’ I say. He shrugs. ‘Why bother with humbug when you’ve got bedbugs?’ he says. ‘Jews, Germans, we’re all the same to them. They have cosmopolitan sympathies. We destroy one another and the bedbugs take revenge.’ ‘Not here,’ I say, ‘they’re all dead.’ ‘So am I,’ he says. ‘Do you remember my grandmother?’ I ask. ‘Eva Zelinsky, she lived near you in Oxford Street.’ ‘What does she look like?’ he asks. ‘An old lady, white hair, in her eighties,’ I say. He smiles. ‘Everything changes,’ he says, ‘except the dead.’ ‘Aaaaaaaah!’ cries Inge. She comes, he goes. There is quiet in the room. Inge is drowsy with delight. The charcoal has burned itself out. ‘Come,’ I say, ‘let’s go to bed.’ During the night I have a vision of bedbugs in congress.

  Throughout the day Inge wears a silk scarf to conceal the bites upon her neck. Likewise, when I telephone my wife, I hide the truth from her. Better keep quiet and skip the consequences. In two weeks Inge will be back in Germany with her jailer. At the moment, however, she is in my room again. We are awaiting another girl, selected to complete our playwriting team. ‘When you took off your clothes,’ says Inge, ‘I saw something. That you are a Jew. Please, you must tell me. When you fucked me, was it for revenge?’ I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say, ‘I did it because I wanted you. I forgot you were a German.’ ‘I am glad,’ says Inge. ‘You know, I have always admired the Jewish people. You have read Martin Buber?’ ‘Buber? Sure,’ I say. ‘I know my melancholy fate is to turn every thou into an it, every person into a thing. Last night you were a thou, this afternoon already you are an it, last night we had intercourse, a real spiritual dialogue, this afternoon we must write dialogue.’ Inge grins. ‘And do you have any ideas?’ she says. ‘No,’ I say, ‘I am the producer. Ideas are not my responsibility. Do you?’ ‘Only simple ones,’ she says, ‘like a husband and wife, eating dinner, watching television, talking but not communicating. Just one twist, a girl will be the husband and you must play the wife.’ The other girl arrives and accepts the idea with enthusiasm. We work on the play through the evening and into the night. The other girl goes. Inge stays. Martin Buber? A boobe-myseh!