Barking Man: And Other Stories (Open Road)

by Madison Smartt Bell

  The bottom of the zoo was bordered by an iron rail fence a little better than waist high, beyond which expanded the wide greensward of Regent’s Park. On an impulse Alf climbed over this fence instead of going out by the South Gate. It was easily low enough for a vault, but his backpack dragged him slightly off balance, and a rail’s tip caught his trousers on the inner thigh and made a neat right-angular tear. Alf stooped over to examine it and straightened up again. Big Brother would not be pleased, but possibly he wouldn’t ever know about it. Possibly Hazel could mend it so it wouldn’t show. He hitched up the pack and stepped out across the grass. A cool triangle lay on the inside of his leg where the cloth was torn. On to the south, farther than he could see or hear, well past the flowers of Queen Mary’s Garden, he knew the traffic on Marylebone Road would be whisking back and forth like the multiple blades of some gigantic meat slicer. He stopped, turned in his traces and looked back.

  Later, after a long time and much catastrophe, when Alf had passed into the care of others, he began to feel relaxed and calm. He looked at a dark spot on the wall, and his eyelids grew heavier and heavier; they grew so leaden that he could scarcely keep them open. His eyes were closed. His eyes were closed now, his breath was deep and slow. His limbs were warm and soft and tingling, his arms so heavy that he could not lift or move them. It was utterly beyond his power to open his eyes or move his arms or legs. His heartbeat slowed to requiem time. He descended a set of thirty steps into a dark place of warm and total relaxation. Asked to recollect the source of his affliction, he began to talk about the zoo, easily continuing the story of that afternoon up to the point where he had hesitated on the lawn.

  “Yesssss …” The resonant voice of the hypnotist came from very far above, high in the mouth of the deep well into which Alf had lowered himself. “Yes. That is very good. You are a good subject. You are doing very well. What did you think about the animals?”

  Responding to some foreign motive power, Alf’s hands began to twist and gnarl, his fingers twining into tangles on his lap. His breath came fast, and he could feel his features screwing up like the face of a child about to cry. Real tears were pricking the backs of his locked eyelids, though he did not know why.

  “I envied them,” he said at last. “I wanted to go back.”

  Breakfast was transpiring in the flat’s large airy kitchen. Big Brother was eating a soft-boiled egg with annihilating concentration. Tap, tap, tap went the edge of his spoon around the little end of his egg, creating a perfectly even fault line. He removed the eggshell dome and placed it on the left side of his plate, penetrated the egg white, lifted a portion and inserted it between his lips. His wrist revolved and the wristwatch on its sharkskin band presented itself briefly to his eye. Alf choked on a bite of the scone he’d been consuming, coughed, belatedly covered his mouth with his hand and cleared his throat behind it. Big Brother lowered the spoon from his second bite of egg and raised his fishy eyes from the eggcup. The spoon’s bowl connected to the plate with a minute click. For a suspended silent moment he faced Alf down the long checked range of the blue oilcloth.

  “You eat like a yobbo off the street,” he said at length. “Choice of diet and manners too. Inclusively.”

  Alf’s gaze broke and fell to the crumbles of scone on his plate. Once more Big Brother began to ply his spoon. He had three bites remaining; it invariably took him five to eat an egg. Hazel, sitting half the table’s length between them, turned and shot Alf a surreptitious wink, which he returned as he reached over for the butter. Big Brother finished his strong black coffee in two tidy sips and arose from his place.

  “Goodbye, Love,” he said. “I expect to be in by seven.”

  Hazel set her hands on her tight waist and arched back in her chair, lifting her face up toward him. The heavy blond braid of her hair hung down over the chair back like a plumb weight.

  “Goodbye, Love,” Hazel said. “There’ll be fish for dinner. I’ll see you in the evening.”

  Big Brother nodded to her and passed in the direction of the hallway.

  “Big-big Bang,” Alf said suddenly. “Pow, knock’m dead, Bee Bee.”

  Big Brother gave him an eerie look but continued his course without pause. There was a whetting sound as he lifted his sharkskin briefcase from the hall stand, then the tumbling of the door’s many locks. Hazel stood up and curved her torso in Alf’s direction. The morning sunshine rushed in through the kitchen’s south windows to lighten the green of her eyes.

  “More tea?” she said, and stroked the rounded belly of the teapot.

  “No thanks, well yes, ah, I guess I will.” Alf pushed his cup in the direction of the spout.

  “Don’t let me make you late for school,” said Hazel. “What is it you have Tuesday mornings?”

  “Supercalifragilisticmacroeconomics,” Alf said.

  Hazel threw back her head and laughed a laugh that reminded him of someone pouring a delicious drink.

  In the usual London style the sunshine failed him as soon as he hit the street. Underneath the damp gray sky he walked a block across Fulham Road and turned. His shoulder sagged under the strap of the weighty bookbag. It had given him a seemingly permanent crick in his neck. He circumambulated the South Kensington tube stop, watching the rush of people in and out from the far side of the street. There was no reason for him to enter, nowhere he urgently had to go. He had actually succeeded in forgetting in which quarter of the city the London School of Economics was to be found, and indeed was rather proud of this feat.

  A few raindrops patted up and down the sidewalk; Alf sniffed and squinted at the sky. A six-month sequence of dissembling had taxed his talent for killing time. His budget did not allow him long periods in cinemas or pubs, and he had dawdled through every museum in the city at least a dozen times. Spring should have opened up more outdoor distractions, but the difference in the weather appeared most days to be only a few degrees of temperature. Give him another good day at the zoo for choice, but it was a long way, and he doubted he’d enjoy it in the rain.

  He took the umbrella from his pack and shot it up and turned south in the direction of the King’s Road. He shambled from one shop to the next, standing before the various clothes racks, revolving his few blunt pound coins in his pocket. Alf’s interest in clothes was nil, but clothes stores did have doors and roofs. Whenever he felt an attendant’s eye upon him, he departed and moved on to the next shop. When the pubs opened he went into one and had a pork pie and a half of Courage. Yobbo’s lunch. The other yobs, punks and skinheads that frequented the area jostled him up and down the counter, somehow always managing to show him only their backs.

  By the time he left the pub the rain had stopped, though the sky remained dull. He walked to Saint Luke’s and sat on a bench in the church garden, trying to remember his ostensible school schedule. As always, the flowers were immaculate in every elaborate bed. The gardeners had timed the bulbs so that every few weeks the color scheme underwent a magical change. Alf slouched lower on the bench, pushing his pack away from him. He would have preferred to return to the flat, but he wasn’t sure if that would be plausible.

  A woman in a beige suit came clipping down the walk, one of those London women who, though on close examination were clearly in their twenties, contrived to convey by their dress and demeanor the impression of being nearer forty-five. A small brown terrier was leading her along at the end of a white leash. Halfway down the walk she stooped and slipped the catch from the collar, then sat down on a bench and watched the little dog run free, sniffing along the line of displaced tombstones propped against the churchyard’s western fence.

  The woman took a compact from her bulky handbag and began to examine herself in its mirror, her lips pursed uncomfortably tight. She had a weak chin, but a powerful nose to compensate. The terrier turned from the fence and locked its nose to some trace of scent and began to execute geometric figures around the bench where Alf was slouched.

  “The little dog laughed to see such spor
t,” Alf suggested. “And the dish ran away with the spoon.” The terrier stopped and looked skeptically up at him.

  “Please do not permit your dog to foul the amenity area,” Alf intoned, quoting loosely from the several green placards planted here and there on the lawn. The terrier sat back on its haunches and let out a little yip.

  “—oof,” Alf replied, falsetto.

  “riffrirf,” the terrier said, jumping up and smiling.

  “aarffooorffurfurfiiiii!” said Alf, somewhat louder. Across the walk the woman snapped her compact shut with a cross click and stood up, shaking the leash.

  At the head of the stairs of the maisonette flat, Hazel and Big Brother had their bedroom, and next to it Big Brother occupied what Hazel optimistically referred to as his study. In fact, it was a sort of electronic cockpit, packed with computers, printers, monitors, fax machines and modems hooked up to New York and Japan. Here, after nourishing himself from his exertions in the City, Big Brother would repair to continue trying to figure out every conceivable ramification of Big Bang for a good part of each night. From the windows of both of these rooms could be seen the Natural History Museum, the domes of the V &A, the Queen’s Tower and other features of the skyline, though Alf doubted if Big Brother ever raised his eyes to them.

  His own room was at the other end of a longish hall, right beside the bathroom, a location which admitted him to privacies of which he might have preferred to remain ignorant. As the spring continued, Alf spent much of his out of class time seated at the small desk before the windows, staring out across the binding of some textbook at the children playing in the trapezoidal courtyard of the council houses below. After the evening meal he’d most often retreat to this same position, staring inattentively at his own faint reflection in the darkened window panes.

  “All’s well, Love?” Hazel’s voice came from down the hall; she must have opened the door to look in on Big Brother, for Alf could also hear that munching sound the computers liked to make as they gobbled information. He couldn’t hear the Beeb’s reply, if he made any, only a drop in the hum of the machines as the door closed. He propped his elbows on the pages of his book and shut his eyes to dream of Spain. For several weeks he’d been considering that he might claim a holiday after his long year of study, and though he didn’t speak the language the excursion fares to Spain were cheap. Hazel was coming down the hall, though he wasn’t sure just how he knew it. Her bare feet made no sound on the carpet runner; it was more like a small breeze passing by. There came some groans and gurgles from the bathroom pipes, then her reflection appeared in Alf’s window pane, framed by his open doorway.

  “Still hitting the books this late at night?”

  Alf flipped the pristine textbook shut and swiveled in his chair. The lights flickered and dimmed for an instant as the computers engorged some great mass of news. Hazel had let down her hair—it descended in a warm current parted by the oval of her face, rejoining on the rise of her bosom, where one hand smoothed it absently against her nightgown’s cotton weave.

  “The two of you,” she said, smiling. “Seems like you never stop.”

  “Ah,” Alf said, and stopped with his mouth open. Conscious of this, he shaped the opening into a sort of smile and began to scrape his fingers across his scalp.

  “Hmm, well, I’m going to bed,” Hazel said, and shook her head to toss her hair back onto her shoulder blades. “Sweet dreams, Alfie …” She pushed herself out of the doorway and swung his door half shut.

  Alf turned back to face the window, pulled his hand loose from his head and looked down at it. His fingers were wrapped with stiff black hairs, indubitably his own. He lifted his forelock and leaned toward the window to examine his hairline. No doubt that it really was receding. A short harsh sound came out of him, something like a cough.

  Hazel was leaning over the small gas stove top, rolling kofta meatballs and dropping them to sizzle in a pan of oil. She turned suddenly to reach for something and collided with Alf, who’d been peeping over her shoulder.

  “Good Lord, you’re always right behind me,” Hazel said. Her face was pink and humid from the burners on the stove.

  She made a shooing motion and Alf retreated, slinking along the edge of the table, which was laden with trays of tiny salmon and caviar sandwiches for the cocktail party that evening. He sniffed and cleared his throat with a rasping sound, then picked up a tray and started down the long hall with it toward the living room.

  “Where do you think you’re going with that?” Hazel called after him. “Just bring it back, it’s way too soon, they won’t be here for hours.”

  Alf reversed his steps and put the tray back where he’d found it. He began to turn an uneasy circle between the table and the stove.

  “Well, I’m sorry,” Hazel said. “Well, you’re just underfoot, that’s all. Haven’t you got a class to go to? Then just go out and get some air, go on now, scat!” The kitchen steamed and she steamed with it; she had sweated nearly through her blouse. She smiled at him gaily through the vapors, and flapped her hands to send him away.

  He walked up Exhibition Road to its end, went into Hyde Park and continued as far as the lower end of the Serpentine. Two men were fishing where he paused, their long poles leveled over the dank surface of the water. The concrete bank was littered with goose down and slimy green goose droppings. An unpleasant idea came to Alf completely of its own accord. Many years before when he was small and they still lived on the farm outside Cedar Rapids, he and his older brother had taken the BB gun to the little pond and whiled away an afternoon shooting toads. When he remembered the phttt sound the BBs made going through toad bellies, two voices separated in his mind.

  It was Tom’s idea, he was the oldest, claimed the first, and the second answered, No no, Alfie, it was you, it was your idea from the beginning. If not for you it never would have happened … The thing was that it didn’t actually kill the toads, at least not right away, just left them drearily flopping around with drooling puncture wounds through their slack stomachs.

  “RURRRRFFAAARRRH,” Alf cried, and discovered the subject had been instantly wiped from his mind. One of the fishermen looked up at him sharply, then away.

  Alf couldn’t get his bow tie right and finally decided to leave it with one end bigger than the other. Leaning into the mirror, he pulled the loose skin of his cheeks down into bloodhound jowls, then let it snap back with a wet smack. He passed a hand across his head, wiped the loose hairs on the edge of the sink and went downstairs to survey the situation.

  An assortment of pinstriped Big Bangers and a smaller number of their fretful wives were circulating through the two front rooms. Big Brother, sharkskin Fileofax in hand, appeared to be rearranging his appointments. A somewhat scurvy-looking gent, Hazel’s water-color teacher, stood alone, snapping salmon sandwiches into his mouth, glancing around after each gulp to see if anyone was observing him. Hazel stood with a gay hairdresser called Neddy who’d befriended her at the painting class. Alf ate a caviar and cracker and began to eddy up toward their conversation. She wore some sort of pseudo-Victorian velvet dress, fastened with a thousand tiny buttons down the back. Though it conformed to no current fashion it made the most of her bee shape; the swell of her rear and the arch of her back even suggested a bustle. Alf drifted in a little nearer. Hazel’s hair was scooped up into a smooth blond orb, exposing the fine down on the back of her neck.

  “… then a body perm, and Bob’s your uncle,” he overheard Neddy saying. “Just whip a comb through it in the morning and you’re off!”

  Hazel plucked at her lower lip with a finger. “It does take a lot of time to look after …” she said musingly.

  Alf felt some rough obstruction rising in his throat.

  “But after all,” said Hazel, half turning to include him in the subject, “what else have I really got to do?”

  A steely clasp shut on Alf’s upper arm and he felt himself inexorably drawn away.

  “Mr. Thracewell, my brother Alfre
d,” Big Brother said. “Alf, fetch Mr. Thracewell a gin and French.” He passed Alf an empty glass and leaned to whisper in his ear, “Jesus Christ, your tie’s not straight.”

  As Alf receded into the hallway, he thought he heard the murmured invocation London School of Economics, and he swallowed against that plaguey roughness in his gullet. The kitchen was empty and he snatched up the gin bottle, carried it into the pantry and shut the door after him. With the bottle upended over his jaws, he squinted up at its butt end until he saw four bubbles rise, then lowered it and gasped. Gin and French? He sniffed the glass the Beeb had given him, but the scent was unenlightening. He fixed a gin and tonic with a lot of ice and headed back toward the front of the flat. En route he toppled a tower of bowler hats from the hall stand, made an abortive move to gather them, then decided to let them lie. Deep in conversation with Big Brother, Thracewell took the drink unconsciously and tasted it without looking. Alf watched his mouth shrivel to the surface of the glass, and at that very instant the vast bubble of gin he’d swallowed burst inside him with a soft explosion.

  “iirrrjffooorrrjBffaaarrrROOOOORF OOOO OOOO!!!” he howled. All around the room he could hear vertebrae popping with the speed of the turning heads.

  “Your younger brother this is, you say?” Mr. Thracewell murmured. “My word, a most original chap.”

  The Spanish holiday did not materialize and now that school was out Alf was at looser ends than ever. Though the weather had turned generally fine, he-tended to loiter around the flat, tracking Hazel from room to room till she was inspired to invent some errand for him. He went down Elystan Street to the newsagent on the little square and joined the queue of all the old ladies of Chelsea, each waiting patiently for a lovely chat with the brick-faced woman behind the postal grille at the rear. Often he came here to buy stamps for Hazel. The fat lady behind the candy counter glowered at Alf and only Alf, who was a foot taller and forty years younger than anyone else present, the only man and, to be sure, the only foreigner. He shifted nervously from leg to leg, trying not to think of how soon Big Brother was likely to discover that he had set foot in the London School of Economics only once or twice ten months before. The tiny lady immediately ahead of him, ancient and brittle as a bit of dry-rotted antique lace, had with the help of a complicated-looking walker made her way up to the grille. She conducted some sort of savings transaction and asked for a television stamp. Television stamp? Alf rocked forward and peered to see what that might be.