by Dan Carver
Well, that’s an ‘interesting’ philosophy, I’m thinking to myself, when along comes the history lesson:
“After all, it was Cicero, in 54 BC, who said, ‘Unchanging consistency of standpoint has never been considered a virtue in great statesmen. It is our aim, not our language, which must always be the same’. Don’t you agree?”
“Er…”
“And there’s a few more things you should know about this little democracy of ours.”
“Do you think this is prudent,” Calamine protests. “Only I…”
“Prudent my Aunt Fanny! He’s got this far, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, Sir but…”
“Yes-Sir-but-nothing, Calamine!” He takes a deep breath.
“Settle yourself in, Jupiter.” Calamine advise me. “Here comes the Gospel according to Saint Calamari.”
Calamari doesn't hear. He's addressing the invisible masses at some imaginary political rally:
“So perhaps it’s best if we start at the beginning: the systematic ruination of the country followed by The Great Separation, starvation and rioting. And how Mr Malmot, being an extremely senior military commander, assembles the shattered remnants of our armies and leads us against the Scots/Welsh coalition, tames the Gypsy warlords, subjugates Manchester, seals off the Cannibal Territories with the Longpig Blockade and establishes the Civilised Territories. You’d think we’d get some respect for that, wouldn’t you?”
Calamine yawns. Calamari turns purple.
“And what happens when we return?” he continues, positively frothing at the mouth. “The heroes?! The lads who went out there and put their lives on the line?! I’ll tell you, shall I?! We’re treated like scum. The liberal press despise us. People on the street, people we defended, spit on us and call us murderers. And we find the same wet mimsies who sold England down the river in the first place expecting to retake control!
“And peace is Hell. All peace brings is dissent and cries of ‘I want this and my human rights entitle me to that’ and ‘I’ve got curly hair so if you don’t give me a diamond-covered house you’re oppressing me!’. Every little oik wants his share of utopia, but he’s damned if he’ll put the graft in to get it. And our beloved ministers are already plotting how to waste our limited resources to give it to them.”
“And so I killed them all,” interrupts a disembodied voice, a voice like bacteria multiplying in a wound. “Systematically. One by one, and in the most devilishly amusing ways. In fact, it’s become something of a hobby of mine – pruning the parliamentary rosebush. I believe I’m on my third.”
I’ve heard those tones before. I didn’t like them then and I certainly don’t like them now. I don’t like the black, backlit shadow that moves independently across the paper walls of our fake dental laboratory. I don’t like the knowledge that those self-same paper walls are all that separate us from the tangle of tree roots that somehow form the body of one Mr Malmot. I don’t like his long, grey fingernails gouging through them.
“And I stepped unto the breach once more,” seeps that terrible voice, as his sepulchral skull oozes through the torn partition. “And I made all the right noises. And I promised to hand over power as soon as free and fair elections took place. But, you see, I didn’t. I synthesized democracy instead. I rigged up a government from my own stooges. Clever, yes?
“But this is the really clever part: not even they know! They’re all such dissipated dreamers, they don’t suspect a damn thing! They think the daily achievement of nothing is normal!”
“Parliament’s just a pantomime performance for the public,” Calamari explains. “The military runs this country.”
“And I run the military,” Malmot laughs.
“Impressive,” I say.
“Impressive? Yes. I’m proud of my achievements. But interesting? Well, I’m afraid not. I’m sick of staging parliament, Jupiter. I’m a soldier not a playwright. I don’t care about story arcs; I don’t give a damn about character motivation for ethnic minority candidates in Kent. I’m not Shakespeare. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but what about the tank? I find heavy artillery the most direct form of communication, don’t you?”
“It does what it’s meant to do, Sir.”
“It does what it’s designed for,” Malmot replies. “And a democracy, for all its much-vaunted, high-minded intentions, does not. Dictatorship is a simple and honest system. Straightforward and efficient. Democracy is like running a cookbook through a shredder and expecting the wastepaper to make a recipe. It’s a jumble sale jigsaw with half the pieces missing.”
“But people like freedom of choice, Sir.”
“What makes you assume they have it? However, point that out and they don’t take kindly to it. So we’re not going to. We’re going to make them believe they’ve chosen dictatorship themselves, that they’re a part of it. And once they’ve tried it they’ll love it. Give a man a flag and a gun and he’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. And I don’t care what anyone says – there’s not a woman out there who wouldn’t trade two good husbands for a mean-eyed bastard in a black uniform.”
Have you heard of ‘Wernicke’s disease’? It affects heavy drinkers. A deficiency of vitamin B1, or thiamine, leads to a blurring of consciousness and damage to the optic nerves. I’m suspecting I’ve got it. More worrying though, the DT’s have hold of me and I’m feeling increasingly odd.
Delirium tremens last between three and ten days. Sufferers experience both visual and auditory hallucinations with a fatality rate of between one and twenty percent. So, looking on the less-than-bright-side, there’s a one in five chance that I might die. And whilst I’m staring Death in the face, shaking and sweating, my head full of blue devils and pink elephants, my stomach trying to crawl out of my mouth, Malmot chooses to tell me that the dead man we’ve reanimated is former Prime Minister Bactrian. We’re to take him on a campaign tour – part propaganda mission and part test to see if our drunken nation notices anything odd about him. If not, well, the plan is to slaughter all the Opposition and Independent Members of Parliament and make their robotised corpses behave so badly they disgrace British democracy forever. I take all this as calmly as I can. I vomit for an hour solid.
I’m left with Calamine, who instantly becomes tolerable again.
“So we’re to part ways,” he says.
“Good,” I reply, “because you never stick up for me when he’s around.”
“I’ve been too busy watching my own back to watch yours. Haven’t you noticed? I’m not exactly Mr Popular these days. Seems they don’t like independent thought.”
“Planning a Night Of The Long Knives, is he?”
“When isn’t he?”
It occurs to me that Calamine might be plotting something himself. I’d like to know what. But he won’t be drawn on the subject. Not straight away. He returns to the matter in hand.
“Now this is the situation: you and your fat, mental friend are to complete former Prime Minister Bactrian and then report to Calamari at this address.” He hands me a business card. It seems to be for a brothel. “In between, you’re to pick up two suits from this address,” another business card, “and make yourselves presentable. You’ll be going on tour with Calamari and assisting with maintenance and operation. Always refer to former Prime Minister Bactrian as ‘former Prime Minister Bactrian’. Not, ‘The Dead Guy’, ‘Old Coffin Bollocks’, or anything of the like. ‘Former Prime Minister Bactrian.’ Understand?”
“I understand,” I say, less than graciously. “Do we have to take Elton?”
“I thought he was your assistant?”
“He's a human hemorrhoid. I'd rather he stays here until we're suicidal enough to need him.”
“Okay. That's fine. Now, Women. We can provide you with women along the way. We run things on military lines and understand necessity. However, I will level with you and tell you that we can’t guarantee the quality. So, if you choose to remain faithful to whoever, I would suggest that you ride her
before reporting. You won’t be coming home for a while.”
“You’re a cunt,” I tell him. I would add ‘insensitive’ but it sounds so wet liberal.
“I’d call myself a pragmatist. It’s a mindset that exists outside of standard romantic notions of honour and decency. If you have any common sense you’ll follow my example.”
He throws me something.
“Officer's stripes? I was never an officer?”
“I thought all army doctors were officers?”
“Not me. I was generally referred to as 'Hey, you!'.”
“Well, be something greater than yourself,” he says. “Or, at least, fake it until you can. Trust me, you'll need all the rank you can get when we bury democracy.
These are the other things Calamine tells me:
1: The infantile bickering of the petit bourgeois will never advance society.
2: Complete freedom means the time, space and opportunity to complicate your existence with irrelevant crap.
3: Dictatorship is just a derogatory term for a one party system. A one party system need not be corrupt.
Although, let’s be realistic…
4: It always is.
So…
5: Let’s build civilisation on our own terms, rather than those of genocidal mad men. Meaning…
6: Malmot.
And so…
7: I’m to report to him secretly.
Remember...
6: Don’t get found out.
7: Don’t get killed.
And lastly...
8: This is not as weird as it gets. By any stretch of the imagination.
I don’t know why Calamine seems to trust me. I wouldn’t say I trust him. I think he assumes I have principles.
* * *
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. What they don’t tell you is that a little power corrupts stupidly. Case in point: Geoffrey Durham. Short, round body, thin head and gaunt face. How do you get that kind of combination? Well, I don’t know, but he’s got it. Imagine a Prussian helmet with feet.
He’s a mass of dangling objects, from the luxuriant moustache to the half-lampshades that jut from his rounded shoulders. He calls them epaulettes. I call them ridiculous. But they complement the gold brocade nicely, as does the vainglorious patchwork of military ribbons that span his pigeon chest.
Clothes maketh the man, they say, and Durham seems to think so. In fact, let’s check out his wardrobe. There’s the usual collection of sensible tailored whatnots and then, if you look to the left, you’ll see the rolled-up sleeping bag he wears when pretending to be a caterpillar. And there’s the butterfly costume he puts on before leaping out of it. But his pride and joy is his black, semi-articulated dung beetle exoskeleton. If it weren’t for the inconvenience of his day job, you’d be hard pressed getting him out of it.
So you’ll be wondering what kind of job this fine specimen holds down. Well, as I think I may have mentioned earlier, Geoffrey Durham is a man of responsibility. He’s the Chief of Police.
We’re down in the depths of Police Headquarters. Durham stands up from behind his outsized mahogany desk, paces the length of the dank, grey dungeon he calls his office, ducks beneath a heavy oak lintel and disappears up a windy, stone staircase to attend to whatever’s troubling his horrid mind. Watch his feet. See those tiny and incredibly shiny shoes jerking up and down in a clockwork goosestep. Even the sound of his footsteps is pompous.
Further, past the cells we go, to plaintive protestations of innocence from within and heel-clicks and salutes from corned beef-faced subordinates in bad brown shirts without. Down a staircase and the stone blockwork melds into excavated rock. Did I mention the corridors? The place is littered with them, stygian tunnels of varied depths and materials, all fetid with male stench. Because standard premises aren’t enough for a man of Durham’s vaulting ambition. And so he’s got teams of convict labour burrowing deep beneath London, carving out secret passages and subterranean caverns.
What he’ll do when his underground lair is completed is anybody’s guess. I doubt it’ll be pleasant though.
London: crapitall shitty of England; full of movers, shakers, fakers, bakers, thieves, conmen, conwomen, catwomen, thickos, sickos, Marxists, racists, unemployed bassists and women called Mercedes with penises. And I’m seeing them all as I prowl Dirtygirl Street, hunting for the brothel on Calamine’s card. I’m not alone, I’m afraid. My expensive new suit’s attracting attention and I’ve a trail of at least a dozen prospective companions, all touting for my business. I don’t know what to tell them. Folk get so offended when you refuse sex that I’ve given up explaining. I just sigh and tell them to join the back of the queue. I say ‘queue’, but it’s more of a parade now, a kind of whore convoy. And I’m leading them on a wild goose chase around Soho, looking like a crazed gangbanger with eyes bigger than his stomach.
Well, I find the place I’m searching for, a classy-looking establishment with frightening security. I wave farewell to my travelling companions because, as the gorilla on the door insists, you wouldn’t bring fast food to a restaurant, would you? And it’s equally plush inside – all high ceilings, soft furnishings and staggeringly pornographic paintings. In fact, very reminiscent of Aunt Salome’s place, where I was paid to provide general security and to bring cups of tea to the rich sadomasochists chained in the dungeon.
I find a clothed woman. She turns out to be the Madam. She has no idea who I am but recognises Calamari’s description, so I set off round the rooms to find him. But I’m out of touch with brothels and unsure what the current etiquette is. Is it still rude to stare? Perhaps it’s ruder not to? I don’t want anyone to think I’m judging them. On any criteria. So I force myself to make eye contact. But this doesn’t work, because for every pretty girl I smile at, there’s one of Malmot’s goons hanging out her back-end and jigging away like a clockwork automaton. Then a thought occurs to me: do I really want to see Calamari on the job? I’ve a head rammed with disturbing memories. One more trauma might tip me over the edge. So I figure I’ll take myself downstairs and see if the Madam has any filthy anecdotes. And she does.
When the goons have all reached their suitable conclusions, they assemble in the largest room. There’s no Calamari, I notice. Roll call reveals another absentee and the cry goes up to extract him from his convincingly affectionate paramour. She shouts encouragement as he struggles, semi-dressed across the landing and then falls down the stairs with both feet wedged in the same trouser leg. Everyone laughs.
We’re all armed, myself included. But, whereas my companions carry pretty hefty-looking handguns, I’ve been issued with a wooden truncheon. This is hilarious, apparently. I take it in good humour and the head goon rewards me with a pistol, albeit a weedy revolver. There’s some kind of plan, but clearly no-one thinks it worth telling me about it. Not that I’m bothered. The less I know, the less I have to take responsibility for. I decide to keep my head down and allow myself to be ferried into a large black vehicle. I’m told we’re going to pick someone up.
“Bactrian? I mean, Former Prime Minister Bactrian,” I say, correcting myself.
“Who gives a fuck?” says the head goon. “We don’t.”
I soon realise I’m travelling with maniacs. Good company, but maniacs all the same. And I get the feeling they’re paramilitary.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Oh,” someone answers, “just a bit of hired muscle.” And they all laugh.
I don’t get to find out anymore. We soon arrive at somewhere or other. And there’s Calamari. And shoehorned into his wheelchair, looking about as dead as it’s possible to get to my newly sober eyes, sits Former Prime Minister Bactrian.
“No one’s gonna fall for this,” I say. “Nobody’s that stupid.”
“Have a little faith,” says Calamari. “This is England!”
The first stop’s Knightsbridge for something called a ‘meet and greet’ – or is it a ‘shake-and-fake’? I can never remembe
r. We’re here to meet the bulbous little sods in charge of British Industry. What’s left of it.
In the past, their nefarious naughtiness in pursuit of power and the pound was frowned upon. Now Malmot’s here to bullshit them round to his way of thinking. We keep Bactrian under wraps until the press have been nobbled and all the guests are well and truly plastered.
You can ascertain how important people are by how busy they’re supposed to be. Piers Dordogne, the horrendously unattractive chairman of English Electric, spends the majority of his days dreaming up easily-remedied business dilemmas he can set right when asked by shareholders what use he is to man or beast. Around this usefulness, he slots the twin tasks of under servicing and overcharging his clients.
Charles Bunnyfroth occupies an inordinate amount of time chairing a quango, a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation; an investigative committee paid to stare up its own backside till it sees something. This ‘something’ will almost always be in complete agreement with the government that isn’t supposed to be associated with it, and almost always ludicrous. Because Bunnyfroth is stark, staring mad. When asked to look into allegations of vote-stealing made by Opposition members, he discovered that the majority of names on the electoral register belonged to dead people. To stop this obvious corruption he flattened all the cemeteries.
“I’ll stop those dead bastards!” he’s been heard to say. On numerous occasions.
Tristram Shelley-Tewks is a semi-professional launch party guest and incorrigible ponce. He spends his mornings ‘rebranding’ companies and his afternoons trying not to hate himself. To ‘rebrand’ you pick some random words from the dictionary, splice them together in a pseudo-logical fashion and then add a couple of vowels to the end. The resulting guff is then sold to a stupid person who needs a new name for their unfashionable business.
But times are hard for Shelley-Tewks. With hyperinflation to worry about, the last thing a manufacturer needs is a big sign with a nonsense word on it. This reflects the uselessness of his creativity and, in turn, the complete pointlessness of his existence. No one else seems to mind, though. They love his garish neckties.