A Closed Book

by Gilbert Adair

  ‘Stop it! For Christ’s sake, stop it!’

  ‘Shut up!’

  *

  ‘You’d take hold of my hands and then you got me to guide it, your great big fleshy red cock, it was a real monster in those days, wasn’t it, not like the pathetic drippy thing that dangles between your legs now, and you got me to guide it into my mouth, and I could hardly get my mouth open wide enough. Wasn’t that cute? You used to find that so fucking cute. You liked the word “cute”, I remember, it was a word you used a lot. And then, and then, when your cock was right inside my mouth and I’d just about stopped breathing – I wanted to throw up – you’d pull down my underpants, my soggy grey little Y-fronts. Oh, they were cute too, weren’t they so fucking cute, those little grey Y-fronts of mine? So cute you used to rub your nose in them, remember? And then you’d take my balls in your hands, my cute little balls, and you’d squeeze them so hard I wanted to scream my head off, but I couldn’t, could I, because I had your cock half-way down my throat, your big dribbling red raw cock, and you were squeezing my balls harder and harder till you came right inside my mouth.’

  *

  ‘And do you remember what you did then? Do you? Oh, this was wonderful, this was the best of all. You’d quickly draw your cock out of my mouth and then I would throw up, I couldn’t help it, ever, and I used to see your face when you made me barf all over your cock, I used to see it, Paul, and I can tell you, at that moment your face was even more of a horror than it is now.’

  ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’

  *

  ‘It’s all wrong, I know. For A Closed Book, I mean. Subject-matter’s all wrong. After all those high-falutin ramblings of yours about eyes and blindness and eyelessness, it would come as too big a shock to the reader’s system. Yeah, but that’s life, you see, Paul. You said it yourself, remember? Life doesn’t stick to the rules. It springs the sort of climax on you that you don’t expect.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, what are you going to do?’

  *

  ‘First, Paul, I’m going to go on with my story. You didn’t know I tried to kill myself, did you? With a razor. No, of course you didn’t. That was after you’d left the school. After you’d given up your job. Sitting at the Feet of Ghosts, wasn’t it? A big, big success. The Booker Prize. Christ knows how many editions. Big-budget Hollywood movie. You didn’t need me any longer. You didn’t need any of us. Besides … besides, you were getting to be a bit too well-known, weren’t you? A bit too conspicuous. If you wanted some little tyke to vomit over your cock, you had to start travelling, moving around a bit. Like – like Sri Lanka, no?’

  *

  ‘I moved around a bit too. In my own way. In and out of reform schools, sleeping in the streets, that sort of moving around. Always on my own, always. Because I never could trust anyone. Never.’

  *

  ‘What? No comment, Paul? Words fail you for once? Never mind, I’m just going to go on anyway. And actually, Paul, you’ll be surprised to hear that my story lightens up a bit now. You wouldn’t think it could, would you, but it does. Because I met this guy. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a nice enough guy on the streets like me, Chris was his name, and we started bunking down together a lot of the time. Then one day, hallelujah, Chris landed himself a job. Teaching English. Just like you. Is that spooky or what? Teaching English in a crummy language school off Regent Street, sort of bargain-basement Berlitz, was what he told me, a total rip-off. You see, Chris turned out to be really quite well educated, I don’t know how he got to be on the streets, I never asked him and he never told me, but, anyway, he got this job and he rented a flat and I moved in with him. A council flat in the East End.’

  *

  ‘Well, we lived there together for a bit. And one day I was sitting alone in Chris’s flat and I said to myself – I said to myself – if he can do it, I can do it. You know? I can get my act together too. And that’s when I changed my name – changed it to John Ryder. It wasn’t any sort of precaution, you understand. I didn’t know then I’d be standing over you now. It’s just that I was in the process of remaking myself, reinventing myself, and it felt good to have a new name for the new me.’

  *

  ‘So, as I say, I got myself a job, any job, anything I could find, working in a video shop, a betting shop, selling fruit and veg in a Bermondsey street market, you name it, you can bet I did it. And then, finally, to cut a long story short, I got myself hired as a runner in a brokerage firm in the City. Office boy, basically, but I was smarter than most of them there and I even did a bit of trading on my own, just penny shares, but I was really very good at it, so good I realized I could do better for myself if I did it from home. Which is what I’ve been doing for the last eight years. Till I turned up on your doorstep.’

  *

  ‘Still nothing to say? Nah, it’s not the kind of story that appeals to you. Not what you’d call “postmodern”, is it? Too much gritty realism. Touch of the Irving Welshes. Not your sort of thing at all.’

  *

  ‘You didn’t expect me to know a fancy word like “postmodern”, did you? Well, but you see, Paul, it’s you I have to thank. You see, you forgot me, but I didn’t forget you. I never forgot you. I read your novels. I read your interviews. I saw the movie. I even watched the Oscar night ceremony on TV. Tough luck, Paul. Best Costume Design. Better than a kick in the pants, I suppose.’

  *

  ‘I was like a stalker – an invisible stalker. Because nowadays, as I discovered, you can be a stalker without stepping outside your own home. That’s how I stalked you – on TV, through the newspapers, through magazines. It was easy. It was child’s play. You were so famous, Paul, you’d become so fucking ubiquitous. Is that the word? Ubiquitous?’

  *

  ‘The Booker. The Whitbread. Your knighthood. Everything you did, I watched you do. Everywhere you went, I went too. Invisible but I was right beside you. And then one day, one day – wham! – Booker Prizewinning Author in Near-Fatal Car Crash in Sri Lanka.’

  *

  ‘Now, Paul, here comes the funny bit. Because you might have thought I’d be over the moon about that crash of yours. I wasn’t, though. No, no, no, no, no! That wasn’t what I called revenge. Maybe it was God’s revenge. Maybe it was good enough for God. It wasn’t good enough for me.’

  *

  ‘No, no, your crash was bad news for me. Because suddenly there was nothing. Nothing about you anywhere. Nothing to tell me whether you were still in Sri Lanka or over here or somewhere else altogether. There was a time there, Paul, I thought I’d lost you for good. I thought it was all over for me, I really did. Till the day, oh and it was the most marvellous, the most exquisite day in my entire life, till the day I opened The Times and I noticed, I just noticed it, Paul, I came that close to not noticing it, till the day I saw your ad.’

  *

  ‘Oh, it was a subtle one. No name. No identification. Just the two words “blind author”. No, no, no, I tell a lie. What you wrote was “sightless author”, wasn’t it? “Sightless author seeks amanuensis.” And I knew, I knew, it just had to be you. And I thought, now I’ve got him! Now I’ve got him! Now I’m going to be his amanufuckingensis!’

  *

  ‘What are you going to do to me?’

  ‘Wait, wait, wait. It’s not over yet. I’ve left the best for last.’

  *

  ‘We’ve been working hard on that book of yours, haven’t we? What is it you like to call it? Your testament? Well, I tell you, Paul, you don’t know how right you are. It is going to be your testament. But you know the best joke of all, Paul? You do, don’t you? You must have guessed by now?’

  *

  ‘It was from Chris I got the idea. Remember Chris? Taught English in a language school? TEFL. Teaching English as a Foreign Language.’

  *

  ‘Well, he used to talk to me about it. How he’d have a class of pupils from all over the place, German businessmen, Japanese students, I don’t know, Brazilian int
erpreters, whole mishmash of nationalities, and the only language they were allowed to speak was English. Right from the start, right from the very first session. Total Immersion, they called it. Even in the beginners’ class, bunch of forty students, not one of them with a word of English to his name, except “yes”, “no”, “okay”, “Coca-Cola”, and he’d have to teach them the language from scratch. And you know what he told me? He told me that, sometimes, when he went into that beginners’ class he’d have this fantasy about teaching them not English at all but a completely invented language! You understand? He’d fantasize about making up words of his own the night before, words for “me” and “you” and “come” and “go” and “table” and “chair”, these would be the words he’d teach them, and none of them would know any better, and by the end of the course there they’d all be, yammering away to each other, really, really fluently, but in a language that didn’t exist! Wouldn’t that have been something? He used to imagine them all returning home, back to Germany or Japan, really satisfied with the course, and the very next day they’d walk into some high-powered business conference and they’d open their big mouths and start spouting this completely invented language! God, we laughed!’

  *

  ‘I’m smiling at it now. Can you hear me, Paul? Can you hear me smile?’

  *

  ‘Anyway, for Chris it was just a fantasy. But I never forgot it. And when I came here I thought I’d give it a go for real. And that’s why your book’s a joke, Paul. Because everything in it, and I mean absolutely everything, is gibberish.’

  *

  ‘I can hear the critics now. Tragic case – premature senility – Alzheimer’s – mind destroyed by his terrible accident. The Rembrandt – the statue of Diana – Hertford College – St Paul’s – the Millennium Dome – the Burger King on Hampstead Heath. Oh, I could go on and on and on. Isaiah Berlin’s dead not alive, Pete Townshend’s alive not dead, Tony Blair, Saddam Hussein, O. J. Simpson, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis – your book, Paul, your book is a monstrosity, it’s a folly, it’s a joke, it’s as big a freak as you yourself are, it’s nothing but the incontinent ravings of a doddering, gibbering old fart!’

  ‘Oh please God!’

  ‘Why don’t you pretend you’re having a nightmare, Paul? Isn’t that what you used to say to me? Remember? “Just pretend you’re having a nightmare, angel-face.”’

  *

  ‘Listen, John, listen to me. Please God, listen to me. I wronged you, I know. What I did to you was a terrible, terrible thing, I can never take it back, never, but – but look, you’re – what I mean is, I’m rich, John, I’m a wealthy man, a very wealthy man, I can make it up to you, no, no, no, of course I can’t, I’ll never be able to do that, but – but you’re young, you’ve got your life ahead of you, and I can make that life worth living, I can, I mean it, John, I’ll give you – I’ll turn my entire fortune over to you, everything, you’ll have everything, only – John, are you listening? John, are you listening to me?’

  *

  ‘John?’

  *

  ‘John? Where are you?’

  *

  ‘Please, John, don’t do this to me, please. Not to a poor old blind man.’

  *

  ‘What are you doing, John? Oh, God, pleaaafffffphm –’

  *

  ‘There there, Paul. Not too tight, I hope. No, no, seems okay.’

  *

  ‘Don’t worry. You won’t have it on for long.’

  *

  ‘Ooops. Oh, I’m sorry. I seem to have knocked your glasses off and – oh dear, now I’ve trod on them too. Tsk tsk. Butterfingers. No, I suppose I mean butter-feet.’

  *

  ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. You won’t need dark glasses in hell.’

  *

  ‘Now, Paul, let me explain why you have that strip of Scotch tape across your mouth. It’s a temporary measure, you understand, I’ll be taking it off again before you know it. I’ve no desire to leave any tell-tale signs of our, shall I say, our little falling-out. And don’t think it’s because I’m afraid someone will hear you. In this lonely old house of yours, as you yourself are well aware, Paul, there is no one who can hear you.’

  *

  ‘It’s just that I want you to know exactly what’s about to happen to you and if you began to scream, you see, you might not hear what I have to say.’

  *

  ‘Strange. Your mouth has been gagged. And you have no eyes. Yet I can still detect the fear in your face.’

  *

  ‘Oh, but I can’t stand here for ever, just gazing at you, wonderful as such a prospect would be. As I was about to say, what I had in mind from the very beginning – from our very first meeting – was of course to kill you. That, I’m sure, you’ve already figured out for yourself. The problem, though, was finding a method. You see, I was determined that the punishment would fit the crime. Or, anyway, fit the criminal. And you can be sure I had no intention of being punished myself. So it was something I had to think long and hard about. And then one day it came to me. That was the day we were in your bedroom going through your ties. Oh, and by the way, Paul, you remember the tie with the stain on it, the tie you thought was a Cerruti? Well – oh, but you know perfectly well what I’m going to say, don’t you?’

  *

  ‘I’ll say it anyway, just in case. It was the Cerruti and there was no stain. Just another of my little jokes.’

  *

  ‘I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me, it was idiotic, it was infantile. Like most of those little jokes of mine. But it was great fun while it lasted and, well, you have to build up to a climax very, very gradually.’

  *

  ‘Anyway, there we both were, you and I, rummaging through your ties, and I suddenly thought to myself, my, but this is a spacious wardrobe. So spacious, I thought, you could actually stand right inside it. Of course, you couldn’t move around too much. And you’d have to be a bit careful about breathing. All the same –’

  *

  ‘Uh-uh-uh, Paul. Naughty, naughty. No struggling, now. Just sit there quietly or I’ll have to pin you down.’

  *

  ‘The only thing was, if I were to stick you in there, well, even you could get out of that wardrobe. And locking the door from the outside wasn’t a solution either, for obvious reasons. Still, I liked the feel of the idea and I wasn’t ready to give it up and I thought about it and I thought about it until finally, just this morning as it happens, I found the answer. The door. The door that keeps swinging open. This morning you walked into it again, and you’ve walked into it before, even Mrs Kilbride knows that, which, incidentally, will come in useful when the police start to snoop around. Oh, and again by the way, Paul, I think you ought to know, just to keep you right up to date, poor old Joe Kilbride genuinely is ill. Believe it or not, that wasn’t one of my lies. It was just my good fortune, just a pure stroke of luck. I deserved at least one, don’t you think?’

  *

  ‘So, anyway, now we come to the nitty-gritty. My story – to the police, I mean – is that you asked me to change the spring on that door, which is what I’m going to do this very day. I did buy one of those restrictor things – you remember, I told you about them, they make doors slam shut when you let them go, and, well, I bought one this morning at the locksmith’s in Chipping Campden and I plan to fix it to the inside of the wardrobe door. It shouldn’t take me more than half-an-hour or so. Then, this weekend, when I drive back to London, and you’re completely alone, you’re going to go looking for a tie inside that wardrobe, one of your elegant Charvet ties – then, hey, hey, what is this, the tie hanger seems to be right at the back. Fuck it, I can hear you say in that inimitable way you have, fuck it, who’s been moving my ties? And then, because you’ve got to have your tie, you wouldn’t be you if you weren’t wearing a tie, without thinking, completely forgetting the spring’s been changed in the meantime, you step right inside the wardrobe to get the tie and, hey pres
to, the door snaps shut behind you!’

  *

  ‘I’ll have left you something to eat in the kitchen. A plate of cold cuts, I think, and a bottle of Rioja. No one will come calling. No one will hear you scream. No one but you. And the darkness. And the silence.’

  *

  ‘You’ll be locked inside that wardrobe, Paul, just the way you might be locked inside the pages of a book. A closed book.’

  *

  ‘I won’t leave you inside for too long. To be on the safe side, what I’ll do is drive back down on Sunday morning. That should be time enough. And to be on the extra-safe side, I’ve decided to line the outside of the wardrobe with some of this thick Scotch tape. I’m counting on your claustrophobia to do the trick, but just in case it doesn’t, I’m going to take the extra precaution of cutting off all your air. Almost all your air, I dare say it won’t be totally airtight.’

  *

  ‘Then, on Sunday morning, I’ll strip it off again, open the door and – well, God knows what I’ll find. Not a pretty sight, I imagine. But to me, Paul, to me it’ll be a masterpiece.’

  *

  ‘So there it is, the end of my little tale. I’ve got it off my chest and all that’s left for me now is to get it out of my system.’

  *

  ‘Now, Paul, what I intend to do is take you upstairs with me. You understand? I’d rather have you at my side while I fix the door, I’d prefer to have you where I can keep an eye on you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you’re trying to tell me. A blind man can’t get into too much trouble by himself. It’s true. But it’s just the way I am, cautious to a fault.’