X20

by Richard Beard

  Ginny had given up, slammed her fists one last time against the door, gone home. I lay on the bed, the unlit cigarette in my mouth and a book of matches in my hand. I stared at the wall. I thought hard about Ginny’s heartache, which had nothing to do with cigarettes. I explored my own cruelty. I decided, without too much difficulty, that I really ought to be dead.

  So I struck a match, but not into my cupped hands, and not like Humphrey Bogart. I watched the flame climb towards my fingers. I could make excuses. I could blame it on Uncle Gregory, and his easy charisma impressing my young mind with the attractions of an adventurous life, full of trouble and tobacco. Or, on the basis of a single half-overheard conversation, I could speculate that Uncle Gregory was secretly my real father, and this adulterous mismatch had scrambled my genes, leaving me incapable of kindness. Or I could blame my parents, citing their failure to buy me a top skateboard or a decent stereo or a motorized go-kart, and for giving me nothing to rebel against except their decency.

  My fingers were burning. I tossed the match onto the floor, and waited. Nothing caught fire.

  I struck a second match and watched it burn. It was my own fault for thinking that I arrived in Paris a free man. I’d cast myself as the centre of the universe, poised to rescue beautiful women, destined to live forever. With luck and time and the headstart of Uncle Gregory’s money, I’d expected to stumble across everything I wanted, just by stumbling along. Disappointment was inevitable.

  I threw away the second match. No fire.

  My mother had been right all along. There was always something missing, and I had to learn to accept dissatisfaction, like everybody. I was no different, and I should never have laughed at her exclamation marks. She used them because what she was saying was important and she was teaching a slow learner. She only wanted me to take notice, but I never had. I ought to be dead.

  I lit a third match and brought it close to the end of the cigarette. I thought of Uncle Gregory in Adelaide and monkeys in test-stations and cowboys in the desert with oxygen in their saddle-bags. I thought of 20% of all British deaths, and Buerger’s disease, and benzo-a-pyrene, and tobacco heart, and the inefficiency of filters, and every threatening headline my mother had ever sent me. I searched out every positive assurance that Julian’s cigarette would definitely kill me.

  I lit the cigarette and drew in deeply and it tasted so vile I didn’t doubt it was fatal. I inhaled again, even though each time I brought the cigarette to my lips it felt like holding nausea in my hands. I finished it and still I wasn’t dead. I threw it onto the floor. Nothing caught fire.

  Nothing was happening. I’d smoked Julian’s cigarette and it wasn’t lethal. It was just a big disappointment, like everything else, like my mother had always warned me. Julian’s cigarette had no special message, no particular moral, and my life was no less fragile than any other. I was not the centre of the universe and everything was expected, unoriginal, unsurprising.

  The girl on the train, unharmed by the cigarettes she’d already smoked, lit another. She pushed her glasses back up her nose.

  Of course it hadn’t killed me. There was no reason why my death should be any more extraordinary than my life. I had to grow up, and fast, which was partly why I hadn’t brushed my teeth. I wanted to keep the taste of tobacco alive in my mouth. It reminded me that it wasn’t my destiny to live forever.

  From now on, I intended to replace all my heroic and ineffective desires with the simple and achievable desire to smoke. The unique and the operatic had escaped me, so instead I would set myself a derisory task which would determine everything in advance. I would accept the inevitability of repetitive days by committing myself to cigarettes, and any other constraints which Julian specified. It wasn’t the future I’d planned for myself, but I preferred it to a life of re-living the dissatisfactions of others.

  I’d thought it all through. Every cigarette was bound to remind me of Lucy, and Ginny, but that was fine. It would be a kind of unending penance, making me remember and suffer, just like I deserved. And as a smoker I’d have to find a new way of showing my mother I loved her, even though it probably wasn’t love which made me want to die before her. At least I presumed I would. It was no great secret that cigarettes were about to seriously damage my health.

  The girl in the black dress was tapping her enamelled finger-nails on the laminated table-top, drawing my attention to the single Ernte 33 she’d rolled slightly towards me. Her eyebrows arched above the tortoise-shell frames of her sunglasses. I could take the cigarette. I could start a conversation. I could find out where she came from and what she did and what we had in common apart from smoking. I looked away. Her reflection shrugged and carried on reading.

  I intended to withdraw my affections and detach myself from everything. I would be indifferent to the weather and the time of day, remaining impervious to any sensation except the hourly swell between deficiency and satisfaction offered by cigarettes. No doubt the external world would continue to address information to me, but I’d no longer be inclined to receive it. Instead, I imagined myself surviving without joy and without sadness, without a future and without a past, simply, self-evidently, like a drop of water forming on a tap, like a rat. I would ask for nothing, accept nothing, and make no impositions. And all in return for smoking a fixed number of cigarettes, each and every day.

  Gradually, my life would empty itself of any activity beyond this imperative routine. It would be free of all crisis and all disorder, a life with no rough edges and no imbalance. I would have no projects and feel no impatience. I would exist without desire, without resentment and without revolt. Hour after hour, cigarette after cigarette, day after day, something was going to start which would be without end: my cancelled life.

  From Paris to Hamburg, interrupted only by station-stops where I failed to alight, and in the background, cigarettes etcetera.

  The Suicide Club was packed. All the regulars were there, as well as Emmy and Jamie, and a large number of scientists and technicians from the Unit. I offered round a tray of sandwiches, studiously avoiding Julian Carr who was representing Buchanan’s and paying his respects on behalf of the company. He was also watching Jamie, who’d been trying to convince Mrs Cavendish the Unit receptionist that Theo’s lung photograph, if she only stood close enough and crossed her eyes, was actually a hidden 3D image of a red Indian chief. Behind them, Walter was arguing with Emmy. He refused to pass round any sandwiches.

  ‘I am increasingly frail,’ he protested.

  Lundy Foot was trying to persuade tea-drinkers to try a drop of sherry, and Julian Carr was now glaring at me over the top of Jamie’s head.

  Theo, restored to full health, appeared from nowhere. He smiled his closed mouth smile, made a space for himself, and danced an intricate jig which involved precise hopping and not infrequent skipping.

  Theo,’ I said, ‘stop that right now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s your own funeral for goodness sake.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said, moving to his left, jumping to his right. ‘And this is the best way to communicate with the people below.’

  It was less than an hour since we’d all come back from the mid-day service at the crematorium, and I’d already smoked 27 cigarettes. I hadn’t eaten all day, and I felt distinctly lightheaded.

  Theo was now standing at my shoulder. Even though he was only a hallucination, brought on by too much nicotine, I wanted to be polite.

  ’So then,’ I said, ‘how’s heaven?’

  ‘Mustn’t grumble.’

  ‘God smoke?’

  ‘Not that I’ve noticed. Watch out,’ he said. ‘Here comes trouble.’

  ‘Gregory.’

  ‘Julian.’

  ‘On behalf of Buchanan’s, my deepest commiserations.’

  ’Sandwich?’

  ‘I couldn’t help noticing,’ Julian said.

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘too many cheese, not enough ham.’

  ‘That you seem to be smoking t
oo much.’

  ‘It’s the occasion,’ I said. ‘Helps me get a grip.’

  ‘Of course, I understand that,’ he said. ‘But maybe you could slow it down, just a touch.’

  ‘Thanks, Julian. You’re a good man.’

  ‘It may not be the best time,’ he said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘But your new contract is ready.’

  ‘Later,’ I said, and went to offer sandwiches to a medical researcher I recognized from the Unit. I lit another cigarette. My head started to spin, and I sat down in one of the armchairs we’d pushed against the wall.

  ‘That man has a one-track mind,’ Theo said. He was making himself comfortable on the arm of the chair, just behind Walter’s favourite ashtray. ‘He’s not going to like it when you give up.’

  I nearly choked on my smoke. ‘I’ve no intention of giving up.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I’m in the middle of smoking more cigarettes than I’ve ever smoked in a single day before. It doesn’t suggest I’m about to stop.’

  ’Smoke another,’ Theo said. ‘I can feel myself fading.’

  I lit another cigarette. Theo now had a tan. He was wearing a lab-coat and Bananas was sitting on his shoulder, peering at my cigarette with green eyes.

  ‘It’s not as though there’s anything wrong with me,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I have a full medical check-up twice a week.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ Theo said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if there was anything wrong with you, do you think they’d tell you?’

  ‘Gregory!’

  It was Emmy, leaning towards me holding a tea-pot. She wanted to know if I was alright. ‘I’m fine,’ I said, even though I could be dying of lung cancer and heart disease and of course they wouldn’t tell me. I felt a dull ache in my chest, near my heart. Pull yourself together, man. ‘Emmy,’ I said, panicking slightly, ‘do you ever have the impression that Theo is still with us?’

  ‘Of course I have,’ she said, ‘all the time.’

  She wanted me to know that Julian Carr was starting an argument with Dr Hacket about Romans, and I promised to go and calm them both down. I took a glass of sherry from Lundy Foot, and found Julian leaning menacingly over Dr Hacket.

  ‘His middle name was Bombastus,’ I said, correcting them both before leading Julian away. He said:

  ‘What are you playing at? Sitting in that corner you smoked at least three cigarettes. I saw you.’

  ‘It’s the grief,’ I said, ‘and the worry. I’m sorry, Julian. It won’t happen again.’

  I left him with Emmy, because there were still several things I wanted to sort out with Theo, and in the nicotine daze of the rest of the afternoon I hope I managed a fairly convincing impersonation of a normal person. I handed round sandwiches, added sugar-lumps to cups of tea, proffered my lighter to unlit cigarettes. If I didn’t always follow the flow of conversation it was only because I was concentrating on Theo, and to keep him clear I constantly had a fag on the go, either wedged between my fingers or stuck between my lips.

  ‘I’m not giving up,’ I told him. ‘Julian wouldn’t let me near a one-day international ever again.’

  ‘You never go anyway.’

  ‘No opera. No motor-cycle GP. I’d lose my income.’

  ‘It’s only money.’

  ‘The practical consequences are unthinkable.’

  ‘Unpredictable.’

  ‘Incalculable,’ I said. ‘I don’t even want to think about it.’

  But Theo insisted that I couldn’t go on living in retreat. I had to move on. Listening carefully, I smoked my Carmens one after the other and his voice never wavered. Stop smoking, he said, Meet some new people, which was all very well until my 37th cigarette of the day, which turned out to be one cigarette too many. I started to feel unwell, and even though Theo was still talking, I had to go outside for some air. I stood in the driveway and took deep breaths, which seemed to help. I was about to take a walk, up to the gates and back, when Julian put his hand on my shoulder.

  He pulled me round so that I was facing him, and then he slapped the pack of Carmens from my hand. Immediately it hit the ground he stamped on it. Then he stamped on it again, and then he crushed it with a swivel of his foot, even though there were still three cigarettes left inside, including the one I always saved for last, turned upside down for luck. Julian said:

  ‘20 cigarettes a day. You know the rules.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I need to sit down.’

  ‘What about the contract?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll sign it.’

  I was still feeling groggy. Theo and Bananas popped up behind Julian’s back and I looked at them and thought a single word. Advice. Over Julian’s shoulder Theo mouthed: ‘Don’t be frightened.’

  ‘Alright then,’ I said to Julian. ‘I’ll sign it. But not here.’

  Julian followed me back inside, and waited while I called a taxi. He hardly raised an eyebrow when I told him we were going to the Estates. All he wanted was for me to sign his contract, and he kept quiet in the taxi, across the waste-ground, in the lift, and only spoke when I opened the door to flat number forty-seven.

  ‘What a dump,’ he said.

  The flat smelt familiar, of stale tobacco and dust, and in the room which used to be the clinic I told Julian to make himself comfortable. He wiped the dust off Theo’s chair and sat down behind the table. I sat in the patient’s chair. He took an envelope out of his suit-jacket and put it in front of me.

  ‘Let’s not waste any more time,’ he said. ‘It stinks in here.’

  He handed me a pen and I took the contract out of the envelope. I read a few lines. I noticed I was holding the pen like a cigarette.

  ‘Oh, I get it,’ Julian said. ‘You’re pretending to hesitate, winding me up for old time’s sake.’

  ‘You always said I could stop whenever I wanted.’

  ‘Of course I did. But you’re so obviously Mr X it should never occur to you to stop. Stopping just doesn’t apply to your personality type.’

  ‘It’s a bit stupid though, isn’t it? I might get lung cancer.’

  ‘And you might not. Anyway, in Hamburg you said you wanted to die. I thought that was the whole point.’

  ‘Well it was,’ I said. ‘But then I met Theo.’

  I couldn’t see him anymore, but I knew he was still with us. I could feel him urging me on. I said to Julian:

  ‘You knew he could immunize against TMV, didn’t you?’

  ‘How would I know that? All his plants were destroyed in the fire.’

  ‘What about the one you stole?’

  ‘It died,’ Julian said, straight-faced, even though we both knew that immunized tobacco plants were just about indestructible. ‘The contract, Gregory.’

  ‘Why did you burn down the lab?’

  Julian’s eyes went blank. He brought out his packet of Centuries. He selected a cigarette and lit it, and then held the smoke in his lungs for a long time, as if this was an admissible reason not to reply.

  ‘You were with me at the time,’ he said, smoke surrounding every word.

  ‘You were in my house. You were drinking my beer.’

  ‘You wear a suit, Julian. You give orders. That’s what you do.’

  ‘Why would I set fire to Theo’s lab? There were plants in there which could have made a safe cigarette.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. And anyway, how would you know? The tobacco would have to be tested, and the tests could take forever and still be inconclusive, just like they are already.’

  ‘You think I made it up?’

  ‘It was an excuse to get your hands on one of Theo’s plants. Theo was right. You wanted nothing to change. You found out about his discovery and you were scared he was going to sell it’

  ‘I promise you,’ Julian said. ‘I know nothing about this.’

  ‘You invited me to your house
to keep me out of the way.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Then you destroyed the lab to protect Buchanan’s. Theo actually beat the TMV years ago, but he knew this would happen. He never told anybody because he knew someone like you would come and destroy it all.’

  Julian glanced down at his packet of Centuries. He slid them towards me. ‘Let’s resolve this like adults,’ he said.

  It was some time since Julian had stamped on my Carmens. I took a Century out of his pack. I turned it carefully in my hand, and read the writing above the filter. I put it back in the box, upside-down, and slid the box back across the table.

  ‘For luck,’ I said.

  He took out the upside-down cigarette and lit it.

  ‘But only if you save it until last.’

  ’Stop fooling around, Gregory. What else would you do with your life?’

  ‘I could do anything. I could buy a motor-cycle. I could go to New York.’

  ‘With whose money?’

  ‘Where as a non-smoker I will rarely be treated as a pariah.’

  ‘Yes, very good, Gregory, but the joke wears thin, even by your standards. Including the farce of bringing me down to this dump in the first place. Now sign the contract. You know what’s in it’

  Another ten years of retreat and the dangerous illusion that I was impenetrable, that I offered no purchase to the outside world, and was inaccessible behind my smoke-screen of cigarettes. Only now I’d learnt that refusal was impossible. Nobody could remain completely detached and incurious because the world was always offering itself to be unmasked, and it couldn’t do otherwise. It was time to stop being a statistic, and prove I had more than collective significance.

  I tossed Julian the key to the flat. ‘Keep it,’ I said. ‘In exchange for the days left on the first contract.’

  Julian sighed. I could see he felt sorry for me.

  ‘Remember the monkeys?’ he said. ‘They never set them free, you know. They didn’t send them back into the wild with a gross of Carmens each and a typewriter between every thousand, to spend their retirement writing Hamlet: