by Luke Kennard
‘This is a great set-up,’ said Karl. ‘So many people dream about having their own bar.’
‘Good for them,’ said Mr Roderick. ‘I hate it. It’s a necessity.’
‘Do you open every night?’
‘Weekends. Ceilidhs.’ He said the word with a rictus of disdain. ‘And we do weddings for people who want to demonstrate how unfussy they are. About twenty a year.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘To be honest with you, Karl, I don’t even like apples very much,’ said Mr Roderick. ‘But running an orchard beats the Neoliberal Free State of Education. I was a teacher for twenty years and for twenty years I was planning my escape. This was my father’s land.’
Mr Roderick’s father had run a ropey pick-your-own fruit farm and had left half of his land fallow. So when he inherited, Mr Roderick did some research, sourced a variety of dwarf apple trees and spent everything he could spare on them. He took an evening class in pest control and maintenance. Dwarf trees – they might start producing a small crop after three years, but full productivity, you’re looking at seven or eight, he told Karl. And then it takes another year or two of harvests before you admit to yourself that you’re barely breaking even.
‘And so,’ Mr Roderick nodded at the bar, dug his thumbs into his belt and did a joyless little dance. ‘But enough about me. What did you do to get relegated?’
‘They didn’t tell you?’
‘Oh, I’ve got the paperwork,’ said Mr Roderick. ‘But I like to hear it from the protégé and judge for myself.’
‘I didn’t write my journals; I threw lukewarm coffee in my mentor’s face; I embezzled money from a fictional portfolio and spent it on booze.’
‘That all?’
‘Apart from that I was just being myself.’
‘Oh, you must always be yourself,’ said Mr Roderick. ‘You’re here for six weeks, yes?’
Karl nodded.
‘All right. You clean the machines. You wash the apples. You pick out any bad ones and throw them in the skip. You clean again. Everything. You spend more time cleaning than making, that’s the reality of the situation and it’s the only way you get a consistent and industry-acceptable product. That’s it.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘It’s wet, cold and miserable,’ said Mr Roderick. ‘That’s the second time you’ve said “Sounds good”. Is it your catchphrase?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll get you started disinfecting the presses. Sound good?’
Neither the two large presses nor the big kettle-shaped tanks nor any of the other machines seemed particularly dirty, so cleaning them inside and out with a series of chemical sprays and a pressure hose wasn’t a satisfying experience. But three hours later Mr Roderick popped his head through the factory door, looked from wall to wall, nodded twice and walked away. This was sufficient encouragement to keep Karl buzzing with approval for the entirety of the 45-minute drive back to Janna and Stu’s.
‘Tomorrow at six, then,’ said Izzy.
Karl walked around the row of houses to the back alley, picking his way over brambles and a pile of disintegrating half-bricks before descending the stairway at the back of the house. He pricked his finger on the wire key ring and, with some difficulty, managed to turn the key in the lock and force the French windows open onto his basement flat. It smelled of cat pee.
To his surprise Karl found working at Roderick’s Orchard therapeutic for the first week. It was cold and exhausting and he woke up in the morning in Janna and Stu’s basement not wanting to go to work, dithering in the shallows of sleep, harbouring some fantasy that he might not have to. But once there he enjoyed the isolation, the finite tasks interrupted only by the occasional gnomic utterance from Mr Roderick. The exhaustion of physical labour turned the mere act of sitting down into an intense pleasure, and this alone felt like a new and important discovery: life was a matter of contrasts, and all of his unhappiness and unfulfilment related, it seemed to him now, to the similitude of his work and leisure. Sitting in the same position, staring at the same screen that spewed out duties or entertainment depending on which way the sluice gate was open. The life of a battery hen. After each of the nine-hour shifts Mr Roderick would produce a boulder of hard bread and an oblong of crumbly cheese so mature it stung the roof of Karl’s mouth. They’d sit at a picnic bench and eat while swigging from a plastic jug of cider from the previous year.
That evening preceded a wedding party and Karl swept the floor of the barn with a useless but beautiful broom. The walls were hung with nine large collages of apocalyptic and mildly pornographic images over enlarged, yellowed pages from old novels. A price guide by the door valued the works at £4,000–£6,000. Mr Roderick was clearly a patron of the arts. Karl wasn’t into art, so he liked it when the artist included words. It gave him something to read while everyone else was appreciating the art. He made the rounds and didn’t recognise any of the titles until he came to the fifth:
T. PIVEN – THE TRAPEZE
so the world ended more than 2,000 years ago,’ said Katya. The dark shape gave her to understand that this was true by undulating gently. In so doing it inadvertently absorbed some of the light within the walled garden, which dimmed significantly, and conversation among the other guests temporarily hushed.
‘The Entity fashions us the opportunity to start again.’ The portly gentleman took her elbow as if it were a bird to be set free. ‘Only imagine – the population of the world capped at 500,000,000. A farewell to misery of every category, to poverty, to war and violence. Disease eradicated, famine and hunger a distant memory. The free migration across every border and the celebration of every culture for their distinct qualities, and all shall have a plenitude! A surfeit of land and wealth.’
Katya watched The Entity shift forms so that it appeared to look like a spiky ball. And then she wasn’t sure whether she might only have been looking at the sky, a trick of the light to the left of the moon. Had the gentleman said ‘The Entity’ at all or had she merely misheard him?
‘But what is his name?’ she asked.
254
The canvas was dominated by a topless woman with a binary galaxy instead of a head.
‘Who’s the artist?’ he asked Mr Roderick.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I like the art. Who’s the artist?’
‘Oh. Nobody. They’re computer-generated.’
Karl looked at the canvas. ‘They can’t be.’
‘Project by one of my former students. You set a few sliding scales – surreal to naturalistic, monochrome to Fauvist, heart to head – make a few category choices and it generates some attractive but hard-hitting concept work you can print onto any surface you like. Then she signs them and we split the printing cost and profits.’
‘This novel,’ said Karl, ‘The Trapeze, do you know it? Do you have it?’
‘Ha! That thing’s still doing the rounds?’ said Mr Roderick.
‘Another protégé gave me a copy,’ said Karl. ‘They said it was supposed to be the book The Transition is based on. I fell asleep reading it and then it was gone when I woke up. I assume Janna or Stu took it.’
‘How would you describe your relationship with your mentors?’ said Mr Roderick.
‘They’re very upfront about everything,’ said Karl. ‘Janna always second-guesses how uncomfortable and stupid you’re going to find something before you have to do it.’
‘And then you do it. Any mind games?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Karl. ‘But Janna always says that they’re mind games before they start.’
‘It’s all mind games,’ said Mr Roderick. ‘Every conversation you have has been worked out in advance.’
‘Even this one?’
‘The Trapeze revolves around a radical reduction in the world’s population: The Winnowing. It’s a potboiler. Politically it’s somewhere between Fascism and radical environmentalism. Wouldn’t it be heaven on earth if there were fewer of us, and if those who remai
ned lived sustainably and in peace, gradually curing every known disease?’
‘It would for the survivors,’ said Karl.
‘Would you expect to be one of the survivors?’
‘Not remotely,’ said Karl.
Mr Roderick regarded him coolly.
‘Good man,’ he said.
‘So the point of The Trapeze is that The Transition is in favour of mass extermination?’ said Karl.
‘In The Trapeze the radical reduction is to be achieved over a generation through total birth control. It’s paranoid conspiracy-theory guff, and the book is a hoax.’
‘So why’d they take it? Janna and Stu, I mean.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mr Roderick. ‘Poe’s Law implies that the parody and the actuality gradually become indistinguishable.’
Karl looked at the signature in the corner of the nearest work: Alice Jonke.
38
THE WEEKENDS WERE the worst. No work at the orchard – although Karl had offered to help out at the bar – and no Genevieve until Monday. It was incredible to Karl how quickly the loneliness had set in. He talked to himself, walked in circles. He went to town and tried to read in the library but kept abandoning things after a page or two – something had happened to his focus. He ate nutritionless snack foods and stared at the wall. He thought about his dad alone in his chalet and felt terrible. Maybe his dad had more of the essential qualities required to take on the great labour of loneliness. Karl feared that he lacked them entirely.
‘You look ill,’ said Genevieve. ‘What are you spending your food budget on?’
‘I’m doing fine.’
‘There’s a McDonald’s straw sticking out of your pocket.’
‘How’s it going with Mutt and Jeff?’
‘They’re really pushing me – I’ve already worked with three different teams – PR this week.’
‘And you’re enjoying it?’ Karl unravelled the straw sheath and started to tear bits off it.
‘Karl, it’s great. I can’t believe how long I put up with being a fucking teacher. The only thing they get neurotic about is food. I passed by the kitchenette and, get this, there were three vegans all competing to say the worst thing they could about soya milk.’
‘Soya milk is bad?’
‘Your body can’t digest it. It causes precocious puberty in children. It’s destroying the rainforest.’
‘Wow. What did you say?’
‘I told them it also inhibits the absorption of protein. We’re going out for cocktails tomorrow. I’ll have to bone up on what’s wrong with quinoa.’
She kept kneading the palm of her left hand with the thumb of her right.
‘Bone up?’ he said.
‘Do you think there’s anything screwy about herbal tea? Reckon I can get them on an air-only diet by the end of summer.’
‘You look beautiful.’
‘Janna showed me your browser history.’
‘She what?’
‘She felt it was her duty.’
‘What browser history?’
‘It’s funny because I never really thought of you that way. I mean, it’s sad.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Does it actually make you feel good?’
‘What is this?’
‘It was the type of material that I found a little upsetting—’
‘You believe some list that Janna produces?’
‘Karl, you’ve been using someone else’s internet to look at porn. You’ve even been using the tablet to look at porn, which is fully networked and accessible by your mentors. That’s just a verifiable fact.’
‘Maybe a couple of times,’ said Karl.
‘Exactly one hundred and nineteen times, up to four times in a single day.’ Karl felt his face flush. ‘I checked through the links. You have a very particular type, Karl.’
‘Actually I was trying to find women who looked like you.’
‘Oh, that’s so romantic,’ said Genevieve.
‘I’m serious. It’s actually a thing. Facial recognition stuff. You can create a kind of surrogate—’
‘Please stop.’
‘It got a little out of control. But the point is, why are they sharing this with you? They’re trying to discredit me,’ said Karl.
‘You don’t make it difficult.’
‘Little things here and there to erode what you think of me, what we have together, and our obligations to one another. If they can make you believe I’m some kind of sexual deviant you’ll find it easier to leave me.’
‘Oh wow,’ said Genevieve.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘this isn’t a big deal.’ He put his hand on her knee. She looked at it and then into his eyes. ‘I don’t mean it isn’t a big deal. You’re maybe thinking why did I keep it from you, but really why would I tell you? I don’t even think about it. It’s a process. Like brushing your teeth.’
‘Ha!’
‘You don’t seem to understand what it’s like having a sex drive.’
‘What?’
‘You can withstand long periods of time without any intimate contact. Like a sex camel.’
‘Sex camel!’ said Genevieve. ‘Take that back. It brought a lot of things into focus, actually. This is all you do all day – you work from home so you can just … I mean I’m not saying you don’t do any work, but whenever you want to …’
‘This isn’t who I am.’
‘Yeah, but it kind of is,’ said Genevieve.
‘It’s not the good part.’
‘No. But it makes me wonder if The Transition is really even going to improve you in any way.’
‘I wasn’t planning on letting it.’
‘Do you not want to be more than an appetite? Do you just want to slowly turn into Jabba the Hutt?’
‘That’s not your reference,’ said Karl. ‘Since when do you use Star Wars references?’
‘Oh, Karl,’ said Genevieve. ‘You do realise I carry on existing when we’re not in the same room? That I’ve seen films you don’t know I’ve seen, that I exist?’
‘Yeah, yeah, of course. Stop it.’
‘That I’m not the sum total of the things you know about me?’
‘Don’t make this about more than what it is.’
‘Dad used to say you judge a man by what he does when nobody’s looking,’ said Genevieve. ‘Although God knows what he got up to.’
‘Isn’t that a koan?’ said Karl. ‘You can’t see someone when they’re alone. Doesn’t it just mean you can’t judge?’
‘Maybe it was when he thinks nobody’s looking,’ said Genevieve, sliding off the stool and tugging her skirt down to her knees.
39
WHEN THE SUN was low it picked out the gnarled trees of Roderick’s Orchard like exhibits in a museum cabinet, every furrow and knot cast in bronze light. Mr Roderick passed the cheese and took a swig from the plastic cider keg.
‘So how are you finding it?’
‘The work? Fine.’
‘I mean The Transition.’
‘Recently? Not so good.’
Mr Roderick grinned. ‘But you’ll do your stint here, write your paper and then get back on the A-stream.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Karl. ‘I’m trying to work out what it is they want with me. You get a lot of interns, then?’
‘Two or three a year,’ said Roderick. ‘It’s free labour. I get paid for taking you, actually.’
‘I guess that makes sense,’ said Karl.
‘In fact I make about as much for mentoring B-streamed protégés as I do hawking craft cider.’
‘Like a state subsidy,’ said Karl.
‘If you like. Roderick’s Orchard is one of a hundred or so interests The Transition uses for placements.’
‘And your past interns,’ said Karl. ‘They tend to get back onto the A-stream?’
‘That’s up to them.’ Mr Roderick leaned back. ‘When I left teaching – I taught Information Technology, and I was very good, which was the p
roblem – when I left I thought I might take a job in the commercial sector for a while and one of my former students was working for a new firm called The Transition and she tipped me off that they were hiring data managers, paid a good wage, and they promised absolutely cutting-edge stuff: DNA storage, the frontier. And for a while it was a good job. But I didn’t like what I was seeing. I think we’re quite alike in that respect. I didn’t like the pattern in the data I was handling.’
‘Which was what?’
‘You liked the paintings, did you?’ said Mr Roderick. ‘If I were to tell you that I loathe The Transition and all it stands for, what would you say?’
‘I’d say why are you taking its money?’
‘And I’d say why are you compromising and defrauding the top tier of the educational system by writing essays for rich idiots?’
‘I make study aids,’ said Karl.
‘Does it ever strike you that some of the people whose coursework you fabricate might go on to work in positions of responsibility? That you’re directly enabling the subliterate to teach literature, for instance? That you’re contributing to the victory of the privileged and stupid.’
‘They’re doing pretty well, either way.’
‘And you’ve got to make a living, right? Look at this. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to show it to you.’ He took from his pocket a crumpled sheet of paper and gave it to Karl. It was a list of names and full addresses. 1 The Plaza, 2 The Plaza, up to 18. Number 1 was occupied by Ms Da-Xia Shih; 2 by Harry and Lucia Syverson; 3 by Richard T. Potter; 4 by Donna Weston.
‘I’m giving you this because you’re a deeply compromised person and because I trust you. This is a small, selective estate where graduates from your programme live. Notice anything?’
Karl scanned the rest of the list. Cino Padovano; Valerie Philips; Nora Keisjers; Soren and Sophie Guertin. He felt a chill.
‘They’re mostly single occupancies.’
‘She said you were brighter than you seemed at first.’
‘Who? Thanks.’