Incredible Bodies

by Ian McGuire

  The first question came from Darian Cavendish.

  ‘What about the incarnation?’ she said. ‘Christ – the spirit made flesh. Some might say that since Western philosophy comes through Aquinas of Hippo that’s rather important.’

  Morris had not known how he would handle the questions. He had not thought that far ahead. He looked at Darian. She was wearing an Arran-knit cardigan buttoned up to her neck. Her hair, rough cut below the ear, had the brittle frizziness of middle-age. She looked intense and vulnerable. He weighed his options. He knew that Darian, a fierce Anglo-Catholic, was not well-liked. She was seen as an eccentric obstructionist saved from the axe only by her reputation as a first-class textual editor and her personal links to the Vice-Chancellor. The Crocodile undoubtedly hated her since she had been there longer than him and regarded his new regime as a passing fad. Zoe Cable, he knew, didn’t take her seriously. Declan Monk, probably the least godly of them all, had rolled his eyes at the question, and Mohammad (leaving aside his natural religious differences) would go along with Declan (Morris knew they played squash together). Darian was friendless. Morris would take her down.

  ‘I regard the myth of the incarnation,’ he said, ‘as merely an idealist response to the scandal of subjectivity, a response which unfortunately reinforces rather than deconstructs the opposition of body and spirit. I recommend that you read a little Nietzsche.’

  Zoe snorted, Darian turned pink.

  ‘Oh it’s always Nietzsche with you people,’ she said. ‘When will you learn?’

  ‘Thank you Darian,’ said the Crocodile, as though nothing had happened. ‘I believe Mohammad is next.’

  Mohammad had not stopped smiling since Morris had come in. Morris was beginning to wonder whether it was a permanent facial peculiarity.

  ‘Morris,’ he said. ‘Have you ever considered teaching the novels of C.S. Forrester? I think they’re terribly good.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not familiar with his work. Does the library carry it?’

  ‘Our holdings are surprisingly patchy, but I have my own copies. I’d be happy to lend them to you.’

  ‘That would be fascinating.’

  There was a puzzled pause before the Crocodile called on Declan. Declan coughed, tugged his beard and shimmied sideways in his seat. He offered Morris his conventional chummy smile. Morris smiled back and readied himself. He was like a savage that had eaten the heart of his vanquished enemy. The spirit of Dirck van Camper was in him now, spreading, blending. Morris felt a visceral surge of self-belief.

  ‘Morris,’ Declan said, ‘I was a little surprised by the subject of your presentation. Since all your previous work has been on …’ He lowered his half-moon glasses and rifled uneasily through the documentation. ‘Arthur Alderley. Can you explain the relationship between Alderley and your current interests?’ Declan pulled a long face, leaned back in his seat and squinted at him like a high-court judge.

  ‘There is no connection,’ Morris said. ‘I believe in discontinuity, disjunction, the incommensurate. The urge to coherence is, as your own masterful work on the poetry of William Butler Yeats attests, proto-fascist. How can we expect to respond,’ he glanced at the Crocodile, ‘to the recent revolutions in learning delivery except by a constant process of self-reinvention? Yesterday I was a scholar of Arthur Alderley; today I am a theorist of the body; tomorrow, who knows? The commodification of knowledge is over, now the flow of information is unstoppable, it moves like the weather. The idea that we can specialise, corner the market, is absurd. All we can do is tap its flow, surf its waves. Alderley was a phase, a moment, but knowledge is a process.’

  ‘How does this relate to teaching?’ the Crocodile broke in.

  ‘I regard my classes as learning delivery systems. I teach technique – content is a side issue.’

  ‘You mean you are prepared to teach anything?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely anything. Without warning.’

  The Crocodile nodded eagerly and wrote something in his notebook.

  ‘You’re something of a chameleon,’ said Declan.

  ‘I’ll pass on the reptile image,’ he glanced surreptitiously at the Crocodile, who smiled. ‘I am reprogrammable, capable of infinite upgrades.’

  ‘The brain is a machine,’ Declan offered.

  ‘No, or only in the sense that a computer is a machine, which is no sense at all – it’s a locus of possibility.’

  ‘Truly fascinating,’ said Mohammad Ganguly out of the blue. Everyone looked at him for a second.

  ‘Sheer verbiage,’ grumbled Darian.

  ‘Morris,’ Zoe said without being asked, ‘are you aware that the AHRB recently announced an open competition for a Research Hub in Body Studies? They’re seeking a single institution to act as the centrally-funded fulcrum for Body Studies in the UK.’

  Zoe’s khaki-and-brown eyes were egging him on, urging him to finish what he had started. Morris had never heard of the Research Hub in Body Studies.

  ‘I certainly am,’ he said. ‘Indeed, my initial informal soundings suggest that a Coketown bid would be warmly welcomed. Its ultimate success, of course, would depend on a convincing display of intra-institutional synergies.’

  ‘Of course,’ Zoe replied, absent-mindedly. She scribbled something on a Post-it note and passed it over to the Crocodile. The Crocodile’s eyes widened noticeably.

  ‘Your own projects on urban sex-crime, for instance,’ Morris went on, ‘offer an interesting potential linkage with my recent work on the post-ethical.’ Morris had long passed the tipping point. The world seemed for that dizzying moment entirely downhill.

  ‘There are obvious bolt-on possibilities,’ agreed Zoe.

  ‘A Research Hub’s two hundred grand per annum,’ exclaimed Declan, almost in protest.

  ‘Two hundred and fifty actually,’ said Zoe, ‘with overheads.’

  ‘That’s simply obscene,’ Darian scowled.

  ‘It would be a new record,’ said the Crocodile.

  Two hundred and fifty grand! The figure hung in the air like an ectoplasm before Mohammad Ganguly, still smiling, emitted a loud – and, in Morris’s experience of twenty-three separate job interviews, entirely unprecedented – wolf-whistle.

  Part Two

  Chapter 13

  Morris’s slide from sleep to wakefulness was gradual and frictionless. His mind drifted gently from a strange dream about Daphne DuMaurier to an awareness of light (bright, white sunshine filtered through a double layer of walnut curtains), texture (the soft stiffness of white sheets) and temperature (sixty-eight degrees precisely). He rolled over and then, astonished by the lack of obstructions, did it again. Where was the edge of his bed? He reached out fruitlessly. Where was E? He opened one eye: the bedspread was the size of a football pitch. He opened the other eye: there was an expanse of purple carpet then, far off in the distance, a brown leather armchair with his crumpled clothes on it. The spackled ceiling was the height and texture of the Coketown sky in August.

  He remembered where he was – the Malibu Hilton. The LA Body Conference. After several more rolls he reached the edge of the bed and stood up. He checked his symptoms: his head was clear and unaching and his vision was sharp and painless, his stomach felt settled but just pleasantly empty. He was actually looking forward to breakfast. Scanning his torso and legs, he was taken aback by the lack of knotting or stiffness. He checked his watch. It was six-thirty; he had gone to bed just after ten. Good God, he had slept for eight hours! No wonder he felt so odd. He walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. He could feel heat radiate off the glass for an inch or two before being crushed by the air conditioning. Outside there were palm trees, billboards, large, silent cars. Sunlight glared off mirrored office buildings and concrete roofs. The only people he could see were black. He stepped back into the room. Something else was strange. Yes, he was unusually well-rested and felt bizarrely alert, but what else? He listened. There was the faintest hum of top-class air conditioning, but apart from that, not
hing. Silence. The more he listened, the less he heard. It was dizzying. He sat down in the leather armchair. It was the first time he had been away from Molly. He remembered how she smelt in the mornings – cheesy, slightly burned. He remembered the machine-gun jabber of the first good cry of the day. It was strange to think of her for once as detachable, an option, to realise there were places where she wasn’t.

  He was having breakfast with Zoe Cable at seven. Her paper was at eight. The bathroom shower had a force of a sandblaster. It felt like mild plastic surgery. Descending on the escalator, Morris felt cleaner, newer than ever before.

  Zoe was wearing mirrored goggles and a patchwork denim kaftan. She was eating watermelon and waving an unlit cigarette.

  ‘8 a.m.,’ she said. ‘It’s idiocy. Who do they think I am? Ben-fucking-Franklin?’

  ‘There won’t be much of an audience I suppose.’

  ‘You’re kidding. They’ll all be there. Look around.’

  Morris scanned the dining room. She was right. It was clogged with conferencees – power breakfasts and grim post-coital chitchat. Over by the waffle irons some of the body art contingent were comparing tattoos.

  ‘The American middle classes,’ Zoe Cable went on, ‘God love ‘em, are notoriously bad at laziness. They don’t do it well at all.’

  ‘They have other people to do it for them.’

  ‘Exactly, that’s where we come in. We’re a bit of rough. We drink, we smoke, we stay up late. We no longer believe in the healing power of education. British academics – we’re a walk on the wild side. Unfortunately,’ she waved the conference programme, ‘someone seems to have forgotten that.’

  ‘Were you up late last night?’

  ‘Yes, but it was all research. I have the receipts. Look.’ She fished a damp ball of paper from her pocket. She sniffed it. ‘Oops, it might not be wise to take that through customs. How about you?’

  ‘I slept for eight hours. It’s a personal best.’

  ‘Insomnia?’

  ‘Children.’

  Zoe nodded. ‘Yo Bernice. You look radiant.’ She waved at a broad-beamed, bald-headed woman who laughed back and gave her the finger. ‘Bernice Plummer,’ Zoe whispered. ‘I’ve asked her for a letter for the Hub.’

  ‘I’ve never seen a bed that size,’ said Morris, still thinking of his sleep. ‘It’s really not necessary.’

  ‘Well, that all depends.’ Zoe lifted up her goggles and gave Morris a wobbly, red-eyed stare. Morris realised she was still a little drunk. ‘On what you’re planning to use it for.’ She winked.

  ‘What would you use it for – refugee camps, nuclear dumping? It’s a trackless waste half the size of Wales.’

  ‘Let’s just say, Morris, there are certain team activities for which such an arena might be suitable.’

  ‘Netball? Grand Prix racing?’

  Zoe stuck out her tongue, there was a shiny silver stud through the middle of it.

  ‘Bloody hell, is that new?’

  ‘Last night. I fell in with the neo-primitive crowd. You don’t want to know the details, Morris, but let’s just say I’m no longer sitting comfortably.’

  Zoe Cable yawned and ate a large chunk of watermelon. She smelt of baked potato and iodine. Morris couldn’t remember the last time he had had breakfast with someone he was not attached to by blood or marriage. Zoe waved to a tall, thin man with a green goatee and a ring through his nose. Morris excused himself and went over to the smorgasbord. Ranged before him were golden-brown foothills of muffins, doughnuts and Danish pastries, steaming stainless-steel troughs of brittle bacon, sausage and scrambled eggs. Further along came pink banks of cold cuts, a gallimaufry of sliced and shredded fruits, tubs of cold cereals, warm cereals, pancakes, a half-hacked ham, raw steaks, sushi. At home, Morris usually settled for a boiled egg, occasionally toast.

  Other conferencees milled and grazed around him. They picked and frowned and picked again. Their plates, which were as big as dartboards, gradually and unrelentingly filled. They dipped maple syrup and hollandaise sauce; they taste-tested the blackened shrimps; they changed their minds about the bruschet-ta; they conferred at length about the saltiness of the anchovies and the arterial implications of the Eggs Benedict. Such plenitude took Morris aback. After several uncomfortable minutes he selected a hard-boiled egg and a bowl of All Bran. He walked carefully back to the table, worried that he was already out of his depth.

  Someone touched him on the elbow. It was the man with the green goatee. ‘Morris Gutman!’ he exclaimed, as though they had known each other for years. ‘Hank Bernebau. Listen, I read “Mindfuck.” Outstanding, just outstanding. Zoe pointed you out.’

  Morris glanced over at Zoe, who blew him a kiss. Hank was still shaking his hand.

  ‘She says you’re the next big thing.’ He chuckled conspiratorially. His voice had the low breathlessness of a late night DJ. Despite the piercings and dyed facial hair, he must have been close to fifty. ‘Listen, I’m doing a collection for UCP – the body-machine nexus. We’ve got the usual guys: Franz Poppenheim on race and machinery, Celie Humm on reconstructive surgery. But an ethics piece would be a terrific addition, if you’ve got anything along those lines?’

  He stopped talking and looked at Morris. Women with long floral scarves manoeuvred around them.

  ‘The post-Nietzschean stuff is just outstanding,’ Hank added. There was another pause.

  ‘Are you offering to publish something I’ve written?’ asked Morris.

  ‘It could be short,’ he said, ‘or indeed long. The longness or shortness would be entirely up to you.’ He smiled.

  Morris looked down at his hard-boiled egg, his bowl of crumbling All Bran. The austerity of his choices seemed suddenly absurd.

  ‘I accept,’ he said. ‘I mean, yes, I will.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ Hank seemed overjoyed, his nose ring wobbled. He gave Morris his card. ‘Let me buy you dinner. I know an outstanding Polynesian place, the breadfruit… Ah!’ Someone had started beckoning him from the other side of the room. He was retreating as he spoke, waving, winking, making gestures of friendship and excitement.

  Morris sat back down. He mouth was slightly open.

  ‘Hank loved “Total Mindfuck”,’ he said after a moment. ‘He wants me to write something for his new edited collection.’

  Zoe was sending a text message.

  ‘That’s a result,’ she said without looking at him. ‘Mention that in your book proposal. Hank’s a name, they’ll gobble it up.’ She pressed ‘send’ then looked up at him. ‘You know, ethics is an excellent angle Morris. It has that slightly ponderous, corduroy quality which in the context of Body Studies is actually very sexy. It’s sly. And with something like “Total Mindfuck” – with that swerve from Aristotle to Internet porn – it feels much denser than it actually is. It gives the requisite sense of seriousness without that annoying philosophical complexity. It’s heavy but light. Heavy-light. I like it a lot. It works.’

  Morris smiled. Since its publication in Vagina Dentata he had begun to feel oddly proud of ‘Total Mindfuck’, even though not a word of it was his. It seemed somehow to reflect his character, to express, in a glancing way perhaps, who he really was. He shelled his egg and gobbled it in two bites. He sucked down his All Bran as though suffering from a deadly form of constipation.

  He checked his watch: seven thirty-five.

  ‘You’d better go and get changed,’ he said.

  ‘I beg your bloody pardon! What’s wrong with this?’

  ‘Isn’t Firenze Beach on the panel? You look like a road protester.’

  Zoe frowned and looked down at the denim kaftan.

  ‘Wear the gold suit,’ said Morris.

  ‘The ABC suit? The “Look of Love” suit?’

  ‘With the velvet corset.’

  ‘The velvet corset, with the gold suit – it’s a double whammy. I love it. Morris, when did you become a girl?’

  ‘I like to keep my eyes open.’

  They took t
he express elevator to the fifteenth floor. Zoe Cable dashed away to change. Morris telephoned E at work to tell her the good news.

  ‘Hank Bernebau wants to publish an essay of mine,’ he said. He was lying horizontally on the unmade bed. A silent slab of CNN was twitching and changing in the corner of the room.

  ‘Hank who?’ She sounded weary. He wondered what time Molly had woken up.

  ‘Bernebau. It doesn’t matter. It’s an edited collection.’

  ‘A collection of essays about Alderley? That’s great.’

  ‘No, not Alderley, the body-machine nexus.’

  ‘Your essay is about this body-machine thing and Alderley?’

  ‘No, it’s nothing to do with Alderley. It’s a new essay. I haven’t written it yet.’ Was it a bad line, Morris wondered, or was she being deliberately obtuse?

  ‘You haven’t written it yet? Isn’t that a problem?’ He heard E yawn and then answer someone.

  ‘Why should it be a problem? It’s standard practice. Do you expect me to write essays just for the sake of it? On the off chance?’

  ‘Yes, I mean sorry to be obtuse Morris, but I thought that’s what you did.’

  ‘It’s what I used to do.’

  There was an extensive pause. In the background, Morris could hear the chitter of keyboards. Alison’s shrieky laugh.

  ‘Well I’m glad you’ve been having a good time, Morris.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was having a good time.’

  ‘I just assumed you would be. On holiday in California.’

  ‘I’m not on holiday. Why do you use that term? I find it quite maddening.’

  ‘Vacation then?’

  ‘Not funny E. This is work. I’m here on business.’

  ‘Isn’t it sunny?’

  ‘Yes, it’s sunny.’

  ‘That must be nice. We had sleet last night. Molly’s got glue ear.’

  ‘The sunniness is beside the point. We went over this at length. I’m here to consolidate the impact of “Total Mindfuck”.’