by Rhys Hughes
It truly was remarkable: she had heard nothing quite like it in all her plastic twenty-one years. But it was as familiar as nitrogen; unseen and all-persuasive, waiting simply for self-discovery. She stood on a beach, as warm as a crab in the setting sun, and placed an ear to the sand. A great vibration suffused nature, not quite a scream, but a sound to which the breakers and whisperings of grains belonged merely as feedback. The real tune. Or was it a forest? Green and gold parrots took the notes in their beaks and dropped them, one at a time, into a lilac river that rippled like an escalator down to a salt marsh. And now she was floating through the sky, delectable dirigible, nosing through a candy floss cloud...
Shivering, she rubbed her vision back into focus. A single high-pitched whine squealed off into the void. The band members had abandoned their instruments and were packing away their electronics. Miranda shook her head and squinted at a clock above the stage. Less than three minutes had passed in the blink of an id. “Scurrility!” she hissed through numb palate. With a sprouting of springs, the clock tumbled to its doom.
“What did you think?” Michael eased his grinning face into her own and arched an eyebrow. Around them, bodies were collapsing in an overdramatic way; a few were still breathing. Others fused and sputtered. “I guessed that it would have less effect on you. I knew it. Did you escape into one of your visions? You are above such things as beauty, strangeness, charm and death.”
Miranda painfully massaged her neck muscles, which were sealed together with the wax of eternity. “What happened?” she wheezed. This was more than the usual half-baked nonsense. “Out of the microwave and into the reactor, I say. Be a good little Michael and tell me.”
Michael chewed fingernails and laughed, his words tickling cuticles and gaseous knuckles. “The music of the Spheres. Quite simple really. Imagine a group who have spent several years analysing all forms of music from the dim time when the first Homo erectus struck stone against stone to the sparky present. And now imagine that such a group have managed to strip down all the best elements of everything they have studied into the one perfect tune.”
“I don’t understand.” Miranda clutched her knees and rocked on her chair. She understood all too well; the music had been waiting for her much in the same way that a thumbscrew waits for a fleshy digit to pulp. “Why are people dying? Freshers’ Week is over.”
“You haven’t been listening. You know how a really good tune lodges itself in the brain and refuses to budge?” Michael relished this chance to play expert to Miranda’s pupil. “And how the better the tune, the longer it stays in the mind, often to the exclusion of other things? Well then, what else would the perfect tune do if not lodge in the brain forever, to the exclusion of absolutely everything? Would it not override even such involuntary functions as respiration and heartbeat? Surely it would expand in the mind until there was no room left at all. Protection would have to be sought. They had anti-noise generators to shield them. You had your genius…”
Miranda scratched her head. There would always be room in her unsegmented lobes. But was this the sort of thing she ought to condone or despise? She eased herself a little with a few of the ownerless drinks. “So why are you still alive? How special can a poet be?”
“Tone deaf.” Michael exhaled and his eyes watered. “If only I could do for literature what they have done for music! Think about it: the perfect novel, a part of all other novels and yet aloof and fatal. But to write it, I would have to spend years researching history, psychology, ethics, philosophy and so much else, making furious notes as I read. So it is impossible. I would have to lock myself in a library and live there undetected.”
Miranda yawned. She was tired. “An ambitious project. You could always find a private library. Or else give up writing and take up morris dancing instead.” She sipped cloudy cider and winced as the acid found a constellation of cavities amid the pearly sky of her back teeth. “Hi ho and all that.”
“The perfect novel!” Michael had crawled into the flue of his pipedream and was stuck fast there. Or else he had covered up the finger holes and was blowing a single fantasy. “A story so fetching that it cannot be shaken loose from memory. A story that will obsess to the point of death…” Miranda stood up and picked her way over the corpses. Michael shook his head. “You’ll never escape. The Indigo Casbah was modelled on the Great Labyrinth at Knossos. Once inside you are trapped forever. There are drinkers here who have been lingering at the bar since the very beginning.”
Ignoring him, Miranda thought only of her bed and the dawn that would be racing to fondle her. A wondrous fiery Ariadne, she followed her trail of shed petals through a hundred twists and turns to the cool air of still bustling streets. Time as well as motion and music was beginning to bore her. She felt as if she had been living through a fable. She wondered: would it be a contradiction in terms to claim that it had been an amoral fable?
More fun.
(iv)
Autumn rattled feebly into winter; a season Miranda had always considered a parody of itself, with gales and rain that swept up under lowered heads and silences that were too frosty to be broken by anything other than the slurp of mulled wine.
With a mouth full of cloves and lusts all unbuttoned down the front, she adopted each city park as her private garden. Again she could escape such parks, but not the leaves that swirled around her feet; only this time the leaves were loose pages that lay on each surface, whether it be bench or branch or railing spike, like creamy shadows. When she reached down to pick one up, she saw that it was charred around the edges and generally worthless.
One time, she thought she saw a man who looked like Ian collecting these shards of knowledge and stuffing them into an enormous sack. And then she recalled everything: that she was alive in this sorrowful world and, once, had owned two lovers, a recluse and a poet.
She even dimly heard echoes of that disturbingly archetypal music, but managed to shake it away with a single flick of hair over shoulders. The figure that looked like Ian had vanished; it must have been another defensive mirage. But there was something moving in her womb; as if the notes had seeded in her a resolution of a different kind.
It had always been possible to traverse the entire city by winding through the parks and crossing a few main roads to others, as she had once traversed a whole day in front of the television, switching between channels to catch each and every news report. And now, without knowing how or why, she found herself in the student quarter again: the faulty streetlight, the row of antiquated corner shops, the crumbs of a new batch of students, pink-cheeked and soft-shoed, mercury fillings nagging in the chill and odourless breeze.
Passing the grocer’s store, she nearly crashed into Michael, who emerged with a bulging brown bag which he promptly dropped, unaware of the near miss. Miranda helped him to pick up the dented tins and bruised fruit and he stood and made a tiny cough. “I did as you asked. I called on Ian. I’ve moved in with him.” He shuffled his feet and added warily: “We’re writing a book.”
Miranda smirked. “Oh yes, the perfect novel.” Somehow she found herself walking back with him, carrying his groceries with a hollow sort of sympathy. “Ian never struck me as the literary type.”
Michael lingered a few steps behind. “He’s a little verbose. He uses twenty-nine words where twenty-seven would suffice. We take it in turns. We have a routine, you see. In the mornings I buy the food while he collects the pages of the books he tried to destroy. The heat in the grate, he tells me, was so intense that whole volumes of Priestley and Conrad escaped unharmed up the chimney. In the afternoons, one of us does the reading while the other writes. We’re on page seven-hundred and ninety-five already.”
“And what do you do in the evenings?” Miranda paused and looked up. They had reached Ian’s house. The junk still cluttered up pavement and road, though by now the individual components had decayed and flowed into one indistinguishable mass; a semi-organic growth. “May I come in?” She caught the glint of the hous
e key as Michael held it up.
Michael stared at his feet and squirmed uncomfortably. He cleared his throat again and opened his mouth, gulping like a perch, his fingers playing a sonata on his thighs, his nostrils twitching. He tried to speak, but could produce only a stutter of no content. Eventually he composed himself a little, though he still avoided her eyes. “Sorry. We don’t. I mean to say, that in the evenings we…”
Miranda handed him the shopping bag and turned away. She did not look back even once. The anxiety of the moment had claimed her. She suddenly knew that all consciousness was terrible, and that all existence was conditional on nothing; nothing at all. It would never change, atom ground against atom, star against star. We are like colliding galaxies, she though fearfully; we merely pass through each other without touching. Surprisingly, however, when she felt her face, he cheeks were still dry.
Approaching her, hands in pockets, a callow fresher ambled in ignorant bliss. Miranda murmured to herself and straightened her back. But perhaps it is what you make it after all, she mused, chewing the cliché to bits and spitting out the pips. As soon as he was in range, she clasped him in her arms and held him fast, her stomach rumbling and her hair standing all on end.
It took but a single brush of a fingernail down his shirtfront to pop all his buttons. She removed scarf and hat and spectacles and loosened his belt, then turned him around and pinched his bottom. As he ran screaming back to the way he had come, she called after him: “You have the makings of a blond geophysicist in you.” She waited a full minute before following, with a steady sure step.
Already the day was brightening. Once more, she felt that she could cope with the endless uncertainties that an infinity of diverging futures would present to her, on a platter not quite silver. She began to sing. No melody but the only one. She capered, she crouched. And when again she raised her hand to her face, she stroked what she had nearly expected; but for a different reason.
Third time lucky?
God in a Basement Flat
I was sitting in my pagoda, committing hara-kiri, when the Celestial Horn began to sound. I had just finished a last cup of green tea. The single note, almost below the range of hearing, gradually expanded until it became unbearable. The Horn itself, black crystal studded with tiny stars, shuddered and threatened to topple off its pedestal. I opened my mouth and tried to mimic the ineffable purity of the effusion. Ears and spartan room filled with agonising sweetness. I raised the teapot to my lips and returned the beverage to its source.
I replaced the sword in its scabbard, uncrossed my legs and stood up. I was being summoned. God himself wanted to see me; there was no time to lose. I stuffed a cushion into the end of the Horn, crossed the room and slid open the silkscreen doors. My bicycle was waiting for me outside. I mounted it and wobbled down the wooden causeway that linked pagoda to terra firma. The fumes of the marsh rolled forwards, forcing me to press a scented handkerchief to my nose.
My destination was the coast. At the end of the causeway, I joined the road that would take me there, past chalets, bowling greens, salted pavilions, lighthouses, to the Hotel Descartes. God had deserted his sumptuous palace for the benefits of sea air. As I changed into top gear and accelerated, chasing satori, I caught the disturbing scents of the first rotting funfair: donkeys and doughnuts, hotdogs and seaweed. I consoled myself with a hasty haiku:
Goldfish choke in bags
Punch is drunk with Judy’s whine
Fun is never fair.
A sudden crash behind me made me risk looking over my shoulder. My cushion was soaring high above the marsh; a gaping hole showed in the roof of my pagoda. God was growing impatient. I sighed and increased my pace, ringing my bell at the nesting flamingoes. As I neared the pale sea, discarded chip wrappers and toffee apples bounced across my path like tumbleweed. Grains of sand coated my cheeks. Calliope music, awash with spiralling arpeggios and jolly funeral chords, pursued remnants of musichall songs over the barren landscape.
I reached the Hotel Descartes within the hour. The receptionist, a haggard old crone, led me up two flights of stairs to God’s room. He was the only resident in the entire building. Other guests had long since been relocated to nursing homes. I was astonished by the squalor of the Hotel: the peeling paintwork, the chipped varnish on the rickety wooden bannisters, the worn carpets. The receptionist wheezed as she rapped on the door of number 49. An ominous voice cried, “Enter,” and I turned the handle and stepped through into darkness.
The blinds were drawn, the lamps extinguished. Such measures are necessary. No human, however pure, can behold the face of God without going insane. I groped my way around the room, stumbling into furniture, knocking over ornaments. Now the Creator’s voice was muffled rather than portentous. As an extra precaution, he had locked himself into the en suite bathroom. I was grateful.
“Listen Yukio,” he said, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Frankly, I’m worried. Heaven isn’t the place it used to be. Paradise is starting to resemble Bognor Regis. There are too many old people getting in. They’re cluttering up the place with their walking frames and bingo halls. We are being taken over.”
I was duly humble. Even though I could see nothing, I kept my eyes on the floor. I remarked that I had been aware of the problem for some time. It was due to a rising life expectancy. Dying young had gone out of fashion. God was nostalgic. “Exactly. In olden days, Heaven was a lovely place. Hardly anyone over the age of twenty. Fine boys and girls with soft limbs and olive tanned flesh, cavorting in the perfumed gardens. Something has got to be done.”
“You want me to go to Earth?” I was excited by the idea. I relished the chance to see my planet again. “You want me to solve the problem for you?” Already schemes were moving in formal patterns across the glassy stage of my mind: a psychodramatic kabuki, obdurate figures. Yet I am not as blindly loyal as I once was. I asked, “An intellectual challenge alone or will I receive something in return?”
“You are perceptive, Yukio. I like that.” There was a long pause. I began to grow afraid. I heard the toilet flush. Eventually, God resumed his speech. “If you achieve what I ask, I will permit you to commit a successful hara-kiri. A favour for a favour. But you are not the first I have commissioned for this task. I trust you will not follow the example of your predecessors. They have already been punished. Hot viruses and global warming were great disappointments.”
“Perhaps the old techniques are no longer viable,” I mused. “Plague and flood are out of date. We require something relevant to the modern age.” I waited for God’s answer. It did not come. “Worry not. I exist to serve.” There was still no reply. I assumed the interview was at an end. I descended the stairs to the lobby. The receptionist clucked her tongue as I departed. I left her with an atheistic insight:
No more cogito
Cartesian wells run dry
My doubts are a drought.
Before returning to my pagoda, I wheeled my bicycle to the frosty beach and attempted to kill myself on the sand. The blade slid in deep, but no blood leaked. I sighed. Broken deckchairs glided in the breeze, lodging together in pairs and resembling sinking trading vessels. The junks of faith. It is easy to decipher the written language of existential despair in every random pattern. But one day I shall read my own intestines and also learn, in their loops, the limits of hope and charity.
I discussed my mission with Meredith Monk, my neighbour. Once a famous composer, she had sought to pursue her calling beyond the Pearly Gates. She was disappointed. Electricity is unknown above a certain latitude of divinity. There was no power for her synthesisers. She refused to seek solace in despair. Mechanical contraptions of harps and horns, stolen from unwary angels, suited her purpose. The larger models are amusing and pertinent. One day, you will know.
She lives on the other side of my marsh. This is a prime site; a relatively healthy stretch of fenland, troubled by less mosquitoes (I sleep naked to divert the insects away from her) and facing a static setti
ng sun. She always praises my novels, though I no longer dabble with prose. My features, she claims, are not those of a fanatic. To counter this insult, not because she expects it, but because an actor needs practice, I strut with unsheathed blade, crack each blasphemous twilight with banzai salutes.
“There is an answer to your dilemma,” she said, adjusting position on her wicker chair and toying with her wine glass. In deference to her considerable wisdom, I had forsaken mat and bowl. I drank Chianti as did she; I dangled my legs. When we stood together, shoulder to shoulder, I appeared clumsy, fierce but impotent.
Meredith is an exception to everything. With women I normally deem it impolite to conduct literal conversation. I prefer to approach topics crab-like, carapace concealing pink flavour. As she refilled my glass, I should have swirled the vintage and remarked that my ancestors had ended our isolation for the sake of such flavours.
Instead I urged: “Tell me!” She laughed at this, an extraordinary sound. Her voice is a koto strung with lutist’s hair. It tears at my heart, massages my spleen. (Not that the latter has been returned. I must continue to wait. In few areas can Heaven be termed efficient. It is a stale bureaucracy with all the trimmings, also stale.)
She teased: “This is the eve of an adventure.” I caught her meaning at once. Her ideas are like her music; they do not flow in a line, but pulse like hungry frogs in a puddle. On an impulse, I reached out to touch her brow; my uncut nails snagged a ringlet.