How the Dead Live

by Self, Will

  They both found out the same way as well. Lying on the padded couch with the ultrasound technicians making with plastic pucks, ironing their big bellies with little echoes. There was a cheerful, running commentary to begin with, and then . . . silence . . . looks of anguished confusion rippled both operatives’ brows. Both pregnant women had been having a hard time with nausea and then, magically, ceased feeling sick a couple of days before. Both mothers had been getting an internal kicking – and this too had stopped. ‘Um . . . err . . . there’s a problem here . . .’ The operatives both struggled for the words with which to describe this intractable situation. In utero death can do this to the most consummate rhetorician it’s so previous.

  On the padded couches both ex-mothers, weighed down by the awful dead things inside of them, stretched out anguished hands to clutch at their menfolk. Hysteria welled up in all four of them. Richard vented his bad feelings on the doctor, when he eventually arrived to tell the Elverses their baby was dead. Miles didn’t intervene. Both women were prescribed plenty of Valium. Charlotte stayed in the London Clinic and that very night they dripped the drugs into her that contracted the womb, which squeezed the corpse, and evacuated it into a cardboard kidney dish. Natasha went home to Kentish Town wearing a self-pitying sackcloth woven entirely from blue, tenmilligram sedative pills. Two days later she presented herself, back at the Garrett, smacked out to the gills, and they sucked the dead fish out of her too.

  Both slunks came to join me at the flat in Dulston. Natch. They lay alongside the nodding Cerberus on the back shelf of Costas’s cab, like bloody, discarded rear-view-mirror dingledangles. He scooped them into a Sainsbury’s bag – It’s Clean, It’s Fresh – and dumped them at my door. All through that winter, while young Iraqi conscripts were being entombed by British and American aerial gravediggers, and into the spring, when once again, Famine drew the Sudanese as stick-figure parodies of human figuration, Charlotte and Natasha’s startwrong kids haunted the basement flat at number 27.

  I couldn’t get them to stay inside. Once admitted they slimed right through and out the cat-flap in the back door. They flotched around the tiny concrete area out back, beneath the miniature clothes-line pylon. They sat, side by side, on the three dank steps that led up to the sunless strip of garden. Two little red cousins with unformed faces hugging each other. Dead babes in the concrete jungle. We all did our best – Lithy, the Fats, Rude Boy and I – to coax them in. It was to no avail. Only in the middle of the night, when the Fats gyred in the front bedroom, and Rude Boy roamed the corridor spitting imprecations, and Lithy sang, ‘I’m gonna wait ‘til the midnight hour . . .’ did the poor mites climb up on to the sill and slither against the window, their tiny maws opening and closing. If I opened the bottom sash and bent down close, I could just about make out what it was they wanted. ‘We need to go wee-wee,’ they said. ‘We need to go wee-wee.’ And of course they did. For eternity.

  Clive departed. The dead never broke off relationships, as such – we simply drifted away from one another, each suspended in our own wispy cloak of cigarette smoke. You’re never alone with a Strand. There was no rancour, no weeping, no sense of loss. He couldn’t really take the horror show in the basement – and who could blame him? He’d rather squat in his apartment full of baggage, while the lost principles of his office lifetime pushed the valises, rucksacks and steamer trunks this way and that.

  Anyway, the Balkans were revolting, while in Milwaukee they’d discovered an apartment not unlike Clive’s, but stacked with dismembered corpses. How much more disgusting were the flights of fancy of the living than those of us mere shades. Miles Davis was dead. Miles with his impeccable sartorial taste, his sweet shofar, his infinite cool. Miles whose jizzy horn had limned in the fins of the fifties. Miles, who did battle with Dizzy on the hot afternoon at the party, when the poet said, ‘September, when we loved as in a burning house.’ So sexy, that quoting poetry. It’d never failed to turn me on. Not that I’d ever needed much turning on, my heels were ready-rounded. Miles was dead. I should’ve suspected that something was afoot.

  I’d been dead for three years. In the sixties we’d all been shocked by the Living Theatre, but I’d grown accustomed to a dying one. I was barely fazed any more by the antics of the Dulston shades, the way my nostalgia for the beautiful babies I’d once had had been transfigured into a menagerie of ugly abortions. The PD meetings, the lazy manifestations of Phar Lap Jones – how could I’ve been expected to realise that this was the peaceful side of the afterlife? Because while the dead hoovered up useless cocaine and tried to rub up against one another, the living were going on and on. Life bobbed like a cork caught in an ever widening torrent of trivial innovation. The century gurgled towards the artificial plughole. And if in those three years I began to accept that I was dead, in the ones that followed, it was made transparently clear to me that I was even . . . deader.

  Christmas 2001

  Soon I’m going to have to attempt some serious climbing. I can’t expect to hug the ground indefinitely, a deserted rug rat. I try to comfort myself by imagining this is a test, a probationary period; and that if I do well the delegation will eventually arrive to announce that I am, indeed, the living goddess. This shoebox maisonette occupies the corner of the building, two flights up. There’s another, empty box, between the front door and the piss chute which serves all the apartments as an external staircase. Even now, in the dead interstice between the years, I can hear children running up and down the stairs, along the landings, the soles of their trainers slapping the concrete. But they seldom venture along here to the corner. Even if they do get as far as the neighbouring flat it’s only to rattle the letterbox with a stick, or bang it on the steel shutters the Council have bolted across the windows. Anyway – kids never listen. We never really listen.

  What’re they in training for anyway? Everyone of them shod in complex vehicles of rubber, leatherette, suede, GoreTex, and even, I daresay, Sympatex. I wonder if anyone else has noticed the sinister convergence of training shoes and cars? Both cars and shoes are now designed so as to appear as if they’re plunging down and forward. They’re ass-up, their squared-off butts anticipating the tragic congress ofa rear-end shunt. And the cars are getting smaller, more garishly painted, their plastic bumpers, wing mirrors and functionless spoilers just like the useless ridges and corrugations of training shoes. Training shoes which are, natch, getting larger. Soon people will find themselves inadvertently parking their shoes and putting on their cars. I wish. Even police cars are fashion statements. Calling all queers – there’s an all points style bulletin. Graphic law and garish order.

  Sympatex – rich, isn’t it. But it exists, I know it does. I saw it advertised on the tube, in the days before the Ice Princess had degenerated so much she could no longer head up west to Marks & Spencer, and make use of their generous returns policy. I guess Sympatex must be an artificial material that adapts itself to the shape ofthe wearer’s body. If only it could adapt itself to the wearer’s intentions, but then they’d have to call it Unsympatex, certainly so far as my fellow residents here in Coborn House are concerned.

  What’re they in training for, a lifetime of being unfit? I used to think it absurd enough to share a country with people who wore baseball caps – back to front, natch – when they’d never played the game in their lives; but during the few, short months of this latest go-round it’s struck me that I’ve been living with millions of worshippers of the wind goddess. Everywhere you look, NIKE is emblazoned on sweat pants and tops, jackets and hats, shoes and even socks. Often there’s only the ubiquitous tick that’s the shmutter vendor’s logo. So droll, that; when to me, who’s lived through times when people didn’t feel the need to put on sports gear before lighting a cigarette, the tick looks like nothing so much as the symbol on an old packet of Newport – but turned upside down. The logo – the logos. The world’s been turned upside down. The daughters are the mothers – their former nurturers are now their neglected babies. Mummy,
why’s your skin so rough and hard? Because I’m a fucking corpse.

  Yes, they walk the shitty streets of this fucking hole, Mile End, East London. They walk these shitty streets, sucking on their cigarettes, marked off with the ubiquitous tick, and exhibiting all the florid symptoms of schizophrenia. I used to see them, hanging about the precincts of Coborn House, right up until the last few days, when the Ice Princess couldn’t even get it together to get up at all. She used to think I was complaining because she was removing me from the rusty swings, the groaning seesaw, the wonky roundabout – when really I was protesting that she’d taken me there at all. Close by us the wind-worshippers stared into the air, while addressing the voices piped into their inner ears. Like modular, electronic talismans, their mobile phones performed the magical feat of convincing them that they had a relationship with these disembodied individuals.

  Why do I sneer? I could use a phone myself right now, but the land-line is cut off and the chunks of plastic the Ice Princess and the Estate Agent used to wield are simply that now: chunks of plastic. If a delegation did arrive it wouldn’t be to find the living goddess, it would be to dun the Ice Princess, or drub her consort. I suppose the GP or the social worker might’ue been anticipated, if this wasn’t the dead interstice between the years. Instead they’re tucked up in their own warm homes, gobbling fat fowls, advocating another thimble ofadvocaat, doing their level best to forget the human wreckage they sort through during their working lives. ‘Did you have a good Christmas and New Year?’ their colleagues will enquire of them when they get back to the surgery in the early part of January. ‘Gh yes,’ they’ll reply, ‘I remembered I was middle-class. And you?’

  Even at 32 Coborn House the season of joy has been, if not exactly celebrated, at least alluded to. The hideous spider plant down here has been indecorously draped with a twist of tinsel. I know she dangled some shiny balls from the fronds of the yucky yucca upstairs. On top of the TV there are at least three cards, only one of which is from the world’s most unsuccessful lawyer. Who’re the other two from? Fuck knows. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if both are from members of the ‘crew’ the Ice Princess and her consort associated with. ‘Crew’, marvellous euphemism this, as if that raggedy gang were in fact a bronzed cockpit full of Ivy Leaguers, plunging through the surf off of Cape Cod. But the only America’s Cup this ‘crew’ have ever been associated with is a crushed Coke can, punctured with a bent pin, and fumigated with crack smoke.

  There’s the tinsel, the cards, and in one of the kitchenette cupboards there’s a hunk of Christmas cake on a Tupperware saucer. It isn’t even wrapped in tin foil, because they used that up a few days ago during one of their experiments in domestic nescience. Still, I know it’s there – I saw it when I was last fed a little pot of heated puree, sitting up on the out-of-worktop, while the Ice Princess negligently poked a hard plastic spoon at my soft little mouth. But that’s all there is in there, save for a couple of crumpled, cellophane, sad pasta packets and three mouldy jars ofunpreserved preserves. There was a shrunkenhead apple on the edge of the serving hatch – but I ate that yesterday.

  So, I’ll have to do some serious climbing. It’s fucking cold in here – as I think I’ve had cause to remark – and if I want to make it through another night I’ll have to eat something. I’ll have to pick my way over the lianas ofcabling, circumvent the coffee table, climb up on to the divan mountain, climb up on to the arm of the divan, crawl along the high back of the divan, gain the serving hatch. Then, leaning out on the slick melamine of the surface, while teetering over the void, some-how contrive to get the door of the cupboard open. Why is it that in this fucking hovel, where everything that ever had any utility has long since broken, there are still functioning cup-board doors?

  Even if I manage this exhausting expedition there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to reach the cake. Even if I reach the cake there’s no knowing whether I’ll be able to get it down without falling. Still, if I do, at least there’s someone there to break my fall; I won’t smash my little head in on the hard floor. No, because that’s where he lay down in slow stages, the Ice Princess’s handsome consort. I watched him go – so I know how decorously he managed it. And it had to be, for there’s only just enough room for him to stretch out there, full length, in his own training shoes, his own sweat pants and top, all of them marked with the ubiquitous tick. He had delusions about dealing in property – but this is his real estate.

  I suppose I should be grateful they saw fit to put me in my own little pair of Nikes, so that I could train to walk. But you know what – I’m not. The only thing I’m grateful for is that they left a packet of ten Benson & Hedges filter cigarettes on the coffee table. Without these I’d really be in shtook. Now, wouldn’t it be amusing if the delegation did turn up to find me alone here, preternaturally mature, not simply playing with a box of matches, but using them to light a cigarette as well? Har-de-fucking-har. Still, it’s good to smoke properly again, to feel the stuff ooze into my living tissues, to sense the nicotine hone my mind, to watch my puny exhalations. To smell again.

  They used to say it stunted your growth – and I thought they meant smoking. But it wasn’t the smoking – they meant death.

  Deader

  ‘I’m still here – where are you?’

  Field Marshal von Paulus's last telegram to Hitler before surrendering at Stalingrad

  Chapter Twelve

  I’d made a death for myself and was pleased to tell Phar Lap so when I ran into him in the street outside Seth’s. He was his normal self, denim-clad, boomerang-toting, roll–up-smoking, looking as if he’d blown into Dulston in a dust devil. ‘Yeh-hey, Lily-girl, whaddya ‘bout?’ he clicked.

  ‘Oh, this and that, this and that,’ I snapped back.

  Rude Boy came running between us and tried to kick Phar Lap in the ass, screeching, ‘Nig-nog, nig-dog, walk your dog, nig-nog!’

  Phar Lap made as if to grab at the tail of Rude Boy’s coonskin cap and chuckled indulgently. ‘He never gives up, that Rude Boy, hey-yeh? Ne-ver.’

  ‘Will he ever?’ I asked, knowing full well that Phar Lap wouldn’t give me any kind of answer at all.

  ‘Mebbe not, but you gotta split the swag sometime, Lily-girl.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meanin’ maybe iss time you moved on, hey? It’s always thirsty Thursday roun’ here, ain’t it?’

  I passed him the lighter I was using that week, which was clear, blue, plastic and eminently disposable. Lighters filled and emptied, came and went. I remained the same. They were alive – I was not. He lit his dag-tail, I my B&H. We both stood puffing, our smoke simulating the misty exhalations we should’ve had on this, a chilly December morning. Moved on? What could Phar Lap mean? Not, I hoped, a tedious intracity trek down to Dulburb, Dulston’s corresponding cystrict in South London. I’d been to Dulburb a few times – and it was exactly that. It was where the more comfortable dead liked to rest, in substantial semis, behind shaven privet hedges, in back of broad sidewalks, beside quiet roads, the tarmac surfaces of which were so bluey-brown they seemed like infinitely slowmoving, turbid waters.

  No, not Dulburb, at once illimitable and confined, like all the parts of London the dead inhabited. Not Dulburb, where every mile or so the houses pared away from a brief stretch of dual carriageway and you found the same mouldering parade of identical shops – the butcher, the baker, the greengrocer, the ironmonger – as you’d encountered a mile back. Not Dulburb, where the roundel of the tube station at Dulburb North was followed by the roundel at Dulburb Common and then, eventually, the roundel at Dulburb South. Dulburb which its gentrifying incomers jokingly referred to as ‘Dahlb’ – sounded a little too much like ‘dull burg’ for my taste. Anyway, I’d had enough of the Dulburbs of this world when alive – ferchrissakes I’d raised two kids in Hendon!

  But if not Dulburb there could be worse destinations. The deatheaucracy – which I knew was as powerful as it was nebulous – might have in mind a move to the
provinces. And what would lie in store for me there? No jobs available in the vicinity for a fat old woman, and no bus service to take me anywhere else. My life would become a series of Women’s Institute cake-bakes, neighbourly cups of tea-spit, walks through fields of crops committing pesticide. It hardly bore thinking about.

  ‘Don’ see you at the meetings much, Lily,’ Phar Lap said after some smoking, changing his tack. ‘Wossamatter, doncha think they’ve anything to teach you?’

  ‘Since you ask – no. As far as I can see it’s simply an excuse for a lot of saddies to get together and moan about being dead. If the intention is to make the condition any more bearable it’s a waste of time. If the aim is to alleviate it – then it’s about as effective as getting tuberculosis-sufferers together in a room and having them cough over each other. I’ve got a death thank you very much. I’ve got my job, I don’t need much money to die on. I’ve only the rent on that grotty little flat to pay, my ciggies, and a few cents for lighting – why should I spend my time listening to a lot of mumbo-jumbo?’

  ‘You remember what I said before, girl?’

  ‘What, exactly – you’ve said so much and it’s meant so little.’

  ‘About it all being gammin, rubbish, lies.’

  ‘What? What you say to me – that I don’t doubt.’

  ‘Yaka! No! Don’t be a fool, girl– yer no buju. Act yer age-think!’ I hadn’t seen the man so exercised before; his mirrored sunglasses shimmered as he jerked his head about, his angular arms sliced the chilly air. He even snatched up one of his precious fucking boomerangs and waved it in my face, as if this could possibly intimidate me. ‘The meetings, girl, this place, the Fats, Lithy, Rude Boy – all of it. Don’t you geddit?’