by Paul Sussman
I’ll keep moving towards the right, from wall to wall, room to room, until the whole ground floor’s done. Then I’ll write my way up the left-hand wall of the stairs to the first floor, continuing clockwise until eventually my pen leads me into my bedroom and so to a final full stop at the doorway to the roof stairs. The doorway to my death. It would have been nice to have filled every wall in the castle, but beyond that final door there will be nothing to say. The empty whiteness of the unwritten walls must speak for the empty whiteness of my oblivion.
According to my watch, I’ve now been at it solidly for well over 30 hours, it being now the afternoon of Wednesday, 22nd December. I don’t feel at all tired. On the contrary, I’m brimful of energy and excitement. The whole thing looks fantastic. Like hieroglyphs on the tomb of a pharaoh. A great pharaoh.
Not that there haven’t been problems, of course. There have. The height of the walls, for a start. On the ground floor they’re over 15 feet from floor to ceiling, necessitating the use of a rickety old ladder to reach the upper levels. Even then, standing 6 foot four, as I do, I still have to stretch to get my pen to the very top. This makes my arm go numb, and the first 15 lines of each column, reading downwards from the ceiling, judder and sway as if written by a myopic drunkard. I did consider using only half the wall, leaving the more inaccessible top parts empty, but felt that to do so would be to leave parts of my life unsaid. It’s the whole wall or nothing. I shall not, however, be covering the ceilings too. At a hundred you have to know your limitations. I’m not fucking Michelangelo, for Christ’s sake.
Another difficulty concerned writing materials. What precisely does one use to write a suicide note on the walls of one’s abode? There are, after all, hardly precedents for such a thing. And I don’t want to go leaving my life looking messy. If I can’t leave behind something neat and pleasing to the eye I might just as well forget the whole idea. One’s death should, at the very least, be legible.
I started off with the gold-plated fountain pen given to me on my 83rd birthday by the residents of Nannybrook House. It soon became evident, however, that in order to write properly the pen needed to be held at a slight downward angle so the ink flowed to the tip, an angle that was damn near impossible to achieve when wobbling ten feet above the ground and writing with my arm up in the air at full stretch. I managed a couple of sentences but then had to climb down and rest for twenty minutes. I gave it another go, but exactly the same thing happened, and eventually I threw the pen away in disgust.
Next I turned to some sticks of red chalk, a goodly – if slightly damp – supply of which I found in a box in the kitchen cupboard. These, however, turned out to be far too slow and smudgy. Sentences unfolded at a snail’s pace and dissolved into an incomprehensible blur as soon as I started the next line and inadvertently rubbed my wrist across what was written above. It furthermore took me two entire sticks to write one paragraph, on which basis I calculated I’d need about 10,000 of the damn things to finish the job. The chalk option was also abandoned early on.
I tried a pencil, but it kept breaking, and a ballpoint, but it wouldn’t work on the plaster; and a stick of green crayon which disintegrated after half a paragraph; and even thought about painting my demise in doleful watercolours.
In the end, however, I settled for a felt-tip pen, two boxes of which I had purchased from Dr Bannen last year when I had it in mind to start a diary (abandoned after the first week, due to a total absence of subject matter). I have already used four of them – the walls of the castle appear to absorb ink like a sponge – but since there are 30 in each box, and provided I don’t get too verbose, I should have more than enough to finish my task. I hope so. The thought of running out of ink is infinitely more upsetting than the prospect of killing myself.
Finally, and most frustratingly, I’ve had problems with light. (What do you expect after a life as dark and malevolent as mine?) The castle does, of course, have electricity, but half its light fittings are broken and those that do work throw off barely enough radiance by which to count the fingers of my own hand. My eyes, furthermore, are not what they used to be, so that even in the middle of the day, working right beside a window, my words bend and sway in front of my face like seaweed in a strong current.
I have thus taken to wearing a large church candle strapped to my forehead with an old dishcloth. There is a plywood chest full of these candles down in the basement, stored there, according to Dr Bannen, when the local chapel was being renovated, and never reclaimed. They are big, thick, white things, rather like the erotic aids one finds gracing the windows of Soho sex emporiums, and provide more than adequate illumination for the job in hand. Molten wax drips down on to my face, forming brittle stalactites on the end of my nose. Taken with my white pyjamas, I look rather like a melting snowman.
And so here I am, felt-tip pen in hand, The Pill in my pocket, candle strapped to forehead, three quarters of the way down a pristine white expanse of wall.
I’ve barely started my note, and already it seems to have taken an unexpected turn, as though it were writing me rather than the other way around. Mrs Bunshop, you see, should, by rights, have appeared somewhere upstairs, near the end of the thing, her being my most recent victim. And what happens? She pops up slap bang at the start. Last murder first. Arse over tit. Cart before the horse. Madness. And totally contrary to my intentions.
What I had hoped, in my suicidal innocence, was to produce something chronological. Not conventional, mind; but at least something forward-looking. A detailed A–Z of the crimes of Raphael Phoenix, starting with his youth and moving neatly onwards down the highways and byways of murderousness to his inevitable, spectacular, pill-popping end. Something coherent, goddammit.
Now, it seems, I am forced to do it all backwards. Z–A. Same information, wrong direction. Last to first rather than vice versa, so that my end shall now be my beginning and my death coincide almost precisely with the hour of my birth. Absolute bloody madness. But what can I do. My life, it seems, has taken over.
CHAPTER FOUR
CONTINUING BACKWARDS, MY penultimate victim, in 1976, was poor old Walter X. I’ll never forget the way he shot up into the air with his eyes bulging and legs dangling like a pair of elongated Parma hams, and I’ll never stop feeling slightly – although only very slightly – guilty about the whole thing. Unlike Mrs Bunshop, you see, I rather liked him, which just goes to prove what a broad church murder is. Friends are just as likely to fall victim to my homicidal urges as enemies. Let it never be said I’m a choosy killer.
I met Walter because of Emily. Well, because of a number of factors actually, although Emily was the deciding one. Had I not killed Keith, for instance, I probably wouldn’t have been wandering the streets that chilly autumn night of 1971. And had I not been wandering the streets I would never have ended up in Trafalgar Square. And had I not ended up in Trafalgar Square I wouldn’t have noticed Emily sitting on the plinth between the paws of the great brass lion. And – and this is the important point – had Emily been sitting on any other plinth, between the paws of any other brass lion, I would never have crossed paths with Walter, for that was his brass lion, the only one he trusted. A host of forces ushered me into destitution, with Emily the most irresistible of the lot.
I fell asleep on her shoulder, gazing up at the moon – ‘God I feel rough,’ I mumbled – and when I woke she was gone. In her place – Walter. Sitting precisely where she had sat, his chin cupped in his hands, peering soulfully upwards at the greying sky of dawn. He was extremely tall, extremely thin and clad in an array of loathsome mouldering rags, topped off with a battered bowler hat.
‘You’re on my lion,’ he said.
‘I beg your pardon,’ I replied, sitting up and rubbing my eyes.
‘You’re on my lion. It’s the only safe one, you see. The others have all got surveillance equipment inside them. Very dangerous.’
I wasn’t sure what to say to this – my head still felt distinctly groggy from the ex
cesses of the previous night – and so I said nothing at all. Instead I simply shrugged my shoulders and made ready to jump to the ground.
‘Although that doesn’t mean you have to go,’ said my companion, motioning me to sit back down. ‘In fact, you’d be a lot safer if you stayed. Just so long as you know it’s my lion. Got any cake?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ I said, edging backwards slightly, for he smelt foul, and probably had fleas too.
‘Shame. Haven’t had cake for ages. They seem to have put an embargo on it.’
He shook his head disconsolately and, fishing in the pocket of his coat, withdrew a disintegrating cigarette end which he put between his lips, puffing on it forcefully, although the thing remained unlit.
‘Who are They?’ I asked, covering my nose with my hand.
‘They?’ He seemed surprised by my question. ‘They’re Them, of course.’
‘Them?’
‘That’s right.’ He looked surreptitiously around before jabbing his finger towards the sky. ‘The ones up there. Watching us. Always watching us.’
‘What, the police?’
He waved his hand dismissively.
‘Oh, the police are part of it. And the politicians, and the doctors, and the milkmen. They’re all involved. But they’re just tools. It’s Them you’ve got to watch out for. The string-pullers. The controllers. Nostradamus tried to warn us, but he’s been suppressed. So have the Knights Templar, and the survivors of Atlantis. We’ve still got C. S. Lewis, thank God, but it won’t be long before they get round to him too. They’re taking over the world. That’s why I joined the World Freedom League. To fight them. To the death if necessary.’
He was puffing heavily by the end of this homily, and, reaching into his pocket, withdrew a grubby tea-towel with which he dabbed at his forehead.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he sighed. ‘We fight them where we can. It’s not much, of course. A broken window here, a painted slogan there, some rotten fruit. But you have to make a stand.’
He sneezed violently, a long finger of mucous flipping out from his nose on to the front of his coat, where, to judge by the shiny, encrusted nature of the material, long fingers of mucous had been landing for many years now. He dabbed perfunctorily at it with his tea-towel.
‘Naturally they know who I am,’ he continued. ‘They have eyes everywhere. Spies on every corner. Your life is in danger just sitting here beside me. I’m a marked man. But then’ – and here he began to chuckle; a slow liquid gurgling in the back of his throat that set his body trembling and made his bowler hat shuffle back and forth across his shaggy head – ‘I always manage to keep one step ahead. I’m smart, you see. Here, I’ve written a survival manual. I’m thinking of getting it published.’
He delved into an inside pocket of his coat, bringing out, along with a confetti spray of cigarette butts, crumbs, corks and used matches, a sheaf of muddled papers.
‘Don’t know any publishers, do you?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ I said, taking the proffered sheets.
‘Shame. If I could publish this it might really help turn the tide. Go on, have a look.’
The papers he had handed me were blotched and crumpled to the point of unintelligibility, but after staring at them for a while, and rearranging them, and spreading them flat on the surface of the plinth, it was possible to discern some vague order to the spidery scribbles thereon. They essentially comprised a list of numbered points, each elucidating a particular facet of how to survive under the rule of a malevolent superior power.
How to Stay One Step Ahead
or
Rules for Freedom Fighters
or
The Handbook of the World Freedom League
by Walter X
1) Never watch television or films or plays, or listen to the radio. Never read papers or books, except C. S. Lewis. And only the ones about Narnia.
2) Always avoid eye-contact.
3) Look both ways before crossing the road.
4) Don’t touch dairy products, especially milk.
5) Avoid people in uniforms. Particularly uniforms with boots.
6) Never stay in the same place for more than a night.
7) Don’t cut your hair – reduces strength.
8) Don’t take any prescribed medication.
9) Be alert for strange noises – especially knocking sounds, and hums.
10) Don’t trust strangers.
‘You appear to have broken rule ten,’ I observed.
‘Yes,’ he admitted, taking back his papers and returning them to his pocket. ‘It was a risk. But sometimes you have to take risks. Otherwise it would be so lonely.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you can trust me.’
‘Oh I know that. You’ve got blue eyes. You can always trust people with blue eyes. In fact, I’d better write that down. It could be important.’
He took out his papers once again and, retrieving a gnarled pencil from another pocket – his coat appeared to consist more of pockets than actual material – scribbled an addendum to rule ten to the effect, ‘Don’t trust strangers, unless they have blue eyes. Also, make sure they are real blue eyes and not glass ones.’ Pleased with his endeavours, he let out a grunt of approval and leant back against the lion.
‘Yes indeed,’ he sniggered. ‘They’ll have a job catching me.’
By now the morning was creeping up on us. The hubbub of traffic was slowly increasing and a man with a wheelie-bin had arrived and begun sweeping up rubbish at the other end of the square. I wondered what had happened to Keith’s body, and whether Marcie was still screaming, and if the forces of law and order were at that very moment fanning out across the capital in pursuit of a silver-haired, 71-year-old, mass-murdering ex-pop star in red sequinned trousers and cheesecloth shirt. I decided I’d better be moving on.
‘Anyway,’ I said, struggling to my feet and patting my pocket to ensure The Pill and The Photo were safe therein. ‘Nice talking to you.’
My companion looked up at me mournfully, but said nothing.
‘I’ll be seeing you then. Best of luck. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.’
I edged past him to the front of the plinth and leapt to the ground. I looked back once – he was still staring at me mournfully – and then set off across the road. Barely had I reached the other side, however, before I felt myself pushed – not roughly, but firmly – into the doorway of a shop. I smelt rather than saw that my assailant was Walter.
‘What’s going on!’ I shouted, coughing at the wretched stench of the man.
‘Ssssh!’ he said, putting his finger to his lips. He leant outwards and looked to left and right to ensure we hadn’t been seen, and then bowed his grimy head close to my own and whispered:
‘I need soldiers.’
‘Soldiers?’
‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘To carry on the struggle. You can only do so much on your own. Two together could do twice as much as one, which is double the damage. Do you see what I’m getting at? Join the cause! Fight for freedom! You and me. A team!’
‘I’m very flattered,’ I began, ‘but right at the moment—’
‘Wait!’ he cried, leaning outwards and looking to left and right again. ‘Don’t answer yet. Think about it. Moments like this don’t come often. Opportunities must be grasped. At least consider it.’
He prodded me even further into the doorway and turned his back, as though I were about to remove my clothes and he wished to afford me some privacy.
‘It wasn’t a coincidence you came to the lion today,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘It was fate. You were summoned. You can’t ignore fate. It’s even stronger than They are.’
That he was completely potty I had no doubt whatsoever. Probably not dangerously so, but potty nonetheless. To have had anything to do with him would, at any other time, and in any other set of circumstances, have been quite out of the question.
This, however, wasn’t any other time, or any other set of circumstances. It was he
re and now, and I had just killed a man. So far as I knew I was, at that very moment, the object of an extensive police manhunt. Emily had gone. I had little money, and even less idea what to do or where to go. I needed to lay low for a while. I needed a way out. I needed – yes, a bit of fate. As Walter so percipiently said, opportunities have to be grasped. I pondered my options for a moment, and then, not without a certain reluctance, tapped him on the shoulder.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll join.’
He turned slowly, eyes wide.
‘What?’
‘I’ll join. I’ll come with you. For a while at least. It’s not as if I’ve got anything better to do.’
Initially he wouldn’t believe me, convinced I was playing some sort of joke, or trying to lure him into a trap. Only when I had repeated my offer several times, and reassured him of my good intentions, did he finally accept that I meant what I said. Tears pricked his eyes and, withdrawing his tea-towel, he dabbed tenderly at his irises before seizing my face in both hands and kissing me on the lips.
‘And now,’ he announced, ‘we’d better get out of town. Before they get a fix on us. Although we should just have time for a bit of cake. Some always manage to get through the blockade. They don’t have it all their own way!’
Whereupon he grabbed my arm and dragged me off down the street.
Which is how, contrary to all expectations and, indeed, all intentions, I joined the World Freedom League, remaining with that organization for five whole years until, again contrary to all expectations and, indeed, all intentions, I did for its founder member.
And although they were filthy years, and uncomfortable years, and footsore, flea-bitten, boozy, scabby, scavenging, disgusting years, they were also rather liberating ones too. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as free as I did during my time with Walter. That’s the thing about hitting rock bottom. You no longer worry about falling. As my companion himself put it, in one of his more pithy aphorisms: