Whit

by Iain Banks

  Perhaps it is not so surprising, then, that Mr McIlone, brought into contact with my Grandfather's messianic, blazing certainty and the unconventional but obvious love he shared with his two exotically foreign beauties, should feel that he was missing out somewhere, that there was another retort to the world's absurdities and viciousness besides hermetic, hermit-like withdrawal.

  Whatever factors, emotional, personal or philosophical, eventually produced this holy sea-change in Mr McIlone, by the end of 1949 it was complete, and our Founder had his first real convert (I don't think he ever felt his wives fully Believed, though they gave every appearance of Behaving).

  He also had the run of the farm at Luskentyre, the continuing opportunity to study in its library, the use of its buildings, access to whatever funds and produce it gave rise to, and an eventually decisive say in its running. And so it was there that our sect, the True Church of Luskentyre, made its first home, from 1949 until 1954, when Mrs Woodbean gifted us the estate at High Easter Offerance, on the green and ancient flood plain of the river Forth, far to the south-east of those wild isles.

  * * *

  'Well, it smells like that liniment stuff me mother used to slap on us soon as we coughed out of turn,' Dec said, flopping into a huge cushion on the floor beside me.

  I had partaken of the precious zhlonjiz unguent some hours earlier, in my loft bedroom, shortly after Zeb and I had made our way back to Kilburn from the South Bank (happily this required no changes of Underground train line). I had pulled up the loft ladder and closed the loft door, placing the ladder on top of it. I removed all my clothes save for my knickers and sat in the lotus position, meditating for some time beforehand. A cup of water I'd brought from the bathroom sat to one side, a scented Order candle to the other.

  I struggled to open the tiny jar; the cap gave an audible crack when it finally turned. The sharp, spicy salve inside was black in the candlelight. I took a little of the thick dark cream on my little finger and placed some on my forehead, some behind my ears and some on my belly-button. I slipped the rest into my mouth, scraping it off against the back of my teeth and quickly swallowing it. I washed it down with the cup of water; the gritty black cream burned my tongue and the roof of my mouth as it slid down my throat.

  I coughed and my nose ran and the fierce dark smell of the stuff seemed to surround me, fiery and raw and dissolving, reeking of a mountainous, half-mythical East. I sniffed back, breathing deeply to suffuse my being with the magical balm, relaxing and trying to let my soul open to the voice of the Creator, attempting both to ignore the vast city and its millions of Cluttered, Unsaved souls, and at the same time to use their untapped, ignorant capacity for Receiving to focus the signals of God upon myself.

  In short, it did not work. I waited for the blink of an eye and the life of an old God, I waited until the next heart beat and the next Ice Age, I waited for the merest whisper of murmured acknowledgement and the erupting scream of God at last losing patience with us all; I waited long enough for the candle to flicker and go out, my legs to grow sore and my skin to prickle with goose-bumps.

  Eventually I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness, aware of an edge of light round the sides of the loft door and the vague buzz of voices and smell of food drifting up from downstairs. I lowered my head and might have wept, until I rebuked myself for such self-pity, and told myself that - if fault there was - it was my own, and I had nobody else to blame. I sniffed, rose stiffly and dressed, tidied things up and lowered the wooden ladder through the opened loft door.

  'What liniment?' I asked Declan.

  'I dunno,' he said, lighting a small roll-up cigarette. 'Some stuff. She just called it "Di lineament" and dabbed the damn stuff on us at every opportunity; worst was when you had the toothache; stung like hell; worse than the toothache.'

  'I thought it smelled like coriander,' said Roadkill, who was rolling one of their drug cigarettes. We were all - save for Scarpa - in the living room, listening to some modern CD music on the hi-fi. I had eaten after the others, having missed the main meal while I was attempting to Receive. I had, perhaps misguidedly, attempted to explain to the others what I had been trying to do in the loft; probably I ought not to have mentioned the zhlonjiz at all. Roadkill at least seemed sympathetic. Brother Zeb, also now rolling what they called a 'number', seemed to be ignoring me.

  'Dec,' Boz said, stretching his hand across me to offer Declan the drug cigarette which was currently in circulation.

  Dec seemed to hesitate, and Boz offered the long white tube to me. 'Hey, Isis, child; you want to try the holy ganja instead?'

  I looked at it. 'I'd probably just cough,' I told him, though I was thinking about it. Our creed holds no thing wrong just because the Blands say it is, and from what I had heard both at school and from various people at the Commune, cannabis was a benign, if befuddlingly distracting drug. Indeed, I felt much more discomfited by the presence of all the electrical activity around me than I did by the haze of smoke that hung in the room.

  'Ah, go on with ye,' Declan said.

  'Very well,' I said, and exhaled to the bottom of my lungs. I reached out for the drug cigarette, but Boz moved it away out of reach.

  'Hey, don't take too much there, Isis; you'll give youself a coughing fit, sure enough. You just breathe in gentle-like.'

  I breathed in, looking up at Boz, who was sitting on another giant cushion. (I, of course, was on the wooden floorboards). I took the long cigarette and sucked on it, not too hard.

  '…. Easy now, Isis,' Boz said, as I gulped and tried not to cough, and handed the thing quickly on to Declan. I exhaled and took another few deep breaths, cooling my fiery throat (at least the cannabis had that in common with the zhlonjiz). 'You all right now, Isis?' Boz asked, looking at me. I nodded. I rather liked the way Boz said 'I-sis'; slowly and deeply with the emphasis on the 'sis'.

  'Fine,' I said, with only the smallest of coughs.

  My head started to spin; alcohol never acted as rapidly. I passed on the next 'spliff and went for another cup of water, but took some of the next drug cigarette, and the next.

  There was much talk and laughter, and at one point I found myself trying to explain to Roadkill that in a sense everything was action at a distance and that this was the most important thing in the world, even though as I told her this I knew I was talking complete nonsense. I told her this too and she just laughed. Some people I didn't know came in and Boz went through to the kitchen with them. When I went there for more water later on I saw him sitting at the table using a knife and a pair of scales to measure out small pieces of black stuff which he then wrapped and gave to the strangers. Boz smiled at me. I felt a little faint at the time so I just smiled back and went through to the living room again. I surmised, in a sort of hazy, dissociated way, that Boz must be cutting up weights to be distributed to small businesses in the area so that their scales were all properly calibrated.

  To my shame it was at least a good quarter-hour before I saw Declan rolling another joint with the same black stuff - made crumbly by having been heated with a cigarette lighter - and realised what Boz was actually doing; this led me into a fit of the giggles so intense that at one point I almost lost control of my bladder. Once I had calmed down I explained the cause of my confusion to the others, whereupon several of them started laughing too, causing me to relapse into hysteria.

  A little later I dried my eyes, excused myself and bade them all goodnight. I negotiated my way carefully and deliberately to my lofty boudoir, taking great care always to have three points of contact as I climbed the ladder, and - leaving the loft trap-door open to light my way - taking equal care to tread only on the doors providing the loft's flooring, and even more extra special care when, having partially disrobed, I swung myself into my hammock.

  My head was spinning, the loft-space was spinning, and I had the distinct impression that they were in contra-rotation to each other. I closed my eyes but this only made the sensation worse. I thought it not impossibl
e that with my senses so unusually disrupted I might be able to open my soul to God and so receive Their word, but not until I could both stop the room spinning and prevent occasional after-shocks of giggles afflicting my body.

  I took several deep breaths and tried to compose myself by thinking of our family history, a subject which requires considerable concentration and an alert, retentive and - some might argue - an open mind.

  * * *

  Salvador Whit and Aasni Whit née Asis begat two daughters, Brigit and Rhea, and a son, Christopher, who was Salvador's first boy-child and born on the 29th of February 1952, and so was known as the Elect of God, and given a long, impressive name which ended in the Roman numerals II because he was a second-generation Leapyearian. Salvador Whit and Zhobelia Whit née Asis begat two daughters, Calli and Astar, and a son, Mohammed.

  Christopher Whit and Alice Whit née Cristofiori begat a son, Allan, and a daughter, Isis, who was born on the 29th of February 1976, and whose name was suffixed with the numerals III because she was a third-generation Leapyearian. Brigit and anon begat a daughter, Morag, but Brigit later became apostate and moved to Idaho in the United States of America and reputedly is to this day without further issue. Rhea became apostate early on, allegedly married an insurance salesman and moved to Basingstoke in England and we know of no children from her loins. Mohammed lives in Yorkshire in England and is childless. Calli and James Tillemont begat a daughter, Cassiopeia, a son, Paul, and another daughter, Hagar. Astar and Malcolm Redpath begat two sons, Hymen and Indra, and Malcolm Redpath and Matilda Blohm begat a son, Zebediah, and Astar and Johann Meitner begat a son, Pan.

  Erin Peniakov and Salvador Whit begat a son, Topee, and possibly a daughter, Iris. Jessica Burrman and Salvador Whit probably begat a daughter, Helen. Fiona Galland and Salvador Whit probably begat a daughter, Heather. Gay Sumner and Salvador Whit may have begat a daughter, Clio.

  After that it gets complicated.

  The room was still spinning.

  I imagined I was in a porcelain-hulled boat, drifting silently upstream to the Pendicles of Collymoon with my cousin Morag at my side; she was slowly bowing the throaty, many-voiced baryton and somehow that was our means of propulsion; I was floating in a silvery spaceship, its rocket tubes like organ pipes; I was lying under the Deivoxiphone listening to the Voice of God but we had a crossed line and all I could hear was opera; I lay on the floor in Sophi's room in the little turreted house across the half-ruined bridge, talking about playing the organ in the cathedral while she lay on the bed, leafing through magazines, but my words were coming out of my mouth as literal bubbles with little fat naked men and women in them, performing strange and unlikely sexual acts in each one; I sat at the Flentrop organ, but the keys just snarled at me and became a piano with the top down and locked and all I could hear was the sound of a dwarf running up and down inside, stamping out some stupid, monotonous tune, and swearing loudly but muffledly; I lay in the moonlit clouds of my Grandfather's beard, listening to the clustered stars sing overhead; the northern lights curved and twisted in great shawls of ghostly luminescence, like the flapping sails of some vast craft fit to sail between the galaxies.

  I wondered hazily if this might be the start of a vision. It had been my ambition to start having visions and so to take over from my Grandfather and follow in his footsteps, as it were. But - despite a few promisingly unsettling sensations I had experienced over the years - I had never been privileged with such a visitation. My Grandfather had told me that there were different ways to hear the Voice of God; one could calm oneself, prepare one's mind, meditate and relax and eventually know what it was God had said to one - the way everybody else in our Order did - or one could - as he had, in the past at any rate - just suddenly find oneself dumped willy-nilly, effectively at random, into one of those fit-like visions over which he seemed to have no control. But that was God speaking to him too, so if what I was experiencing now was the start of a vision, I reasoned, then perhaps my attempt this evening had worked after all, albeit not quite as I had anticipated.

  'Howyi, Isis; you all right there?' said a voice nearby, making me start. I must have closed my eyes. I opened them again. I had no idea how much time had passed.

  There was somebody standing by the side of my hammock, a tall shadowy shape looking down at me. I'd recognised his voice. 'Declan,' I said, focusing with some difficulty. What was it he had asked? Then I remembered. 'Yes, I'm fine,' I said. 'How are you?'

  'Ah, I just thought you might be feelin' a bit strange, you know?'

  'Yes. No; I'm all right.'

  'Right,' he said. He stood there for a moment, just visible in the light from the loft trap-door. 'You sure, now?' he asked, putting his hand out to my forehead and running his fingers through my hair. He stroked the back of my head. 'Ah, Jayzus, Isis; you're a beautiful kid, ye know that?'

  'Really?' I said, which was probably the wrong thing.

  'Chroist, yes. Anyone ever tell you you look like Dolores O'Riordan?' he said, bending closer.

  'Who?'

  'The Cranberries.'

  'Who?' I repeated, confused. Actually his hand was producing quite a pleasant sensation at the back of my head, but I knew that, as a man, Declan would be unlikely to regard that as an end in itself.

  'Ye mean ye've never heard of the Cranberries?' He laughed gently, bringing his face nearer to mine. 'By God, ye have led a sheltered life, haven't you?'

  'I suppose so. Look, Declan-'

  'Ah, ye're glorious, so ye are, Isis,' he said, and used his hand at the back of my head to lift my face up to his as he bent further forward.

  I put my hands up to his chest and pushed. 'Declan,' I said, turning my face away to avoid his lips and getting an earful of wet tongue. 'You're very nice and I like you, but-'

  'Ah, Isis, come on…' he said, putting one arm round my hammock and pulling me to him, his lips seeking mine. I pushed harder and he let me go, leaving me swinging to and fro between my roof beams. He sighed, then said, 'Ah, Isis, what's the matter? Will ye not even-' as he leant forward and reached out again.

  I extended my hands to push him away, but he stumbled, I think, and next thing I knew he was falling forward on top of me, forcing the wind out of me. Declan went, 'Whoo!' Our combined weight swung the hammock out away from over the doors forming the floor; there was a creaking noise from somewhere beyond my feet, then a jerk, and in a moment of helpless horror I knew what was going to happen next.

  'Oh, no!' I shouted.

  The nail Brother Zebediah had bashed into the roof truss to take the foot of my hammock sprang out of the wood and sent Declan and me tumbling forward into the darkness under the slope of the roof. Had Declan not had both arms around me, my hammock and sleeping roll, and had I not had my arms trapped for that same reason, one of us might have been able to save one or both of us, but instead the second nail at the head of my hammock gave way too and sent us crashing lengthwise to land neatly between two rafters onto the rough, grimily ridged surface of the plaster. It broke like puddle-ice and we fell through into light, surrounded by dust and brittle shards of plaster with me screaming and Declan snouting, and somebody else screaming too.

  We must have twisted in mid-air as we fell because I landed beside Declan with only his head thumping onto my midriff. We landed half on the floor of the room below - which proved to be Boz's - and half on the double mattress which was Boz's bed and on which he was lying at the time, propped up by a couple of cushions and watching a video; we must have just missed landing on his feet.

  He gave a surprisingly high shriek and pulled the bed sheet quickly up over himself as Declan and I bounced once and lay stunned under a rain of dust and more lumps of plaster. I'd got just the vaguest glimpse of something black and purple Boz had been holding as we crashed down onto the bed in front of him. I moved an arm to shift some plaster off Declan's head and my hip and caught a glimpse of Boz's video, being shown on another remarkably new-looking television set on the other side of the room. I
saw a woman sucking - in a somehow exaggerated way, and from a distinctly unnatural-looking angle - a man's erect penis. I stared at this. Two in one batch of seconds. Life was strange. Declan moaned and looked up, instantly aged thirty years by the grey dust coating his face and hair. He looked at me and then at Boz. He coughed. 'Oops,' he said.

  I hardly heard. I was staring with my mouth open and my eyes boggling almost out of their sockets at the screen of the television set. The girl in the erotic video was now lying on her back by a sun-lit swimming pool while the man did something to her one could not see; her face contorted with what was probably meant to be ecstasy.

  I couldn't believe it. I pointed with one shaking hand at the television. Declan followed my gaze to where the woman pouted and grimaced on the screen.

  'That,' I exclaimed loudly, 'is my cousin Morag, the internationally famous soloist on the baryton!'

  Declan watched the screen for a moment, looked back round at me, glanced at Boz - who still seemed stunned into wide-eyed silence - then shook his head, releasing a cloud of dust. 'Yer arse!' he laughed. That's Fusillada DeBauch, the porn queen, and the only thing she's renowned for is playing the pink piccolo, pal.'

  CHAPTER TEN

  The next morning, in the living room, I studied the videotape Boz had been watching.

  Boz had recovered his cool and then started laughing at us while the dust was still settling around his bedroom. Declan apologised - to Boz first, I noticed, but then afterwards to me. He repaired the roof as best he could with a couple of posters over the hole in the ceiling and one of the loft's door floor-boards on the other side. Boz slipped into a pair of boxer shorts; he and I cleaned up the plaster. My head was still spinning but I felt somewhat more sober for the experience.