by Paul Haines
Johnny frowns, but rallies on. “Anyway, y’know how god ’as angels, right? Well, Santa ’as little elves instead fer helpin’ him—”
“Not in the Netherlands,” I say. “In the Netherlands he’s got a helper called Zwarte Piet who cheerfully beats the shit out of kids on the naughty list. And in parts of Eastern Europe he used to have the Krampus, who wear black masks and drag chains which they throw at passing children—”
“And it’s called Xmas on account o’ how Jesus were nailed to a great big X,” Johnny snaps.
“No, Johnny,” I say automatically, “it’s called Xmas because in Greek and Roman, X is the first letter of the word Christ.”
The hoods look suspiciously between us. Trying to work out who’s telling the truth—which, frankly, as both a mythological creature and someone without a police record, I find rather offensive.
Surprisingly it’s Johnny who breaks the tension. “I ain’t no expert,” he says mildly, tossing a sparkly-pink present in his hand. “You should listen a Zeem ’ere. He’s always got ’is facts straight on this sort o’ stuff. I reckon I’ll stick wit’ gift-givin’, eh?”
He double-checks the address on the back of the present, then trots off to knock on a door. The hoods, still playing page, aren’t far behind him.
I watch them do their Babushka business from the pavement. Johnny is a thief and the hoods are a bunch of little bastards who’ve a reputation for ringing doorbells in the middle of the night, writing misspelled graffiti on people’s fences and pissing in public places. This is their pilgrimage, not mine; their chance to give back. And yet what they’re doing here, as we walk from house to house, seems less like a penance than an impulse.
Sure they’re doing good in the Christmas tradition—in, specifically, Babushka’s tradition—but it doesn’t fit in my head in the neat way I’d prefer it to.
* * *
We deliver the last presents to a pair of snotty-nosed twins just outside the town centre; they squeak happily and hug the yellow hoodie. Their father invites us in to sample his home-made eggnog, but it’s getting close to midnight now and the hoods have parental curfews. We say our goodbyes before the hoods think to serenade the twins with a farewell carol.
Our route back to the tenements takes us down main street, where the lamp posts are swathed in red tinsel like barber’s poles and every shop window is printed with a Merry Christmas decal. (Naturally the French bakery’s reads: Joyeux Noel.) The pavements are crowded with people returning from late church services and the annual carols by candlelight held in Wickley’s community centre. Johnny, who’s always got an eye for an opportunity, nicks someone’s wallet and uses the cash in it to buy the hoods a kebab each.
Then the yellow hoodie finds some mistletoe hanging from a street sign and gets in a snog with the better looking of the two other hoods. And the less attractive male hood carves his name into a bus time table with a penknife.
Johnny and I leave them to it and walk home through the snow, which is looking slushier by the minute. At my place, Johnny flips through repeats of Carols from Kings while I potter off to the kitchen to pour him a glass of brandy and myself a glass of Chanel No. 5.
“You know all that present-giving doesn’t count as community service, right?” I say, returning with drinks.
Johnny shrugs. “I know.”
“Then why do it?”
“Dunno. Why wouldn’t I?”
I look at Johnny for a long time.
“Merry Christmas, Johnny,” I say eventually. “Thank you for being my friend.”
“Merry Christmas, Zeem,” says Johnny. “Thank you fer bein’ mine.”
We clink glasses. We drink. And I don’t wince, even though I want to. I’ll admit it freely: I’m nine millennia old and I still haven’t gotten used to the indignity of being taught life lessons by humans.
Especially not on bloody Christmas day.
* * *
This story has an ending, but it’s not magical or miraculous.
Three days after Christmas, Johnny and I go to the hospital. We’ve got a patient to see, and a Christmas miracle to verify. Patient visiting hours are almost up, but tall, dark, handsome Johnny manages to flirt his way past two duty nurses and a janitor without too much trouble.
We find our Babushka in the private wing. As we enter her room, she starts awake, and the monitor at her side peep-peep-peeps like a hungry chick. Her heartbeats zigzag irregularly on the screen. An elaborate pulley system is keeping her bandaged left leg raised; her right arm has a plaster cast. Without her patterned scarf she doesn’t look particularly Russian. She’s just a small, broken woman. She looks like no one special at all.
“Are—are—” the broken woman begins, rubbing her eyes, but Johnny puts a finger to his lips to quiet her.
“Hullo, Missus B,” he says. “Don’t you bother gettin’ up on my account. I jus’ came by to say that you ain’t got nothin’ to worry about. With the presents. Me ’n’ my friends, we delivered ’em. All them kids got their presents. So don’t worry ’bout a thing, you hear? You concentrate on restin’ yourself and getting better.”
The broken lady’s face crinkles in confusion. I put a hand on Johnny’s arm before he can go in for an over-friendly, over-Christmasy hug of togetherliness.
“You should probably head off now, Johnny,” I whisper. “I’ll take it from here. The lady Babushka and I have things to talk about. One mythological being to another.”
“Oh, aye,” says Johnny, intimating with his finger again. “I’ll meet you outside then, fairy-boy. G’bye, Missus B.”
He strides out, a hero’s exit, ducking ever so slightly to clear the door frame. The broken woman and I watch him go.
“It’s Kazeem, isn’t it?” asks the broken woman finally. “I ’member you helped us some with setting up the Giving Tree. You had opinions about our tinsel.”
“That’s right,” I say. “And that was my friend Johnny Flannery. It’s okay, he’s nothing to worry about. He got out of Wandsworth for good behaviour.”
“Did he really deliver those presents? I should thank him. I think everyone needs to thank him.”
“Ah, no. I think it might be better if you didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
An unfortunate side effect of my fairy biology means I’ve an awful time trying to lie, but that doesn’t mean I can’t prevaricate with the best of them. “Johnny’s an unassuming kind of man, Mrs Edgeworth,” I say. “Wouldn’t want anyone to make a fuss of him.”
“I was worried someone might have stolen all the gifts,” says Mrs Edgeworth, leaning back on her pillows. The pulley system creaks in relief. “What a disaster that would be! Especially considering how much support the Giving Tree got this year. Dozens of presents donated. Those poor unfortunate children would have been so disappointed—”
“Quite,” I say. “Lucky we had Johnny Flannery, eh.”
On the way out I stop at the hospital gift shop to browse their assortment of fluffy bears and balloons and plastic flowers and other Get Well Soon paraphernalia. I’m not going to tell Johnny about Mrs Edgeworth and the Giving Tree, of course. I want Johnny to have the dream of saving Christmas, but I also I owe him a real gift, something a little more solid than bloody Christmas spirit. Call it an impulse, or maybe just plain old peer pressure . . .
Tis the reason for the season, and all that.
Schubert By Candlelight
Matthew Chrulew
I smile as Samuel hesitates in the doorway, three-quarters full of self-pity and one-quarter of cognac. His gaze sweeps the room, pausing on curious articles: me standing in the centre of his Savonnerie rug; the decanter of Premier Grand Cru set out on the cabinet; Narcissus Absolute candles arranged on the mantlepiece. The familiar melancholy of Schubert’s Rosamunde drifts from the corner. Already, from the quickening of his lips, I can begin to penetrate his mind: a flicker of repressed desire within the gloom.
“Adam,” he says. “You’re here.�
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I had begun to worry that he would work it out and wouldn’t come home at all. At least, not on his own. I even found myself biting my nails again. Habits die hard, both old and new. But here he is, shutting the door gently behind him.
It turns out, after all, that I had weighed his infatuation perfectly.
“Of course I’m here,” I say, and beneath the despondency on his round, soft face, the half-drunk waver in his eyes, I can sense his surprise and anticipation. That fearful longing, thinking tonight might be his big night.
Well, if you look at it the right way, it will.
Then the misery regains its grip, and he puts his head in his hands.
“Samuel, sit down.” I guide him into his pride and joy, the Victorian mahogany elbowchair by the wall. “You look like something got the better of you.”
“You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had,” he says. I cross his precious wool rug, light the sweetly fragrant candles, and pour him a cognac. Three cubes, two shots, one swirl: the only thing not neat about him.
“Really?” I hand him the drink, allowing our fingers almost to touch, and then adjust the volume on the record to play softly in the background. “This should cheer you up,” I say, knowing better.
He contrives a half-enthusiastic smile, sinks into his chair and breathes in the cognac vapours.
“Not likely. I’m finished,” he exhales quickly. “I’ve been set up.”
I shake my head and hold out his pills. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He looks up, as if only now registering my presence. He takes the pills and swallows them with the Grand Cru.
“Overnight, there was an intruder.”
“What? Was anybody harmed?”
He gazes at me over the crystal snifter. I maintain my concerned expression.
“No, no, there was no-one there. It was just . . . corporate espionage. The system was compromised and vital information was exposed.” He shakes his head. “The thing is, they breached security using my passwords!”
“What? How did they get them?”
“I have no idea, but half the board believed it was me, the traitors. I finally convinced them that I couldn’t possibly gain anything—I’m not going anywhere!—but of course they still hold me responsible.”
I feign a groan of shock and sympathy as he squanders the liquor with a masochistic gulp.
“So now we just have to wait. If it’s a whistle-blower, they’ll still throw me to the wolves, but it won’t matter. The media will tear the company apart just the same.” He concedes a wincing smile. “But if it’s blackmail, it’s a matter of waiting for the message. We’ll pay big, too. Either way, that’s the end of me.”
He leans back with an air of practised misfortune, indulging this newfound justification. “Oh, I’m too miserable. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Yes, let’s. You need to relax.” I pour him another drink, the decanter flickering ostentatiously under the candlelight. He glances at the piano, notices my suitcases, and looks up at me. I lower my eyes.
It’s tempting: I want to suggest that he sit at the grand and purge himself through his fingers. He always plays most beautifully when depressed, losing himself in the sorrow of the music.
That’s how it was the first time I met him, quietly gatecrashing that intolerable work party. I watched as he sat there in that hand-carved seat, politely brushing aside the under-dressed and over-rouged tarts and making boring intelligent conversation with the dissolute execs, the PR men, the other neurochemists-for-hire. His fingers fidgeted at his knees, enticed by the Unfinished Symphony which played in the background. He was obviously desperate for company—younger, male, and unrelated to work—but too governed by his Catholic superego to admit it, let alone act on it. And it was noticeably frowned upon by his peers, just like with Schubert—as if, two centuries later, we were still in the grips of that stifling taboo. So he pined, wielding his melancholy like a lure. I saw my moment and took it, stood by the piano and offered him a glance.
“You play,” I said.
When everyone else had left, he sat before the parlor grand and slowly, softly, released himself into the Rosamunde Impromptu in B-flat major. That’s how it’s been ever since: Schubert and longing. Never altering his mood, but mirroring it perfectly—and that reflection, too, entranced him.
Like the composer, he felt himself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world.
I was beguiled. It was then that this undertaking became about so much more than Bryce Pharmaceuticals’ dirty secrets.
We had dinner the following night; within a week, I was staying in his spare room.
It wasn’t a problem, playing this game with another man; he was too repressed to even approach me for a fortnight and accepted my gentle rejection as if it were fate. But his desire remained, undiminished. I found myself wondering, with an ironic smirk, whether it might somehow rub off.
But that would be all right; I wouldn’t mind. I could be anything for a while. Even that which he found unspeakable.
It was his habits that got under my skin: his minute and rigid patterns and affectations, his tedious Oedipal conflicts and hypocritical boys’-school morality. God. He was so predictable that I found myself pre-empting his incessant, conflicted grudge-stories about his mother, unknowingly conceding to his preciousness over his furniture, and counting the clock by his insufferable fixations. At least he’s not a smoker; the amount of times I’ve had to withstand that godforsaken addiction.
The trick is to survive such annoyances while remaining open to what is worthwhile. His one superlative talent.
But to expect him to play now would be wishful thinking; instead, I turn up the record as the ominous strains of the second Entr’acte die away.
“Tell me, though, Samuel, I’m intrigued. What is so worrying about the data that was breached?” I’m curious about how much he actually knows.
He makes a show of sniffing the vapours wafting from the crystal and studies me with delicate consideration. “You know my research is confidential.” But his motives are so easily deciphered: he is judging, not if he can trust me, but how he might play this confidence to his advantage.
I smile. “Well, it was.”
He grunts in acknowledgement. “Let me put it this way. Bryce Pharmaceuticals’ interests extend into some . . . ethically sensitive areas.” He can’t help but pause and glance around as a Ducati hums past, its headlight driving inkblot shadows across the walls.
“How do you mean?”
“The last few years, Bryce has concentrated its R&D on a certain area of neuropharmacology—controversial, but potentially extremely profitable. Nootropics, it’s called: cognitive enhancers that act directly on the brain, boosting neurotransmitter levels, for example, to improve memory, concentration, alertness, things like that. The military’s been dabbling in it for decades, but industry has avoided this sort of cosmetic enhancement. Since Viagra, though . . .” He blushes ever so slightly. “Well, the idea has become more acceptable to consumers. Now there’s heavy competition among biotech start-ups, not to mention big pharma, to develop effective drugs and corner the market. I mean, with regulations being what they are, officially they’re intended for diseases like Alzheimer’s. Though this whole diagnostics business has proven quite elastic—there’s always some new disorder or condition we can target. But the real profit is in the massive off-label demand; we’re talking students, aging baby boomers . . . Heck, my whole team is on modafinil—narcolepsy meds. They pretty much have to be, given the hours I make them work.”
He laughs with disdain at the image of his medicated lab rats, and I smile along.
“Our competitors have been experimenting with ampakines, CREB enhancers, BDNF . . . not that those will mean anything to you.”
I open my hands in ignorance.
“While we’ve been synthesising a new compound—MN1704, we call it.”
“Smart drugs?”
> “Well, yes, some use that term.”
“Giving yourself the chance at something that fate never saw fit to equip you with. I understand the appeal of that.”
He inclines his head forward. “I can see that about you. Critics complain that we’re messing with nature, but what is ‘normal’, anyway? People have always modified themselves with the best means available. Will we deny them that choice today, just when we’re finally getting good at it?”
I throw in my old favourite. “I remember reading somewhere about this dream of inventing memory pills. There were these experiments, in the sixties I think, where this scientist taught worms to behave a particular way, and then ground them up and fed them to some other worms. Apparently the untrained worms acquired the learned behaviour of the ones they had eaten. Suddenly everybody was hoping they could take a tablet and—voila! On parle Français!”
He laughs. “Ah, oui, the planaria controversy. So . . . bête. No, no, those results were refuted long ago. Nothing so extravagant is claimed for next gen nootropics. Though I personally find the prospect of enhanced recall to be sufficiently exciting in itself.”
“But I don’t understand. I see how some might object, but it hardly seems illegal.”
“Not as such, no. You must understand that Bryce’s number one concern is to protect their investment—securing intellectual property. With this incident, the threat to that alone has them panicking. But there’s also the issue of . . . well, let’s just say that I’m not sure how much scrutiny our testing procedures could handle.”
“You mean on animals?”
He laughs again and waves his hand. “Absolutely routine and unquestioned. As is that on humans, mind you. No, it’s all about fast-tracking FDA approval, you see. Which makes it very profitable for clinical investigators and contract research organisations to quickly produce supportive research—and very . . . unprofitable for them to bother too much about negative results and side-effects.”