by Lodge, David
“Well, I guess it depends on whether you want to fuck or not.”
Philip winced. “Well, how do you feel about it?”
“I’d just as soon not, to tell you the truth, Philip. Nothing personal, but I’m tired as hell.” She yawned like a cat.
“In that case, you take my bed, and I’ll sleep in here.”
“Oh no, I’ll take the couch.” She sat down on it emphatically. “This is fine, really.”
“Well, if you insist… the bathroom is at the end of the hall.”
“Thanks. This is really kind of you…”
“Don’t mention it,” Philip said, bowing himself out of the room. He didn’t know whether to feel glad or sorry at his dismissal, and the indecision kept him awake, rolling fretfully about in his king-size bed. He turned the clock-radio on low, hoping it would send him to sleep. It was tuned where he had left it the previous night, to the Charles Boon Show. The Black Pantheress was explaining to a caller the application of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory to the situation of oppressed racial minorities in a late stage of industrial capitalism. Philip switched off. After a while he went to the bathroom to get an aspirin. The door of his study was ajar, and without premeditation he turned into it. Melanie was sleeping peacefully: he could hear her deep, regular breathing. He sat down at his desk and turned on the reading lamp. Its hooded light threw a faint radiance on the sleeping girl, her long hair spread romantically over the pillow, one bare arm hanging to the floor. He sat in his pyjamas and looked at her until one of his feet went to sleep. As he tried to rub life back into it, Melanie opened her eyes, staring at him blankly, then fearfully, then with drowsy recognition.
“I was looking for a book,” he said, still rubbing his foot. “Can’t seem to get to sleep.” He laughed nervously. “Too excited… at the thought of you in here.”
Melanie raised the corner of the coverlet in a silent gesture of invitation.
“Very kind of you, you’re sure you don’t mind?” he murmured, like someone for whom room has been made in a crowded railway compartment. The bed was indeed crowded when he got into it, and he had to cling to Melanie to avoid falling out. She was warm and naked and lovely to cling to. “Oh,” he said, and, “Ah.” But it wasn’t altogether satisfactory. She was still half-asleep and he was half-distracted by the novelty of the situation. He came too soon and gave her little pleasure. Afterwards, in her sleep, tightening her arms round his neck, she whimpered, “Daddy.” He stealthily disengaged himself from her embrace and crept back to his king-size bed. He did not lie down on it: he knelt at it, as though it were a catafalque bearing the murdered body of Hilary, and buried his face in his hands. Oh God, the guilt, the guilt!
And Morris Zapp felt some pangs of guilt as he listened, cowering behind his door, to the wails of Bernadette and the imprecations of Dr. O’Shea, as the latter chastised the former with the end of his belt, having caught her in the act of reading a filthy book, and not merely reading it but abusing herself at the same time—an indulgence that was (O’Shea thundered) not only a mortal sin which would whisk her soul straight to hell should she chance to expire before reaching the confessional (as seemed, from her screams, all too possible) but was also a certain cause of physical and mental degeneration, leading to blindness, sterility, cancer of the cervix, schizophrenia, nymphomania and general paralysis of the insane… Morris felt guilty because the filthy book in question was the copy of Playboy he had been perusing earlier that evening, and which he himself had given to Bernadette an hour before, having discovered her reading it by the flickering light of the TV on his return from ferrying O’Shea to and from Mrs. Reilly, so engrossed that she was a microsecond too late in closing the magazine and pushing it under the chair. Blushing and cringing, she stammered some apology as she sidled towards the door.
“You like Playboy?” Morris said soothingly. She shook her head suspiciously. “Here, borrow it,” he said, and tossed her the magazine. It fell on the floor at her feet, opening, as it happened, on the centrefold of Miss January, tilting her ass invitingly at the camera. Bernadette flashed him a disconcertingly gap-toothed grin.
“T’anks mister,” she said; and snatching up the magazine, she disappeared.
Now her screams had subsided to a muffled sobbing and, hearing the footsteps of the outraged paterfamilias approaching, Zapp scuttled back to his chair and turned on the TV.
“Mr. Zapp!” said O’Shea, bursting into the room and taking up his stand between Morris and the TV.
“Come in,” said Morris.
“Mr. Zapp, it’s no business of mine what you choose to read—”
“Would you mind raising your right arm just a little?” said Morris. “You’re cutting out part of the screen.”
O’Shea obligingly lifted his arm, thus resembling a man taking the oath in court. A luridly coloured advertisement for Strawberry Whip swelled like an obscene blister under his armpit. “But I must ask you not to bring pornography into the house.”
“Pornography? Me? I haven’t even got a pornograph,” Morris quipped, confident that the gag would be new to O’Shea.
“I’m referring to a disgusting magazine which Bernadette took from your room. Without your knowledge, I trust.”
Morris evaded this probe, which indicated that plucky Bernadette hadn’t squealed. “You don’t mean my copy of Playboy, by any chance? But that’s ridiculous, Playboy isn’t pornography, for heaven’s sake! Why, clergymen read it. Clergymen write for it!”
“Protestant clergymen, perhaps,” O’Shea sniffed.
“Can I have it back, please,” said Morris. “The magazine.”
“I have destroyed it, Mr. Zapp,” O’Shea declared severely. Morris didn’t believe him. Inside thirty minutes he would be holed up somewhere, jerking himself off and drooling over the Playboy pix. Not the girls, of course, but the full-colour ads for whisky and hi-fi equipment…
The commercials on the TV ended and the credits for one of O’Shea’s favourite series appeared on the screen accompanied by its unmistakable theme tune. The doctor began to watch out of the corner of his eye, while his body maintained a stiff pose of umbrage.
“Why don’t you siddown and watch?” said Morris.
O’Shea subsided slowly into his customary chair.
“It’s nothing personal you understand, Mr. Zapp,” he muttered sheepishly. “But Mrs. O’Shea would never let me hear the last of it if she found the girl reading that sort of stuff. Bernadette being her niece, she feels responsible for the girl’s moral welfare.”
“That’s natural,” Morris said soothingly. “Scotch or Bourbon?”
“A little drop of Scotch would be very welcome, Mr. Zapp. I apologize for my outburst just now.”
“Forget it.”
“We’re men of the world, of course. But a young girl straight from Sligo … I think it would put our minds at rest if you would keep any inflammatory reading matter under lock and key.”
“You think she may break in here?”
“Well she does come in to clean the rooms, in the daytime…”
“You don’t say?”
Morris paid an extra thirty shillings a week for this service, and doubted whether much, if any, of the money found its way to Bernadette. Passing her on the stairs the next morning, Morris slipped her a pound note. “I understand you’ve been cleaning my rooms,” he said. “You’ve done a real nice job.” She flashed him her toothless grin and looked yearningly into his eyes.
“Shall I come to ye tonight?”
“No, no.” He shook his head in alarm. “You misunderstand me.” But she had heard the heavy tread of Mrs. O’Shea on the landing, and passed on. There was a time when Morris would have snapped up a chance like this, teeth or no teeth, but now—whether it was his age, or the climate, he didn’t know—but he didn’t feel up to it, he couldn’t make the effort, or face the possible complications. He could picture all too easily the consequences of being found by the O’Sheas in bed with Bernadette, or e
ven behind a door at which she was suing for admittance. Nothing was worth the price of looking for new accommodation in Rummidge in mid-winter. To avoid any accidents, and to give himself a well-deserved break, Morris decided to take a trip to London and stay overnight.
…
Philip woke sweating from a dream in which he was washing up in the kitchen at home. Plate after plate dropped from his nerveless fingers and smashed on the tiles underneath the sink. Melanie, who seemed to be helping him, was staring with dismay at the growing pile of shards. He groaned and rubbed his eyes. At first he was conscious only of physical discomfort: indigestion, headache and a sulphurous taste in his mouth. On his way to the bathroom his bleary gaze was drawn, through the open door of his study, to the tousled sheets on the couch, and he remembered. He croaked her name: “Melanie?” There was no answer. The bathroom was empty. So was the kitchen. He drew the curtains in the living-room and cringed as daylight flooded the room. Empty. She had gone.
Now what?
His soul, like his stomach, was in turmoil. Melanie’s casual compliance with his tired, clumsy lust seemed, in retrospect, shocking, moving, exciting, baffling. He couldn’t guess what significance she might attach to the event; and didn’t know, therefore, how to behave when they next met. But, he reminded himself, holding his throbbing head in both hands, problems of etiquette were secondary to problems of ethics. The basic question was: did he want to do it again? Or rather (since that was a silly question, who wouldn’t want to do it again) was he going to do it again, if the opportunity presented itself? Not for nothing had he taken up residence in a Slide Area, he thought sombrely, gazing out of the window at the view.
He did a lot of looking out of the window that day, unwilling to venture out of his apartment until he had decided what to do about Melanie—whether to cultivate the connection, or pretend that nothing had happened. He thought of putting through a long-distance call to Hilary to see whether the sound of her voice would act like some kind of electro-shock therapy on his muddled mind, but at the last minute his courage failed him and he asked the operator for Interflora instead. The sun set on his indecision. He retired early and woke in the middle of the night after a wet dream. Clearly he was reverting rapidly to adolescence. He turned on the radio and the first word he heard was “pollution.” Charles Boon was talking about the end of the world. Apparently the U.S. Army had buried some canisters of nerve gas, enough to kill the entire population of the globe, deep in underground caves and encased in solid concrete, but unfortunately the U.S. Army had overlooked the fact that the caves were on the line of the same geological fault that ran through the state of Euphoria.
The thing to do, Philip decided, was to see Melanie and have a heart-to-heart talk with her. If he explained his feelings, perhaps she could sort them out for him. What he had vaguely in mind was a mature, relaxed, friendly relationship which wouldn’t entail their sleeping together again, but wouldn’t entirely rule out such a possibility either. Yes, tomorrow he would see Melanie. He fell asleep again and dreamed, this time, that he was the last man out of Esseph at the time of its second and final earthquake. He was alone in an airplane taking off from Esseph airport, and as it hurtled down the runway he looked out of the window and saw cracks spreading like crazy paving in the tarmac. The plane lifted off just as the ground seemed to open to swallow it. It climbed steeply, and banked, and he stared out of the window at the unbelievable sight of the city of Esseph, its palaces and domes, its cloud-capped skyscrapers, burning and collapsing and sliding into the sea.
Next morning the Bay and the city were still there, smiling in the sunshine, awaiting the rabbit punch of the earthquake; but Melanie was not to be found—not that day, nor the next day, nor the day after that. Philip went in and out of the house at all hours, found pretexts for lingering in the hall and whistled loudly on the stairs, all to no avail. He saw Carol and Deirdre often enough and eventually summoned up the courage to ask them if Melanie was around. No, they said, she had gone away for a few days. Was there anything they could do for him? He thanked them: no.
That afternoon he fell over a pair of boots in a corridor of Dealer Hall which proved to belong to the Cowboy, squatting on the floor outside Howard Ringbaum’s door, waiting for a consultation.
“Hi!” said the Cowboy, with a leer. “How’s Melanie?”
“I don’t know,” said Philip. “I haven’t seen her lately. Have you?”
The Cowboy shook his head.
Ringbaum’s thin, nasal voice floated out into the corridor: “You seem to confuse the words satire and satyr in your paper, Miss Lennox. A satire is a species of poem; a satyr is a lecherous creature, half man, half goat, who spends his time chasing nymphs.”
“I have to be going,” said Philip.
“Ciao,” said the Cowboy. “Hang loose.”
That was easier said than done. He felt himself sliding into obsession. That night he was sure it was Melanie’s voice that he heard talking to Charles Boon on the radio. Tantalizingly, it was only the tail-end of the conversation that he caught when he switched on. “Don’t you think,” Melanie was saying, “that we have to aim towards a whole new concept of interpersonal relationships based on sharing rather than owning? I mean, like a socialism of the emotions…”
“Right on!”
“And a socialism of sensations, and…”
“Yeah?”
“Well, that’s all, I guess.”
“Well, thanks anyway, that was great.”
“Well, that’s what I think, Charles. Good night.”
“Good night, and call again. Anytime,” Boon added meaningfully. The girl—was it Melanie?—laughed and rang off.
“Queue Ex Why Zee Underground Radio,” Charles Boon intoned. “This is the Charles Boon Show, the one Governor Duck tried to get banned. Call 024-9898 and let’s hear what’s on your mind.”
Philip jumped out of bed, pulled on his dressing gown, and ran downstairs to the ground-floor apartment. He rang the bell. After a longish pause, Deirdre came to the door and called through it.
“Who are you?”
“It’s me, Philip Swallow. I want to speak to Melanie.”
Deirdre opened the door. “She’s not here.”
“I just heard her speaking on the radio. She phoned in to the Charles Boon show.”
“Well, she didn’t call from here.”
“Are you sure?”
Deidre opened the door wide. “You want to search the apartment?” she inquired ironically.
“I’m terribly sorry,” said Philip.
I must snap out of this, he said to himself as he climbed the stairs. I need a break, some distraction. On his next free day he took a bus across the long, double-decker bridge into downtown Esseph. He alighted at exactly the same moment (though seven hours earlier by the clock) that Morris Zapp, seated in the grill-room of the London Hilton, sank his teeth luxuriously into the first respectable-looking steak he had seen since arriving in England.
…
The Hilton was a damned expensive hotel, but Morris reckoned that he owed himself some indulgence after three weeks in Rummidge and in any case he was making sure that he got full value out of his occupation of the warm, sound-proofed and sleekly furnished room on the sixteenth floor. He had already showered twice since checking in, and walked about naked on the fitted carpet, bathed in fluent waves of heated air, had climbed back into bed to watch TV and ordered his lunch from Room Service—a club sandwich with french fries on the side preceded by a large Manhattan and followed by apple pie à la mode. All simple everyday amenities of the American way of life—but what rare pleasures they seemed in exile.
However, perhaps it was time he put his nose outside the revolving doors and took a look at Swinging London, he conceded, as he waddled from the dining-room with a comfortably full belly and selected an expensive Panatella from the cigar store in the lobby. He donned overcoat and gloves and a Khrushchev hat in black nylon fur he had bought from a Rummidge chain st
ore, and sallied out into the raw London night. He walked along Piccadilly to the Circus, and then, via Shaftesbury Avenue, he found himself in Soho. Touts shivering in the doorways of strip-clubs accosted him every few yards.
Now Morris Zapp, who had lived for years on the doorstep of one of the world’s great centres of the strip industry, namely South Strand in Esseph, had never actually sampled this form of entertainment. Blue movies, yes. Dirty books, of course. Pornography was an accepted diversion of the Euphoric intelligentsia. But strip-tease, and all the specialized variations on it indigenous to Esseph…
…
Which at this very moment Philip Swallow is observing for the first time: having walked to the South Strand district to look up old haunts he now stands gawping incredulously at the strip-joints that jostle each other all along Cortez Avenue—topless and bottomless ping-pong, roulette, shoeshine, barbecue, all-in wrestling and go-go dancing—where once stood sober saloons and cafés and handicraft shops and art galleries and satirical nightclubs and poetry cellars, now GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! and STRIP-STRIP-STRIP-STRIP in giant neon letters strain against the sun (for it is still only afternoon in Euphoria) and seek to lure the idle male into the smoky-coloured darkness behind the velvet curtains where rock music twangs and thuds and the girls pictured outside with huge polished breasts like the nose-cones of missiles “DANCE BEFORE YOU ENTIRELY NAKED THEY HIDE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING…”
…
… that was strictly for hicks, tourists and businessmen. Morris Zapp’s reputation as a sophisticate would have been destroyed the moment he was seen by a colleague or student patronizing one of the South Strand strip-bars. “What, Morris Zapp? going to topless shows? Morris Zapp paying to see bare tits? What is this, Morris, not getting enough of it these days?” And so on and thus would have been the badinage. So Morris had never crossed the threshold of any strip-club on South Strand, though he had often felt a stab of low curiosity, passing on his way to a restaurant or movie-house; and now, standing amid the alien porn of Soho, six thousand miles from home, only strangers around to observe him, and not many of those (for it is a cold, raw night) he thinks, “Why not?” and ducks into the very next strip-joint he comes to, under the nose of a disconsolate-looking Indian at the door.