by Will Self
—I’ve been clean for five years, Dorian! Baz wailed. Why would I want to fuck that up now?
—You’ve also been alone for five years, Baz, with no one to care for you. He continued methodically cracking the amps and filling the syringe. If you want to go straight back into rehab, you can – I’ll pay for it – but let’s have one night together of complete abandon. We can start being good again tomorrow, can’t we?
—Dorian, if I shot that lot up I wouldn’t be abandoned, I’d be stone dead.
But it was too late. Baz had remained within this danger zone for far too long; and now he’d countenanced the idea of drugs again, which meant that he’d as good as used them already. The points had been switched for the Baz express; nothing short of a derailment could have stopped him now.
—How much would suit? said his persecutor. Half, perhaps? As deftly as the Wotton of old, Dorian flipped off his shirt, save for one sleeve which he employed like a tourniquet. He plunged the needle into his main line. The lengthening red column quivered between them and sweat beaded along his lip as Dorian pushed the plunger in. Baz was transfixed by the fix. Here, said Dorian, giving him the hypodermic; then he undressed Baz completely, right down to his boxers. He took the phial full of the antidote to life and using his own Old Etonian tie as a tourniquet, Dorian shot Baz up. As t’were a flea / That’s sucked on you and now sucks on me… he cooed, and looked Baz full in the eyes. Baz saw neither excitation nor revulsion, merely the cold passion of a voyeur and a lambent flicker of triumph.
—Jesus… oh… Jesus. That’s strong. Baz gagged.
—I told you, it’s pure, purer than baby Jesus.
—Oh… fuck. I think I’m gonna puke.
Half staggering, half running, Dorian guided Baz across the room and in through a bathroom door masquerading as a lacquered screen. Still-effervescent mineral water gushed from Baz’s mouth. That’s OK, Baz… that’s OK… Dorian billed. It’ll be all right… you’re stoned, yeah?
—Righteously.
—It’s good, yeah? he soothed.
—Oh yes… so good.
—And this – this is good, too?
—Ye-es.
A zipper was hauled down. The curve of Dorian’s back was like the spine of some antediluvian creature, browsing in the sexual swamp. His haunches quivered as he bowed down, rose, bowed down, as if abasing himself before a phallic idol, an idol which panted and groaned and eventually cried out under the pressure of such adulation. Nyum-nyum. Dorian licked his lips. Still saltier than most men, Baz.
—Don’t you worry, Dorian?
—Worry?
—About the virus?
—I think if I was going to get it, I would’ve done by now. Maybe I’m immune.
—I’m so stoned. I’d forgotten how when you’re stoned you can lie on a toilet floor with complete equa – equa –
—Cool?
—Yeah, thass right… cool.
Dorian sprang to his feet. He seemed wholly unaffected by the fix, as imperturbably cool as ever. He padded back across the room and retrieved his shirt. Baz followed him and began to dress as well. But you still want to see it, right? Dorian said, shucking on his jacket.
—It?
—Cathode Narcissus.
—Yeah, of course I wanna see it. Of course. Where’re these boxes?
—Upstairs – come on. The two men mounted the open staircase, and ascended through the painted heavens like villeins playing angels in a medieval mystery play. At the top of the flight, there was a single steel door pierced with more keyholes than Baz had seen since he was resident on Avenue B. With a woozy pang he thought of the three she-males and recalled their instinctive suspicion of Dorian. All of them were dead now; there was no more dressing up to be done – except in shrouds.
Dorian got out a hefty bunch of keys and began to deal with the locks. Why all the hardware? Baz asked, but Dorian merely replied, You’ll see. The door swung open soundlessly, and Baz was confronted with the antithesis of the fusty repro downstairs. Here, all was empty and minimal, grey and white in the light of a full moon, which floated in the dead centre of a rectangular skylight, as if it were a line drawing in a geometry textbook. From somewhere a brassy tenor choked out the crescendo of the aria ‘Nessun dorma’. Dorian turned up a dimmer switch, and recessed pinprick lights illuminated the starkness. The only furniture in the room were the nine monitors that displayed Cathode Narcissus, ranged in a precise crescent atop waist-high steel plinths, and an Eames chair which faced them in prime viewing position. One of the monitors was switched on and playing a tape of a concert in Hyde Park. On a giant stage Pavarotti mopped his sperm whale’s forehead with a metre square of white handkerchief, while salaaming to the ecstatic crowd. The camera wavered away from this to take in Princess Diana sitting in the enclosure allotted for the blood-line.
—It’s here! Baz cried out, swaying in the doorway. This is perfect, Dorian; it’s like an exhibition space purpose-designed for Narcissus.
—That’s exactly what it is, Dorian replied as he picked up a remote control and negated Princess Diana’s image. I had it built when I moved in. You see, Baz, I was lying at Henry’s when I was so dismissive about your work. Far from my not caring about it, Narcissus means more to me than life itself… He paused for emphasis. Baz, a most marvellous thing has happened.
—What? What marvellous thing?
—When I saw Cathode Narcissus for the first time, Baz, in your studio, the day you introduced me to Henry, well, I’m sure you can’t remember but I wished it could be the installation that aged rather than me. I wished it could be the Dorians you videotaped who displayed all the scars of dissipation, and the marks of immorality that I already suspected my life held in store for me. Had I known about it then, I bet I would’ve wished that it could be those multiple images of me prancing and dancing that succumbed to AIDS.
—What’re you saying, Dorian? Oh fuck, I’m too wasted to take this on board.
—Have another bump. Dorian got out a wrap and spilled a shiny white pile on top of one of the grey monitors. He handed Baz a ready-rolled note. Go on, he said, it can’t make any difference now.
—S’pose not, Baz snuffled as he took a hefty snort.
Dorian guided Baz into the Eames chair, and while his solo audience looked on he continued his exposition of the supernatural: What I’m saying is that it’s happened. It’s Cathode Narcissus that has aged and suffered, while I remain pristine. Look at me, Baz, look at me! I’m thirty-one years old. I’ve fucked hundreds of men and women – thousands, even. I’ve never used a condom in my life. Some nights I’ve taken it in the arse from twenty heavy-hitters. I’ve never stinted myself on booze or drugs, never. I take what I want when I want it. Yet I bear no marks; I look exactly the same as I did a decade ago when I came down from Oxford.
—Either you’re mad, Dorian, or you’re acting mad.
—I’m not mad, Baz, I’m the sanest person you’ll ever meet. I tell you – it’s true. That girl you spoke of, Octavia, it’s true what Henry said… I can show you the letter if you like. She wrote it to me when she was dying, abandoned by her family, in the public hospital in Marseille. She maunders on about being buggered by me when she was tripping… and it’s all true, it’s all true… just as it’s true what happened that night at the Mineshaft. Yet I don’t bear a mark. I don’t look like a cruel man, do I, Baz? An immoral man? I’m a dew-picked piece of innocence, a plump cherub, the springiest of chickens – wouldn’t you say? And it’s you, you, who’ve never looked more than skin-deep at me, or penetrated any further than my rosebud of an arsehole. It’s you who’re the superficial one, Baz. You.
—That’s not true, Dorian, Baz managed to say. I’ve always loved you. I loved you when I made Narcissus. If you really look at it it’s obvious that I loved you then – and I still do now. It’s a love letter, that piece, a fucking love letter, it’s not some mad fetish that keeps you looking young. I dunno what you’re talking about, Dorian.
—Oh, is that so, Dorian sneered, reaching for the remote. He picked it up and pushed a button. Well, look on your love letter now, Baz; I’m returning it to sender.
The monitors whined and zigged and zagged and sprang jaggedly to life. But was it life? In place of the unchanged Dorian who stood before Baz, as fresh and youthful as the first evening he’d met him at Phyllis Hawtree’s, was the Dorian Baz had for years now suspected he ought to be – an anguished figure, his face, neck and hands covered with Kaposi’s, his mouth wet with bile, his eyes tortured by death and madness, his bald pate erupting with some vile fungus. And there were nine of these animated pathology plates, nine of them, haltingly disporting themselves. Concentration-camp victims forced by an insane Nazi doctor to dance.
—Ach! Baz spat involuntarily and thought he might vomit again. This is revolting, Dorian! A sick travesty – where’d you get them?
—It’s all yours, Baz, all your own work. You have such a mastery of the superficial.
—Where are the tapes?! Baz shouted. Where are the fucking tapes?!
—In here… Dorian slid open a panel in the wall and there, neatly shelved, were the VCRs.
Baz got up and went over. He scrutinised them, ejected the tapes and examined them. He even, futilely, checked the connections between the VCRs and the monitors – but all was exactly as he remembered it. So… it is from within… he murmured in wonderment, staring once more at the moribund Dorians. How fucking bizarre… these images have been corrupted… it’s almost as if sin itself were eating away at them.
—I congratulate you, Baz, you’re responding to your masterwork as any artist should. Baz slumped back down in the Eames chair. When I did the original, he said, I guess I was catching the briefest moment in time, that kind of androgynous New Romantic look of the early eighties. I dunno… he ran sweaty hand across sweaty brow… maybe this version of Cathode Narcissus is of its time too.
—How prettily you put it, said Dorian, who, unnoticed by Baz, had withdrawn a switchblade from his pocket, snapped it open, and begun paring his fingernails. It’s so important nowadays that an artist be able to speak well of his work.
—No – it’s not my work, Dorian, it’s nothing to do with me. I dunno where you got hold of it… S’pose it might be one of those German guys’, they do pretty wiggy stuff, but maybe it’s what I’d do now, if I could… if I – if I had the guts, the courage to stare death in the face.
—There’s no need for that, Baz… Dorian put down the knife on a monitor and came over to the chair, put both his hands on the arms and, bending down, breathed sweetly into Baz’s face. I want you to stay here with me. I’ll give you anything you want; all I want from you in return is a little technical assistance.
—Whaddya mean?
—The tapes, Baz, the tapes. They’re wearing out. I need someone to transfer them all to new ones. I need the work to be maintained. Call me superstitious, but I have an idea that my life may depend on it.
—I don’t think so, Dorian.
—You do think so, Baz, you do. Stay here, look after it! This is your life’s work.
—No… I don’t think so, Dorian… It’s not mine, anyway… I’ve gotta… I’ve gotta go. This evening was a mistake… the whole thing… an awful fucking mistake… He struggled to rise from the Eames chair, but the poor old bull was penned in by its modernity. Dorian had ample time to retrieve his knife and – exhibiting all the balletic grace of a matador – plunge it deep into Baz’s neck, cleanly severing the carotid artery. However, the golden boy then spoilt it all by carrying on, delving into the dying man again and again with the gory implement, as if it were a spade and the thrashing Baz unyielding ground. Blood spurted and sprayed around the two figures as the starveling ghouls on the screens cavorted and leered. Dorian howled and even lapped at the splatter.
But what of Basil Hallward in all of this? So much more attention tends to be lavished on the murderer than on his victim. Murderers remain always with us, n’est-ce pas? – whereas victims have a disgraceful way of creeping off into the shadows, only re-emerging in the guise of actors, who play their part for the purposes of reconstructing the crime on television. You’d have to agree that, faute de mieux, you would rather invite murderers to a drinks party than their victims, even if a pathetic preoccupation with self-preservation led you to hide everything sharp, including the cocktail sticks.
I’ve led you astray. The life-force pumped out of Basil Hallward, while the face he had loved for over a decade hovered above. It was twisted with hatred, true, but can we not say that to him it appeared as if Dorian were in ecstasy, transported by this grisly consummation? Why don’t we also assume that in his final throes dear Basil was gifted that procession of precise and intimate recollection that those who have experienced ‘near-death’ assure us accompanies the dying of the light?
Basil aged nine, in short-sleeved Aertex shirt and wide-legged flannel trousers, tenderly nuzzling the crotch of a boy similarly attired. Or Basil aged fifteen, naughtily absconding to Paris and wandering the dappled cobbles of St-Germain, until ushered into a beat hotel to be ceremoniously sucked off by an old roué. Or Basil five years further on, sharing lodgings above a dentist’s surgery in Stanmore with a merchant seaman – see him, this dull afternoon, flick through the pages of Jeremy (a mag for newly liberated chaps), looking for adventure while his friend is away at sea. Or see Baz the hunger artist take his first hit of Methedrine from Captain America in a closet at Andee’s Factoree. Not intimate enough to convince? Too emblematic? Would the gland Baz found that morning when shaving – a gland where no gland should be – do the job better? Or a dust mote in Detroit or Droitwich, or a paperclip in Pretoria or Prestatyn? Many people – let’s be frank – have lived too long, and of those, rather a lot have gone too far.
No. Cocaine got the upper hand even at this terminally late stage. And despite all the death he had already witnessed, the thanatos he was steeped in, Baz discovered that he’d rather not take a permanent nap. The poor sick withered Dorians danced in the darkening periphery of his vision as he grappled with this hellcat Dorian who was stapling him to the present. Oh to get away! To get back! Get off me! Baz wanted to shout, supremely irritated to be dying in such a lousy frame of mind.
The pain was bigger than Manhattan. It was as if he were being flung down on all the dagger spires and needle aerials of its skyscrapers, cut to pieces by very the city he’d so loved. So it was with acute relief that Baz realised he was dead, and stepped away from the lolling gargoyle of his corpse. He joined the wraith-like Dorians, who had stepped down from their plinths to meet him, and in the null space in the middle of the null room, the ten of them linked hands, formed a ring, and commenced a stately dance.
At last Dorian stopped, and instantly his hot face froze over. He lifted himself off the broken body, moving with his usual fluidity, as if quite unaware of the bits of Basil all down his front. He went to the door, undid the locks and disappeared down the stairs. From above could be heard the sound of a telephone receiver being lifted and digits being punched into a keypad. But of course there was no one to see him go and no one to listen to the call being made. No one save his alter egos, who paced around their cathode vitrines like caged beasts, returning again and again to stare out with insane eyes at the corpse of their creator.
Dorian stood with the plastic prong nuzzling his china ear. Alan? Dorian… Listen, I’m glad you’re home, I wondered if you could come over here… Yuh, I appreciate that, I know it’s late… It’s just that I have some garbage that needs disposing of and it can’t wait until morning.
PART THREE
Network
13
An area of Chelsea rocked back and forth as if it were a seascape viewed from the tilting deck of a ship. But this wasn’t a ship – it was a building. A building of some ten storeys, seemingly caught in a gathering urban storm. As yet this was only a force 7 gale, but it was enough to allow foam sheets to form around the chimneys and television aer
ials of the terraces, sheets that streamed with the wind.
Up and down the deck tilted, up and down. Given that he was the captain of this vessel, it was incumbent on him to maintain his station at the bridge, his hands thrust casually in his trouser pockets to show that nothing untoward was happening. As the deck reared up below his right foot he retracted it, while allowing his left to extend. Then, when the deck tilted the other way, he reversed the process. Only for the split second when the deck became level was he able to consult the compass (a very old issue of the Reader’s Digest), which stood upon the binnacle (an old music stand, its metal chipped and worn).
It was vital that he maintain the ship’s north-westerly course through the peaks and troughs of urbanity. Due west were the chimneys of the gasworks at Lots Road, while nor’-nor’-west he could discern the shiny cliffs of the Kensington Hilton. For many years now they had not drawn any closer, but that didn’t discount the possibility that one day they would. No, he must keep the MV Block of Flats on course towards the humped, awkward bulk of Olympia, even if she never arrived.
He had stayed at the helm through worse gales than this, force 10s and 11s, that had produced such violent pitching he could barely keep to his feet. Then he could hear nothing save the scream of his own shredded psyche through the taut steel rigging of consciousness. He knew from experience that when his own encephalogram grew spikier – with both the amplitude and the frequency of his brain waves mounting – he also observed the strange weather in the streets deteriorating. Tight isobars were ruled across the shopfronts on the King’s Road and Fulham Road, while the frightening vortices of low-pressure cyclones formed over Redcliffe Gardens and Edith Grove.
Still, eventually the gales would blow themselves out. His orderly would change his trousers and underwear, wringing wet with salty urine. Some nutriment would be taken, together with the vitamin pills he needed for sustenance during this gruelling voyage. His orderly would withdraw, and he would take the helm once more, his gaze first fixed on the crenellated horizon, then falling to the heavy swell of bricks, mortar, concrete and steel that the Block’s prow breasted, throwing up a spume of garden greenery. With the practised eye of the mariner, he could detect and analyse the ever changing properties of this view, an urban doldrums which would, to the untutored, appear quite static: the rear of a substantial, late-Victorian terraced house set in its oblong of walled garden.