My nameless daughter frightens me. For the first time I wonder what it would be like to have a real child.
I go to see Molly in her flat on the other side of Holland Park. She sits on her squalid island of old newspapers, dirty cups, used tissues, blankets, a commode, a litter tray, dead plants, cosmetics, discarded clothes and banana skins. Often, now, she falls asleep on her sofa and sits in the same place for days. Her cleaner is as old as she is and only tickles the dust, but Molly won’t sack her because she has known her for years. She’s wearing a mauve-and-yellow paisley smock over scarlet jogging trousers and fluffy pink mules. I stoop to kiss her. As my lips brush her dry white hair I smell Chanel No. 5 and urine, delicately combined.
‘Oh, it’s you, is it? Married your millionaire yet?’
‘Sort of. He is quite rich, but we’re not married.’
‘Sit down. No, don’t sit on my spare teeth, you can move them there, on top of the Christmas decorations. Mind Ruddigore’s litter tray! Now pour yourself a drink and I’ll have one, too. Gin, not too much tonic. No, less than that. There. You don’t look a day older, not that I can see much now. I’m glad you’ve finished with my poor David. That was a coup de foudre if ever I saw one. Right there in our old living-room in Hampstead. Got her hooks deep into his heart just as her old bitch of a grandmother got hers into you all those years ago. Damn, Ruddigore’s crapped on the Persian carpet again.’ Molly isn’t talking to me any more but to a corner of the room where her dead husband lives.
I unblock her drain, water her dead plants, kiss her again and flee her decay.
As soon as I shut the door of Molly’s flat I hear the spiteful hiss of my alchemical daughter:
Molly’s the closest thing you’ve got to a sister now. You should be supporting her, not smirking because your twat’s still juicy and hers isn’t.
Walking home across the park I feel a wave of anguish for the dead I’ve loved and the living, like Molly, who soon must die.
You have returned from Brazil and the house belongs to you again. Power surrounds you like an invisible force field. Tonight we have to go to the Metaphysical Bank for another reception.
‘I don’t feel like it. I hate going there.’
‘Don’t be so ungrateful, Jenny. Where would you be without the Fizz? If only you’d read your contract …’
Later, while I’m in the bath, my femunculus harangues me again:
What is this contract he’s always banging on about? Do you mean to tell me he’s got some kind of hold over you? You’re even dumber than I thought. Outwit the bastard, get over there and look at it, read every word, scrutinize every comma. I can’t believe you were bright enough to imagine me.
You’re almost entirely nocturnal now. You complain that daylight hurts your eyes. You wear dark glasses, which look odd with your smart new suits and give you a gangsterish look.
We walk through the back wall of the Metaphysical Bank and stand, champagne glasses in our hands, in that dazzling reception room. I have a headache, induced by the scarlet carpet, white walls, painted ceiling and scintillating chandeliers. All these people scintillate, too, so predictably. Pete, who used to be Binkie, is telling me about his latest investment in Kimberly in 1894, and I’m trying not to yawn.
Suddenly you jump up on to the gold-and-scarlet platform at the end of the room. All eyes turn to you and the chattering stops. You don’t need to clap for attention or use a microphone; you can hold a crowd as if it was a kitten, even this assembly of practised narcissists. After seventy years I’m still impressed. What are you saying? On and on about the success of the Bank, the soaring profits, the generous bonuses, the spiritual dimension, the charity work.
The voice of my femunculus is in my head again as I listen to my ex-lover gloating over his goldmine:
You mean you slept with this boring old fart? You actually let him – I’m glad I haven’t got a body. Right, now, while Leo’s hocus-pocusing, get downstairs and read that contract. Don’t let him do it for you; you know he’ll twist the words. Sort it out yourself and find out what’s going on.
But Binkie/Pete is really very charming and good-looking. He suggests we have lunch together, and I’m dissolving with alcohol, sentimental memories and susceptibility.
Don’t you dare, you undignified old trollop. There you go again, pleasing, teasing, simpering. Why can’t you just be natural with men? You won’t get rid of me until you empower yourself. Stop clinging to him like a piece of wet seaweed and take control of your life.
So I kiss Pete lingeringly, say I feel unwell and sneak away from the reception.
I take the crystal lift down to the level where pasts are bought and sold, down to the white-marble casino where men and women in evening dress gamble, playing mah-jong in 1930s Shanghai and breaking the bank in 1900s Monte Carlo. It’s so vast, this area beneath the Metaphysical Bank, I can’t understand why it doesn’t get entangled with High Street Kensington Station. But there’s no sound of tube trains down here, only silence as I turn left down the long, red-carpeted corridor and come to the black wrought-iron staircase that winds down even deeper under the city.
The only sounds are my thumping heart and the clatter of my high heels on metal. The stairs spiral and plunge, making my head swirl. I’ve never been down here before, yet I’ve always known it was waiting for me. Every nerve in my body tells me that I must be on my guard. Icy mist and a cave-like mouldy smell rise towards me. I have to stop and clutch the banister, dizzy from the stairs, which seem to be revolving.
At last I reach the bottom and almost collapse. I’m in a greenish-white tunnel, streaming with water. The only light comes from the rock itself, which is phosphorescent. The mist that almost tricked me into stumbling on the stairs is concentrated on a heavy door ten yards away. Shivering with cold and fear, I turn to go back upstairs where you will help me, you always can:
You so much as think his name and I’ll dump you.
I’m not sure I want you around anyway.
Oh yes you do. I’m your only hope, you’re so clueless. Now listen. You came down here to read your contract. Not exactly dressed for adventure, are you, with your spiky heels and your glitzy dress? Now get over to that door and say your name –
Which one?
The one you had when you were twenty-five, of course.
I approach the metal door, which bulges outwards as if fire or water press on the other side. The door has writing all over it, floating layers of shifting language – that’s Latin, surely, and Greek. In the top left-hand corner I can see Arabic and, in the centre, Chinese. Reduced to illiteracy again I stand forlornly in front of the door that has no lock or handle or bell or knocker. Not even my alchemical daughter breaks the silence, which isn’t peace but mounting tension. I don’t want the door to open; my voice is paralysed. Then I manage to say, ‘Jenny Mankowitz.’
At first nothing happens. Then the shifting words on the door spin in the centre like a roulette wheel. A small round hole opens as I step back, terrified of passing through that door. But it doesn’t open. Instead, a rolled document is pushed through the hole. I reach out to touch it. It’s warm, as if an unseen hand has just let go of it. The parchment smells of fire, ink and blood, and as I unroll it I see that the words are fiery, too, flickering treacherously. I put a finger to my eye to see if I’m crying, for the distortion of the words is very like the effect of tears. No, I’m dry-eyed.
‘Whomsoever’ and ‘thereunto’ leap out at me, familiar but meaningless. Is it written in English? Can’t even make out my own name. Impossible that words that dance and glitter with such energy should make no sense. I must be too stupid to read it. I turn the document upside down, look at the back, which is also covered with incomprehensible words, and then try rolling it up again, in case there are instructions I’ve missed. The parchment is brittle and fragile, my fingers leave marks like bruises all over it. I hold it, impotently angry. The document becomes still, shrinks. I hear it yawn. I fling the parchment dow
n on to the damp rock, hoping I’ve hurt it as it has hurt me, then stumble back to the winding stairs. I grasp the black metal banister and feel the city come to meet me as the mist, warm and buoyant now, lifts me upstairs.
I go home and lie fully clothed on our bed, trying to understand my subterranean journey. You come back, ask if I’m feeling ill and fall asleep beside me.
My femunculus glows in the dark:
Night’s a good time for thinking – if you have a brain.
Sod off! Why do you keep coming back to nibble away at my confidence like this?
You’ve got enough confidence to sink a dozen battleships. I’m trying to inject some intelligence into your life. You think you got rid of Virginia, bumped off your trollopy side, but you’re still totally dependent on Leo. You do everything through him instead of thinking for yourself. Why do the wrong people live for ever? And you never did look at that contract.
I tried. But it was so hard, I couldn’t read it.
Didn’t want to, more like. Couldn’t face up to the truth.
I want to go back to sleep.
A Modest Proposal
Is she asleep? Pretending? Sulking? What use are all my powers if I don’t know what’s going on in the head of the woman lying beside me? If only I knew what she really wants. This time I want her to stay. They used to say earwigs enter your head through the ear. Well, she has got in there somehow.
Another delightful party, at Toby and Katrina’s house near Chelsea Embankment. Their marriage fascinates me and makes me feel that all is possible. Upstairs in their beautiful house their children have a conventional middle-class childhood while Toby and Katrina entertain their friends at lavish dinner parties. Cocaine is served like sherbet, and drug dealers, pop stars, artists, bankers, bank robbers, actors, con men, judges, mafiosi and politicians all find each other unexpectedly congenial.
Looking around, I recognize several faces from the Metaphysical Bank. I think sadly of Nat, who died of dysentery in her Bogotá gaol. She and Hari might still be alive, now that the underworld and the Establishment have met and become enchanted by one another. I often regret my powers – so many unfortunate accidents – but tonight I feel playful and benign, sure that only good can come from my tricks. I watch as Jenny and Katrina, the two prettiest women in the room, hug.
‘You look wonderful!’
‘So do you. How do you do it, Jenny? Well, actually, I know. Leo told me your little secret.’
‘Really?’ She glares at me nervously.
‘Yes. Isn’t it uncomfortable?’
‘What?’
‘Being injected with chemicals distilled from ancient Egyptian mummies.’
‘Oh – well – a bit.’
‘Perhaps I’ll wait until I’m forty.’
I haven’t mentioned my plan to Jenny. She accuses me of showing off, I don’t think she realizes how much self-control I have to exercise every day to pass for normal in her world. I switch off all the lights, relieved as the comforting darkness swathes me. I glow, illuminated by my natural spotlight, and all eyes are on me. I love to bask in their attention and wonder, to show them the hem of my cloak of marvels.
‘It’s good to see so many friends from different worlds enjoying each other’s company. I’d like to thank Katrina and Toby for their wonderful hospitality. When they invited me I told them not to bother preparing anything to eat. But now it’s nearly nine, and you must all be getting hungry. What would you like to eat? No, don’t be all polite and English, this is the perfect party and we must have the perfect meal to go with it. I want you to remember tonight all your lives. Anything you like, to be served on this table here. It expands. Come on! What would you like to start with? I can’t hear you. This isn’t like you, Charles, are you on a diet?’
Charles Arbuthnot is so fat he has to book two first-class seats whenever he travels by air, so everyone laughs. ‘Well, Leo, since you insist, I’ll have two dozen oysters.’
‘Ice and lemon? Bread and butter?’
‘Brown bread, thinly sliced. Please,’ Charles says in a facetious voice.
‘Done. Come and sit down, Charles, you can have two chairs if you like. Now, who else appreciates food?’
Charles pushes forward to the table that has appeared, sits down and eats something on a plate. They all crane forward to see what it is. There’s a murmur of scepticism and surprise. Katrina, who hasn’t eaten a square meal for years, is alarmed by the direction her party is taking. These people aren’t children, after all, but intelligent, successful adults. She says in a high anxious voice, ‘I’ll have some crudités. No dressing.’
The plate of sliced raw vegetables appears, and Katrina sits beside Charles.
Now the atmosphere is charged with amazement and the satisfaction even the very rich feel when they are offered a good free meal. People start to shout their orders out, at first with a snort of embarrassment. Then greed conquers inhibition and they push each other out of the way as they rush to the table to enjoy their favourite dishes. As I promised, the table really does expand to seat them all.
I’m just about to join them when I see Jenny standing alone on the other side of the room, staring out of the window. I go over and put my arms around her. ‘What’s the matter?’ I whisper. ‘Not hungry?’
‘No. I feel sick. How could you be so self-indulgent?’
‘But I want to entertain my friends, to give them something. You always tell me I have no friends, but I like these people. Look, they’re enjoying it. They’re tucking in, aren’t they? I don’t understand why you’re complaining.’
‘Because it’s asking for trouble. They’ll guzzle the food now, but what are they going to think in the morning? You should keep your tricks to yourself.’
‘And where would you be if I had? Are you going to stay here and sulk all evening?’ I kiss her again and she goes over to the table, orders a salade niçoise and sits down with the others.
Jenny is silent for the rest of the evening, almost as if she begrudges me the limelight. But everybody else at the table has a riotous time. The food, they all agree, is exquisite, even if you do feel hungry again a few minutes after you’ve eaten it. So they keep ordering more. At five o’clock in the morning they begin to order breakfast, still talking, laughing and drinking, pausing every so often to toast me.
Last night has convinced me that I’ve found my milieu at last, after searching for several thousand years. Something to celebrate, indeed. ‘I want to have a birthday party,’ I tell Jenny over breakfast.
She stares at me coldly. ‘You’re going soft.’
‘Why shouldn’t I celebrate my birthday? People do.’
‘You’re not a person. You weren’t born at all, strictly speaking.’
‘Well, I’m here now, anyway. And happier than I’ve ever been. I have you, a wide circle of delightful friends, a lovely house, interesting work; as far as I’m concerned this life can last for ever.’
‘But it can’t. These people will age and be suspicious if we don’t. They’re going to wonder who you really are, where your money comes from, how you manage all these tricks …’
‘Not while they’re benefiting from them. What a nit-picker you’ve become, Jenny, always destroying and undermining. I thought that was my job.’
‘I’m just afraid we’re heading for disaster. You don’t understand how people think, Leo.’
‘How dare you say that! I invented them. Invented you, anyway. Now I’ve created a metropolitan Garden of Eden for us, the perfect setting for the jewel of our love, and you behave as if my thoughts and feelings had no importance.’
‘Shut up, Pantoffsky, you old fraud.’
‘I will not. You don’t take me seriously. You want the outer shell of a rich handsome lover, but you don’t want to be bothered with my inner life.’
‘You haven’t any.’
‘Oh, Jenny! How can you, of all people, say that? I have a million voices in my head, yours and so many others. Ten thousand snatche
s of dialogue jangle like tunes – conversations I had with Nebuchadnezzar and Socrates, with popes and princes and prostitutes. In all those thousands of years you’re the only resting place I’ve found, my most successful creation.’
‘Sorry. If you do have feelings I really didn’t mean to hurt them.’
‘You think there’s a superior reality I can’t experience. You forget that it was I who imagined you, Jenny, and directed the film you think you’re starring in.’
‘What kind of a threat is that?’
‘Just a reminder that I’m not to be dismissed. I’m always behind the tapestry of your life, listening, watching, controlling, injecting eternity into your thin twentieth-century blood. Your mind is my toy, your heart is a room whose door I can open at will, your body is still desirable only because I command your flesh to break the rules of nature.’
‘Really, Leo, I think you’re a bit of a megalomaniac.’
So, I’m a megalomaniac, am I? And where would she be without my megalomania? Jenny calls me these names as a substitute for real thought. I don’t believe she has ever considered what I really am, whereas I know her only too well. This week she has been perversely killjoy, glaring at me whenever I mention my party. She doesn’t seem to realize that I’m celebrating my birth as a man, living among other men. I ask her nervously if there will be enough food for our forty guests.
‘I’ve been cooking and shopping for days. And if there isn’t you can do your party trick.’
‘But you didn’t like it last time. You were embarrassed by me.’
‘What’s the matter with you, Leo? When did you ever care what I thought of you? Your present’s being delivered later.’
At lunchtime a whole van full of flowers arrives and the driver doubles as an interior designer, filling vases and pots, garlanding lights and banisters and constructing a trellis on the living-room wall so that vines and ivy seem to have been growing there for years. The harsh contours of our fashionably sterile rooms are softened, flooded with warmth and brilliance. I wander from room to room, smiling, inhaling the wonderful perfume. I reach out to touch a particularly beautiful branch of white cherry blossom pinned above the kitchen door. ‘It’s real! Jenny, what a wonderful surprise. This is the best present I’ve ever had.’
Loving Mephistopeles Page 16