Thomas M. Disch

by The Prisoner

  The Prisoner

  Copyright © 1967, 2001 by Carlton International Media, Ltd.

  Licensed by Carlton International Media, Ltd.

  Represented by Bliss House, Inc., West Springfield, MA, 01089-4107

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  THOMAS M. DISCH

  THE PRISONER

  Better known for SF novels likeCamp Concentration, 334 andOn Wings of Song, THOMAS M. DISCH has had considerable success with works as diverse asClara Reeve (a period Gothic),Neighboring Lives (an historical novel of literary London in the 19th Century), and a series of supernatural novels situated in Minnesota that read like Frank O’Hara rewriting Stephen King; all the time maintaining a prolific career as a critic and book reviewer for periodicals such asThe Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times, Washington Post Book World, Playboy, The Atlantic, The Nation, Hudson Review, andPoetry ; while still finding time to publish an incessant stream of short fiction in genre and literary magazines; and, as “Tom” Disch, over 500 poems that offer much in the way of wit and delightful formalism; not to mention the acclaim brought by his children’s books likeThe Brave Little Toaster andA Child’s Garden of Grammar . He has lived in Mexico, Spain, England, and Rome, but for the last 20 years he has lived in New York City and out of it, where he is a sometimes radio pundit and theatre critic.

  “[Disch] is without doubt one of the really bright … lights on the American SF scene.”

  —Fantasy and Science Fiction

  “One of the most remarkably talented writers around.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  To Jane

  and

  to Pamela:

  in equal shares

  PART I

  ARRIVAL

  I have been studying how I may compare

  This prison where I live unto the world.

  Shakespeare,Richard II

  Chapter One

  The Connaught

  “Have you been here before?” he asked.

  “Wasn’t it here that we came, the last time?”

  “Not possibly. We were last together in … Trier, if my memory serves.”

  “Mine, apparently, does not. Coming across you again, everything gets very déjà vu. The chandeliers, the flowers, even that waiter with the Hapsburg lip. They’re all exactly the way I remember them.”

  “If this is what your déjà vu’s are made of, you’ve had an agreeable past.”

  “Small thanks to you, darling.”

  He touched her empty glass. “Once more?”

  “Didn’t you say you were in a terrible rush? Besides, it wouldn’t show respect for the bisque. Which is already gliding to our table.”

  The waiter with the Hapsburg lip performed deft rituals with the bisque, while they, with the preliminary skirmishover, made minor modifications in their strategies. The wine steward brought the Solera, its brittle label flaking from the glass.

  “Yes,” he said. “Then, with the salmon, Coindreu Chateau Grillet.”

  “And I’ve seenhim before too,” she said. “Did you notice the funny ring he was wearing. No, men never notice how other men dress. It’s delicious. If the venison is half so nice, I’ll marry you. Would you like that?”

  “I might. I’ve never had a wife.”

  “I’d make a very attractive wife for you, I think. You’d never have to feel embarrassed. I speak French, German, Polish, and probably something else. As I have my own income, I wouldn’t even be expensive–except at Christmas–though I’dlook expensive all the time. Whenever your self-confidence faltered—”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “—my skilful flattery would bolster you up. And I’m nottoo much younger. Am I?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Do you fear I’d be too frivolous? Do you take exception to the coloratura passages? You, if anyone, should realize that my serious side isjust as serious as yours. Make a serious face. Oh, like that! All those wrinkles–the strength of character they suggest.”

  “It’s the supraorbital ridge that does that.”

  “It’s so many things.”

  “You have good points too.”

  “Each complements one of yours. Imagine the two of us walking into the same room. We’re surrounded with whispers, the cynosure of all men’s eyes. The waltz swells about us, and you take me in your arms.”

  “What are they whispering?”

  “That you’re forty years old, and still single.”

  “Thirty-eight.”

  “C’est la même, darling. We’ll both have little secrets tucked away in dresser drawers, behind our stockings. Iwould have thought forty more likely.”

  “You listen too much to the things people whisper.”

  “Let’s leave them, then. They mean nothing tous . We’llgo off by ourselves. To the Seychelle Islands? Meshed? The Philippines? They’re said to be quite in now.”

  “We won’t listen to what people say. We value our independence too highly.”

  “Where shall we go, then? You tell me.”

  “To Wales.”

  “Oh, not Wales! One must draw a line between independence and ennui.”

  “I’ve already signed the papers, love. I am committed.”

  “This isn’t pretending, then?”

  “I hope not, after all the money I’ve sunk in it.”

  “Where in Wales?”

  “The Pembroke coast. It has one of the quaintest nameson the map.”

  “Oh, I know just what it will look like–all the cottages built out of marzipan, and an abbey church from the 14th century, the rustics brawling in the pub, fishing boats, sunsets. You’ll live in somebody’s converted toolshed.”

  “A gatehouse, actually. I leased it through Chandler &Carr.”

  “Who showed you photographs.”

  “And a floor plan.”

  “Though smallish, it possesses every convenience.”

  “A majority, at least.”

  “I don’t believe it. It isn’t you. What about yourwork ?”

  He paused at this, the first point scored in the game.

  “I’ve retired.”

  “Idon’t believe it. You? Though, of course, if that’s what you’re supposed tosay …”

  “It’s been my impression that it’s not at all what I was supposed to say. But I do say it, I have done it, I am retired.”

  “Why, in God’s name?”

  “That’s a secret I’ve tucked away in a dresser drawer, behind my stockings.”

  Which tied it, one all.

  “And the dresser? Off in the rural, implausible solitudes of Pembroke?”

  “Still in London, most likely. I only bought it today. That’s why we met here. I’ve been up and down Bond Street all day, furnishing the place.”

  “Andnot because we’re so convenient to Grosvenor Square?”

  “I thought that might make it handier for you.”

  “They won’t buy it, you know. You can’t just go and tell them you’ve lost interest in the whole thing, for heaven’s sake!”

  “On the contrary, Liora–youcan .”

  “You called me Liora. That was nice of you.”

  “It’s your name.”

  “It’s not the name on my passport. You are a darling, and you really do believe in integrity and honor and all of that. Yes, thank you, just a wee bit more. 1872! And without an expense account?” When the steward had left them
, she continued: “Is that what you’d call a Masonic ring?”

  “I forgot to look.”

  “He also uses wax on his mustache. I’ve never kissed a waxed mustache. Remember where you kissed me, in Bergamo?”

  “That was where I didn’t kiss you.”

  A palpable hit. He moved into the lead.

  “But you wanted to. Why are you looking seriously now? Is it about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, it isn’t. You’re having second thoughts about all that furniture. What did you get? Where? How much did they make you pay?”

  He itemized on his fingers. “Four Chinese Chippendale chairs, at Mallett’s. A mahogany table from J. Cornelius, that copies one at the South Kensington. A Sirhaz carpet in the pear design. A Riesener secretaire that’s very much restored. Oh, and odds and ends. I forget how much—”

  “Fantasy, all of it.”

  “I did see them, and I might have wanted them. Actually I just picked out some bare essentials at Liberty’s. Here’s the salmon.”

  Bare and essential, the salmon was presented. The Coindreu was open, tasted, and approved. Richebourg ’29 was suggested for the impending venison Diane. Their conversation, set against the backdrop of this restaurant, this meal, seemed to lack the element of chance. The ordered sequence of dishes dictated not only the wines they drank but also the words they spoke and the glances that passed between them. Even their errors were such as only the most expert players could have made.

  Her serve.

  “What do you intend todo in Wales? Fish? Think? Write your memoirs? Discover some new inner resource, or a hobby?”

  “What’s customary for a country gentlemen these days?”

  “Alcoholism.”

  Which might have tied the score again, if the glance that accompanied it had not, so noticeably, grazed the net. She tried again.

  “When do you leave?”

  “From Paddington, at half past eleven.”

  “Tonight?”

  He nodded.

  “How ridiculous! You asked me here … just to have dinner … and to tell me that you’re leaving town?”

  “I thought you’d enjoy eating out, and that you’d want to say goodbye.”

  “You don’t give me time to say much else. I’d hoped … Well, you knew what I hoped.”

  “You didn’t hope. You took for granted.”

  He had moved lengths ahead of her: she was reduced to being forthright.

  “Whydid you want to see me? You won’t say you love me, and you won’t say you don’t. You sit there and decorate yourself with wrinkles and irony. You know, if you can’t trustme , you’ll never be able to trust anyone. You sit there with your enigma dangling in front of you like some fat gold watch chain. You’re just inviting someone to grab it my dear.”

  She leaned back in her chair, touching the emerald pendant on her throat, while these points were added to her score.

  The waiter with the Hapsburg lip replaced the china on the table according to a strict and clandestine geometry. The dinner approached its climax.

  “Do you think I look Jewish?” she asked.

  “You look dark and mysterious. Your face expresses great strength of character.”

  “And you won’t postpone your trip just one night?”

  “There isn’t a pullman every night. I’m sorry, Liora–I’ve made up my mind.”

  “Someone has–that’s certain.”

  But the game was clearly his, for all that. She smiled, conceding it, and began to talk about nothing at all.

  When they left the restaurant, at ten forty-five, the waiter with the Hapsburg lip, ignoring more pressing demands, cleared the cups and Tokaj glasses from the table. He pursed his mouth at the flower vase, from which the dark-haired woman had purloined the single rose.

  He replaced the linen cloth with one slightly crisper, and on this, beside the new flowers, he put the small wooden plaque that indicated, in incised, gilt letters, the number of this table-6.

  Chapter Two

  A Round Trip to Cheltenham

  The two identical Hartmann Knocabouts stood, already packed, beneath the false mirror in the foyer, like a demonstration of one of the less obvious axioms devised by the Alexandrian geometers. In the reception room the butler, a dumb and slightly Oriental dwarf, pressed the button that released the ornamental screen: he entered. The butler handed him his gloves.

  “The telephone?” he asked.

  In reply the butler removed the receiver from its cradle and offered it, as mute as himself, across the intervening space. Dead.

  “Very good. The Locust is at the garage, I take it?” The butler nodded. “There’s no particular hurry. When they’ve finished you can drive it on to Carmarthen. Wire me from there.”

  He turned for a last survey of the room. Depersonalized by dust covers, the furniture could not evoke so much as aflicker of sentimental regret. Like the monolithic pavilions of a defunct World’s Fair, the room seemed already to be impatient for its own era of privacy, decay, and picturesque abandonment.

  His fingers wriggled into kid gloves. Now there must be some gesture of departure, the closing of curtains, keys in locks. The butler stood at the opposite end of the room; he removed, from a pocket of his waistcoat, a key, turned, fitted it into the glass door of the bookshelves, turned the key.

  “Not,” he said, “the Dickens.”

  Obediently the butler reached, on tiptoe, to the fourth shelf and removed a slim sextodecimo volume of frayed morocco. Relocked the shelves. Crossed the room, padding on bare parquet, offered the book to its owner.

  “Yes, that will do nicely.” He slipped it in the pocket of his raincoat. “Goodbye, then.”

  The butler lifted a pudgy white-gloved hand and waved goodbye.

  In the foyer he dipped his knees, caught a handle in each hand, and rose with the weight of the suitcases. The steel screen purred shut, sealing his past. He kicked open the front door. The taxi was waiting, aglow in the drizzle.

  “Paddington,” he said.

  “It’s fifteen after eleven, sir. No trains are running now.”

  “My train leaves at eleven-thirty.”

  The driver shrugged, and lifted the flag of the meter, which ticked off sixpences and fractions of miles along the Brompton Road, through Knightsbridge and past the flood-lit Corinthian columns of Apsley House, turning left and turning left again along the perimeter of Hyde Park, then right into Gloucester Terrace.

  The station clock said eleven-thirty.

  “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.”

  He walked with his two bags toward Gate 6. A blue-uniformed ticket puncher waved at him, across the intervening space, to hurry. But for the two of them, the station looked as deserted as a cathedral in one of those counties tourists never find. Liora had carried on about her cathedrals, Salisbury, Winchester, Wells, all through the bombes.

  While the man worried the ticket with his punch, he glanced backward, thinking he had seen her. It was only a young American, in army surplus, seated on a knapsack, her back propped against the Sherwood green tin of W. H. Smith’s, sleeping or seeming to sleep.

  The conductor was waiting outside the blue sleeping car to help him with his bags. Before he had been shown to his compartment, the train had begun to move.

  “I will arrive …?”

  The conductor glanced at the destination hand-written on the ticket. “At half past six. The engine is changed once in Bristol and again in Swansea.”

  He found the bed in his compartment already made, the sheet spread back to receive his body, the pillow plumped. He drew the blinds. He removed his raincoat, his gloves.

  He began to read:

  Escalus.

  My Lord.

  Of government the properties to unfold…

  On the small screen in his own compartment, the conductor watched the swaying man turn the pages of his little book. Often, to his distress, he would turn them backward instead of forward, but not so o
ften, after all, that he did not reach the end. He then rose, swaying, and began to undress, unknotting, first, the black bow tie, prying off the cufflinks from his cuffs. He shrugged out of the jacket, loosed the cummerbund, slipped the suspenders from his shoulders, unbuttoned his fly, stepped out of the trousers.

  He hung trousers, jacket, shirt inside the closet of simulated wood, placed tie, cummerbund and cufflinks on the shelf above. He lifted the handle of the door toLOCK.

  Then he moved for a moment out of range of the closed-circuit camera. The microphone picked up the sound of running water. He returned, naked now, to the bed and pulled the upper sheet loose. The conductor, who, though probably no older than this man, could no longer think of himself as fit, had time briefly to admire the sturdiness of these limbs, the trimness of the torso. Then the light blanked.

  “The second camera,” a voice commanded.

  The conductor adjusted a knob at the side of the screen. It now showed a man’s head, cradled in his hands, swaying. He stared directly at the lens concealed in the ceiling for several minutes. Even when his eyes had closed, his face did not seem to relax. It was a quarter past two.

  The conductor picked up his copy ofNews of the World and read the captions beneath each picture. At a quarter to three, a buzzer, at E-flat frequency, brought him to his feet.

  The man was now asleep.

  The conductor flipped up the switch markedVENTbeneath the screen and watched as the mask descended over the man’s face. When the mask was retracted, the facial muscles at last showed some degree of relaxation.

  He went into the corridor and pulled theEMERGENCYcord. He unlocked the upper half of the door, reached in, turned the handle down toOPEN.

  He pulled the slack, naked, fit body out of the bed. Twelve cars ahead the engine whistled. He stood low for a better grip beneath the armpits. The floor lurched.

  Four men had gathered in the corridor. They watched the conductor pulling the man across the beige Acrilan without offering to help. Lights flickered by outside the windows. The train was approaching Cheltenham well ahead of schedule. It came to a full stop by the siding of a cable warehouse. While the four men unloaded the limp body on to the boards of the siding, the conductor returned to the compartment for the two suitcases, and again for the clothes and the copy ofMeasure for Measure . There was barely time to place these on the platform before the train was moving again. Spools of heavy cable flicked pastaccelerando . The four men returned, each to his own compartment.