“Actually, Eli, I’m really exhausted. Could we do this tomorrow, maybe?”
“I can’t tomorrow, I’ll be on a flight all day, but the day after…”
“You’re going somewhere?”
“Coming back. I’ve been on holiday in the States.”
He focuses more intently upon me. “Whereabouts?”
“Texas. Houston.”
He pauses. Then he says, “You’ve been at the Astrodrome?”
“Yeah, I mean… yeah, I went there a few times.”
His laugh is wonderful. I can’t remember the last time I heard it. It’s deep and genuine and his face is filled with delight. “Me too. I’ve literally just got back. I was out there for a month. I went to every bloody game, every event. Seriously? You’re seriously in Houston?”
“I’m in my hotel right now. You were here?”
“Were you at the Rams versus the Saints, day before yesterday? I was in the west section.”
“I was east!”
“What did you think? Of the game?”
“Not as good as rugby,” I tell him, and he laughs even more.
“I bet you spent the entire time looking up,” he says. “That’s why you were there, right? Same as me. You worked it out too.”
“There haven’t been any Effects.”
“Not for a while, no.” He coughs, and the tiredness seeps back into his face. “What were you looking for? In the Effect?”
I think about it for a while. I can’t tell him. “I don’t know.”
“Well,” he says. “I think that’s what I was looking for too.”
We say goodnight and I promise to visit sooner, before Christmas. As soon as I get home. Once he has hung up I take the laptop from my knees and lie down on the bed, in my small circle of light. We were in the same place and didn’t know it. I wonder if I would have seen him, across all that space and so many people, if I hadn’t been so busy looking up.
FARLEYTON
The Guard
The ticketless people, waiting in their long, long queues, make comments about how far they’ve travelled and how long it’s taken, and then look at me as if that should mean something. Sometimes they try to bribe me, but the official line is that all of us guards are immune to bribery.
Am I immune to bribery? Well. It’s true that I don’t like cake much and I’ve never been one for jewellery. Money comes and goes, as do affections and promises. A bag of butterscotch – now, catch me in the right mood and I might consider a bag of butterscotch, but nobody ever does offer me butterscotch or catch me in the right mood. I am a person, under this suit, even if nobody can find me in here.
Butterscotch reminds me of my grandmother. I bet everyone says that. My grandmother told me the story that led to me taking this job, guarding the gates of Farleyton:
At first there was a man who undertook a journey.
To clarify, my darling:
At first there was a man who stood still, and a journey came to him, in the form of a god. The god brought hardship – a cold wind, an empty stomach – and the man said: This must be a test.
So began a long and difficult relationship, where the man moved to please the god, and tried to guess what form that pleasure took. What placates the makers of pains and puzzles? Devotion, perhaps, or sacrifice. After making many guesses the man gave up, and decided to journey forth to find the god and ask directly: What is it you want from me?
He searched until there was nowhere left to look, and then he began to ask himself if there was a test at all. Thinking up that question disturbed him more than the arrival of the answer.
Because an answer did arrive.
Then I would ask her, “So what is the answer?”
She said, “Farleyton, my darling.”
* * *
The Travel Agent
Ahem—
After passing through the great gate you may rest at the lion’s head fountain, that proud mane in marble, that mouth that pours forth the purest of waters. Once rested, why not step amid the tulip fields? The tulips are the flowers of a most reverent design for the simplicity of the petals and the straight green fuse of the body. There are paths between the fields which are delineated by colour, a parallel to the span of the rainbow overhead, such order, such beauty.
What are you thinking?
Yes, sir, of course it rains in Farleyton sometimes. Forgive me, but how could there be a lion’s head fountain and tulip fields if it didn’t?
No, there’s no need to worry about waterproofs or an umbrella. It won’t be raining when you get there, of course. Pack light is our recommendation. Everything you need is there. I can show you our deposit scheme, sir, just as soon as I’ve seen your bank statements for the past five years and a written letter from your employer. Do you have those handy, at all?
* * *
The Saver
“It’s the most visited place in the world,” she said. “Which actually makes me not want to go. But also, to go. To see what I’m missing out on. I’m torn.”
“You saved up enough, though?” said her friend, at the next desk. Well, acquaintance, really.
She hesitated, not wanting to talk about money, and then said, “Have you been?”
Her friend shrugged, cheerfully. “I can’t afford it.”
“Not even a day trip?”
“If you can afford a day trip, I’d keep quiet about it. There are all sorts of unscrupulous people out there.”
She put her head down and went back to work. That night, she lay in bed next to her husband and thought she heard people outside the door. She spent some of the carefully saved money on a security camera instead.
* * *
The Goodbye Note
You are the king of untouchability. Well, not this time. This time you get to feel it, feel it all, and you’ll have to sing the bedtime song and do the picking up and putting away and answering of questions, and making the packed lunches while I’m gone. Don’t give them cheap ham – it has nitrates. And don’t listen when they say they don’t eat granary bread – they will if there’s no option. The documents are in the fireproof box under the bed, and when you inform the authorities you can tell them you are to blame for it all, for letting it all slide off you for so many years. You’re slick, the problems just don’t stick to you, do they? They never have.
This one will. The problem of telling everyone what happened. Of getting along day by day while knowing I’ve used the money to get into Farleyton.
And you may think that’s the point of my leaving – to make you suffer. But that’s not it at all. It’s bigger than that. See if you can get this into your head:
A pamphlet came through the door. You probably don’t even remember it. The pamphlet said that society was broken, all the way from the top to the bottom, and that is why we suffer. Not in that general way, not the collective suffering picture we get in our heads of some place where babies are starving and some old pop song is playing over black-and-white footage. Why we suffer. Why we can’t be happy. You and me. Because we won’t admit that everything is broken. How can you mend it if you refuse to see the cracks?
I started to try to talk to you about it, and you said things like, You don’t know how good you’ve got it, and, Maybe you should see the doctor if you’re depressed and get some pills, I don’t mind making an appointment for you. Because you didn’t want to change. You put that first pamphlet in the bin.
You like it broken. You like me broken.
I don’t blame you, but I do hate you for it.
The latest pamphlet talked about starting again in a better place. Farleyton. It had pictures and quoted people who live there, talking about fresh air and greenery and playparks and old-fashioned jobs. I sent off for an advance ticket from the address mentioned on the back, and by the time you read this I will already be on my way. I look forward to the day when I’m set up and the kids can come visit. You won’t be able to deny it then, when you see them happy. This thing isn’t even
about me or you. It’s about them.
I’ve left one of the pamphlets with this letter. No doubt you’ll throw it away, too, but at least I can honestly say I tried. It breaks my heart to leave them, but it’s to find a better way.
* * *
The Walkers
After a while the soles of our feet hardened to leather and nothing could get through, not even shards of glass from the broken windows in the emptied cities: emptied but for the streams of us, the survivors. We trickle and weave down the alleyways. We search for the sea.
There is a map that gets passed between us, and we have collected enough for a ship, we think. We pooled our treasures and take it in turns to carry them. When we reach the shore and negotiations begin, perhaps our solidarity will melt away and we will become him, and her, and them, with values placed upon each individual. But for now we are all valueless, and priceless. Our only worth is in our undeniable number when the camera crews fly in their helicopters overhead.
This – I think as I walk and I remember the rows of students outside the university building, shouting for change and cheering when it came in the form of the removal of choice – this is the only real community I have ever experienced. For this reason, I am glad I chose to make this journey. Not to reach Farleyton – which I suspect is a myth, because everything that is said, everything I hear, now lacks a feeling of truth – but to have walked with others through this dead land and know we are seeing the same thing.
* * *
The Workers
– They need people to work underneath the machinery. People who can speak their language.
– I swear, it’s not good. I have a friend, they went in, they didn’t come out.
– But the beds. A place to sleep. Even a little money. No papers needed, I heard. It wouldn’t matter about my, you know, my condition. All welcome, as long as you can understand and you work.
– They work you to nothing and then they throw you away.
– How is that worse? Here, I have no work and I am already thrown away. I want to be useful. And I’m smart; I can learn how to do the controls of one of the big machines or maybe even be an entertainer or a guard and wear a suit. I can juggle, did you know that?
– Big dreams, huh?
– Better than no dreams at all.
– You think I don’t hate living here? In the shadow of Farleyton? We can’t even see the sun, these walls are so high.
– No, that’s the pollution. From the machinery. The air filters make it good inside the walls and spit out the bad. That’s why we’ll be better in.
– If we could get in as visitors, just on a day pass. Then we could find an empty house and I heard there are laws about that. If you hold on to an empty house for three months, it’s yours. Population laws. There’s a plan – a tunnel—
– What do you think this is, some adventure movie? I’m putting my name down for a job.
– Listen. There’s something bad in there. So many go in and don’t come out. And so much machinery is never a good thing. Those machines work away all day, all night.
– What are you saying?
– I don’t know.
– If you don’t know, then shut up.
– Don’t leave.
– Shut up.
– I love you, though.
– No, you’re just afraid of being left on your own. Who could love anyone in this place, anyway? To love someone you need light, and air, and quiet. Love and fear are not the same thing. Besides, if you loved me you’d come with me.
* * *
The Vetter
He felt that if he didn’t believe in something then there would be no point in living, and he had chosen to believe in Farleyton. He didn’t need to go there himself. It was enough to know a place like that existed. Its appearance had raised the tone of the whole planet. It gave every single person a goal, an aspiration.
He looked up from his monitor and stretched. The muscles of his back and neck ached, and his spine clicked; age was upon him. But he wouldn’t stop. To have been born with money was such a privilege and he hadn’t even realised it until late in his life. Now he meant to make good use of it with the time he had left, before the end.
Every day more applications arrived from the website. Each application represented a request for one person to be awarded a grant for access to Farleyton, from the charity he had set up. People couldn’t fill one out on their own behalf; the idea was that they nominated somebody. A person with a good heart and a host of kind works behind them. The application form was fifty-two pages long and in the language of Farleyton, but that didn’t seem to stop fraudsters from attempting it. About a quarter of the applications, when investigated, turned out to be fakes. People nominating themselves under false names, mainly. Telling lies. How he hated lies.
He returned to the screen. During that brief pause seventeen more emails had arrived from the people he employed to perform the first application filter process. With numbers like these, only one in ten thousand would be given a grant, but he felt good about that. The truly deserving would get in and find a better way of life. The work of uncovering the best people would continue until he was too old and tired to stare at the screen for a moment longer. The work gave meaning to it all.
* * *
The Girl
Around the low fire, amid the corrugated huts and the panoply of smells from street food to shit, the old woman recalled Farleyton. She spoke low, with her eyes closed, in a state of ecstasy. The others listened.
“She was really there!” said the girl, to her mother.
“Sshhh!”
So, the girl waited until the dream state was broken and the old woman had come to the end of her remembrances of clean streets, spring blossoms, gift shops and pancake houses. Well-spoken young men and zebra crossings and butterfly houses, and recycled dreamcatchers and rainbow parades and pesticide-free fresh fruit that didn’t even need washing. And the mornings spent on a park bench, of all things. A park bench. With a coffee and a pastry and passing well-behaved dogs on leads with owners who always picked up.
“Why did you leave?” said the girl, then.
“Sshhh!” said her mother again, embarrassed to death by this rudeness; how would her child ever get to Farleyton with such a big mouth? They’d never let her in the gates.
“I didn’t,” said the old woman.
“What happened?”
“There was a circus planned. A big tent was put up, red and striped. I went along on a Sunday morning, and I was given candyfloss. Do you know what that is, child? It’s a pink cloud of sugar. I sat for the show and ate my candyfloss, and then there was the grinding of machinery and the whole tent – all of us within, hundreds of us – spun around and around. I was so dizzy. People laughed. Nothing bad happens at Farleyton, so they laughed where once they might have screamed. Then the tent was gone, and we were standing in a wilderness with only rocks around us. Everyone was confused. At first people thought it was part of the circus. Many refused to come away, even after we found the bodies of others and, in the dust under the bodies, more bodies. Then skeletons. Those who waited, I suppose. And yet still they would not come away.
“So many stayed. But I started walking. I walked and walked, until I got to a small town and they told me where I was. I was on the other side of the world to Farleyton.
“You know what I think, child? I think maybe Farleyton gets full, and so they…” The old woman raised her hands and splayed her fingers wide. “Paff! They zap people out with their machinery. They teleport them. Yes. That’s the word. To make room for more.”
“Are you not angry that they zapped you?”
“There’s not room for everyone.”
“I would be angry,” mused the girl.
“Well, I’ve seen a lot of life. And there is more to see. Why waste time on anger?”
“Like what? What do you want to see now?”
“One day, I’d like to see Farleyton again. It was a sight to beh
old.”
“You want to go back? You’re crazy,” said the girl, and her mother cuffed her round the head and dragged her back to their corrugated hut, only to find that a drunkard had taken advantage of their absence to climb inside and fall asleep, snoring like a bull.
So they slept out in the street and hoped he would leave in the morning. It was a good thing to hope for, the little girl felt. A solid thing.
INTO GLASS
I lie beside you, twenty-seven years into our marriage and everything placed just so in this house, from our possessions to our thoughts to our long patterned days. This burning feeling inside is messy by comparison. It has grown and grown like a weed in good soil. It pushes its way to the surface and tells me that surely, by now, we are secure enough for me to take something back for myself.
The bedroom is warm even though the window is open. I can hear the swish of the cars on the motorway, a few miles away. Do we ever stop travelling? Is there ever a point where we reach a destination, and stop, and say there, enough?
Twenty-seven years is not quite enough. I need to do this once, just once. Just to learn how it is done.
I lift my pillow and slide out the scalpel. It has a leather cover, made specially for it; the black stitches along the soft material are precise and strong, and the blade has stayed sharp.
I do not think of you as a person, exactly. We’ve been together long enough that I think of you as a part of me or not at all. This won’t hurt you at all – I know the theory. Still, I only touch the tip lightly to your stomach, on the left side, just above your hip. If it wasn’t so sharp you would not have been cut, but in the breathless pause after the action there it is: a bead of blood, as dark and heavy as treacle. You don’t move. Your face is untroubled; how do you sleep, live, breathe, with so little care? At first I thought you kept your worries from me deliberately, and so I asked you many questions when we sat together, at the end of the working day in front of an endless series of television vignettes. You answered the questions easily. Then, one day, you said – It’s just the usual. It’s just life – and I realised I was only asking because I wanted you to ask me the same questions in return. So, I simply talked about myself instead, about the deep things inside of me, and you listened and calmed me.
From the Neck Up and Other Stories Page 12