by Martin Amis
“So. Santa Maria. Catholic. Any port in a fucking storm, eh?”
“Why are you so het up about it? You should have heard yourself last night. Groaning and wailing in your sleep.”
“All this hypocrisy.”
“Squealing you were. Like a pig having an operation.”
“Lily, it’s the principle of the thing. They believe in Father Christmas. Why? Because the present he brings is eternal life.”
“… What’s antinomianism?”
“It means doing whatever the fuck you want all the hours there are. With ‘should’ and ‘ought’ I have nothing to do.” Keith felt his body relax, and he went on, “It means anti-law, Lily. I’m surprised you didn’t know that. Frieda was the same. German, see. Nudism and yoghurts. Eros-worship. Nietzsche. Otto Gross. Repress nothing!”
Lily said, “Aren’t you hungry? I was just thinking. You’ve lost weight. You haven’t eaten all week.”
“Yeah, come on. While they’re down there on their lousy knees. Jesus. On their knees. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
Left alone for a moment, he went to the wall and peered over it. You could see the two tight and bustly little forms moving over the cobblestones. Children criss-crossed their path, but no swirling coils of young men took shape in the rear of Gloria or in the van of Scheherazade.
In the library he put Professor Meadowbrook aside and pored over a semi-literate paperback called Religions of the World, which eventually referred him to the Book of John. Then he unsheathed the Olivetti and typed out a note on it: Dear Scheherazade, May I say something to you? I’ll be reading in the gunroom after dinner. Just a few words. K. With that accomplished, he crept out into the salon, and moved through the precincts of his demotion—like an intruder, or like some menial and futile phantom, one worthy of a decrepit cottage, perhaps, but not a fortress on a mountainside in Italy … It seemed that eternal excommunication was the sentence he’d been given, and it came like a summons from outer darkness when Gloria turned in the corridor and said with a matronly air,
“Oh, Keith.”
“Yes, Gloria.”
“There’s a choice tonight—meat or fish. I tried the fish earlier, and I thought it was a bit off. Have the meat.”
“Thank you, Gloria, That’s very thoughtful of you. I will.”
“Do,” she said.
And that was all. Fractionally emboldened, Keith offered Scheherazade his folded note as they passed in an anteroom, and she accepted it without meeting his eye.
The four of them took their seats in the kitchen: one Catholic, one Protestant, one Atheist, and one Agnostic. Yes, Keith, unlike Lily, was an agnostic: he knew that he would die all right, and that heaven and hell were vulgar insults to human dignity, but he also knew that the universe was very imperfectly understood. In his opinion, it would be an outcome mainly notable for its banality—but God might turn out to be true. Claiming otherwise, as he told Lily when they argued about it, was crabbed, presumptuous, and not rational, Lily. I’m teetering on the edge of it—of godlessness, Lily. But that’s what you have to do. Teeter. Now he said to her,
“Not for me.” And covered his wine glass with his hand. During the salad course Gloria said to Scheherazade, “When shall we swap rooms? Not tonight. I’m too … weak. I think I’ve got what you had last night. Queasy.”
“It soon passes. I’m fine now. Tuesday morning. Eugenio can help.”
“Jorquil’s in Florence. Poor you. Oh I do wish Timmy were here.”
Keith’s stratagem for Scheherazade, then, was only ninety-nine-point-nine per cent dishonest: it contained its mote-sized blind spot. He was going to tell her that he had experienced a change of heart and mind. Yes, Scheherazade, I have. And is there, perhaps, some vicar … No, not vicar. Luminary? … perhaps some spiritual counsellor I could go and talk to, when we all get back to London? Keith knew that success was not much more likely than the cosmic manifestation, that same night, of an omnipotent being. But he had to try. And now he sought comfort in harmonial themes, how they spring eternal, the tender leaves of hope—and so on.
“Mmm,” said Lily as she tasted her sole.
“Mmm,” said Scheherazade as she tasted hers.
“I’m sure the fish is perfectly fresh,” said Gloria. “But Keith and I are very happy with the lamb. Now Whittaker said half past seven. An early night, I think. So that we’re all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” she concluded, “for the ruins.”
Antinomianism in D. H. Lawrence was finished with and tossed aside by a quarter to twelve.
Scheherazade had in fact stuck her head round the door of the gunroom, on her way upstairs, and Keith did in fact manage to announce, from a seated posture, that he was suddenly open to persuasion about the existence of God and, more particularly, the merits of the Pentecostalist persuasion (with its emphasis on prophecy, miracles, and exorcism).
“I know the Bible quite well,” he said, “and I’ve always been very moved by that verse in John. And it’s central, isn’t it, to the born-again idea. You know—The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is everyone that is born of the Spirit. That resonates, I find.”
He kept this up for a couple of minutes. Scheherazade frowned levelly at him. As if his words were not necessarily implausible but merely obtuse and irrelevant. And boring—don’t forget boring. Keith couldn’t construe her: the one visible hand on the one visible hip, her shifts of stance. Her indifference. There was something—there was something almost un-Christian in it. He said,
“I was very wrong to be dismissive like that. That was trivial of me. And I’d like to give the whole thing a lot more thought.”
“Well,” she said with a dutiful shrug, “since you ask, there’s a man called Geoffrey Wainwright at St. David-in-the-Field. I’ll drop him a line about you. If you like.”
“Right. Fine.”
Right. Fine. And now we’ve got all the religious shit out of the way, Scheherazade, how about a game of cards and a glass of champagne? This much at least was clear. In fact it had never in his life struck him with such force: religion was the antichrist of eros. No, the two themes, Racing Demon and God, God and Racing Demon, did not combine. Or so he then thought.
“Timmy swears by Geoffrey Wainwright,” said Scheherazade. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight. Don’t tell Lily,” he said as she closed the door on him. “She wouldn’t approve.”
So to round out the panoply of the weekend’s achievements, its moral and intellectual breakthroughs and triumphs, he reached into his back pocket and read the thing again, without Lily’s breath on his neck.
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness Pains my sense. So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lieth.
It was a dull day at work (August) and I thought I’d liven up the evening with a violent film. I fancied A Man Called Horse—two hours of torture at the expense of Richard Harris. I wanted a couple of powerful ones to get me in the mood, so I looked in at the Saracen’s Head in Cambridge Circus, a place described to me, by Violet, as “good.” Why, I wondered, did Violet think it was good, apart from the fact that it sold alcohol? What is this business with Violet and alcohol—with England and alcohol?
It was by no means the worst of all possible pubs, the carpets not much damper than bathmats, the tureens of the ashtrays not yet brimming over, the clientele not audibly planning your murder. I ought to say at this point that I’d been on the evening news two nights running that week (Vietnam). As I was ordering, I felt a waft of yeast on my cheek and a tap on my shoulder, and even before I turned I felt the arrival of violence (violence at my expense). It’s a funny feeling. The shift of type, of category—the arrival of the radically unfamiliar (well caught, I think, in Augie March, when he watches his brother pistol-whip the drunk: “My heart went back on me when the cuts were torn, and I thought, Does it make him think he knows what he’s doing if the guy bl
eeds?”). I wasn’t scared. As you know, I don’t get scared. But it was a funny feeling.
I turned, and found myself staring into a big, rhomboidal, bottom-heavy face, and trap-mouthed, with the tongue idling on the lower teeth. This face undoubtedly wanted to hurt me. But it wouldn’t be needing physical force. He said, “Have you got a little sister called Violet?” I said slowly and emphatically, “Yeah?”—because I knew what was coming.
He bared his upper teeth, now, and gave a nodding sneer. And then he started laughing. Yes, he had a good laugh about it all. Then this fucking berk looked me up and down, and backed off to join all the other fucking berks by the pie-warmer, and they started doing it too. Staring, sneering, and laughing. By the way, the berk’s status, as a berk, was far from irrelevant. I hardly need to point out that I didn’t disdain the berk qua berk. But when it comes to the extreme sexual delinquency of your little sister, only a fucking berk is going to tell you about it.
My dear Little Keith, I invite you to consider some of the implications. 1) Imagine the kind of guy you’d have to be to enjoy passing that on to a brother. 2) That’s the kind of guy Violet thinks is good. 3) He was being implicitly violent to me (Well, big brother, what are you going to do about it?), for reasons of class—the revenge of the berks; so it’s a fair bet that he’s implicitly violent to her too. 4) Their response was unmistakably communal. In other words, Violet is the kind of girl who dates football teams.
Remember when we were young we used to say we’d kill anyone who laid a finger on her? We used to get very emotional about it. And that’s what we used to say, again and again. We’d kill.
After that, A Man Called Horse didn’t quite seem up to it. So I went to the Taboo and did what I could with The Dungeon that Dripped Blood.
I sort of raised it with her, obliquely, and she said, with some indignation, “I’m a helfy young girl!” Why can’t she talk properly any more? Why does she sound like someone who’s accustomed to being in prison?
You’re the only one who knows about this. Hurry home.
And then Keith crossed the expectantly starless courtyard and climbed the steps of the tower.
“Hear that?” said Lily in the dark. “Not the rumbling. Santa Maria. At a stroke you’re—twenty-one.”
He did not respond. She kissed his ear, his neck. He did not respond. Her hand caressed his shoulders, his chest, and moved downward. Now would be the time to show gratitude to Lily. Now would be the time to be grateful to Lily. But Keith wasn’t grateful any more.
“I can’t,” he said. “Violet.”
His body, now embarking on its twenty-second year, gave its reflex. Yet Keith did not respond. Lily held it. Then she flung it aside.
“Do you know something? Your cock,” she said, “is much smaller than average.”
He at once resolved not to take this too seriously. Then again, he knew that anything a girl said to you on this subject was by definition unforgettable.
“Oh really,” he said. “Fascinating. Much smaller than everyone else’s. That’s well worth knowing.”
“Yes, much smaller,” she said, turning over. “Much.”
Up above in the firmament, great weights were being wheeled around on sets of titanic castors: the rolling stock of heaven, mobilised for civil strife …
Lily’s quiet flurry; in the dawn—he was intermittently aware of it; and there was a small packet of time (he sensed) when she stood over him and looked down, and not with liking either. There had just been a disastrous spillage (he had accidentally poured a two-pound bag of sugar into the intimate workings of a grandfather clock)—but someone else could clear it up, the dream could clear it up, he left it there for the dream …
Now Keith heard the car doors slam shut and the slow and monstrous snarl of rubber on gravel. And he began the task of separating the real from the imaginary, separating fact from fiction. Feminine shapes and configurations, then thoughts like the clues of cryptic crosswords—these slowly scattered, and he reversed himself, with many misanglings, into his opening sentence. It must have been a considerable relief to D. H. Lawrence—the formulation of a … The formulation of a creed of unadorned self-centredness must have come as a … Keith reared up and sat there with his feet on the floor. All was bare. He was neuter, loveless, sexless; and he was twenty-one years old.
Naked, he pushed at the bathroom door. It was locked. He listened to the silence. Then he fastened a towel round his waist and rang the bell. He heard ticking footsteps.
“Ah there you are. Good morning,” said Gloria Beautyman.
With pinched thumbs and fingertips she was holding up a light-blue summer dress at shoulder height, as if assessing it for length in front of a mirror.
“You didn’t go,” he said.
“Mm. I pretended to be ill. I hate ruins. I mean they’re ruins.”
“Exactly.” He said, with prescience, “You’re made-up.”
“Well I had to retouch it. I wanted to look all feverish. A bit of purple eyeshadow usually does the trick.”
“You find?”
“Mm. I even hid a rotten apple under the bed. For the tang of the sickroom. I’m airing it even as we speak … I’m terribly good, you know. No one will ever guess.”
“Well.”
“Well. I’m sorry I kept you waiting. I was just saying my prayers before putting some clothes on. You see I always pray naked.”
“And why’s that?”
“For the humility. Do you have any objection?”
“No. None.”
“I thought you might have some objection …”
And a voice said to him, There’s no need to hurry. Everything is as it should be. Everything is just as it should be.
“Yes, I thought you might have some objection.”
“To praying, or praying naked?”
“To both.”
“What do you say in your prayers?”
“Well first I praise Him. Then I thank Him for what I’ve got. Then I ask for a little bit more. But it’s probably pointless, don’t you think?”
“Is it?”
“Tell me. If you had to give just one reason. What is your quarrel with those of us who believe?”
Never worry. Proceed. It has all been decided.
“All right. It’s a failure of courage.”
“Not true in my case.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s simple. I believe. And I know I’m going to hell.”
Remain silent. Go on looking into her eyes, and remain silent.
“So!” she said. “Then I had a quick shower and I was just putting on some clothes.”
“How far did you get?”
“Shoes,” she said.
They both looked down. White high heels. He said,
“So. Not very far.”
“No. Not very far at all.”
She tipped her head at an angle and gave him a flat smile. The polite cough: “Huh-hm.” Then she looked him up and down in a way that made him feel, for a moment, that he had come to fix the loose tiles or see to the plumbing. She turned and slowly walked.
Jesus Christ. Say, No bee sting. Say it. No bee sting.
He said, “No bee sting.”
She halted, and ran a hand down the small of her back. “To tell you the truth, Keith, I put a dab on that too. While I was at it. You know. Concealer.”
He thought, I am in a very strange place: I am in the future. And this is the strangest thing of all: I know exactly what to do … Lit by the innards of the storm, all the colours in the room were lurid, torrid, morbid, even the whites. Another strange thought: the vulgarity of the colour white. Step forward.
Stepping forward, he said, after a while, “So pale. So cold.”
She moved her feet apart.
His towel seemed to make a lot of noise when it fell—like a collapsing marquee. Her dress made no sound at all. The first thing she did, with her gaze on the mirror, was attend to her breasts in a way he had never seen before.
She said ardently,
“Oh, I love me. Oh I love me so.”
Neither blinked as thunder split the room. He went even closer in.
She brought her legs together. “Kadoink,” she said.
Make a joke. Make two jokes. It doesn’t matter what they are, but the first one has to be dirty.
“You forgot to dry yourself.”
Her spine quivered and arched.
“Because you were distracted by higher things.”
“Look,” she said to the figures in the glass. “I’m a boy. I’ve got a cock too.”
Say, You are a cock. Say it. You are a cock. “You are a cock,” he said.
“… How on earth did you know? I am a cock. And we’re very rare—girls who are cocks. Stand back a minute.”
She leant over with parted legs and her small left fist tightened on the towel rack.
“Look. The sting’s actually quite far in. Look.”
She was doing something, with her right hand, that he had seen before, but never at this angle. Say something about money.
“I want to buy it a present. Your arse. Silk. Mink.”
She was doing something, with her right hand, that he had never even heard about.
“Look what happens,” she said, “when I use two fingers.”
It was then that he had his moment of vertigo. I’m too young, he thought, to go to the future. Then the vertigo passed and the hypnosis returned. She said,
“Look what happens. Not to the arse. To the cunt.”
He stared on at it leadenly—at the far future.
“… Some might say that it’s a bit droll—to start with this. But we’re having a black mass, you and I. You know—backward. Everything the wrong way round. Stay still, and I’ll do it all. Understand? And try your hardest not to come.”
“Good,” she said, as, some minutes later, her knees settled on the bath-mat. “Now. The only way to spin this out is for me to be a bit of a chatterer for a while—do you mind? … You can talk while you do most other things … Often to no great purpose, in my opinion … But you can’t talk while you … while you … Now here’s something you’ve probably never seen before … Big as this is, and very hard. As hard as the towel rack. I can make it completely disappear. And then come back even bigger. Oh look. It’s even bigger already.”