Our Tragic Universe

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Our Tragic Universe Page 25

by Scarlett Thomas


  About an hour before I went to Libby's I opened up my laptop. The sound from the fan immediately replaced the gentle sound of the waves outside. I logged into my bank account and selected Transfers. Christopher's name was there at the top of my list, and I transferred £1,000 to his account. Then I spent a while browsing beds on the Greenfibres website and once I'd decided which one I wanted to buy, I set about composing my reply to Rowan.

  'You've done what?' Libby said.

  We were in her kitchen, with nine fish lying in front of us, intact, on the worktop. Their eyes bulged, and they each looked as if they'd been just about to say something important when they were caught. Inside their open mouths were perfect sets of miniature teeth. They were freaking me out a bit; reminding me of why I'd once become a vegan. I turned away. B wasn't at all interested in the fish. She'd insisted on bringing her chew from Torcross and was lying in the middle of the kitchen floor with it, looking as if she couldn't wait to get to the end. I turned back to the fish. Libby was still looking at them as well, holding a knife but not doing anything with it.

  'I've rented a cottage,' I said. 'At Torcross. I've spent most of the day sitting there by the fire watching the sea come in and then go out again. It was amazing. You know those rocks at the end of the beach? When the tide goes really far out they look like a dragon's bony foot splayed in the water, and you can actually walk around them to the next cove. I never realised that. I usually only walk the dog from the car park to the monument and then back.'

  'You've left Christopher?'

  'I'm not entirely sure. The plan was that I was going to just use the cottage to work in, but I almost ordered a bed today. I rented the place on a whim yesterday because, well, it was there, and not damp, and it has an open fire, and I could suddenly afford it. Christopher doesn't know about any of it.'

  Libby giggled. 'We'd better have a drink,' she said. 'Why did I not get them to fillet these?' She waved her knife over the fish.

  'Because you were planning to bake them?' I said. 'You won't need nine any more, by the way, because Christopher's not coming. What are they?'

  'Sea bass.'

  'Bake them.'

  'You think?'

  'Yeah, definitely.'

  She got a bottle of white wine out of the fridge. 'This'll be nice,' she said. 'It's a very expensive Sauvignon Bob doesn't know I took from the shop. God. I don't know what's wrong with me at the moment. Of course I should bake these. That's such a sensible thing to do. So why do I want to fillet them all?'

  'Because that's the way you are. But we're baking them.'

  'Are we?'

  'Yes. I've had a massive row with Christopher, and I may have left him. I'm not sure about that bit, but anyway, at the same time, I'm thinking about having an affair—which by the way will remain an affair even if I do leave Christopher, because the, um, third party has got a partner as well. So I'm going to be very distracted, and if I have to fillet a fish I'll probably leave bones in it and kill Bob's aunt. Also, you look like you're waiting for an executioner to turn up or something. Where's Bob?'

  'At the shop still.' She poured the wine. 'So tell me everything.'

  While she covered the fish in oil, a different white wine and orange zest, and I chopped herbs, I told her about my row with Christopher, and my meeting with Milly and the day I'd kissed Rowan, although I didn't name him. I said that I couldn't get him out of my head even now, a year later.

  'Be careful,' she said. 'You probably won't end up leaving Christopher.'

  'I don't know about that. But yes, I am planning to be.'

  'Just make sure you don't turn into me. Remember you said that you find people more exciting before you actually get to know them.'

  'Oh.' I sighed. 'You're right. Well, it's only lunch.'

  'You were the one who used the word affair,' Libby said.

  'What's wrong with this as a hypothetical model: I do find this man exciting, even though he's too old for me, and so let's say he kisses me again—not that he will, and I don't even want him to—'

  'You so do.'

  'Well, say it happened and then after some modest amount of time we slept together and fell passionately and tragically in love...'

  'Yes?'

  'Well, no one would have to know.'

  'I'm just not sure it really works like that. You can't really be in love with one person and officially living with another; it has to be both at once. Well, if you're a woman. Do you want some more wine?'

  'Yeah. Thanks. God, you're probably right.'

  'You'll keep fancying other people all your life. But if you're going to work things out with Christopher you can't go off with someone else at the same time. You have to do one or the other.' She laughed. 'I know the theory. I just can't put it into practice myself. It's like playing pool. I could always tell someone exactly how to pocket the ball, but not always do it myself. Did I ever tell you about the time I really fell in love with this guy who was, like, the king of pool at my local pub when I lived in Bristol? What was his name? Oh—Ollie. Right, so I loved Ollie, and he slept with me and then broke it off. He had the most amazing dick—suntanned, can you believe it?—and a lovely smile, and he wanted to be a writer. God, I loved him. He had four friends, one dark, one blond, one redhead and one bald guy. They were like a boy-band. I went through them all one by one after Ollie rejected me. With the first three I convinced myself I was in love each time. One of them liked Hawkwind, though, and was obsessed with curry. The next one had a really tiny dick and horrible carpet and used to tell his own mother to fuck off. The one after that I can't much remember. But seriously, each time it was like, "He's got nice hair, and reads books; he'll do," or "He's got really good taste in music and likes Buffy," and I'd convince myself he was the one for me. I didn't fancy the bald one at all, but one night he was the only person left to walk me home from the pub, and when we got there he came in, dropped his trousers and tried to put his dick in my mouth. There was no conversation, but I understood, and he understood, that I'd had all his friends and now it was his turn. I sucked him off and then never went back to that pub again. They must have thought I was a right slag. Which just goes to show.'

  I laughed. 'That's like some kind of weird Zen story, almost.'

  She laughed too.

  'So what's happening with Mark?' I asked.

  'Well...' There was the sound of a key turning in the lock. 'That's Bob. I'll tell you later.'

  The three of us spent the next hour preparing food and setting the table. Bob had brought oysters from Joni for a starter, and a lemon tart from the shop for pudding. He put on some Britpop album from the nineties, and we all sang along and danced around the kitchen. They cracked me up: every time a song had two singing parts they'd automatically take one each and harmonise. We moved on to the soundtrack of some big film from the eighties with lots of harmonisation possibilities, finished the bottle of Sauvignon and started another. B had finally got to the end of her chew and went to sleep it off upstairs. By the time Bob's parents turned up everything was ready and we were all knackered and a bit pissed, sprawled on the sofa, listening to a new jazz band that Bob was really into. He and Libby had started a long conversation about this band. Did she know they'd been nominated for the Mercury Prize? Yes, she did, but she hadn't known he had the album and had wanted to get it herself. I was wondering just what was so wrong with their relationship. It wasn't just the harmonies and the easy conversation. I noticed the way they refilled each other's wine glasses, and how Libby, when moving a book of Bob's from the coffee table, carefully inserted a bookmark so he wouldn't lose his place. Did Christopher and I seem like that to the outside world? Probably not. He'd never refilled my wine glass in his entire life.

  Bob's father, Conrad, was German and still spoke with a slight accent that I felt I knew from someone else but couldn't remember who it would be. His wife, Sacha, had been a model years ago, but now worked on local art projects and made sculptures from driftwood. I sometimes bumped in
to her at Blackpool Sands when I was there walking B in the mornings. She had wild, dyed red hair, and a low, confident voice that reminded me of Vi's. Conrad and Sacha were both in their sixties, but looked a lot younger. Bob told some anecdotes about his recent trip to Germany, and brought his parents up to date with news of his great-aunt and -uncle. Just as Bob was talking about his journey back, and his plane being diverted to Exeter, the doorbell went and Libby jumped up to answer it. It was Mark, wearing unironed jeans, a new-looking shirt and black shoes that had mud around their edges. Once he was settled on the edge of a sofa on the opposite side of the room from Libby he asked Sacha some polite questions about what she did, and where she grew up, and then told us all about how his parents still lived on an island in Scotland as part of a hippy community they'd both joined when their marriage hit the rocks when they were in their fifties and Mark was finishing his GCSEs in Newcastle. Mark had ended up having to sleep on a friend's floor through his A-levels. Sacha kept asking things about the island, like 'Isn't it cold?' and 'Is it true there are no trees?' Conrad laughed every so often and at one point said to Bob, 'See, I've always told you that having crazy parents is a good thing.'

  'What did you do at university?' Sacha asked Mark now.

  'I didn't go at first. Couldn't afford it, and I didn't really have anywhere to go home to in the holidays. In the end I worked on a lighthouse for a couple of years until it got decommissioned and then I started doing peace studies part-time, but I could immediately see there was no future in peace studies.' He laughed.

  'Why?' said Sacha.

  'Well ... You know, the Gulf War had just started, and everything seemed so screwed up. Eventually I transferred to engineering. I was an engineer for a while after I graduated, and then, of course, I dropped out and...'

  'You didn't really drop out,' Libby said. 'You started designing boats.'

  'Yeah, I guess.'

  Just as I was wondering how Libby could explain knowing this, the doorbell rang and she went to open it. And suddenly there was Rowan, standing in the entrance to the sitting room wearing jeans and a pale blue shirt and not meeting my eyes. He was carrying a bottle of wine, which he gave to Libby.

  'Lise can't make it, I'm afraid,' he said, after kissing Sacha on both cheeks and shaking hands with Conrad. 'She's got a really terrible headache. She's taken pills and gone to bed. I'm going to try to be both of us if that's all right.'

  'Oh, the poor thing,' said Sacha.

  'She always did have headaches,' said Conrad.

  Conrad was Lise's brother. Of course. Had I known that and forgotten it? I didn't think so. So Rowan was Bob's uncle. I'd kissed Bob's uncle and then had a million sexual fantasies about him. I was glad I hadn't told Libby whom I was planning to have an affair with, even though, looking at him now, I realised how impossible that would be. But I had told him about her affair, I realised. I downed the rest of my wine and didn't catch his eye.

  Over dinner we all ended up talking about paradoxes. Libby had said something about my TV deal, and all the maths I used in my SF novels and the weird stuff I wrote about mobile-phone networks and cellular structures. She was worried about how they were going to translate this onto the screen. I said not to worry, because from what I knew TV options just sat on a shelf gathering dust until they expired, so it was unlikely the books would ever be adapted. Rowan asked whether or not I understood all of the maths and science in my novels, which was a good question, because I didn't always. Or, at least, I did at the time I was writing and then not a year or so later, usually when I had to give a few interviews about it. I tried to explain all this as honestly as I could.

  'But you review science books?' Sacha said.

  'Yes. It's a bit the same,' I said. 'I understand them at the time I read them, especially if they're well written and have lots of good examples, but whenever someone asks me to explain relativity I can't do it. Or at least I can, sort of. Which is the speed-of-light one?' Everyone looked blank except Conrad.

  'Special relativity,' he said.

  'General relativity is gravity?'

  He laughed and sipped his wine. 'I think so. You're right; one does forget.'

  'In my mind I have a jumble of images: a man on a train that's going along at the same speed as a car, and so it seems to him as if the train and the car are standing still, relative to one another, and when he starts walking down the carriage he feels as if he's going at about one mile an hour, but really he's going at the speed of the train plus that. And I can see space-time laid out like a blanket...'

  'Like the fabric of the universe!' Libby said.

  'Exactly like that,' I said, smiling at her.

  'You've confused everyone now,' Bob said to Libby.

  'Oh. I knitted the fabric of the universe for Meg ages ago. That's all.'

  Mark rolled his eyes when Libby wasn't looking.

  '"That's all,"' Rowan said, laughing. He caught my eye and then looked away again. 'As if you're a kind of God of knitting.'

  'Or God's assistant,' Libby said. 'I had to ask Conrad what the fabric of the universe would look like so that I could knit it.'

  'Do you think God made the universe, or just designed it and got someone else to make it?' Sacha said.

  'Oh, Mum, don't. You're hurting my brain,' Bob said.

  'This is why we didn't bring him up to be religious,' Conrad said to Mark. 'We knew he wouldn't be able to cope with the paradoxes. Robert has a very focused mind.'

  'I feel about three years old now,' Bob said. 'So thanks.'

  'I can't understand paradoxes either,' Rowan said. He looked at me. 'Do you know Frank and Vi's friend—that philosopher who solves paradoxes?'

  I laughed. 'No. My God. That sounds a bit crazy.'

  'I thought you couldn't solve a paradox,' Libby said. 'Isn't that the point?'

  'Your wife is cleverer than you,' Conrad said to Bob. 'I've always said so.'

  'Dad, please shut up.'

  'One of the artists I know collects paradoxes,' Sacha said. 'He pins them in a glass case like butterflies whenever he finds one.'

  'Finds one?' I said. 'What, just lying around?'

  'It may have been a metaphor. Perhaps there were no glass cases really either. We were drunk when we were talking about it, I think.'

  Conrad frowned, and finished his glass of wine. He poured another glass, and then topped up everyone else's.

  Rowan laughed. 'I've never found a paradox,' he said.

  'You will,' said Libby with a dark smile.

  Damn it. She knew.

  'This is good,' Sacha said. 'It's good that we're discussing this because I've always been too embarrassed to ask him what they actually are. Now one of you can tell me exactly: what is a paradox?'

  'It's a self-negating statement,' Mark said.

  'Like what?'

  'All Cretans are liars,' I said. 'If a Cretan says that to you.'

  'A cretin?'

  'No. A Cretan, Mum,' Bob said. 'Someone from Crete.'

  'Why?'

  'Because it's an Ancient Greek thing, I assume.'

  Conrad looked up and laughed. 'She's clever,' he said, pointing to Libby, 'but my son isn't stupid either. They are well matched. In any case, there's something more to it than a self-negating statement.'

  'It's where you end up using something to prove that it, itself, is ridiculous,' I said, struggling to explain. 'Like the Heap Paradox, where you have a heap of stones, take one away and ask someone if it is still a heap. They'll say yes, of course. You take another one away and ask again. Still a heap. At what point does it stop being a heap? At some point it will be just one stone, and since there is no definition of "heap" you could end up concluding that the single stone is a heap of stones.'

  'But that's just a case of proving that a word doesn't have a precise definition, surely?' Rowan said. 'It just shows the difference between an abstract noun and a concrete noun.'

  'OK, yes, that's not a great one. But the whole of twentieth-century science is ba
sed on paradoxes. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle ... There's also the Fiction Paradox, or the paradox of fiction. Why is it that we get scared reading a ghost story, for example, when we know it's just a story? Why does fiction have any emotional effect on us at all, considering that we know it's not real? Why, when re-reading a book, or watching a film for the second time, do we still have the same emotional reactions as we did the first time around?'

  'That's not a paradox,' Rowan said. 'That's just life.'

  'My favourite paradox is the Horse and the Bales of Hay,' Conrad said. 'This is where a horse, given the choice between two identical bales of hay, each the same distance from it, cannot make a rational choice between them and so starves. This demonstrates the paradox of rationality.'

  I thought about the woman who couldn't leave her house because she'd seen the Beast in her garden. Would she starve? If so would it be because she was too rational, or too irrational?

  'Oh, that reminds me of an even better one,' I said, struggling to remember where I'd read it. 'It's from Thomas Aquinas originally. Aquinas wondered what would happen if God wanted to achieve universal resurrection. In other words, bringing everybody who had ever lived back to life at the same time. What would happen to cannibals, and the people they ate? You couldn't bring them all back at the same time, because the cannibals are made of the people they have eaten. You could have one but not the other. Ha.' I looked at Rowan. 'That's a good example of a paradox.'

  'Rowan's got stories about real-life cannibals,' Bob said, but Conrad was pointedly stroking his beard in response to what I'd said about Aquinas, and so Rowan, like everyone else around the table, waited for him to speak.

 

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