I exhale. Well, okay, that’s a different story perhaps.
And then I think, No, actually, it isn’t. The serpent is like the parrot, and like the bird it’s punished. All of these old stories are part of the same protean mass – or so at least it seems with my tetrahydrocannabinolized brain, which, for some neurological reason that I’ve never bothered to look into, finds connections in everything.
The bird is still watching me intently. I go inside, find the remains of a packet of biscuits, and empty the crumbs out on the table. It flaps across to gather them up with its beak and its fat grey tongue.
‘You’re not a god, my friend,’ I say to it, standing back politely by the door to let it concentrate on the crumbs, ‘you’re just a rather smart bird.’
But I do think gods are real. They too are protean, far more so than they’re presented as in the various mythologies we’ve been brought up with, dividing and merging all the time, but they do really exist. They inhabit human minds – and maybe parrot minds too, for all I know, or the minds of pale river creatures – in the same kind of way that minds inhabit flesh.
I will summon them now, I think, relighting the joint and inhaling deeply. They’d be company of a sort.
‘So we’re agreed on what we’re against,’ I say. ‘But that’s the easy part. What exactly are we in favour of?’
I’m sitting at the kitchen table in my apartment, talking politics with my two flatmates, Rémy and Jezebel, and a couple of friends of Jez’s who’ve come to dinner. It’s a slightly shabby apartment, but reasonably spacious, conveniently near the university, and – this is my favourite part – it has a balcony that directly overlooks the famous Botanic Gardens, with its shady streams, pools, banks and rocks beneath those enormous rainforest trees that we could, if we chose to look, see right now from our window.
The others start to enumerate things: better pay for workers, nationalization of certain monopolies such as the power industry, legal protections for indigenous people and other minorities, reduction of the size of the armed forces, indictment of certain generals implicated in civil rights abuses in the interior, higher taxes and the closure of tax loopholes, free healthcare, investment in universities, a constitutional guarantee of academic freedom, proper sanitation and electricity supplies in the shanty towns, citizen’s councils to oversee the police, closure of certain newspapers that are controlled by and run for the benefit of the oligarch class . . .
‘Okay,’ I say, ‘this is a kind of shopping list of various demands that have been made over recent years and are familiar to all of us, but we’re always talking, aren’t we, about the need to change the structure, and none of these represent a structural change. What I want to know is: what is the new structure we’re going to put in place?’
Jez’s friends glance at each other, eyebrows slightly raised. I regret that, because I find one of them rather attractive – his name is Hasdrubal, but Jez just calls him Dru – and had wanted to make a good impression.
‘I feel a bit embarrassed about asking the question,’ I add. ‘I talk all the time to my students about structural change, and yet I don’t really know what I mean by it.’ I look across at Jez’s friend Dru. ‘Quite a confession, I know, but there it is. And I wonder if perhaps there’s some fundamental thing I’ve missed that everybody else knows?’
It soon becomes apparent that there isn’t some fundamental thing that I’ve missed, because none of them can really answer my question. They speak in generalities, platitudes even – ‘we need a society that is run for people and not for profit’, ‘we need real democracy’ – but they don’t have a blueprint for how it would work, and, when pressed, dismiss as ‘state capitalism’ the only obvious alternative to the economic system we currently have, knowing as they do that, when tried in practice, it failed to achieve the utopia that had been its objective. It’s almost as if we need to keep our destination in soft focus, for fear that it wouldn’t stand sharper scrutiny.
Eventually I give up on trying to establish where it is we think we should be headed, and instead ask how we should build the alliance that would be necessary to move things on from where they are. But to this question too the answers are vague and even platitudinous and seem to focus almost entirely on what other people should do or not do. In short, my companions don’t know any more than I do, and it strikes me that they – we – are oddly uninterested even in the question. The important thing, it seems, is that we believe the right things, not that we do the right things. In theology, I believe, this is known as sola fide.
Anyway, pretty soon we’ve all more or less forgotten my questions and, after returning briefly to the more familiar territory of lamenting the iniquities of the present system, we move on to matters of more personal interest like the appalling state of the institutions for which we work, and various currently fashionable topics in the arts.
Rémy gets up to make some coffee and suggests we adjourn from the table to the soft chairs a few metres away in our smallish but rather comfortable sitting area.
‘I’m going to have a quick smoke on the balcony,’ I say as we all stand up, ‘if anyone cares to join me. It’s worth a look at the view if you haven’t seen it.’
One of Jez’s friends does come out with me, but not the one I was hoping for. This one is called Melita and, while I dare say a perfectly nice person, does not attract me at all, and strikes me as a little prim and self-congratulatory.
‘We really don’t know, do we?’ I say.
She has gone to the railing. The night sounds of the city rise from the streets below: honking horns, the purr of a passing tram, the noisy laughter of a bunch of young men emerging from a bar. The Botanic Gardens are in darkness except for the outer leaves of the trees just inside the fence. ‘We really don’t know what?’
‘We don’t really know where we want to get to or how to get there.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ she says. ‘I’m very clear in my own mind.’
And that’s the end of that conversation. I often feel that I’m trying to talk with people about the beliefs and priorities of our little tribe as just one of many different ways of making sense of life, one of many little pools of light in the darkness, but that they either don’t understand what I mean or refuse to see any validity in this way of looking at things, since they view our tribe’s position as simply the truth, or at least the most advanced version of the truth that currently exists, and everyone else’s as just plain wrong. I have the impression, in fact, that many people are quite threatened by the idea that they are not standing in the sole true light, but only in one of many different small and dimly lit patches, I suppose because to acknowledge this means also acknowledging the darkness that surrounds us all. It’s not even that unusual to hear colleagues and acquaintances expressing the view that certain people should actually be punished for their problematic views, or at any rate prohibited from expressing them. Myself I just can’t see how we can be so sure of being right when we are so manifestly unclear of either our goal or the means of getting there. But there is a very ancient school of thought, I know, that says that you can make a statement true by forbidding anything that might contradict it. And there’s no denying there’s something in that. There are, after all, around the world, many millions of very devout believers in various faiths, whose ancestors were converted by force. Our own indigenous people, for instance. And very probably my own forebears, who must have been converted at some point to Christianity from one or another of the old pantheons. I finish rolling my little one-skin joint, light it, and, leaning on the railing beside her, offer Melita first go, which she declines with a polite smile.
I take a puff. ‘They lock the gardens at night these days. I always think that it’s at its best when you can’t get in. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love it in the daytime too, but it gets pretty crowded, and, however hard I try, I can’t help noticing that it’s really quite a small park that I can walk right across in less than ten minutes. But look a
t it now! A bit of street light on the outer leaves, but behind that . . . mystery. You would still hear the traffic if you were in there, but it would seem like it was a whole world away. I often come out here at night just to look at it. It’s like a portal to another world.’
‘I signed the petition against closing the gates. It was an entirely spiteful act by the city government. This was a place where homeless people could sleep in at least comparative safety.’
Irritated, I want to ask her whether she proposes also to open the doors of the National Gallery, where she works as an assistant curator, since that would surely be a much more comfortable place to spend the night, particularly in the rainy season. I may be wrong, given the impossibility of completely separating one’s understanding of the motives of others from one’s own projections, but it seems to me that what Melita is really doing here is punishing me for my awkward questions earlier by highlighting my shallowness and lack of concern for the marginalized.
But, after all, she is Jez’s friend, and I am a co-host of this little party. And what’s more, I know that I recognize Melita’s ploy (or think I do) precisely because it’s one I often use myself. I regularly point out to others the things they’ve failed to notice because of their position of privilege but which I, with my greater sensitivity, both see and care about. So I grunt something that I hope will sound vaguely like I am accepting her rebuke without my having to actually do so, and take a final puff on the joint before stubbing it out.
‘Well, thank you for showing me the view,’ Melita says. ‘You’re quite right, it’s really rather special.’ And she heads back inside to join the others.
*
It was a mistake to climb to the top of this rock. All I can see from it in every direction are trees stretching to the horizon with the occasional slight rise and fall but no distinctive features at all. The rock itself, smooth and weathered, could be anywhere. It could be an asteroid. It could be on Mars. You could find it in some polar landscape, or in the middle of a desert. It is simply a lump of that particular kind of hard stuff of which the solid parts of the universe are made. And now I’ve missed my chance to go back into the cave in search of more food, because if it was risky then, it’s surely even riskier now when so much more time has elapsed for Carlo and the others to return from wherever they holed up while the army was in the area.
I say the army, and I’ve been assuming it was the army all this time, but it occurs to me now that the skirmish that killed Guinevere could equally well have been a quarrel within their own faction, or between their faction and one of the rival revolutionary groups, some of which, I know, have become more like organized criminal gangs, or proto-states, perpetuating themselves by demanding tribute in money or in kind from local villagers, and sometimes a certain percentage of their children to serve as a kind of janissary corps, in exchange for ‘protection’. In which case, of course, the people who shot Guinevere would be as much a danger to me as Guinevere’s comrades. Even the army might turn out to be dangerous if they decided that I was lying and was a terrorist myself. And I’ve heard that some formations within the army have, to various degrees, gone rogue, and become players in their own right in the game of factions and gangs.
The climbing has distracted me somewhat from the awfulness of my situation. But now I am alone with myself again. My fingers were raw before I started but now are red and excruciatingly painful. I’m beginning to feel hungry. I have no idea which direction to head in. I feel in my pocket for the little plastic disc, and look at Guinevere’s gentle parents, trying to absorb some comfort from the warmth of their gaze, though it wasn’t meant for me, they don’t even know of my existence, and they would no doubt be entirely happy that I should die out here in the jungle, of hunger, or septicaemia, or a bullet wound, if that would restore to them their strong and passionate daughter, who did them the honour not only of absorbing their beliefs but of taking them seriously. I eat one of Guinevere’s mint sweets, washed down with a swig of warm and slightly plasticky water, and smoke one of her cigarettes.
I’ll head to one of the places where the ground goes down a bit. There should be a stream there, with any luck, where I can at least drink, and perhaps catch a fish. And streams flow downhill towards larger streams, or lakes, or rivers, don’t they, though admittedly in this sort of country you can’t rule out cliffs and waterfalls, or streams disappearing into sinkholes.
I feel a certain unexpected calmness. I have broken out of my coop. I am back under the open sky, and away from the horror of that broken doll that had once been Guinevere. Now I have a destination as well. Also, having just absorbed some sugar, I am deeply savouring the hit of nicotine as it crosses from my lungs into my bloodstream.
I’ll have one cigarette a day, I decide. It’ll be my treat, something to look forward to. One’s idea of luxury expands and contracts to fit what’s available.
‘Well,’ I say out loud, ‘you wanted to be a character in a novel.’
And, to my own surprise, this actually makes me laugh.
It’s obvious that before nightfall, I will be in a completely different place, a place of hunger, and sickness quite likely, and certainly pain. In a few days, very possibly, I will be dying or dead. But that will be then, and this is now, so why make myself miserable about it? What help would that be to my future self? And why, in any case, should my future self have precedence over my present one?
The first gods to appear are Jesus and Dionysus, or so I like to call them. Jesus wears sandals, of course, and has the earnest look of the politically aware. ‘Every soul is a fragment of the same divine light,’ he says. ‘This is why happiness is indivisible, and selfishness and egocentrism make no sense. When I call on you to love your neighbour, or offer you my blood, or ask you to turn your cheek, all I’m really doing is asking you to recognize this truth. Suffering must be accepted. Just to shrug your shoulders and let others bear the burden is to deny what you really are.’
Jesus opens his hands, offering his thoughts for me to hear if I have ears to hear them. He isn’t really just a single figure, but a multitude, his face constantly flickering from one form to another like a TV set on which someone is constantly changing channels.
Dionysus blows a loud raspberry and laughs. He is a merry, beautiful boy in my imagination, but he’s flickering, too, his aspect shifting from cheerful to spaced-out to cruel. ‘For Christ’s sake, Christ, why can’t you lighten up? There’s suffering in the world, I grant you that, but you don’t make it any easier by banging on and on about it. There’s also pleasure and that redeems everything. Happy people don’t even need to ask what the point of it all is. It’s only when we’re sad that we ask that question. So seek pleasure! Seek joy! Seek delight! Why would anyone in their right mind welcome suffering?’
Apollo hovers over the water. His face is severe, though it’s too bright to look at for any length of time. ‘They’re both wrong,’ he says. ‘Pleasure is trivial. Even the simplest animals know pleasure. And as for Jesus here, with his sentimental nonsense about the equal value of every soul, we all know that’s not true. Some people are large and shining, others small and insignificant. Why do you think we have the words “bright” and “dull”? Life is intelligence. The brightest are the best.’
Aphrodite sits on the railing. She isn’t like her statues at all, fuller in the figure, and merrier, and much, much sexier. ‘Who cares about intelligence?’ she says and instantly melts me. No one, whether man or woman, or some other sex entirely, could hear that voice without feeling desire. ‘Are you seriously trying to say that what’s important in life is being able to solve very difficult maths problems, or have penetrating insights into the cultural significance of modernism in the arts? Give me a fucking break, Ap! Dio is quite right, it’s all about pleasure, and pleasure is about the body. And especially it’s about bodies together, warm bodies touching other bodies, bodies caressing and stroking other bodies, bodies entering others and being entered. It’s about stimulati
on, and ecstasy, and sweet satiation.’
‘Really?’ sighs Mother Mary. ‘Wouldn’t a life that was all about that be like being a horny teenager for ever? Surely you can see how boring that would—’
‘Just sit and watch the river,’ says another god, whose face I can’t see, whose name I don’t know, and whose gender I can’t tell, but who is very familiar to me all the same. ‘Just sit and watch the river. All the rest is—’
‘Oh, do give over,’ Jesus scoffs. ‘There’s a reason no one knows your name, my friend, while most of the world knows mine. Whatever followers you have are nobodies. They never amount to anything, they never reach any position of power or responsibility, they achieve nothing.’
‘And right there,’ says the god whose face I can’t see, ‘is the reason you’ve been adopted by rapacious empires for the last two thousand years. You make a drama out of life. You make it into this big pompous story full of noise, and struggle, and suffering, and pathos, and heroism. Heaven forbid that human beings should just quietly enjoy the experience of being alive.’
Dionysus has been following this exchange with amusement but now glances at me. ‘You need to choose between us, you know. You can maybe follow two of us, or perhaps even three – life is more fun with a few contradictions – but it makes no sense to try to follow us all.’
‘Well, how about that!’ Jesus reels back in mock amazement. ‘Dio finally says something that I agree with!’
‘The rest of them are just sublimations of me,’ says Aphrodite. ‘The sooner you realize that, the sooner—’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Apollo interrupts. ‘Just listen to yourself for once. Can you not hear how crassly reductionist that is? And above all, how infantile!’
‘You have to choose,’ Dionysus tells me. And all their various godheads, clustering round me, remind me of a big shiny bunch of balloons, each one a different colour. You can pick whichever one you want, your father tells you as he takes out his wallet, but you know that none of them will look half as good when separated from the bunch, and none of them is the colour you really want, because that colour apparently doesn’t exist.
Tomorrow Page 6