As they sat in the packed auditorium, Oscar wasn’t really concentrating on the play. The intense dialogue, the murky lighting, the moments of desperate lust served only to create a transparent screen through which he discerned his life.
In the intermission Bloch managed to buy them both a drink after a titanic struggle that required him to exercise all his skill and cunning in order to attract the attention of a single, frantic barman. They stood yelling in a corner, trying to be heard above the din generated by the crowd, which had miraculously managed to squeeze itself into the tiny bar.
‘I’m going to leave the cinema. I know I’ve said that before but this time I’m serious.’
‘What will you do?’ Bloch yelled.
‘Not sure – I’ve got plans.’
‘Are you enjoying the play?’
‘It’s a bit morbid, don’t you think? I’m not really in the mood. I’m more interested in that story about me. How’s that coming along? Are you happy with it?’
For an infinitesimal time Oscar had the impression Bloch was no longer there with him. His body, his clothes, remained, but the living, breathing entity contained within had been suspended. He might have been a waxwork model. Then the moment passed and the spark of life was restored.
‘It’s...different,’ he bawled. ‘I’ve drawn on my own personality. I brought what I’ve got so far. Two chapters. Thought you might like to have a look.’
Bloch reached into an inner pocket and produced some neatly folded, typewritten sheets. A voice on the intercom stated that the second half of the performance would begin in five minutes. Oscar ignored it and began to read.
While Oscar read, Bloch glanced around the bar. The throng was well-groomed. People were laughing and screeching and alcohol drove conversation with a merciless whip. After a climactic moment in which voices collectively forced out an ear-splitting squeal, bodies began to drift away, trying to forge a painless path back to the auditorium. At last only the hardened drinkers remained. Bloch turned back to watch Oscar reading. He seemed to have entered an impenetrable cocoon. As Bloch studied his face Oscar’s features formed an unfamiliar pattern. At the same time Bloch felt his own face wilting as a flower does in an oppressive sun.
‘We have to go or we’ll miss the second half,’ he muttered.
‘You go,’ said Oscar, without looking up. ‘I’ll join you later.’
As Bloch moved he felt his legs grow heavy. He stared at the floor; it was slowly separating into a double image. He found his seat in a cold sweat, seized with dizziness. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief. It was drenched in sweat. What’s wrong with me? he thought. Eventually the dizziness passed and he became distracted by the play. The ghost of the murdered woman was incredibly eerie; she was made of mist, hair flowing down her back like fleece drawn from snow.
At last Oscar returned, quietly took his seat and whispered in Bloch’s ear.
‘Your story is strangely fascinating. But the strangest thing is how it resembles what’s been going on in my life recently. We’ll have to talk about this later. I’m going to have to go; I’m too excited to sit through this. I’m going for a swim.’
‘What – now?!’
‘There were some flyers in the bar. An all-night pool. Just opened, down the road. The Roman Leisure Center.’
A man with a double chin asked them to be quiet.
‘What about swimming trunks?’ Bloch whispered, straining for an even lower volume.
‘They’re giving away free gym wear, according to the flyers, so I can use a pair of shorts. And there’s a car in the pool.’
‘What?’
This time the man demanded silence from them. Bloch apologized, produced a piece of paper and scribbled: WHY’S THERE A CAR IN THE POOL?
Oscar snatched the paper and wrote: THE CENTER’S BEING SPONSORED BY SOME CAR COMPANY. IT’S AN ADVERTISING GIMMICK – PEOPLE CAN FRONT CRAWL THROUGH IT. SOUNDS INTERESTING. THEY’VE LAID ON OXYGEN CYLINDERS. WANT TO COME?
‘No, I’m staying,’ Bloch whispered.
‘Fair enough. But if you change your mind, you know where to find me.’
‘I’m staying,’ said Bloch emphatically.
‘Either go or stay, but for God’s sake, shut up,’ the disgruntled theater-goer growled, his double chin quivering like a jelly on a plate slammed down upon a floral table.
But eventually Bloch didn’t stay either.
He found a deserted cafe on Upper Street with so many posters that they formed a second layer of wallpaper. He ordered a cup of strong black coffee which he knocked back so quickly he almost scalded himself. This story, he thought to himself, is turning into something strange. I have to tell him I’m not really happy with the idea of going on with it. It’s too bad if he’s invested lots of hope in the damn thing. After all, the story was just an idea.
As he was thinking about how best to erase it from his life he felt some fingers tapping lightly on his shoulder and turned around, half expecting to find Oscar next to him.
‘It’s Mr. Bloch, isn’t it?’
The owner of the fingers went by the name of Webster. Bloch had recently bought a silver teapot from him at his antiques stall on Portobello Road. This had triggered a faltering but pleasant conversation which eventually morphed into a monologue by Bloch, fueled by five pints of beer guzzled in The Earl of Lonsdale pub. As Bloch’s bladder swelled and ballooned he set out an intoxicated vision of utopia, which entailed marooning on a desert island all politicians, investment bankers, writers of memoirs and tabloid journalists who would eventually consume one another in a gigantic act of cannibalism or have their heads shrunken by voodoo priests.
Webster was clutching a bulging plastic bag and wore a badly knotted cravat and waistcoat, a dozen colors wrapped within it in an unruly mix.
‘Oh hello, Webster. How’s the pottery?’
‘Porcelain. Japanese Arita porcelain. Are you alone?’
‘I’ve just walked out of a theater. The play was making me nervous.’
‘Plays? What a royal bore. Can I join you? I’m whipped. I was on my way to Camden Passage – to take delivery of twelve Moroccan saucers.’
After this disconnected exchange Webster sat down, with much negotiation. His flabby face seemed to reflect his slumberous mind. During a conversation his remarks were always a little to the edge of things, never quite managing to embody the precision of relevance. This slightly displaced quality was reflected in the fact that when he spoke he always did so out of the corner of his mouth, his lips drooping at one end and making him mumble. This habit had been formed when he was a small boy and a female cousin had spied on him urinating – since he had left the door ajar – and announced her presence with hysterical squeals.
After the waitress had served Webster with a cappuccino he turned to her with a bashful smile, and, as if afraid the request would get him into trouble, asked for a piece of coffee cake. He beamed with the anticipation of pleasure.
‘Webster,’ Bloch began, ‘can I ask you a question?’
‘Of course.’
‘What do you think of me?’
Webster wasn’t expecting this and started squirming. He stared into his coffee for a moment, hoping the answer lay within it.
‘Well, I don’t know you that well...I mean...how do you mean? What do you mean when you say...I mean?’
Bloch blurted out, suddenly desperate to reveal some buried part of himself, ‘You know, sometimes I feel like a chef who travels the world, gathering the finest ingredients, the freshest vegetables, but never manages to start cooking, convinced as he is that something’s always missing – a sprig of parsley, some anchovies, oregano.’
These comments might as well have been made in Japanese for all that Webster followed them. But help was at hand as Webster’s coffee cake now arrived with some degree of ceremony. In an instant he was as breathless as a child presented with a new toy, and in his elation dropped his spoon with a loud clang. As he fished around for it (it seemed t
o have disappeared or at least sped across the floor so that it was beyond his reach) he struck his head under the table. Hollering in pain he emerged looking dazed. Bloch helped him.
‘I’m in pain,’ he spluttered, bulbous tears streaming down his cheeks.
Bloch said, ‘Take it easy.’
The waitress noticed the commotion. She ran some water over a tea towel and walked over. As she did so her foot trod on the spoon, which had reappeared, disfiguring it forever. She applied the wet towel to Webster’s head.
‘Thank you,’ he muttered, his face averted from hers.
The pain began to recede a little.
‘All because of a cake,’ he said. All his joy had fled and could never be recaptured.
While the waitress tended to him her lips rose in a beatific smile and her face at that moment seemed to be the embodiment of a mysterious, unconditional love. As though she had suddenly tapped into, or was now congruent with, an energy that had hitherto been separate from her. Bloch studied her – and this remarkable luminosity – for as long as he could without seeming intrusive.
She said, ‘I’ll just get you another spoon.’
Webster said, ‘No, please. Don’t bother. I don’t want the cake anymore. It brought me bad luck.’
The waitress shrugged – and her transfiguration was at once over. Webster stared at the cake sadly as it floated away, back to where it had come from.
‘That cake got me into trouble,’ he muttered mournfully to himself. ‘I should never have ordered it.’
‘Will you forget that fucking cake!’ Bloch yelled.
‘Sorry, Bloch, it’s just that my head’s sore. In the morning I’ll have a bloody great bump.’
‘So what? Is that what constitutes pain for you? Are you telling me that knocking your head is pain for you? What do you know about pain anyway? The vicious lie they tell us, that life is sweet, that love is a well we can all draw from. That cow Natalie.’
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘I feel lonely. I’m detached from people. I have nothing. Nothing important.’
‘That’s not true Bloch; think of your marriage.’
‘I’m divorced.’
‘Oh yes. Right, it didn’t work out but...’ – he floundered – ‘at least you’ve tasted...a bit of love. We’re all alone. We’re all alone,’ he repeated stupidly.
‘Are we? I’m not convinced. Perhaps I can help Oscar; perhaps I can offer a small contribution to humanity by helping him realize his ambitions. I could have been the love-filled host, offering the fatted calf. I would have been happy so long as I could have gone on speaking. A wind from a foreign clime which made others feel they weren’t alone. But sincerity is so hard to find. Where do you begin? Perhaps by the light of the moon. Perhaps only at night. Or with a voice singing in a chapel. A taste of wine. The morning light of summer. But they fade. They fade and we fade with them.’
Webster took refuge in his coffee again, desperately wishing he were somewhere else. He racked his brains but couldn’t think of a single response to Bloch’s lofty remarks. Fortunately he was not required to give one, as Bloch now posed a reassuringly direct, though completely unexpected question.
‘Fancy going for a swim?’
Apart from the attendant and instructor (who showed people how to use the breathing equipment) Oscar was the only other person at the pool. It was hard to discern him clearly in the low light of the candles mounted around the pool’s rim – another unusual feature of the way in which the car manufacturers, Kazooi-Template, were choosing to present their sponsorship of the center – and his face was periodically submerged in the water as he chugged along mechanically so he didn’t notice Webster’s and Bloch’s muted arrival. It was more or less impossible to distinguish his form from that of somebody else’s. As Bloch regarded that moving supine figure, Oscar’s very anonymity made Bloch’s mind flash back to the moments before their original meeting, when each of them had been strangers to one another, each locked into his separate trajectory until life or fate or nothing at all had pushed them together and their pathways had crossed, like train tracks that run parallel and then weave and converge as speed slackens and gathers. He thought of the billion souls he would never have time to coincide with, the billion encounters he would never know.
Clearly Kazooi-Template was going all out to promote its latest brainchild. The website promised that their latest model, the Tutor Saloon 101, was their greatest creation yet, a car that to all intents and purposes possessed autonomous intelligence. The male owners of this cross between a sentient being and a vehicle could look forward to transfigured social lives, job promotions, and god-like success with women who would surrender their deepest treasures in a somnambulist’s trance.
The manufacturers had run into problems with the Islington Council. The breathing and diving equipment had been procured from DEFTOL, a highly-reputable German firm, then approved by the Health and Safety Executive, and checked by the council’s own health advisers who knew nothing whatsoever about underwater breathing equipment. Then the car itself had been sealed with transparent plastic to ensure that no one would cut themselves on any jagged edges, and clamped down. The council stipulated that an instructor and doctor had to be on hand at all times. Kazooi-Template managed to persuade them that a doctor wasn’t really necessary. A janitor was appointed for maintaining and supervising the candles.
The center had been open now for two days and so far, including Oscar, two people had taken a swim there.
The candles continued to cast different clusters of weird shadows along the tiled walls. When the water was disturbed lines of yellow-blue light formed around the rim of the swimming pool, gigantic ripples of reflected light, which criss-crossed and hovered and flickered, creating a gossamer web of stunning beauty.
Bloch stared, strongly attracted by this dance of light and shadow.
Then he walked over to the edge and peered into the water, making out the blurred outlines of the car that – like a great metallic turtle – sat at the bottom.
Bloch was a very good swimmer, and he had no trouble in diving in and breaking free of the water’s surface, not caring to be saddled with breathing equipment. As he pulsed downwards his languorous body experienced a brief revivification. On approaching the saloon he could see that it had no doors, so entry was possible from all sides. Light glowing from the bottom of the pool created a translucent effect. He drifted into the car from the back and stared at the leather seats and dashboard in bemusement.
Meanwhile, Webster had yet to take the plunge; he was sitting on the side of the pool, feet dangling in the shallow end. Oscar in the meantime had still been swimming up and down methodically, his head all the while concealed in the water. As he reached the end of a length he finally came up for air, spotting Bloch as the latter re-surfaced and began climbing up a metal ladder.
‘Daniel, you’re here! It’s funny; I had a feeling you might change your mind...’
‘I was curious about that car.’ Their voices were thin in the cavernous space.
Bloch didn’t know what else to say, though Oscar’s expectant eyes seemed to be waiting for some great illuminating remark from him. Bloch just stood there, shivering slightly. On getting his breath back, he felt the urge to go under once more. As he passed through the car a second time the glove compartment yawned open. He peered inside. A card was dislodged and floated dreamily toward the driver’s seat. He reached out and grabbed it and came up for air sluggishly. When he held the card up in the light of the candles the three words that he saw there made his brain turn somersaults.
ART CAN KILL
‘Oscar, got to get going,’ he spluttered apocalyptically, globules of saliva flying from his lips. Oscar watched him in alarm. ‘Got to get going...never should have come...in the first place.’ The spittle that was being ejected out of his mouth abruptly reminded Bloch of all the liquids that stirred in tenebrous currents beneath the surface of bodily flesh; a disturbed recognit
ion came that the physical form could revert back to amniotic non-existence, was not invulnerable, was not fixed. Bones and flesh and tendons could be smashed into a jelly, could themselves be liquefied.
Webster, still rooted on the far side of the pool, becoming, as it were, more and more of a permanent fixture there, peered up and asked, ‘Do you have to get going now, Bloch?’ as though seeking to clear up some elusive mystery.
‘Daniel, wait a bit, I’ve got to talk to you,’ said Oscar.
‘Do they have hair dryers in this shit-hole?’ Bloch demanded, not remotely interested in an answer, throwing out the question just to give himself something tangible to latch onto. Oscar caught up with him, took him by the hand and led him toward the changing rooms while Webster muttered, ‘Where are you going? What’s going on?’ They ignored him, found a wooden bench and planted themselves on it, puddles of water widening around their feet. Oscar studied Bloch’s body in fascination, as he had never previously set eyes on its mottled, pallid contours. Bloch seemed to collect himself and took some deep breaths.
‘What the hell does it mean...Art can kill?’
Oscar said nothing. He had the impression Bloch was on the point of getting up to leave, so, in reverential tones, he declared, ‘That story that you’ve dreamt up is absolutely great.’
‘It wasn’t very polite of you to leave the theater like that.’
‘I’m sorry. I was feeling excited.’
‘So you came for a dip...in this chamber of horrors.’
‘The first time in a year I’ve taken exercise; it’s a good sign. I’m so glad you came.’
‘So you liked what I wrote?’
‘I love it. It’s so...different, from your other stuff. But the resemblances are astonishing. Someone I just met suggested I take up nude modeling, as in the story. And you know about my cat, of course. I wonder how you managed to do that.’
The Fabrications Page 5