The Fabrications

by Baret Magarian

  ‘My body used to be an abandoned pig sty. Now it’s a temple. I’ve turned it into one.’

  ‘I’ve always been worried that people are too similar, too made up of the same thoughts and ambitions. Won’t we just rob the world of the little individuality that does exist by turning ourselves into synthetic dolls?’

  Oscar’s tone was impassioned. He noticed that others were flocking toward them, taking an interest in the conversation. An intense looking young girl was nodding enthusiastically as Oscar spoke, agreeing with his every word.

  ‘No, no, my little man...’ began the man in the robe.

  The girl interjected, ‘He’s not a little man. He’s a wise man and you should crawl back to the laboratory that spawned you. Come with me, Oscar. This is Oscar Babel, you moron. He’s a visionary, a poet. He knows what the hell is going on with the world, even if you don’t.’

  She gripped Oscar’s arm tightly and gave him a friendly smile. She made Oscar think of some rare, delicate animal that the world had not yet caught and catalogued.

  The man, who was not to be beaten so easily, snapped back with, ‘So, if you’re such a visionary, what are your plans for improving things? What do you suggest, that we all go back to the dark ages, throw out sugary drinks and drugs, and take up witchcraft?’

  At this point a man in a dog collar and balancing several drinks in his hands felt the urge to say something, however irrelevant. The skin on his face was stretched thinly, like a fine pastry.

  He shouted out, a half-spent cigarette bobbing up and down between cracked lips: ‘I’d like to make a point. I want a penis as big as a tree trunk. My mind’s too small; it needs bigger and bigger things to keep it amused, you see. I’m not like you, deep people, profound fuckers. Bigger and bigger chocolate. More and more fireworks, more puffs of the cigarette death machine. I may be deluded. More and more color and carbohydrates and blisters of noise to hide behind, to fill in the big zero.

  ‘More and more stimulus like the body’s become immune to painkillers so that only morphine will do and then not even that. Give me bigger and better pornography, juicier and fatter steaks, sicker and sicker entertainments, more and more bloodletting in the galleries.

  ‘Roll on man, roll fucking on!’

  He staggered off, as if the fact of having spoken had finished him. Oscar moved away, anxious to lose the devotee of plastic surgery. The girl followed, holding his hand affectionately. For someone so young, Oscar thought, she certainly had enough confidence.

  The party had entered a new stage of abandon, having reached in the last few minutes a plateau fueled by raucous, heavily percussive music. People were dancing orgiastically, thrashing about, limbs bending backwards, their spines threatening to snap in the search for greater expressive freedom. The evening looked like it could go on forever, its frantic rhythm never tiring.

  A man in dreadlocks, struggling with a large amplifier, an electric guitar slung around him, was making his way onto the balcony. A small crowd joined him and awaited the solo concert. The girl squinted at Oscar and said earnestly, ‘Shall we leave this party and go somewhere else?’

  Oscar stared, slightly bewildered, into the central pit before him. Again he was struck, as he had been when he first entered the room, with the complexity, richness and mystery of those gathered. He was on the point of answering when someone shouted out his name. He turned to see Ryan Rees leering at him in the distance. The next thing that happened was that a small brown object headed for him. Oscar ducked and caught it. Another and then another catapulted toward him. Oscar caught the first but not the second, which in landing, announced what it was, as it became a mass of shell and fluid, yellow and transparent. An egg. In the distance Rees grinned and moved on with the bawled words, ‘Just keeping you on your toes.’

  He slid away but Oscar could hear his vile laughter issuing from afar. He turned back to the girl but she had gone. He made his way toward the balcony for some air. The guitarist had started playing and the street echoed to the sound of distorted notes and chords which periodically gave way to the wailing of feedback. It was phenomenally loud. Oscar consulted his watch. It was two-thirty. Had he already been there for two-and-a-half hours? Surely not. It’s strange, he thought, how the experience of time is so changeable. Sometimes it’s like treacle; now it’s thundering along and taking me with it. Perhaps it’s all these people, all these personalities who turn time into a black hole, so that my sense of self is wiped out by their sense of selves and the time that normally drags because of my self-consciousness, doesn’t, and I forget myself, because I’ve lost myself in the heat of others.

  A little farther down the balcony two men were occupied in dropping wine glasses onto the street. They kept saying, ‘Beautiful’ and ‘Wow.’ The guitar wailed and screeched. All the while the guitarist wore an expression that suggested he was in considerable pain. The men popped back inside and re-emerged a minute later, this time armed with bottles, glasses and plates. They stacked them up on the stone wall, which was scarcely wide enough to hold them, and they hung there precariously. The pile wobbled from side to side, until one plate took the lead and dragged everything else with it into the void. The shrill sound of breaking echoed across the street with crystal clarity since the guitar had come to a standstill an instant before. Apparently, the men’s joy was boundless. Oscar stared at the mess below and then up at the street lamps, small yellow halos. It was a warm summer night, a perfect night. The phosphorescent moon, one of its corners slightly blunted, the endless expanse of the sky flecked with one or two stars, the sleep of the silent houses, the sleep of those inside them, sealed off from this party that continued to mutate. He felt happy.

  He went back inside. Everyone was a little more sweaty, a little more disheveled and dizzy. There were by now so many people bearing down on each other that it would take several minutes to get from one end of the room to the other. Oscar started shoving his way through. As he got wedged in the mass of alien bodies, pressing intimately against him, he reflected on the evening, his speech, and the uproar it had caused. And as he arrived once more at the point of time he now occupied, he was surprised to find that his thoughts had allowed him to be transported from the party which he, at that same instant, now perceived not only as claustrophobic, but also as empty.

  He stood there, unable to move. The party had come to a halt, had clotted. Oscar’s chin was nuzzled against the chest of a man so tall he had to strain his neck to see his face. As he tried to push through he felt some fingers caressing his hair from behind. He turned around to look. He blinked at the face staring back at him, then realized who it was.

  ‘Anna, how did you get here?’ he shouted above the thick membrane of voices.

  ‘I took a cab with the great Bear,’ she yelled.

  ‘No, I mean, what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m enjoying myself.’

  ‘When did you arrive?’

  ‘About an hour ago. I got bored at the Hilton. I liked your speech. I told the reporters you were either a lunatic or a genius.’ Oscar had to strain to hear even though her lips were practically touching his earlobe.

  ‘Shall we try and go outside?’ he bellowed.

  ‘Sure, I’ll follow you. You seem like an experienced navigator, midshipman Babel.’

  They struggled together and after a crushing interlude during which they crawled past some masked figures ceremoniously clutching spears, they found an opening and walking quickly reached the paneled doors and practically fell into the corridor. Anna started twirling about. She led the way and soon they were outside, crouched on some steps, glancing up at the stone balcony.

  ‘Where’s the Bear?’ he asked.

  ‘When I last saw him he was downing shots of vodka, drinking to each of his fillies, with this paunch king with a stalactite grin. I kept wishing he would freeze. I’m glad I bumped into you.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  ‘Your speech was pretty wild, but what followed it was wilder. Eve
ryone will hate you now.’

  ‘I really hope not.’

  ‘But you’ll be the talk of the town. For a day or two. You chewed the hand that fed you tonight.’

  ‘No I didn’t. I just made a few disparaging remarks about certain people. They can take it; they’re adults.’

  ‘And you, what are you? I think you’re a bit of a puzzle, Mr. Babel. Are you the sensitive type who gets excited by flaxen hair but lets the dishes pile up, goes easy on the mustard and always leaves a tip? Or are you good in a fight; do you hail taxis with a single whistle, drink to excess, and kiss girls and make them cry?’

  ‘I’m whatever you want me to be. I’m your mirror. And a sponge.’

  She threw him a coquettish smile. She seemed bewitching to him now, a poetess in her dollar-bill sarong, the skin of her face made diaphanous by moonlight.

  The street was gradually filling with some of the other party guests and he wondered whether there would soon be a complaint from the neighbors. But, he thought, if the sound of an electric guitar at full volume is all right, then anything probably is.

  ‘You see, where the guru goes the people follow. Pied Piper Oscar.’

  She slotted a cigarette into his mouth and another into hers. She lit her own, inhaled, exhaled, the released smoke turning with her head in that characteristic way. Then she lit Oscar’s cigarette with the glowing end of hers, still poised between her lips.

  ‘You’ve led me to oxygen,’ he remarked.

  Pounding, throbbing music started shaking the building.

  ‘Nicotine tastes better than oxygen. But after this farewell smoke I should probably get back to Ernst.’

  ‘How can you stand it, being at his beck and call?’

  ‘Don’t make a fuss, Oscar; now you sound like David.’

  ‘Who’s David?’

  Her eyes lit up.

  ‘David’s my big sticky pudding, my late night tipple. He’s what I wrap myself up with on chilly nights, my spark plug, toad in the hole, my one-night-stand-for-every-day-of-the-week. Lover, beau, and paramour.’

  ‘You’ve got a boyfriend?’ said Oscar, trying hard to hide his disappointment.

  ‘You’re quick off the mark. And who do you have, Oscar?’

  ‘No one. My recent spell in the spotlight has pushed her away.’

  ‘Jealousy?’

  ‘Oh God, no. Najette would never get jealous. She’s too principled.’

  She laughed mockingly and ruffled up his hair. More and more people were pouring out of the house and Oscar could see that others from the neighboring houses were joining in, clutching bottles of wine which had apparently just been located. The previously deserted street was now teeming with life. He wondered whether the police would also be joining the party shortly.

  ‘What does she do, this turtle dove of yours?’ she demanded.

  ‘She’s a brilliant painter.’

  ‘Has she had much success?’

  ‘She did have an exhibition recently but it wasn’t very...fulfilling.’

  ‘I see. And you’re telling me there isn’t the slightest chance that she’s envious of the fact that you’ve been on television, been quoted in The Guardian, have had your name plastered all over the London Underground, and have just spoken at one of the most prominent art events of the year and caused it to implode?’ She was as assured as a preacher and yet as light as dew.

  ‘Well, she doesn’t know about the last of those of course, but she’s really not like that.’

  ‘She must be a saint.’

  ‘And I’m a fake.’

  ‘Oscar, you’re not a fake. How many people would have had the gumption to stand up and say the things you said tonight?’

  ‘Can we change the subject?’

  ‘Sure. But before we do, promise me you’ll ring her.’

  ‘I promise.’

  Above, the pounding music stopped and babbling voices rose on a wave. Oscar glanced up at the stone balcony. He could make out a face peering down at him. It was Rees. He had his earphones on and was listening to the Kenyan bird medley, drawing sustenance from that shrill soundworld.

  ‘Can we move over there?’ he asked Anna, anxious to be out of the line of Rees’s vision.

  ‘Anything you say,’ she said, winking flirtatiously.

  They found some other steps to perch on, beneath the stone cover of one of the adjacent houses, and watched the crowds milling about. Oscar savored the stillness of their communion, the sense that in words there was communication but in silence there was a deeper intimacy. Very slowly and gently he moved his hand toward Anna’s and held onto it. He felt her fingers wrap around his.

  There was a rumble of thunder. They looked up into the sky, illumined with eerie light at its edges. Thunder but no rain, though rain suddenly seemed quite possible. He wished it would rain; it would be good to feel something cool against his flesh after this sultry night, this night of relentless, blurred impressions.

  ‘Who will water me?’ he asked out loud.

  The thunder roared again like a dinosaur caged in some remote chamber of the sky. This time it was louder and people turned their heads, shed some of the skins of intoxication, held their breath. The semi-delirious figures, swigging bottles of beer and speaking volubly, creating an ambient buzz of sound, had transformed the avenue into a pleasure dome. Despite the fact that it was the middle of the night it might as well have been day and the idea of sleep remained just an idea; indeed it had already been established that this night was to be sleepless, was to be a series of leaps from one snatched pleasure to another.

  The first drops of rain started to fall. There was an almighty flash of lightning.

  A moment later the cloudburst, the deluge had happened. In seconds the rain was forming swirling rivers that flowed from the pavement, ran into the gutters, seemed to churn the cobblestones. Oscar stared, enraptured by the criss-crossed, fractured lines, straining to see beyond the meshes in the storm’s giant net.

  From where they sat, protected on the steps, Oscar and Anna imagined that everyone would rush back indoors in a confused bid for shelter. But instead, the numberless throng, with a collective yell, threw its arms up in the air and was instantly drenched. They danced and turned and clutched each other and opened their mouths to receive the streams of water hurtling toward them. Now Oscar and Anna, unable to resist, joined the loops of bodies claiming the road for themselves. Oscar looked around at the drenched, exhausted faces; for once he could cling to what drew him toward them, and not to what forced him apart. There was still something waiting for him, he knew, there was still some alchemy hidden in the shadows. “It’s up to you now,” Bloch had said. The rain was falling harder than ever, and every now and then lightning flashed, creating equal amounts of doom and wonder. The street had been sieged, sabotaged by irreverent life. Daylight seemed to be an age away. Instead it was the trajectory of the present which everyone was locked onto, as sensation climbed higher and higher into a place stripped of cares.

  So this is life, Oscar thought.

  III

  THE ORGY

  18

  After the party Oscar’s existence evolved and mutated and regressed in different ways; he felt as if he was moving through a hurricane which uprooted him of his bearings, possessions, certainties. He felt as if, instead of walking, he was always running. He felt as though a fierce wind was slamming into his face and rushing down through his half-opened mouth down his gullet into his lungs, causing him to swell with euphoria; but then as that wind subsided and left his body he sagged and flopped into a place of stupefaction. The earth was turning and he was turning with it, but stripped of the gravity which kept others securely grounded in their lives, where the certainty of sunrise ushered in other, countless, certainties, like a loving husband or wife, or a well-peeled orange, or a carefully clutched and presented bus ticket.

  Many things now happened in quick succession.

  Firstly, he was both vilified and celebrated in the press fo
r his performance at the banquet. He was now visible in a way he had never been in his life. Secondly, he was moved into a hotel in Chelsea. With his sticky fingers Ryan Rees plucked him from the squalor of his bedsit and deposited him into fully blown, unreal luxury. Oscar said good-bye to Mr. Grindel who agreed to forward his mail. His landlord’s parting words were, ‘I shall miss telling you of my love, Mr. Babel.’ Oscar thought: I won’t miss hearing about her.

  The reason Rees was willing to put him up at the hotel was because he felt Oscar now needed to be more centrally based and to be associated with a glamorous residence. Visiting journalists would be treated royally in royal surroundings.

  And the third thing that happened was that he became obsessed with Tristan and Isolde.

  The living room overlooked the King’s Road and from the tenth floor Oscar could virtually see its entire length, which simply wasn’t possible while he was walking down it. It was stirring with life: shoppers hopping from butchers to supermarkets to delicatessens, stopping for coffee breaks at the Stockpot; devotees of High Street fashions appearing as listless, moving emblems of color – figures swathed in handkerchief neckline dresses and chiffon shirts, leather jackets and green jersey trousers, silver hoop earrings and purple sandals – receding into tiny points, and then being replaced, as it were, by more prospective candidates for the most beautiful person on the street, until clusters of slowly moving rollerbladers eclipsed them with the grace of their motion, making Oscar envious, since their acrobatics turned existence into a nonchalant game, a sport to be played in perpetual sunshine. But as he further considered them, some half glimpsed sight of strife or friction – a quarreling couple outside the Cafe Picasso, tortured by the specter of infidelity; a screaming driver blocked by a detested rival; the homeless in their patches all but invisible to the shoppers, fashion slaves, rollerbladers, and drivers – made him forget his envy and leave aside his longing to waft through life like an idiot.