‘I feel very honored to be here tonight,’ he said, speaking into his radio mike, his voice reverberating with fearful clarity through the speakers.
There were whistles and yells, more applause, this time localized. It was carrying on. They love me. How can they love me when they don’t even know me? The flight of reality was locked into an unknown trajectory. But now his nerves had vanished without trace, replaced by insane well-being, reckless nonchalance. He was firing on the electricity the crowd had mustered and plugged into his skull.
But then just as he was about to start, without warning, fanfare, or introduction, another voice began speaking. It had a faintly American accent and it made unintelligible sounds.
‘Swa yala huuuu cur mee. Eeeighhurr e wee ooo wee.’
This eventually gave way to precisely articulated chuckles. There was stunned silence. Heads turned, interrogative glances spread from person to person, eyes goggled. But no one knew where this waxwork laughter was coming from or what was provoking it. When Oscar tried speaking into his microphone he found his voice was no longer amplified. At last the cackling subsided.
‘This is what happens when you look for meaning, ladies and gentlemen,’ said the voice thickly. ‘Darkness falls. Oscar Babel is an impostor and you must not listen to him. He is not noumenal; he is phenomenal. I am noumenal. Don’t listen to him. Listen to me; let me take you someplace else. What do you look for? Do you look for a silver lady under a poplar tree? Do you look for a constant friend? A life without end? What do you crave? A stolen kiss? An end to all your pain? I have nothing for you except a – ’
The voice got no further. There was a sound of scuffling, something knocked violently against something else, there was a sharp cry of pain and nothing more was heard from Vernon Lexicon, who had managed to creep unnoticed into the sound booth, overpower the technician, take down the fader for Oscar’s microphone and bring up the fader for the announcements microphone. At that moment he was receiving another of those ritualistic, savage beatings he had come to know and even love during the course of his troubled life.
Oscar declared, after a pause, ‘One of my detractors; let’s hope he finds his silver lady and won’t bother us again.’
The evil chuckling having run its course, collective and disproportionate belly laughter now replaced it. Oscar felt rather sorry for Lexicon but at the same time he knew his response was what the audience expected from him – a dismissive levity which showed he was in control and wasn’t daunted. And Lexicon’s attempt at sabotage, far from undermining the public’s faith in Oscar, had only strengthened it. He mopped his brow, feeling the heat.
Some layers of clothing, he noticed, were being peeled off. Jackets made way for shirts, blouses for slips. Given the hour, things should have been cooling off. Perhaps a meteor was headed for the Earth; the heat clung like some invisible oil to the pores of the skin; perspiration no longer seemed to serve any function. Evenly tanned skin revealed itself provocatively. He tried to avert his gaze as the sinuous arms of sinuous women were gradually exposed.
After waiting a moment more, waiting for the shuffling to cease and the bodies to settle down he began speaking in a measured, confident voice, accompanied by a physical language which expressed a mixture of poise and energy.
‘I wonder for what percentage of our lives our eyes are truly open? I daresay it all adds up to a very small figure, maybe even negligible.’
Women fanned themselves with whatever lay to hand; a few people were using cushions to shield their heads from the sun; others were taking swigs from bottles of water and wine. He tried to summon up a tone of sincerity and fervor so that his next words would take another step up the ladder to the summit of the speech, and its final perorations, a long way off.
‘How did humans, who have minds which might be infinite, come to see in such a confined way? Here’s a tentative answer. An external voice seduced us, a voice calling and coercing with images of greed, in the dreary patter of consumerism. Man makes compromises like bees make honey; his natural state is one of passivity: neither good nor bad, merely indifferent. And though he can momentarily be moved by a face, by suffering, he’d rather slouch back in his armchair and go on switching channels. Or beat his brother, or speak viciously of his colleague while turning to smile at him as he passes him in the corridor, or turn trees into concrete, or turn language into jargon, or turn the earth into a sea of blood, or license murder in the cause of religion...or politics...or money...even freedom.
‘And yet, even today, even in the current mire of fashionable nihilism, it’s still possible to catch glimpses of those moments of subtle promise which stand outside of time, which seem to play tricks on it, accessed through art. And meditation. And love. Or, failing that, narcotics. Gateways to the divine, that whole spectrum of unnamable flowering which has been marginalized, told to take its leave because it apparently serves no useful purpose, does not enhance Productivity or create Profit.’
He was finding himself as an orator, his hands crossing and opening over his chest dramatically, his head tilted in sincerity.
‘Plato’s forms, Hinduism’s Brahman share an insistence on a world of ultimate reality beyond the confines of our changing, inconstant marketplace. And the one idea that all religions have in common is that of transcendence, of touching an undifferentiated reality beyond the boredom and dreariness of man-made reality.’
He took refuge in another pause. The audience still wasn’t relaxed. He wondered if he was boring them all to tears. Or was it just the heat? Eyes peered and squinted at him. Reams of sweat poured from him so he had continually to mop his brow with a handkerchief. He wondered if the earth was about to catch fire. He imagined this must have been what it felt like to ride in the shaft of an active volcano, on the verge of becoming mucilaginous liquid. He glanced at the sun, collapsing in blood-scorched glory.
‘I would like to offer a few thoughts on how to live,’ said Oscar.
Near the outermost ring of the circle, her legs telescoped up to her chin, feeling out of place and ill at ease, was Lilliana. She watched Oscar intently, more interested in the change she perceived in him than in his words. She noted his grandiloquent gestures as his arms reached out with a preacher’s ardor. She was gently amused by his preened, theatrical appearance and found it hard to take him seriously in a tunic. But looking at him now, after all this time, she missed his aura of innocence; in her eyes his worldliness, his success had made him less sympathetic. She knew she would be reluctant to speak to him afterwards because there was a gulf between them now. He was famous and she wasn’t. And could she be sure they’d be able to converse naturally and easily as they had before? She glanced around at the expectant audience, and, turning to Alastair, whose hand was in hers, whispered, ‘Do you mind if we get out of here?’
Alastair did very much mind, but as he looked into Lilliana’s ardent eyes he abandoned his resistance and they slid away inconspicuously.
His insurance company had offered him alternative accommodation while his house was being restored to its previous condition, but he told them he had no need of it since he was living with Lilliana now. He gave her the opportunity to explore commanding impulses too often overlooked by her. She stilled the writhing of his demons. Since meeting her, his disappointments did not run so deeply; he could relinquish his cravings, and those perceived injustices he might have once brooded over were forgotten.
Shadows began climbing around them, and as they drifted away their happiness found reinforcement in everything, in the trees and their veins and arteries, in the gravelly paths, in the way he could gaze on the edges of her smile and the way she invited him to gaze by smiling.
They circled around and came eventually to a round pond. Patches of water flashed with dappled sunlight. The deck chairs were stacked;the ice cream vans were packed and gone. A group of toddlers was scattered around the pond with their fathers, their sailing boats steadily advancing across the water, powered by radio-controlled
boxes which they eagerly punched with small thumbs. Lilliana crouched down to study one little boy’s face. He was lost in delight when the voyage showed signs of wobbly progress, and utterly despondent, his bottom lip curled all the way down, when the boat capsized as he applied too much speed. One little girl hopped up to Lilliana, having decided she was interesting.
‘You’re nice,’ she observed in a tiny, croaky voice.
‘Well, thank you very much.’
The girl pulled a hair clip out of her hair with a big, bright ladybird fastened onto it. She started waving it around.
‘Do you like my hair clip – my mummy buyed it for me.’
‘I like it very much.’
The little girl smiled an ecstatic smile which encompassed her whole face, turned and waddled off chaotically.
‘Children just make up their own rules, don’t they?’ she said. ‘Come on. I want to show you my favorite spot.’
Lilliana led the way down to a lime-tree enclosure adjacent to a white, rectangular building, locked and silent. Within was a wall of bushes and she found an opening in them and pulled Alastair toward the spot she was already perching on. They were looking into an exquisite garden, a series of rectangles within rectangles, separated alternately by narrow columns of grass and beds of dahlias and roses. The heart of the garden was a central square of water where three fountains were hissing. Little islands of funnel-shaped leaves floated on the water’s surface.
‘This is the Sunken Garden. It’s modeled on the Tudor garden at Hampton Court. Isn’t it pretty?’
Alastair nodded. A couple of bumblebees were hovering heavily around some daffodils. Taking his hand, Lilliana very carefully directed them toward the water; they stepped over spraying shrubs and came eventually to the paved ground which framed the window of clear water. They sat there together and listened.
She threaded her fingers through his hair, leaning close into his shoulder, her head nestled there. She whispered, ‘These hands have healing power, my love.’
‘Why? Do I need to be healed?’
‘I’m responsible for you now.’
‘I thought it was the other way around: that once a person saves someone’s life he’s responsible for that life forever.’
‘That’s a Chinese saying isn’t it?’ The movement of her fingers slowed. ‘That night, the night of the fire – ’ Lilliana began in a low, husky voice.
‘I went from hell to heaven,’ he interrupted matter of factly.
She re-commenced the threading of his hair, her fingers magnetic fibers.
‘I never thought I’d be able to give myself to someone, with such little fuss,’ she reflected. ‘It was really natural wasn’t it? It’s funny, all these years I’ve been alone, I’ve turned love into something so tangled, I think I’ve put all my fears in its one basket. But that night they all just evaporated. I can’t understand it. Life’s so unpredictable and beautiful.’
By way of reply he leaned over and kissed her, and she enclosed him in her slender arms.
‘We should go away, you and I,’ he said. ‘Run a seafront restaurant in Tel Aviv; take an elephant ride from Bombay to Cochin. I want to see the Sahara through your eyes.’
‘Why? Do I have better eyesight?’
‘You know what I mean, dummy.’
‘What do we do for money?’
‘I’ve got money. Enough for a year. We can make money on the road. We could start in Istanbul or Marrakech or Cairo. We could wash dishes, wait on tables, teach English. I want to drink red wine in a cockroach hotel, to ride in buses with no windows. I want to see sandstorms; I want to get caught in one and spend three days getting the sand out of my ears and out of yours as well.’
‘I see. You’ve got this all mapped out, then?’
‘Sure. Don’t you want to say good riddance to shopping malls and itemized bills? And CCTV? And newspapers? I want to climb onto a camel and fall off it twenty-seven times.’
‘That might prove painful, but I’d stitch you up; I’d have you up and running. Give the patient a good seeing-to. Us women: Florence Nightingales through and through.’
‘I think women are wonderful. Everyone should own one.’
She started tearing at his stomach with clawing fingers and he doubled up, trying to block the siege of his torso. In the end onslaught and defense collapsed and merged into a giggling union.
Afterwards she murmured, ‘I worry you’ve too romantic a view of camels. Or rather of travel. Perhaps you’re searching for a paradise that doesn’t exist. Or perhaps this garden is it. It’s all in how you look at things, isn’t it?’
An exhausted sigh issued from his core.
‘I don’t know. Maybe I am looking for a purity that’s never existed. But I like to think it does exist in some unmapped corner.’
‘You can find innocence here, too. Purity.’
‘In London? Where people daily drag out their prayer mats to worship money? Where people have become so narcissistic they can’t even go to the shops without grooming themselves for the catwalk?’
‘Isn’t it important to look your best?’
‘Not when it comes at the expense of everything else. You’re not like that. That’s what I love about you.’
‘So it’s my slobbishness which appeals?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘But you should love me for what I am, not because of the contrast I make to others.’
‘I do love you for what you are, but at the same time I feel like you’re an antidote to all the rubbish. I can say that, can’t I?’
‘But I don’t want it to be Lilliana and Alastair versus the rest of the world. I don’t have that kind of energy.’
‘Nor do I.’
He looked blankly at her, then asked, ‘So what do you think about going away?’
‘I think I’d have to think about it. I’d have to do something about the Sun Well. With the house – I suppose I could rent it out and have the money wired to me up a juniper tree in the Congo or wherever.’
‘That’s not a problem. I think this is what I’ve always wanted. I’ve tried to deny it, but I think deep down I’m rather nomadic.’
Within a few minutes the idea had gone from being a tentative suggestion to a finalized plan. This troubled her. At the same time she was slightly in awe of this tendency in his character – his ability to carry things through, not just talk about them.
‘Have you lived abroad before?’
‘Well, I studied mime in Paris. Then spent six months in New York, trying to become the next Brecht.’
‘It’s funny.’
‘What is?’
‘We’ve sort of done things in reverse, haven’t we?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You’ve moved in with me and I’m only really finding out about you now.’
‘Does that worry you?’
‘Not especially. And did you always want to direct plays?’
‘At first I was keener on acting. I did a few big roles on the fringe: Macbeth, Dr. Faustus. But then it gradually dawned on me I wasn’t any good. So I tried directing. I did a version of The Misanthrope in which Célèmine has all her suitors poisoned. Molière plus gore. It was a mess but it got me noticed. The artistic director of the Gate invited me to stage The Nursery, which was about adult babies. It’s set in this house put aside for the molly-coddling of disturbed men who like to drool in oversized cots dressed in nappies, dummies stuffed in their mouths, getting squirted with milk.
‘I discovered directing allowed me to be an enlightened despot. I had all the power, and could still disappear after the dress rehearsal and get drunk. After the first night plays no longer need their director, like children who’ve outgrown their parents.’
She let her hand sink into the water, savoring its coolness.
‘So do you think you might direct again?’
‘Not until I’ve got something to say. I won’t do it when it’s just going through the motions, which is what
it had become. I was whipping out blancmange. There might be a way, but I have to find it first. I have to find it.’
She thought about Oscar: had he found his way, in his tunic and sandals? Her eyes grew distracted. Alastair started planting soft kisses all over her yielding neck in between murmured questions.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Oscar.’
‘Oscar Babel?’
‘Yes, we were friends, but we drifted apart.’
‘Really?’
‘Ah-hah.’
‘What was he like?’
‘I don’t know; that’s what I was thinking.’
The Fabrications Page 34