I think it was inevitable, however, that we would have to say goodbye to Mr. Babel at the height of his fame. Mr. Babel has reached the point at which he knows his teachings can only be compromised in the very fact of the expression and communication of them. He knows that true integrity lies in keeping silent, and that retreating from the spotlight is the logical terminus to any argument and speaks volumes. Mr. Babel is opting for non-negotiability. His soul remains intact even though it has had to have dealings with the sordid, so-called real world.
Yours faithfully,
Bart F. Walla,
(Professor of Theology)
University of Bangor
September 2.
24
Three days had elapsed since Bloch was admitted to the hospital and he still wasn’t eating. The osmolite drip fed into his veins. He was drinking fluids but no solid food has passed into him since he had been admitted apart from two portions of rice, a new potato, some salad, and half a boiled egg. He had aches and pains in every part of his body, though he had more energy owing to the drip and was able to resume his tape recordings.
His body continued its relentless retreat into itself, revealing the outlines of the spine, rib cage, pelvis and hip joints. As with a block of marble which is hewn down to the statue the artist sees residing somewhere within it, Bloch’s old body was being hewn down to a new version of itself, chiseled by fasting. And he still rationalized his decline in terms of asceticism and purity.
When he had the energy he spoke into his microphone in an oddly tinny voice:
30 August
I’ll just say this. Let the dog man leave and breed among flies. The pale yellow moon is unseen by his eyes. Dogs barking mad at the moon, running along corridors. They make the ladies swoon. Why the bloody tearing of limb from limb? Give me the dogs. I’ll soon lick them...into shape. Show them who’s boss. And in the meantime all other lunatics can scrape at each other, over scraps they take for gold.
I didn’t ask for this...hammock. When the death comes to release me will it be like the anesthetic of the bow-legged woman?
Colors fading, sounds cracked.
This body must be transparency...so pure mind will pass through it.
Soon I’ll make my meals from thought, from air...
I’m achieving luminosity, my true nature’s spirit, not body.
31 August
They come, they wake me, they weigh me. They give me cups of tea; they stick things in me, temperature gauges behind my ear; they take blood. Why do they talk of sausage and mash, of scampi and chops? Why do they meddle?
Ate roll. Half of roll. Felt sick but it didn’t come up.
I don’t know what it would take...to be healed...
I keep thinking...the times when Natty made chicken stock. Take up the carcass in those hairy arms. In the company of others I’d see a midget and cry out, “There goes Natty, she’s joining the Moscow State Circus.” Can you imagine? Occasionally the old spark came between the bedclothes, then all hell broke loose; she clawed at my eyebrushes. She had such sexy teeth. I liked it when she dipped her fingers in mustard, coated my face in it and licked it off. Still wasn’t hot enough for mademoiselle. And green peppers.
I used to spend hours watching her floss. She took the floss with her, left nothing behind. That was always her way, to be fastidious. Natty dresser. Even when she made dinner she texted her friends afterwards, listing the cooking time, utensils used, ingredients. God, she was Amazonian. I was the escort down river, wobbling in my little canoe. For a hairy woman she was très appealing. I loved it when...Natty scribbled her appointments – always used to keep...appointments, kept everything – on arm, hand, palm. Sometimes my kisses tasted of ink, black or blue, I forget; but you should have seen her when real, not a fiction I’m devising. But that’s it. I can’t tell what’s real anymore. Re-inventing her so many times I forget. She brought a fucking haystack home once – said it would give the house some earthiness – we were too urban up in Islington, needed to get in touch with nature.
And those hairs on pillow case! And false eyelashes curling like tongues of flame! There, under the ground, running invisible, subterranean world...soot and dust and hair and pus gathered in the sewer. How many years before the sink finally, in one fell swoop, would be blocked by her comings and goings? Only a real woman like Natalie could have blocked that drain properly; done it justice; shown it flesh was mightier than marble. I envied that dragon snout of hers, flames jostling from nostrils. She killed me each time with her Spanish Inquisition eyes, curling skin that to touch would mean...third-degree burns.
I do feel better with this drip on. I wonder – does it suit me? Perhaps I’ll start a new trend.
Now my lust’s not even poetic. Time was, I remember, I...same lust could set a house on fire, chew through beams of wood. And drops of blood, now here, now there, found their raison d’être within the swollen cock, swelling after sleep. Down insolent wretch dictating like a lunatic fascist.
Now my poker’s a peanut.
1 September
What nausea, the thought of...a sickly cuddle, bodily fluids, rotting teeth, skin and dust. Yuk. I want...to exist in a vacuum, far from human secretions. Spared all that mess...at least let me take tea with gods. I don’t ask much, my Cinderella dream – to become a vapor, drifting through space.
How could I have ever talked of the sexual...in terms of a divine union of souls, gateway to heaven on earth? More like the gateway to stinking bodies, oozing sweat and semen. Must have been mad.
Starting to feel tired, numb. Hair’s falling out in clumps –trapped.
They came with trolleys – told me “eat, you little shit” – I stuffed cod behind radiator – they snooped around later – & found it – Sister Brunhilde with strutting manner – wakey, wakey, rise and shine – fuck off sow, porky potbelly, enough flesh in your backside to fill the Grand Canyon. How much have you guzzled while little children starved?
2 September
Wish I could coat words in acid, spit out my outrage in final emission with phlegm; let me cover the world in it! All parasites, all who turn death into state opening of Parliament, all disregarders of truth, beetles crawling in shrunken world. I’ll get my revenge; I’ll kill them all, backwards, forwards, lingering; slow death waiting in the wings. Done with charity, done with kindness. Leave it all to Wormy. So tired, and I speak the truth, truth no man, not even I, can bear. Burn photographers who film misery! Incinerate politicians who conspire with conspiracy! Holy men can get fucked; they’ve all along been the devil’s accomplices! I...can...see...everything now, don’t you see with me?
4 September
Satisfied now? Do you have a life now, Wormy? Did you gain a life by taking mine?
5 September
I’ll tell you something; that is, if anyone’s listening: my mind’s...it’s...floating further, further away...even the sound of my voice...it’s alien to me...husky, dead, squeaking on and on. The bod deceives. Changes, not constant. Let’s not forget smells. Armpit...I might vomit out entrails, for want of food to vomit. See them splat like spaghetti across wall.
What about the balls hanging...a couple of shriveled tomatoes, what from them gems! Don’t let get me started on sweaty abominations, bag lady’s underwear left in sun for afternoon.
Door to treasury, anus, stroke it, love it, fuck it, no matter how you do it, unimpressive morsel. Why did you make it...all these orifices...smell given half chance, ponging penises, arses like dead donkeys, rotting mouths, mucus breeding up our trunks.
So now you see no to bod makes sense.
No food...to digest, no smell in mouth, no food in teeth, no flossing, no shit excrete, clear, clean colon. Load lightened.
Actually, in point of fact, my mouth feels like a cow’s moved in and has been shitting in it and will go on shitting in it ‘til the cows come home...which they can’t...as they’re all out looking for the one in my head.
My ankles have swollen into tree t
runks. Calves ballooning. Why?
But do they make it easier? No, they remind me with pins, tubes, injections of vitamins, iron. The big boo-boo of force-feeding, can’t do, because no longer time for force. Dr. Kennel, what does he know? Has he been married to woman who fucked Father? Has he been famous, then six-feet under?
Sometimes...sometimes...I feel so light, I will my arm to move and I can’t feel it. I’m wafting around drawing rooms...at the bottom of ocean, invisible, could walk into a room, no one would see me.
So light, so thin.
Running a finger along my spine, it juts out like serrated piping. Don’t know how much longer can go on with speaking. Thinking.
Nut doc’s back, Dr. Kennel’s back – the man’s a numbskull; thinks I’m out to lunch (hah!) but can’t give me drugs because knows it’s too risky, so he’s reduced to jargon and reasoning. I begin where he leaves off.
7 September
Freak show freak show
Mirror mirror on the wall who is the thinnest of them all?
Made me eat salad today. Said, ‘Eat, you little shit.’ Said well done, said good boy, pat on your pancake back.
Maybe little soup would slip down
Not Crimbo turkey
Crisis – ripped my drip out – big hullabaloo – sectioning came up again – they put it back, couldn’t find a vein, found one after much pain – When she sat astride the toilet seat – fuck, beautiful, glorious; nothing more alluring...than defeated beauty! Won’t dwell on her bottom. But if any bottom deserved a voice hers did.
Webster here before – good person, really. Retarded but good.
If I’ve preached love always been safe in pulpit far from action, far from where the love is happening.
Special person came with trolley – told me “Eat, shit” – I stuffed chop and spuds in drawer – under socks – he found it of course – I said, “You eat it” – he said, “It’s for you” – I said “Neither of us can eat it now, it’s been near my socks.” They tire of me.
Came later with jacket potato, hid it behind radiator, took off drip. They told me the social workers are arriving to assess me, see if I’m ripe for sectioning, then force feeding. I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go –
8 September
Never did paint, the cretin. If only a little bit of discipline. If only could shut up, die. If only hadn’t come to me. Never met him. Why didn’t he...stay in cinema, rot in dark. Like the rest of us.
9 September
Not Bloch, just assumed his form, no more Bloch than ant giraffe.
Floating through space.
Born again. Time fits in pocket. I’m a molecule. No flesh, just bone and tendon.
Done it. Don’t exist anymore.
Love that burns makes clean the pus, the oily woundedness.
You the one I invoke over fire and smoke are lost.
Are lost. Are lost. Are lost. Are lost.
Night (4AM)
Floating...weeping...blood for tears, tears in veins.
Floating
Floating
25
After Rees had looked in the bathroom and the bedroom, under the bed and in the cupboard, he retrieved his stocky henchman Edwin from where he was standing outside the door, inert and monolithic, cross-examined him, learnt nothing from him, then noticed the opened window and practically fell out of it, straining to see. He spotted the hydraulically operated cage, which by then had completed its descent. Rees screamed at Edwin to go down and get Oscar, who, he bawled, had obviously just escaped seconds earlier and might still be stopped.
Ryan Rees fumed and swore; at first his cursing was functional and mundane, but then, as he found his rhythm, it became ornamental, baroque. He was like a virtuoso pianist who begins with a bald, seemingly unpromising tune and builds around it an increasingly complex set of variations.
‘That syphilitic piece of cow dung.
‘That piece of shit prick with shit for brains.
‘I’ll show that little doorstop! I’ll feed him to the fucking dogs! I’ll feed him to vultures peck-peck-pecking at his heart and liver!
‘I’ll hand him over to the cannibals then they can slice off his prick. I’ll show that little idiot, pigcunt fuckpig piss-arsing around, his dick pissing in the wind, I’ll get the wind to blow the wind back in his face, I’ll seal his arse with dynamite that little wet fart arsing around with his gonorrhea face, I’ll fuck him up the arse little sniveling gibbering cretin with mothballs for balls prick shit fuck fuck fuck.’
By the time he’d reached the end of this foul litany, Edwin had returned – alone. Rees’s reaction was not good: He grabbed some ashtrays and hurled them into the drinks cabinet. Smash went the brandy glasses. Then he grabbed the Viennese secession screen and jumped up and down on it until it was severely disfigured. Edwin looked on in awe and wonder. Throughout all this, Rees’ phones emitted a steady stream of beeps and musical medleys, these announcements of arriving text messages providing a spasmodic soundtrack to the ballet of destruction. Then Rees took one of the zinc-galvanized lamps and tossed it into the wrecked drinks cabinet. Crash went the mirror. Then he fired Edwin. Through the door and to the unemployment office went Edwin. Then Ryan Rees made some phone calls, feeling slightly calmer.
He learned that the Royal Parks Agency was planning to sue him for bringing the name of Kensington Gardens into disrepute.
*
Egham: a small and utterly inconsequential town in Surrey, near Windsor and Virginia Water. It boasted one or two Indian restaurants and very little else. Its most alluring feature was probably its train station, with its promise of passage into the outside world.
Oscar and Najette were living on a quiet street – Harvest Road – within reach of a small corner-shop, off-license and newsagent’s. There was a wooded footpath nearby leading to Kingswood, one of Royal Holloway College’s halls of residence (its main campus was in the vicinity), and down this Najette sometimes ambled, as it provided a pleasant walk. There was also a pub called The Happy Man, which served homemade, overcooked food. Its lasagna and chips was especially popular. The back streets were silent; so silent they could be used as pavements, which was just as well as there were no pavements.
The house sat baking in the late afternoon sun. It was small and semi-detached, with a little garden at its back and a patch of grass, bare in places like a balding head, at its front. Oscar and Najette sat inside the front room, curtains drawn, windows open, the curtains fluttering in the breeze. She was shaving his face, scraping at his cheeks and chin, a wet towel knotted around him. She was using olive oil, which she claimed facilitated the perfect shave, though he was skeptical.
His decision to go away with Najette was, he reflected, the best he’d ever made.
Surrounding both of them were canvasses propped up against the chairs and walls. He recognized the lake, the skull and face, and other works from the exhibition at the Earl Gallery. There were also paintings he’d never seen before: jagged landscapes, etiolated nudes. She’d brought them all along because she felt anxious about leaving them in London. And gathered in a corner, rolled and tied with gaffer tape were the studies for the scene from the Sun Well. She was quite excited about these; she thought she was on the verge of finding something she had always wanted – a truly resonant, truly disquieting image, whose power would unexpectedly ambush the onlooker. She wanted the smashed plant to be an emblem of fearfulness and energy. If she could invest in that one shattered certainty, a greater uncertainty, she would have achieved her goal. It was a lot to ask for; for the moment Najette was limbering up, stretching the tendons of her brush. She hadn’t started to work with oil yet; she wanted to have all her lines and configurations mapped out in her head before she began since, in the past, too-hasty leaps into work had made the results lopsided, in her view.
She felt relieved to be away from London. She found the house – modest, tattered, dusty – provided the right environment for her work; it allowed the work to be th
e focus, not overwhelmed by too elaborate a setting. The front room received plenty of sunlight, which was important to her; as did the weedy, neglected back garden, where stinging nettles and a hesitant blackberry bush swayed when the wind was strong. Life was oddly idyllic there – though there were no patios or statues, bougainvillea or rhododendrons. In the afternoons, after lunch, they would sit together under the shade of the fledgling apple tree, slumped in deck chairs, reading: Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare’s sonnets.
As she scraped at the recalcitrant hairs between his nose and upper lip, yanking his nose up comically, Oscar looked into her eyes, telling himself to wake up to the happiness of this sojourn, because – for once – he was going to appreciate something while it was happening. He didn’t miss the hotel and the luxurious life it kept hurling at him. And here, he was anonymous again – nobody could bother him, test him, intimidate him, claim him.
He started cooking elaborate meals, spending sizable chunks of the days in the company of colanders and chopping boards. He made sausages braised in cider with apples; roast lamb with garlic; chicken with mango and sultana, all creations culled with the assistance of the owner’s extensive library of cookbooks – she must have had at least twenty piled up next to the bread bin.
But he was worried about Ryan Rees, though he thought it unlikely he could track him down here. Egham was a backwater, and he was pretty sure no one would recognize him. His fame already seemed unreal, as though only a day spent apart from the activating cogs of the media was enough to precipitate its collapse. And he liked it that way.
The Fabrications Page 40