2002 - Wake up (17 page)

“It’s Lily we should thank,” said Greg. “If you’d left it much later, mind, love, he’d be supporting you all on his pension.”

“I’ll support us if needs be, thanks, Greg,” Lily told him.

“I think it’s very nineteenth century, John,” said Bill. Whatever the hell that meant.

Melody had brought cakes and persuaded Lily to stay put and let her fetch tea and squash from the kitchen, assisted by her children, who when she asked them to help rose as one with robotic good grace.

Since her fall before Christmas, Mum zimmer frames around her bungalow, but she’s got a wheelchair for special occasions. She can operate it herself with a joystick but being pushed makes her feel more important. Lee was lumbered with the job.

“Watch my ankles John…Greg.”

“Lee, Nan.”

“Watch my elbows, Lee.”

“What’s the suspension like on that road-runner, Nan?” Bill asked.

Clint was slumped in an armchair as if his relatives were vampires collectively sucking the lifeforce from him. At some point, though, he must have summoned sufficient energy to slink away. To hole up in a room in our house with a lock on the door.

“He looks nothing like you,” Mum assured me. “Does he, Lee?”

Melody and Bill’s children sat back down on the blue sofa. They were smiling reminders that teenagers are not obliged to be misfits or ruffians. They said things like, “Doesn’t Jacob smell great?” and “He’s lovely, Aunt Lily.” They were really very nice.

Did I say this generation had only produced boys? I clean forgot Melody’s April. She looks more like her father than her mother, that’s doubtless why. A pale and chunky girl. It’s probably just as well.

Greg clipped a Communicam to the base of his mobile and took pictures. John J., needless to say, started making faces like he was trying to poo. Unsuccessfully.

“Tell you what, John,” said Greg. “Hang on.”

“What?”

He fiddled with the phone. “Just a sec. There you go, Lily, digital pics already on your computer. I’ve e-mailed you them.”

Clint reappeared, looking shifty yet refreshed by a bout of self-abuse in our bathroom, and stood next to his father, whom he proceeded to gently shoulder-barge. Greg nudged his son back. Every now and again one of them chuckled. It was simpler than speech, I suppose.

“Can you believe it, Ma?” Lily asked. “Six grandchildren.”

“Dad never saw one of them,” Mum sighed. “You’d have liked him, Lily. He was a man and a half, he was. Wasn’t he, Lee?”

I realised that Melody must have served up all the tea and cakes without me, or anyone else probably, noticing. It struck me how different she was from Lily. Lily hands dishes round and people stop to say, “Thank you, darling,” and, “How delicious.” From Melody people find cups and saucers and plates have appeared in their hands. She’s meek. Like Mum, our beloved sister, I had to admit. As if Mum had passed on a self-effacing gene to her only daughter.

§

Where was I? Oh, yes. Berlin. I wonder whether other people have noticed the dogs there? It’s as if dog-leads are against the law; freedom for canines written into the United Germany Constitution. They’re everywhere, and they lope at their own speed along the pavements (past dawdling, zombie-like humans, dislocated in another, slo-mo dimension) moving in straight lines on their four legs but with their bodies at a slight diagonal. I’ve seen them.

One thing affected by the fall of the Wall, not just in Berlin I don’t mean but the crumbling of the Warsaw Pact in general, and Russia’s dereliction too, has been the quality of prostitutes in Germany. They’ve reached Amsterdam and Paris as well, presumably. The standard of beauty has shot through the roof; goddesses you would once have hardly dreamed of laying a trembling finger on are now for sale in every shop window and alleyway.

I’m not sure how many men realise what a golden age this is for them. These eras pass us by too easily. It’s like the fashion for sports gear a few years back. Suddenly women were walking the streets of England in sporty versions of bras and tights and figure-squeezing knickerbockers. Women’s midriffs displayed to the world. Bellies and thighs and even genitalia lovingly described by Lycra. Cotton-clad bottoms wobbling along the pavements of the streets of my country. I remember thinking that heaven was upon us, we’d entered a new Jerusalem, and here we’d stay. But I didn’t fully savour the moment, for that is all it was, and the moment passed with the next season in fashion. Clothes shops were full of something else and women’s bodies retreated once again behind more demure fabric.

So, a golden age now of dyed-blonde angels with Slavic cheekbones, though not, funnily enough, a golden age for me. When I pay for it, when I have a consumer’s choice, I like to fuck a big fat woman. Indeed I do. I’ve rarely had a problem finding one when the mood has overtaken me: anywhere there was a smattering of whores I didn’t need to worry, there’d be at least one large trollop. Which is comforting, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter how perverse a man’s sexual fantasies are, he won’t be alone. When Greg first got me hooked up to the net on the home computer I spent a mind-boggling afternoon surfing via links from one website to the next down a ladder of depravity. And what was astonishing, and so reassuring, was that I’d reach a site devoted to the most unlikely and outlandish of proclivities, I don’t know, for men who want to dress up as cardinals in gown and gaiters and tie up a Chinese girl. Or to have their balls licked by a toothless poodle. Whatever. I stole into these sites, assuming I must be the first person ever to discover them, only to see a little box that read:

You are the 802, 379 visitor to this site.

And I, with my own taste in the real world, if hardly weird, for giantesses, was catered for. I was not alone; I found the company I sought (which is curious, isn’t it, the idea of ugly whores? Women who can’t get other jobs do the one you might have thought them to be uniquely unqualified for.) Except not any more. The poor fat cows are being squeezed out of the market by sheer aphroditic beauty swanning in from the East. No more part-time hausfraus or fat African rumps. No more slatternly, buxom wallops. Customers have got the upper hand and, topsy-turvily, what sneaking men used to have to make do with has become a minority taste, one I share, that’s hard to cater for.

I may not be a connoisseur of whores, but I’ve the highest regard for them. There’s too much lust in the world, isn’t there? You shudder to think what would happen to it without them. A five-knuckle shuffle is not always enough, men need to be brought off by another’s flesh. Orgasm. That’s what we’re talking about. What it all boils down to. Ejaculation. How incomparably blissful it is.

Why I relish bosomy women, though, I don’t know. Neither of my wives, none of my girlfriends, have been unusually large. Lily is long and slender. Is it to make clear for myself a distinction between different kinds of sex? Different orders of relationship? I don’t know, really I don’t. I like to writhe around with roly-poly women; I like to feel them smother me, absorb me, take me. To ram one from behind, thumping against her buttocks, lashings of gluteus maximus, till my knees turn to jelly.

And as they wobble around, you can almost convince yourself they’re enjoying it.

The more flesh the better. An obese girl in an American mall, so fat her own flesh is a medium surrounding her. That she, the real her, has to wade and waddle through with every step. Oh, the fat of such a young woman is luscious, it is the succulence of roast lamb, it is the salivation-making pulp of ripe mango. With a plump girl, a man can grope and poke his way to a delicious, enveloping nirvana.

§

Myself, I have a disappointing figure. Tall, awkward, not thin—of classical proportions just without the muscle—but rather shapeless. Narrow shoulders, wide hips, scrawny limbs. And now, having entered middle age, a soft paunch; long and puny, yet with loose flab. Naked, I cut an absurd figure, with my thin prick at least proportionate with my frame. I used to suffer a mild form of gymnophobia, the fear of getting undressed in front of other people, of being seen naked, in public changing rooms. I am plain. Neither ugly nor handsome. Forgettable. I’ve tried on occasion the usual methods for improving my visage. Moustaches. Beards. The last, a few years ago, was a bushy one I briefly lurked behind. Lily disliked it. She said kissing me must be like cunnilingus without the fun, and promptly stopped doing so. Instead of going directly to the bathroom and shaving it off, however (which I was anyway considering myself, having hid behind it long enough) I kept the beard a little longer.

You think I need you to kiss me?
I mean, how can a man be capable of such not merely petty and selfish but clearly self-defeating obstinacy? I know how, and why. Because a man can’t allow himself to be pushed around. Because once he lets a woman gain the upper hand, it’s over.

Greg grows fuzzy holiday beards. I tried one of those Amish-style ones once. A line of wire around the jawline. The Solzhenitsyn look. I don’t know why I tried. It looked ridiculous on the aforementioned and it looked even more ludicrous on me. Off it came.

No more beards for me. I get sharp haircuts now. I go to
Graziani
’s, a barbershop in town where cool young men go—the kind of barber I myself never went to as a young man. I’m not even sure they existed in those days, did they? I tell the guy, Number two clippers around the sides, cut square at the back and flat on top. They finish off the sideboards and around the ears with a real razor and warm foam, and they gel the hair, combing it backwards. If I’m going to be middle-aged, I reckon, I want a little dash.

§

I haven’t lacked women. My brother and I had, from our early twenties, wealth and the patina of wealth in our social circle. Chuck a bit of cash around and you get the peripheries, as Greg called them: girls drawn to cars, decent tailoring, and in my case the sheen of pampered flesh. Massages, facials, manicures. Shaves (which reminds me: our father never knew how to shave properly. Bits of grey stubble remained scattered across his chin like a cornfield). Expensive eau-de-colognes. They made me feel good and I also knew what they signified: I soon discovered that in a restaurant or hotel bar I could approach a woman and she’d discern that patina. Whether what attracted her was money—
I’m taken care of here
—or power—
I can relinquish myself
—didn’t concern me overmuch.

And because I understood this, I didn’t care. I could be relaxed and stand-offish. And this arrogance is the most attractive trait of all. I’d approach a strange woman in a sideways manner, with a throwaway word, and all my signals—voice, look, posture—gave off this unmistakable message:
you want to fuck me? You want to fuck me, you little harlot? Well, I don’t know, maybe I’ll fuck you. If I think you’re worth it
.

Few women resist this invitation, even from a plain, forgettable man like me. Why? Were they weaned too early from their mother’s breast, prised loose from the maternal hip? It’s sad, pathetic. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game, it’s given me huge happiness in my life. Or maybe it’s just that in casual sex, where we’re closest to the animals we once were, and still are, it’s obvious that a woman can be persuaded to buckle beneath the man astride her. Once she is vanquished, then she can assert herself. Once he has conquered, a man may submit.

Stem Canker

Variable-sized black or brown surface particles on tubers, easily detached from skin.

Brown lesions may girdle the bases of stems, causing wilting and rolling of leaves.

Y
ou go round and round, you can go on for ever. As long as you keep your wheels on the ground. As long as you keep with the camber, and work with the centrifugal force; otherwise gravity can turn against you.

I’m not afraid of my brother. He’s not my keeper. Greg’s not my conscience. I just rather like driving a while longer than usual on a Monday morning. Afternoon, even. I can see why people become chauffeurs. They glide through space, past other people. As long as you stay calm, and let the world slide by, what’s the problem?

A lot of fuss about nothing. That’s what I just told Simon Wright on the mobile. “I’ve thought about it, Simon,” I said. “I’ve been giving it some thought, and I don’t see how we can allow the random demise of two natives to jeopardise our endeavour.”

Simon still sounded as fazed as he did eight hours ago. I felt like I was talking him down from a high spot. “If this gets out, we’re finished,” he said. “If the Salesians there find out.”

“Keep calm,” I told him. “What we have to decide is simply this: whether we stop it getting out, or let it get out but in our version.”

“Oh, John,” he said. “We never should have done it.”

“Don’t say that, Simon,” I said.

“We should have done something else.”

§

It’s the first clinical trial with human beings, after five years working with rodents. If people were told how much AlphaGen had to splash out on lab mice during that time they wouldn’t believe it.

The trial has been carried out in stealthy conjunction with an expedition to the Venezuelan rainforest headed by a Professor of Biological Anthropology.

“We couldn’t get any more respectable than that,” I reminded Simon. Or responsible, you’d have thought.

Norwalk Virus causes acute gastroenteritis. In developing countries, the rapid and severe diarrhoea is a prominent cause of infant mortality. The virus is spread by contaminated food, and from person to person. It’s also known as Traveller’s Sickness. Montezuma’s revenge. The galloping trots. Lily once told me she’s had it on four continents.

“A person hasn’t lived, sweetheart, until they’ve had the runs in an Indian latrine, with pigs snuffling below them—”

“Tell me more, darling,” I interrupted. “Another time, maybe.”

There’s no vaccine available for Norwalk Virus.

Twenty-four supposedly healthy adult volunteers from the same village took part in the trial. They were given cubes of peeled, raw potato: four of them wild-type, twenty a transgenic version, into which Norwalk Virus-copy proteins had been engineered.