Barefoot in the Head (5 page)

His hearing became preternaturally acute. Although his own footsteps sounded distant, very near at hand were the tidal flow of his breathing, the tick of his watch, the stealthy rustle of his body inside its clothing. Like the man said, there had been a war, a dislocation.

As his hand came up to touch the shoulder of the Gurdjieffian I, it was arrested in mid-air; for his glance caught the sight of something moving on the sea. For a moment, he mistook it for some sort of a new machine or animal, until it resolved itself under his startled focus into a ship, a car ferry, moving close in to the harbour. On the promenade deck, he saw himself standing remote and still.

The figure before him turned.

It had broken teeth set in an indefinite mouth, and dark brown pupils of eyes gripped between baggy lids. Its nose was brief and snouty, its skin puffed and discoloured, its hair as short and tufted as fur. It was the waiting man. It smiled.

‘I was waiting for you, Charteris!’

‘So they were hinting down in the town.’

‘You don’t have any children, do you?’

‘Hell, no, but my ancestry goes right back to Early Man.’

‘You’ll tell me if you aren’t at ease with me? Your answer reveals, I think, that you are a follower of Gurdjieff?’

‘Clever guess! Ouspenski, really. The two are one — but Gurdjieff talks such nonsense.’

‘You read him in the original, I suppose?’

‘The original what?’

‘Then you will realise that the very times we live in are somewhat Gurdjieffïan, eh? The times themselves, I mean, talk nonsense — but the sort of nonsense that makes us simultaneously very sceptical about the old rules of sanity.’

‘There were no rules for that sort of thing. There never were. You make them up as you go.’

‘You are not much more than a kid! You wouldn’t understand. There are rules for everything once you learn them.’

Charteris was feeling almost no apprehension now, although his pulse beat rapidly. Far below on the quay, he could see himself climbing into the Banshee and driving towards the customs shed.

‘I must be getting along,’ he said formally. ‘As the Saint would say, I have a date with destiny. I’m looking for a place called...’ He had forgotten the name; that image had been self-cancelling.

‘My house is hard by here.’

‘I prefer a softer kind.’

‘It is softer inside, and my daughter would like to meet you. Do come and rest a moment and feel yourself welcome in Britain.’

He hesitated. The time would come, might even be close, when all the gates of the farmyard would be closed to him; he would fall dead and be forgotten; and continue to stare forever out through the window at the blackness of the garden. With a simple gesture of assent — how simple it yet remained to turn the wrist in the lubricated body — he helped the waiting man into the car and allowed him to direct the way to his house.

This was a middle-class area, and unlike anywhere he had visited before. Roads of small neat houses and bungalows stretched away on all sides, crescents curved off and later rejoined the road, rebellion over. All were neatly labelled with sylvan names: Sherwood Forest Road, Dingley Dell Road, Herbivore Drive, Woodbine Walk, Placenta Place, Honeysuckle Avenue, Cowpat Avenue, Geranium Gardens, Clematis Close, Creosote Crescent, Laurustinus Lane. Each dwelling had a neat little piece of garden, often with rustic work and gnomes on the front lawn. Even the smallest bungalows had grand names, linking them with a mythical green nature once supposed to have existed: Tall Trees, Rolling Stones, Pan’s Pantiles, Ocean View, Neptune Tiles, The Bushes, Shaggy Shutters, Jasmine Cottage, My Wilderness, Solitude, The Laurustinuses, Our Oleanders, Florabunda.

Charteris grew angry and said, ‘What sort of a fantasy are these people living in?’

‘If you’re asking seriously, I’d say, Security masquerading as a little danger.’

‘We aren’t allowed this sort of private property in Jugoslavia. It’s an offence against the state.’

‘Don’t worry! This way of life is dead — the war has killed it. The values on which this mini-civilisation has been built have been swept away — not that most of the inhabitants realise it yet. I keep up the pretence because of my daughter.’

The waiting man began to breathe in a certain way. Charteris regarded him curiously out of the corner of his eye, because he fancied that the man was accomplishing rather an accurate parody of his daughter’s breathing. So good was it that the girl was virtually conjured up between them; she proved to be, to Charteris’ delight, the one of the three girls in a mini-skirt he had most admired while walking up the hill, perhaps a year younger than himself. The illusion lasted only a split second, and then the waiting man was breathing naturally again.

‘All pretence must be broken! Maybe that is the quest on which I came to this country. Although we are strangers and should perhaps talk formally together, I must declare to you that I believe very deeply that there is a strange force latent in man which can be awakened.’

‘Kundalini! Turn left here, down Petunia Park Road.’ ‘What?’

‘Turn left.’

‘What else did you say? You were swearing at me, I believe?’

‘Kundalini. You don’t know your Gurdjieff as well as you pretend, my friend. So-called occult literature speaks of Kundalini, or the serpent of Kundalini. A strange force in man which can be awakened.’

‘That’s it, then, yes! I want to awaken it. What are all these people doing in the rain?’

As they drove down Petunia Park Road, Charteris realised that the English middle-classes were standing neatly and attentively in their gardens; some were performing characteristic actions such as adjusting ties and reading big newspapers, but most were simply staring into the road.

‘Left here, into Brontosaurus Broadway. Listen, my boy, Kundalini, that serpent, should be left sleeping.
It’s nothing desirable!
Repulsive though you may find these people here, their lives have at least been dedicated — and successfully, on the whole — to mechanical thought and action, which keep the serpent sleeping. I mean, security masquerading as a little danger is only a small aberration, whereas Kundalini — ’

He went into some long rigmarole which Charteris was unable to follow; he had just seen a red Banshee, driven by another Gurdjieffian I, slide past the top of the road, and was disturbed by it. Although there was much he wanted to learn from the waiting man, he must not be deflected from his main north-bound intention, or he might find himself in the position of a discarded I. On the other hand, it was possible that going north might bring him into discardment. For the first time in his life, he was aware of all life’s rich or desiccating alternatives; and an urge within him — but that might be Kundalini — prompted him to go and talk to people, preach to them, about cultivating the multi-valued.

‘Here’s the house,’ said the waiting man. ‘Pear Tree Palace. Come in and have a cup of tea. You must meet my daughter. She’s your age, no more.’

At the neat little front gate, barred with a wrought-iron sunset, Charteris hesitated. ‘You are hospitable, but I hope you won’t mind my asking — I seem myself to be slightly affected by the PCA bombs — hallucinations, you know — I wondered — aren’t you also a bit — touched — ’

The waking man laughed, making his ugly face look a lot uglier. ‘Everyone’s touched! Don’t be taken in by appearances here. Believe me, the old world has gone, but its shell remains in place. One day soon, there will come a breath of wind, a new messiah, the shell will crumple, and the kids will run streaming, screaming, barefoot in the head, through lush new imaginary meadows. What a time to be young! Come on, I’ll put the kettle on! Wipe your shoes!’

‘It’s as bad as that? — ’

The waiting man had opened the front door and gone inside. Uneasy, Charteris paused and looked about the garden suburb. Kinetic architecture here had spiked the viewpoint with a crazy barricade of pergolas, patios, bay windows, arches, extensions, all manner of dinky garages and outhouses, set among fancy trees, clipped hedges, and painted trellis. Watertight world. All hushed under the fine mist of rain. Neighbourhood of evil for him, small squares of anaemic fancy, wrought-iron propriety.

He found himself at the porch, where the gaunt rambler canes already bore little snouts of spring growth. There’d be a fine show of New Dawn in four more months. An enchantment waited here. He went in, leaving the door open. He wanted to hear more about Kundalini.

At the back of the house, the waiting man pottered in a small kitchen, all painted green and cream, every surface covered with patterned stuff and, on a calendar, a picture of two people tarrying in a field. Behind the frozen gestures of the couple, sheep broke from their enclosure and surged among the harvest wheat to trample it with delight.

‘My daughter’ll be back soon.’ The waiting man switched on a small green-and-cream dumpy streamlined radio from which the dumpy voice of a disc-joker said, ‘And now for those who enjoy the sweet things of life, relax right back for the great all-time sound of one of the great bands of all time and we’re spinning this one just especially for Auntie Flora and all the boys at “Nostalja Vista”, 5 The Crossings, The Tip, Scrawley, in Bedfordshire — the great immortal sound of you guessed it the Glenn Miller Orchestra playing “Moonlight Serenade”.’

Out in the garden winter birds plunged.

‘ “All time sound” — you are for music?’ asked the waiting man as he beat time and watched the treacly music as it rose from the kettle spout and steamed across the withered ceiling.

‘My daughter isn’t in. I expect she’ll be back soon. Why don’t you settle down here with us for a bit? There’s a nice little spare room upstairs — a bit small but cosy. You never know — you might fall in love with her.’

He remembered his first fear of the waiting man: that he would detain Charteris in the customs shed. Now, more subtly, the attempt at detention was again being made.

‘And you’re a follower of Gurdjieff, are you?’ Charteris asked.

‘He was rather an unpleasant customer, wasn’t he? But a magician, a good guide through these hallucinatory times.’

‘I want to waken a strange force that I feel inside me, but you say that is Kundalini, and Gurdjieff warns against waking it?’

‘Very definitely! Most definitely! G says
man
must awake but the snake, the serpent, must be left sleeping.’ He made the tea meticulously, using milk from a tube which was lettered Ideal. ‘We’ve all got serpents in us, you know!’ He laughed.

‘So you say. We also have motives that make our behaviour rational, that have nothing to do with any snakes!’

The waiting man laughed again in an offensive way.

‘Don’t laugh like that! Shall I tell you the story of my life?’

Amusement. ‘You’re too young to have a life!’ He dropped saccharine pills into the tea.

‘On the contrary! I’ve already shed many illusions. My father was a stone-mason. Everyone respected him. He was big and powerful and harsh and sad. Everyone said he was a good man. He was an Old Communist, a power in the Party.

‘When I was a small boy, there was a revolt by the younger generation. They wanted to expel the Old Communists. Students everywhere rose up and said, “Stop this antique propaganda! Let us live our lives!” And in the schools they said, “Stop teaching us propaganda! Tell us facts!” You know what my father did?’

‘Have your tea and be quiet!’

‘I’m talking to you! My father went boldly out to meet the students. They jeered him but he spoke up. “Comrades,” he said, “You are right to protest — youth must always protest. I’m glad you have the courage to speak up because for a long while I have secretly felt as you do. Now I have your backing, I will change things. Leave it to me!” I heard him say it and was proud.’

And he heard now the all-time orchestra never dead.

‘I became fervent then myself. Sure enough, father made changes. Everyone said that the young idealists had won and in the schools they taught how the Old Communism had been okay but the new non-propagandist kind was better. The young ringleaders of the revolt were even given good jobs. It was wonderful.’

‘Politics don’t interest me,’ said the waiting man, stirring his tea. ‘Do you care for music?’

‘Five years later, I had my first girl. She said she would let me in on a secret. She was part of a revolutionary group of young men and girls. They wanted to change things so that they could live their lives freely, and they wanted the schools and newspapers to stop all the propaganda. They determined to expel the Young Communists.

‘For me, it was a movement of terrible crisis! I realised that Communism was a just system for hanging on to what you had, no better than Capitalism. And I realised that my father was just a big fraud — an opportunist, not an idealist. From then on, I knew I had to get away, to live my own life.’

The waiting man showed his furry teeth and said, ‘That’s hardly as interesting to me as what I was telling you about the serpent, I think you must admit. There’s no such thing as an “own life”.’

‘What is this serpent of Kundalini then? Come on, out with it, or I could pretty easily brain you with this kettle!’

‘It’s an electric kettle!’

‘I don’t care!’

At this proof of Charteris’ recklessness, the waiting man backed away, helped himself to a saccharine pill, and said, ‘Enjoy your tea while it’s hot! Forget your father — it’s something we all have to do!’