I Hear Voices (5 page)

“It’s no use,” cries Arthur, genuine though not very
profound
, more like drunken, passion registered on his face and revealed in the unnatural tension of the stance with which, having turned from the window, he confronts me. “No use at all. I can’t rely on you at all. At first you said that girl was Clara and now you deny it. You say she’s not like Clara. Well there’s a broken link, I can’t deny it. Oh, you’re proud in your own miserable way. I gave him Clara, you’re thinking, he could never have found her himself and now I’m taking her away. She is mine to dispose of. No, parasite, no, rascal, you shall not have her again—the Sunday games, the seaside games, the long journeys and make-believe games, the socks, the stuffed boxes, the important branch—all those not you but time has taken, for they were genuinely in its gift. But not Clara, no: Clara you gave sealed in the faint fragrance of violet woods and preserved by a handful of adjectives. Lovely Clara you shall not reclaim. Delicate, fresh Clara is secure from your treachery. Light, trembling Clara—”

So Arthur goes on in an extraordinary fashion. He’s done this before. First he mocks and jeers or at the very best adopts a patronizing attitude—and all this quite rightly as far as I can see—towards my helpless and often quite unpleasant ways and then suddenly he begins to rage and fume as if what I have been saying was not merely the feeble vaporings of a distracted brain but veritable holy writ. I never thought he’d remember Clara. She was only a little fantasy I consoled myself with when they laughed at me in class. And now look at him snorting and fuming and claiming eternal possession and—I hope he doesn’t do me any violence. Sometimes I feel he works himself up almost to the point of doing me real violence and he’s beginning to look pretty worked up right now.

“Maria!” I shriek, rushing to the door of the anteroom. “
Maria
, protect me, help! Arthur wants to hurt me—Maria—”

She gets up at once and comes into Arthur’s office. I am far from certain that she will take my part for, after all, Arthur supports her and altogether might be expected to have a larger claim on her sympathies than me. Nevertheless, I have a pretty shrewd suspicion that she will look after me, that, at least, she won’t allow any real damage to be inflicted on my island shell.

“Stop it! What is it?” she snaps, obviously nearly as upset as, by now, both Arthur and I are. “How dare you? Shouting and brawling like any ditch lads. What do you mean by it—leaving me to wait, fidgeting and wondering, yes and worrying too. And you—” she says, turning a severe look upon me where I have retired to the elevations to plot. “Oh, I was a fool—a few presents, a taxi ride and I forget all the rest. Oh a fine
cavalier
—and you—” now she turns her attention to Arthur, “
sitting
there at that desk like a prince of commerce. Sometimes I wish I’d married that Italian. Smug fool—you think you’re so important, so superior. Well you’re not, you’re just as feeble and helpless and I have to do everything for you too.”

For a moment I think she is going to weep. She stands still making little nervous movements with her head, her hands, even her tongue which reveal the pressure of as yet
unexpressed
sentiments inside her. But she does not weep.

“I’m not going to cry,” she announces. “That would be
foolish
. Crying over you two.”

And at that, of course, she does break down and weep. Arthur immediately rushes to comfort her and, while they
occupy
themselves in bestowing on each other the occasional pledges, assurances and consolations, with which they need periodically to reassure themselves before facing another stretch of the surly routine of living, I slip quietly away to continue my calls.

I look and see the familiar sights, the mines with their charge and volley, the cross pitch and the laggings. Cardinals pass,
beating for shells, avoiding both asps and swallows and sinking their percipient lines deep in the fiber. Cardinals pass and re-pass, pausing for surgery, exchanging ages or single dates, stooping over the negotiable humps, counting each other and modeling in asphalt extrusions. They have no obvious leader but ages of practice, of staining their robes with blood, of
burnishing
the brazen trumpet mouths and hanging tassel to the clouds, have wrought this symphonic perfection. Thus when one of them, a wizened cardinal and cartographer of the Holy See, whose waist is girdled with phials containing samples of all substances that either flicker or propound, leaps to the crest of an adjacent strophe and chants the opening bars of the “
Cardinal’s
Lament” or “Cardinal’s Glorious Perimeter,” the others interject names and degrees of salvation. Their rhapsody is like all rhapsodies. It is like the little machines that float up to nest in the boughs. It resembles the first glimpse of leaf by emergent grubs, the first cocaine of the plunderers.

I continue on, past the well, past the fern and its
reinforcement
until I come to the special development. There I take my place in the line of men queuing for employment and gaze at the enormous development.

“It’s for tunneling,” I hear someone further down the queue remark.

“I don’t care what it is,” remarks another.

“It has various sections, volumes and capacities,” outlines a more knowledgeable one. “Much goes into it. Much issues from it. It engrosses much.”

“Is it healthy?” asks a nervous-seeming youth, eyeing, in particular, a barren portion of it, over-hanging and discharging a blast of shadow or synthetic night.

“Don’t you worry, builder, my lad,” urges a rough, dusty and older man whose face and hands are scored with the abrasions of a lifetime spent in actual physical opposition to the inertia
of steel and stone. “That’s not for you to worry about. It’s healthy until it kills you—and what good’s health then? No, do your job—it’s got to be done and it’s for you to do it—and collect your money on Friday.”

I am about to ask my neighbor his opinion when I am abruptly summoned away to the manager’s office. This is a large, bare chamber of new brick and concrete in which only an amusing cartoon on the Turkish navy provides any note of stress.

“It’s really for worming,” the manager assures me. “You’ll find me a more convincing employer when my suitable apparel arrives. It’s being fabricated in that next development down the stream. Still your fame has streamed before you.”

Affably he leads me to the window to survey the gigantic project.

“We have no trouble with the men,” he confides. “They work merrily on these towers and domes amidst the
emanations.
At night we float huge flares above the diggings and double the rations. When day comes through, we ticket it and docket it and send it to another department. The great work progresses. All is planned. We are called converters of
transformers.
You see,” here he bends cautiously towards me and lowers his voice, “we really work on the mind.”

There is no doubt that he thrives on his labors. He dresses better than Arthur in marine tints. He seems to have full authority and an eye for everything. He points to some defective joints.

“You could start on those. Adhesion is the great thing.
Cohesion
is what we require. It must all cohere in a large,
convincing
fashion—you’ll soon be able to run your eye over it, detect a sticky rivet with a single finger thrust, analyze it, adapt your schedule and fulfill many of your quotas. You’ll find it a
pleasant
life. We have subterranean retreats of every kind. We have
kind feelings for each other and teamwork. I’m no more than the least of those yobs, hoisting bricks, mingling their sweat with the girders and cement. I divide myself amongst them and issue each work into their pay packets. Thus the very
sandwiches
they withdraw from their sweaty rags and munch
during
their whistle stop are slices of cooperation, selfless harmony and endless, rabid toil to improve our living standards. They wave these standards, glinting in the blood-red dawn, as they surge on long conveyors into the shops. They plant these
standards
in the mulch and decay of forests that their great rakes and shovels have curried up from the earth. They seal
themselves
into the circuit streams of production and the curve rises continually—oh yes—it rises continually—oh yes—” He
falters,
turns from the opening and, after a pause, remarks, “I don’t wish to bore you.”

“It’s inspiring,” I assure him. ‘It’s your duty to talk like that, just as it’s the men’s duty to behave like valves or gauges, to gear their lives to the demands of this splendid development. Everyone has a job to do.”

“Oh, it’s not all work you know,” he assures me expansively. “There are holidays abroad—you can fly almost anywhere, though not to the poles yet, no matter how you crave illimitable ice, but to Bongalulu or Trepan, or the more familiar splodges of the famous land mass, Prance, Hermany or Slain. You can runnel and turret amongst the quintitudes of these vinish fiefs, each richly stored with slabs and carved treasures, good hotels, petrol everywhere. Of course, those places are being developed now too and everywhere you go, rising from the historic
landscape
, you’ll find our blocks and antennae. Weeds. Weeds of progress, flowering in the ancient beds of culture. Sometimes you can hardly sniff an ancient rose for the stench of diesels. Still, there’s lots of dynamic fun about, pinching and poking and pursuing into bedrooms with a bottle of joy in one hand and
feeling hastily in your pocket with the other for those little rubber charms. Then there’s golf and watching tennis, films, plays, television and girls’ legs in the street. There’s a big party tonight as it happens. Arthur’s giving one to celebrate progress on the development. Would you care to come?”

“Not much,” I confess morosely. “I’ve seen enough of Arthur for one day. Is this his development?”

“Yes, as much as any development of this order, of this breadth and complexity, of this capacity for marshaling
significance
, can be related to the poky doings of a single particle. He glows a bit, I grant you, and between ourselves there are lots of developments, more than are suspected by the public, or admitted by the editors, that have been touched by the
sparkle
of that electron’s track. Yes, he’s quite a whirler, quite positively charged is our apparently common acquaintance. And then again, he’s just a bouncer like the rest of us, glancing from collision to collision, gasping out, as he spins and reels amongst the random chances, his philosophy of achievement. The fiery streams of logic that spew from his propulsion vents whirl into the surrounding turmoil. Bits adhere to inflammable stuff and little flames break out. Much is deadened or burns itself out on inert material. Some reacts or combines with other
substances
in bizarre and unpredictable ways and the whole rages and seethes as before. And our friend, looking back, sees only the lovely curve of his rocket progress, standing clear and bright for a moment, a beacon and a monument, before trickling away to blend with the receptive spaces.”

The manager falls silent. Around us, but deadened and
remote
, is the chattering of machines. Up, up through the
thicknesses
of concrete, the filmy opacity of clouds, the turbulent air of the stratosphere, beyond the orbit of the moon, sits the Kingdom of Heaven like a floating bandstand and all around it dart little particles of hydrogen, like bees.

“That’s why,” concludes the manager, “I’m only his drunken manager and he’s the boss.”

“Are you drunken?” I ask.

“Pretty drunken.”

“You probably have a literary or artistic nature,” I advise. “I was quite carried away by what you were saying and thought, ‘This manager has an uncommon ability for evoking things. He must have a literary or artistic nature.’ That’s probably why you’re drunken.”

“Everyone’s drunken,” murmurs the manager. “The brain is a chunk of grey pudding but it works at high temperature. It has to be cooled with drink. Well—do you want to meet the men?”

“I’ve already met them,” I explain. “I was in the queue. At least I didn’t meet them all, but I don’t suppose they vary much do they?”

“Not much. Some are kinder, some crueler—but our
arrangements
are flexible enough now to accommodate the little individual variations and extract the requisite amount of labor from them all. We’ve no time to worry about idiosyncrasies and minor differences. Personality’s dead, deader than chivalry. Well, are you coming to the party?”

He pours himself a swift drink from a bottle in his desk drawer. An aide or assistant comes in with his new tinted suit from the further development. Lights hiss on and, beyond the stony eye, the flares blaze out above the geometry. I allow myself to be drawn along and, in a short time, we pull up outside a very different prospect. I begin to feel slight
misgivings
.

“I’m not used to this sort of affair,” I confide. “I don’t think I really belong. Besides, what will Arthur say?”

“I don’t know,” grumbles the manager. “I never know what anyone will say, not even myself. My notion at this sort of
function is simply to raise the internal fluid level as rapidly as possible. And then maybe find a girl. But then I’m only a coarse manager, only tolerated by all these posturing, obsolete
waxworks
because they need me. They need us, my boy, remember that. And don’t be afraid of Arthur. I’ll tell him what a splendid day’s work you did. I’ll tell him you exceeded your quota. Do you smell drink?”

I sniff the evening air blowing amongst the cool, high elms, stirring the well-kept lawn with its few decorative leaves, but smell only an indistinct scummy smell as if a fetid pond had been drained.

“Only ooze,” I confess, “like tidal ooze.”

“There are tides flowing tonight,” mutters the manager but I am not sure what he means.

“Shall we follow those fire-flies?” I ask. “They might lead us to an earl, on the telephone or rehearsing a speech. You see those fire-flies, romancing with the leaves? Each fire-fly courts a single trembling leaf and they carry the first-born to the nearest earl or accountant. It sounds feudal, I know, but
History
coils and re-coils and we never know when we open our lids—”