I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story (22 page)

One is tempted to conclude that there's something genetic
in Penelope's acute allergy to dishonesty, something deep,
something structural. I'd prefer to be able to explain it away by telling a tale of a disappearing dad or a compulsively fibbing
first love - but I can't. Penelope is simply one of those
human beings for whom dishonesty destroys everything.

And here at this insufferably pleased with itself and overpriced club in Notting Hill, dishonesty is much on her
mind, as she observes Gunn at the centre of a small group of
sycophantically tittering industry girls. Oh it's not as if he's
feeling them up or anything (I keep telling him: feel them up,
for Christ's sake feel theta up); but his vanity shimmers all but
luminously around him. Again she sees the unrecognizable
body language, the overacting, the disingenuous well-it's-ajob-ness of his pose. Passing, secretly, at his back, she hears
him address one of the girls as `my dear'; it would be innocent if it weren't for how clearly she could see what he was
doing with it, namely, connoting (however subtly - and
obviously not too subtly for the smirking blonde with her
dark-rimmed specs and piled giggle of hair) the priapicartist-to-nubile-muse relationship, which would be tired
even were he thirty years the girl's senior, but which, given
that she looks more or less his age, is both ludicrous and nauseating.

It's not jealousy. If only it was. No. It's just a terrible,
near-annihilating feeling of threadbare disappointment. All
the hours and years. His hand in the small of her back. Be
true to nie, she's said, unashamed of the antique idiom,
because she's known he understands. You will stay true to tne,
Yun~ Gunn, won't you?

Meanwhile Gunn is confounding me with the firmness
of his resolve: You will not do anything. He keeps affirming,
watching the light on her lipstick and the little corkscrewy
bits of her pinned-up hair as they jiggle and bounce
around her face. You are flattered. Shes pretty (but stupid) and
you're now almost certain that you could have her if you wanted to - but you WILL NOT DO ANYTHING - DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

Much to my chagrin (blocked temptation's like chronic
constipation; not Satanic Rap - just the truth) he does
understand, or so it seems. He extricates himself - No,
honestly, I cried, blondie has tinnily confessed, just cried my
eyes out on that last page - and heads for the gents. He knows
he's neglected Penelope. Glimpses of her on the periphery
with unblinking eyes and the corners of her mouth gone
trouble-coming tight. Why did he let himself drink so
much? Why, in God's name, has he just spent forty minutes
so obviously flirting with Aurora? Nice tits, though, I persuade him to acknowledge at the urinal, where, in a surfeit
of self-satisfaction ('...the poetic beauty of his imagination ...' Times Metro - cheers!), merely pissing in a straight
line strikes him as a niggardly or unimaginative activity, and
he begins slashing with a swing to his hips, accompanied by
his own surprisingly tuneful version of James Brown's 'I
Feel Good', a performance short-sightedly premised on
the notion that he's alone in there (apart from me, obviously), shattered in mid soul-brother screech by the
appearance of the literary editor of the Independent, who,
not surprisingly, gives him a pained smile before hurrying
out.

And just when you think it's hopeless, just when a lesser
angelic rapscallion would have called it a night (the rentboy's rolled-up sleeve, the journo's husky mobile call in the
purple foyer, the waitress's successful rationalization, the
bouncer's stirred hunger and gnawing fear - all in the bank),
a way through the darkness opens as Aurora's fifth gin and
tonic passes her tonsils and sends its alcohol by express
bloodstream delivery to her noisy and irritable brain. Well, I
only need a sniff. Go on, I dare you. You know he Fancies you. Not that you can blame him, because you do look the Fucking business in that dress, babe. `You look like Nicole Kidman' he said.
(He did, too. Believes the non-sequiturial delivery of such
judgements part of his newly acquired status as an artist.)
Bernice said his girlfriend's here. Fuck it. Go on -1 dare you. Make
a night q f it.

Amazing thing is - Gunn stumbles out of the Gents only
to find Aurora awaiting him on the landing, barely has time
to check his flies before she sweeps up to him, takes his surprised face in her white hands, and kisses him, softly on the
mouth - amazing thing is that sheer luck has Penelope spot
them on her own (arrested, obviously) way to the loo. I
can't take any credit for that. That - long live the angles of
chance - is absolutely nothing to do with me. She stops and
stares. They don't see her and she doesn't hear them. Thank
you very much, Gunn is saying, holding Aurora by the elbows,
but I can't do this, I'm afraid. I've got a girlfriend. You're very
attractive, though. I'm really flattered. Sorry. And you really do look
like Nicole Kidman.

But, Hell be praised, Penelope can't lip-read. We need to
meet somewhere, she supposes he's saying. Fucking girfriend's
here. Give me your address.

`Tell Declan I've gone home, will you?' she says to Sylvia.
`I've got a stinking headache and I don't want to spoil his
fun.'

Which is where I go to work. By getting her to punish
God by degrading herself. Convoluted? No no no no heavens no. How many of you haven't heard that voice, the
no-nonsense, call-a-spade-a-spade friend who emerges
when the world's shat on you? So, this is how much He cares
about you, is it? Cares about you enough to let you fail fucking
Human Biology/drop the mortgage/lose a leg/miss the bus/stub
your toe/get the sack/crack your tooth/fluff your line/get to the booth only to discover that the bastard in front of you got the last
ticket . . . That's how much He cares. Yes. Well. Fuck You,
God. Tivo can play at that game. Watch THIS. And off you go
to the tobacconist's, or the boozer, or the Adult Video
retailer, or the knocking shop, or the casino. Look at your
precious creation not; Mister. Don't like it, do you, taking a bit
of your own medicine. And if I get lung cancer, or liver failure, or
.Fucking AIDS, .'Matey, we knoly ivhose.fault it'll be, don't we,
ell? Should've thought of that when you let Claire FINISH WITH
ME!

Penelope's is a secular version, more or less. So I don't
speak to her of God or the friability of His love, but rather of
the long, grinding, endless punishment the world dishes out
if you try to live in accordance with truth and decency. I
speak to her, bitterly, of how daily she struggles with the idea
that her stand is hopeless, that everything turns to shit in the
end, that evil invariably wins, that people ... people aren't
any damned good, that her own horror of falsehood is nothing more than a pitiful delusion of grandeur, and that the
best thing she can do now is give herself a good, strong,
vinegared slap in the face ...

She resists for quite some time. Had I not been around so
long - so very long - it would astonish me, somewhat, the
strength of her resistance. It doesn't, however. In boredom,
I persist. Time for Bad Cop. You fucking stupid bitch. You
knew; didn't you, it'd come to this. There'c shit everywhere, it'c all
shit, you pathetic, deluded idiot. Get down on your hands and
knees and rub your stupid, trusting, liigh and Fucking ►nighty face in
it ... Go on. Theres medicine! Until, with what feels like an
icy fracture down the centre of her chest, knowing full well
and having no clue about what she's going to do, she halts
the cab at the bar that's just opened not three blocks from the
flat she shares with l)eclan Gunn. I remember my last words to her. Not the first time I've used them. And certainly not
the last. I gave them to her in a long, slow whisper. Embrace
it...

I've heard some theological guff in my time, but one of the
most idiotic theories I've ever cone across is the one suggesting that I possessed Judas Iscariot in order to bring about
Jimmeny's betrayal. Can anyone explain this to me? Actually
don't bother. I know the explanation. (I know all the explanations.) The explanation is that millions of people all over
the world, despite being in full possession of a functioning
cerebrum, think I wanted Christ crucified. Now if you'll
allow me to be blunt for a moment: Are these people
retarded? Christ's crucifixion was the fulfilment of the Old
Testament's prophecies. Christ's crucifixion was going to
restart the mechanism for the forgiveness of sins. Which
would mean? No one has to go to Hell.

So, could you please tell me why I would do anything to
help bring that about?

I was, however, at the Last Supper. Thirteen guys in sourleathered sandals, all with tropical underarms and honking
butt-cracks; a tiny room (Leonardo's way ofI), poor ventilation, the smoke of badly trimmed lamps, the odd discreet
but sulphurous apostolic brap, the tang of burped plonk ...
You know what I spent the evening doing? I spent it loading
Judas with guilt. You miserable bastard. You know you're doing
the wrong thing. Thirty fucking pieces of silver? You cheap sonofabitch. Don't do it, man. Listen to me. Listen to the voice of your
conscience! The Enemy has led you astray but it's not too late to
change your mind and save your soul. Listen to the voice of God,
Judas Iscariot. This is a mighty hour f or you. You're on the verge of cons(AninA yourself to Hell for eternity - and for what? Thirty
fiuckinn pieces of silver! Don't do it, Judas!

The man was made of stone. Hanging was too good for
him if you ask me. Actually that's not fair. Not fair to give
Judas credit for his own resistance, I mean. It was, as in the
desert, the Old Bugger's hand at work. God hardened
Pharaoh's heart ... Yes, He did (He's hardened a lot of hearts
over the years) and He hardened Judas's, too.

In spite of all that, in spite of the unfair nature of the fight,
in spite of His cheating, I almost nailed the fucker (pardon the
pun) with Pilate and Procula.

What I have written, I have written. My general disappointment in Judea's then governor notwithstanding, I've
long had an aesthetic soft spot for the poised ambivalence
of his infamous dictum. The lonely pregnancy of the pause,
its shadowy implications: What I have written is not what
I wanted to write. What I have written is the truth. What
I have written is what I shall be judged by. What I have
written seemed to write itself. What I have written was not
for me to write ... Quad scripsi, scripsi. The tautological
conclusion with its gravitas and idiocy. He wrote it at the
end of a morning the length and drain of which couldn't
be measured in hours. He'd been abused by forces beyond
his control, boxed and flirted with as if by fevers and flues.
His thigh-bones had felt thin, his ankles weak, his flesh hot
and cold, as if embraced and abandoned by a sodden
shroud in the heat of the sun. His blood whistled and
thumped; deafness descended, periodically, leaving him
only the sound of the heart in his chest; his vision seemed
to narrow into a dark tunnel, haunted at its distant end by
incandescent spirits. I didn't give him up without a fight, I
can tell you.

Pilate's side of the bed was long cold by the time Claudia Procula woke with electric suddenness, sheened in sweat, sitting bolt upright and astonished that the loud lamentations
on the other side of sleep translated to mere whimpering in
the waking world. She wasn't bad looking, Pilate's missus,
and became increasingly appealing in somnambulistic agitation, but that really isn't relevant, at all, Lucifer. What's
relevant is that Pilate trusted her dreams. He wasn't overly
superstitious (although you wouldn't find many military men
who didn't at the very least go through the motions of pagan
propitiation), but his wife's dream-inspired prognostications
had several times proved useful, and had once literally saved
his neck, back in Rome not long after their marriage, when
she'd dissuaded him on the strength of a nightmare from
keeping a horse he'd bought for recreational riding, which
beast a week later threw and broke the neck of its next
owner. She'd never actually seen Jesus, though she'd heard of
him, and, via slaves' gossip the night before, of his arrest and
detention in the hands of Caiaphas & Co. She'd never actually set her dark eyes on him, so I'm not altogether sure
why I bothered impersonating him so carefully in her dream;
I could have appeared to her as Groucho Marx and she'd
have been none the wiser. But I'd be fibbing if I didn't admit
that there was a profane titillation in taking on his looks and
mien. Made me feel ... I'm almost embarrassed to say ...
You know: what initht have been. Anyway. I entered the tapestry of Procula's sleep and crucified myself in her dream. It
was funny, hanging there in her mind with the stigmata
flowering and the sky darkening at my back. I worried that
I'd overdone it with the blood - her and her husband mired
and flailing, shin-deep and red-handed - but time (New
Time) was passing (Caiaphas's envy glowed around him like
baby's breath while the real J.C. stood barefoot with his head
on one side and an infuriating patience in the stilled line of his mouth) and I wanted the message writ large, so to speak:
PILATF. & WIFE MURDER INNOCENT MAN -`WE'LL BURN IN HELL
FOR THIS' GOVERNOR ADMITS. In any case it had done the