Mefisto (17 page)

He looked at me sidelong, smiling.

– What do you say?

I said:

– I don’t know.

He took my arm again.

– Oh but you do, you do know, you of all people.

We walked along a weed-grown path, and came upon a dark pool overhung by a stunted, bare tree. Dim forms moved in the depths of the water. We stopped, and leaned to look, and slowly the fish floated up, like something in a dream, lifting weak, hopeful mouths, their pallid fins feebly beating the moss-brown water. Felix’s face grinned up at me, with a fish-mouth for an eye.

– What are numbers, after all? he said. Music, that kind of thing, it’s all sums, isn’t it?

The bronze reflection of a cloud sailed on to the surface of the water, the arabian moon was there too, a horned sliver, glimmering. The fish sank again slowly, into the deeps.

– Come on, Felix said, let’s go for a stroll. I have to see a man about a horse.

Dusk was settling in the streets, the lamps were coming on. There was a bitter wind, and patches of damp on the pavements. We walked by the railings of the square, under the dark trees. Felix pointed to the gutter.

– Ever wonder, he said, who it is removes squashed cats from the road? There was one run over there this morning, now it’s gone.

He halted, cupping a hand to his ear. Music sounded faintly in the distance, a tinny blare.

– Hark! he said. The herald angels.

The office workers were going home, flitting like shadows through the brumous twilight, hurrying away to their unimaginable lives. We crossed the road, past great pillared arches and granite façades, and turned in the direction of the river. Two figures in long overcoats stood under a lamp-post, examining a bottle in a brown paper bag. Water was bubbling out of a crack in the paving where a pipe had burst. For an instant suddenly I saw into the dark heart of things, and a surge of mad glee rose in my gullet like waterbrash.

– The professor, now, Felix was saying. A hopeless case, I tell you, I’ve given him up for lost. Blind chance, he says, blind chance, that’s all. As if chance was blind. We know better, don’t we, Castor?

We passed under a railway bridge. An alleyway exhaled the sour stink of the river. The tide was high. We picked our way along the quay, over the slimed cobbles, and stopped by the side of a rusted cargo ship. The curved prow jutted above us, keen as an axe-blade. Felix peered up into the darkness and whistled softly. Running clouds were spilling past the rail up there like luminous smoke. He whistled again, and this time there was a faint answering note. A head appeared, and a hand waving, and presently two figures came down the gangway, hurrying silently on tiptoe. Felix started towards them, but paused and turned back to me.

– By the way, he said, the old boy wants you to work with him, did I mention it?

The sailors were hardy little men with bandy arms and legs. One wore a leather cap with a peak. His name was Brand. He had a big pink face, and eyes set so close together they were almost one. He said nothing, only grinned, showing a mouthful of broken teeth. His companion was called Frisch. He had a high forehead and a prominent nose and hardly any chin.

– Dear friends … ! said Felix.

Frisch made a chopping gesture with the edge of his hand.

–
Ruhe!
he snarled. You want everyone to fokken hear?

We went to the Star of the Sea, a low, smoky dive with plastic seats, and yellowed prints of sailing ships on the walls. The bar was loud with merrymaking. We sat at a table in a corner, and Felix bought brandy for the sailors and sat and watched them drink, tapping his fingers on the table and smiling. Frisch, who seemed to regard everything with a profound, angry scepticism, buried his seal’s snout in his glass and looked about him grimly at the weeping walls and the prints and the strings of coloured paper decorations. He eyed me too, and said to Felix:

– This is your tester, eh? Your
Chemiker
?

Felix laughed blandly.

– Oh no, he said, no. My … partner.

And he winked at me.

–
Ja
, Frisch said sourly, that is what he looks like.

They began to argue about money, or at least Frisch did, while Felix sat and smiled. Among the crowd at the bar someone fell over, and a cheer went up. Brand was peering about him out of his cyclop’s eye with a kind of happy wonderment, lifting his leather cap and scratching his straw-coloured hair, as if he had never seen such a place before, with such jolly people in it. He drank another drink, and banged his glass on the table top and sang:

– Good man, Lars, Felix said. Sing up!

Then there were more drinks, and Frisch’s rancorous mutterings grew slurred. Brand stood up, and put one foot up on the table and reached a lighted match between his legs and farted, igniting a brief blue spurt of flame. He sat down with a sheepish grin, rolling his shoulders bashfully, and pulled the peak of his cap over his eyes.

– Bravo, old firebrand! Felix said.

–
Arschloch
, Frisch mumbled, and curled his lip.

Brand grinned again, and ducked his head.

– Drink up! said Felix. Pip pip!

Frisch was growing increasingly angry, glaring about him unsteadily with a murderous eye and talking to himself. Brand began to sing again, but could not remember the words. His mood turned glum. Felix made a sign to me and rose, and after a moment I followed him. He was waiting for me in the street. He took my arm without a word and walked me around the side of the pub. In a moment Frisch came out and stood looking up and down the quay, shouting drunkenly. Then Brand stumbled out, and took a gulp of night air, and immediately vomited on the pavement. Felix chuckled. We retreated down a lane.

– The people one has to do business with! Felix said.

The moon was high, a black wind scoured the streets. We arrived at a corner and found ourselves on the quay again. There was a broken blue wall, and a wooden fence, and a swollen woman drawn in chalk. We stopped under the street light.

– You see what fun you can have when you stick with me? Felix said. New friends, night rambles, interesting times. There’s only one condition.

He was peering off into the darkness.

– That you don’t, he said, lead a normal life.

And he laughed.

Two figures approached, going unsteadily, I thought it was Frisch and Brand, but it was not, it was the shaky young man from Chandos Street and his skinny girl. Felix went forward to meet them, taking something – something, that’s rich! – from the deep inner pocket of his mackintosh. He and the young man spoke together briefly. The girl hung back. Then they went off again into the darkness, and Felix returned.

– As I say, he said. The people!

We walked along by the river, and crossed the bridge. There were not many abroad in that cold night. A group of youths stood in a shop doorway bawling out a carol. Chains of coloured lights were strung between the lamp-posts, dancing and rattling in the wind. Under the dark façade of a huge shabby office building Felix stopped and said:

– Well, here we are.

He laughed at my baffled look.

– I told you, he said. He wants you to work with him. I promised him you would. Now you won’t let me down, will you?

He pointed to a flight of steps descending to a door in the basement of the building. He was smiling. Afar in the tempestuous night a peal of joybells sounded.

– Don’t worry, he said. It’s the season for beginnings, after all!

He skipped down the steps, his coat-tails flying, and pressed the doorbell with a flourish.

The door was opened by a plump young man in a yellow cardigan and suede slippers and a silk cravat. He had curls, and a broad soft sallow face, and a moist little mouth like the valve opening of a complicated inner organ. His name – let me have done with it – was Leitch. He looked at Felix with distaste and said:

– He’s not here.

Felix only smiled at him, and after a moment’s hesitation he shrugged and stepped back to let us pass. When I came forward into the light he laughed.

– Who’s this? he said. The Phantom of the Opera?

Felix smiled again, with lips compressed, and wagged a finger at him in playful admonition. We were in a long, bare, clean corridor with white walls, and white rubber tiles on the floor. The air vibrated with a dense, soundless din that pressed upon the eardrums. We walked towards another door at the end of the corridor. Leitch padded behind us, I could feel his hostile eye. He was first at the door, though, skipping ahead of us on his slippered feet, like a corpulent ballet dancer, one plump hand preemptively lifted.

– Allow me, he said with a venomous trill.

The room was an immense, rectangular box with a low ceiling made of blocks of some white synthetic stuff. The floor here too was clad with white tiles. There were no windows. The machine was housed in big grey steel cabinets, they had about them a faint, pained air of startlement. They were so grand, so gracefully arranged, they might have been interrupted in the midst of a stately dance. For a moment even Felix hesitated on the threshold. This was their room. We were the wrong shape.

– Come in, Leitch said. Meet the monster.

He grinned scornfully, his pink mouth puckering, and started to walk away.

– Hang on, old chap, Felix said mildly. Aren’t you going to show the new boy around?

Leitch looked from him to me and back again with deep dislike. It seemed he would refuse, but something in Felix’s smile checked him. He shrugged, tugging angrily at his cravat.

– What does he want to see?

Felix laughed.

– Oh, everything! he said, and turned to me. Isn’t that right? You want everything!

The machine was a Reizner 666. I had never seen anything like it in my life, had not known such a thing could exist. Yet I recognized it. It hummed in the depths of its coils, dreaming its vast dream of numbers. It had a brain, a memory. I recognized it. Leitch showed me the rudiments of its workings. I hardly listened to him. The thing itself spoke to me, I touched its core and it quivered under my hand. When I pressed the keys on the console the print fell across the page with a soft crash. At my shoulder Felix chuckled.

– What a gadget, eh? he whispered.

Professor Kosok arrived, with his black coat and his hat and his badly furled umbrella. He stopped inside the door and stared at us. Then he took off his coat and threw it on a chair, and came and looked at the figures I had printed.

– What is this game? he said. This is not a toy.

It was Leitch he looked at. The young man scowled. Felix said:

– Well, I’ll be off.

And with a wink he departed.

PROFESSOR KOSOK
always worked by night. Often I had come upon him in the daytime in one of the bedrooms in Chandos Street, asleep on a bare mattress in a bundle of blankets and coats, only the top of his head and his nose showing. Now I too began to live a life at night, in that white room. The professor took scant notice of me. He existed in a constant state of angry preoccupation, stumping about in his waistcoat and his bow-tie, snorting softly to himself and rubbing a hand on his tussocky scalp. The machine was connected to others like it in other parts of the world, suddenly in the middle of the night the printer would spring to life of its own accord, rapping out peremptory, coded questions, like a medium’s table. He would rush to the console and start excitedly to reply, but he could not work the keyboard properly, he kept making mistakes, to the growing annoyance of the machine, which would chatter and snap at him, and then retreat abruptly into a silent sulk, until Leitch, with a bored sneer, came and punched in the correct codes. Then, for hours, sheet after sheet of figures would fall into the wire tray, each one folding on to its fellows with an identical, silken sigh. When the transmission was finished Leitch and I would take the figures and sift through them for days, searching out intricate patterns of correspondence and repetition. Sometimes it was no more than a single repeating value that we hunted.

– Truffles, the professor would say, with a smile that twitched. And you are the pigs.

It was his one joke.

But he seemed to want only disconnected bits, oases of order in a desert of randomness. When I attempted to map out a general pattern he grew surly, and threw down his pencil on the console and stamped away, fuming. I turned to Leitch. He put on a pensive frown, pressing a finger to his forehead.