The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (31 page)

Professor Head, friend and radio-astronomer asks no questions of these wide-awake eyes that hurt as they see people in the map-like shapes of their radiating coronas, inner meridians, latitudes and spirals. He has small eyes himself, one of them almost blind, the other watery, through which he peers at calculations held an inch away from it, wearing five-dimensional glasses. He merely says it depends, really, what one expects to see, and the scientific principle of perfect doubt works well with him. He teases the university’s non-scientists at dinner. Nurturing doubt needs much more care than nurturing spiritual life, he says. Scratch any humanist and you will find at least five quite irrational principles held perhaps unconsciously but as rigidly as any dogma, which nobody can question without causing total or partial collapse. You should know that, Laurence, in your own field. He teases interviewers on the screen. Ah yes, it takes a lifetime’s training to doubt
everything,
even one’s own observation, to treat each infallible proof as merely a working hypothesis which explains things until it has outlived its working usefulness and so ceases to explain them. Such as your eyes, Laurence, men get unsettled by your eyes.

–I came to ask you, but then, I don’t even know what I want to ask, except perhaps, why me? Sometimes I wish I could remember something.

But he answers no questions either, except in the curved way of light, like when you don’t understand something, continue as if you did, things will come clear later. You should know that, Laurence. Mathematics works that way. You start with nothing, treat it as something and in no time at all you have infinity or thereabouts. Storytellers do the same I believe.

–Yes, but I have no story to tell.

–You will, you will. In the last sentence.

He sits surrounded with the maps of light. We tap the silent telephones of outer space, we bounce our questions on the planets and the galaxies answer out of aeons. But they give no names, only infinities of calculations.

–Oh, names. What do names matter?

–I think they do, Laurence. They tell a story given at birth, creation perhaps, when the primeval atom burst. You know, I suppose, that I favour the Superdense Theory, what they call the Big Bang, not the Steady State?

–Yes indeed. I should know that by now, after all my time here, and your television lectures.

–Ah, you watch those, do you? Well, well, how good of you. Popular, you know, but still.

Professor Head has an undoubted presence on the screen despite his small eyes, one of them almost blind, the other watery. He walks through metal curves and makes spheres spin and plays with atom-rings as with an abacus and in slow close-up twists the plastic beads that thickly coil along the spiral called the thread of life, holding together in a daze of attention the auditorium that curves upwards from him in tiers as the cameras swing their booms away and point the cold precision of their lenses on a spiral galaxy. The others, my rivals, hope to prove the Steady State soon by actually seeing, or perhaps I should say hearing, a hydrogen atom in the creation process. This at the speed of one in the space of a large house every thousand years, to compensate for the recession of the galaxies at the rate observed. Hardly hearable of course. You know what I mean by hearing, don’t you, Laurence. If I showed you a map of the sun as we hear it through the giant telescope it would fill the entire sky. Did you know that?

–I did. My wife –

–Ah yes. Bright girl. She understands all we do, you know, more than most computer-operators I have had working for me.

–Now I remember what I came to ask you. I see people like that. As you see the sun. It hurts. And why? Why me?

But he answers no questions either, except in the curved way of light, like what do the doctors say, oh doctors, I know them too well, nerves, they say, I have said it myself, time heals and things like that, indeed Laurence, you have little faith in your own profession, but then, as a
geometrician
of the soul which, like the universe, has at least five geometries – geometries? Why professor, I would call them geologies rather, maps of ocean depths, well, it all comes to the same thing you know, like physician, heal thyself, or at any rate continue as if you had, things will come clear later, in the last sentence perhaps which ushers in his junior colleague, Dr Tim Dekko, and his anxiety about promotion wrapped up in a complex equation. With infinite patience and the finite velocity of light Professor Head peels off the geometric series like the skins of an onion to reach a tearful child who makes the professor’s one eye water and says you sit on me.

–My dear good man, why should I sit on you? I have every interest in pushing your work, good work, you know that. And you know it too, don’t you, Laurence? I depend upon it.

–Yes, everyone depends on everyone here. We all go round in circles and nobody gets anywhere.

–Energy works that way, my dear Tim. But I only fill in the forms, you know. Well, now that you’ve made your gesture I hope it didn’t hurt. Let me see, where did I put your calculations?

He holds them an inch away from his watery eye and scrutinises them through five-dimensional glasses while Dr Dekko flinches in the tight meridians that surround him but do not fluctuate an inch into the wavering undulations that fill the rooms of others, doubling, trebling each other’s trebles like a map of ocean depths. Yet something emanates out of his small corona in the mad morse of neural cells that races round in no space, no privacy, his silence says, and receives at once the radiated objection well, you didn’t have to enter during my presence or let your scientific skin get peeled away. I know, however, how it happens, the worms in your head squirm as the world you see in even the gentlest creature sharpens its beak, so that the programme in your giant computer-mind gets blocked, goes blank of calculations, cries like a child of three. His mouth dips down a little and through his rimless glasses there pulses out on a low frequency an average story of a decoy blonde who costs a lot in scant clothing. He rides her with a sad passion in the basement of a life that keeps up the appearances with a smart modern villa garage balcony front-lawn back-garden air-conditioning a plump virtuous wife and three plump schoolgirl daughters. He stands plumply surrounded with feminity for whom he can do no wrong, so that he does it and his mouth dips down to twenty-five past five.

–Smile, Dekko, smile.

–That won’t help me. I only do all the work around here.

–Well, I’d better go, I’ve taken up enough of the Professor’s valuable time. He also has work to do, though you seem not to believe it.

–Of course I believe it. But he gets a decent salary, not to mention fat television fees. Why should he care?

–My dear good people, of course I care. I do my best. But the matter doesn’t rest in my hands.

–These hands that saved my life with –

–What?

He sits surrounded with the maps of radiation that waver through his watery eye and five-dimensional glasses. He nods and smiles through the infinite velocity of uncreated light. We do our best, he says. We tap the silent telephones of outer space, we bounce our questions on the galaxies which answer out of aeons. But they give no names, no explanations, only infinities of calculations. You on the other hand give names to the complex geometries of the soul, you explain perhaps, but do you heal, within
space-time
I mean. These maps represent something, certainly, but not the ultimate mystery of the first creation that has gone for ever with its scar inside one huge unstable atom. You can’t photograph such means of communication.

–How long do you think it will take?

Our elegant hearse rattles along the cobbled street, drawn by five elegant black horses. Something and I lie in the open coffin, making love quietly under the autumn sky filled with the Whale ahead, the River below, Cygnus half way down on the right with Deneb brighter than fifty million suns. The Serpent-Bearer has gone down below the horizon perhaps. Gut Bucket sits in front, holding the reins, while Dippermouth manipulates the brakes as we rattle downhill. But we have wedged the coffin firmly and it doesn’t slide. How long do you think it will take to the cemetery, Something?

–As long as you like.

–I long to die with you, to make it last. I love you, Something.

–You don’t have to say that.

–Tell me you love me, Something.

–I love you. More than you think. And more than you love me.

–We won’t try to win points on that.

The hearse stops with a jerk and no whirring of the brake on the wooden wheel. Gut swears by gut, lashing the horses on their rumps. Dippermouth says tut-tut, gee-up. The front horse raises his black tail, the others follow suit, so that in perfect concord they all shit long and generously onto the cobbled street and the stench surrounds us swiftly. Good horses, says the grave-digger, step down, my dears, you people have all the luck. Oh yes, you’ll die good, you’ll sprout, more than I will, I only do my job. Out you come. He spades up the horse-dung piles and fills the coffin with them.

–Where do you expect us to lie?

–On top. Underneath. On either side. Where you like. The snake eats its own tail. Have you got your route-maps? Oh well, who cares, the rich die in good earth, the poor inherit it in afterdays. In the meantime they clean up. Why haven’t you got any flowers? Flowers would absorb the smell.

–I don’t know. The midwife didn’t give us any. Why didn’t she give us any, Something?

–Well, you didn’t help by losing consciousness. A little consciousness can do a lot for a girl in a –

–I like that. She said breathe away, so I did. What do you expect?

–Flowers and good rich dung. They guarantee to smoothe out marital quarrels among the rich in the rich earth. Oh yes, you’ll sprout all right, more than I will. I never go anywhere, I just bide my time and clean up.

–Well, we’d better push on.

–Always in a hurry. Some people have all the luck, but then, five horses, and black ones at that. I wish you a long life and many good years after.

–Whoa!

Gut Bucket stops the hearse by an empty patch of earth in the cemetery, thumps his thorax and jumps down. Dippermouth perks off his alarm briefly, his mouth awry from chewing bubble-gum. The grave-digger throws out the last spadeful of rich earth and hauls himself up on a pulley, pushing the side of the narrow grave with his feet like a mountaineer. A narrow, narrow grave.

–But we booked a double room.

–Nothing to do with me. I only deal in local space, and we have a shortage here. A poor old woman inherited the space next door. You’ll have to lie on top of one another. No harm in that, I take it?

–But I won’t sleep a wink.

–Stop fussing, man. What difference does it make? You start with little, treat it as more and in no time at all you have infinity or thereabouts. Time heals, they say, but timelessness heals faster. As to space, well, we have a shortage here.

The Serpent-Bearers lift the coffin from the hearse with Something lying on the soft bed of dung and me on top of her. Dippermouth blubbers his bubble-gum and Gut Bucket says don’t cry, Big Dipper, they have to do it, and he bows into the pile of rich earth, filling himself with it. I feel heavy with sorrow, he says, and pours it down on top of us. Do you think they’ll give us an inscription?

–I don’t know, Someone.

–I thought you did the knowing around here.

–Not any more, Someone, you confuse me with broken words and things.

–Ah yes, your secret instructions. Do you still follow them?

–I try, but I often lose contact.

–I must say I would like an inscription.

–Well, I don’t see that it matters, you break those too.

The escalators trundle through the dark intestines, stones float in gall, green horse-flies swim in urine, furry
caterpillars
all lit up like skeletons in barium light crawl through the dung. Patience, my love, the reflex will come soon. But I feel sick. It hurts. It always hurts to give rebirth, wait patiently, and breathe, it will come soon.

–But I breathe all the time, unbeknown to you.

–Breathe quietly, regularly, relax.

–What! Take her away, don’t let her near me, get off, get off.

–Hush, my love, no weight sits on you, only inside you. Soon, soon it will come.

The earth purrs under me with a scratching sound that drills into my entrails. Something bends over me pressing her fingers into them or the earth perhaps, the soft dung, humus out of which in a dim starlight peers a small brown thing. A furry animal crawls limply out into her hands bundling itself at once into a ball. Dippermouth ticks away quietly somewhere and Gut Bucket stands stock still, coming in useful for the placenta.

The furry ball uncurls and twists its ribs in pain. It turns so pale and so transparent it looks like vanishing altogether, like a decaying giant horse-fly about to crumble into dust, take it away.

Something gathers it up and holds it to her breast, whispering to it or breathing perhaps the kiss of life into the dying born thing.

–You’ve got a girl, Someone. A delicate little thing. We’ll have to take very special care of her.

–A girl? But how? Show me.

She brings her breast closer with the odd insect shape attached to it, already bare of fur and settled now into a thick-waisted hour-glass, but fast losing its transparency as it fills itself with sap.

–Do you know her name, Someone.

–I feel so tired.

–Potato Head. You came up through the heavy water, Someone, of course you feel tired. But weight only consists of the attraction of two bodies. It can buoy you up,
according
to the combinations or splitting of its atoms. So Gut Bucket goes down to the round pond of heavy water that buoys him up, to clean himself, he says. Dippermouth ticks quietly away somewhere and Something croons over Potato Head. She doesn’t seem to know me or I her in my convalescence. She takes no notes now, and dials no dials. I can sit up a little and suck the pulp of grapes. She peels me an orange in segments and it hurts, don’t do that.