The Brothel Creeper: Stories of Sexual and Spiritual Tension (26 page)

Neil raised his sack and emptied the contents into his mouth. “Just a cabin boy?” He coughed metal fragments. “So who is in charge? It’s not Michael, is it? Please tell me…”

“She’s not here at this moment. She’s gone to buy some roses from a florist’s. She likes them thorny.”

Swallowing his obsessive past, Neil fell on his knees, clutching at her ankles. “Let’s plot a mutiny! We’ll talk to all the crew members, if we can discover who they are. We’ll convince them to join us. How can we just go along with this immoral transaction? Selling lava to Satan! Time to grasp the demon by the sting and make a stand…” He noticed her lips curling downwards and relaxed his grip. “You won’t help? You’re loyal to that redheaded bully? What do you mean, you can’t steer the planet? But if you’re not a navigator then…”

“A Custom’s Officer. Earth docked months ago.”

Neil fell back, careful to avoid spilling his pint. He stood with a sigh, straightened his shirt and leaned forward. “What’s going to happen to the good people when we disembark? Do you keep the nice ones as well? There could be a problem with my passport, I don’t recollect where I put it. I wanted to work hard, but if I’d realised my position it would have helped. Will I be disciplined?”

“You were clear until you suggested a mutiny.”

He tried to ignore the implications of her answer. “If this captain won’t work with me again, I’ll apply for a post on another planet. If we are transporting fire to Hell, presumably Saturn is delivering clouds to Heaven? I’ll take any job, however menial. We can’t all be in the pay of the devil. What about simple compassion? It exists. Once a female smiled at me on a train. Who was she?”

“A stowaway, Neil. That’s why we boarded Earth, to root them out. A few hide on every voyage. Romantic fools. Incidentally, Saturn is taking circles to Hades. It’s a barge.

“I’ll organise them into a rebel army. Virtue can still defeat sin. I’m a natural commander. Wait and see. I’ll form battalions of righteous souls to oppose your employer.”

“That won’t be easy,” Thumbelina chuckled. “Not every stowaway will support you. Divide humanity into good and evil, then rate everyone on a scale of one to ten in that category. You’ll see that good folk who fall below five on their scale are actually closer to evil than to the summit of good. Thus they’ll throw in their lot with Satan. In other words, the mildly saintly will fight you.”

Neil frowned. In the frothing head of his pint he inscribed a gauge of morals. “This also applies to the mildly evil, who are closer to good than to the devil. So the battle will be between the pure and the soiled on one side, and the demonic and half-decent on the other. Troop numbers will therefore still be equal.”

“You haven’t got time to recruit followers. Distinguishing the nice from the nasty these days is, I’m afraid, no easier than telling student from jobseeker. Both are poor.”

Neil raised himself up to his full height and spoke through gritted and carious teeth. “You can’t subjugate the noble qualities of the race. I still believe in the future. Things can change for the better, I won’t give up my optimism.” He gave a weak clenched-fist salute. “Satan’s just an establishment running-goat!”

“Hadn’t you better gambol to the employment centre? I don’t know if dropouts are entitled to benefit, but you might as well apply. A lick of despair should calm you down. By the way, the invisible lines which link the centres form a layout of this pub’s other dimension: intoxication. I won’t explain how; I see the captain of the world returning. She’ll want to have words with you herself.”

Slotting his drink in a jacket pocket, Neil scampered from the room in abject terror. It was essential he form a partisan group immediately. He must seek out the fanatically good and the moderately evil; only they would band together to resist Lucifer. What was it that Thumbelina said? The difference between saints and sinners was the same as the difference between students and jobseekers? In that case he should categorise every drinker in The Indigo Casbah. He spiralled upward, crouched through cool nested chambers and emerged on the rope bridge where he first mistakenly decided he was captain of Earth.

Halfway across, he found his path blocked by an amateur astronomer, peering through the warped skylight with a glass as a lens. Neil gripped his shoulder. “I need to know whether you’re a student or…” The fellow whirled and he found himself gazing into the bandaged countenance of the drinker who fell through the rotten slats. Before he could retreat, Neil was seized around the neck and lifted high over the drop. He clutched at his attacker’s ears, screaming and sobbing. A ripple shook the bridge; a cord snapped somewhere. Notes vibrated along the length of the span. The remaining slats clapped. Then, with a minor arpeggio, the hemp structure collapsed, propelling them down.

(iv)

When he opened his eyes, he assumed he was still in the pub. He held his drink; it was full, but scum had congregated on the surface. The air was musty, it clogged his throat. He glanced round and saw a place dominated by an ordered chaos, which contrasted untidily with the chaotic order of The Indigo Casbah. He guessed he was inside an employment centre. Had he made his way here after the accident? The fall had broken his memory. He squirmed on his uncomfortable chair and turned to his neighbour. “Have I been here long?” He inhaled sharply as he recognised his assailant, even more heavily bandaged. “I didn’t snap the bridge deliberately. It was an example of frayed workmanship.”

The man opened his mouth, his lips anticipating a word that seemed to suggest seasons rather than hours, but before he could vocalise it, a loudspeaker burst into action: “Luis Rey to Reception.” The fellow leapt up and hobbled toward a desk where he was greeted by a stony-faced woman and conducted through a narrow door at the far end of the room. Neil sat and waited, examining his thumbnails. There was something wrong with the lighting. Fluorescent tubes seemed to be signalling to him, flickering a series of confusing or insulting messages. He faced a wall with circular windows, each looking out on unrelieved darkness. No, there were needles of light beyond, tiny and remote.

He unbuttoned his jacket, revealing his ribbon. It had turned black for some unfathomable reason. Muzak slushed behind his chair, punctuated by shrieking children. Standing in agitation, he crossed to Reception. A thousand uncomprehending eyes followed his motion. “Can you tell me when I’ll be seen?” he asked. The woman dipped into an enormous book, fingers smudging columns of names. Pages flapped; a second volume was consulted. He had the impression the furnishings were utilising his frustration, as if the plastic was moulded from congealed anxiety. The woman reached the final page and grimaced horribly.

“Nothing this century, I’m sorry.”

The fake apology minced his nerves. “What do you mean? I’m about to be cast into Hell. If you don’t get a move on, I won’t be in a fit state to complete the forms.” She dismissed him with a giggle and he slammed a fist on the desk, with little effect. “I demand my basic rights!” Unable to regain her attention, he flung the contents of his glass in her face. The consequences were startling. She seemed to dissolve before his eyes, shrivelling like a snail. Her wig slipped from her head; stubby antennae fenced the air. Neil retreated, clawing at his ribbon. “You’re not meant to be real. Vampires are just a symbol!” This was worse than college. He fled toward the nearest corridor.

Reaching the end, he entered an identical employment centre. Weary, unshaven claimants drooled as he loped across the room and down a second corridor into a third employment centre. He hurried through a succession of repeats, leaving doors swinging behind him like the throats and hopes of the ultimately bored. He was caught in an eternity of mock-welfare, a cosmic postponement. He staggered toward a seat and regained his breath. How many employment centres comprised this nightmare? Did they loop back on themselves? Had the government taken lessons in trigonometry from the planner of The Indigo Casbah? While he twitched, a quartet of jobseekers clustered near him began to sing.

Neil studied the crooners. They were the celebrants who had died in the Entropy Parties; he recognised the little cuts, the broken neck, the smoking ruin and the cyan bloat. He staggered up to a window. The specks of blurred light outside were not, as he had assumed, city lamps or even stars; they were galaxies. The building was resting on nothing, absolute emptiness. He glanced to the right and saw Earth hanging in space over a gargantuan funnel. The funnel narrowed to a pipe that led into the side of the linked employment centres, as if to channel the dispossessed away from their mother. At first Neil imagined this was how he had arrived to take his place in the infinite queue. But as he stared, the real purpose of the arrangement became apparent.

Slowly, with an ineffable grandeur, the planet swung open along its axis. The operation was smooth and silent. Behind the widening crack, an incredible but homely glow seethed with excitement. As the two halves of the globe moved apart, the liquid fire poured into the waiting funnel in a stream. Soon the world was drained of magma; hinged at the North Pole, the hemispheres closed and the planet cast off, ascending rapidly in the void. Neil watched it until it was the size of a goblin’s conscience. He rejoined the four singers. “This isn’t the first time I’ve gatecrashed a party.” They ignored him, concentrating on finishing a madrigal. Even in damnation he was fated to be left out. When he tried to mime along, they crumbled his silence with knuckles.

Far away, at the end of a million-mile corridor, a belly rumbled. A tidal wave of brimstone was sweeping toward them. Running and completing forms were pointless now; perhaps they always had been. No use lodging a complaint either. The lava was coming. Neil decided to look for Michael. There was a slight chance he was here; he had been the lover of the real captain of the world. One big argument and she might have set him adrift on a comet or one of the other lifeboats. Before going, he may have been able to snatch a few items from her cabin: a sextant, beard or bottle of rum. With Michael anything was possible. Hands in pockets, Neil paced in the opposite direction to the oncoming magma. Strangely, he felt cold as he awaited the official inundation.

It always disturbed him, or maybe it was amusement he felt, when the act of penetration was described as an entry. The man entered the woman; he entered her. That’s not how it seemed to him at all, when he did it himself with an obliging female, because he didn’t pass through anything. He just remained in the same place as before, in this world, in his familiar reality, and his spatial displacement after the deed was always zero. That’s not an entry by any true definition of the word.

On the bed he lay, staring at the ceiling, the sweat cooling on his body, the soft form of Monique next to him, pressing into his confusion. Surely the very notion of an ‘entry’ indicates there’s somewhere to actually go, a destination? But how can you arrive if you never depart in the first place? To enter a country, a room, a wardrobe: that makes sense. But a woman? It bothered him constantly, though he knew he shouldn’t let the question take priority over more significant issues.

But he was helpless in the ramifications of the inaccuracy. He wasn’t a man who could simply ignore details, certainly not when they concerned the things that gave his life its richest meaning. Entering a woman. It was common usage, to say that; and he had read Wittgenstein and knew that a profound truth can be found behind, or within, every example of standard human speech; that the way a word is actually employed reveals its spirit more succinctly than any logical analysis.

He stirred uneasily, felt a bedspring ping beneath him, then another. If it was acceptable to talk about entering a woman, and it clearly was, then who was he to dispute the validity of the claim? Men entered women. Yes they did. But he still couldn’t believe the statement. Perhaps it came down to simple percentages. When the majority of your matter remains outside whatever you are attempting to pass through, you have not entered. By no stretch of the imagination have you entered.

He sighed and Monique responded to his agitation, stretching her arm around his neck, rubbing his firm leg with her soft foot. Her hair smelled exotic, but that wasn’t enough to soothe him. She opened one eye, brown and liquid. “What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing. I’ll go down and make breakfast.”

“Say what’s wrong first.”

He shook her off, swung his legs out of bed, started dressing. “I can’t. Too absurdly trivial for your ears.”

“Shouldn’t I be the judge of that, Knut?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Come back. You can tell me anything.”

But no, he refused to listen to her, as he had refused to listen to anyone in recent weeks, and he walked out of the bedroom into the passage, then shuffled down the stairs. At the bottom he paused and stared at his sullied reflection in a hallway mirror and frowned. Knut was his name; cunt was his obsession. It sounded puerile stated that way, yet he wasn’t a bad man, not an opportunist; it was merely the case that he lived for erotic exploits and cared little for any other experience.

Monique matched his desires perfectly. She was sensual, permanently lustful, greedy; they were utterly faithful to each other and would remain devoted and loyal for as long as stamina lasted. They both knew this and had no illusions. It wasn’t exactly a business arrangement, but sentimental considerations weren’t in the forefront of the relationship. He turned from the mirror and went to look for his shoes. They were under the sofa in the lounge, one mounted on top of the other.

He put them on, straightened and glanced around the room; there were too many books on the shelves, some volumes were balanced horizontally on vertical columns of less accessible titles. The shelves sagged. So with careful fingers he extracted one, to lessen the weight just enough, and idly flicked through the pages. It was the
Travels
of Sir John Mandeville. The illustrations were amusing, quaint, strange. He wondered if it belonged to him or to Monique; he couldn’t remember.

He read a passage at random about an island of women with snakes in their vaginas. The snakes bite the penises of the men who enter; to ensure safe entry the lovers hire other men, immune to the venom, as testers and decoys. The men who enter. He slid the book under the sofa, possibly for later reference, he wasn’t sure. Then he slipped his thick coat on and went out. A chill wind was whistling down the street, stirring litter; gelid drops of rain struck his forehead. He shuddered.

At the corner shop he selected a bottle of milk, a newspaper, a loaf of bread. The shopkeeper made a comment about the weather but not for its own sake; apparently a parade had been arranged for the afternoon by the council, in aid of what nobody seemed to know. Drummers, dancers and acrobats in sleet. The dancers would be girls in skimpy outfits, bare legs, bosoms, but the shopkeeper didn’t mention this. It was deduced. After the parade, their boyfriends might enter them.

Clearly they would. Men enter women all the time. Yes, enter. He paid for his items, left the shop and walked home. Surely the phrase expressed a yearning that was more than a description of orthodox penetration? But when you enter something willingly, you are supposed to be able to turn around inside and come back out facing forwards. Enter a woman. What did it signify truly? Was it a straightforward desire to return to the womb? He hated that idea: he was claustrophobic.

Regression to foetus: insufficient rationale. He pushed the key into the lock of his front door, turned it slowly. The door opened. Then he had the answer; or rather he knew
how
to finally solve the enigma. He closed the door, left the milk and bread in the hallway, kicked off his shoes, scurried up the stairs and burst into the bedroom. Monique was in the act of rising, a pair of knickers in her hands, one foot held aloft ready for insertion. In a fury of impatience he gasped, “Not yet!”

She sat back on the bed. “What do you mean?”

He rubbed his jaw savagely. “I want you, Monique. I want to try a new kink with you, a game. An experiment.”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t object. He undressed hastily, pushed her down on the pillow, moistened her with his rough fingers, guided himself into her without words. Then he lay on top of her, unmoving, thoughtful, perhaps reluctant, ashamed, a dead mass.

“Just this, Knut?” she frowned.

“No. Wait,” he said. There was no passion in his snarl, no cruelty; just concentration, the working out of the mechanics of a trick. He licked his lips, nodded to himself and grinned.

Remaining inside her, he began rotating in an anticlockwise direction, his hands grasping clumps of bedsheets, the edge of the bed, anything to help pull him in that direction. She waited as he revolved; the friction of his penis was negligible; this sexual act was original but not stimulating. Worth a try anyway, she supposed. Now he was facing her feet and she wriggled her toes to amuse him, but he paused only a second, drew a deep breath and continued the manoeuvre.

Like the needle of a compass swinging gradually to the magnetic north of her disappointment, he dutifully closed the full circle. A useless stunt, was her initial reaction, as proper alignment was resumed. Just one more degree of arc and both bodies would be parallel again. He was listening as he finished this ludicrous exercise.

Something deep inside her clicked. She felt it.

“It’s a key, you see,” he said.

Still on top, still inside, he arched his back, contorting himself to loom above her like a seal. His knees took his weight. With his hands free from supporting duties, he cupped her breasts. Then he twisted. The right one turned smoothly but remained silent; the left one too. So he turned them together, outward. Nothing. Then he turned them inward. Better. Another click. More like a safe than a door, a woman, evidently. Gentle, slow, he pulled her and Monique swung open.

There were no hinges, nothing of that kind. He was still inside her, so he swung with her, ending up on his back. He couldn’t withdraw from this position, so he pushed firmly, shutting her again. Then he pulled out and worked her breasts a second time. Monique sighed. She realised now that he wouldn’t stay. “Goodbye then, Knut.”

He swung her open fully and looked down, looked through. The other side. There it was. Yes, he wanted to enter. “Goodbye, Monique.” Was he in love with her, he wondered? The golden view beyond the doorjambs of her identity compelled his attention. This was what all men really wanted, the formerly unknown reason why they fumbled so eagerly in the dark of alleyways, on cinema seats, in brothels.

He brushed the golden light with his fingertips. Then he stood upright on the bed and stepped through. Like entering a pool. He dropped into the depths, ripples of warm glow rebounding off her inner corners like waves of unspecified emotion, undefined but intense. Knut had gone. Inevitable at this stage of the affair. It seemed nothing more would happen, then an object broke the surface of mellow illumination. His hand. It reached out and safely closed the woman behind him.