The Brothel Creeper: Stories of Sexual and Spiritual Tension (5 page)

“Don’t go yet,” called Herod. “I almost forgot. There’s one other nursery I’d like to show you. Just so that you get a full feeling for every part of the problem. It’s not really a nursery. More a compound. Or even a sort of game reserve.”

“Newborn babies again?”

“I’m afraid not. It lies in the region of Heaven where we keep all the foetuses and embryos.”

Tennyson turned pale. “What did you say?”

Herod pretended to be confused by this reaction. He acted as if he was reminding an old friend of a simple and obvious fact. Smoothing the edges of his robe with his fat fingers, he chewed his lower lip. Then waving a languid hand, he added:

“The miscarriages and abortions.”

The unborn infants had negative ages. The earliest ones were collections of cells the size of continents. Tennyson fled. He was vaguely aware of knocking Herod down and snatching the keys from his belt. The donkey ran by his side, biting at him with its overlong teeth. He shrieked and lashed out and knocked off its head with his fist. The skull bounced and rolled away and the remainder of the skeleton buckled under its own blindness. He went back the way he had come. He hurried past all the miserable towers and mundane houses. He was oblivious of unlocking the gate and leaping into the gash that led to the material universe, but he must have clutched the rope ladder before jumping, because he landed safely on the roof of his tenement block.

He clambered along the tiles, swung over the edge and stood on his windowsill. Then he broke the glass and sought refuge in his grim room, grateful that the roof had closed up. He lay in bed, the sheets covering his body and head. A fever racked him and squeezed stale sweats out of his limbs. But there were sounds around which had nothing to do with his delirium. Nor were they the disturbing noises of his neighbours. They were much worse. The harsh music of industry. Cranes were depositing objects everywhere. He listened to this activity with feelings of acute horror. He knew what it portended. He alone was to blame, for he had given his permission. His signature was on the document. He had been used as a stooge. Like Judas.

He went into the street and screamed.

He ran, but there was nowhere to hide. Giant babies. They dominated the Swansea landscape. They were coming down from the sky. Immortal and useless. The smell was unbearable.

He was aware of people on corners shouting. Somehow the news had already spread. Voices were raised against him. “That’s the culprit!”

He was chased into Singleton Park, from the park into the University. More figures and threats. Promised dooms.

The clouds had fully dispersed for the first time. No more need to conceal the cables. Buckets brimming with immaturity. Howls tore apart the world. Unreasonable behaviour. It always ended in tears. And now he was running down the coastal path that fringed the ugly beach. Staff from the Job Centre were close behind, boots polished for many kicks. They held the leashes of beasts. Maulings were feasible. Helicopters swooped overhead. He was being hunted.

The path was blocked by a reclining toddler. A monstrously bloated baby, drooling and wailing. There was no escape now except onto the beach itself. He ran into the tide. But it held his weight. He was running on water. Then he realised this wasn’t the sea. It was something else.

A moment of conception.

Beyond the limits of human imagination, it straddled the ocean. And it squelched as he stepped on it. His pursuers were reluctant to follow him onto such terrain. But he didn’t slacken his pace. He gazed up. The sky was full of stars and descending babies. Then he noticed Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, the first two bright and clear, the third very faint. All at once he realised that these already contained babies. Every gas giant in the solar system, in the cosmos, was crammed with infant flesh. It explained the experience Herod had confessed to having in the hoisting of big items from one dimension to another.

The lifeless planets could be exploited without permission, but to use Earth as a similar dumping ground had required the consent of one of its representatives. That was he.

Now he saw something appear through the gash that was the portal between the universes. The head of an unborn baby. It seemed far too large for the gap.

First one head. Then a second.

Conjoined twins! A freak of nature. There was a tearing sound. Heaven was rupturing. Tennyson resumed running.

Ahead sat a man with a long beard. A tramp or escaped lunatic. One of those derelicts from the vicinity of the damaged church. He had his legs crossed under him and his breath smelled of cider. He was playing with a crossbow. Tennyson guessed this was his own discarded weapon and raised his hands and said:

“Shoot me if you want. I’m tired of running.”

“I have no interest in that,” mumbled the man. “In fact, I know exactly how you feel. I’m tired of running too, which is why I stopped. Besides, I don’t have any bolts. Only golf balls.”

“Help me. Please.”

“I am Saint Peter. How may I assist you?”

“The whole planet is against me.”

“Then hide in this.”

Reaching under his robe, he pulled out a shapeless mass of hair and skin that moved spasmodically and seemed to be in pain. Then he unfurled it completely and smoothed out the creases and Tennyson saw it was the pelt of the donkey, still alive. A complete donkey but without bones. A glove for his identity.

“It’s hollow,” urged the man.

With a sigh of disgust, Tennyson fell to his knees and struggled to draw the flapping skin over his head. It was warm as he wriggled deeper inside, like a birth in reverse, for the opening was in the beast’s lower abdomen. When he was fully concealed, he lay still, summoning the courage to stand. He finally did so.

The man stroked his mane. “You’re my pet now. We’ll ride into the New Jerusalem together. That’s how Swansea must be called from now. Truly the most childish city of all.”

Tennyson didn’t reply in words. He brayed. He knew that from this moment he would be too busy to be considered unemployed, but that he would always remain unloved.

When the first demonstration was broken up the people ran from the park in all directions. In those days the police rode horses and everything still stank of reality. I hurried down a narrow street and took refuge in a bicycle shop, entering as casually as possible and pretending to examine the displays of wheels, gears and chains while the owners pressed their faces to the window to discern the nature of the fuss. I remember leaving without saying a word. I strolled back to the park and smoked a cigarette among the fallen banners.

Moona had fixed the radio by the time I returned to my apartment. We turned the dial together with the volume very low, lingering for a few seconds at each foreign music station before finding the official news channel. We had missed the beginning of the broadcast but it was obvious what had happened. When the static became unbearable I switched the device off and rummaged in a cupboard for a bottle of cheap brandy. Our mouths burned as we drained our glasses miserably.

“Colonel Bones has declared martial law,” I said.

“Because of general dissent,” Moona replied.

She was like that, my girl, always able to find humour in tragedy, a lightness in oppression, even though she took politics more seriously than did I. We moved into the bedroom and worked out our frustration in a nice way, the pressure of our tangled futures eased by the tangling of our limbs. But certain parts of our bodies seemed disconnected from the whole, as if the alcohol really had seared off our lips and tongues, and my fingers felt lost on her skin and within her softness. The events of the day had damaged us, shattered our illusions but had not split us apart. Not yet.

In the morning the changes were already in place. Groups of more than four were not permitted on the streets and a policeman stood on every corner. Curiously I saw the owners of the bicycle shop being led away, arrested for some imaginary act of resistance, and I wondered at the fate of the spare parts stacked inside. I was on my daily walk to the newspaper kiosk. Moona had left for the university an hour before and my anxiety at being without her became an almost pleasurable tension as I turned down alleys to avoid the police. On my own my existence was less offensive to the government. Elsewhere people who had forgotten the new rules on crowds were sent scattering by blows from the nearest truncheon on duty, scalps bleeding, ears ringing.

“Break it up! Break it up immediately!”

At the kiosk I paid for my newspaper but did not engage the seller in conversation. Other customers might gather behind me, causing trouble for us all. There was very little news: the official censors had done a thorough job during the night, arresting more than half the journalists. One bold headline declared how the police were going to use motorcycles instead of horses. I bought a bag of bagels and returned home. When Moona came back she was trembling but her eyes were bright and her voice had acquired a resonance that was too rich for our little room.

“I’ve joined an underground movement,” she said.

I held her in silence, refusing to criticise or even to beg her to be careful, already feeling I was losing her to the outside, to ideals and history. My love was no longer a comfortable cocoon for her and I understood that the direction of her life was now leading her away from simplicity, away from my desires and identity, and I knew she was right but I was unwilling to follow, too mistrustful of my own abilities. After an hour of stagnant contact I rose to make a pot of coffee, mumbling as I did so that the situation was bound to worsen. She winced as if jabbed with a needle.

“Yes, this is the most paranoid regime we’ve ever had.”

Her words awakened something in me, not exactly anger or despair but a realisation of my own impotence. To avoid taking my bitterness out on her I lingered longer than necessary in the kitchen, turning down the flame on the stove and boiling the kettle painfully slowly. It was the first night when external events, the sickness of those who controlled society, came between us, an invisible block separating our bodies as well as our minds. We slept without touching and I was acutely aware of the edge of the bed, the chasm between it and the cold wall. As the days passed we moved unconsciously beyond the point of reconciliation. But we never argued.

I stood on the balcony and leaned into the darkness, poised above the curfew with my weakness. Moona began taking greater risks, returning later and later from the university, sometimes joining me after midnight. The underground resistance was growing in size and ambition. The roar of motorcycles was constant and once we watched a wedge of machines rumbling down our street as if rehearsing for some acrobatic display. This was actually a farewell jaunt, a final fling, for the motorcycles were due to be replaced with armoured cars. We learned this from the radio the following day. Colonel Bones had decided to tighten the rules. Now people were not allowed to gather in public in groups of more than three. Friendships were being cut into smaller portions.

I went back to the bicycle shop, partly because I had little else to do, but it was empty and left me feeling even more dissatisfied with myself. Statues of our leaders were being erected in the park, heroic and angular but faceless and nameless to confuse assassins. Moona had warned me that paranoia must always increase in intensity. The movement she had joined based its principles on understanding and opposing the mechanics of paranoia. When the university was closed down she was less surprised and worried than I. Her organisation had not been discovered by the authorities, it was just an example of logical repression.

But disappearances increased and I wondered how long it would be before bodies were strung up on lampposts as examples. Moona wanted to hold meetings in our apartment. I did not oppose her wishes but she must have felt ashamed by the expression on my face for she never mentioned the idea again. I later learned from a few cryptic remarks she made that they had found an abandoned warehouse in which to conduct their plotting. I stopped reading the newspapers when the kiosk was boarded up. The actions of the government had always been mysterious, now they became utter secrets and only a violation of some new unknown law allowed a citizen to understand what brutal changes had taken place.

Moona stopped undressing in front of me, but one evening when she was leaning over the balcony I noted that she had acquired a small tattoo at the base of her spine. Her organisation had invented a symbolism for itself. They were flirting more boldly with danger but it was clear they had struck a few successful blows against the regime. Nothing was reported but there was a tangible expectancy in the air. The government responded with increasingly extreme measures. Now people were not permitted to congregate in groups of more than two. The city became a place of fake romanticism, the streets and parks dotted with couples seeking solitude.

“Isolation is the problem,” Moona said to me.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The root cause of paranoia. You can only be suspicious of others if you perceive them to be outside yourself, separate units rather than part of the same system. This is the key to our rebellion. My movement seeks to instill in people the feeling we are all connected, all part of one organism. In fact our most fundamental principle is that the planet can be regarded holistically as a living being, not merely an inanimate rock on which individuals struggle against each other. We are cells in a vast body. Once this mode of thinking becomes truly established, paranoia must wither away. It cannot flourish in an environment where there is no isolation, no more loneliness.”

I now understood why her tattoo was that of a blue world surrounded by a sunburst. Colonel Bones was looking inward and forcing society to lose its sanity: the secret opposition had chosen to look outward as a balance and a cure. I realised that Moona was inviting me to join her cause but I still could not find the courage or perhaps the belief. She was dismayed but my contribution would have been superfluous. The government was doomed anyway. In the following month the police seemed to lose the will to enforce the rules. Armoured cars lay abandoned in the roads. How Moona had helped to accomplish this was beyond my conjecture and I could not motivate myself to ask her.

The radio had been silent for many weeks but we kept it turned on and tuned to the official news channel. This had been shut down on some bizarre whim of the regime, which apparently could no longer even trust its own propaganda. The foreign music stations we avoided because the unthinking joviality of freedom excited too much envy in us. However, in the early hours of one morning, the set crackled into life. Moona had just returned from a meeting, alert despite her fatigue, and we listened together. For a few minutes we were connected again, but we had moved too far apart to reclaim our previous infatuation and mutual respect.

The voice that came over the airwaves belonged to Colonel Bones. Desperation had driven him out of his reclusion. His voice was very strained and old as he talked about enemies and traitors and admitted the government was close to collapse. In the background the murmurings of other old men were punctuated by the slamming of doors. He rambled on, choking back tears, articulating his words as if suffering from toothache, and finally announced that as a last measure he was outlawing all gatherings in public consisting of more than one individual. I shook my head at this and turned to Moona with a remark that the oppression had reached its absolute limit. It was almost a relief.

Moona said nothing and returned to the bedroom. I did not follow her but slept in a chair. She must have left before dawn because when I roused myself at first light and went to check on her the bed was empty and cold. She did not return later in the day or in the night. I imagined she had been arrested. My apprehension was a combination of selfishness and confusion: I feared she would name me as an accomplice. I lived for a week wincing at every sound in the apartment, the gurgling of the pipes and creak of floorboards, expecting the notorious knock on the door, the rap of gloved knuckles.

Only the hiss of the radio soothed me and I smoked the last of my cigarettes in front of the set. Slowly I began to hate Moona. I sank to new depths and understood that I had to reclaim my humanity before it was too late. I decided to search for her. This was my first step back into an authentic life, my only honourable act since Colonel Bones took power and infected society with his diseased values. I went out without my coat and called her name on every street corner. The sound of the rain was like radio static. I approached pedestrians to make enquiries, holding up her photograph and pleading for help in finding her, but they fled before I could reach them, scared of forming a crowd.

And yet the police were nowhere to be seen. The whirling of truncheons and shouts of “Break it up!” were absent. But the fear and mistrust still lingered.

I went home and retreated into myself. The supply of food in the house was running low but I adopted an extremely frugal lifestyle, refusing to venture out to any of the state run shops. I even locked the doors leading onto the balcony and drew the curtains. I wept and I hope my tears were for Moona as well as myself. Alternating between self congratulation and self loathing I lost track of time and spent most of my days and nights in uneasy slumber on the crumpled bed, listening to the muffled sounds which reached me through the walls. It was impossible to work out what was happening outside. It was easier to allow my dreams to handle that task and to dismiss the more unpleasant possibilities as simply the products of subconscious fantasy. I was hiding from everything.

One morning the radio exploded into activity and I jumped from the bed with such force that all my muscles burned with real pain. I had forgotten the set was still on. I wondered if the humidity of the sealed apartment had altered its circuits in some manner, adjusting the capacitors until the tuning slipped to the frequency of a foreign station. But this was not the case. The official news channel was playing music. I crouched before the set and touched it, more bewildered than delighted.

Outside the voices of a multitude rose on the late summer air. I peeped through a gap in the curtains and beheld a procession of citizens singing and waving banners. Each banner depicted a single symbol: a blue world surrounded by a sunburst. Moona and her colleagues had staged a successful coup. For an instant I felt an urge to join them but for some reason I pulled back. I remained a recluse in my apartment, too damaged on some level to welcome this new age, trembling at the sound of fireworks and carnival drums, envious and resentful of the universal joy and freedom.

Despite my seclusion I could not avoid understanding the nature of the changes in society. The cult of separation and individuality had been replaced by one of sharing and mingling. All people were now brothers and sisters. Closer than that in fact: the whole world was a living entity and we were the cells that gave it life, working together, discarding the demands of the ego for the greater good. I despised myself for not contributing, for acting as if nothing had altered since the days of Colonel Bones. I still awaited a knock on the door but this time I was dismayed when it did not come. I felt left out and forgotten and my jealousy was only amplified by the fact that I was entirely responsible for this situation.