The Digested Twenty-first Century (3 page)

But she can’t. There’s no place else for her to go.

Digested read, digested:
Unbelievable love triangle between the posh, the old and the spotty.

The tinker drove his horse and cart through the streets of Wigton as cars hummed past. He shook his head sadly. ‘I’m just a cliché to illustrate how the Cumbria of the mid-50s had one foot in the past and one in the future,’ he thought to himself.

Sam and Ellen dwelt on the portentousness of the novel in which they were appearing. Ellen’s mind turned to Mr Hawesley – she could never call him William. She knew he was attracted to her, but she could never leave Sam. These were deep, northern thoughts – the kind that were best left unarticulated.

‘Our Joe’s a good kid,’ Sam said eventually.

‘Aye,’ Ellen replied.

Joe felt himself to be on the cusp of adulthood. He felt a longing to remain part of Wigton, yet at the same time he yearned to break free of its parochial boundaries. He sensed he had a greatness – a knighthood even – within him, but somehow it still felt an inch or two out of reach.

He stroked his thick, luxuriant hair, his enduring symbol of potency. He watched Richard swagger around the school, and felt a twinge of adolescent insecurity. Would Rachel fall for Richard’s athletic charm or would his hair win the day?

‘Would you like to see
On the Waterfront?’
he asked.

‘Aye,’ Rachel answered.

‘We could go dancing afterwards.’

‘Aye.’

‘So we’re going out together, then?’

‘Aye.’

As the music changed from the foxtrot to skiffle, Joe reflected on how Wigton had one foot in the past and the other in the future.

‘I’m worried about Suez,’ he said, a year later.

‘Why are we talking about this?’ Rachel asked.

‘To show that this book isn’t just a saga, but an important literary event that refracts global events through the prism of small-town northern life.’

‘I’ve won a scholarship to Oxford,’ smiled Joe. ‘But first I must go to Paris to be intellectual. And to show the French my hair.’

Rachel lowered her eyes. She knew she was just an ordinary northern girl, and that she was losing Joe.

‘Dear Joe, It’s over. I’ve met a man called Garry,’ she wrote. Joe had never known such pain. ‘I love you,’ he cried. ‘Say we’ll never be apart again.’

‘We’ll be together for ever.’

Joe tugged on his pipe and discussed Beckett with James and his fellow undergraduates. How they admired his intellect and hair. How he admired their class. He hoped Rachel would like them.

‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘I can hold you back no longer. Go, conquer the wider world of media and academe.’

Joe knew she was right. He was too good for her. It was time to move on. But when would fame be his?

‘All in good time,’ James muttered.

‘In our time,’ replied Joe.

Digested read, digested:
The secret diary of Melvyn Bragg, aged 16 3/4.

My name is Kathy H. I am a carer. As I drive around the country looking after my donors, I like to reflect, in my elegant and refined way, on my childhood at Hailsham.

I realise now how lucky Tommy, Ruth and I were to be brought up in such surroundings. We even had a sports pavilion where we would go to chatter amongst ourselves. You may wonder why I mention these details, but such empty observations are the hallmark of the consummate prose stylist.

From time to time, we would talk about donations and the world outside, and then we would shrink back into our sheltered lives. It may strike you that I like to hint at truths. This is because I fear you might stop reading were you to guess that the story really was as predictable as it first seemed.

Our guardians, particularly Miss Emily, took good care of us. Most of us, apart from poor Tommy, became competent artists and we were, in our way, quite happy, though a sense of dread would run through the school when Madame came by to take the pick of our artwork.

We had very few personal possessions but that never bothered
us. My treasured item was a Julie Bridgewater tape. How I loved to dance to it! Sadly, it got lost one day.

I can see you are becoming deeply affected by the poignancy of our situation. I should have loved to have told you at this point of how we felt about having no parents, of how we tried to escape into the outside world. But I can’t. Emotion and interest have no part in this story.

As we grew older we started to have sex with one another, though the enjoyment was tempered by the fact that none of us could have children. Tommy and Ruth even became a couple when the three of us left Hailsham and went to live at The Cottages.

Improbable as it may seem, I used to enjoy looking at porn mags, though this was partly because I hoped to spot my possible. We were all obsessed with meeting our possible – our real-world entitie – and Ruth once thought she had seen hers in Norwich. But it turned out to look nothing like her, which left her depressed for days. I suspect you’re beginning to know how she felt.

Ruth and Tommy split up before Ruth made her first donation and she completed while making her second. I became Tommy’s carer and we started to have sex after his third donation. We hoped to defer his fourth donation for a few years, but a chance meeting with Madame and Miss Emily stopped that.

‘Deferrals are not possible,’ Miss Emily said. ‘You are mere clones – organ donors – and we’ve tried to make you as happy as possible.’

This came as quite a shock, though I dare say not to you. Tommy completed during his fourth donation so I’m left alone, to drone on.

Digested read, digested:
The triumph of style over substance.

What about a teakettle? What about little microphones? What about writing the same book again and seeing if anyone notices?

I’m nine years old and I’m an inventor, computer consultant, astronomer, historian, lepidopterist, and I write to Stephen Hawking. I’m no ordinary boy, but the creation of a writer who’s trying too hard. That’s why you’ll find doodles, photographs, pages with just a few words on them, blank pages and very small print littered throughout the text.

Dad got killed on 9/11. We used to look for mistakes in the
New York Times
together. I picked up the messages he sent from the World Trade Center before he died, but I never told Mum. She spends most of her time with Ron.

Why I’m not where you are
– 5/21/63. I’ve lost the power of speech, I can only communicate in writing. Then you came along, you whose eyesight was failing and asked me to marry you.

I can feel my prose dazzling from within. I find a key on the bottom of my dad’s vase. This is the key to his life. I see the word ‘black’ printed beside it and decide to visit every person called Black in the telephone directory. I will travel the five boroughs on foot and find the entrance to the mystical sixth.

My feelings
– Dear Oskar, This is hard to write. Your grandfather could not speak and I could barely see, but we joined our lives in a place of Nothing and Something. He left when I was pregnant with your father. Love, Grandma.

In the evenings, I’ve been playing Yorick in Hamlet, but Mum
only came once because she was out with Ron. In the day I’ve been walking the streets with a 103-year-old man.

Why I’m not where you are
– I lost my love and punctuation in the firestorm of Dresden your grandma was her sister when she got pregnant I had to leave rather than love I wrote to my son everyday but never sent the letters I came back! to New York when I discovered he had died and went to live with your grandma again but you only know me as the Renter what is the sum of my life 466389028364859690707 464532537

The key belongs to someone else. It has no catharsis; in its place there is only sentimentality. My mum loves me after all. My grandpa and I dig up my dad’s empty coffin and we place his letters inside. I rewind the pictures of 9/11 and my dad returns to me.

Digested read, digested:
Extremely annoying and incredibly pretentious.

The year I turned 90, I wanted to give myself the gift of wild love with an adolescent virgin. I thought of Rosa Cabarcas, the brothel owner.

‘You ask the impossible, my mad scholar,’ she said. But I implored her and she promised to ring back within the hour.

I’m ugly, shy and anachronistic, and I live alone in the house where my parents lived, scraping by on a meagre pension from my mediocre career as a journalist. And I have never been to bed with a woman without paying. In short, I am without merit or brilliance.

On the morning of my 90th birthday, I awoke, as always, at five in the morning. My only obligation was to write my signed column for Sunday’s paper, for which, as usual, I would not be paid. I had my usual aches and pains – my asshole burned – but my heart lifted when Rosa rang to say I was in luck.

I gazed at the phosphorescent sweat on the naked body of the 14-year-old virgin asleep on the bed, and admired the brilliance of my language. ‘She was nervous,’ Rosa informed me, ‘so I gave her some Valerian.’

She did not stir. ‘Let me call you Delgadina,’ I whispered, for like most solipsists I preferred to invent my own names. I may have slept myself and a tiger may have written on the bathroom mirror – we magical realists can never be too sure of anything – and when I left her snoring in the morning she was still as pure as the night before.

‘You fool,’ spat Rosa. ‘She will be insulted you did not care enough about her to abuse her.’ But I did not care: I had detected the fragrance of Delgadina’s soul and had realised that sex was the consolation we receive for the absence of love.

I had planned to tender my resignation at the paper, but I was so moved at being given a voucher to adopt a stray cat that shat and pissed at will, that I resolved to continue.

And my fame grew. Every evening I would go to Rosa’s house and spend the night admiring the sleeping Delgadina – whose body was filling out agreeably – while reading out loud the great works of literature; and by day people would read out loud the tacky sentimentality of my columns.

Late into the year, Rosa interrupted my reveries. ‘A client has been murdered,’ she shouted. ‘Help me move him.’

I returned night after night, but Rosa’s house was locked up. I pined for Delgadina. I sensed my cat might lead me to her, but like my own writing, he led me up a cul-de-sac.

At last, Rosa returned. ‘Whore,’ I said. ‘You have sold Delgadina to secure your freedom.’

‘How wrong you are,’ she cried. ‘Others may consider you a sordid, delusional old man, but Delgadina loves you. She kept her distance because she wanted to save herself for you.’

My heart soared. I was not a perv. I was a 91-year-old man with so much love to give and so much life to live. I will survive.

Digested read, digested:
100 pages of turpitude.

Daniel 1,1:
I get so tired writing comic sketches about gays, blacks, Jews and Muslims these days. But being thought to be avant garde has its advantages; people take you seriously and pay you shed loads of cash for any old tosh. And you get lots of pussy, too.

Daniel 24,1:
Look at those savages in the distance. They are humans. I sit alone in my fenced-off compound sending the odd email to Marie 22.

I am not happy, I am not sad.

I never cry and I’m never bad.

Daniel 1,2:
I don’t know why I married my first wife and I didn’t care when my son committed suicide. That’s how shocking I am. I met Isabelle when she came to interview me after the success of We Prefer the Palestinian Orgy Sluts. She was OK; her tits didn’t sag and I felt almost affectionate towards her. We stayed together
for a while in a house I had bought in Spain with my many million euros.

Daniel 24,2:
I am neo-human. I sit here with Fox, reflecting aimlessly on our previous incarnations.

I’m even deep.

When I’m asleep.

Daniel 1,3:
Isabelle aged badly and I grew tired of her. I acquired a dog I called Fox, who was much better company. One morning some neighbours invited me to join the Elohim sect. Weighed down by my professional ennui I was naturally sceptical, but the prospect of free love and everlasting life was undeniably attractive.

Daniel 24,3:
Marie 22 sent me an email.

My breasts are low.

It’s time to go.

She is about to become Marie 23.

Daniel 1,4:
With Esther I thought I had discovered happiness. Just looking at her 22-year-old body gave me a hard-on and she willingly let me fuck her in every orifice.

Daniel 25,1:
Daniel 24 has had enough. The Supreme Sister has called him.

Daniel 1,5:
Esther left me as I knew she would, but my Fourierist principles had drawn me ever closer to the Elohim. I had even taken to writing doggerel.

Just one push.

On a friendly bush.

Vincent had replaced the Prophet and he was convinced the time of human cloning was drawing ever nearer.

Daniel 25,2:
It was around this time that the early leaders pioneered a genetic mutation of autotrophism, allowing the new species to survive on minerals and water.

Daniel 1,6:
Sometimes I think I overstated my despair; though not that of my readers. I chose to visit Isabelle. ‘I still love you,’ she said, before committing suicide.

Daniel 25,3:
Marie 23 has escaped to live with the savages. I read Spinoza.

Daniel 1,7:
Occasionally my cock showed signs of life, but I had come to realise that happiness was the preserve of the young. Vincent suggested that Fox and I should have our DNA copied. ‘It is time for you to commit suicide,’ he said. ‘You will be an example for millions of others.’ I sent a last poem to Esther.