These Demented Lands (18 page)

‘You don't know, do you?'

I sighed.

Brotherhood said, ‘I almost didn't realise. God knows, we've all been distracted with this millennial rave: El Big One. Promotion, busy pockets of the youth of today; look to the future, friend: mobile phones and jackets that say Security, don't you see that vision of the future? All is in the hands of the youth. All our hopes!' he laughed. ‘God, man, don't you see the reason she stayed, little mummy tiger, the jumpers on all the time? Look, just a thought for you to take with you on your trip to the Mainland, so when you think back to your times here you can think of me, playing happy families . . .'

‘Brotherhood, what are you on about?'

‘I can imagine our wedding night,' he sighed and, genuinely pensive, looked out to the keep cages, ‘She'll roll over away from me, curl up her legs, “You can just go rampant on me from behind,” she'll announce, and that'll be our wedding night. Then I'll be able to howl with laughter at the little bastard thing driving its pedal car or whatever up and down the corridor and as the winter nights approach once again, I'm looking forward to the Old Pleasures that I gave up so long ago. If the hotel is shut it won't be one of the Brand New Wives, I guess it'll be a sixth-former from the boarding school – whatever, both her and the other girl's mouth playing Russian roulette with my cock . . .'

I punched Brotherhood on the jaw and it was a pleasure to hear his next words snap shut. He sat down heavily in the shingle then a blow, denoting side-taking had begun, sent my head snapping to one side and I hissed out snottery black blood onto the back of my hand.

I was sitting in the shingle too, facing Brotherhood, the Argonaut looming above me.

Brotherhood spoke and spat, then continued. ‘You didn't know at all. I knew you weren't that strong. ‘When you left, for a moment I thought you knew, so I was afraid, but you're just as stupid as me. She was pregnant the day she walked into the hotel.'

The Argonaut helped him up, took two steps towards me and kicked me on my ear, I fell to the side.

‘You'll sleep better at nights, I'm sure. I had to say goodbye. You've been fun, by far the best I've ever known
in fact. Enjoy civilisation.' He crunched back up the shore then turned, ‘What is your real name?' When I just glared at him he added, ‘We could have named it after you!' He walked off. The starting motor on the chopper whined and the Argonaut said, ‘He told me about you. Fake compensation forms. I'll give you your propeller all right.'

In front of his bungalow, with the dumb children staring, the Argonaut stripped off my shirt. He lashed the propeller to my back so its weight was across my shoulders; a burning point of pain at the base of my spine started straight away.

‘Four mile along the coast is Ferry Slipway, they'll untie you there.' The Argonaut looked at me and laughed. ‘You're lacking your crown of thorns.' He walked away to the rocks and I began to stumble forwards. Argonaut soon caught up with me. He was cradling a large clear jellyfish with purple central tracings, he draped it ceremoniously over my hair so its cold blubber cooled my forehead.

‘Your regalia: unfortunately not a stinger.'

‘A reminder of your ancestors,' I forced a smile and began walking.

Moving through birches and whins further along the shore I had to turn first this way then that and move between trunks sideways. It was when I was clear of The New Projects on the lonely coastline, I turned, and with the propeller on my back, I shook free the jellyfish and began to climb back over the mountains in the direction of The Drome Hotel.

I was near the summit of the ridge when the keep cages exploded in a low plume of white water, shattered crabs
rattling down out of the sky onto the coloured tiles on the roof of the Argonaut's house.

Secret Address

Let's say Tierra del Fuego

(use a second-class stamp)

DEAREST PA-PA
(nearest I'll ever have),

Found this paper: so smooth to the touch, like the flat tummy of a twenty-year-old girl, eh? some time back in a hotel of no return, an island at the end of the world, there was a couple who had proposed marriage to each other live on national radio! I'm still unmarried, though I've had an interesting clutch of suitors lately. I'm writing to tell you I got up the clout and you're a grand-daddy if not a very grand person. Perhaps you've let your last breath hiss out your nostrils? Couldn't care less but I thought I'd try dement you one last time with the story of the events leading up to my child's birth and The Nativity itself.

The things I've seen in the last years! Listened closely to my body and done what it told me – obviously! – and mainly otherwise read books while drinking sweet coffee all over Europe.

Daddy, a man swam the Danube for me! Are you proud? It's full of minging ex-communist pollution. I'd just got off a very bumpy flight from Stockholm, or was it London? Whatever, rushed by taxi (the driver had a conversation with himself all the way) to a basement where the man had lived in a cage existing on spring water for forty days and nights; it was somewhere in the Romany district, the seventh or eighth precinct, then sparks flew in the candlelight from the saws they cut the bars with while a man played a didgeridoo. The air was mouldy and it was full of joumalists' whispers – there was a crew from CNN and concept artists galore, studying the shadows.

The man made a huge speech on his experience in a language I understood nothing of. He ate a chunk of bread and sipped a thimble of wine that comes in nine levels of sweetness!

By sundown the fool was doing the crawl through muddy water – right across and almost back to our metallic café table when the River Police got him: shame. I folded his trousers neatly on the chair-back opposite and left enough money for the bill. He wasn't the Jesus I'd crossed Europe for; I found him later, in the hotel, but more of that when I feel like it. I ensconced myself in The New York Café: beautiful, handsome rude waiters in white jackets (slept with two); a piano player; brilliant pastries, all crazily priced. I asked the old piano player who specialised in Strauss to play Where It's At by Beck, and fucked if the old one didn't launch into it! We became friends but never lovers though I stripped for him once. Christ, he must've been eighty and I learned
things. I used to enjoy making the two young waiters jealous of him!

But listen, Daddy, this is not all! I had a conversation about post-modernism! It's true. I actually said the ridiculous word and even held my sandwiches with two fingers. That was at a university. (Going back to The New York Café: its walls were impregnated with the evil and torture and executions of the old regime who used to own it, impregnated the same way they were, browny-yellowed by the slowly rising Havana smoke.)

I've
so
many stories I could tell you – infuriating itch – I hope every one of my words will be like the bedsores which bloom on your bony arse as you die – unable to scratch your knuckles up into the jelly.

I've only wrote 3 letters ever before. I can remember word for word I think: one was to Orla, my girlfriend in Sweden:

Orla, I'm on my sixth Bloody Mary, you know they always mixed a cracker here.

Look, there's other men besides him – and ones who sweat less from their armpits, though few with so cute a frown: I know you believe he should give up his gold-leaf paintings that light the single room at dawn . . .

Ooops . . . you guessed it – as I walked in bare feet over his latest canvas entitled:
Psychedelicatessen
(stretched out on the floor with piles of the Swedish translation of my novel holding down each corner) I trailed silver and gold prints into the bathroom.

. . . I know you think you should live by those damp lakes of your homeland, him being the mosquito-bitten house-husband while you bring the bacon home in your blue Saab, giving out enemas and bunion plasters with equal generosity; him waiting for you, shuffling the wok as you swing the car keys but
for fuck sake
girl, when did you start believing in all this bourgeois stuff? This is
not
the Orla of old.

I thought of your lovely eyes and the way you use the Rimmel liner, cause you
know
you'll be crying at some point every Saturday night. I'm deluded there's a scrap of innocence and humility still left in me – but I've taken my young heart and polished it perfectly smooth.

I really suggest you put down your Anatomy and we meet this evening at the Sture Hof eight p.m. for Bloody Mary and laughs. Forget him and his Mathieus and Kandinskys and others who look like they suffered from severe flash headaches; that's just you taking seriously the middle-class world we had agreed to rip off.

Orla, the fact is, his gold-flecked fingernail has been up my arsehole all last night and most of this morning: Yum yum!

Kisses on your opening which I've

spared yet again.

PS. A definition of human evil might be our ability to use those cutey-pie pet names we have for each other (Goolah-Goosh, Smicky-Smooch, Beeper) – whispering them to a complete stranger I'm fucking. I used
every
one of our names on him last night. Some betrayal, eh?

I'll buy the drinks. Mmmm and kisses.

Like that one? I'll transcribe another later, after I've fed the baby. Autolactation, it's a scream, Father.

I'm not going to tell you where I'm hiding out. You're too dumb ever to find me; besides, I hear you've developed agoraphobia and can't leave the village limits! Hysterical. The place I am has lots of stones. All its monuments are stone too. There's a big stone up the mountain round the back. Local myth has it, if you can put your arms round and touch fingies you can make a wish! I got my long monkey arms round it . . . obviously the wishing front is pretty bleak for pregnant women! Christ, I could barely see my toes at the end but the weight just fell off after I dropped the egg. I've been cycling up to the stone and making a wish each day. As I've got skinnier my rings chink thegether.

Becoming a fat cow fair gets you out a few niggling situations. I had a crappest job ever on yon island, housemaiding, kitchening, and a waitress. Housemaiding ended in wrapping all the mattresses in newspaper at the finish of season to keep damp out all winter long; the words ‘pillowslip' and ‘bolster' leave my nose curled and always will. What a pain in the cunt, beyond all belief, but better than the alternative: sleeping with creepy John Brotherhood the owner. You know how Robinson Crusoe thought that print in the sand came from Satan? Well it was more likely John's! I set down my terms: ‘Just go rampant on me if you want but it'll be from the behind; my rear-end out, with me curled on my side and, though I doubt it, if there's anything down
there in the piston department you'll be going real easy else the tip punctures me inside and the foetus comes spilling all out and Hotel Linen Service'll be loving you again for the most messed in the west AND talking of which, you'll be wearing not just one condom but
two
Superstrongs, one over the other so I doubt you'd feel much even if you were balling the mincer in the kitchen; I might have messed up in the contraceptive department in the past, but I'm fucked if I'm getting the virus offof a Tory.'

His face soon turned sour at all that: typical squeamish misogynist, it's always fears about hygiene at the bottom of yous, fear of the body, cause you've never known how to give pleasure or enjoy it.

I best start some of the stories culminating in the birth of my baby.

You know how Satan has all the best music? well the Devil's Advocate has got every one of his albums. You could start like this:

The Devil's Advocate opened his eyes, whites vivid in darkness as he rose up from his lair knowing the time of my confinement had come to an end; his fat legs had been splayed apart where he was laying, meditating along the length of the stunted, horizontal larch. His face smeared in mud, he began to walk down into the enclosures and outhouses – moved through the shaking portable generators, the cables lying still like oil-runs, the fairground vehicles on the airfield site. Wandering peacocks scuffle aside to let the Devil's Advocate pass, the lasers flicking left and right in the
night are flecking on the screens of fanned feathers: the central tail-vane white in moonlight. He slaps the rumps of the circling ponies, the drugged-out kids gingerly holding the reins in their thin fingers; but this was all later when Lucky People Center were speeding it up in the big tent. I was up the stairs in The Heated Rooms where old Brotherhood had died. I was lying still stunned, obsessed you could say, by the modern pilgrimage of the one who pretended to be the Aircrash Investigator: haunted by the day I saw his Christ figure appear on the skyline, arms outstretched like some Icarus as he jogged down the slopes of 96-Metre Hill, past the stunted larch, the trousers torn where he had stepped over the barbed wires, his face beaten by the ones over at The New Projects.

I have the skill of noticing things; that much you can make a song and dance about: like on a rainy day in the city when you have enough for a taxi you wonder why the wetness on the vehicle floor is only on the left-hand side, till it dawns on you: that's the pavement side where almost all are going to be getting in through.

Before the millennial rave, it was me first noticed the fardistant helicopter with the black speck hung below it like as its own vertical sunlight shadow, bumping over the surface of the Sound. Closer it came till clear: the astonishment that it was a big bed dangled on the rope and spinning slowly beneath the helicopter, above the tips of the pine plantation that fashed shyly, left and right in the downdraughts.

This was the bed of sand for Brotherhood's dying father. The special strengthening support struts, sledgehammered
into place, were so close together in room 7, below Brotherhood's Heated Rooms, that yous had to turn sideyway to get from one side of the room to the other and pocket some of the soft toilet paper as relief from the agony-stuff Brotherhood had lumbered us with out in the caravans.