Tomas (2 page)

The use of the present tense ‘is melting' appears to Tomas to be a lesser offence than the past-tense disaster ‘has melted'. Had the butter committed this capital crime, Tomas imagines the blonde pressing one of her nipples to activate a siren. Immediately a wail fills the restaurant and defensive barriers rise from the sand. The sky fills with helicopter gunships and American voices announce through loud hailers: ‘Attention! The butter has melted. The situation is under control. Do nothing. Stay calm.'

But this catastrophe is averted. The butter is merely melting.

The ‘do something about it' is a less alarming proposition but opens up more possibilities. The unimaginative response would be to fetch fresh butter. In doing this the waiter would abdicate his responsibility to save the life of the expiring condiment. A compromise could be to move the parasol to shield the butter from the sun's melting beams. But this might incur the blonde's wrath. Etiquette demands new butter. She will accept nothing less. And those breasts weren't constructed to be upset.
Tomas speculates that they have nuclear potential. The French Riviera atomised because a waiter fails to bring fresh butter.

Still Tomas isn't satisfied. One solution is unimaginative, the other defensive. He is urged on by the same invisible voice. ‘Are there no scientific or even futuristic possibilities?' it asks.

Tomas chides himself for thinking so one-dimensionally. Sometimes the best solution is the least obvious. Bringing fresh butter or moving the parasol is a child's answer. What about moving the sun or blotting it out altogether?

Of course he realises that this isn't possible. But in the cause of serving the rich and famous, who are always complaining, every expedient must be considered. It may be that the waiter can't provide this solution at present. But in a world of eternal return, where events repeat themselves in perpetuity, all he need do is find a way to live for ever, construct a sun-blotting or -moving technology and wait for the incident to recur. An alternative, of course, is time travel. From some future time or life the waiter can voyage back to this moment with the necessary technical apparatus and deal with the situation. Thus …

‘My butter's melting. I insist you do something about it.'

‘Immediately, madame.'

The waiter produces a pistol from his pocket and fires an almost silent shot between the parasols into the air. Instantly the sea begins to froth and foam. There's a groaning sound like the girders of a bridge breaking free and a spacecraft with massive distended arms rises from
the ocean. Within seconds it has jumped into hyperspace and is barrelling towards the sun.

‘Moved or blotted out, madame?' the waiter enquires.

‘Moved will do.'

The waiter fires another shot. The arms of the spacecraft stretch outward and lock into position at both extremities of the sun. A button is pressed ten thousand miles above earth and they clamp on. Seconds later, the sun has been moved.

‘May I recommend the fish?' the waiter asks.

‘I need time to think,' the blonde replies, waving him away. ‘This butter incident has upset me.'

‘Of course, madame,' the waiter responds. ‘Would it help if I blew my brains out? The butter almost melting was a disaster. It might make you feel better were I to kill myself.'

The blonde fails to answer. She's exhausted by the drama. The pop of the pistol shots disturbed her imperceptibly, but disturbed her nevertheless. She looks at the butter, which is melting no longer, and remembers that she doesn't even like butter; why on earth has she gone to all this trouble?

Tomas balances in his mind these solutions to the blonde's problem. A final possibility occurs to him. He takes out his weapons and sprays the restaurant. He finishes with the blonde, who slumps forward into the butter and ruins it anyway.

A higher calling
…

Tomas wanders down to the port to seek solace in its azure waters. He's disappointed that his killing spree has had so little effect. Although word has spread, people continue as normal, unperturbed by the lone gunman who is providing important morality lessons via his annihilating weapons.

Tomas has been sent mad by Shit TV. Shit TV is the biggest media network in world history, with an audience of billions. After years of tedious reality shows – singing competitions, jungle-survival programmes, business-apprentice shoot-outs – people want more. Shit TV is the answer.

Shit TV broadcasts globally twenty-four hours per day. Dozens of shows cover everything that is most base and nasty in the world – trafficking, violence, perversions of every sort; in short, shit: a celebration of the fetid trough of dirty Russian money, footballers abusing adolescent girls and bankers raping the planet. And why not? If the ship's sinking, let the people watch.

Programmes include ‘Fuck Me for A Lie', in which pretend film producers trick girls into sex; ‘Fat Ballet: Eat My Fat', featuring obese dancers who perform before an audience in hysterics and then do something too disgusting to describe; and the ever popular original, ‘Shit TV Show', of which Tomas is the star.

Shit TV has also achieved a technological breakthrough. Millions of TV sets are fitted with a connecting tube and buttons marked ‘smell' and ‘shit'. Viewers watching ‘I'm a Raw-Sewage Swimmer' can heighten their
olfactory pleasure by pressing ‘smell'. A surprising number use the ‘shit' button.

Tomas enjoys cult status worldwide. He's an object of desire to millions of girls who are obsessed with his Messiah-like looks. Still more boys want to copy his devil-be-damned attitude and hippy-chic style. His job, like his appearance, is simplicity itself. He pitches up with a camera crew at major events – royal weddings, political swearing-ins, football finals. Within full view of the ceremony, event or podium in question he drops his trousers and defecates, to the unbridled joy of a global audience. He then speeds off, trousers and other unpleasantries trailing.

St Paul was converted on the road to Damascus; Tomas in the Emperor Napoleon's tomb in the centre of Paris on a cloudless summer's day, at a ceremony to mark the great man's birthday. Having reconnoitered the chamber meticulously, Tomas leapt forward at the critical moment to perform his act when he was dazzled by a sunbeam streaming into the tomb from a dome window. It was a moment of incandescent light, beauty and joy. An invisible voice inside Tomas's head told him he'd been called to a higher purpose. The world was tipping into a foul sewer of despond. Drastic, even murderous action was needed to awaken society before it was too late. It would be righteous to take it: although he had erred, even the lowliest may rise, and the sinner become a saint. This was his task: a sacred quest to save the world.

Numbed but certain of his mission, Tomas arrived on the French Riviera a few hours later.

The old enemy awakes
…

The Russian Great Bear stirs in his wintry lair. Although it's summer on the French Riviera, he prefers his cave of perpetual cold. He has spent years here healing his wounds, some as deep as the revenge he's planning.

The beast's fur is mottled, criss-crossed with scars of war and defeat. His shoulders are stooped and he walks across his lair on stocky legs with an awkward gait; a slow shaggy giant. This only serves to deceive: his strength has returned and he's fast if he needs to be.

Russia's loss of the Cold War two decades ago dealt a shattering blow to the Great Bear and sent him into his hibernation of depression and disgrace. There he slept, his pain anaesthetised by the cold. Finally, he woke and began to plot his vengeance from his kingdom of ice and snow.

He recalls the early days of his plan, the seeming impossibility of joining battle with the West once again. Force was useless; in running the arms race Russia had buckled and collapsed. He had to find a more subtle means. But what? Communism was in chaos, everything he believed in swept away by the West's devastating economic tsunami.

Then it occurred to him. What was the opposite of communism and played the West at its own game? A menace difficult to anticipate and impossible to resist. The answer was so simple that it could be described in a single word. A commodity which after only a few years was already debauching Western values and behaviour.

Money. Russian money and all it brings: envy, the corruption of scruples, social dysfunction. Western bankers
accept a Russian rouble without questioning its origin. Oligarchs, the new weapons of war, are welcomed with open arms by society, irrespective of their backgrounds. Yachts, mansions and jetted-in prostitutes are envied as symbols of the Great Bear's new empire. Previously good people now bow in submission to the vulgarities of Russian taste, behaviour and power.

The beast's black eyes fix on the boulder that serves as a door to his cave. The rot is set, he thinks, as sure as stone. Soon it will be time for his final plan.

He pads over to the boulder and turns his mind from his great design to a seemingly microscopic issue: reports of a gunman on a killing spree on the French Riviera, the world headquarters of decadent and licentious behaviour, where Russian yachts patrol offshore like battleships and oligarchs command armies of hitmen and hookers. No wonder the gunman, styling himself as a celestial avenger, has chosen this latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah.

Normally, such news would be inconsequential to the Great Bear. A lone killer, clearly mad, touting automatic weapons and a moral message with no hope of success. A few dozen deaths of society types, including some Russians. So what?

But the beast's long hibernation hasn't dulled his instincts, if anything the opposite. His senses are as sharp as the cold. For the first time in two decades, he takes a fateful decision. He rolls back the boulder and steps out of his cave. His retinue, camped outside, is shocked. The Great Bear never leaves his lair; his enemies must come to him.

His attendants scatter in fear and confusion. Ignoring the commotion, the Great Bear raises himself high on his hind legs like a predator hoping to catch the scent of blood in the wind. He tilts his head back sharply and with a vertical snout sniffs the snow-and-rain-drenched air with short, sharp breaths which billow puffs of steam above his head. He's right. Something's wrong.

Pride comes before a fall
…

A helicopter clatters overhead on its descent to the port's landing pad. Tomas watches as its owner tumbles out. He has a normal trunk but an enormous stomach, which Tomas imagines is detachable. His belly is so big that its top is parallel to his mouth and he has to shout to be heard. Perhaps he has had a treatment at a Swiss clinic to distribute weight only to his stomach. This allows him to eat as much as he wants while leaving him lithe elsewhere. His stomach, being detachable, provides the ultimate in corporal flexibility. Maybe he leaves it on a cot by his bed at night and only brings it out during the day for meals and for show.

The detachable-stomach man pauses on the step of his helicopter. He's surrounded by journalists and photographers. ‘Boss Olgarv,' shouts a reporter, ‘are you frightened of the killer?' Russia's oligarch-in-chief, arriving to investigate the situation and do a little business, doesn't reply. Instead he snaps, ‘Wait!' to the photographers. He flips a mobile to his ear. ‘OK,' he obliges. The photographers get to work. His imaginary telephone conversation
adds to his magnificence. This is the picture he wants, exiting his helicopter, eyes narrowed on the horizon – a man of vision as well as wealth; the world transfixed by what he might be saying: ‘Buy it now, damn it!' ‘OK, sue the bastards.' ‘Yes. One hundred million euros, not a euro more.'

The fat Russian walks towards a yacht, mobile still clamped to his ear, photographers calling his name, a small crowd gathered to watch and admire. Tomas is prepared to provide another morality lesson but holds back for a moment out of curiosity. At the raised gangplank of his boat, Boss Olgarv reaches into his pocket. This is it, the climax of the show. He withdraws his hand with a flourish and brandishes a clicker, which he points at the boat. The crowd and press pack fall silent. ‘Click. Click.' Nothing happens. He shakes it and aims in a different direction. ‘Click. Click.' And again, ‘Click. Click.' The gangplank, whose purpose in life is to descend, permitting its owner a magnificent exit, remains stubbornly erect.

A bead of sweat forms on Boss Olgarv's brow. Someone in the crowd sniggers. The commander of men and worlds can't command a plank. The finale isn't going to plan.

As he waits on the dockside, face reddening, an aide calls from the balustrade of the yacht. ‘Boss. We need you on board as soon as possible. The video conference is about to start. The American bankers are waiting.'

‘Idiot,' he replies, the walls of his cool beginning to crumble. ‘This fucking thing won't work. Get me on board.'

The aide blanches and disappears, reappearing with an engineer in blue overalls, who attempts to entice the gangplank to obey by way of a manual lever. Disembodied grunts, huffs and puffs and a ‘Fuck!' float over the yacht rail. The gangplank maintains its phallic posture, as if it has sighted a female gangplank across the harbour and is sending a friendly message.