Will Self's Collected Fiction, Vol. 2 (2014), page 113
part #2 of Will Self's Collected Fiction Series
Chapter 16
The others had finished their own food, yet no one made to leave the table; they stayed to watch a bravura performance by the men in theatre costumes. Von Sasser and Loman steadily tunnelled their way through their food mountains, pausing only to call for salt, water or beer. The anthropologist, predictably, drank his beer from a stein half a yard high. Overhead, the awning rat-a-tat-tatted in the rising sirocco. In his blood-stained scrubs, the skeletal Von Sasser was a giant praying mantis devouring its mate.
Tearing his eyes from the grisly spectacle, Tom saw the little SUV standing where Prentice had parked it the evening before. Some Tayswengo kids were sitting inside. The one in the driver’s seat was wrestling the wheel; the others were aiming pretend cameras, miming Anglos on vacation. They captured the occupants of the veranda in their invisible boxes, then turned them on the tame auraca grazing the sparse grass in the paddock.
With the air of men who had for a long time been working as a team, Von Sasser and Loman finished their plates at the same time, then pushed them aside. Von Sasser called for coffee, and the Tayswengo waitress swished away in her humiliating dirndl. Von Sasser produced his long-stemmed pipe. He filled it with tobacco from a leather pouch, then lit it. The assembled company were all riveted by this matinée, but Tom was now convinced that Von Sasser’s spoken lines were intended for him – and Prentice – alone.
‘How does it all end?’ was how the anthropologist began today’s homily. ‘Isn’t that the question that torments the Anglo – bothers him like a fly in his eye? The Third Act problem, the thrilling climax . . . then the drowsy resolution. Yes, yes, the Anglos’ lust for this is blatantly bloody sexual – they’re not like the true natives of this great land. Those poor bastards have had it hammered into them for so long that they’re shit, that they just sit on their arses while the flies eat them! Especially the children – the poor bloody kids. It’s almost as if,’ – he shifted to confront Prentice – ‘they’re born with this fatalism.’
Von Sasser stopped. Prentice no longer had the energy to even quail beneath his raptor’s stare: his psoriasis was back with a vengeance; the badlands of cracked and humped skin had spread right up on to his face. ‘You!’ Von Sasser spat. ‘You can do whatever you like to the poor bloody kids . . . except’ – the shotgun eyes came back to Tom – ‘tell them stories with clap-happy bloody endings!’
He took a long draw on his pipe, then resumed more evenly: ‘You’re probably wondering why the Technical College is such a dump, when the rest of Ralladayo – thanks, in no small part, to those present’ – he nodded to Adams, Loman and Gloria in turn – ‘who have given their hearts and bloody minds to the community – is ticking over pretty damn efficiently.’
‘Uh, yeah, I guess I was kinda intrigued,’ Tom said lamely.
‘My father, Otto, is buried at Gethsemane Springs, forty clicks east of here, yeah, on the track to the coast. The Technical College was his own brainchild, right. He laboured for it – strived to make it a reality. He even went south, put on dress kit and gave after-dinner bloody speeches to raise money for it from Anglo fat cats, who – once his back was turned – went back to cursing the bloody bing-bongs.’
With forensic fingers, Von Sasser picked up his tiny espresso cup and took a sip. He smacked his lips with an ‘ah’, then went on. ‘Be that as it bloody may, when my dad was dying he made me promise that I’d sack the Anglo teachers and let the College decay back into the bloody dust.
‘ “Erich,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether our people study the sciences, the arts, maths or languages – the result is the same: it makes them lust for an end; that, Erich, is the true leitmotif of Western civilization, and it’s the very one we’ve come here to rid them of. Don’t let our people fall victim to the narrative fallacy of the Anglos!”
‘ ’Course, I’m not claiming that those were his actual last words – that’d be a bit bloody rich! But he was dead in days, and I respected his final wish – why wouldn’t I? By then I’d already begun the work he’d had me trained for; it’s true, the first results were not exactly, er . . . conclusive’ – Tom noted the hesitation – ‘but in spite of that we were both confident we’d found a way forward, so that these people’ – he threw an arm wide to encompass all of Ralladayo – ‘would never, ever waste their lives waiting for the bloody end. Sitting in the dark and smelly multiplex of their minds, gagging to know how their lives would turn out, while completely neglecting to bloody live them!’
There was silence for a few seconds, then Tom heard an electronic whirr. Its source was Swai-Phillips: the lawyer was hovering at the corner of the chalet, a camcorder held to his good eye. He switched it off and let it fall by its lanyard on to his bare chest. He approached the table, walking normally and banging his big, square hands together with slow, resounding claps. He stopped, bowed low, then gravely intoned: ‘Here endeth the second lesson.’
Von Sasser ignored him, instead rattling off a series of commands: ‘Winnie, take Brodzinski here over to the comms shack; he’ll be needing to call his people. Brodzinski, you take your man Prentice along with – you wanna keep a close eye on that one. Vishtar and I’ve got more bloody carving to get on with s’arvo.’ He rose. ‘Till sundown, then!’ And, with Dr Loman in his train, swept off the veranda and back through the gum trees towards the dispensary.
Adams came to life. ‘ ‘C’mon,’ he said to Tom. ‘Erich’s right; the early afternoon’s the best time to patch across.’
Tom was about to protest at this assumption that he even wanted to call Milford, but something in Adams’s tone prevented him. This wasn’t to do with his calling home; it was about Prentice not being allowed to. Prentice, who was now a pitiful sight: a pile of dirty dude’s clothes slung over a seat back. Not one for his good lady’s album.
Tom, with an access of hypocritical pity, helped him to his feet and said, ‘D’you want me to get some ointment for you? I don’t mind putting it on . . .’
‘Don’t bother, old chap,’ Prentice muttered. ‘Let’s go make your call.’ Then he gave the lopsided smile of a beaten cur, and added: ‘Not long now.’
In the comms shack Adams adopted the persona of a radio ham. He put on headphones – or ‘cans’, as he pretentiously referred to them – and played with the switches and dials on the transmitter. Prentice dumped his bundle of a body form down on an upturned crate, while Tom took a swivel chair beside Adam’s. The ether whistled and warbled, then, once the appliance was humming nicely to itself, Adams took his headphones off.
‘There’s some news you, ah . . . might like to tell the folks back home,’ he said. ‘It’s, ah . . . concerning Mr Lincoln.’
Tom marvelled at how such a heavy lunch could rise up his gorge so easily: here it came, another hateful display of amateur dramatics by the Queen Ham. ‘What?’ Tom yelped. ‘Has the old man died?’
‘On the contrary.’ Adams chose his words as fastidiously as a spinster selecting Scrabble tiles. ‘Dr Loman spoke with one of his colleagues in Vance this morning. It would appear that Mr Lincoln has, regained, ah . . . consciousness. It’s an astonishing case – the infection is, ah . . . subsiding. It’s early days, but the feeling is that he may well make a full, ah . . . recovery. Of course, the consequences for your own, ah . . . situation – especially now an initial reparation payment has been made – can be nothing but, ah . . .’ – the longest pause, dry-stick fingers fondling the slack vocab’ bag – ‘. . . good.’
And with that Adams resumed his other communication duties, rapping out a call sign into the mic’ once, twice, a third time. Between each announcement his equine face quivered with the strain of listening. He pointed to some other headphones, and Tom put them on. He was in time to hear the radio operator in Trangaden say: ‘. . . receiving you RAL20–40. You’re faint – but you’re there, yeah. How can I help ya today, Winnie? Over.’
Adams read out the Brodzinskis’ home phone number and asked to be patched through. The sounds of the Trangaden man dialling were suddenly very loud: each digit a klaxon beep, then there came the leonine purring of the ringing phone. ‘WE’LL LEAVE YOU TO IT,’ Adams mouthed exaggeratedly, and Tom revolved to see him hoik Prentice unceremoniously to his feet and lead him out the door.
Tom pressed the headphones firmly against his ears, and the purring lion padded into his head: ‘pprrrupp-prrrup; pprrrupp-prrrup; pprr–’ Then stopped. ‘Martha Lambert speaking,’ said Martha’s voice. Hearing it, Tom allowed himself to fully accept what Prentice had said: it wasn’t long, now. Long before he would be back in Milford; long before he would be able to mend this crazy breach between them; long before he would be at home with her – and the kids.
He pushed his mouth into the mic’s steel mesh: ‘Martha, it’s me, Tom, can you hear me, honey?’ The etheric birds had been netted; every one of his words sounded as clear as a bell that resonated with cravenly hopeful expectation.
‘Tom, is that you?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m in Ralladayo, where Atalaya’s – Mrs Lincoln’s – people live. Lissen.’ He couldn’t stop himself gabbling. ‘There’s fantastic news – it’s incredible. The old man – Mr Lincoln – he’s, he’s making a recovery, and I’ve, I’ve made the, like, restitution I hadta, so, it looks as if – I mean, I can’t be certain – but it looks like I might be home soon.’ He stopped. There was no sense of the half-world that separated them, only a voracious nullity, sucking on his ears with foam-padded lips.
‘That’s . . . excellent news, Tom . . .’ Had her voice ever sounded more like her? More completely Martha: each snicked syllable and sharply enunciated consonant a tight brush stroke, vividly describing her slim body – so very dear, so very familiar, so utterly strange. ‘I’m so happy for you . . .’ There was a small yellow-tinted perspex window in front of the table the transmitter sat on. As he listened to his wife, Tom Brodzinski stared at this acrylic of an alien land: the streaks of the gum trees’ trunks, the pointillism of their foliage, the brown splodge of a humpy in the mid-distance, the painterly distortions of the sun’s own strokes. ‘It’ll be good to have you back home, sometimes I think you don’t realize . . .’ Looking like Death, a figure in a black native toga walked into the picture from the left. ‘. . . how much the kids’ve . . .’ It turned towards the comms shack, and in the shadow of the hood bloomed a pale face. It was Gloria Swai-Phillips, talking on a cellphone. ‘. . . missed you . . .’ Martha’s words, which had pulsed along wires, been thrown into space, bounced off a satellite, then cast back down to earth, were now dubbed precisely on to Gloria’s lips. Tom registered this, because Gloria completed Martha’s sentence: ‘. . . especially Tommy Junior.’ Then she looked through the window straight at him and gave him a playful little wave.
Hispid and viscid: the sweat-damp hairs on Tom’s nape lifted and stretched themselves, each chafing against its neighbour. Hispid and viscid: Beelzebub’s proboscis was nuzzling at the sweet nooks and crannies of Tom’s cerebrum. It tickled.
Tom found himself outside without any awareness of having torn off headphones or slammed through doors. He was temporarily blinded – than he groped his way, hands on sunbeams, to where Gloria stood in her sack. The race was over; she snapped the cellphone shut and disappeared it in the folds of her robe.
‘You – she . . . W-What? W-What have you done? Are you – have you been fuckin’ copying my wife?’ He spluttered his childish accusation.
Gloria looked him up and down matter-of-factly. ‘If you want me to be your wife, Tom, then that’s fine, yeah?’
‘I – I dunno . . . Have you been talking – on the phone, to me?’ He ranged back in time to the night before the prelim’ hearing in Vance, and the rhythmic jingling trudge he had heard when he held his own cellphone to his ear. The Martha voice impersonating Gloria. What was it she – they – had said: you’ve gotta say these things to keep ’em happy, yeah? I mean, their pathetic little egos require it, yeah?
But that was then.
Gloria Swai-Phillips led Tom back towards the Technical College by the arm. She guided him between the gum trees, holding him firmly in case he should trip on their roots. As they walked, she gave him an explanation – at least, that’s how she saw it.
‘Squolly – Commander Squoddoloppolollou – he read your rights to you when you were arrested, right?’
‘Rights?’ Tom murmured. All he remembered was Swai-Phillips ridiculing him for even raising the matter.
‘What I mean is, Squolly would’ve told you how the police were gonna investigate you, yeah? How they were gonna tail you, check out what your intentions were, yeah? Figure out what kinduv a guy you are.’
‘And those were my rights?’
‘So far as the Tugganarong and Anglo communities here are concerned, yeah, those are your rights. The thing is, Tom’ – still holding his arm, Gloria drew Tom round so that he was facing her – ‘Squolly’s men’ve been tailing you for a long time now – years in fact, yeah? Y’see, when you were a young bloke, Tom, you kinduv took your eye off the ball.’
‘Eye off the ball?’
They had reached the low wall that bounded the Technical College. Tom’s eye – still off the ball – rolled over crab grass, cracked earth, the sawn-off stumps of a mulga thicket. The thrift-shop donation that was Prentice was piled on top of the wall, smoking. There was something different about this small prospect – a change that bothered Tom. He fixated on this, instead of listening to the harpy.
‘Not acting – y’know, that can reveal a lot concerning a bloke’s intentions. After her miscarriage, when Martha came to visit us in Liège, then, when she came back, and a few months later you guys adopted Tommy Junior, well, you didn’t act: you never asked the questions a conscientious man – a man with good intentions – would’ve asked, yeah?’
It was the SUV – that was the difference. It was gone. Tom scrutinized the patch of dirt where the little vehicle had been standing only half an hour before. Why were there no tyre tracks to show that it had been driven away?
‘But you’re not a conscientious man, are you Tom? You’re the kinduv man who feasts his eyes on a young black girl’s tits, then wants to screw his wife with the hard-on, aren’t cha?’
There was something where the SUV had been, and bizarrely it was car shaped. Ignoring Gloria, Tom moved towards it. He felt a perverse affection for the SUV, whatever its design weaknesses; it had managed to carry him all this way.
‘You’re the kinduv man who pays no attention to a woman at all unless she’s a sexual-bloody-prospect.’ The ghastly crow came pecking after him. ‘Winthrop’s Handrey women friends? They’re only fuck-buddies, fat gals beneath your contempt – same goes for my cousin Betsy, who you never so much as said “hi” to. Daphne Hufferman saves your life, but she has to ride in the bloody back like a kid.’
The object that had replaced the SUV was a car; or, rather, it was a 1:10 scale model of one. Tom squatted down and picked up the Gandaro spirit wagon. He ran his hand over the artfully bent and hammered sides of the tiny MPV, marvelling again at the skill with which it had been soldered together out of tin cans.
Glancing up, Tom saw that Prentice was as intrigued by the spirit wagon as he was; although, of course, Prentice could have no idea what an astonishing coincidence it was to find it here, thousands of miles from where Tom had first seen the cult object.
‘I wonder what you think Atalaya Intwennyfortee feels about her husband – a respected elder of this community – being so viciously bloody assaulted, yeah? Then lying for all these weeks on the brink of bloody death? You sure as hell don’t know, Tom, ’cause you’ve never once taken the time to talk to her, despite having big mobs of bloody chances, right?’ I’m spotting, Tom . . . I’m spotting . . .
Tom set the spirit wagon down on the wall next to Prentice, who, somehow managing to summon his famed national reserve, gave him a look that implied – at one and the same time – that he too was withering under Gloria’s onslaught, while never the less being too polite to have heard a single word of it. He touched his waxy finger to the flying vee of the spirit wagon’s spoiler.
‘It’s bloody incredible how you’ve behaved since you flew in, Tom, when all Martha was ever trying to do was show the kid his roots, and get you to face up to your bloody responsibilities as his father!’
This penetrated – and Prentice flinched as if it had been aimed at him. Tom thought: bloody this, bloody that, bloody every-bloody-thing. I’m spotting, Tom . . . I’m spotting . . .and it’s your fault.
He rounded on his Jesuitical tormentor. ‘Are you telling me’ – Tom was amazed by the control he was exhibiting; he must still be astande – ‘that I, we – the whole damn family – weren’t here for a vacation?’
Squolly was sitting in the deliciously airconditioned interview room. Tom was opposite him, sipping a soda, the bubbles fizzing on his culpable tongue. Attached to the shiny peak of the squat Tugganarong’s complicated cap was a Tommy Junior mask. It fitted perfectly.
But Gloria refused to be interviewed. ‘What did Erich say to you at lunch, Tom? You Anglos are always the bloody same; you’re as happy as a pig in shit – and this is shit, Tom, believe it – so long as there’s an ending to the sorry bloody tale. Well, I’m happy to provide you with one, Tom, and like I said, I’m happy to be your wife too. You wanna know why? Aw, I’ll save you the bloody bother of asking, yeah? It’s ’cause, exactly like Martha, I’m gonna leave you.’
