Nick Cave - The Death of Bunny Munro

‘Did he now?’ says Pamela, and Bunny’s eyes mist at the drama of her lungs filling with weary air and releasing a compunctious sigh.

‘Most obliging, he said. Generous, even.’

Bunny notices a giant baby-blue rabbit wrapped in cellophane perched on the mantelpiece, but before he has even had time to contemplate the extraordinary synchronicity of this, Pamela, who looks as though she has been forced to make some unpleasant and ill-fated decision, sinks back into the sofa and says, ‘Tell me more about the hand lotion.’

‘Well, Pamela, this rich, hydrating, age-targeting lotion softens the skin and exfoliates surface cells for a smoother…’

Pamela reaches under her skirt and with a subtle upward shift of her hips slips off her panties. They are as white and blank as a snowflake.

‘… Um… younger look. It is formulated with a relaxing fragrance…’

Pamela hitches up her skirt and opens her legs.

‘… that inspires feelings of… comfort and… calm,’ says Bunny and he notices a sculpted domino of black fuzz balanced on top of her gash like a pirate flag or a Jolly Roger or something. He closes his eyes for a moment and imagines Avril Lavigne’s vagina and tears run down his cheeks.

‘Are you all right?’ asks Pamela.

‘It’s been a hard day,’ says Bunny, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

‘I’ve got a feeling about you,’ she says, not unkindly.

‘Yeah,’ says Bunny.

‘I think things are going to get a whole lot worse.’

‘I know,’ he says, with a sudden and dizzying awareness. ‘That’s what scares me.’

Pamela pushes her hips forward.

‘Do you like pussy, Bunny?’

There is a soft, sucking sound as Bunny’s bottom lip drops open. He experiences a great, cinematic rushing-away of the years.

‘I do,’ he says.

‘How much do you like it?’

‘I love it.’ He feels the evaporating of a massive psychic weight as his life tunnels backwards.

‘How much do you love it?’

‘I love it beyond all things. I love it more than life itself.’

Pamela readjusts the position of her hips.

‘Do you love my pussy?’ she says

She slips a long curled finger into her vagina.

‘Yes, I do. I love it beyond measure,’ says Bunny, in a tiny, uncomplicated voice. ‘I love it till the cows come home.’

Pamela chides him gently.

‘You wouldn’t lie to me, Bunny?’ she says, her left hand splayed and circling like a pink, amputated starfish.

‘Never. It is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Cross my heart and hope to die.’

Pamela slips her finger out and it glistens as she beckons to Bunny and says from deep in her throat, ‘Well, come and get it.’

Bunny slides from the armchair and drops to his hands and knees and with movements that seem newborn and unpractised he crawls across the worn carpet of her maisonette – a tube of hand cream clamped in his fist, a fucking rocket in his briefs and a little trail of plashed tears behind him.

Quasar – a distant compact body far beyond our galaxy, which looks star-like on a photograph but has a red shift characteristic of an extremely remote object. The distinctive features of quasars are an extremely compact structure and high red shift velocity corresponding to velocities approaching the speed of light. They are the most luminous objects in the universe – thinks Bunny Junior – and he brings his knees up to his chest. The boy believes that if he remains where he is, in the Punto on Meeching Road, Newhaven, his mother will eventually find him, and even as he thinks this he becomes aware of a shift in the air and the smell of his mother’s hand cream. He feels the feathery touch of her hand on his brow. He can feel her trace his profile with an index finger, down his forehead, between his sleeping eyes, along the length of his nose and onto his lips, where she presses her finger down in the approximation of a kiss. Bunny Junior hears a voice – either his or hers, he is not sure which – that says, ‘You… are… the… most… luminous… object… in… the… universe,’ and he feels a gentle folding of the air around him.

‘What’s the capital of China!?’

Bunny Junior awakes to the smell of hand cream and the retracting flutter of his mother’s fingers. His father sits beside him, panting and super-charged, his jacket off, his shirt open, his powerful pomaded hair crazy and all over the shop. White foam has collected in the corners of his mouth, his nose looks like a small, injured tomato and his eyes are energised with a wild joy.

Bunny Junior sits up and grabs at the empty air in front of his face.

‘Mummy?’ he says. ‘Mummy?’

‘Eh?’ says Bunny.

The boy rubs the sleep from his face. ‘Beijing,’ he says.

Bunny enacts a little stunt with his index fingers.

‘What’s the capital of Mongolia?’

The boy opens and closes boxes in his mind, but he is groggy with sleep and this takes time.

‘Come on! The clock’s ticking,’ says Bunny, who is now frantically combing his hair in the rear-view mirror.

‘Ulaanbaadar,’ he says, ‘formerly Urga.’

Bunny stops combing his hair and for some reason does an impersonation of Frankenstein’s monster, then mimes electricity coming out his ears and exclaims, ‘Ulaanbaa… what?!’

‘Ulaanbaadar, Dad,’ says Bunny Junior.

Bunny lets forth a great infectious laugh and slaps his thighs and lurches over, grabs his son in a headlock and knuckles the top of his skull.

‘My son, the bloody genius! You ought to be on the telly!’ shouts Bunny as he twists the key in the ignition and veers into the road. There is a blare of car horns and Bunny says, pulling at the crotch of his trousers, ‘Fuck, it’s good to be back on the road!’

‘That took a really long time, Dad,’ says the boy.

‘What?’

‘You were in there a really long time.’

Bunny turns into the Brighton Road and says, ‘Yeah, I know, but if you want to come on the road with me, the first thing you got to learn is patience . That is the first and fundamental law of salesmanship, Bunny Boy. Patience.’

Bunny guns the engine and overtakes a maroon cement truck.

‘It’s like those bloody Zulu warriors in Africa or wherever.’

‘Natal,’ says the boy.

‘What?’

‘South Africa.’

‘Yeah, fuck, whatever. The thing is – if a Zulu warrior wants to spear an antelope or a zebra or something, he doesn’t go stomping through the bush with his boots on and hope the antelope is gonna stay put. Right? He has to employ, what is known in the trade as stealth. Stealth and…’

‘Patience,’ says Bunny Junior and compresses a smile.

Bunny begins to beat on his chest a solemn tattoo with his fist and his face gathers in intensity.

‘You become one with your prey… and move quietly, stealthily, towards it and then… Wham !… you stick your spear right through its bloody heart!’

Bunny slams his hand on the dashboard for dramatic emphasis, and then he looks at the boy and says, ‘Why are you doing that loopy thing with your feet?’

‘You left your tie behind, Dad.’

Bunny’s hand rises to his throat.

‘Shit,’ he says, softly.

‘You left it back at the last house,’ says the boy.

Bunny punches his son playfully on the arm.

‘Ah, well, Bunny Boy, you tell me a Zulu warrior that ever wore a bloody tie!’

The Punto is now heading west along the coastal road and the boy watches the sun as it falls beyond the horizon and casts the sea in yellow gold, then pink gold, and then an ethereal, sorrowing blue.

‘Aren’t you going to go back and get it?’

‘Shit, no, I’ve got a suitcase full of ties!’