Nick Cave - The Death of Bunny Munro

Bunny turns to the boy, sucks on his cigarette, expels a funnel of smoke into the room and asks, ‘Will you be all right, Bunny Boy?’

‘ I’ll be all right. But will you?’ says Bunny Junior.

Bunny crumples the can of Coke and lobs it into the sink in the tiny kitchenette and says, ‘Yes, I’m ready,’ then slips on his jacket, throws his arms out to the side and says, ‘How do I look?’

‘You look good, Dad,’ says Bunny Junior. ‘You look ready.’

‘Well, yeah, because there is something I’ve got to do,’ says Bunny.

‘I know, Dad,’ says the boy, and he picks the scorched remnants of his encyclopaedia, with its rain-swollen pages, off a low laminated coffee table.

‘You go wait for me down at the swimming pool, and I’ll come by and pick you up later,’ says Bunny.

‘Yeah, Dad, I know.’

Bunny sucks the last gasp out of his Lambert & Butler, crushes it in an ashtray, checks himself in the mirror (for the hundredth time) and says, ‘Sure you do, Bunny Boy.’

Bunny Junior lies back in the beanbag and opens his encyclopaedia and peels apart the ruined pages until he finds a definition of the word ‘Fantasy’.

‘A fantasy is a situation imagined by an individual which does not correspond with reality but expresses certain desires or aims of its creator. Fantasies typically involve situations that are impossible or highly unlikely,’ reads the boy and closes the encyclopaedia. ‘Who would have guessed that, Dad?’ he says, secretly pinching his leg.

‘See you, Bunny Boy,’ says Bunny, and he opens the door of the chalet and steps outside into the cool evening air.

Outside the night air carries within it only the faintest idea of a chill but it is enough for Bunny to register a shiver run through his body. At least he hopes it is the breeze and not some eleventh-hour lack of resolve, because, as he walks down the path towards the Main Hall, he feels a rising but not altogether unexpected suspicion that the course of action he is about to embark upon may not be as straightforward as he has planned.

He stops walking for a moment, puts a Lambert & Butler in his mouth and looks up at the night sky for guidance or strength or courage or something, but the moon appears counterfeit and merely cosmetic, the stars cheap and gimmicky.

‘Oh, man,’ he says to himself. ‘What happened to the night?’

Bunny Zippos his cigarette, takes a deep drag, holds it in his lungs and comes to understand that there is simply no point in turning back, he must do what he came here to do, and he expels a resolute stream of blue smoke into the air and moves on. He leaves the path, makes his way around the side of the Main Hall and enters the stage door of the Empress Ballroom.

The carpeted stairs are rank with cigarette smoke and stale beer, and as he climbs them, Bunny sees within the bizarre amorphous pattern of the flock wallpaper a gallery of sinister faces with elongated and spiteful eyes. He sees these as a congregation of accusatory faces – a grotesque collection of the aggrieved – and he hopes that they are not some kind of premonition of things to come.

He traces his finger along the raised scar over his right eye and walks down a short hall, and as he draws closer he hears the dull murmur of the crowd gathering and he thinks he can hear, on the soft-pedal, a note of anxious expectation growing within it. He also senses, deeper down, a reverberation of malice and mistrust that he knows is imagined, or at least anticipated, but nevertheless implodes within him like a sadness.

‘Oh, man,’ he says again and he enters the cramped backstage area of the Empress Ballroom.

Bunny sequesters himself into the wings and, hidden there, takes a deep breath and pulls back one of the red velvet, star-spangled curtains and sees that the interior of the Empress Ballroom, with its purple-and-gold satin ceiling and its ornamental balconies, is filled to capacity with the crowd of women that he had observed walking up the main path. He feels his heart constrict and a bubble of dread rise in his chest.

On the tiny glittering stage, a three-piece band dressed in pale green velour jackets begins to play an instrumental version of a soft rock classic that Bunny feels is both familiar and foreign at the same time.

Bunny puts a Lambert & Butler in his mouth and pats his pocket for his Zippo.

‘Need a light, friend?’ says a voice.

Bunny turns and sees a tall, lean-looking figure standing, like a tower of obtuse angles, in the shadows. He has a cigarette dangling from his mouth and what appears to be a saxophone hanging around his neck. The man strikes a match and the flare of the flame reveals him to be a blue-eyed, handsome man in his early fifties. He sports a black moustache, wears a hairnet and is dressed in the same pale green velour jacket that the other band members are wearing. He reaches over and lights Bunny’s cigarette.

‘Shouldn’t you be on?’ says Bunny, keeping his voice low.

The musician takes a drag of his cigarette and blows a considered plume of smoke into the air and says, ‘No, man, they haul me in on the third number.’ Then he takes a step back, sucks on his cigarette again and gives Bunny the once-over. ‘Hey, man, I love the quiff. What are you?’ he asks, ‘A joke-man? A magician? A singer?’

‘Yeah, something like that,’ says Bunny, and then adds, ‘I dig your moustache.’

‘Thanks, man. The missus don’t go for it much.’

‘No, it looks good,’ says Bunny.

‘Well, it’s a commitment,’ says the musician and takes a final drag on his cigarette and with a swivel of his black leather boot grinds it into the floor.

‘I can see that,’ says Bunny.

‘But I do love my wife,’ says the musician, tracing his fingers along his moustache, a distant look in his eyes.

Bunny feels a wave of emotion erupt in his throat and he presses his lips together and turns his face away, so that it is momentarily lost in shadow.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a tiny man in a red tuxedo with white piping and gold buttons the size of milk bottle tops and an immaculate strawberry-blonde toupee pushes past Bunny and bounds onto the stage. He executes, with a shimmy and a shake, a series of rolling gestures with his hands that brings the band’s song to a close.

The musician with the moustache leans in close to Bunny and behind his hand speaks to him out of the side of his mouth.

‘Hey, did you hear the one about the junkie who shot up a whole packet of curry powder?’

‘No,’ says Bunny, who has pulled back the curtain again and is anxiously scanning the crowd on the dance floor of the Empress Ballroom.

‘Yeah, well, now he’s in a korma.’

On the stage the diminutive Master of Ceremonies skips up to the microphone, pops his cuffs and throws his arms out wide and says in a voice that surprises Bunny in its depth and insistence, ‘Hi-di-hi!’

The audience responds with a smattering of non-committal applause.

‘I can’t hear you!’ says the MC, in a singsong voice, ‘I said “Hi-di-hi!”’ and then walks to the lip of the stage and points the microphone at the audience.

‘Hi-di-hi!’ says the audience, in unison.

‘That’s better! Are we gonna have fun tonight?’

The crowd, swept up, clamours its assent, with foot stomps and hand claps.

‘We are gonna dance!’ says the MC, and the little man does a nifty twisting movement with his tiny feet, his pink toupee shimmering in the stage lights, the buttons on his jacket twinkling. ‘We are gonna sing!’ he cries, and yodels horribly, then cocks his thumb over his shoulder at the band and says in a panto-whisper, waggling his thick black eyebrows, ‘I better leave that to the professionals!’ The crowd laugh and whistle and applaud. ‘And when the lights go down,’ says the MC, winking suggestively, ‘maybe make a little love!’