Brian Aldiss - The Complete Short Stories - The 1960s

‘If you don’t understand, it’s no good explaining. What I mean to say is that sometimes for days at a time I think myself – though I’m pure English – to be an Indian like you, living in India!’

‘I am a Pakistani, Eddie, as I have told you many times. You are choosing your own way to insult me again, aren’t you, taking advantage of the fact that I fundamentally have this degrading urge to be insulted. How can you live like an Indian here? And why should I care if you do? Your life is your own to make a fool with if you care to!’

‘That I would dispute if you were capable of arguing properly. How far are any of our lives our own ? Where do we live? Who lives us? Which is us? But to pose such philosophical questions to you – pah, it’s laughable! I must be out of my mind!’

‘The very truest word I have heard from you for months! You’re mad!’

‘Don’t you call me mad!’ The two tiny human figures confronted each other in the vast grey reconstructed landscape. Suddenly, one of them flung himself on the other. For a moment, they struggled together and then fell, rolling over and grasping at each other’s throats, lost on the ill-lit and broken plain. They became quieter. Finally one of them rose. He staggered off in the direction of the exit, gaining control of his movements as he went, and then breaking into a run that took him as fast as possible from the scene of the struggle.

When he got back to his apartment, he went straight into the little washing cubicle behind the surgery and rinsed his face and hands. He stood there bent at the basin for a long while, soaking his cheeks in cool water. Life was such nonsense that the more serious it grew, the harder it became to take it seriously.

The more he thought about it, the more amused he became. By the time he was drying himself on a fluffy white towel, he was laughing aloud. The moon indeed! The twenty-second century! Funny though it was, this nonsense must be put a stop to, once and for all. Clearly, he must go and see Etienne.

He rolled down his sleeves, walked through the surgery, down the passage, and to the front door. Looking through the two panels of frosted glass, he could see that beyond lay a fine summer’s evening. Although it was almost past nineteen-fifteen, the sun was still shining brightly, and quite high in the sky. He paused. Just beyond the door he would see the brass plate that announced he was practising as a dentist; and the name on it would be – Vindaloo or Morré? He hesitated. He hoped, Morré.

He opened the door. On the brass panel, polished by the concierge that morning, appeared his name: Morré. He beamed with relief. Beside the panel was a little pasteboard card with his surgery hours and reminders to patients to present their health cards, all neatly written out in French and Flemish.

He strolled down the side street and on to the main road, where the quiet was instantly lost. The garish seaside street carried a lot of through traffic, often international traffic hurrying from France through to Holland or Germany. Taking the undercut, Morré crossed the road and walked a couple of blocks to Etienne’s place. On the way, he stopped at a little flower stall and bought her a posy of blue cornflowers; they would soften the blow of what he had to say.

Etienne lived over a magazine and paperback shop in a flat she shared with two other young Belgian ladies – both happily away on holiday at present. Her pleasant little living room looked over the low dunes and the wide beach to the sea.

‘You are very late this evening, Eddie,’ she said, smiling as she let him in.

‘Perhaps so, but why attack me for it? It’s my misfortune, isn’t it – or so I would have thought it if you had greeted me lovingly!’

‘Eddie, don’t be that way! I did not reproach you, my darling!’ She stood on tiptoe, as he had noticed she often did. She was short and very shapely, in a little blue dress that went well with the cornflowers. She looked very sexy standing like that.

‘Please come off your tiptoes,’ he said. ‘You are trying to fool me.’

‘Darling, I was not – and I swear to you, I did not even notice I was on my tiptoes. Does it disturb you to see me on my tiptoes? It’s not usually reckoned as an indecent posture, but if it offends you, I promise I won’t do it again.’

‘Now you are trying to humour me! You know nothing maddens me like being humoured! Why can’t you speak to me like a reasonable human being?’

She flung herself down rather prettily in the wide armchair. ‘Oh, believe me, if you were a reasonable human being, I’d make every effort to talk to you like one. You’re absolutely nuts, aren’t you, Eddie?’

He had a brilliant idea. It would scare the pants off her. ‘Yes, you have uncovered my secret: I am nuts.’ Without undue haste, he lifted up the cornflowers before him and ate them one by one. Then he wiped his hands on his handkerchief. ‘I am nuts and that is what I wished to talk to you about this evening.’

‘I have to go out almost at once, Eddie …’ She looked as if she would have liked to faint. When he sat down close to her on the straight-back chair with the tapestry seat that was an heirloom from her old Flemish grandmother, she became rather fixed in expression, and said nothing more.

‘What I was going to tell you, Etienne, darling, what I especially came over for, was to say that I feared our engagement must be broken off. It’s not so much that we are not suited, although that is a consideration; it is more that I don’t even seem to know what century I am living in – from which it follows, I suppose, that I don’t even know what country I am living in – which in turn means that I don’t know what language I am speaking, or what my name is. In fact I don’t even know what planet I’m on, whether it’s the Moon, or Earth, or Mars.’

Etienne gestured out of the window towards the beach, where two sand yachts were bowling merrily along.

‘Take a look for yourself. Does that look like Mars? You were born on this coast; you know the North Sea when you see it, don’t you?’

‘Don’t interrupt me! Of course I can see it’s the flaming North Sea –’

‘Well then, don’t talk so stupid! Look, Eddie, I’ve really had about enough of your nonsense! You come up here every Saturday night and break off our engagement –’

‘I do not! I’ve never broken it off before, often though I’ve been tempted to!’

‘You do, too! You don’t know what you do do! How do you think I like it? I’ve got my pride you know! I can take emotional scenes as well as the next girl – in fact sometimes I rather think I enjoy them in a kinky sort of way. Maybe I’m the kinky kind –’

He shook a fist under her nose. ‘No self-analysis, please, at least while I’m speaking! Have you any interest in me or haven’t you? And who am I? Who indeed? Man’s eternal quest for identity – pity I have to carry mine out with such rotten partners.’

‘If you’re going to be insulting, you can go, Eddie Morré! I know perfectly well what’s wrong with you, and don’t think I’m not sympathetic just because I don’t show it. You have built up that fine little dentist’s practice just so’s you will have enough money to support me comfortably when we get married, and the overwork has resulted in brain fatigue. Poor Eddie! All you need is a little rest – these fantasies about Mars and the Moon are just phantoms of escape filtering across your over-heated cerebellum, reminding you of the need for rest and quiet. You know how damned quiet it is on Mars.’

Tears filled his eyes. It seemed she really was sympathetic. And perhaps her explanation was correct. He threw his arms round her in perfect forgiveness and attempted to kiss her.