William Boyd - On the Yankee Station - Stories

OH, MUMMY, I THINK …

He looked again at the sunglasses in his palm. Things would change now. Nothing would be the same after this secret. It seemed to him now as if he were carrying a ticking bomb.

OH, MUMMY, I THINK I’VE FOUND YOUR SUNGLASSES.

The lowering sun was striking the flat rocks of the outcrop full on and Gavin could feel the heat through the soles of his sandals as he walked up the slope. Then, ahead, facing away from him, he saw the lizard. It was catching the last warmth of the day, red head methodically bobbing, sleek torso and long tail motionless. Carefully Gavin set down the glasses and took his catapult and a pebble from his pocket. Stupid lizard, he thought, sunbathing, head bobbing like that, you never know who’s around. He drew a bead on it, cautiously easing the thick rubber back to full stretch until his rigid left arm began to quiver from the tension.

He imagined the stone breaking the lizard’s back, a pink welling tear in the pale scaly skin. The curious slow-motion way the mortally wounded creatures keeled over, sometimes a single leg twitching crazily like a spinning rear wheel on an upended crashed car.

The lizard basked on, unaware.

Gavin eased off the tension. Holding his breath with the effort, heart thumping in his ears. He stood for a few seconds letting himself calm down. His mother would be home now; he should have enough time before his father returned. He picked up the sunglasses and backed softly away and around, leaving the lizard undisturbed. Then, with his eyes alight and gleaming beneath his oddly heavy brows, he set off steadily for home.

Before we start, something from this book I’m reading called Truth, Falsehood and Philosophy: “It occasionally happens that a situation is so new and unusual that no speaker of the language is equipped to say what words are appropriate for it. We shall call such situations bizarre.”

That’s what the book says, and I think it’s quite interesting and fairly relevant. But, how to begin? Perhaps:

I shall never forget the sight of Joan’s crumpled body, her head clumsily de-topped, like a fractious child’s attempt to open a boiled egg; as if some giant’s teaspoon had levered and battered its way to Joan’s decidedly average brain.

Or maybe:

I am here in Paris, Monday night, Bar Cercle, Rue Christine — well into my third Pernod — looking for Kramer. Kramer who came to stay and allowed his wife to suicide in my guest bedroom. Suicide? No chance. Kramer murdered her and I have the proof. I think.

Or possibly:

To cure some chronic cases of epilepsy, surgeons sometimes resort to a severance of the corpus callosum , the substance that holds together — and forms a crucial link between — the two hemispheres of the brain. The cure is radical, as is all brain surgery, but on the whole completely successful. Except, that is, for some very unusual side effects.

Into which we shall go later; my own epilepsy has been cured in this way. But, to return, the problem now is that all the beginnings are very apt, very apt indeed. Three of them though: three routes leading God knows where. And then, endings, too, are equally important, for — really — what I’m after is the truth. Or even TRUTH. A very elusive character. As elusive as bloody Kramer, sod him.

My preoccupation with truth arises from the division of my corpus callosum and explains why I am reading this book called Truth, Falsehood and Philosophy . I open at random. Chapter Two: Expressing Beliefs in Sentences. “Beliefs are hard to study directly and many sentences do not naturally state beliefs.…” My eyes dart impatiently down the page: “… although truth does not have degrees it does have many borderline cases.” At last something pertinent. For someone with my unique problems these donnish evasions and qualifications are incredibly frustrating. So, “truth has borderline cases.” Good. I’m glad to find the academics admit this much, especially as since my operation the whole world has become a borderline case for me.

Kramer was at school with me. To be candid I admired him greatly and he casually exploited my admiration. In fact you could say that I loved Kramer — in a brotherly sort of way — to such an extent that, had he bothered to ask, I would have laid down my life for him. It sounds absurd to admit this now, but there was something almost noble about Kramer’s disregard for everyone except himself. You know these selfish people whose selfishness seems quite reasonable — admirable, really, in its refusal to compromise. Kramer was like that: intelligent, mysterious and self-absorbed.

We were at university together for a while, but he was scandalously sent down and went off to America, where he duly made something of a name for himself as a sort of hoodlum art critic, a cultural vigilante with no respect for reputations. I often saw shadowy photographs of him in fashionable glossy magazines, and it was in one of them that I learned of his marriage — after ten years of rampant bachelorhood — to one Joan Aslinger, heiress to a West Coast fast-food chain.

Kramer and I had grown to become close friends of a sort and I continued to write to him regularly. I’m happy to report that he kept in touch: the odd letter, kitsch postcards from Hammamet or Tijuana. He used to come and stay as well — with his current girl-friend, whoever that might be — in my quiet Devon cottage for a boisterous weekend every two years or so.

I remember he was surprisingly solicitous when he heard about my operation and in an uncharacteristic gesture of largesse sent a hundred white roses to the clinic where I was convalescing. He promised shortly to visit me with his new wife, Joan.

It was during one of my periodic sojourns in the sanatorium that I experienced the particularly acute and destructive epileptic attack that prompted the doctors to recommend the severing of my corpus callosum . The operation was a complete success. I remember only waking up as bald as a football, with a thin, livid stripe of lacing running fore and aft along my skull.

The surgeon — a Mr. Berkeley, a genial elderly Irishman — did mention the unusual side effects I would have as a result of the coupage but dismissed them with a benign smile as being “metaphysical” in character and quite unlikely to impair the quality of my daily life. Foolishly, I accepted his assurances.

Kramer and his wife came to stay as promised. Joan was a fairly attractive girl; she had delightful honey-blond hair — always so clean — bright blue eyes and a loose, generous mouth. She chatted and laughed in what was clearly an attempt at sophisticated animation, but it was immediately obvious to me that she was hopelessly neurotic and quite unsuited to be Kramer’s wife. When they were together the tension that crackled between them was unbearable. On the first night they stayed, I overheard a savage, teeth-clenched row in the guest bedroom.

It was the effect on Kramer that I found most depressing. He was drawn and cowed, like a cornered, beaten man. His brilliant wit was reduced to glum monosyllables or fervent contradictions of any opinion Joan ventured to express. Irritation and despair were lodged in every feature of his face.

It didn’t surprise me greatly when, three strained days later, Kramer announced that he had to go to London on business and Joan and I found ourselves with a lot of time on our hands. She tried hard, I have to admit, but I found her tedious and dull, as most obsessively introspective people tend to be. She came slightly more alive when she drank, which was frequently, and our preprandial lunch-time session swiftly advanced to elevenses.