Will Self - Shark

there are a thousand million questions about hate and death and war . . But the shouting is becoming a drag: it’s time to go — Claude gulps down his doppelgänger. . introjects him , and falls to ee-lim-in-ating the seditious and the negative with firm strokes of his pen as he sings: Ho, darkies, hab you seen de massa, Wid de CUDGEL IN HE HAND! — A hand closes over Claude’s, and Busner — who’s now towelled but still dripping — crouches down beside him in the hall and gently withdraws the letter he’s been censoring on his bent knee. Through the wall comes the highly appropriate cry, That’s what the wall of love is for! Busner slaps the wallpaper and shouts, Some bloody quiet please — IT’S FIRST THING IN THE MORNING! though he knows it’s no such thing: there’d been a few too many tins of Worthington’s on stage last night. Sleep had at first been deep — but eventually the heavy ebb of his bladder had drawn him to the lavatory, and when he lay down once more it had been. . full-fathom-five . Be that as it may. . Busner thinks, as he holds the sheet of Basildon Bond up to the light shining through the transom. . there are some advantages to living over the shop. He sees the watermark buried in the notepaper’s weave, he registers de muff-tash on he face : in fact, several thick felt-tipped muff-taches neatly obliterate the address at the top left, the date top right, the salutation, the entire body of the missive, the valediction bottom left and — assuming the writer had continued pro forma — the first element of his or her signature, so all that remains is a single word, a surname presumably: Lincoln, the L with a trailing loop that whips across the page. Busner reconsiders this: It might actually be the place name — or both, in a medievalish sort of way, say, John of Lincoln. . He summons himself to speak levelly and neutrally with the air of someone who both expects an answer and believes he will receive one: Why did you do this, Claude? But Gummidge says nowt , only persists in rocking back and forth rowing to nowhere . . his reassumed neck-gear mangling into his lap as he bends, unmangling as he straightens, his wurzel head rolling about on his stuff ed-up shoulders . — Next, and more infuriatingly, he clicks the dial on his little trannie and turns its and his own volume up: I tellya, man, I was THERE, and what I didn’t know AT THAT TIME I made it my goddamn business to find out AT A LATER STAGE such as. . NOW. Find out how the Godly integral fits in. . Laird & Company must be overcome within ten days if the shipyard is to be saved from closure. This was announced last night following the first meeting of the shipbuilding committee. . on the holy ballistics — a ball of enriched pee-you no bigger ’n a softball and tampered with, naturally, to intensify the reaction and. . make immediate representations to the Minister for Employment and Productivity —. Enough! Rocking in the hallway of his own head, Zack cannot focus either on the homely newsreader tones or the Creep’s nasal honks, so he’s overwhelmed by both. . Kilroy was there — some of it was pretty blue, such as Fuck your slant-eyed mother’s cunt. . of shop stewards will be going to London in the next few days. . It might be, Busner theorises, slightly hungover lability — or the function of a successful bowel movement, for the longer he listens to the two wordstreams the more they seem to be mingling. He fleetingly entertains the idea that the Creep may be adjusting. . my own consciousness! Deftly tuning it in and out, editing this random word collage into. . a surrealistic statement that, were I only able to concentrate on it , would express the fundamental Logos of experience —. Enough! Busner squats again: Claude, did you read the name on the envelope before you, ah, censored it? Claude, I need to at least let whoever it is know they received a letter, despite their being unable to read it. . I mean the fact that someone called — he squints at the notepaper again — Lincoln has written to them may mean a lot. — Accompanying Lillibullero on his trannie, Claude sing-songs: Fu-ckyou! Fu-ckyou! Fuck cur-i-osity, We’ll fight for the old cunt, fight for the old cunt. . — Busner senses stirring between his moist thighs and remembers yesterday morning when Miriam came to him in his bed, fully clothed and. . smelling of toast . He remembers her crumbling into the warm hollow beside him. — From downstairs there were raucous noises: the Kid screeching, Back up, baby, back up! as Mark walloped spine-jangling chords out of his electric guitar. Zack likes it when their boys play with him, after all, the Kid is only a few years older, and what could be more therapeutic than play? Miriam is unconvinced — whatever sympathy she may have for what they’re trying to achieve at the Concept House, she remains, Zack thinks, a victim of her own training. The residents’ distress — which he concedes can often be distressing — remains for her symptomatic of definable mental pathologies rather than an unusual form of social phenomenology. When the residents are distressed around the boys, Miriam backs up, baby, backs up! into an anxiety state — one that may well be maternal, but that he still felt the need to tell her yet again . . is probably evidence of her own. . un resolved attachment trauma . Maternal! she’d snorted. And why the bloody hell shouldn’t I be maternal, Zack? He rose up beside her on one elbow, admiring her hairy brown mantilla . . spread on the lacy pillowcase, part of an accouchement set Maurice had given them as a wedding present: fine linen having been superseded at the Highgate flat by easier-to-launder stuff, it’s ended up at Chapter Road, enveloping slack old pillows. . leaking dream-dampened feathers . With a protestation of bedsprings he lowered himself to lick the butter from her lips. Miriam turned to him, lifting her leg over his hip, pressing herself against him with. . elemental force . Stubbornly he’d persisted, coming up for air and to say, Of course you feel maternal, but you wouldn’t want to be a Stone Age mother confronting a Space Age child. She reared up at him: Meaning? Meaning, he continued, that there’s no illness the residents have, and if they did it wouldn’t be catching. . it wouldn’t be contagious. Even people who believe schizophrenia exists don’t think that any more — that it’s some kind of plague. — All this had backed up, baby, backed up! between them many times before — the novelty was this: her taking his hand and pressing it to her breast, his feeling with lancing intensity . . the many dimply depressions made by the machine-made embroidery of her bra through the cable knit of her pullover. She’d breathed buttery into his flaring nostrils and snuggled into him. As he caressed the back of her skull, stroked her rounded shoulders and massaged her slowly rotating hips, he’d exalted in the fine eroticism of a near-naked man together with a fully clothed woman, grappling in suburban daylight. The sexual should always be. . he sort of thought. . such up-endings of convention, the chance encounter of egg-whisks and silk scarves . . a perfumed ritual. . held in a cupboard under the stairs . She snuggled in closer, tugging at the bedcovers, trying to get at him, and he savoured the sandalwood talcum powder in the hot crook of her neck — pulling up her pullover, he fluttered his fingers on bare skin. — In the past month there’d been a lot of this: rumpling, rucking up, rummaging, pulling up and pulling down. . Surprise-surprise! You shouldn’t have . . the familiar gifts torn open with fresh expectation. A week before, another torpid Sunday dropsical with rain and overcast by the imminence of her and the boys’ departure, Miriam had frog-marched Zack into the bedroom and. .Читать дальше