Russell Hoban - Medusa Frequency

It’s still three o’clock in the morning, the night sister still in her space of light at the edge of the dark ward, at the edge of underworld. Her face is in shadow, her white cap flickers, becomes a writhing and a hissing silence. She looks up, her shadowy gaze is on me. The silence crackles with its brilliance, her mouth is moving as it moved above the pinky dawn water between the beach and the Island Tamaraca.

‘What?’ I said. ‘What are you saying?’

‘We haven’t had a ten o’clock urine specimen from you,’ she said.

Melanie came to visit me with a bunch of grapes. ‘What brought on the angina?’ she said.

‘The head of Orpheus turned up as half a grapefruit and in an absent-minded moment I ate it.’

‘Perhaps that was your way of recognizing that you don’t need it any more.’

‘It’s the other way round: it doesn’t need me any more now that we’ve finished the story.’

‘Well, there you are then; you took it on yourself to finish the story and now you’ve done it and it’s off you. That’s more of a reason for not getting angina.’

‘Yes, but it’ll take some getting used to.’

‘Do you remember in The Tempest,’ she said, ‘Prospero says, “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine”?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘That’s what I think you’ve been doing; and now that you’ve acknowledged it you can move on to something else.’

‘This thing of darkness is where my writing comes from.’

‘You mean your comics?’

‘No, I don’t mean my comics. Slope of Hell and World of Shadows weren’t comics, were they.’

‘No, but they were quite a few years back, weren’t they. What’s this thing of darkness done for you lately?’

‘Today is William Blake’s birthday,’ I said.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘Nothing. He just came into my mind, that’s all. He said that what men and women require of each other are the lineaments of Gratified Desire.’

‘There’s more than one kind of desire that wants gratification,’ she said.

‘What kind were you thinking of?’

‘The desire to stop mucking about and get on with it. Have you started work on the film?’

‘No.’

‘Are you going to?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Right. I can see what’s coming: after a while you’ll leave the phone off the hook and stop answering the door and keep the blinds pulled down and newspapers and letters and bills will pile up in the hall and finally one day they’ll break down the door and there won’t be anybody there but the thing of darkness.’

‘Maybe that’s who’s been there all along. Gom Yawncher’s gone.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was here in this ward and now he’s gone, handed in his dinner pail, picked up his cards, hopped the twig, slung his hook, pissed off out of this world.’

‘Oh,’ she said, and began to cry.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to burden you with it.’

‘Yes, you did.’

After a while the grapes were still there but she was gone. Pale wintry Sunday-afternoon sunlight on the grapes.

The hospital, having brought me a cup of tea at six o’clock every morning, electrocardiogrammed me, X-rayed me, tested my blood and urine, confirmed Dr Carnevale’s diagnosis of angina, advised me to avoid fats and cholesterol and take moderate exercise and lose weight, gave me a little bottle of glyceryl trinitrate tablets, and put me out on the street again. And there I was as before with Hilary Forthryte waiting for my call and the current account dead on the floor.

Quickly I went to the word machine, booted the system master and the word-processing programme, and typed:

Hello, hello. Is anybody there?

WHOM DID YOU WANT?

Well, I thought maybe Medusa.

THIS IS MEDUSA SPEAKING.

Do you remember what you said to me?

WE HAVEN’T HAD A TEN O’CLOCK URINE SPECIMEN FROM YOU.

No, before that, when you spoke above the pinky dawn water between the beach and the Island Tamaraca.

THAT WAS A MYSTERY.

I know, but couldn’t we talk about it a little?

NOT NOW.

OK, I said. Sorry I bothered you. I blew some of the dustballs off my desk, emptied the wastebasket, put on a Greek tape, shook some dandruff over the keyboard, stared at the screen, and began to fall asleep. ‘No,’ I said, ‘that’s not the way to do it.’ I got a videotape from the shelf, it was a BBC documentary about a wedding in Calabria and I was remembering the father of the bride. I ran it fast forward to the part I wanted: there it was just before the end, there was the father, a thin man in shirtsleeves. Setting up his daughter in married life had cost twenty thousand pounds, each of the two families bearing half the cost. This man had used up his savings and borrowed from the bank and he had two more unmarried daughters.

There is music and suddenly he is dancing. His feet move him in a circle and with his arms and his head he abandons himself; his arms make rhythmic motions of swimming or scattering, his face is rapt, urgent with the marriage of his daughter as his dance carries him around his circle.

I rang up Hilary Forthryte and told her I couldn’t do the film, I had too many other things to wind up and I really wasn’t going to be free for a new project for a long time. Then I sat down at the keyboard again and looked intently at the screen.

ARE YOU THERE? said the Kraken.

Here I am. What now?

PAY ATTENTION,

I am paying attention.

FAR, FAR DOWN IN THE DEEPEST DEPTHS OF THE HURGO MURMUS LIVES NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH.

Yes, that sounds good. Tell me about Nnvsnu the Tsrungh.

NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH, ALONE IN THE BLACKNESS, THINKING, THINKING IN THE BLACKNESS OF THE ULTIMATE DEEP.

Carry on, I’m with you.

THAT’S AS FAR AS I’VE GOT.

You’re making up a story.

I THOUGHT I’D GIVE IT A TRY.

This Nnvsnu the Tsrungh — there’s a lot of you in him, isn’t there?

WELL, YOU KNOW HOW IT IS — THIS IS MY FIRST TIME.

That’s all right, you’re doing very well. There’s nothing wrong with using yourself but you have to dress it up a bit, put in a little sex and violence, a little excitement. Not too much thinking in the ultimate deep.

NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH IS THINKING VIOLENTLY.

Of what?

OF GOING AFTER WHOEVER PULLED THE GREAT SNYUKH.

What was the Great Snyukh?

IT WAS THE BLUG OF NEXO VOLLMA.

The Blug of Nexo Vollma. I like that. I should think it was about forty feet high with a thousand tentacles and it left a slimy track.

NEXO VOLLMA IS THE BLUGHOLE OF THE UNIVERSE.

You mean plughole. Nexo Vollma is the plughole of the universe and the Great Snyukh was the plug. In that case the Great Snyukh must have been a good deal bigger than I thought.

IT WAS A WHOLE LOT BIGGER THAN ANY PLUG YOU CAN THINK OF, AND IT GOT PULLED. BUT IN THAT UNIMAGINABLE MOMENT BEFORE THE BIG WHOOSH, SNYUKH! INTO THE BLUGHOLE WENT NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH.

He saved us all.

HE DID WHAT HAD TO BE DONE BUT NOW HE THINKS VIOLENT THOUGHTS. FROM THE BLUGHOLE IN THE BLACKNESS OF THE HURGO MURMUS, FROM THE UTTERMOST DEPTHS OF THE ULTIMATE DEEP HE SENDS HIS MIND AFTER THOSE WHO PULLED THE GREAT SNYUKH, THE BLUG OF NEXO VOLLMA.

Who did it? Who pulled the Great Snyukh?

THE DEEPLY BAD ONES DID IT.

Why did they do it?

THEY WANTED TO HEAR THE BIG WHOOSH.

The bastards.

DEEPLY BAD.

But Nnvsnu the Tsrungh is sending his mind after them. How does he send his mind?