Russell Hoban - Linger Awhile

‘Greed? What are you talking about? I’m not greedy — all I want is a fair share of the action.’

‘OK,’ I said. I went to the V & A to check it out and there they were on the fourth floor, Liu Hai about seven inches high in brown clay and the toad buff with brown spots. Liu Hai trying to catch the toad which was looking very sly and sneaking away with a coin in its mouth. I copied down everything on the card because you never know. It said:

Liu Hai with the three-legged toad. Mark: Made by Xu Xiutang, Autumn of Chengshen Year [Yixingy] 1980 FL32-1984

I liked that toad, it looked as if it had seen wealth-seekers come and go over the centuries and was not much impressed by them.

Another version of the three-legged toad story is that it exists ‘only in the moon, which it swallows during the eclipse. It has therefore come to be a symbol of the unattainable.’ That version made more sense to me than the wealth one, and I wondered if I wasn’t helping my client to delude himself with fantasies of wealth that he would never possess. The look on the toad’s face suggested that Mr Rivet-Eyes might well end up with a wealth of unattainable.

But there was the matter of Justine to be considered. Irv was waiting for me to get Istvan’s notes and I was waiting for Istvan to leave his place. On Friday the 23rd I kept a close watch and I saw him go out. I waited a while to make sure it wasn’t only a local errand, then I read my bit of The Heart Sutra , which I always do at the start of any serious enterprise:

Here, O Sariputra. Form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness.

I’ve never read the whole Heart Sutra but if form is emptiness, then not reading it is the same as reading it, so I’m all right with that one bit. It always seems to do me good, and as soon as I say, ‘Here, O Sariputra,’ I’m up for whatever I need to do.

I let myself into Hermes Soundways and stood there listening for a few moments. Then I got to work. Istvan’s filing system was simple: he just piled the most recent thing on top of the one before it. That was the main system which included invoices, receipts, and newspaper cuttings as well as notes. There were several lesser ones consisting of backs of envelopes, various scraps of paper with writing on them and the odd matchbook cover. I separated what seemed to be Justine material from everything else, put it into what I thought might be chronological order and bundled it into the bag I’d brought with me.

Hoping not to run into Istvan I went down Dufour’s to Broadwick and over to Berwick. When The Blue Posts pub and red-and-yellow Nicolas and the Fine Crêpes wagon with its yellow scallop-edged canopy came into view I was on my home turf and I breathed easier. GOOD NEWS, said the sign above the red Newsweek awning at the start of my stretch of Berwick. At Nicolas I bought a bottle of Stolichnaya, then paused at the blue canvas-roofed flower stand diagonally opposite for some yellow and mauve crysanthemums. For a moment the smell of roast chestnuts came back to me from long-gone Decembers. Careful not to step on the cracks in the pavement I made my way back to All That Glisters past my many competitors in the jewellery line and my various landmarks: Reckless Records; then Badge Sales which looks like a message drop in a thriller; above it is a tailor with a blue plaque on his window:

TOM BAKER

1966–2041

BESPOKE TAILOR

Works here but lives

around the corner

How did he calculate his life span? Will he top himself at seventy-five or what? One day I’ll ask him but I keep putting it off. The Cotton Café, The Maharani Indian Tandoori Restaurant with its splendid yellow sign (Maharani in red), followed after a decent interval by the Raj Tandoori Restaurant, also with a yellow sign like a beacon of Eastern heat in the English winter. Then I was home.

Up in the studio I poured myself a drink and sat down on the floor with my load of whatever it was. As I held the papers in my hand an invoice fell out. I took that as a sign that something was trying to tell me something. The invoice was from Thierson & Bates Biologicals in Surrey for Rana temporaria (3), £33. I rang up Thierson & Bates and said I was Mr Fallok’s secretary. ‘I’m going through invoices for his VAT return,’ I said, ‘and I’m not sure about this one from you. What are three Rana temporaria ?’

‘Common frogs,’ said the man at the other end.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘I assume these were …?’

‘Laboratory-quality specimens in formaldehyde,’ said the man.

‘Oh, yes,’ I said, ‘Now I remember the project. Thanks very much.’

The next thing was a handwritten recipe for primordial soup which included 20 gallons of chicken noodle, 500 Oxo cubes, 500 mg of polypeptides, 40 bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree (an obvious codename) plus quantities of ginseng and assorted multivitamins.

It was the polypeptides that convinced me that I was well out of my depth so I rang up Irv and asked him to come over. He came with a new bottle, sensitive human being that he is, and we looked the whole lot over togezzer. Together. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s a good thing that I have a nephew who’s a polymath. He knows everything.’

‘I don’t care if he’s a merphradomite,’ I said. ‘Bring him on.’

So the next day or some other day Artie Nussbaum turned up. He’s at the Guy’s, King’s & St Thomas’ School of Medicine and he’s good with chemistry, biology and computers. He’s a little guy and he looks as if you added water you’d have four or five Charlie Sheens.

‘Oho,’ he said when he looked through what we had. ‘Is this legal?’

‘Artie,’ said Irv, ‘are you going to ask dumb questions or are you going to help your uncle?’

‘Sorry,’ he said. To me he said, ‘Have you got a computer with a modem?’

I led him to the computer and he sighed and said, ‘If you could order me a pizza with pepperoni and a six-pack of John Smith?’

‘No prob,’ I said. I got him what he needed and we left him to it. He had to go to lectures from time to time but after three days he gave us a shopping list for all kinds of things plus three Rana temporaria . We ordered the laser gear, the extra computer software, the oil drum and the rest of it. For the primordial soup there was the matter of the forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree. Artie was not bothered about that. ‘What we’re doing here,’ he said, ‘is creating a suspension of disbelief in which the visual particles of Justine Two will be held pending the zapping which will precipitate the whole woman. For Ring-Bo-Ree read any high-calorie filler that will enhance the body of the soup, say John Smith, forty cans of.’

‘Julv,’ said Irv.

‘Sorry?’ said Artie.

‘Just thinking out loud,’ said Irv. ‘I agree that John Smith can go in for Ring-Bo-Ree.’

I did too, so that was one less problem. When we got to Rana temporaria Thierson & Bates said, ‘Sorry, we’re temporarily out of frogs. Would you like some other batrachian?’

‘Like what?’ I said.

‘Toads?’ said the man. ‘I can do you some nice Bufo bufo in formaldehyde.’

‘Yes,’ I said, going all goosepimply, ‘those will do nicely.’

30 January 2004. OK, so I didn’t ask dumb questions. Actually, after a while I became completely involved in what I was doing and I stopped worrying about legality and morality. Like the guys who worked on the first atom bomb, I guess. Once you see that something is possible, you’re damn well going to make it happen if you can.