Russell Hoban - Linger Awhile

After I gave Irv and Grace my shopping list they handed me one: a whole blood transfusion kit. Irv put the cash in my hand for the necessaries and I got everything at Chiron Medical Supplies near Middlesex Hospital. ‘We’ll need it for when she comes out of the soup,’ said Grace.

When our preparations were complete there was nothing to do but Justine Two. Irv and Grace assured me that Justine One had been created by this procedure so we did the same thing with isolating the image, lasering it through the diffraction grating, printing the interference pattern, then reducing the pattern to its particles and putting the particles into the soup in the drum. ‘There’s our suspension of disbelief,’ said Irv.

Grace said, ‘Please don’t say, “This is the moment of truth”.’

‘I’m not sure what kind of a moment it is,’ said Irv, ‘so I’m saying nothing.’ He handed Grace the 240-volt zapper we’d rigged up. ‘You do it,’ he said to her.

Grace closed her eyes and did it. There was a flash, a primordial electrical smell and somebody belched loudly. Then there she was rising out of the soup, all black-and-white in her sopping wet western clothes: Justine Two. ‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘where’s my fucking horse? Am I supposed to walk to El Paso?’ Then she stared wildly around and clambered out of the drum so violently that the three of us had to hold it to keep from spilling the primordial soup all over Grace’s studio. As it was, there was a big puddle and Justine Two stepped into it, sat down, and belched. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I don’t see anybody I know, so what kind of party is this?’

‘It’s not a party,’ said Grace.

‘Why are you talking funny?’ said J Two.

‘I’m English,’ said Grace. ‘You’re in London.’

‘That’s a crock of shit,’ said J Two. ‘There aren’t any London locations in this picture.’

‘You’re not in a picture now,’ said Irv. ‘This is reality.’

‘That’ll be the day,’ said J Two, and she fainted and fell back into the puddle.

‘I wonder if Istvan’s Justine started out like this,’ said Grace.

‘I wasn’t there so I couldn’t say,’ said Irv.

She was really an awful-looking thing in black-and-white, and when we got her out of her wet clothes it was even worse. ‘I forgot about clothes,’ said Grace. ‘We’ll have to get her other things to wear. Underthings as well, tights, shoes, whatever.’

‘Then what?’ said Irv.

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Grace. We’d been working for a couple of weeks to bring this creature into the world but Grace was looking at it, at her I should say, as if the whole thing was totally unexpected.

‘Well,’ said Irv to Grace, ‘while you’re thinking about it you know what we have to do.’

‘I know,’ said Grace, ‘and I’ll go first. Bleed me, Artie.’

‘I don’t want to take too much,’ I said. ‘Let’s just get her into full colour so we can see where we are with this.’ Mind you, while we were doing all this the rest of London was going on as usual. Some trains were running, some weren’t. The streets were full of buses and cars and pedestrians, the pubs were full of drinkers, and we were putting blood into this thing that had climbed out of our suspension of disbelief. Great.

As J Two filled up with colour I felt a little stirring of interest. She was a good-looking woman, you had to give her that. ‘Hello, honey,’ she said as she came round. ‘Why don’t you get naked with me.’ She stuck out her tongue which was quite a long one and gave me the wettest kiss I’d ever had. She tasted like a swamp full of incontinent crocodiles. My head went round, the room tilted several different ways, and the wall opened up to let some huge hopping thing into the room. ‘Mmmmm!’ said J Two. ‘Oh yes, gimme that old-time religion, do it, do it, do it.’

‘Are you talking to me or the huge hopping thing?’ I said. ‘I don’t usually tilt this much on the first date.’

‘Artie, try to come down a little if you can,’ said Grace. ‘Justine, you’ll have to slow down if you want to hang out with us. We’re actually a pretty quiet crowd.’

‘Oh yeah?’ said J Two. ‘Who died and left you in charge, Grandma?’

‘Watch your mouth,’ said Irv.

‘Up yours, Grandad,’ said J Two.

The room was heaving around and the thing that had hopped out of the wall was making obscene gestures but I still couldn’t see its face. Maybe I’m St Anthony, I thought. Is this a temptation?

3 February 2004. I don’t read much poetry any more but there are some poems that I go back to. There’s one by Yeats that’s certainly short enough to stay in my memory but I never get it exactly right and I have to turn to the page in his Collected Poems where the bookmark is:

MEMORY

One had a lovely face,

And two or three had charm,

But charm and face were in vain

Because the mountain grass

Cannot but keep the form

Where the mountain hare has lain.

The form where the hare slept is emptiness in the shape of the hare. Last night I dreamt that Rose Harland came to my bed. I was lying on my side and she shaped herself to my back and pressed herself against me. In the dream I woke up and said, ‘What?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, ‘I didn’t mean to wake you, I only wanted to get warm.’

‘That’s all right,’ I said as I woke up out of the dream. I put my hand where she’d been but her side of the bed was cold.

23 January 2004. I went up to Golders Green out of curiosity; I wanted to see how Chauncey and Justine were getting on. I didn’t phone ahead, I thought I’d just drop in and catch them unawares. Not knowing where I’d find an off-licence in Golders Green I bought a bottle of Glenfiddich at Nicolas in Berwick Street. I like the red Nicolas sign with its yellow lettering, it has spiritual uplift.

I was standing on the Northern Line platform at Tottenham Court Road when I noticed a rat down among the cables by the tracks. I remembered reading somewhere that in London you’re never more than ten feet away from a rat. That’s about how far I was from this one when it turned and looked at me. ‘You looking at me?’ I said. It didn’t say anything but its nose was twitching. Then it went back to its cable run. I did a few bars of rat music in my head. I hate their naked tails and their superior attitude, their behind-the-scenes cynicism. Cockroaches too — you can scrunch as many as you like but they’re laughing because they know they’ll win in the end.

Justine. What made Irv Goodman and Chauncey Lim and me suddenly fall in love with her? Love, shit. Irv is eighty-three and he’s got no business falling in love. I’m sixty-five and Chauncey’s only in his forties but all of us are old enough to know better. Irv started it. Almost at the end of his life and wanting something impossible he comes to me and flings down the gauntlet: ‘You can do it, Istvan.’

When I first saw the interference pattern on the white card I thought,Well, yes, I am interfering. Maybe she wants to stop in the video, maybe she wants to stay dead. But I was hot for her and I wanted her alive and I was in charge. Now she was with Chauncey Lim and for the most part I was glad to have her off my hands. Maybe I was a little jealous. Dead people! I wonder what Lazarus did when he came out of the tomb. Must have had a hell of a thirst. Did he head for the nearest pub? If he did, they probably gave him plenty of room at the bar.

The train came and I found a seat by the doors. A woman sat down next to me but at Goodge Street she moved to another seat. Did I still smell of primordial soup? Or maybe I just looked crazy. Whatever. So many different faces in the Underground. Chinese, Japanese, Pakistani, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-African, and a few white American and English ones. All of them had necks, some exposed by open coats or jackets, others hidden. Faces staring into space, faces reading, faces looking inward at the stories inside them.