Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

‘Which is it?’ she asked. ‘All or nothing.’

‘Of the two, I don’t know, I’d have to say nothing.’

‘Well done , Xan. A long word: nothing. Ah. Here are the boys.’ She stood up and waved. Then from her fathomless tote-bag she removed a newspaper and stretched the page out at him: three photographs — Xan, Pearl, Russia. ‘She’s going to give you grief about this,’ she said.

As his sons approached, Xan made another effort to straighten himself against the rails behind his back. Again, with trembling hands, he rearranged the trembling wefts of his hair. The bed, the whole stall here, felt like a display-case of age and ruin, in ashtray colours … Michael and David took up position on either side of him. They regarded their father, not with solemnity, alarm or disappointment, but with acceptance; and immediately he took comfort from it.

David, the younger, kissed his cheek and said, ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’

Michael, the elder, kissed his cheek and said, ‘Dad? Who were the fucking bastards who did this to you?’

‘Michael,’ said Pearl.

‘Well that’s it,’ said Xan, who remembered, pretty much. ‘You don’t remember.’

But he couldn’t remember the impact, nor the moments leading up to it. Tilda Quant had told him that there was a fear-centre in the brain, a dense knot of neurons deep inside either hemisphere and normally associated with the sense of smell. Here was the control tower of your horrors and hauntings. Sometimes the brain could suppress the most painful memories (and military scientists, she said, were trying to duplicate the effect with a devil-pill that would quell all qualms). So now his brain was protecting him from his memory. But he wanted the memory and constantly sought it out. He wanted the smell of the memory.

‘Never fear, boys. Soon I’m going to go out there’, he said (in a voice, in an accent, that even Pearl found hard to recognise), ‘and get them fucking dogs.’

Like somebody moving from one life to another, Russia walked along a tube of glass — one hundred feet above the road that separated the two sections of the hospital. She was leaving theory, now, and entering practice.

Her anxiety, her suspense, was currently devoted to a fit of slanderous detestation aimed at Natwar Gandhi — and at all doctors everywhere. As a student of twentieth-century history, she knew about the ‘chemistry’, as opposed to the ‘physics’, of the USSR’s interrogation teams, the vivisectionists of Japan; when, in 1941, the German doctors were given a free hand in their treatment of the infirm and the supposedly insane, the following phase became known as ‘wild euthanasia’. Doctoring talent — healing — danced closely with its opposite. Given the chance (it seemed), these pulse-taking, brow-fondling trundlers would be wrapping up children’s heads in old newspapers, and strolling about, in a collegiate spirit, with the packages under their arms.

All of which they did do. But Russia, now, was hating Dr Gandhi (her chest swelled, her nostrils broadened) for his refusal to protect her from any of her fears. The prognosis was good; still, he would rule nothing out. And the glint that came into his face when he described negative outcomes: the glint of relished life-power. Yes, he must get a lot of that, in Intensive Care. While he talked, Russia found herself imagining what his senses had been trained to tolerate — unspeakable textures, fantastic stenches. Nor, as she took her leave, could she spurn the consolation that this doctor, like most other doctors, would drop down dead within a week of his retirement. It was to do with power, and when that went, they went.

She pressed the button. Something dropped in her. She sighed as the lift sighed.

‘No, boys,’ Pearl was saying, ‘Dad’ll be back on his feet before we know it. And up to his old tricks again. Won’t you Xan.’

‘… Course I will.’

‘Of course he will. Whoo-pa. Here she comes. Christ she’s fat. Russia! I’ve been admiring your picture in the newspaper!’

Explosive Anger and Irritability, Family Abuse, Grief and Depression, Lack of Insight and Awareness, Bladder and Bowel Incontinence, Anxiety and Panic, Sexual Problems, Loss of Love, Coping with Loss of Love, Letting Go … Russia walked on, making herself taller. The waisted blouse, the dynamic brassière, the olive cleavage: all this — just in case — had been for Pearl.

What used to be funny? wondered Clint Smoker. What’s funny now? And is it still funny?

A hushed conference room in the sick building. On the other side of the sealed window a tubercular pigeon silently flapped and thrashed. The Chief Publisher sat at his desk with his face in his palms.

For the Morning Lark was in crisis. Desmond Heaf (who made a habit of disappearing, of fading in and out of things) had returned, on a thirty-hour flight from the South Pacific, to rally his men.

He eventually said, ‘I simply don’t see how something as extreme as this could have actually … What were you thinking of?’ Gingerly and evasively he looked down at the double-page spread flattened out in front of him. ‘Sacred heart of Jesus. I mean, it’s not in nature …’

‘When I saw the first one,’ said Clint, ‘I thought it was an exposé on Battersea Dogs’ Home.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jeff Strite, ‘or a “shock issue” about Romanian mental homes.’

‘And the actual damage, so far?’

‘This whole thing is being taken very personally,’ said Mackelyne. ‘There’s a lot of anger out there.’

‘Are we losing them, Supermaniam?’

‘Judging by my e’s, they’re all dying of heart attacks.’

‘That’s good, that is,’ said Heaf. ‘We’re killing our own wankers.’

Supermaniam said, ‘It’s like Black Thursday.’

On the Wednesday before Black Thursday, the Lark had put together a playful piece about the Guinness Book of Records and the new category saluting the biggest ever, or longest ever, male member. On the same page (with more than a little twinkle in its eye) the Lark had reproduced a twelve-inch ruler and (tongue still firmly in cheek) challenged its readers to make an invidious comparison. As an obvious tease — or so the Lark believed — the twelve-inch ruler had been renumbered to make it look like a six-inch ruler. Soon after dawn it started coming in: word of the Black Thursday suicides.

Heaf said, ‘Bill. You made up these pages. How did you physically bring yourself to do it?’

‘When the first lot came in,’ said Bill Woyno, ‘I assumed they were taking the piss. When the next lot came in I must have thought, Well, this is … this is what it’s like.’

‘Let’s face it, lads,’ said Clint, ‘we’ve gone and strafed ourselves in the metatarsus on this one. But there’s a way out of it, Chief. May I essay a marxist analysis?’

‘By all means, Clint,’ said Heaf with a frown of intense respect.

‘Right. The quality broadsheets are aimed at the establishment and the intelligentsia. The upmarket tabloids are aimed at the bourgeoisie. The downmarket tabloids are aimed at the proletariat. At the Lark our target wanker is unemployed. ’

‘Come to the point, Clint.’

‘Well: who can you pull when you’re on the dole? We’ve delivered an insult to all our wankers — a deserved insult, but an insult. We’re saying, we’re proving , that our readers’ richards, if any, are straight out of the Black Lagoon.’

Four days earlier the Morning Lark , with considerable pomp, had launched its new feature, Readers’ Richards. And the death threats had started coming in that morning.