Martin Amis - Dead Babies

'It just checked out, man," said Marvell.

"Yeah," said Andy, breathing in. "But Jesus I hate this no-good motherfuckin' chickenshit weekend."

"Good evening, sir. What can I get you? It's been an absolutely glorious day, sir, hasn't it?”

Andy pitched two one-pound notes onto the bar. "Brandy," he said. "Two doubles."

"Right you are, sir. The Hine, sir.? Or would you like to try the Martell?"

"Yeah."

"Would you prefer the three-star, sir, or the four?"

"I don't give a shit," said Andy.

Within half a minute Andy had two glasses of brandy in front of him. He emptied the first glass into the second and emptied the second into his mouth. He pitched two one-pound notes onto the bar. "Again," he said.

"Certainly, sir."

The landlord refilled both glasses. Sighing histrionically, Andy poured the one into the other. "Barkeep," he said as he moved off to the window with his drink, "you're a pain in the arse."

Andy felt bad. It wasn't the death of The Mandarin — it had been quite a casual kick bag, he supposed — but he had had no emotion for the cat other than mild irritation. No: it was false memory. He had sustained an attack of it that afternoon, his second in a week. For fifteen minutes he had lain on his bed thinking about his father — a gray-haired man who looked like a successful doctor, with an efficient, reserved manner and a charmingly defenseless smile — before realizing that he didn't have a father. He didn't have one. But, again, it wasn't this that depressed him; he wouldn't have been able to understand such a loss. The memory had come, as always, with none of the piecemeal haze of fantasy, but with all the settled and poignant soft clarity with which the past reconvenes. Only it was false memory. It wasn't his. Those images! They were like the displaced memories of someone else's mind, the photographs of another's past. Sadness washed through him. He felt secondhand.

"I feel secondhand," Andy muttered. "False memory. Bastard false memory."

"Sorry, sir? What was that. A refill, sir?"

Andy flipped a hand in the direction of the bar. "Ah, shut up," he said. "Just shut the fuck up."

Ignoring Skip's invitation to join the others in the sitting room, Andy rolled a ten-paper joint on the kitchen table and took it out to smoke in the garden, the air gun swinging loosely at his side. He sat down on the slope beneath the trees. It was evening and the cool doves filled the humming air.

The joint lit, Andy lay back and thought about a holiday he had had a few years ago, when he had taken a beaten-up Land-Rover to Italy. He had been hopelessly in love with a friend of his sister's at the time, a small, lithe Jewess called Anna whom he'd met only twice and kissed only once. He had written to her every day with youthful desperation, gushing more and more extravagant promises until.

Andy opened his eyes. The trees were suddenly loud with birds. "How long.?"

Andy sat up straight. He had never had a sister and he had never been to Italy and he had never been in love with a Jewess called Anna. False memory again. He pressed his palms to his temples and exhaled breath. "False memory again," he said. "Sonofabitch false memory again. Fucking hell."

"Andy? It's me."

Andy opened his eyes. Giles hovered uncertainly above him. "Uh, hello, kid," said Andy.

"You've been crying too," said Giles, noticing the fresh tear-tracks on Andy's cheeks.

". Yeah."

"What was it, actually?"

"False memory."

"Oh. I don't get that. I get street sadness. Even when I'm nowhere near streets. Why's that?"

"It just keeps getting back to you."

"Mm. Funny, isn't it, about drugs," said Giles. "They always said it would be brain damage, something like that. It isn't, though. It's just sadness. Sadness." Giles sniffed. "Marvell sent me to get you. He wants us to go and take some more. Shall we?"

"Drugs got me into this," mumbled Andy, "and drugs are gonna have to get me out."

"By the way, Andy, is one of those American chaps called

'Johnny'?"

Andy half shook his head.

"I thought they weren't. Andy, what are you sort of doing, : iactually?" Giles asked, gazing up at the white doves in the branches overhead. "Killing the birds?"

"No. I… they don't. "

"May I have a go?"

Andy flapped a hand torpidly at the rifle.

"What I… you just… it won't. pull the. and it. "

A compressed thud ignited the tree and the threshing castle hurled the birds off into the sky. A wide dove swung down to the earth. It spun like a dislodged Catherine wheel.

Andy stared up through the frightening leaves. "Giles! You stupid fuck! It's a dove, it's a dove!"

Giles reeled away from the wounded bird. "Kill it, Andy," he wailed. "Kill it."

Inside Appleseed Rectory, the first light came on. From their various corners they were all moving quietly and purposefully toward the main room. With the passing of day and the advent of evening their sicknesses and anxieties seemed to be momentarily neutralized, blent off into the changing air. Soon the windows would be dark and there would be nothing but Appleseed Rectory and themselves.

"The central nervous system is a coded time scale," began Marvell, "and each overlap of neurones and each spinal latitude marks a unit in neuronic time. The further down the CNS you go — through the hind brain, the medulla, into the spinal track — gene activity increases and concentrates and you descend into the neuronic gallery of your own past, like your whole metabiologic personality going by in stills. As the drug enters the amnionic corridor it will start to urge you back through spinal and archaeopsychic time, reactivating in your mind screen the changing landscapes of your subconscious past, each reflecting its own distinct emotional terrain. The releasing mechanisms in your cytoplasm will be awakened and you will phase into the entirely new zone of the

neuronic psyche. This is the real you. This is total biopsychic

recall. This is the lumbar transfer. Come over here one at a time, please.”

Yes, it was seven o'clock and a pall of thunder hung above the Rectory rose gardens. The formerly active air was now so weighed down that it seeped like heavy water over the roof. Darkness flowed in the distance, and the dusk raked like a black searchlight across the hills toward them.

But pity the dead babies. Now, before it starts. They couldn't know what was behind them nor what was to come. The past? They had none. Like children after a long day's journey, their lives arranged themselves in a patchwork of vanished mornings, lost afternoons, and probable yesterdays.

"Keith!" shouted Andy as he wheeled the videotape into the center of the room. "Lie down and plug that bit in under there. You dumb fuck — not that bit! Christ. How long did Marvell say it'd take? An hour? Roxeanne — Diana — get me a brandy, willya. I'm practically blacking out here."

"This stuff should really be heavy," said Roxeanne eagerly. "We picked up the tapes in New York just before we came out — haven't seen all of them yet."

"Not really heavy," droned Skip. "Just with pigs, shit like that."

"It remains axiomatic," observed Villiers, "that sex films fatigue. If they're not sexy, they're sexy. Which is the more tiresome?"

"That's good coming from you," said Marvell.

"I've never seen a sex film before," whispered Giles over his glass.

"Keith! Will you — will you get the fuck out of there?"

Whitehead had been subject to crawl beneath the bottom shelf of the fitted bookcase in order to plug in the videotape. So very short were his arms, however, that he couldn't reach the socket. Andy kicked at and stomped on his tremblingly obtruded legs.