Will Self - The Butt

Tom now realized, with mounting horror, that his carelessly discarded cigarette butt had flown on its — perhaps fatal — trajectory powered by one fuel alone: a tank of combustible pride. He was Doing the Right Thing — and for that alone should be accorded the uttermost respect.

So the butt had described its parabola and hit its target, creating a minor entry wound, a tiny blister. But oh, the exit wound! The massive, gaping and bloody exit wound, through which the butt had sped on, fragmenting into scores of smaller butts, which were now hitting his children, his wife, and causing terrible collateral damage.

Tom ate at the café on the ’nade. It was empty, and they served him an underdone burger, still frozen at its core. Too cowed to complain, he nibbled its edges. The waiter stood at the sixteen-metre line smoking and looking out to sea: the last of the cruise ships was sinking into the horizon, and above its fo’c’sle reared a mile-high genie of gibbous thunder cloud, struggling to escape from the tropical night.

In that night, Tom dreamed he was staying in the roach motel. It was fully booked, and the other guests, who wore zooty batik T-shirts and tinted shades, tickled him mercilessly with their antennae. It was a relief when the warder of this plastic prison bent down to pick it up and empty them all into the sea. Tumbling end over end, Tom looked up to the quayside and saw the giant Swai-Phillips, his grey Afro coruscating like the corona of the eclipsed sun around his dark impassive face.

* * *

The lawyer’s house was further out of Vance than the Honorary Consul’s, at the top of the Great Dividing Range’s first foothills. As the cab laboured up the hairpin bends of the single-track road, Tom was confronted first by walls of impenetrable shrubbery, then by vistas of the city below growing smaller and smaller, reduced from its dirty, confused status as a place of human habitation to a mere scattering of pristine white cubes beside the aquamarine bay.

When the cab eventually stopped, so did the road. The blacktop looped through the scrub and petered out in deep ruts of reddish dust. Struggling to turn his vehicle, the cabbie, an obese Tugganarong, grunted, ‘This is it.’

And when Tom queried the location, saying, ‘Are you sure?’, the man laughed increduously. ‘’Caws I’m fuggin sure. Phillips ’ouse bin ’ere longest time. Longer than bloody Vance, yeah.’

Tom watched as the cab bounced back on to the road and disappeared down the hill. There was a mailbox nailed high up on a tree trunk, and beyond this a path led into the indecipherable bush — so many plants and trees Tom didn’t comprehend, their myriad leafy foreign tongues still further complicated by parasitic mosses and squiggling creepers.

Reluctantly, Tom summoned himself and began to pick his way into the jungle. It was oppressively still — not a breath of wind. The sun’s rays struck down through the foliage, spearing the back of his neck. His sandals slithered through leaf fall and caught on tree roots. He tried not to think about the seven species of venomous snake, or the three kinds of venomous spider.

Tom came upon a kennel. Two of the sharp-muzzled, brindled, native dogs lay asleep in it. He crept past. Next, the lawyer’s Landcruiser emerged from the greenery, parked on an apron at the end of a metalled drive.

The dogs must have been roused despite Tom’s wary tread, because there was an anguish of yelps and the crash of heavy paws through the undergrowth. Tom took flight along the path, staggering and tripping, until he was propelled into the full glare of noon.

He found himself by a fence of corrugated-iron sheets, beyond which spread a large compound that occupied the summit of the hill. He was on the point of throwing himself over this — for he could see no other means of access — when the yelps were throttled off. Turning, Tom saw the big dog, its muzzle dashed with saliva, dancing frantically on its hind legs: it had reached the end of its long chain.

Tom laughed callously, then took his time discovering the stile and mounting it, looking back with each step in order to taunt the watchdog still more.

On the far side he expected to meet the lawyer, or one of his retainers, but there was no one, only cracked earth, and scattered across it bits of scaffolding, a cement mixer, piles of cinder-blocks and mounds of hardened mortar. Towards the far side of the compound, projecting out where the hill fell away, there was a concrete platform upon which a few negligent courses of bricks had been laid. An indication, Tom thought, of where a house might be sited if anyone — in this stifling heat — could be bothered to build one.

Tom walked across and stood on the platform. He checked his cell. There was a signal — if Swai-Phillips didn’t appear, he’d call him. Then he heard a skittering noise, as of a lizard’s flit, and, peering over the edge of the platform, saw that he was not alone.

Ten feet below, in the thin wedge of shadow at the base of the platform, sat a very tall, matt-black man. Even at a glance, Tom could see that he was extremely thin, his long thighs no thicker than his calves. All the man’s limbs were tucked in, so that he resembled a collapsed umbrella.

Tom slithered down the friable earth of the hillside. Up close the man was still more outlandish. He sported only a dirty leather breechclout, which called to mind Adams’s gardening apron. Apart from three long tufts of hair above either pendulous ear, his head was shaven; it was like a fifth, etiolated limb, the face as dimpled as an elbow, the almond eyes glazed. A swelling in the man’s cheek was the only part of him which moved, revolving slowly. Tom could almost taste the bitter sloosh of the engwegge, and he understood that this must be the makkata.

Not wanting to disrupt the sorceror’s trance — it might be prejudicial — Tom turned away. Yet, reluctant to leave, he sat down a few feet away on a tree stump. Into the shimmering oppression of the tropical noon came the rhythmic slurping sound of the makkata’s mastication. Tom wondered if he was deep in a vision of the future and, if so, whether he could see Swai-Phillips’s new house, its terrace strewn with loungers tenanted by the lawyer’s influential friends? Was the makkata watching while topless party girls dove into the pool, their breasts swaying as they went off the springboard? But no — a springboard was out of the question. Tom hadn’t seen one in years, and here in Vance — of all places — such a dangerous pleasure would surely be illegal.

Swai-Phillips, as was his gift, popped up from nowhere. One instant he wasn’t there — the next he was, looking frowsty and unshaven, in dirty-white jeans hacked off at the knee and nothing else. There were small balls of greying hair on his chest, Tom noted, each one a mini-Afro. Had he forgotten to shave this as well?

Swai-Phillips was standing some yards down the hill, beckoning and calling to someone up on the platform. ‘C’mon, Prentice!’ he cried. ‘Get your sorry white arse down here, yeah!’

Earth and pebbles rattled. Swai-Phillips pushed up his sunglasses and winked at Tom with his bad eye. Tom got up from his stump and turned to see an Anglo of about his own age making his way, very unsteadily, down the slope.

The man had a preposterous coif: the top of his head was completely bald, while there was brown hair not only at the sides but also on his forehead. This fringe wasn’t a few straggly threads that he’d combed over; rather, it appeared to have been left behind when the rest of his hair retreated.

The Anglo came right up to Tom with a waddling gait — he walked like a fat man, even though he was not. He offered Tom a hand at once thin and yet fleshy. ‘Brian Prentice.’

‘Tom,’ Tom said, reluctantly taking the hand. ‘Tom Brodzinski.’