Will Self - The Butt

‘Von Sasser?’ Tom queried. ‘I thought he was an anthropologist?’

‘The brother,’ Swai-Phillips replied. ‘This is Hippolyte — the other one’s Erich. You’d never catch him up here in Vance, too much civilization for the man to bear, yeah. .’

It seemed as if the lawyer was going to add to this, but suddenly — as if responding to an ultrasonic whistle audible only to smokers — the men formed a line at the steel dolmen of an ashtray, and one after another shed their butts. Von Sasser carefully knocked out his pipe before replacing it in a leather case. Then they all filed up the steps and into the Central Criminal Court.

The lobby was stygian, even after the sepia gloom of the monsoonal outdoors. There was a tremendous scurrying as clerks, police, court officials and lawyers scuttled over to consult the long lists pinned up on bulletin boards, then hurried back to consult with their clients. Abdul dove into this free-for-all, and, emerging a few minutes later, he went across and whispered to Swai-Phillips.

The lawyer rounded on his clients. ‘Good news!’ he boomed. ‘You’re up this morning, Prentice, and you, Brodzinski, will be dealt with first thing this afternoon.

‘You.’ He yanked Prentice by his tie. ‘Come with me. And you’ — he pressed Tom down by his shoulder on to a bench — ‘stay here.’

Tom gazed at Prentice being led away like a mangy sheep to the slaughter. He expected some anxiety to show on the abuser’s ovine features, yet Prentice appeared altogether unconcerned.

Once the morning sessions had begun, the bustle died away. A few hill people remained in the darkest recess of the lobby, huddling together and chanting their ‘bahn-bahn-bahn-boosh’ so mutedly that Tom couldn’t be certain that it was them and not his own agitated blood pulsing in his ears.

At the main reception desk a cop checked his armaments over in thorough yet listless fashion, removing every bullet from its clip, polishing them with his handkerchief, slotting them back in.

From time to time a lawyer or a court official exited from one of the high double doors ranged across the back of the lobby and scurried outside. There they paced along the sixteen-metre line, snatching smoke from their mouths and yakking on their cellphones, before scurrying back inside.

Tom sat and looked down at the white billow of his thighs. He wondered where Adams had gotten to — and Atalaya Intwennyfortee for that matter. He was missing the Honorary Consul and the plaintiff acutely: as if he were still a smoker and they a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Once or twice Tom caught himself patting the pockets of his suit jacket, as if in expectation of feeling small bodies tucked inside them: Adams with his seersucker smile, Atalaya with her matt-black skin.

There came more slow hand claps of thunder; then, at last, like a strained-for ejaculation, the hiss of the rains. Tom felt islanded in the lobby, listening to the ‘bahn-bahn-bahn-boosh’ of the natives, the scrape of a faulty aircon’ unit and the measured slap of a large digital clock.

At eleven, scattering raindrops from her plastic poncho, Gloria Swai-Phillips swept in. She scanned the lobby and, spotting Tom on his bench, came across and sat down beside him. Her approximation of Martha’s features was at once imperious and consoling: the wide mouth and long top lip writhed as she struggled out of her rainwear. Underneath she wore a cream linen two-piece with a pleated skirt. Tom fixated on the raw pores of her freshly shaven calves.

At first, Gloria said nothing, only leaned over and probed Tom’s own leg. Her fingers found the makkata’s wound.

‘Does it hurt, yeah?’ she asked.

‘Did you call last—’ Tom began, then checked himself. ‘Not much,’ he answered instead. ‘It’s like a war wound — aches when the rains are coming.’

Gloria laughed curtly and withdrew her hand. ‘I’m leaving this arvo’,’ she said. ‘Flying first to Amherst on the west coast, then heading along Route 2 with a convoy for the Tontine Townships. .’ She paused and looked at Tom. He looked back, wondering what any of this had to do with him. ‘Y’know,’ she continued, ‘the orphanages I run there, they’ve gotta be supplied, right?’

‘Sure,’ Tom said. ‘Of course — I understand.’

‘I–I. .’ She took up his hand in her own, turning it this way and that. Her fingernails were long, sickle-curved and steelily varnished. ‘I hope to see you there, yeah?’

Before Tom could think of a response, Gloria was struggling back into her poncho. Her heels clacked the stone floor to the main doors. She glanced back at him over her shoulder, then covered her blonde hank of hair with the pointy hood and swept out into the rain.

Tom had no time to analyse this visitation: the doors to Court No. 3 banged open, and Gloria’s cousin came striding out. In his train were Abdul, the clerk, and Mulgrene, the attaché. Then came Prentice, together with a huddle of court officials. Mulgrene was saying, very loudly, as if advertising for prospective Swai-Phillips clients: ‘That was inspiring, Jethro, absolutely bloody inspiring. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone tackle Von Sasser with quite such sheer brio before. You deserve a drink, man.’

The whole posse came across to where Tom was sitting and grouped themselves around him, ignoring him while recounting loudly the feats of advocacy they had just witnessed. Tom tried to catch Prentice’s eye, but it was fixed on Swai-Phillips with an expression of nauseating adoration.

Tancroppollopp and Von Sasser came past and straight out into the rain. A clerk came up to the defendants’ party and handed a scrap of paper to Mulgrene. The attaché scanned it with goggling eyes, his sad clown’s smile turned upside down.

‘Four gross of reusable teats, ditto of disposable nappies. Ribavirin — 400 doses in ampoules, amoxycillin, antiseptic wipes—’ He broke off and turned to Prentice. ‘Nothing here that we weren’t expecting. You have the credit available, yes?’

Prentice nodded.

‘Then you can load up tomorrow,’ Swai-Phillips barked. ‘Then get the fuck outta here!’

* * *

Lunch dragged on for hours. The party sat at Formica-topped tables ranged around a shrubbery that threatened them with its saw-toothed leaves. Swai-Phillips, taking a moment out from the continuous toasting of beer that was celebrating his signal victory, explained to Tom: ‘The court won’t sit again till at least three, right. They’ve gotta put up a rood screen so Atalaya and her manager can give evidence to the makkatas. Try not to be so uptight, Brodzinski; it’ll play out fine. Have a bloody beer and relax, yeah.’

Tom couldn’t. He stepped outside of the food court. Rain hammered down on the glass porch as he hit redial for the twentieth time that day: ‘This phone is temporarily unavailable, your call is being answered by AdVance messaging. .’

When the peep-prompt came, Tom decanted all his pent-up anxiety: ‘Jesus-H-Christ, Adams. Are you gonna hang me out to dry, or what?’

Back inside, a wheeled icebox was being pushed from one man to the next. In turn they drew off glasses of beer, then made another toast, to ‘Justice!’, or ‘Rhetoric!’, or ‘Reason!’ Jackets had been slung over chair backs. Bare forearms lay among the curry-smeared pannikins, together with a dandruff of coconut flakes.

Swai-Phillips sat at the head of the table, his tie loosened, his globe of hair so beaded with sweat that it resembled a jewelled snood. Yet he was sober compared to Mulgrene and Prentice — both of whom were straightforwardly drunk.

At two thirty, Tom palmed one of the waiters forty bucks to go to the liquor store and get him a fifth of Seagram’s. When the man returned, Tom took two swift shots. The whisky slapped him lazily in the face, a knuckle of intoxication catching him beneath one eye. His head spinning, Tom looked up to see the rains smashing through the skylight. Swai-Phillips aimed his painted lens at his client. The lawyer’s strong jaw was bearded with bladder clams, his mouth a robotic speaker through which he crackled: ‘It’s gone two forty-five, Brodzinski. The court’ll sit in fifteen minutes; we don’t wanna be late, mate.’