Will Self - The Butt

Tom placed his hand on Swai-Phillips’s bare shoulder and, concerned, said, ‘What’s wrong with you, Jethro?’

Instantly, the lawyer transformed: his clownish moustache and goatee froze on his strong features. From the bunch of accessories dangling from his neck, he hoisted up his wrap-around shades. From behind this reassumed mask he fired at Tom: ‘Nothing wrong, Brodzinski. I’ve gotta job t’do and I’ll do it, yeah. I’m the chronicler of this community. I haven’t been favoured with the kindest cut, but-that-needn’t-concern-you. .’ In his haste to appear sane Swai-Phillips’s words leapfrogged crazily: ‘. . allnecessarytellyouthat’syoumeimpressionsyourfirst.’

He thrust a voice camera in Tom’s face: ‘Campthisman-thenjourneyinsurgencykinduvthing, yeah?’ Tom pushed it aside, and it was replaced with a camera. Swai-Phillips pumped the shutter, while ranting, ‘Importantofpicture AnglojoinsVonSasser’sgreatprojectonthemanspot, right.’ Tom placed a hand over the zoom lens and gently pushed it down. Then he sidestepped the lawyer and entered the house.

A long Formica-topped table was set for dinner with Tupperware plates, brightly coloured plastic beakers, and plastic knives and forks. The room was far larger than Tom was expecting, and there was enough space for three distinct groups of people to have formed. Standing along the walls were Tayswengo women dressed in black togas and sporting discoid hairstyles. Immediately behind each of the place settings were more Tayswengo women, only these were costumed as Bavarian waitresses in dirndls and aprons embroidered with flowers. Their hair had been oiled and twisted into braids. Beyond the table, grouped by a fireplace with pine logs crackling in its grate, were five Anglos: Brian Prentice, Gloria Swai-Phillips, Winthrop Adams and Erich von Sasser. Together with them was Vishtar Loman, the doctor from Vance Hospital.

Tom tried to catch Dr Loman’s eye, but he was deep in conversation with the anthropologist. Atalaya Intwennyfortee was among the Tayswengo women, her lissom figure hidden in the heavy black cloth. She too avoided Tom’s gaze, instead fidgeting with the hem of her robe.

Seeing that Tom had arrived, Von Sasser broke off and addressed the company: ‘Gentlemen, Ms Swai-Phillips, dinner is served.’

Von Sasser took the head of the table, the other Anglos whichever was the nearest seat. The natives hunkered down where they had been standing. The waitresses tripped in and out of the kitchen, depositing dish after dish on the table: sauerkraut, Wiener schnitzel, sausages, boiled potatoes, some sort of broth with dumplings floating in it. The light from the setting sun streamed through the fret-worked shutters, scattering shining heart shapes among the fat-filled platters.

Von Sasser raised his face from his bowl of broth and saw the Galils that Tom had stood by the door. ‘Weapons, Mr Brodzinski? We’ll have none of those in here. This is a peaceful house.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said. ‘My restitutional payment for Atalaya — for the Intwennyfortee.’

He got up to remove the rifles but was beaten to it by Swai-Phillips, who scampered in the door and snatched them.

‘I have the ten thousand here as well.’ Tom pulled out the wad of currency from his pocket.

‘Really?’ Von Sasser sounded underwhelmed. ‘Well, Atalaya, no doubt our wayward friends in the north can use the firearms; the cash will go to the common fund. You can have the cooking pots.’

She darted forward, took the rifles from Swai-Phillips and slung them expertly on her shoulders. Then she picked up the pots and departed. In the still evening she could be heard rattling off towards the native camp. Swai-Phillips took the cash out of Tom’s hands and disappeared into a back room.

Deflated, Tom sat down. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. He had anticipated an elaborate ceremony, graceful female dancers, preferably naked, shimmying towards him in a line. Then a tremendous ululation as he was shriven by a prancing makkata. Instead, there was only this odd scene: the Anglos, waited on by fräulein impersonators, stolidly working their way through plate after plate of heavy food, and washing it down with beakers full of dry, light, white wine.

At one point Prentice looked up from his schnitzel and said: ‘I’ve brought the riba—’

Von Sasser cut him off with a wave of his knife. ‘No need to speak of that either,’ he said. ‘Dr Loman will deal with it at the dispensary tomorrow, right.’ The anthropologist picked up a chunk of rye bread and tossed it to the Tayswengo women sitting on the floor. One of them deftly caught this and subdivided it among her companions.

Von Sasser acted, Tom thought, more like a monarch than a social scientist. There was ruthless superiority in his every word and gesture to the Tayswengo, while the Anglos were his courtiers: treated with civility, sometimes, yet no more powerful than those who served them.

As night fell, the waitresses brought in old-fashined brass oil lamps with elegant glass shades. Their soft yellow light welled up, filling the chalet with the distillation of other, more elegant eras. Conversation at the table was general: talk of hunting, rainfall, supply difficulties because of reported bandits along the thousand klicks of track to Trangaden — all matters of predictable importance to an isolated desert community.

Adams, who was seated on Tom’s right, was talkative, unbuttoned even. He was also — Tom was amazed to see — smoking. But then all the Anglos were smoking. Smoking before the food was served, smoking between courses and — in the case of Prentice and Von Sasser — even smoking within them, inhaling food and smoke simultaneously. Meanwhile, from the Tayswengo women squatting along the wall, there arose the squelching noise of engwegge mastication.

When the last helping of Apfelstrudel had been served, the cream pot had done its final round, and each of the diners had ladled out a generous dollop, Von Sasser pushed back his chair, relit his pipe and called for ‘Schnapps! Coffee! Double-quick time!’ The waitresses hurried to do his bidding, their dirndls rusting against the chair backs, their aprons suggestive white patches in the lamplight.

Tom tossed back the first shot of oily schnapps and his glass was immediately refilled. A warm muzziness was creeping over him: there was something almost sexual about this gemütlich scene. Gloria had exchanged her black toga for a high-collared white dress with full skirts, and Tom imagined himself throwing these up and exploring her own suggestive patches.

He — she — they had survived, mastered the insurgents, got through the Tontines and traversed the desert. The first reparation payment had been made — so what if there had to be others? Nothing was more terrifying than the unknown. Besides, Tom was properly astande now: he had righted his most egregious wrong. Moreover, even though the tobacco smoke lay as heavily over the table as mustard gas in a trench system, he was also — he exulted — utterly free of smoking, no longer a smoker at all.

He was free to lose himself in the wisps and curls of blue and grey, to aesthetically appreciate these subtle brush strokes on the glowing canvas of the chalet’s interior — a painterly rendition of the very timeless present itself, which, from one second to the next, altered irrevocably. Even Von Sasser had acquired an air of benignity. He was no hawk — but an elegant Audobon heron, his streamlined form garbed in silky, smoky plumage.

Even so, when the anthropologist tapped his pipe stem against his coffee cup, Tom understood that this wasn’t only the command for silence; it was also the toastmaster’s gavel, signalling the beginning of a long speech — an oration, perhaps — and that the orator himself would tolerate no interruptions.