Will Self - The Butt

Tommy Junior stuck Tom’s feet in his mouth and slobbered on them: a suck of incestuous satisfaction. His father’s head burned with shame. Then the boy pinched Tom’s legs, hard, and flipped him. Tom flew, end over end over end, yet never reached the end of the dusty corridor; while up ahead the woman that was Martha, that was Atalaya, that was Gloria — that was all of them — turned and turned and turned the corner, avoiding him for an eternity, her words floating back, over and over, to her rejected spouse: ‘I’m scared, honey. I’m scared. .’

It was still early when Prentice came to wake him. When they got outside the Technical College, the first dull light of the pre-dawn showed up the sloppy grin on Prentice’s face. He had changed his clothes as well as his complexion; the slogan on his too-tight, white T-shirt read NEXT PUB 859 KMS. He must’ve scored last night and the T-shirt is his sick trophy. . Prentice took Tom’s hand and led him into the eucalyptus grove.

As they walked towards the dispensary, he prattled away: ‘Have you ever noticed, old chap, how the water here goes down the plughole the other way? Y’know, anti-clockwise. I’m not good at expressing myself at all, but it did occur to me that this was a sort of meta-thingy.’

‘Metaphor.’

‘That’s it, metaphor — for what’s happened to me. I mean, a good deal of pressure was applied, don’t get me wrong. Jethro told me I’d be seeing the inside of the old prison walls. Then there’s the racialism thing. Well, I’d be the first to admit that my, um, standpoint — rumpy-pumpy aside — was pretty old-fashioned, but, well. .’ He laughed. ‘Seeing your behaviour — how crass you were — and then meeting my own children for the first time. . Well, it turned me completely round, twisted me anti-clockwise. Now I believe in what I’ve done, Tom. It’s like Erich says: it doesn’t matter what my intentions were, I was a good tool.’

There was barely enough current in Tom’s brain for the connections to be made — but then they were. At high speed the entire narrative spooled through the viewfinder of his awareness, and the depth and complexity of the set-up, and the shallowness and simplicity of his own responses, stunned him with blow after blow.

Adams — who’d known so very much about Tom without even having to ask, right down to the fact that he drank Seven and Sevens — had been omniscient in the break-fast room at the Mimosa — and then there was Swai-Phillips, who had already known that Tom had met with the Consul. The indifference and then hostility of the junior embassy attaché — who had been got to long before Tom called.

Then, once things were up and running, they had a legman keeping an eye on Tom’s every move. First there were tails from behind — Squolly’s men — and then they were replaced by a better tail, one who worked from the front and was able to anticipate which way he’d go before Tom knew himself.

The man who knew what the inside of the courtroom was like — even knew that it had good airconditioning; the man the car-rental clerk knew the name of without having to be told; the man who’d slipped it to the clerk in the Goods Shed Store that the rifles weren’t for Tom; the man who was never marked by the makkata in Vance to begin with, and whose thigh was checked by other makkatas along the way, purely to confirm that he was the plant. Yes, the man whose case was being handled on a no-win-no-fee basis, and who performed brilliantly as an instrument to be played upon by the wills of others.

Lincoln, Tom kicked himself. The old man was the only damn one of them who had told the truth. He tried to warn me — the rest of them were all in on it. And to Prentice, he croaked: ‘That makkata.’

‘What’s that, old chap? Speak up.’

‘That makkata, back in Vance, he was a fucking fraud, wasn’t he?’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ Prentice laughed. ‘Pissed out of his brains, the ceremony was a total cock-up. You must’ve realized, Tom, you were inquivoo all along.’

They had reached the dispensary, and Prentice let go of Tom’s hand to withdraw an envelope from the back pocket of his jeans. It was identical to the one that Tom had left under his swag — the one that contained Tom’s copy of the tontine.

‘All tontines are, of course, fully reciprocal, Tom,’ Prentice said, waggling the envelope. ‘You may have thought you could convert it unilaterally, but I’m afraid you couldn’t. I’m surprised the man at Endeavour didn’t spell it out for you, but then insurance salesmen aren’t the most honest of chaps. The natives are easy to rook; however, it’s different with an Anglo — they couriered a copy round to me at the Hilton within an hour.’

Prentice smiled complicitly. ‘Our tontine covers — you’ll’ve noticed, if you’ve read the small print — severe mental impairment, as well as injury and death. In the absence of your having appointed someone to hold your power of attorney. . Well, let’s just put it this way, since I can see you’re still a little groggy: it seems I’m on the verge of coming into a considerable sum of money.

‘But don’t think I’m going to be selfish,’ he continued, holding the dispensary door open for Tom. ‘By far the bulk of it will go to support my kids — and to help Erich’s work, naturally. So, best not to look on this, um, procedure as a punishment at all; rather it’s your way of giving a lot of people a much deserved reward.’

Erich von Sasser was waiting for them in the anteroom to the operating room, together with Vishtar Loman. The doctors were already in their gowns and masks, but a third shrouded figure — smaller, slimmer — was scrubbing up at a sink in the corner.

Prentice helped Tom on to the gurney, then went to take his turn at the sink. The other operating assistant was Atalaya Intwennyfortee, and it seemed she was playing the part of of anaesthetist, because she came over to where Tom lay bearing a kidney dish, and looked down at him. Her beautiful dark eyes were joined by Von Sasser’s hollow sockets.

‘I’m afraid, Tom,’ the neuro-anthropologist said breezily, ‘that a lack of funds means we aren’t able to give you a pre-med’, but Ms Intwennyfortee here has something that should help you relax.’

Atalaya took a quid of engwegge from the kidney dish and pushed it into Tom’s defenceless mouth. Biting down on it, feeling the nicotine immediately perfuse through his gums and into his bloodstream, Tom ruminated on what a pity it was that his last smells were so bitterly antiseptic.

In gown and mask, Prentice joined the other two standing over Tom, and Von Sasser put one rubber-gloved hand on his shoulder and the other on Atalaya’s. ‘Well, Tom,’ he said, ‘if you’re puzzled as to why Brian is helping out with your oppo, cast your mind back to Papa’s Songs . You’ll recall that there’s nothing a Tayswengo fears more than gettanka , or ritualized humiliation, and that he — or she — would rather see a man die — or at any rate, experience an ego-death — than suffer such a fate.’

However, Tom wasn’t casting his mind back anywhere; he was adrift in his engwegge trance, and faintly amused by the way things had turned out. After all, he was only doing what he had always done: passively conforming to an invented belief system.

Some years later. .

The Honorary Consul, Winthrop Adams, stood on the casino steps together with his two friends, Jethro Swai-Phillips and Brian Prentice.

Prentice, who had a good deal of ready cash, was known around Vance as something of a high-roller, and, although he only blew into town from time to time, he liked to cut loose and enjoy himself. Treating his mates to a few hundred bucks’ worth of chips, so they could fritter them away on blackjack or craps, gave him immense — and not altogether discreditable — pleasure.