Will Self - The Book of Dave

With the alphabet he had gleaned from Fred, Symun was able to decipher his Daveworks. By matching the words he had himself found to those words he could see on those rare occasions he could handle the Book, he came to be able to read. Symun was intelligent, formidably so, and while the first few phrases had cost him whole tariffs of frustration, once he had cracked the code entire rants of the Book leaped off the page at him.

Naturally Symun was familiar with the Book; all Hamstermen were. Its runs and points were called over by them in unison, in the Shelter. Its doctrines and covenants were constantly on their lips as they disciplined their mummies, opares and boilers. Its Ware2, guvs were what they welcomed one another with, and its farewells to the Lost Boy were their valedictions. Yet much of what they recited was gibberish to them — deprived, as they were, of the good offices of a Driver. Now that Symun could read he could provide his own interpretation: he could see how the Book explained Ham, its shape, its isolation, its peculiar character. This was the true revelation: the island, which had for all his life been an immutable given, now became fluidly legible. Then he knew what he must do. He understood what his mummy had implied but dared not openly state: he should use the Book to penetrate the mysteries of the Ferbiddun Zön.

The Hamsters were sowing the kipper wheatie. First the mummies went on their hands and knees rooting out the weeds; the daddies came after them, casting the seed along the rips. It was mummy-time, so babies in swaddling were propped up in the furrows; they bawled but no one paid them any mind. The Hamsters worked as one, the dads chatted a little among themselves while the mummies were silent. A sadness lay over the whole community. Caff Ridmun's baby had been born a month before, in due course it was anointed by Effi, and then, eight days later, after the most excruciating suffering, the mite had died. Unnamed and unblessed by Dave, its little corpse had been buried without a wheelstone in the waste ground beyond the graveyard.

It was a fresh, breezy day. Mountainous clouds passed over Ham, dark grey at their flat bases, brilliant white at their lumpy peaks. To the south the Sentrul Stac rose from the choppy sea, its crenellated sides streaked white and brown with gull shit; while beyond it the far islands of Surrë were a bright green streak along the horizon. Beams of foglight fell on the land and on the white-capped waves, yet there was a damp tang to the air — there would be screenwash before nightfall. Frogwash, the Hamsters called it, because they believed that at this time of the year the showers were sticky with spawn. The crinkleleafs and smoothbarks above the home field quickened with buds, and their limbs tossed in the breeze. The land birds had begun to return at the new headlight, and as they worked the Hamstermen hailed them, Orlrì, Bob! Orlrì, Jen! Orlrì, Tom! while the kids ran at them with flails, scaring them away from the newly sown seed.

Gari Funch had finished his changebag of seed and gone up into the trees to relieve himself when he saw Symun Dévúsh coming along the Layn from the moto wallows. Later on, Gari said there was an aura about Symun that struck him as soon as he saw the other young dad. His mates teased him about it, saying, Ure lyke awl ve Funchis, Fukka, so shortarsed anifyngs up in ve air 2 U! Yet he stuck to his recollection of Symun floating above the ground, with a wisp of mist wrapped around him like a cloakyfing, while his jeans and T-shirt were rent.

— Ware2, guv? Gari had hailed him, and then, as Symun wafted closer, he said, Orlrì, mayt?

Symun only looked straight through him, his blue eyes glassy. Gari stepped forward and made to take his shoulder, but Symun twisted away and blurted:

— Bakkoff! Eyem nó Symun no maw, Eyem ve Geezer nah, Eyev ung aht wiv Dave, C, an ees toll me ve troof.

— W-wotcher meen? Gari spluttered.

— Lyke Eye say, Eye bin in ve Zön, Eye bin 2 ve playce vair ee berried ve Búk, an ee cum 2 me, an ee giv me anuwah Búk — yeah, a nú 1 — an we cauled í ovah togevvah, yeah, an ee toll me 2 cum an tell U Ió abaht i, ri.

— Bluddyel.

— Bluddyel iz abaht ve syze uv í, mayt, coz iss awl chaynj fer nah. Dave sez weev gó ve rong end uv ve stikk — ee doan wannus livin lyke vis, nó torkin wiv ar mummies, treetin em lyke shit an vat. Iss ve saym wiv ve Nú Lundun stuff, ee sez iss awl bollox, ee doan give a toss abaht bildin Nú Lundun, aw ve Pee-See-bleedin-Oh. Ee sez we shood liv az bess we can an nó wurri, if we wanner do fings diffrent iss fyn bì im …

There was much more of this, all spoken in a rush by Symun, his voice strangely breathy and high-pitched. If this was blasphemous to Gari, it was also beguiling. All his life Dave had been present to him yet invisible, untouchable and unreachable; now here was Sy — who Gari knew as well as he knew himself — claiming to have spoken with Dave and saying that he'd received a second Book, which did away with all of the tiresome strictures inhibiting the Hamsters' natural inclinations. Gari wasn't the most credulous of the Hamsters, but, even if he'd been disposed to challenge Symun, he was forestalled by the Geezer, who began to spout whole chunks of the new Book. They were beautiful to Gari's ears: sonorous, ringing — incontrovertibly the words of Dave. Gari felt his bowlegs buckling beneath him, and he collapsed to the ground. Worming forwards in the muddy lane, he reached out and touched Symun's foot — now reassuringly earthbound — with a trembling hand. Orlrì, ven, Geezer, he said faintly.

Geezers had been a part of the religious life of Ham for as far back as the chain of linked individual memories reached. These were charismatic dads — and occasionally mums — touched by the Word of Dave, who sprang on to the stage afforded by the island and strutted there for a few months or even years. Certain brick-built hovels on the margins of the Gayt were known as the 'Geezers' gaffs', and among the Hamsters the feeling was that the Geezers had been present in the time of the giants — or even before. Naturally, whenever a Driver had been among them, all talk of the Geezers was suppressed, yet the receptivity of the Hamsters to such things remained high, so that when Symun came down through the home field spouting revelation the daddies and mummies cast away their tools and followed him to the Shelter. The screen itself responded to Symun's new calling; Dave's demister powered up and swept the clouds up into higher and higher masses, which teetered, then dispersed with supernatural rapidity, leaving the foglamp blazing down on the green isle.

— Yeah, rí, Symun began, U Ió av sussed Eyev bin angin aht in ve Zön. Bú wotchoo doan no iss Eyev bin ailed bì Dave, C, an Eyem iz fare. Ee gayv me iz sekkun Búk. An ee sat wiv me wyl Eye red ve öI fing — coz Eye can dú fonix nah — an ee mayd me tayk í awl on bord so az Eye can caul í ovah, rì?

— So caul í ovah, ven, clevah clogs! shouted out Symun's uncle, Fil Edduns, from the back of the little throng. His sister, Effi, may have been the repository of the old folkways, but Fil was the most rigidly dävist of the daddies. Despite the long years that Ham had been beyond the PCO's writ, he still looked to London in all things spiritual.

If Fil had been hoping to expose Symun and to put paid to this new Geezer, he was utterly vanquished. The granddad stood, kneading the mulberry birthmark that stained the left side of his face, while the Knowledge flowed out of his nephew: a flood of eloquence that slaked his audience's thirst for poetry. While Symun spoke, skipping from verse to verse of the new book — so az Eye can stikk í strayt 2 yer — a remarkable thing happened.