Will Self - The Book of Dave

He screamed and clawed at his own flesh. Heedless of the blisterweed, he charged straight into the lagoon and plunged his head beneath the water. You touch you — me touch never! he cried. Effi screamed as well and covered her face with her cloakyfing, yet Böm was torn between horror and hilarity; for it had dawned on him that the Driver was not merely careful — as any Driver must be — to avoid contact with a mummy, but terrified to the point of revulsion. The black crow was now dipping his head in a frenzy, the seawater flowing in glaucous cords from his beard and hair.

Eventually, while Effi faded into the woodland, Böm carefully negotiated the blisterweed, waded into the shallows and assisted the Driver back to the shore. The incident was never spoken of again, and this became part of the compact between them: the Driver confined himself still more to the Shelter, to leading the dads and lads in the calling over, to his interference in their Council; while Böm was free to wander the island and commune with the Hamsterwomen.

Effi Dévúsh had borne the brunt of the community's displeasure after the Geezer was deposed. Her grandson, Carl, was the last infant she had been allowed to anoint. Although she still acted as knee woman, as she grew older her skills — which had only ever been rudimentary — became unequal to the task. Apprenticed surgeon or not, of their own accord the Hamsterwomen would never have let Böm be present at a birth. It was he who heard Bella Funch's cries when her baby was being born breech. He ran full tilt into the mummies' gaff where she lay. Eye can elp! he cried. Bleev me, pleez, Eye no wot 2 dú! He did — he eased, coaxed, manipulated and finally yanked the bloody mite into the world. Then he stitched Bella up with neat loops of moto sinew, before applying a poultice of curried Sphagnum. She survived — and so did the baby.

It took Böm several more years to gain the mummies' trust, and when he did, he mostly regretted it, for it made a torture garden of his imagined Arcadia. When Böm had arrived, he'd thought the island an idyllic place, for, despite its minatory Driver, Ham was far enough from London for the grip of the PCO to be slack. He understood now that the palisade of blisterweed that guarded the little island wreathed the minds of the Hamsters as well. Böm had seen the bruises and welts on the mummies, their scratched faces and wrists twisted into floppy uselessness. No dad or lad ever spoke of such things — it was as if they could not even recognize that it was they who had done them.

Even so, as the full truth began to come out in dribs and drabs — little gushes of pained recollection — it was only as he had sadly suspected. The beatings and rapes, the dads queuing up to take young opares just changed over, the casual clouts and blows — the dark, mummy-hating underbelly of Dävinanity that Antonë Böm could now recall in the whimpers of his own mummy, as she lay on her sofabed, recúperaytin — as she put it — after another visit from Antonë's own dad.

The secret Knowledge of the Hamsterwomen, which had withstood the Driver's dismal reign by sinking beneath the current of their lives, ran deep within Caff Ridmun. She remembered the time of the Geezer, and lest she ever forget she had only to look into Carl's restless eyes to recall that day at the curryings, the questing hand, the fingertips' progress from mole to mole.

So Caff poured all the love she had into Carl. She snuck into the woods and found him out with Gorj. Lifting the little boy down from the moto's neck, she would then spend whole tariffs with him, walking and talking, reminding him of who the mummies were — that they were not mere chavs, leased to them by Dave in order to do the daddies' bidding, but feeling, hurting fares. Caff told Carl he should never forget his own mummy when the motorage came upon him, and the daddies urged him on, and the young opares cowered in the byres.

When Carl was seven, the summer when Changeover became irrevocable, and for half of every blob he would have to be with the daddies, Caff told him the truth concerning his real dad. Ee woz a grayt dad, she said to the boy, ee spoak wiv Dave an Dave toal im 2 stop alluv vis malarkë, vis mummityme an daddityme, vis Chaynjova. U muss nevah ferget í, nevah. Ear tayk vese. She gave him a necklace of Daveworks that he could hang beneath his T-shirt, special talismans to remind him of the unity of mummies and daddies, before their painful division by the PCO.

Antonë Böm was permitted by the Driver only to teach the very phonic of the Book to the lads of Ham. There were five of them in the school the year that Carl changed over and became old enough to join. Lessons were held in the Shelter during the first tariff. After that the lads had to vacate the small wooden shack so that the dads could do their own calling over. Instruction was by rote: Böm called over the run and the points from the Book, then the lads repeated it in unison. Böm would announce a run he had selected at random: List Four, Run Fifty-Four. Leave by forward Kenton Road, left Cassland Road, right Wick Road, right East Cross Route slip, forward East Cross Route. Then the little Hamsters would mangle it into Mokni: Leev bì forrud Kentun Röd, leff Kasslan Röd, rì Wyc Rod … and so on, until the run was completed. Then it was the points: Burberry Factory, 29 Chatham Place, WE9 … Bubbery Faktri, twennynyn Chá-um Playce, dubbulU ee nyn …

For the first two years that Carl sat at Böm's feet there was only this, monotonous repetition. Then, when Carl's younger stepbrothers joined the class, Böm split them all into two groups. Henceforth the little ones were quizzed on their Knowledge, while Carl and his mates were taught its application. Böm had A2ZS, drawn up by the PCO, which showed New London in all its growing magnificence.

The city the Book described was a perfect circle nineteen clicks across. Every street and most of the significant buildings had been ordained by Dave. Since the Book's discovery by the founding dad of the House of Dave, in the London burb known as Hampstead, court Drivers had laboured to interpret its dävine plan for the city. As each run was deciphered by these phonicists, so it was laid out. Once surveyed, the principal points were built and occupied, many by the Drivers themselves. In these newly founded Knowledge schools the learned queers debated and refined their understanding of the Book, thus ensuring that yet more buildings might be erected.

There were those sceptics who maintained that New London was not only incomplete but quite wrong. That its winding, muddy lanes and narrow, cluttered alleys bore no more relation to the city of Dave than a child's drawing to what it depicts. Worse, that the buildings themselves were mean travesties, unfit to bear the names of the mighty edifices Dave had inscribed on the irony plates of the Book. Still more critical voices noted how it was that as the PCO had grown and grown over the centuries, London — and beyond it Ing — became increasingly burdened by a religious bureaucracy the sole industry of which was its own perpetuation. However, these voices were stifled by the Doctrines and Covenants of the Book: the exactions of the Breakup and the Changeover, which kept the Inglanders riven inside, and so unable to conceive of any purpose beyond the fulfilment of Dave's prophecies.

Besides, who could gainsay the phenomenal growth and burgeoning prosperity of London, and beyond it of all Ing? In the centuries since the discovery of the Book, the vision it presented of a heavenly world of marvels that might be built here, on earth, had acted as a fruitful stimulus to the Inglanders, allowing them to resurrect the glories of past civilizations with apparent ease, and thus outstrip the haphazard advances of other nations. The Jocks, the Taffies, even the Swizz confederacy far across the sea — all remained mired in barbarism, while in Ing the people were subject to the rule of law. Now, when Inglish privateers encountered the longpedalos of the Nords or the ferries of the Franks on the high seas, the foreigners hove to and made tribute. Could there be any doubt that the dävidic line was dävinely ordained to rule Ing — and beyond it the known world?