John Banville - Nightspawn

Helena pulled the cord, and there, revealed before us, was a magnified model of the diseased coils of an insane brain, with painted wires and bits of tubing twisted together, and a round black ball, like one of those cartoon anarchist’s bombs, resting with an odd malevolence at the centre of the mesh. Helena was rooted to the spot. Yack.

‘Good Christ, it’s going to explode.’

I stood outside the gate, drinking the darkness. The moon peered through a crack in the clouds. A little man shared my vigil. He had an empty glass, a dead cigar, and the bandiest legs I had ever seen. We were almost like friends. After some time of silence, he sighed, laid the glass down on the road, and walked toward one of the largest of the limousines.

‘Ahem,’ he said.

He climbed the bonnet, had a moment of difficulty with the windscreen, and then he was on the roof, where I saw, in awe, his little legs rise, slowly, slowly, a grunt, up; he did a perfect handstand. Coins fell from his pockets, and gave him a silvery round of applause. He clambered down, smoothed his jacket, and swaggered, justly proud, back into the garden.

And I watched the large dent his inverted head had left in the roof of the car, a pool of moonlight, emptying gradually, until, at its lowest tide, the metal suddenly snapped back into its shape with a deep note of booming black music, filling the night with wonder. I turned, and heard glass crunch under my feet.

When I lifted my eyes I found a figure coming toward me through the purple gloom. I raised my glass in a toast.

‘You,’ I said.

The figure went past me to the window and looked down at the city.

‘Why did you not come for my lesson yesterday?’

‘What?’

I was busy with that bottle again.

‘I said you didn’t come for that bottle yesterday.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The lesson.’

‘Was busy.’

I took the bottle back with me to the chair and sank down into its waiting arms. I asked,

‘Shouldn’t you be in bed, this hour of the night?’

‘What?’

‘Should we go to bed tonight?’

Silence. Thunder rolled in the distance. The pool of moonlight vanished. A finger was drawn down the glass, ee ee ee. I tried to recall something, a fleeting memory.

‘On such a night as this,’ I murmured.

There was the sound of the silver applause of coins falling, tinkling on the road. A thunderhead with a silver gash in its forehead was rolling in from the mountains. I heard the soft hushing of rain.

‘Always something,’ I said. ‘Something always comes along to ruin it.’

‘In Egypt once I saw a group of pilgrims on their way to Mecca,’ said Melissa, Melissima. ‘It was at the airport. They were bewildered, as though they could not connect the two worlds. They were like refugees. Pilgrims or refugees, there is no difference. You make me think of them.’

‘Why?’

Their plane crashed in the desert before it reached Mecca. I thought of their white robes. And now you make me think of them again.’

Think. Tink. Once, in winter, on a deserted beach in a strange part of the country, I found an abandoned baby seal dying in a crevice of the rocks. It had such exquisite moist brown eyes. I wanted to kill it, to put it out of its misery, but I did not know how to go about it, and I went away instead and left it there. Sometimes those eyes stare at me out of the velvet darkness of a dream. Do I digress?’

‘You told me you loved me,’ I said.

‘I never did.’

‘Then you didn’t love me?’

‘I never said that either. That ridiculous machine. He planned it, how could you fail to see that? I shall never forgive you, never.’

She was sitting on the floor, her arms around her knees and her forehead laid against the glass. Lightning flashed on her face.

‘How can I keep you?’ I asked. ‘What have I got to offer you, to make you stay?’

‘You know.’

‘Do I?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t think I do.’

‘You know. The first day we were together, you spoke of…’

‘What would you do with it, if you found it?’

‘Would that matter to you?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘You are such a fool.’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh go away, leave me alone.’

‘Yes.’

I went away, I left her alone. The music had ceased. I searched for Yacinth, but I could not find him. Their plane crashed in the desert. What did I expect from him, anyway? Downstairs, the guests were becoming noisy, recovering from their fright. You fool. It was only a little thing. Why could she not…?

Suddenly, with a great groan, the whole thing began to uncoil. Pieces of wire hopped into the air like a troupe of undisciplined acrobats. Smoke billowed. A girl screamed, and then a tremendous, though undeniably comic, bang came from the machine, and the thing finally exploded with an hilarious, groaning, ungainly slowness. Ping, ping, said the springs, lying down dead on the floor. The last wisps of smoke cleared. I found that I was laughing, while Helena screamed abuse at me from the stage, her fists clenched, feet stamping, her teeth out and eyes ablaze. The immediate area of the disaster was cleared (the artist, Horsfall, who had created the bomb, had been one of the first to flee, tittering as he ran), but beyond that, figures were fleeing, dowagers skidding cumbersomely through the windows into the courtyard (snouts appearing again a moment later), old men dancing with delight, women waving their hands, and a few fat men loping away, pausing every few steps for a glance over their shoulders, fear telling them to flee, curiosity urging, yes, but not yet. Into the centre of the room there tottered a plump woman in pearls and a black dress, wailing, her mouth a round black hole. She halted, her hands in her hair, and her squeals swung into a higher key, then her mouth closed, and she sat down abruptly on the parquet with a soft plop. The thread of her necklace broke, and the little white beads went rolling in all directions. Rescuers rushed forward, drew back before her screams, advanced again and caught her by the arms, legs, tits, head, ribs, and she was hoisted to her feet, roaring in protest. Helena launched herself at me. She had reached a stage of total incoherence by now, just one unbroken howl cleaving a passage for her which led to my most pluckable orbs, all four of them. I turned and ran, but not before I glimpsed, in one of those frames of stillness which, running, one can catch so beautifully, Julian, his hands in his trouser pockets, watching us with amusement, and not a little sympathy, yes, sympathy. He had won.

The lights sank with what I would swear was a sucking sound. My hand found a knob, pushed open a door. Lights, lights, bring tapers to this scene, we are not finished yet, I have some revenge, there must be … But soft you now. The lights swooped down from the ceiling and lit up a little tableau for me, quaint as a picture. Look at this descending scale of hilarity. Shelves of books, a chandelier, french windows again. Andreas crouched on his heels in the middle of the floor, one hand behind him pressed to the carpet for support. In front of him, the good Aristotle cowered, knees bent, back arched backwards, an arm lifted across his forehead. And there, last but best, leaning over them with a stick upraised above the Colonel’s unprotected pate, Julian, our genial host, master of assorted jokes and japes, his tongue out and eyes bulging, ready to thrash the living daylights out of his quaking foes. O lord, that I should have had a camera and one of those little bulbs that go pop, to transfix that scene forever. On, on to the finale. There was a roar behind me, and I leapt aside, fearful of a stick descending on my own head, and Erik (remember Erik?) went galloping through the doorway, across the floor, threw the combatants to all sides, then crashed through the windows (closed, by the way) and fell headlong into the courtyard. The last thing I saw of him was his heels disappearing into the darkness. An absurdly melodramatic clap of thunder bawled up in the sky, and when its rumbling had ceased there came to us the prosaic sounds of Erik being extravagantly sick.