Martin Amis - Heavy Water and Other Stories

This reunion, so far, was being completely cool. Nothing personal. They strolled west. Cleve intended to accompany her as far as Seventh Avenue; then he would retrace his steps, and proceed to Magnificent Obsession. When he walked, Cleve’s thighs jostled and sideswiped one another very noticeably, and very loudly. His upper body was holding steady; but his lower body was hugely enlarged. Those thighs: he could only find room for them by standing with his feet about a yard apart.

“Whew,” he said on the corner, swaying there in the heat. “Good to see you again.” He reached out a hand, which she didn’t take.

“Wait,” said Cressida. “I thought you might like to see the baby.”

Christopher Street was not what he had built it up to be. For instance, it wasn’t even called Christopher Street, not this bit of it anyway: a new sign had been tacked over the old one like a temporary number plate. He might have asked his companion about that, but he didn’t need to. The straight district told you all about itself. It was out . SITE OF THE STONEWALL RIOTS, JUNE 27–29, 1969, said the white lettering on the black window of some impenetrable lockup or godown: BIRTH OF THE MODERN STRAIGHT-RIGHTS LIBERATION MOVEMENT. And the TV footage slid into Cleve’s head: cops, lights, squad cars, crime-scene tapes, the chanting, bouncing ranks of straights. Cressida looked up at him (her round eyes, her characterless nose, her flat smile), and led him on down Stonewall Place.

Cleve had imagined a little world. A world of Ant-and-Bee innocuousness, of diffident striving and inch-by-inching, with heads down and faces averted and abashed. But he found it chaotic: everywhere there was poverty and prettiness and peril. On the green triangle of Sheridan Square the “Five O’Clock Club” was dispersing; minders bawled and kids rioted. As they moved west through the sidewalk gridlock of prams, pushchairs, buggies, strollers, through smells of dairy, of confectioner, of dime-store perfumier, they passed herds of men drawn to the jaws of bars and taverns, and street-corner youths, loiterers, louts, punks, drunks, assessing Cleve from an unknown vantage of violence and boredom—and he walked on, shaped like a top when it spins, quivering with centrifugal torque.

In New York, in summer, air doesn’t want to be air anymore. It wants to be liquid. Around Christopher Street, this day, it wanted to be solid: a form of food, most probably. Paddling through it, Cleve’s thighs rasped on. They turned right on Bleecker. He looked up. Beyond the lumpen foliage of the ginkgo trees an evening sky lay swathed in its girlish pinks and boyish blues. And the tenement blocks. One-way windows, and the butts of AC units like torn hi-fi speakers, playing churned heat. The smutty fire escapes going Z, Z, Z . What are these zees saying, he wondered: sleep, or just the end of the alphabet? She hurried on ahead. With momentous helplessness he followed.

Now he was standing in a basement kitchen. Cleve assumed, at any rate, that it must be a kitchen. Cressida had called it “the kitchen.” A kitchen, to Cleve, was an arena for the free play of delectation, enterprise, and wit. Not the rear end of some desperate holding operation, a field hospital of pots, pails, acids, carbolics, and cauldrons of boiling laundry. “This is meat and potatoes,” he whispered. “Meat and potatoes tops.” He couldn’t imagine cooking anything in here. He could imagine having his legs amputated in here. But not cooking… Cressida was in the room across the passage, consulting with another straight broad, her buddy or backup. Cleve waited, listening to the saddest sound he had ever heard. It reminded him of the call of the loons on the river trips he’d gone on, years ago, with Grainge…

And now the baby was there on the kitchen table, being unwrapped as if for his imminent inspection, its hiccupy weeping growing softer, its stained and damp cloth diaper revealing itself beneath the unclasped bodysuit, its arms waving and miming at the bare bulb overhead.

“Would you pass me the powder? And that tub of cream. And that cloth. Not that one. On the faucet. The pink one.”

As he poked warily around among the jars, the pads, the balls of cotton wool, the plastic bottles, the plastic teats, the grime, the biology, Cleve wondered if he had ever suffered so. He could feel self-pity drench his heart: his heart, so deep-encased, so far away.

“Not that one. That one.”

He wondered if he had ever suffered so.

And he wondered what on earth people were going to say.

Twenty-second Street, the apartment, the bedroom: sheets, pillows, a leg here, an arm there. The acidy tang of male love suspended itself in the failing light and alerting air of autumn. Two mustaches stirred and flexed.

The first mustache said, “I mean if it was another man. That I could understand.” This was Irv.

The second mustache said, “That you could fight. You know what you’re dealing with.” This was Orv.

“You know where you stand.”

“You know what’s what.”

“But this…”

“Another man. Okay. It happens. But this…”

“I just feel so unclean.”

“Irv,” said Orv.

“The past. It’s all defiled for me. I feel so…”

“Maybe it’s some kind of midlife thing. A rush of blood. He’ll be back.”

“I could never feel the same about him. Not after this.”

“I saw him in Jefferson Market. He looks two hundred years old. He’s lost his build. He’s even lost his tone.”

“Do you think he was always that way?”

“Cleve? Jesus. Who knows?”

“It’ll get around.”

“You’re damn right it’ll get around. Where’s my Rolodex.”

“Orv,” said Irv.

“You just think of them kissing.”

“Get this. He says it’s not her tits and ass he ‘admires.’ It’s her wrists. It’s her collarbone.”

“That really does sound straight.”

“He’s coming over for his books Saturday morning. That’s right. He’s moving into that… crèche on Bleecker.”

“Oh, wow. Cleve … of all the guys we hang with. Arn. Harv. Grove. Fraze.”

“But Cleve.”

“I mean: Cleve.”

This was Orv.

“I mean: Cleve.”

This was Irv.

Esquire , 1995

A DERBIBLE THING HABBENEDdo me on my haliday. A harrible thing, and a bermanend thing. Id won’d be the zame, ever again.

Bud virzd I’d bedder zay: don’d banig! I’m nad zuvvering vram brain damage—or vram adenoids. And I gan wride bedder than thiz when I wand do. Bud I d on’d wand do. Nad vor now. Led me egsblain.

I am halve English and halve Amerigan. My mum is Amerigan and my dad is English. I go do zgool in London and my bronunziation is English—glear, even vaindly Agzonian, the zame as my dad’s. Amerigans avden zeem zurbrised do hear an eleven-year-old who zbeegs as I zbeeg. Grandaddy Jag, who is Amerigan, admids thad he vinds id unganny. As iv suj an agzend requires grade ganzendration even vram grownubs, led alone jildren. Amerigans zeem to zuzbegd thad the English relags and zbeeg Amerigan behind glozed doors. Shouding oud, on their redurn, “Honey, I’m home!” My other grandvather veld divverendly: English, do him, was the more najural voize. Zo thiz zdory is vor them, doo, as well as vor Eliaz. I dell id thiz way—in zargazdig. Ameriganese—begaz I don’d wand id do be glear: do be all grizb and glear. There is thiz zdrange resizdanze. There is thiz zdrange resizdanze.

Me and my younger brother Jagob usually zbend the early bard of the zummer in Gabe Gad, with my mum, and the lader bard in Eazd Hambdon, with my dad. Bud thiz year we wend do my dad’s a liddle zooner than blanned. When the day game we gad ub ad the grag of dawn and biled indo the gar with our Ungle Desmond. Id was a vive-hour drive do New Yorg, bud the dravvig wasn’t heavy and Desmond doled uz many inderezding things—aboud dreams, aboud aldered zdades. We zeemed to be there in no dime. My dad was wading on Ninedy-zigzth Zdreed.