Tom McCarthy: Remainder

She smiled back awkwardly again and said:

“I’ll go and tell the captain, then. That you said it’s okay.”

With that, she disappeared into the cockpit. A few seconds later we banked and turned. My coffee cup slid to the side of the table top; coffee sloshed over the edge onto its surface. We righted again. The coffee trickled back into the middle of the table top, towards my sleeve. I didn’t move my hand out of the way; I wanted it to stain it. It was tarry. Matthew Younger had apologized and handed me a handkerchief. Shares Tumble, the headline had said. Five had tumbled, Four had crumpled. Naz was sweating, mumbling. I called the stewardess over.

“A napkin?” she asked, eyeing the spilt coffee.

“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s that I should like us to turn back out again.”

“Out again?” she repeated.

“Yes,” I said. “I should like us to resume our original course now.”

She turned around and went back to the cockpit. After a few moments the plane banked again, but to the other side this time. I felt weight shifting in the cabin and my body, felt myself becoming weightless for an instant, a sensation of being held just above something. On the table top the coffee ran again. The plane turned and then straightened, heading back out. I smiled and looked out of the window. The sun was low on the horizon, making the few clouds in the sky glow blue and red and mauve. Higher up, lingering vapour trails had turned blood crimson. Our trail would be visible from the ground: an eight, plus that first bit where we’d first set off-fainter, drifted to the side by now, discarded, recidual, a remainder. In the cockpit the radio crackled again. The pilot called out to me:

“Now they’re ordering us to turn back.”

“Ordering!” I repeated. “That’s pretty cool.”

We turned and started heading back. The stewardess stood still beside the cabin door, avoiding eye contact with me. After a couple of minutes I called to the pilot.

“I should like you to turn back out once more,” I said.

“We can’t do that,” he called back. “I’m afraid the Civil Aviation Authority’s commands override yours.”

“That’s annoying,” I said. “Isn’t there anything…”

My voice trailed off as I pondered what to do. I liked this turning back and forth in mid-air, this banking one way, straightening, then banking back another, the feeling of weightlessness, suspension. I didn’t want it to stop. I looked around me-then I had a brilliant idea.

“Tell them I’m hijacking you,” I called back to the pilot.

I reached down into my bag, pulled out my shotgun and brought the barrel back up straight. The stewardess screamed. Naz did nothing. The pilot swivelled his upper body halfway round again, saw the gun pointing at the cockpit and shouted:

“Jesus! If you shoot that, we’ll all die.”

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “Don’t worry at all. I won’t let us die. I just want to keep the sequence in place.”

The radio crackled more. The pilot spoke into it in a hushed, urgent voice, telling the tower what was happening. The tower crackled back to him; he half-turned to me again and asked:

“Where do you want to go?”

“Go?” I said. “Nowhere. Just keep doing this.”

“Doing what?” he asked.

“Turning back, then turning out. Then turning back again. The way we’re doing it right now.”

He spoke into his radio again; it crackled back to him; he half-turned towards me and asked:

“You want us to keep turning, out and back, like this?”

“Yup,” I said. “Just keep on. The same pattern. It will all be fine.”

I looked out of the window again. I felt really happy. We passed through a small cloud. The cloud, seen from inside like this, was gritty, like spilled earth or dust flakes in a stairwell. Eventually the sun would set for ever-burn out, pop, extinguish-and the universe would run down like a Fisher Price toy whose spring has unwound to its very end. Then there’d be no more music, no more loops. Or maybe, before that, we’d just run out of fuel. For now, though, the clouds tilted and the weightlessness set in once more as we banked, turning, heading back, again.

Many thanks to-

Clémentine Deliss and Thomas Boutoux at Metronome Press, for first bringing Remainder into the public realm with the MP Paris edition of 2005; Marty Asher and the team at Vintage, for their help in preparing the current edition for publication; Jonny Pegg at Curtis Brown, for his untiring support; and Johnny Rich and Tarquin Edwards, for generously sharing their experiences of (post-)trauma with me.

Tom McCarthy was born in 1969 and lives in London. He is known for the reports, manifestos, and media interventions he has made as General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society (INS), a semifictitious avant-garde network. Remainder is his first novel.