Tom McCarthy: C

Serge looks up at the window, then at a whiteboard on whose surface more geometry is displayed: rows of round shapes with lines inside them have been drawn on it. The shapes modulate as they repeat, their curves narrowing or widening, their lines arcing and flexing as they process across the glass. Looking down again, Serge turns his attention to a toy soldier who’s been resting until now against his thigh. Picking the soldier up, he holds him to his face. The soldier’s eyes are neutral, gazing off into the middle distance; his mouth is set in a calm, still expression that contains the tiniest hint of a smile. Serge lays the soldier front-up on the rug, smoothing its hairs aside to form an enclave for the back to nestle in. The thick fibres thread and wrap around the soldier’s sides. Serge reaches for one of the wooden blocks and, lifting it up above the soldier, slams it down hard onto his face. The soldier’s legs and feet jolt upwards as the comparatively huge slab hits him. Serge draws the block back, then slams it down onto the soldier’s face again; then again, several times. When he’s done smashing him he holds the soldier up to inspect the damage. His eyes are unaffected, still vague and distant, but his mouth has been deformed, its plaster dented and chipped away. Serge scrapes at the ground-down surface with his thumbnail, lifting off more flakes of plaster. Then, to no one but himself since he’s alone, he says:

“Bodner.”

He sets the soldier down gently on the rug, propping him up in a sitting position against the wooden block that’s just mutilated him. Serge is reaching out towards another block when his attention is distracted by the hurried entrance of the family cat and, close on its tail, his older sister Sophie. Sophie is half running, half skipping, with clenched hands held out in front of her. Placing herself between the cat and the door, she thrusts her hands towards the cat and sings:

“Spitalfield! Oh, Spitalfield!”

The cat retreats beneath the recess seat. Sophie stoops low and creeps towards it, opening her palms to reveal four or five small white larval balls nestled warmly in them.

“Just try one, Spitalfield,” she purrs, holding the balls temptingly up to the cat’s face. The cat turns its head away, then, ducking beneath her hands, breaks cover and darts out of the room. Sophie lets out a sigh and, setting the larvae on the recess seat’s cushion, turns her attention to Serge. Scooping three or four of the wooden blocks up from the carpet, she starts laying them out in front of him. Then, kneeling behind them and pulling the front of her skirt forwards so that it covers the figures on their surface, she says: “If you can remember which one is which I’ll give you my pocket money. If not, forfeit.”

But Serge doesn’t want to play her game. He reaches between her legs, pushing through the pleated fabric. She grabs his wrist and pulls it out again. “Forfeit!” she cackles. “Take your trousers down.”

“No!” Serge snaps. But she’s stronger than him. She wraps her arm around him, pulls him to his feet and, still kneeling beside him, yanks his trousers down his legs. He wriggles as she pulls the pants beneath these down as well.

“Aha!” she shouts in triumph. “Now to telegraph the Admiralty.” Holding him in place, she begins tapping his little penis with her index finger. “ ‘Dear Sir: Please send reinforcements,’ tap-tap-tap. ‘Enemy quite outnumber us,’ tap-tap. ‘Are holding out but fear total submission if not soon relieved,’ tap-tip tap-tip.”

“Stop it!” Serge shouts.

“Why? I’ve seen Miss Hubbard do it. She did it with the man from Lydium. ‘Dear Man from Lydium,’ tap-tap, ‘please send more charcoal and wipers for our school class,’ tip-tip-tip. ‘Weather here fine but rain is forecast for tomorrow.’ Tippety-tap. See? You’re laughing.”

“No I’m not!” Serge shouts, straining to get away. Eventually he manages to break loose. Sophie half-heartedly grabs after him, but he pushes her hands away. Moving a safe distance from her, he pulls his pants and trousers up, then gathers the wooden blocks up in his cradled arm and shuffles through the door through which the cat’s just made its own escape.

Sophie watches him go, then shrugs, sits back and tilts her head to one side as she looks up at the whiteboard. As she runs her eyes along the rows of round, lined shapes, her mouth forms positions, holding each in place for several seconds before morphing to strike up the next one: her jaw lowering and lifting, cheeks tautening then slackening, fattening, rising to form pregnant mounds while her lips stretch back in terror or jut forwards to pucker into silent kisses.

Out in the warm March sunlight, Serge totters with his blocks towards a wooden trolley. It’s a small trolley with a large handlebar at one end: it’s been his for a year now, ever since he started walking. He stoops over it and, loosening the cradle of his left arm, lets the blocks fall into it. Grabbing the handle with both hands, he starts pushing the trolley along the gravel footpath. To his right, women are moving among mulberry trees, climbing and descending ladders, carrying baskets to and from the spinning houses. One of them stops and waves at him but he ignores her, pushing on. To his left is the wall between the Mulberry Orchard and the Maze Garden; coming to the doorway in this, he steers his trolley through and pushes it into the corridor formed by the paving laid into the lawn. When the corridor forks, cutting at right angles in opposite directions, he chooses a branch and follows it until, after performing several more right-angled turns and forking twice more, it comes to a dead end. He doubles back to the last fork, advances down another branch and follows it until it, too, runs out-at which point he doubles two forks back and takes a new branch. There’s no need to stick to the paved section-the maze is wall-less, two-dimensional as the figures on the blocks, and the grass is short and wouldn’t slow his trolley down-but he continues working his way along the abruptly turning corridors, held by their pattern, until they deliver him back out, through the same doorway, to the footpath once more.

The same woman waves at him; again he ignores her and, pushing his trolley past the house’s main entrance, turns into the Low Lawn, crosses it and passes through the hedge into the Lime Garden. Leaving his trolley at the edge of this, he walks to its centre and pauses there. The lime trees are flowering; little white and yellow petals teeter on the ends of branches. The bees are active: Serge can see a blur of movement around the openings to their hives at the garden’s far end. He tilts his head to one side, then the other; then he slowly rotates his whole body above the spot on which he’s standing. The bees’ hum first grows and then recedes, changing pitch as his ears turn through the air. As trees, grass and hedge run together, the bees seem to relocate, and hum from a new spot within his head, their pitch and volume being modulated from inside him now, not outside. He rotates several more times, relishing the acoustic effect, its repetition.

Eventually he returns to his trolley, swings it round and pushes it back across the Low Lawn, steering it off the path after he rounds the house’s edge. A swathe has been mown through the longer grass, leading up to and through a large metal gate set in tall stone walls. The gate is open. Serge follows the swathe between the gate’s obelisk-topped supporting columns and enters the Crypt Park.

It’s darker in here. Tall hedges wall him in; the obelisks cast shadows on the ground. Trees and bushes sprout up willy-nilly, closing off most lines of view. Serge pushes onwards, following the mown swathe until, beside an empty bench, it suddenly gives out. He continues, but from here on in the going’s harder: grass-strands twine themselves around the trolley’s wheels; the blocks slide and jump across its floor. Serge rests beside a tree stump and, looking up, catches sight of his mother. She’s sitting on another bench, leaning her back against the Crypt. On the bench beside her a teapot, a cup, a jar of honey and a little phial are laid out.