Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

I hear your words , says a voice. I hear your thoughts.

Jasper’s mind spins. ‘This is Knock Knock?’

I am he whom you call by that name.

To Jasper’s inner ear, the voice sounds patrician, cold and resolute. ‘Should I call you by another name?’

Would you care by what name a dog knows you?

Jasper works out that, in this metaphor, he is the dog and Knock Knock the master. He glances at the clock: 7.14 a.m. The Queludrin is having no effect. ‘Why do you want to destroy me?’

This body is my property. It is time you were gone.

‘This body? This mind? They’re mine. They’re me.’

My claim is older than yours.

‘What claim? I don’t understand.’

A pause. The dream of the cicada.

More metaphors? ‘Am I the cicada? Are you? What are you going to do to me? Just tell me. Directly.’

‘Directly’, then: the custom of my country allows even the lowliest thief a period of a few hours to prepare his spirit for death. Your period of grace begins now, and ends tonight .

‘I don’t want to die.’

That is irrelevant. You die tonight.

‘Is there no other way?’

None.

Jasper stares at his hands. The clock ticks.

This is your fate, de Zoet. No sword, bullet, exorcist, drug, stranger or stratagem can change it. Accept this.

‘If I kill myself first?’

Then I will inhabit another. There is no shortage of suitable bodies in this city. If you want anything of yourself to survive, however, surrender this body in good working order.

Knock Knock withdraws …

Traffic simmers seven floors below Jasper’s balcony. The air is cool and metallic. Autumn’s here. The city rumbles, near and far. Early sunlight reflects off high east-facing windows. Jasper lists his options. One. Jump over the rail. Deny Knock Knock my body . Jasper waits for an intervention. None is forthcoming. If this is my last day, why end it now? Two. Act as if Knock Knock has not just served a death sentence and spend the day with Elf, Dean and Griff in interviews with the press, answering questions about our first impressions of America and why Elf, a woman, is in Utopia Avenue.

Three. Go down to breakfast and tell Levon and the band that Knock Knock, a demon in his head, is going to kill him later. Four. Obey Knock Knock. Prepare for death. How do you do that? Jasper’s not sure, but he finds himself cleaning his teeth, dressing in his stage gear, pocketing his wallet, putting his shoes on, walking down the echoey stairwell, out through the lobby and onto 23rd Street, past unglamorous apartments, repair shops, garages, a bus depot, parking lots and warehouses, where men in oil-stained overalls eyeball him as if he’s an intruder who has no legitimate business there. Rats ferret through rubbish spilling from an upturned bin. Jasper walks under an elevated highway of angry cars. Beyond is a strip of waterside park. He watches the Hudson River slide past, towards its perpetual ending. I am leaving the world. Not in fifty years. Tonight. Whatever Knock Knock’s plans for his future are, Jasper doubts very much they include Utopia Avenue. The band too, then, has only a few hours left, unless Elf and Dean carry on without him. I’m half ghost already. In a lean-to, a kid Jasper’s age is injecting drugs into his lacerated forearm. He looks up at Jasper, and slumps back, the tip of the needle still in his arm. Jasper walks on. He stops and reties an undone bootlace, marvelling at the complexity of this everyday operation. Weeds corkscrew up from cracks in the path. Their flowers are sparks …

Jasper is engulfed in a human river, dammed by a ‘DON’T WALK’ sign; it changes to ‘WALK’ and the river spills forwards. Glass-fronted buildings reflect the sun, its own reflections and re-reflections.

In a gleaming perfume showroom, women stare at Jasper like sinister dolls. He tries a row of samples, from wrist to elbow. Lavender, rose, geranium, sage. Bottled gardens. ‘Sir,’ says a serious guard. ‘We have a hair policy.’

‘What’s a hair policy?’ asked Jasper.

The guard’s eyes narrow into slits. ‘Wise guy.’

Jasper’s confused. ‘Only accidentally.’

‘Scram, buddy. Go!’

Aggression , realises Jasper. He leaves the showroom, passing a school bus, big and yellow and toy-like, disgorging schoolchildren. ‘Quit whining , Snail!’ scolds an older girl. Jasper thinks about his cousins in Lyme Regis – Eileen, Lesley, Norma, John, Robert – for the first time in a long, long time. Their faces are forgotten. One wave of the de Zoet magic wand, and they vanished. They’ll probably be married now, with children of their own. Maybe they saw Utopia Avenue on Top of the Pops without recognising their small cousin from long ago. ‘Titch’, they used to call him. ‘Shrimp’. He wonders if they missed him, after the de Zoets’ driver took him off to boarding school.

Hundreds, thousands of besuited men with briefcases surge along this sunless street. Few speak. None gives way. None makes eye-contact. They serve the god who made them. Jasper has to dodge or get shoulder-barged. A busker is playing Big Bill Broonzy’s ‘Key To The Highway’. George Washington watches from his plinth, framed by Doric columns. Statues’ faces are easier to read than people’s – George Washington is not pleased to be there. Jasper sees a shop: BOWLING GREEN PHARMACY. A rebel thought nudges Jasper inside to ask a pharmacist for an over-the-counter anti-psychotic drug, and his skull is pummelled by KNOCK -KNOCK KNOCK- KNOCK KNOCK -KNOCK KNOCK- KNOCK KNOCK- KNOCK KNOCK- KNOCK - KNOCK KNOCK- KNOCK KNOCK- KNOCK KNOCK- KNOCK KNOCK-KNOCK -KNOCK KNOCK- KNOCK KNOCK- KNOCK KNOCK- KNOCK KNOCK -KNOCK KNOCK- KNOCK KNOCK -KNOCK KNOCK -KNOCK KNOCK -KNOCK KNOCK- KNOCK until his vision swims.

‘No drugs,’ Jasper tells Knock Knock. ‘I understand.’

Knock Knock does not reply, but stops pounding.

A pharmacist is staring. ‘Can I help you, son?’

‘It’s okay. I was talking to a voice in my head.’

Down in a subway station, booms and screeches echo all the way from the underworld to Jasper’s eardrums. An ogre’s borborygmi. An approaching train howls out of the tunnel and stops to disgorge and load up with more carcasses-in-waiting. The carriage contains all the racial variations Jasper knows of, with mixes he can only guess at. Rivers of blood , he thinks, flow not in the street but through our species. Passengers sway, snooze and read. The genetic deck is reshuffled at every stop. I wish I could live here . He wonders if Knock Knock intends to erase his memories once he’s moved in, or if he’ll keep some, like the photograph albums of a man you murder. If Knock Knock hears, he offers no comment. Jasper gets off at the 86th Street stop. It looks close to Central Park on the map of the subway stops. A thin sheet of cloud is pulled tight across the sky. The sun shines through, like a torch. This neighbourhood is home to old money and privilege, like Mayfair or the Prinsengracht. The park draws Jasper a few blocks along 86th Street and into its well-thumbed pages. Maples are pyrotechnic. Conkers spill from catjackets, like brains, under the spreading chestnut tree. Squirrels flit in and out of sight. A spiral path brings Jasper into a mossy omphalos. He sits on a bench and rests his aching feet. We are porous. ‘Old haunts fill me with melancholy.’ The elderly man has the beard of God and the hat and pipe of a gentleman-farmer. ‘Old haunts gladden my heart.’