Iain Sinclair - Downriver

It amuses Sinclair, after three or four Russian stouts, to pretend to believe my name is really Jobard , the French for ‘ninny’, ‘simpleton’. Joblard (sic) is how he has addressed the jiffy bag.

It might be a book. I’ll have to open it. I’ll risk a squeeze. At least, it won’t be a bill. The electricity can’t be cut off. We haven’t got any. We live by the natural rhythms of the day. Even among all this chaos — especially among this chaos — everything is slow and calm. Dust motes spiralling in trumpets of sunlight. The persistent drip of water wearing away the basin. We are waiting on the unhurried dictation of an unborn child.

The large jiffy bag contains a smaller one, too small to hold a book. It is addressed to Sinclair in a hand I do not know. What could this second bag have contained? Sinclair has nothing but books. He eats books. He pays with books. He sleeps on them. He’d probably sleep with them if he could. He begets books. There’s also a letter. I’ll save the letter. One thing at a time. Heat more water in the pan. We still have gas — until the end of the month. Another filter paper, another mug of coffee. Getting weaker with each infusion: no more than an aide-mémoire , recalling the sensation of previous cups; and — by way of that sensation — the cluster of thoughts and images, the day dreams, floating to the surface as I sipped before, and as I sip now; my eyes firmly closed in creative indolence. Somewhere, there is half a Gozitan cigar to be found: marking my place in a notebook, shredded by the opening and closing of the hinges, perfuming the creamy paper with dark and oily resins.

I dig out the staples from the fat lip of the envelope — one by one, with a fork; lay them around the circumference of my plate. The hooped silver bones of a centipede. I study the arrangement. Pick up one of the staples and lick it. Uninteresting, flavourless. I shake the packet. Something wriggles out, falls reluctantly on to the table. This is much better, the colour is superb. A bruised purple, infected with carmine: that must have been the original state. Soutine’s impasto. Colour that’s hung on a hook until it’s ready to declare itself. It shifts. It prevaricates. It broadcasts its history. Dies, regresses into a morbid, flagellant blue. A slate licker’s punishment. I lift it on my fork, bring it close to my lips — as a rasher of dead veal. A grey corpse cut. Waggling. Six inches of meat fallen from a hanged man’s mouth.

What am I dealing with, exactly ? The pith of a skinned lizard? Too dark; too much blood in it. The tannin-dyed cock of a Tibetan priest, beaten out flat on a stone? I don’t want to think of this sample as what it actually is, or was. Or what it is now intended to be. What does it want — of me ? It’s altogether less painful to stall, to speculate, construct post-Martian similes. The thing has been savagely divorced from its natural setting, the purse of wet meat, the talk box. A human tongue is, at the best of times, an obscenity. A naked muscle, slithering with bacteria-marinated mucus, food memories; its papillae travestying lime-white kettle fur. And this tongue has not been decently amputated; it has been torn, uprooted, ripped from the throat. It lies on the desk like a silent scream. As I poke it reflectively with the tines of my fork, it twitches. It persists: it has something to say. It is still eager to rap, to taste, to forewarm of pleasures as yet unrisked. Scorpic to the end, it arches to the touch. It spits defiance.

I swear this is not my affair. I don’t know the tongue. The tongue does not know me. The smaller jiffy bag is clearly addressed to Sinclair (or ‘St Clair’, as they have it). It’s his business, his mess. Now I will have to read his bloody letter. The usual see-through copier paper, crammed to the margins; but — this is rather remarkable — it’s written in his own hand, his holograph. No typewriter. He must be serious. Desperate. He’s cracking up. I’ll throw the thing away. I’ll try another coffee transfusion. Kill the taste of the water. The taste in my mouth.

II

Haggerston, 198–

Joblard:

a favour. You will by now have opened the mysterious package and performed your own autopsy on the small gift that arrived for me this morning, innocently lurking among the usual clutch of threats, begging letters, final demands — and poems written in red Biro on lined paper, postmarked HALIFAX, and emanating, without a doubt, from Hebden Bridge.

That’s the time of day to live through. From then on it’s a quiet slog to survival. I squeeze my heart back into my chest. I start to shake as I listen for the postman’s footsteps. I’m crouched behind the door, sweating. I’ve been there for hours. All night? Possibly. I’ve forgotten what it was like to sleep in a bed. The rattle of the brass flap, the aggressive slither of envelopes cascading on to the mat, has become — for months now — something of an ordeal. My hands tremble. I can’t decide whether to smash what’s left of the furniture, or to break into tears. Often, I’m done in for the day. Another one gone, shot. Dealers are ruthless in setting up meetings, for which they never show. Poets? Poets are the worst. Don’t ever get involved with poets. Stick with the pulp boys, the rippers and gougers. They’re pussy cats. Edit the belly-bursters, the revolving head merchants. All delightful conversationalists. Poets? The sound of the word and my knuckles are turning white. They are rabid correspondents, openly psychotic, proud of it, proud of their galloping paranoia. They issue threats by the hour, polemics, circulars of hate. You take your life in your hands if you reply to one of their mad spiels. Carry heavy life insurance before you offer veiled criticism of a stanza. Reject one? You’re dead. Accept one? Worse, they want to sit on your shoulder and watch you love every last syllable.

It’s cruel. My creditors are pressing cheques on me, but they return like homing pigeons. Tax assessments, all different, all massive, double by the week; invoking punitive penalties. Publishers sue me for work I have no recollection of taking on. I’ve promised ‘afterwords’ for books that have not yet been written. I won’t bore you with the domestic traumas: death, disease, cash-pleas. The usual lightweight stuff. I can taste madness, see it from the window. It would be a relief to let go, to gibber like all the other blanked cancellations; wander off down the middle of the road, looking for the right bone-crusher. So what’s new? Nothing. There’s just more of it. And my ability to climb out, to watch it happening, is going, going, gone. How long can I stave off the onset of stone craziness by the trick of writing about it?

By now you will certainly have smoked the second half of your mandrake root cigar, and you will have succumbed to another cup of coffee before turning, reluctantly, to my note. That’s good. (Do you feel that you’re playing a part in a spiked fiction? I used to. It was OK. When it’s scriptless, that’s much tougher.) The slippery hint you are poking around on your plate is not a subtle one; though, you might consider, not without its own bleak humour. Don’t worry: I can identify the source of the tongue (ugh!) The pathology, with which we have been confronted, has been squeezed like tomato paste in a Mafia video. But I’m afraid it’s more serious than that. The thinking behind this gesture is coolly pragmatic. In other words, they know exactly what they’re doing.

‘They?’ you ask. They . Here we go. The old conspiracy circuit. Bear with me. Please. The object itself, the glossa, was stapled to a portion of card torn from a bookdealer’s catalogue. There’s a man I know in Upper Tooting who trades under the flag of convenience of ‘Ferret Fantasy’, and who habitually fills in any space left at the end of his price list with a few lines of domestic intelligence or biblio-banter; before, cordially, signing off. His name is Locke. The torn corner of lemon-coloured catalogue which formed the base for the uninviting open sandwich I received in the post had the single word, Locke , ringed in felt-tipped pen.