Iain Sinclair - Downriver

IV

‘The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part’

T. S. Eliot, East Coker

Nothing interrupted the complacent ruralist calm of Leyton. The journey through the tunnel and out into the wide-sky spaces of Stratford had been uneventful: no rapes, no violations, nothing to write home about at all. A warty red sun pitched over the rumpled post-bellum savannah, dissolving the bluegrey mist, and flashing across stagnant pools, car dumps, and portakabins.

The only action to be found on this platform was a low-intensity assault on a Reebok-sporting street-cred black by a mean cartel of uniforms. They were encrusted with enough badges to subdue a college of semiologists.

‘Surfers,’ Millom glossed, ‘we’re pretty hot on them in Leyton. These new trains can get up to fifty or sixty miles per on the clear stretch after Stratford: the drivers call it a “running road”, gave it the bullet, then hit the brakes — late. Always shake a few woolly-heads out of the trees: we hand out a bit of a pasting, confiscate their footwear — they hate that — and turn ’em loose to limp back to their six-in-the-bed drug dens. They never learn, born ignorant, it’s in the blood. Myself, I’d wire the train roof, turn up the juice, make ’em hop a bit. It’s what they’re good at. Am I wrong?’

The ‘surfing’ craze was a Brazilian import, that was taking a lot faster than Mirandinha in Newcastle. A real smack substitute: you mounted in Ongar or Woodford, caught the wave for the long skate to Snaresbrook; felt the ripple in your spine, heard the wind talk — all the way to Leytonstone. You are out there , balancing on the lid of the snake, the power under your feet; swaying, jolting, snorting the colour, staying with it.

There were never more than three or four deaths a week: a few losers bottled out and grabbed for the overhead wires. They fried to a crisp; or suffered the harsher option — a disability ticket on the minibus.

It didn’t take a detective to notice that Millom disapproved of most human activities, especially those involving more than one party, and the requirement of conversing in anything above a whisper. He had the soapy skin, the trembling handshake, and the averted eyes of an inveterate self-starting wrangler of picture books. Yet something told me that this was not the case. There was nothing wrong with Millom’s sight; he examined me like a magistrate. No; he was way beyond the reach of any form of orgasm. His sex life, if we must consider it, resembled that of an unmutated cephalopod.

He scrutinized me, rapidly, missing no peculiarity of the scuffed boots, the rancid cords, the failed-its-first-autopsy jacket. He visibly flinched; decided he could expect nothing better from a writer; snorted, and limped off, flourishing what I took to be his swordstick.

The station stood on a mound that afforded a superb view of an enormous burial ground, a vision: thickets of white crosses, gardens of bone-trees, winged angels anchored to granite plinths. A mute army of the Catholic dead waited to be summoned; a snow harvest blazed to the borders of Wanstead.

‘My digs,’ Millom acknowledged, pointing to a window smothered in wedding-dress net, above an Indian pharmacy on the corner of Calderon Road. But that was not where we were going. I trailed in his wake, taking breath by admiring the clusters of lilac, lime, and virgin pink that riotously fruited around the doorways: the nuts, pines, and grapes. ‘Personalized’ flourishes burst from the closet in a scream of genetically-risky varnishes. The dim terrace sung out loud against the morbid oppressiveness of its fixed location.

‘Ever read him yourself?’ Millom’s tight-lipped sneer came back at me, like smoke from a crematorium. ‘Calderon? The Surgeon of Honour ? Tell you why later, and you’ll understand. Honour, my friend, is something I set my stall by. Am I wrong? It may have gone out of fashion, but this Calderon person knew all about it. When I saw his play — down Walthamstow, at the College — I got that very special feeling, you follow me? I knew what was coming: I could have written the thing myself, take away the language.’

I could not believe what I was hearing. It was like eavesdropping on Charles Manson, and catching a dissertation on the troubadour poets. (Indeed, it was even more spooky. Sooner or later someone in San Quentin is bound to turn Manson on to Ezra Pound. The rest follows.)

‘A Spanish Duke of some kind, a nob, discovers that the King’s brother has taken a shine to his wife, right?’ Millom hadn’t finished yet. His statements were cast as questions: the stunned silence of his audience was interpreted as a tacit collaboration. ‘Honour must be preserved, right? Say what you like about the wops, they know about honour. There’s your Mafia, your Falangists, your Inquisition: omerta , silence. Am I wrong?’

Millom pinned me against a privet hedge, pumping with his finger, as if he was chopping cabbages. I was forced to nod, disguising a yawn as a gasp of admiration.

‘Anyway, see, this Duke, Don Gutierre, follow me? You’re a writer, a literary man — what am I telling you? Falklands War? Yes? I don’t have to spell it out. You’re getting the picture. The Duke speaks to the woman, his wife — but in the voice of the bloke who wants to give her one , the King’s own brother. He’s got her. Am I wrong? Traps the cow. Not her fault? And some! If she’s been had, even in mind , if an illegitimate party has imagined himself doing it — you with me? — she’s soiled, damaged, ruined. She’s no good to him any more. His honour is tainted. Right? Know what he does?’

Calderon Road had given way, with a good grace, to North Birbeck; from which source, doubtless, further anecdotes, allusions, and portents would flow. It looked like being a long hard afternoon. North Birbeck had its pretensions: it fronted the burial grounds. There were windows tricked out with bull’s-eye glass: hideaways for the better class of vet, and a few under-qualified abortionists. We jumped from the safety of the pavement to dodge through a flotilla of black stretch limos, in which mourners struggled fitfully to freeze solemn expressions while enjoying their rare outing in fan-blown luxury. We shadowed them through the portentous gates of St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cemetery.

My path was blocked by Millom’s upraised cane. ‘He doesn’t kill the King’s brother, does he? No need for that. He employs a blindfolded surgeon to bleed the woman to death . Very astute. The King gives him a commendation and furnishes him with a bran’-new wife, a virgin .’

We plunged, unguided, into a spinney of plaster arms — raised in surrender like an abandoned winter army: bladed wings, crucified midgets. We were soon lost among negative forests of exiled Poles ( Bors, Tomczak, Balawender, Pitera, Pelc, Sieczko ); colonies of replanted Italians with sad sepia photographs, albums of grief; cellars of Irish, dismissed Republican taskforces.

‘A blindfolded surgeon bleeds her to death, wonderful!’ Millom was furiously revolving the tip of his swordstick among the crust of leaves. I expected a wisp of smoke to rise from the frozen ground. ‘Drop by drop, razor cut by razor cut; he describes her — leeches her from life. Takes the heat out of her. Irritates her skin with expectations of pleasure. Am I wrong? An adultery of slow wounds, a salty painless sleep. Imagine the succeeding chain of ecstasies that rolled through her dreams. That’s what the Whitechapel butcher was after. He wanted to bleed their fallen natures, let time drain the corruptions. But he was always interrupted; they harried him. He became frantic, botched the job. You understand? These things can only unfold in an ordered society. You can’t force the pace of a culture. It took thousands of years for Rome to evolve. Yes?’