The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (26 page)

A feeling of no movement wakes me, no vibration, no hum of silence even. Framed in the circular window, houses and hedges pass. We fly almost at ground level, along a road. The silence bounces with the sounds of people in the houses loving, quarrelling, calling their children in from the gardens where they throw their high-pitched voices like bright coins along the sunlight.

–Something, wake up. Look.

–I know.

–Our plane has changed into a private vehicle, sort of cigar-shaped.

–Yes. A cocoon.

–Nonsense. We move on wheels, I feel them. And look we have embryonic wings on either side. We must have fallen asleep.

–You drank more than I did.

–I see.

–Do you, Someone? What for instance?

–The sounds of people quarrelling, loving, calling their children in from where they throw their voices like shining coins along the sunlight.

–You read what you want into it, Someone.

–I can see the sounds but can’t hear what they say.

–I didn’t think you could. You don’t take much interest in things as such, do you, Someone, despite your five geometries? Only in the appearances you try to save.

–Oh, come, Something, I have a high regard for you. Surely I’ve made that plain by now.

–Have you?

–Well … Didn’t you like my meridians?

–You’ve made it plain to your own satisfaction.

–I don’t know any other way, Something.

–You will. Fasten your safety-belt.

–I can’t. It hurts my camera-eye.

–Put it away, Someone. You won’t see anything through that.

The vehicle lifts over a bank of yellow dustcloud, bumps down their steps immeasurably and with no undercarriage crashes to a stop. We emerge from our disintegrating cocoon, a man, a woman in the vast plain of a circular

crater. The ploughed fields in the hard baked earth offer no trees, except in the distance perhaps, near the slopes. The houses on the far edge of the crater curve a little like asses’ jaws as we start with crumbling steps towards them having to walk all that way in the hot sun without a drink.

–You chose the transit drink, Someone. The infra-red.

–But you said–

–No I didn’t –

–You did. You said we’d travel supersonic, on the top edge of ultra-violet.

–Until you shifted us into the red end of the spectrum. The light of the further regions that recede at the speed of light itself can never reach us now. You with your five geometries should know that.

–Oh, have it your own way.

–No, Someone. I played it your way.

–You do the knowing around here, as you never cease to remind me. You know everything, don’t you, girl-spy?

–Not everything. But I came prepared.

–Prepared for what, for God’s sake?

–Not necessarily.

–Oh, really –

–Not Really. Someone, please, please don’t let’s go on like this.

–No, don’t let’s.

–It makes me feel, so desolate.

–Me too. Have I – have I lost a point now, Something?

–Only a little one, a matter of timing. I think, perhaps, Really won’t come back first after all.

–Why not? The book said –

–Yes, before we, before the law got broken.

–Another law! How do you expect me to follow all these laws I’ve never heard about?

–But you know about the red shift, Someone. That, together with the degradation of intensity, as speed
increases,
means that less and less of the light actually emitted reaches us.

–Oh, don’t start proving your point again.

–I haven’t any points to prove, Someone, you have. I only follow my instructions.

–Whose instructions? Secret instructions, I suppose.

–If you like. I can’t tell you more because you wouldn’t hear. You chose opaqueness, Someone. You still have too much atmospheric density. I don’t mean that as an insult but as a statement of fact.

–Thank you for pointing it out.

–But you see, the density makes me bend the laws a little. Even a lot. And then it takes a long time to unbend them.

–Like light waves? Or do you mean, like meridians?

–Well, both. Like meridians, within.

–Let me enfold you.

–No, we must keep walking. But you can take my hand.

–Smile, Something.

–You smile first, but she says it smiling.

Sometimes she seems to pull me along, sometimes I pull her. The ploughed fields of the plain inside the crater offer no trees, except in the distance perhaps, and each furrow makes a high obstacle to step over. The earth looks hard and baked but crumbles as we step into whatever seed they have sown there on stony ground. Whenever I raise my eyes towards the distant trees to identify them I hit my toe against a boulder and curse, and Something merely keeps her pact of smirking silence which says don’t mention it.

–Who ploughed this for God’s sake, the Big Dipper? Why do we go this way? Do you follow your sense of direction or your secret laws of momentum, mass times velocity?

–We landed in the middle. It doesn’t make any difference. You with your five geometries should know that.

–We landed on the left focus of an ellipse. We had the city with the children’s voices behind us. Why did we go forward? Why didn’t someone meet us, with a bus or train or something? My words rebound only against myself in the heat haze but their internal combustion pushes me along. Come to that why didn’t we stay in the cigar-shaped vehicle? Why did we land, it had embryonic wings, and it had wheels, I felt them, we didn’t have to come down those steps of dust-cloud, and so on, into the wounded trees. The surgeons cut carefully at the bark, removing it in
quarter-cylindrical
segments and painting the membranes of the twisted branches in bright orange. The orderlies pile up the curved rectangular segments on tall lorries that chug off slowly up the winding road along the slope of the crater. My God, Something, what do they do that for, help, it hurts, for insulation, Someone, to line the eardrums of the crater so as not to hear, help, help, it hurts, the pressure, it pushes out the eardrums on each side, it hurts, it hurts. I’ve gone deaf, help, help, I can’t hear my own cries, help, ow, good boy, you didn’t cry.

The baby sits on the mantelpiece, lolling its big moon head and about to topple forward from the weight of it, about to fall on me, on my wound, on my pain, and I have lost my arms or my meridians, no, here, as my meridians catch the baby in a cat’s cradle and it bounces up into its mother’s arms.

She nods her thanks in an absent-minded manner and goes about her business as an ex-girl spy or something. She doesn’t seem to know me or I her in my convalescence.

–Do you know me in my convalescence, or I you?

–Oh, yes, I know you.

–I think, you do the knowing around here, don’t you?

–The proprietress will come and see you soon.

–Ow.

–The proprietress of this house of course. The
house-surgeon
.

–Ow.

–She wormed the story out of me.

–Ai.

–Our story, of course, silly.

–Hng-ng-ng.

–I couldn’t help it, Someone. She talked and talked, and suddenly I found she knew.

–Ow.

–Stop prodding me with questions. It makes me feel … so desolate. I have no future as a girl-spy.

–Ow.

–You didn’t help by losing consciousness. A little consciousness can do a lot for a girl in a tight spot.

–It hurts.

–And even while she talked she called up the journalists. I don’t know how she did it. She talked as camouflage.

–It hurts.

–Of course it hurts. You chose the way of unconsciousness which bends words to breaking point. I told you it would take a long time to unbend them and bring them back to life. You’ll have to do exercises. Let me show you before she comes, that’ll put her nose out of joint.

She swaddles the baby, hanging it from her right shoulder and across to her left hip so that its lips can suckle her left breast. This frees her hands for us to play cat’s cradle with my meridians, very slowly, soothingly, and the game tires but exercises the muscles of my interest.

–Which one came back first, Something?

–Dippermouth. He sucks hard, he hurts my nipple.

–He has character.

–Oh no, character shouldn’t hurt. Lack of character hurts. He takes after you, Someone.

–What! How? You told me – ow! It hurts.

–Lie still. It always hurts to give rebirth. You’ll have to rest a little.

–Good people! Good children! Ah, you’ll go very far, my turtle-doves. Now, we must get you up for the
journalists.
You didn’t cry, you know. I told them that. I’ll have to examine you first. Stop that game at once. Now, where did I put the book?

–Madam, you shall not sit on me. I won’t allow it.

–No, I won’t allow it either.

–Good people! Splendid. Now that you’ve made your gesture, I hope it didn’t hurt. Where did I put that book? Ah, here, goodness, how it has grown. Almost as big as me, laugh, I thought I’d die, breathe in, don’t mind my buttocks, will you now, off with the bandages, unwhirl, unwhirl the bandages, lift up your knees, dear, for me to prop the book on, thank you, hold it, your breath I mean, I hope I don’t weigh too heavily by now, I go from strength to strength you know, as you get weaker, laugh, I thought you’d died. Off with the last bandage, off with the lint, crack, why, what a lovely wound, just like a big eye gashed, painted bright orange. You can have a look between my legs, I’ll raise my buttocks a little as a special favour, there, you see, whoops, oh dear, I couldn’t keep them up, I hope it didn’t hurt too much, hold it, your breath I mean, now let’s see, what does the book say, yes, they removed the bark in segments from the trunk, very useful, very useful indeed for the insulation of the big ear-drum, only a mite of course but every mite has its main, laugh, I thought we’d die, the lot of us, but the time has not yet come, nor the space for that matter. Time heals but spacetime heals faster. Soon the scar will look just like an individual flan-pudding in the middle of your belly, or like a protruding camera-lens if you prefer it that way, you will go far, my boy, see much, now then, a little more orange paint, I know, you chose infra-red but anyway you’ve had that. On with the lint, whirl round the bandages, the latitudes, the orbits, the ellipses and up you get, well, up I get first I admit, there, that feels lighter doesn’t it, breathe away. Ah, here comes the journalists, they will rejoice to see you in a wheelchair already.

I can hardly manipulate the epicycles she has fixed to my hips, but Something pushes me from behind.

–You’ll have to hold the baby, if you don’t mind, the swaddling gets in the way. Here. Take.

–Something! Dippermouth weighs a ton. I can’t possibly have fathered him.

–You both weigh a ton. Oof!

–What, in my condition? Unless I absorbed some of her weight while she sat on me.

–He has your very high density and low luminosity.

–Do you mean like a White Dwarf? Impossible, I’d consist of degenerate matter.

–Well –

–Besides, he’s only just got himself born. And I belong to the main sequence.

–How did it feel exactly repeat feel exactly query what did the joke fat woman unjoke say did you die laughing pardon me you see she said you didn’t cry unpardon if I may get in a query edgeways query how come your plane stroke vehicle changed into a vehicle stroke autostop unquery so you hitchhiked repeat hitchhiked on the skyroad stop delete last seven words for autostop read auto space stop query what shall we call you unquery no reply stop mister you must have a name unmister he says someone scramble check query has he lost his mind uncheck unscramble suggest Lazarus in said circumstances unsaid no objection quote no comment I feel sick don’t puff your cigar-shape at me comment has humour expand human touch your end my reply to soothe we only do our duty feed the people good people we like people end reply query please repeat please how did it feel exactly repeat feel exactly Mister Lazarus query did you want to come back unquery we must know what you felt thought saw said heard stop.

The headlines girdle the world in black and in bright lights with telepictures of my winding-sheets unwinding from my face, my swaddling-clothes unswaddling from my birthmark. The man who died laughing cries out at the world. The man who came back won’t come out. The man who didn’t cry
mocks the world. Read the human story in the Daily Sphere. See the superhuman drama on your screens tonight. Tonight Lazarus dies for you again, exclusive
interview
by Tell-Star, Tonight, Yesterday, Tomorrow in World Without End.

I sit in my wheel-chair and watch myself sitting in my wheel-chair. My wife waits on me hand and foot, wearing her lover’s kisses on her lips and passing them to me in her emotion at my death and amazing recovery. She brings me grapes and oranges. The grapes I suck the pulp of, leaving the deflated skin. The oranges she peels for me in segments and it hurts to watch Tell-Star, smooth as a blade, peel me apart into an empty hole. No, I remember nothing.

–You died you know, the staff-nurse says the sister says the doctor says the surgeon says, speaking in strip-cartoon, each in a square room with accusing remarks attached to their smiles like gall-bladders, to be continued in our next. Darling, you can tell me, your wife, your own. I want to understand. Didn’t you have any dreams at least?

–No. I never dream.

On the monitor the world cocks its giant radio telescope and I watch myself watching the psychotic handwriting of distant nebulae on the round screen. It comes from way beyond the visual range, in which the layers of atmosphere distort the light-waves and upset the definition. But I draw the line as a rule between one solar system and another.

–Quite. Yes, indeed. So you do actually, remember moving through a kind of space, doctor?

–No. I remember nothing.

–So you would say, in fact, that we can expect only total darkness?

–Darkness? Well … no. Darkness implies light.

–Annihilation then?

–Nihil obstat nihilum.

–Quite so. For the benefit of our viewers, perhaps you could translate?