The Brothel Creeper: Stories of Sexual and Spiritual Tension (25 page)

“No, but I defend your right to do so.”

Scurrying out of the college, Neil turned down Pompoir Grove, where undulating chicanes gripped unwary traffic, and then up Florentine Place toward an alley that would take him relatively near the planetarium and canal. Once over a bridge and under the Feuille de Rose tunnel, he would be home. No need to stray far from his quarters ever again. Earth needed his expertise for the docking phase. His presence would be required in a job centre at some point, there might be an interview for his claim as a shirker, but these formalities would rob him of less time than continued studenthood. He refused to look back as he left the institute forever, a cargo of emotions in his chest. A jetsam composed both of bitter regrets and sour exhilaration bobbed against his heart. He must try to think not of himself but his obligations.

His feet shuffled through charred papers. They were twirling from a tenebrous sky, pages from old books. He stooped to examine one; somebody was creeping up behind him. Suddenly he felt an excruciating pain in his buttocks. He turned to catch the diminishing form of the redheaded girl who had disrupted his game in The Indigo Casbah. She had lashed him with a bunch of roses, more thorns than petals. Though he had prayed long for such an assault, he was disturbed by the incident. His legs, against his will, broke into a sprint; his fringe swayed like a rudder. Sighing with relief, he entered Postillionage Avenue and slackened his pace. All four parties were in full swing. Even as he approached, glass shattered and a body dropped from a window. Immediately, music from that domicile ceased and grateful revellers emerged.

“Bleeding entropists!” Neil shook a diminishing fist as they jolted past. Opening his door, he gingerly crept up the steps; Thumbelina might still be sleeping. But he found her in the kitchen, ladling brochan with a spoon pulled from one of his model catapults. She handed him a chipped bowl and he paddled his tongue.

“It’s ready! How did you manage that?”

She indicated the slow cooker. “I switched it off. It’s so sluggish that it actually chills food. When I pulled the plug the brochan rose to room temperature and that finished it off. I made it for myself, but you can share some. I need a contrast to my beauty. Stand over there: on the threshold. You are malodorous.”

“Quite sure you’re not my appointed chef?”

Thumbelina scowled. “I have a higher role than that. Do I look like a menial worker? I’m esteemed.”

Neil clapped his hands. Lukewarm soup crusted his knuckles. “I knew it! Michael suggested you were my navigator. He’s a friend of mine, I do have a couple. Well, not friends exactly but they talk to me. They don’t think my game playing is serious. I told him about my theory and he said it was better than Pythagoras.”

“I remember him. He was opposed to beans.”

Attempting a wink, eyelid closing like a suitcase, tears of delight locking it fast, Neil struggled to remain calm. “Have you completed your calculations? Was it difficult steering us round asteroid belts and Oort clouds? May I see your charts? I bet they don’t look much like maps. You probably didn’t even know what your job was until recently. Anything you do might be what sets our course: maybe proofreading is really adjusting our progress through eternity.”

Thumbelina toyed with her dinner. “Your life resembles a tune which can be forgotten twice. This is reality, Neil. Scuttle your speculation, it’s getting us nowhere fast.”

He tapped his glasses with a finger. “Nice joke. I always enjoy the banter of a competent officer.”

“Well, just suppose that everything you say is true? Where is Earth headed? Don’t give me that ambassador nonsense. You’re no diplomat; only a mineral could ever find you charming. And we’re not a private yacht. I recommend you take a closer look at our planet. Consider its topography, geology and recreational facilities. This is no luxury-liner. It lumbers in the void like a tub of skiffle, graceful lines sacrificed to maximise volume. It’s a working vessel.”

Neil was aghast. “What are you saying? This is a commercial venture and not an idealistic mission?”

“If Earth is an artificial craft, it must be a cargo-ship. A tanker of some kind. Why else adopt the spherical shape? Think about our goods. What lies in the hold? Billions of gallons of the stuff, worth a fortune on the interspiritual markets.”

He looked at his worn shoes, at the grimy floor, and then his fancy drilled into the floorboards, passed through the downstairs party, under the house, into the foundations, among pottery shards, deeper and deeper beyond human fossils, into strata of insensate evolution, finally poking a lobe through the crust and entering the mantle. “Hot!” he breathed. He decided it was hotter than: a goblin blacksmith’s furnace; the lightning that jumps from the wand of a patronising wizard; the oasis between the tattooed thighs of a barbarian princess from a remote northern province. (Barbarians come always from up north. The other cardinal points must be literate; rarely do they steal jewels from inaccessible towers or combat snake-gods in circular sarcophagi.) With a shudder, Neil’s fancy stopped in a swirling, bubbling turmoil.

“Molten rock. Lava, I mean magma…”

Thumbelina smiled indulgently. “Very good. So we are shipping magma to an unknown destination. Where’s the one place that might require such a substance, Neil? Who could want an unimaginable supply of molten rock? Take your time with the answer.”

“I really can’t decide, Thumbelina.”

“Having a few problems extrapolating your fantasy? That’s generally the way with dreamers. It’s no use retreating into alternative worlds if you won’t work out all the details. Even castles have kitchen sinks. How can I respect someone unable to plot his own escapism? Come on, that’s a poser with an obvious solution.”

Neil burst into tears, a welter which liberated his eyelid from its oubliette. “Mapping isn’t my job. You’re the navigator, I’m here to keep it all together, oversee the business.” He experienced a sudden surge of confidence. “And go down with my vessel if need be. I don’t know or care where we’re going. I have no idea what the magma is for, but I intend to make sure it gets delivered safely. It’s a stressful time for you, but I insist you master your emotions for the sake of a successful docking. It would be awful to run aground in the mouth of the harbour. I must try to work out who my radio-officer is, in case you desert us and we need help from the coastguard.” The distorting lens of his grief trickled away and he saw her anger. “I’m sorry…”

She was at his side in a single step, snatching the bowl out of his sweaty fingers and gesturing at the corridor. “Go to your room at once!” Meekly, he obeyed, head lowered.

Inside the broom cupboard he seethed; it was too early for bed. Her enquiry strummed his fretted curiosity like an uncut thumbnail. “Why are we transporting fire across the cosmos?” He felt he might know if he had some peace to order his notions. The parties would have to cease. At the rear of the room slept a stepladder; he yawned it under a trapdoor which led to the attic. His landlord had sealed it when dividing the residence into units. There were bolts and a screwdriver. He balanced on the rungs and twisted, his wrist strengthened by months of manipulating giants and centaurs. One bolt fell free; then another. Harmonies pulsed through the grease on his head, plaster dust fighting dandruff in his hair. One less Entropy Party running meant the balance of forces had shifted toward the pulverising end of the music spectrum.

While he was working on the third screw, the whole trapdoor fell in and knocked him aside. He gripped the ladder as a reveller dropped past, groaning as he connected with the floor. Faces peered over the edge; the noise was cut and polite applause revolved round the sanctum like a damp joint. Neil hauled himself into the attic as the last entropist departed onto a fire escape, locking the door behind him. Now the room was empty, glasses, ashtrays and antibiotics littering the stamped carpet. Neil was trapped, unable to return the way he had come, with that body leering up at him. The melodies had pounded an exit in the slates; he eased himself onto the gables, where he could smell the city, wrinkling below like the frown of a dog that sniffs him in turn.

Far away, in the direction of Cassolette Street, books were burping from a chimney, as if a household of cerebulimiacs had gorged themselves on learning before a mirror discouraged digestion. Neil read singed hope in the scene: what good were printed words now the Earth was nearing its terminus? Those clever fellows had doubtless realised the truth, just as he had. Perhaps they were members of his crew: stokers and engineers. He picked his way across the tiles, greasy with smoke, toward the stacks of his Eastern neighbours. The Western had shut themselves down; the others would require brute encouragement. Climbing onto the pot, he dangled his legs, soot tickling his knees. “Warmer than an…” he began as he gushed along the flue and into the grate. “…Alchemist’s hatred of fishermen,” he finished, amid the saurian anthracite.

This was a slightly more relaxed debauch. Young things read Mishima on chocolate-stained sofas and listened to Meredith Monk. Jumping out of the hearth, Neil stumbled between bulwarks of cushions. Something hissed through his pocket; an ember. His tight trousers ripped as he kneeled to watch the coal roll under a
chaise longue
. It was stuck fast. He went to fetch a jug of water from the toilet, but someone had filled the cistern with brandy. When he drifted back, helplessly, the couch was blazing and its occupant had become an unnourishing silhouette, like a kebab bought through a curtain. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. Already the celebrants were packing away their fashions. Somebody smothered the loser with a poncho, a cosy no less gaudy than the flames.

He gathered a dozen pillows and followed the carousers out the back into a weedy yard. There was a single party left to sabotage. He tripped down the stone steps to the door of the basement flat and sealed all the ventilation shafts with the cushions. Before long the music ceased and a bolt was drawn back; the cyanotic survivors were exhaled in a shuddering pant. The wineglasses inside were completely drained of air. A solitary figure did not move; the suffocatee. Neil’s legs folded, not with guilt, but because this sudden tranquillity gave him the answer to Thumbelina’s question. He finally knew where Earth was going and why they were taking lava to it. He rushed up his own stairs and cried out: “We have to alter course!” He barged into her quarters.

She was no longer there. His navigator had abandoned her post. With a set jaw, he fumbled among her possessions: a silk stocking, a portable loom, a pulley for lowering oneself into high-heeled shoes. Lying beside the gramophone was a leather notebook. Neil had always craved to study a girl’s diary. He opened it, disappointed to find a professional log. The final entry was a brief scrawl: HAVE COMPLETED CHECKS AND AM GOING FOR A DRINK. He hurled the book against a wall. How dare an officer adopt such a cavalier attitude to work? He would seek her out, reprimand her before insisting she put the world into reverse. But where would she be sipping her drink? He had no doubts it was The Indigo Casbah; he secured his bag of pewter figures and raced out, one hand thrust deep into the sack, the first time he had played on the hoof.

He entered the tavern and searched for the lounge where the college magazine was edited. It took him even longer than he anticipated. It was impossible for him to conquer the maze without relying on his mnemonics, but the lead battles which represented each twist and turn, and which he enacted before every venture into the depths, had been transformed by an omission: the griffin he compressed into an advert. Without this monster his judgement was invariably erroneous. Only by chance did he stumble on the room and table where the publication was prepared. He approached the editor and politely enquired as to the location of her proofreader. With a sneer behind schedule, she denied the existence of this occupation and rejected his groin with a fist. “You’re the one who distracted me with a growl!” He clutched his pain away.

He teetered into a bar and ordered a numbing pint. As his eyes came back into focus, he recognised Thumbelina sitting in a corner with other females. He took his drink over and croaked his message: “We must try to turn the planet round. It’s Hell we’re off to! We’re delivering magma to the other place!” She regarded him with mild disapproval. Her colleagues were dressed in similar clothes; it was obvious now she had been wearing a uniform all the time. “You’ve been dallying with me, Thumbelina, but I need you to be serious. You’re our navigator. As captain of the world, I order you to plot a course away from Hell. Aren’t you listening to me? A dishonourable discharge awaits if you disobey. Do you want to trade with the devil? Let him buy his brimstone elsewhere. I won’t conduct business with despotic regimes. Answer me!”

She waved a languid hand. “Very commendable, Neil, but you’re in no position to command anyone. You’re a cabin boy. A rather naughty example to be truthful.” She swirled her cocktail. “I can’t envisage a promotion for you now, I’m afraid. Quite the opposite. You’ve been slovenly beyond belief: you were supposed to oil the continents, but the tectonic plates make a dreadful sound when they move. And you forgot to polish the Alps. The real captain will be annoyed.”