He could have been forgiven for thinking that this was some nightmare he was inhabiting. The woman grunted a little and then she giggled as she grasped the neck of the bottle and, with a horrible sucking noise, pulled it right out of her anus. It was like watching a patient, etherised upon a table, performing some surgery upon herself. The apparent impossibility of what she was doing and the sense of astonishment which I felt seemed to underline the dream-like aspect of the whole situation. To my surprise I found myself holding out my hand in front of me, as if to perceive it. What happens in sleep could not surely appear so clear, nor so distinct as this. But of course, Descartes knew that sleep deceives by the ingenuity of its illusions, that there are no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish wakefulness from sleep. From death, even.
For a moment I was lost in astonishment. My astonishment could almost have persuaded me that I was indeed dreaming. The bottle disappeared inside the woman again. She squeezed it back a little and then vacuumed it back once more.
A dream then. Even better. It was easier for us both that way. I drew the gas-gun from my shoulder-holster and reflected that I could hardly miss. All the same, if I say ‘The gun is aiming at point p on the back of Descartes’s head’, I’m not saying anything about where the shot will hit. Giving the point at which it is aiming is a geometrical means of assigning its direction. That this is the means I use is certainly connected with certain observations (projectile parabolas, etc.) but these observations don’t enter into our present description of the direction.
‘Do it,’ said the voice.
I froze with surprise. Who had spoken? Descartes? Nietzsche? God?
‘Yeah, go on, do it,’ it said again.
The girl squealed, almost imperceptibly. I heard other cries of wild encouragement.
‘All right,’ I said and lifted the gun barrel until it was just a few centimetres from the back of his head.
The girl kneeling on the stage hauled the bottle out of her ass and stood up to take a bow. Small explosions of applause surrounded me as the audience showed its appreciation. Everyone except Descartes. But I don’t suppose anyone noticed. Holstering my gun again I made my way upstairs to the light.
Like him I dread awakening from this slumber. Just in case the laborious wakefulness which would follow the tranquillity of this repose should have to be spent not in daylight, but in the excessive darkness of the difficulties which have just been discussed.
It’s true, no one has interfered with my freedom. My life has drained it dry. A lot of fuss about nothing. This life had been given to me for nothing. And yet I would not change. I am as I was made. But I can still savour the failure of a life. After all, I have attained the age of reason.
But what kind of reason have I to assume that my gun will fire if my finger pulls the trigger? What kind of reason to believe that if I fired it at a brother’s head it would blow his brains out? When I ask this, a hundred reasons present themselves, each drowning the voice of the others. ‘But I have already done it myself innumerable times, and as often heard of others doing the same. Why only the other day there was an article in a magazine written by a former Mafia hitman who used to shoot his victims in the head while they were eating their soup.’ (Well, at least I have the decency not to interfere with a man’s lunch.)
Reason is first in Nature, created that Man may investigate and perceive, and it is to be distinguished from Sensibility and Understanding. Of course it has a very natural tendency to overreach itself, to overstep the limits of what may be experienced, and all inferences which would carry us across the slippery ground are fallacious and worthless.
And yet... the same mind that is capable of reason also produces monsters.
There is an engraving by gorgeous Goya in which various creatures of eternal night hover menacingly above the head of a sleeping man — perhaps Goya himself: certainly there are few artists who can rival his monstrous imaginings. These monsters in the engraving are, of course, symbolic. The real monster, as Hobbes tells us (and, for that matter, Freud), is Man himself — a savage, selfish, murderous brute. Society, says Hobbes, exists so that man may leave his brutish nature chained up at home, that he may aspire to something greater.
But if Man’s original state is to be asocial and destructively rapacious, then if he aspires to go beyond this state, does he grow nearer to God, or does he find himself growing further away?
For my own part I find the aspects of my character which are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short are far stronger than those civilising constraints which are imposed by society. I find that I understand, only too well, those who are at war against the world.
We all look to fathom the mind of a mass-murderer and to understand what makes him commit such heinous crimes.
Yet which of us can honestly say that in his Hobbesian heart of hearts, he does not already have the answer?
13
The man sat slumped in his seat, head on chest, arms dangling by his sides, a perfect caricature of a sleeping gorilla. The back of his neck looked painfully red, as if badly sunburned, but that was only encrusted blood.
Jake regarded the body carefully. It didn’t look so bad. A dead man always looks tidier than a dead woman. Usually the clothes are left on, and there are no mutilations. Nothing missing like a breast or a nipple. No presents left inside the private parts. There were worse ways to get it than six times in the back of the head. This one reminded her of some photographs she had once seen of Mafia hits in Palermo. The neatness of the gang executions had surprised her. There was very little disruption to whichever business (usually a restaurant) was being operated on the premises. Just a few shots in the head and then out, leaving the victim to a pop-eyed contemplation of his shirt-front or his navel or his minestrone.
It was the same with this killer. Jake knew he must be a neat, fastidious sort of man. But she wondered if he took any pleasure in the actual act of killing. Or if, like a mob gunman, it was just something that had to be done, like filling in your tax-return, or going to the dentist. Business. Nothing personal. Just business.
She sat down in the seat behind the body, with Detective Inspector Stanley, who had been on the scene for rather longer, placing himself in the seat beside her. He didn’t say anything. There wasn’t any explanation needed to picture what had happened. Finally she nodded and said: ‘Any witnesses?’
Stanley tugged his shirt collar down from his Adam’s apple and flexed his neck before answering.
‘Most of them buggered off the minute someone noticed that Mr Armfield, codenamed René Descartes, had been shot.’ He laughed scornfully. ‘Probably scared that their wives might find out that they’d even been in a dump like this.’
‘What about the people who run this fleapit?’
‘Well we’ve got the girl who was performing on stage at the time. And the owner, Mr Grubb. He was upstairs, on the cash desk. But they both say they don’t remember seeing anything.’
Jake pointed at the stage. ‘The girl would have been less than six metres from the killer when he fired. With those spotlights on she must have been able to see his face.’