Gently said nothing. He sipped the Sauternes. Deeming sipped his too.
‘He’s a hothead,’ Deeming continued. ‘We all know about that. He was on a jail kick for pitching. Like it’s easy to see how. But you know something,’ Deeming asked, ‘something that isn’t quite so obvious? We’ve cooled him down since he’s been with us, and like he isn’t pushed, he stays cool. And then there’s nothing wrong with that guy. He keeps it down, he’s a cool jeebie. So don’t go pressuring him unless you have to. We don’t like him ribbed into flipping his lid.’
He looked level with his slate eyes, reached for a sandwich and began to eat.
‘We don’t go for flipping lids at all,’ he said. It’s too square, man. It’s torrid.’
Gently nodded, kept sipping. ‘Where were you on Tuesday?’ he asked.
Deeming finished chewing his sandwich. ‘Up at Tony’s,’ he said. ‘Not busting off Lister.’
‘Have you a bike?’ Gently asked.
‘Sure,’ Deeming said, ‘the mostest going. I ride a Bonneville with all the action, sank a year’s loot in it. But man, it hasn’t a scratch on it, nor any notches on the butt. And Johnny wasn’t bust, you know. Let’s talk up things fundamental.’
‘Murder,’ Gently said, ‘is fundamental with me.’
‘You like salami and garlic?’ Deeming said. ‘Latch on to one of Tony’s sandwiches.’
Gently latched on to a sandwich. The Grieg went on thumping and tinkling.
‘Now the way you see this action,’ Deeming said, ‘is delinquent kids kicking it up. The war generation, you say, cocking the stale old snook at their elders. They’ve got a fresh curve, maybe, but it’s the old complaint they’re hung up with. They want to poke the old man’s snot. They want to act themselves big. That’s the way you see this action, and man, you’re not seeing it so good.’
‘I can see it being lawless,’ Gently said.
‘You’ll never change that,’ Deeming said. ‘That’s a perpetual factor in civilization where every law is an experiment.’
‘An experiment backed by consent,’ Gently said.
‘But still an experiment,’ Deeming said. ‘And backed by the consent of its generation, not by the generation that follows. With them the experiment continues, or as you say, they are lawless. And then the laws become modified by a new act of consent. Today they hang you for a shilling, tomorrow they lock up the hangman. Like you’re merely stating the obvious by calling any man lawless.’
‘Yet people suffer because of it,’ Gently said.
‘Sure,’ Deeming said. ‘I’m with you there.’
‘And it has to be checked,’ Gently said. ‘Or the next stage is anarchy.’
‘I’m still with you,’ Deeming said. ‘But that’s the process, for better or worse. Society acts, the individual reacts, there’s a percentage of suffering, and there’s modification.’
‘And there’s individual responsibility,’ said Gently.
‘There,’ said Deeming, ‘is the ground of contention.’
He refilled the glasses, took a long sip from his. From the player came a long trumpet-call melting into the note of a single instrument. Deeming paused, listening to it. He caught Gently’s eye, smiling.
‘Like I’ve made a point,’ he said. ‘Don’t knock this action for kicking the law. They kick it in Sunday school circles and all over Squaresville in general. But maybe it gets kicked less with us, I wouldn’t know, I don’t see the figures. But the cool thing, screw, is to keep it down. We aim not to get hung up with the squares.’
‘You’re still cocking a snook at them,’ Gently said.
‘Sure,’ Deeming said. ‘But let’s get on from there. Because cocking a snook is all the squares see of it, and it’s the way it’s cocked that really matters. Like there’s a change they haven’t noticed. Like it isn’t just growing pains any longer. Like it’s a historic reaction going on against a life direction that’s played itself out. You dig it, man, what I’m giving you?’
Gently nodded. ‘I think I do.’
‘Crazy,’ Deeming said. ‘I figured you were smarter than some of these screws. Like there’s a revolution going on, not just in Russia but everywhere. In Russia and China it’s a mass revolution, but in the West it’s individual. Like we’re dragged to death with this society and its nowhere aims and its chromium shop-front. We just don’t go for it, we’re opting out, we’re leaving it be to hang itself up. We want to live it real, man, to touch the real. We’re sick and tired of the illusion. Christ-ish jazz, we’re tired of that, and piling loot, and conning our neighbour. You can knock Russia for being a police state, but hell, it gives a Russian some real to live with.’
‘But you’re no Communist,’ Gently said.
‘Like I told you, we’re personal with ours,’ Deeming said. ‘The Communist deal makes the state a family, but like in the West we’re ashamed of our family. So we kick it, we’re individual. We go for it way out with the birds. That’s making the touch on a personal basis, keeping it down with having relations. You dig relations? It’s overvaluing someone, making yourself too vulnerable. When I feel I might be having a relation I pull up my stakes and get easting again.’
‘That way,’ Gently said, ‘you’ll finish up under a Bo tree.’
Deeming nodded. ‘You’re with me, screw. It might be a Bo tree at that. Like keep it down in every way and go for the final kick in the book. I sometimes think I’ll make that scene. I’m only part way out, yet.’
‘With a begging bowl?’ Gently asked.
‘Right,’ Deeming said. ‘A good Buddhist must beg.’
‘If all the world were good Buddhists,’ Gently said, ‘who would fill the bowls for them?’
Deeming chuckled. ‘Like you’ve put a finger on it,’ he said. ‘But all religions are contradictory, and the Buddhist jazz is the least so. I don’t know. I go some way with it. It’s got a logic that sends me. The Christers counter fear with faith, the Buddhists stare it in the eyeballs.’
‘It asks you to be ahuman,’ Gently said.
‘Don’t all religions?’ Deeming asked.
The Grieg thundered to a close. Deeming rose, turned over the record. The muted second movement began, a gentle, nostalgic meditation. Deeming sat down and ate a sandwich, sat listening, his yes beyond Gently. Gently also ate another sandwich. A motorbike blasted by on the highway.
‘I’m sorting it out,’ Deeming said, ‘I’m writing a novel, sorting it out. Like it was time it made the record, what I’ve been giving the jeebies here.’
‘I thought it had been done,’ said Gently. ‘By Kerouac.’
‘Kerouac,’ said Deeming, ‘like he’s John the Baptist. But I’m way out further than Kerouac was. I picked it up where Kerouac dropped it.’ He ate and drank some more.
‘I’ll try to give it to you,’ he said. ‘You’re the only screw I could ever talk to, so I’ll lay it on the line for you. Now the big jazz is touching the real — you dig me, man, touching the real?’
Gently nodded slowly. ‘Breaking through the illusion to the essence,’ he said.
‘Right,’ Deeming said, ‘that’s how a square would define touching. You make some action and grab a kick and like it’s wild enough, you’re touching. Now keep with me. Did you ever have a shock off a D.C. system?’
‘Once,’ Gently admitted. ‘It used to be D.C. in my rooms.’
‘It was like this, wasn’t it,’ said Deeming. ‘First it was like your fingers exploded. Then it was like them being burned. Then they exploded again when you broke contact.’
‘That’s roughly it,’ Gently said.
‘Take another instance,’ Deeming said. ‘You’ve turned a corner in a garden. You see a flower, a crazy flower; it sends you, looking at this flower. Now when you first see it you get that explosion, it hits you smack down to your bowels. Then it burns you, you aren’t with it, you just keep looking and thinking at it. Then, when you find you’ve lost touch, you turn away, and it hits you again. Only the first bang is the big one, like it is with the D.C. shock. Are you along?’
Gently nodded.
‘Take another instance,’ Deeming said. ‘You’re coming through a big belt of mountains. All day you’ve had these peaks around you, you’re getting dragged by so many peaks. Then you come over a pass and see a great plain beneath you, and the peaks are standing over the plain, and the plain is wide under the peaks. And that hits you, the plain and the peaks, coming together like that, though you’re dragged with the peaks and the plain is just nothing. But where they meet like that it pulls you up and sends you. You get the on-off-on like I’ve just been giving you.’