‘Yes,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I saw the photos.’
‘The caption under the picture of Solvent in his bath is: “Alone at the end of the day, Harry Solvent relaxes in his bath correcting the proofs of his new novel, Transvestite Express”’
‘Yes,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What about it?’
‘He isn’t really alone, you see,’ said Redbeard. ‘Why can’t they say: “While the eighteen members of his household staff are variously occupied elsewhere in the mansion, Harry Solvent, in the presence of his agent Titus Remora, his solicitor Earnest Vasion, his research assistant Butchie Stark, his secretary and p.a. Polly Filla, his flower arranger Satsuma Sodoma, his masseur and trainer Jean Jacques Longjacques, his boyfriend Ahmed, Times photographer Y. Dangle Peep and his assistant N. Ameless Drudge, and Times writer Wordsworth Little, sits in his bath with proofs of his new novel Transvestite Express”? There’s a difference, and the difference matters.’
‘I’ve often thought the same,’ said Kleinzeit.
‘It’s bad enough in books,’ said Redbeard. ‘When Kill is alone in the submarine trapped on the bottom by Dr Pong’s radio-controlled giant squid …’
’He isn’t really alone because the giant squid is there,’ said Kleinzeit.
‘He isn’t really alone because Harry Solvent is there to tell about it,’ said Redbeard. ‘What I say is at least let Harry Solvent not be reported as being alone when he isn’t. That isn’t much to ask. It really is not much to ask at all.’
‘An entirely reasonable request,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Seemly in its moderation.’
‘What’re you sucking up to me for?’ said Redbeard. ‘I can’t do a bloody thing for you. Ordinary foolscap, eh?’
‘What about ordinary foolscap?’
‘I wasn’t born here, you know,’ said Redbeard. ‘Read a lot of stories from here as a child. Often a young man in the stories lived in a bare room, rough white walls, one peg for his coat, plain deal table, ream of ordinary foolscap. I didn’t know then that foolscap was a size, thought it was some kind of coarse rough paper that dunce caps were made of. Asked for it in shops, they didn’t know.’ He was talking louder and louder. People turned their heads, stared. ‘Got it into my head that rough A4 yellow paper might be foolscap, used to buy it with my pocket money. Even after I found out I stayed with the A4 yellow paper because I’d got used to it. Now I’m a yellow-paper freak. There bloody isn’t any bare room. Empty rooms yes. Bare ones no. You ever seen a bare room? Curtain rods and clothes hangers jingling in the cupboard. Plastic things with that special kind of dirt that plastic things get on them. No end of gear. Carpet sweepers with no handles, plastic toilet-brush holders. Ever find a plastic toilet-brush holder in a plain deal table story? Try to make a room bare and in five minutes three-year-old cans of dried-up paint leap into the larder. From where? You’d thrown everything out. Old shoes you’ve worn one time fill up the cupboard, jackets you’re too fat for. Your arm grows weak sliding things along the bar that you’ll never wear again, and they won’t go away. Move out and they flop along after you tied up with string. Not alone like the young man at the plain deal table with the ordinary foolscap. Bloody awful really alone with yellow paper, tons of rubbish. And you think you’ve got answers coming to you. What a baby. You and your Ibsen and your Chekhov. Maybe the revolver in the drawer’s for another play, you ever think of that? You think your three acts are the only three bloody acts there are? Maybe you’re the revolver in somebody else’s play, eh? Never thought of that, did you. It’s all got to mean something to you. Do I ask you to explain anything to me? No. Because I’m a bleeding man and I’ll take my bleeding lumps and get on with whatever it is I’m getting on with. Got enough answers for your fruity buns?’ He began to cry.
‘Good God,’ said Kleinzeit. He gathered up the bedroll and the carrier-bags, hustled Redbeard out into the street.
‘You still haven’t said why you drop the yellow paper and pick it up and write on it and drop it again,’ said Kleinzeit.
Redbeard grabbed the bedroll, swung it, knocked Kleinzeit down. Kleinzeit got up and hit Redbeard.
‘Right,’ said Redbeard. ‘Ta-ra.’ He disappeared into the Underground.
By Hand
Kleinzeit got back to the ward in time for three 2-Nup tablets and his supper. He smelled his supper, looked at it, Something pale brown, something pale green, something pale yellow. Two slices of bread with butter. Orange jelly. He stopped looking, stopped smelling, ate a little. It may not be health, he thought, but it’s national.
Faces. Two rows of them in beds. He smiled at some, nodded at others. Comrades in infirmity.
‘What’s new, Schwarzgang?’ he said. Blips going all right, he noticed.
‘Be new?’ said Schwarzgang.
‘I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. Everything.’
‘D’you go?’ said Schwarzgang.
‘Here and there in the Underground. Coffee shop.’
‘Lovely,’ said Schwarzgang. ‘Coffee shops.’
Kleinzeit lay back on his bed thinking about Sister’s knee. Brown velvet sky again. An aeroplane. You’re missing what’s going on down here, he said to the plane. He extended his thoughts downward from Sister’s knee, then upward from her toes. He fell asleep, woke up when Sister came on duty. They smiled big smiles at each other.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello,’ said Kleinzeit. They smiled again, nodded. Sister continued on her round. Kleinzeit felt cheerful, hummed the tune he had played on the glockenspiel in the bathroom. It didn’t sound original, but he didn’t know whose it was if it wasn’t his. C#, C, C#, F, C#, G# …
THRILL, sang his body as intersecting flashes illuminated its inner darkness. C to D, E to F, with two hyperbolas. LUCKY YOU.
That’s it, thought Kleinzeit. My asymptotes. His throat and his anus closed up as if two drawstrings had been pulled. He drank some orange squash, could scarcely swallow it. Another aeroplane. So high! Gone.
MINE! sang Hospital, like Scarpia reaching for Tosca.
Aaahh! sighed the bed.
SEE ME, roared Hospital, SEE ME GREAT AND HIGH UPON MY BLACK HORSE, GIGANTIC. I AM THE KING OF PAIN. LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR.
That’s Ozymandias, said Kleinzeit.
You mind your mouth, said Hospital.
Asymptotes hyperbolic, sang Kleinzeit’s body to the tune of Venite adoremus.
Tomorrow’s the Shackleton-Planck, he thought. Will there be quanta? Three guesses. And if the 2-Nup clears up my diapason they’ll probably find that my stretto is blocked. It feels blocked right now. And of course the hypotenuse is definitely skewed, he didn’t even bother to be tactful about that. What time is it? Past midnight all of a sudden. Half of us are dying. The groans, chokes, gasps and gurgles around him seemed repetitive, like the Battle of Trafalgar soundtrack at Madame Tussaud’s. Cannon booming, falling spars, shouts and curses. The orlop deck of the Victory every night, with oxygen masks and bedpans.
Blip, blip, went Schwarzgang, and stopped.
Sister! yelled Kleinzeit in a hoarse whisper. Darkness, dimness all around. Silence. Cannon booming, spars falling, bedpans splatting, shouts and curses, chokes and gurgles.