But these were only the conscious wars, the phony wars. Deeper down, closer to his heart, the real war was now pressing: the war against his father. And here hung the shadow of the mushroom cloud. For this was indeed a cold, cold war, all about areas of influence and control, posturing, troops massed, invisible borders drawn, crossed, and redrawn, blanket-smuggled exchanges on shivery bridges by night, years of watching, listening, propaganda, betrayals, chronic suspicion, and the endless, endless silence. A war that felt as though it too were now shifting toward some new point of crisis.
But deeper than even this, at the very bottom, never spoken, never admitted, was the loneliest war of alclass="underline" the war against despair. This last a solitary staggering struggle that took place in the freezing darkness of the polar night, a struggle from which he could not rest but for which he must be forever on the lookout, perpetually exhausted and perpetually tensed, peering hard into the blizzard, ready for the shape of that hooded foe emerging, ready for the three furious minutes of nail, tooth, and blood that would decide it.
The worst of it was that these wars (and many more) were all being waged simultaneously. Had he been fighting any single campaign in isolation, he would have required all his available resources to prevail. But en masse, he had no chance. And so, like every other human being alive, Gabriel now found that his only free time was filled with craving for more free time so that he could gather the space and energy to engage his foes. Pick them off. (Deal with the cigarette problem at the very least.) Since he had returned from Petersburg, though, he had found that day-to-day distractions pressed in on him from all sides all the more. Considered thought, intelligent resolve, emotional balance—there was no chance. Weaknesses faced, dilemmas considered, relationships weighed—there was no time. No chance and no time for anything other than the blind and foolhardy living of it all.
And the nightmare scenario was already happening: since the death of his mother, his enemies had started talking. Smoking, for example, seemed to hijack his evenings under the casual pennants of his mother’s lung cancer (for that, he was sure, was what she had been suffering from), and then, just as he was raising his arms in surrender, some leering little corporal would swing the main banner around and he’d be looking at the insignia, not of his poor mother, but of his father. Yes, cigarettes now reminded him of his dad. Simple as that. A cigarette in itself—white, thin, blithely toxic—said “father” to him as noisily as if it were able to speak out loud. Worst of all—and irony’s perfectly curved scimitar this—his father had managed to give up. Easily.
Another thing: he had become curious about—no, fascinated by; no, preoccupied with—his mother’s life. Not her life with his father (though this too) but her life before that, her life around, behind, beneath the life he thought he already knew. (What did this Russian guy know?) Related to this was his panic that he would forget what she looked like, what she sounded like—hence his need for hourly mental checks. And related to this was his quest for pictures, for mementos, for anything at all that he might gather, hoard, treasure. And somehow—somehow—related to this was… was the strong sense that he had to sort his life out. Sort his bloody life out.
He dialed Lina’s cell phone. Her office phone was usually diverted, and he didn’t want to speak to her secretary.
“Hi, how’s it going?”
“Busy,” she said. “I’m supposed to have written a presentation and people keep coming in and asking me stuff. And the phone keeps going.”
“Shut your door.”
“I do. Then they knock and I can’t think of anything else to say except ‘Come in.’”
“How about a sign—’Fuck off unless you are giving me money or can do interesting tricks.’”
“Gabriel.”
“Sorry. Do you want me to check through the presentation?”
“Yes. That would be nice, thanks. It’s a pitch.”
“When’s it for?”
“Friday. Will you have time?”
“Yes… yes, if it’s important.” He paused. “Are you out tonight?”
“No. You?”
“I’m on the radio. It’s the late show again.”
“Okay. Don’t wake me up. I have to catch a train at eight-thirty.” She changed register. “Quality Kitchens just rang, by the way.”
“I love those guys.”
“They’re sending someone new to start next Monday.” She shuffled something. “Frank Delaney.”
“Can’t wait.”
“Okay—I have to go. I’ll put your pajamas in the lounge so you don’t have to turn on our light. See you later.”
“Bye.”
The afternoon arrived like an aggrieved trade unionist. Not a single one of his so-called writers had filed their so-called copy on time. And what he did have was universally shit. Unbelievably shit—even by the standards of modern journalism, even by the standards of contract publishing, even by the standards of Self-Help! Further, there was no single person among his staff to whom he could appeal for help. He looked out across the empty office floor. Ten to three, and they were all still out at lunch—probably drinking in the Alfred. Not that having them back would make things any better…
His chief (and only) picture editor, Pablo, was a pouting Portuguese prima donna who accused him of being antigay every time he ever so gently suggested that an additional effort of the imagination might be required on such and such a spread, or whenever he delicately pointed out that perhaps a cover picture of Charles and Diana circa 1986 was not the best idea for the “Toxic Parents” issue; his one (and only) copy editor, Craig, was now openly smoking cannabis during his many screen breaks and only last Friday had declared to all comers at the Alfred that he “couldn’t be arsed”; his features editor, Annabel (home counties, public school, Durham), had some sort of trouble with her thyroid and was as maniacally ambitious “to make a national” as she was utterly unsuited to her chosen career—completely unable to cope with any kind of decision-making or pressure and totally incapable as an editor, designer, or, he sometimes suspected, even as a reader; his deputy, Maureen, forty-seven (and forty-seven a day), was probably the single most bitter and poisonous woman ever to scratch a living in the miserable secondhand dirt of the profession—in an industry riddled with rancor, rashed with resentment, choked with bile, gall, and spleen, Maureen Wilson was head and shoulders above everyone else, by some distance the most noxious human being Gabriel had ever called colleague, she spent her days whispering on the phone to the National Union of Journalists or lying in wait for just the right moment to take him to an employment tribunal—a woman outdone only by Francine O’Brien in sheer pound-for-pound toxicity; Wendy, meanwhile, his one and only in-house staff writer—aside from the fact that she was Chinese and English was her fourth language, behind Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese—simply could not be made to understand that interviews with fashion gurus and Tokyo pop stars, however hard to get, had no place in the magazine unless there was a clear self-help angle and so continued (on her own initiative, at her own expense, and at the expense of the jobs she was supposed to be doing) to file three-thousand-word pieces on the latest glamour boy of Japanese death metal—only to break down in tears when he had to explain why they could not run her stuff before she sprinted off to the toilets to lock herself in for the rest of the day.