“Shall I pay you, then, or…”
“Yes. Pay me,” he said. “Ten pounds.”
I paid him ten pounds. I remembered that my windscreen washer reservoir was empty and I asked him for some fill-up. He glanced at the middling boy and slightly raised his chin; the middling boy ran into the shop and came out with a litre of blue liquid which he and the youngest boy poured into the windscreen washer reservoir for me, operating in sync together now, the youngest one holding the lid off while the middling one poured, then passing the lid over for the middling one to screw on while he, the youngest one, carried the empty bottle over to a bin. They closed the bonnet for me and I got back into my car.
Before I drove off I pushed the windscreen spurter button to make sure it worked. Liquid should have squirted out onto the glass, but nothing happened. I pushed it some more. Still nothing. I got out, opened the bonnet again and checked the reservoir. It was empty.
“It’s all gone!” I said.
The boys peered in. The oldest one got down on his knees and looked under the car.
“There’s no patch,” he said. “It hasn’t leaked. It should be there.” He turned to the middling boy and said: “Go get another bottle.”
Another bottle was brought out and poured into the reservoir. Once more I climbed inside the car and pressed the spurter button. Once more nothing happened-and once more, when we looked inside the reservoir, we found it empty.
“Two litres!” I said. “Where has it all gone?”
They’d vaporized, evaporated. And do you know what? It felt wonderful. Don’t ask me why: it just did. It was as though I’d just witnessed a miracle: matter-these two litres of liquid-becoming un-matter-not surplus matter, mess or clutter, but pure, bodiless blueness. Transubstantiated. I looked up at the sky: it was blue and endless. I looked back at the boy. His overalls and face were covered in smears. He’d taken on these smears so that the miracle could happen, like a Christian martyr being flagellated, crucified, scrawled over with stigmata. I felt elated-elated and inspired.
“If only…” I started, but paused.
“What?” he asked.
“If only everything could…”
I trailed off again. I knew what I meant. I stood there looking at his grubby face and told him:
“Thank you.”
Then I got into the car and turned the ignition key in its slot. The engine caught-and as it did, a torrent of blue liquid burst out of the dashboard and cascaded down. It gushed from the radio, the heating panel, the hazard-lights switch and the speedometer and mileage counter. It gushed all over me: my shirt, my legs, my groin.
10
I SHOULD HAVE JUMPED out of the car as fast as I could, but I sat there instead, letting the blue liquid gush all over me. When it had finished gushing it trickled, then dribbled, then dripped. I sat impassive while it ran itself out. It took a long time: even when it seemed to have dripped itself dry it still managed to grind out another half-drip a few seconds later, and another half-half-drip a few seconds after that.
Slowly, tentatively, the three boys edged over to the car and peered in. The youngest one gasped when he saw my trousers soaked in the sticky blue liquid. The other two said nothing: they just stared. I stared too: we all stared at the dashboard and my legs. We stayed there, static like that, for a long while. Then I drove back to my building.
When I got there, I took off my wet clothes and had a bath. I lay in my bath looking at the crack and thinking about what had happened. It was something very sad-not in the normal sense but on a grander scale, the scale that really big events are measured in, like centuries of history or the death of stars: very, very sad. A miracle seemed to have taken place, a miracle of transubstantiation-in contravention of the very laws of physics, laws that make swings stop swinging and fridge doors catch and large, unsuspended objects fall out of the sky. This miracle, this triumph over matter, seemed to have occurred, then turned out not to have done at all-to have failed utterly, spectacularly, its watery debris crashing down to earth, turning the scene of a triumphant launch into the scene of a disaster, a catastrophe. Yes, it was very sad.
I lay there in my bath replaying the event in my mind, scouring its surfaces. There’d been the garish model tin and piled-up tyres, the spinning sign, the swaying tyre-suit of the youngest boy, the lathe with its clamps and pedals and the blue tube full of air. I remembered how the boy had carried the tyre from my car boot to the shop, how grime had rubbed onto his shirt; then how his hands had whipped around it daubing glue on, re-inflating it. I lay for so long remembering that the bath turned cold and my skin wrinkled. After an age I got out and phoned Naz.
“I’d like you to facilitate another project I’m considering,” I said.
“Certainly,” Naz replied. “Tell me about it.”
“I should like a certain area,” I said, “to be reproduced exactly.”
“A small section of the building?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Another place. A tyre repair shop.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Naz said. “If you tell me where it is, I’ll give Roger a call right now and get him to knock you up another model.”
“It’s not a model I require,” I told Naz. “It’s a full-scale reproduction. I should like Roger to reproduce this tyre shop exactly, down to the last detail. Furthermore, I shall require re-enactors to run through a certain event which I’ll outline later. These re-enactors must be children: three of them, aged fifteen, thirteen and eleven. Plus one man of my age. Four people in all, plus back-up. I shall require them to run through this event constantly, round the clock.”
There was a pause at Naz’s end. I pictured his office in the blue-and-white building, how the desks were laid out, the telescope by the window. After a while he said:
“How can they do that?”
This was a good question, but I had the answer:
“We’ll have several teams,” I told him, “relieving one another, in relay.”
“In relay?” he said.
“Yes,” I answered. “We rotate them.”
There was another pause at Naz’s end. I concentrated on his office again, clasping the phone. Eventually he answered:
“Fine.”
His people found a warehouse out at Heathrow. It was on the outskirts of the land owned by the airport-one of a row of old hangars for small private aircraft that the corporation running the whole place hired out. It was large enough to contain a full-scale reproduction of the tyre shop itself-including roof with tyres and garish model baked-beans tin-and of the road outside it where the boy in the Michelin Man suit had swayed beside the spinning sign that said “TYRES TYRES”-and where, of course, the sticky liquid had exploded from my dashboard and cascaded over me.
They also paid the real tyre people, the men who’d been inside the café when the episode had happened, half a grand-nothing-to let Roger, Frank and Annie come and detail everything about the shop: the layout of the shelves, the products on them, their positions, age and state of wear, the dimensions of the garish model baked-beans tin, the lathe inside with its pedals and its clamps, the blue tube full of air and so on. The instruments all had to work, of course. The owner of the real tyre place, a round man of forty-odd, came out and taught us how to use all the equipment. He trained up a team of ten fifteen-year-old boys until they knew how to dip tyres in water and look out for silky bubbles, how to clamp and turn the wheel with their feet while daubing glue on, how to reach their hand behind them to collect the tube of air and guide it to the valve without needing to turn their heads. It took a while.
As far as positions and movements were concerned: I took care of these myself, as before. I showed the Michelin Man boy re-enactor where to stand and sway, and the other two how to kick his head between them. I made them kick it with a minimum of movement, hammering it with their legs mechanically, like zombies or robots. The driver, the person re-enacting my role, had to get out slowly. Like the concierge, he wore a white ice-hockey goaltender’s mask, so as not to overrun my personality with his-or, more precisely, so as not to impose any personality at all. I just wanted the motions and the words, all deadpan, neutral-wanted the re-enactors to act out the motions without acting and to speak the words without feeling, in disinterested voices, as monotonous as my pianist. The oldest boy had to take the tyre from the boot, carry it over to the lathe and fix it; the middling one had to attempt to help him lift it and the oldest had to push his hand away; the youngest one had to come over and then lurk outside the door. I showed them where to step, to lift, to kick, to stand. Most of the time they only had to stand, completely static.