— My dear friend, of course, why didn’t you say? Don’t worry, however, I’ll fix everything before you have time to think and his wife archly says how kind.
— I don’t want to go to Bermuda. I want to stay right here and work on my equations. And you shall stay here with me and look after me.
— Of course darling, if you want it that way. But the journalists –
— They’ll tire of it as soon as they’ve tired me out or no doubt before. I only want to cock my giant ear and listen to the total darkness in case it emits particles of light.
Lazarus gives his message to the Citizens of the World. Read the Daily Sphere tomorrow. As told to your favourite reporter, Tell-Star. Lazarus’ own sick handwriting photographed for you by telescopic camera in World Without End tomorrow. Read World Without End tomorrow, yesterday, today. Read Lazarus’ message in Sayings of the Week, no, I remember only total darkness, no, I remember nothing.
— Why did you tell them nothing?
— What? Leave me alone. I only want a little darkness.
— I can’t leave you alone, Someone.
— Why not?
— I can’t trust you. And besides, I belong to you.
— You do?
— Why did you tell them nothing, Someone?
— I didn’t. I told them … Something.
— You went much too soon.
— But the journalists came.
— They came for me, not you. But you never listen.
— I lost … Something.
— You lost your equations, Someone.
— I remember now. I’ve had such a peculiar dream.
— I know.
— Oh yes, you do the knowing around here, don’t you?
— I don’t know your equations, Someone.
— Have I lost a point, then?
— I tried to help you.
— But I had such an odd dream. Things come back.
— Yes, things do.
— I dreamt I died, and came back to life and could read people. Good people.
— Really?
— Yes. No. Not Really. What happened to Dippermouth, Something?
— He took after you, for three years. Now he takes after me.
— How did he take after me?
— He had your opaqueness. Now he has, to some extent, my transparence.
Dippermouth toddles into the room on tiny golden legs. The needles on his big moon-face point horizontally at a quarter to three and he gives a gurgling laugh like a chime.
— Can he talk?
— At three years old? I should think so.
— Say something, Dippermouth.
— Hello, dad. Wanna see something, dad?
— But I can see her, son.
— No, I mean something great, real great. Can you read, dad?
— I can read dials, Dippermouth.
— Good dad! You give real daddy-answers, don’t he, ma?
— Doesn’t, Dippermouth.
— Oh, but he does. You read my dial, dad. What does it say?
— A quarter to three.
— Quarter past nine. Got you! Now watch.
With a creaking noise that reminds me of something, Dippermouth dips and dips his mouth to twenty past eight, and with a louder creak dips on to twenty five past seven and on until my eardrums burst and his mouth joins down into itself to form one vertical needle that oscillates painfully on half-past six. Then with a screech it swivels as one needle half round the dial to twelve and the cowboy shoots his way across the screen on a white horse in a cloud of dust. The homestead burns. A sheep trots past the foreground and the naked blonde pours out of the flames with screams. The cowboy yanks her up onto his horse now blackened with the smoke, gallops away and Stance comes nonchalantly out of his hiding-place, smoking a big cigar. Good man, he says, can you repeat, we’ll do a take this time. Why didn’t you have your camera on, the cowboy asks, galloping back, I can’t repeat perform indefinitely. Well, I wanted to film the conflagration first, we’ll mix you in, don’t worry. Shoot. I yank the blonde again onto my saddle and gallop off the screen. Good man, he says to my wife, I changed the decoy blonde, he never noticed, this one will take him far. How unscholarly says my wife to confuse the records. Don’t you respect history, science? Things, he says, I have no interest in things. I like people. Now, my remote Bermuda, ride me. So he does call her something, and in the privacy of their banal untender story they go into a clinch. The needle chimes the romantic music of the spheres and then goes cloppety-clop around to half past six and with a creaking noise that reminds me of something slowly opens back to the disarmingly triumphant smile of Dippermouth at a quarter past nine.
— Quarter to three! Got you. What did you see, dad?
— I saw … my wife.
— Well! You sure saw something stupid!
— I saw remote Bermuda ride on Stance.
— You read what you want into it, Someone.
Dippermouth dips his mouth a little in disappointment.
— All that Bang Bang I gave you and you only saw Kiss Kiss. Oh dad!
He creaks with disgust and I cover my face with my hands.
— I can’t bear it, Something. I keep losing points. Why do you do this to me?
— Smile, Someone.
— No, you smile first.
I smile, it hurts and Dippermouth creaks back to a quarter to three.
— Quarter past nine! Got you.
— Good people! Good children. Now put away your camera, you mustn’t tire your little excrescent scar, dear boy, or I’ll have to swaddle it up again in bandages. Let me see –
— Madam, you shall not sit on me, no, I won’t have it, stop, get off!
— My dear good man, why should I sit on you? Stop yelling your head off or you’ll lose it, and then what will you do?
— What shall I do, Something?
— You leave my dad alone, fat grandma.
— Oh you dear pretty boy, what do they call you?
— Dippermouth Blues, fat grandma.
— Well, Mister Blues, I congratulate you, why, I would hardly have recognised him since I dragged him out of you. Let me see now, how has your little flan fared since then?
— Don’t touch me! Take your hands off me!
— These surgeon’s hands that saved your life with all their skill?
— I fear your hands.
— My dear good man, you understand nothing. I shall flounce out in a fury if you go on like that, and then what will you do?
— What shall I do, Something? Take me away, where can we go?
— Where would you like to go, Someone?
— Anywhere, away from her fat hands rummaging in my scar, from her fat buttocks about to climb on to me, from her huge weight.
— No weight climbs on you, Someone, weight only consists of the attraction between two bodies. Use your head. Lift it up. Do try to use your eyes and ears. You never look, you never listen. I made only one condition, but you didn’t keep your promise.
— I don’t keep anything. Even my point, I lose it all the time.
— You have a point, Someone. I assure you.
— Has she … has she flounced out?
— Yes. You hear what you want to hear.
— All that Big Bang I gave you, dad, and you only saw Steady State.
— But–
— Quiet, both of you. If you don’t take care, Someone, your atoms will become totally random and unable to impart uniform motion to others. Now concentrate, please, look, listen, organise your energy, listen at least to the absolute immobility of your own heat death, if it must occur. A little consciousness can do a lot.
The house crumbles around us. All the houses fall with a loud neighing from the edge of the crater and down through the twisted branches of the cork-trees with great creaks and crashes, down the immeasurably tumbling steps into the middle of the crater, which opens up and engulfs us all, Something, Dippermouth Blues and me.