— Flowers and good rich dung. They guarantee to smoothe out marital quarrels among the rich in the rich earth. Oh yes, you’ll sprout all right, more than I will. I never go anywhere, I just bide my time and clean up.
— Well, we’d better push on.
— Always in a hurry. Some people have all the luck, but then, five horses, and black ones at that. I wish you a long life and many good years after.
— Whoa!
Gut Bucket stops the hearse by an empty patch of earth in the cemetery, thumps his thorax and jumps down. Dippermouth perks off his alarm briefly, his mouth awry from chewing bubble-gum. The grave-digger throws out the last spadeful of rich earth and hauls himself up on a pulley, pushing the side of the narrow grave with his feet like a mountaineer. A narrow, narrow grave.
— But we booked a double room.
— Nothing to do with me. I only deal in local space, and we have a shortage here. A poor old woman inherited the space next door. You’ll have to lie on top of one another. No harm in that, I take it?
— But I won’t sleep a wink.
— Stop fussing, man. What difference does it make? You start with little, treat it as more and in no time at all you have infinity or thereabouts. Time heals, they say, but timelessness heals faster. As to space, well, we have a shortage here.
The Serpent-Bearers lift the coffin from the hearse with Something lying on the soft bed of dung and me on top of her. Dippermouth blubbers his bubble-gum and Gut Bucket says don’t cry, Big Dipper, they have to do it, and he bows into the pile of rich earth, filling himself with it. I feel heavy with sorrow, he says, and pours it down on top of us. Do you think they’ll give us an inscription?
— I don’t know, Someone.
— I thought you did the knowing around here.
— Not any more, Someone, you confuse me with broken words and things.
— Ah yes, your secret instructions. Do you still follow them?
— I try, but I often lose contact.
— I must say I would like an inscription.
— Well, I don’t see that it matters, you break those too.
The escalators trundle through the dark intestines, stones float in gall, green horse-flies swim in urine, furry caterpillars all lit up like skeletons in barium light crawl through the dung. Patience, my love, the reflex will come soon. But I feel sick. It hurts. It always hurts to give rebirth, wait patiently, and breathe, it will come soon.
— But I breathe all the time, unbeknown to you.
— Breathe quietly, regularly, relax.
— What! Take her away, don’t let her near me, get off, get off.
— Hush, my love, no weight sits on you, only inside you. Soon, soon it will come.
The earth purrs under me with a scratching sound that drills into my entrails. Something bends over me pressing her fingers into them or the earth perhaps, the soft dung, humus out of which in a dim starlight peers a small brown thing. A furry animal crawls limply out into her hands bundling itself at once into a ball. Dippermouth ticks away quietly somewhere and Gut Bucket stands stock still, coming in useful for the placenta.
The furry ball uncurls and twists its ribs in pain. It turns so pale and so transparent it looks like vanishing altogether, like a decaying giant horse-fly about to crumble into dust, take it away.
Something gathers it up and holds it to her breast, whispering to it or breathing perhaps the kiss of life into the dying born thing.
— You’ve got a girl, Someone. A delicate little thing. We’ll have to take very special care of her.
— A girl? But how? Show me.
She brings her breast closer with the odd insect shape attached to it, already bare of fur and settled now into a thick-waisted hour-glass, but fast losing its transparency as it fills itself with sap.
— Do you know her name, Someone.
— I feel so tired.
— Potato Head. You came up through the heavy water, Someone, of course you feel tired. But weight only consists of the attraction of two bodies. It can buoy you up, according to the combinations or splitting of its atoms. So Gut Bucket goes down to the round pond of heavy water that buoys him up, to clean himself, he says. Dippermouth ticks quietly away somewhere and Something croons over Potato Head. She doesn’t seem to know me or I her in my convalescence. She takes no notes now, and dials no dials. I can sit up a little and suck the pulp of grapes. She peels me an orange in segments and it hurts, don’t do that.
— What?
— Peeling. It hurts.
She puts the orange down.
— Do you sleep all right?
— Yes, I think I sleep.
— Do you dream at all?
— No. I never dream. Stop spying on me.
— I don’t. I mean, I’ve stopped. I only-oh darling, if anything you spy on me.
— Do I? How?
— I don’t know. I don’t know why I said that. Your eyes. Your eyes seem to, see things.
— They feel, sort of hollow.
— Yes, they look hollow, but then, after all — And so big, Larry, so big.
— Like dish-telescopes.
— Well, not as big as that.
— As if I had other eyes, turning inside. Or perhaps these turn inwards. Can you see my pupils?
— Yes, Larry. Huge pupils. Do they give you drugs here?
— I don’t know what they give me.
— I must speak to the doctor about that.
— Don’t speak to anyone, least of all to Stance.
— Stance?
— The Travel Agent.
— Travel —?
— Grave-digger.
— All right, all right, my darling, don’t worry. Nobody wants to harm you. They’ve done a wonderful job.
— All things and civilization considered.
— Yes well, I know, they made a huge mistake. But then you can’t altogether blame them. You did die, you know.
— Did you really die, dad?
— Dippermouth.
— You do say funny things, daddy. But mummy warned me.
— Mummy? Whose mummy?
— Mine, daddy, me, Patricia.
— Oh. How did you get in?
— They said I could. I came out top at school. Ten out of ten for maths and biology. Oh, and current events, nine. And that in spite of getting only seven for religious instruction. I hate r.i. Did you hate r.i., dad, and English, and history? I do. But I came out top all the same.
— Good. One feels better when one comes out top.
— Did you come out top, dad?
— I suppose so.
— Martin’s gone back to France. But he knows you’ve come through.
— Through what?
— You died, you know, says the nurse says the sister and all the rest, speaking in strip-cartoon, each in a square room with accusing remarks attached to their smiles like gall-bladders to be continued in our next. Did you really die says Dekko in the subsequent square moving from left to right, I don’t believe it in another ring attached to his tight mouth, it has a perfectly good scientific explanation. But the explanation vanishes from right to left in the dark as he stands in the cubic room with trite remarks inside an onion round his rimless glasses, tight layers that don’t peel off and make no maps of contours. My wife sends her regards. Would you like anything, grapes? I brought you flowers … I mean she sent them … From the garden … You’ve seen our garden, haven’t you … I hope you will come and sit in it and rest … You don’t have a garden, do you. Or an expensive mistress though your wife, ah, but then I do all the work, I discovered the formula, Head took the credit. Died, he should have died, for heaven’s sake, Laurence, don’t look through me like that, it frightens me. Don’t you sleep well here?
— Yes, I think I sleep.
— You mean you don’t know? Don’t they give you anything?