— But you don’t suffer the children to come, if I may say so, sir.
— Forgive me, Tin Roof. I couldn’t bear the noise.
— Or the smell either, sir, or the glugging of communication, or the ticking of your time.
— What shall I do, Tin Roof?
— Recognise me, father. A little recognition can do a lot for an unprodigal son.
— You mean, you remained at home all the time, while I expected the other?
— You expect him all the time, father.
— Really.
— Yes. He will come of course, he has never stopped coming.
— At forty-eight.
— Congratulations.
— How shall I recognise him?
— We all look alike, under the differentials.
— Yes well, the infinite divergencies confuse me.
— You confused us too, breaking the laws, altering our orbits. But look at it this way. If a film-director wanted to make a film featuring quintuplets, he’d never find five child actors, or actors of any age, looking exactly alike, unless he chose quintuplets, and the law of probability against their all having both acting talent and the required physique would work out at a thousand million million to one. So what would he do? He’d use illusion, and camera-tricks, and silhouettes and stand-ins.
— Why did we crash, Tin Roof?
— We had to. The rails got twisted.
— How did she, I mean where, will she … Tell me, son, have I divorced her or something?
— I got her out. Thank you for calling me son.
— Thank you for getting her out. Did it take long?
— That depends on your second life. You can begin it any time, she told you that once.
— You mean, you listened all the time?
— We didn’t move in time, father.
— But you said I expected Really, all the time.
— During your life, father, your first life. And now also.
— And in that district you remained with me?
— We all remain. You can’t get rid of us merely by giving us names and sending us into oblivion. Oblivion has its orbits, like everything, you know that.
— What shall I do, Tin Roof?
— You could, if you’d like to I mean, and don’t mind the noise, climb on my pinion.
— Yes, I’d like that.
— Right. On you get.
— Go gently with me, Tin Roof. I mean, I know you find me tiresome, but the noise, well, it does give me such a pain inside my head.
— I brought you a crash-helmet, father.
— Oh, thank you. Thank you, son.
My arms in orbit round his waist, ourselves in orbit round the district of my time, we move in total immobility against the ultra-violet light, producing no vibration, no hum of silence even, until the circular steel house made out of our ellipses rises like a hemisphere above us and around. We land on the flat slice of its inner equator, surrounded by innumerable slices that diminish in space towards the rounded roof and this in spite of the curved door to the right. Alalala — pa — pa like a bent doll. My sweet Potato Head. Her hand gropes out for mine, her strength moves into me out of her double shape and back and into me again. The silent hum of the inner equator vibrates under our twelve feet as if they all belonged. Gut Bucket stands in quiet double meditation, his handle in my other hand and an ecstatic smile round both his inner and his outer rims. Something bends over Dippermouth and dials his needles as he ticks away in impulses that bounce back from her secret source as a girl-spy. They say you love me, Lazarus, she says.
— I do love you, Something, you know I do.
— But you have to go back.
— I don’t want to go back.
— We’ll have to clear out of this vehicle, father, it’ll get pretty hot if that door shuts.
— Out where? Into empty space? No, we can’t, we can’t, can we, Something? I like it here.
— Well, it depends on you, really.
— Really? Will he come now?
— He’ll come at the expected time of arrival, if you want him, Lazarus, and I know you do, you must. But I do so hate to see you suffer.
— I won’t get out. Not through that door. I must pace out this radius, and square it, and divide it by the height, and multiply it by the number of slices, and then you see I’ll know exactly how it works, quick, help me, keep busy, count the slices, yes, I accept them all.
— You must get out, Lazarus, you must.
— Don’t panic, Something. A girl-spy doesn’t panic.
— I know, I know, I have no future, but I must tell you, yes, I must. The house, Lazarus, the steel house. Someone designed it so that the door would close up automatically at maximum entropy and everyone left inside would die of absolute immobility from sheer heat.
— Entropy? What entropy? Who designed it, for heaven’s sake?
— You did, Lazarus. You have a complicated brain. Oh, I know you can’t help it, but it does make things difficult for a girl-spy with all those innumerable slices of you. Sometimes I wish I had married a poorer man –
— Oh cut that out, Something, you’ve never stopped saying I see nothing, understand nothing.
— But you do, Lazarus, you will. If you don’t forget me.
— I’ll never forget you, Something, because I won’t leave this place. I don’t believe in maximum entropy.
— Pa — pa, like a bent doll. Dippermouth’s needles oscillate more and more weakly and very slowly the door closes. Quick, get out. The heat becomes immeasurable. Gut Bucket starts melting into a pool of red hot metal. Potato Head crumbles like a giant decaying horse-fly. Something bends over Dippermouth as the atoms of total waste whirl around his dial and his impulses tick slower and slower. Only Tin Roof still roars round, drowning the vibrant hum, consisting now entirely of exhaust into which he picks me up, propels me with a jet into my belly, backwards into the closing door. I don’t want to go back, I don’t, I don’t, pushes me, squeezes me through it as Something bends over Dippermouth and I fall, fall, fall to the loud ticking inside the district of my time.
Inside the mirror on the landing towards the lawyer’s office the shape stares back the map-like contours of some unknown region, continent, galaxy perhaps with two craters or starless coalsacks radiating nothing. Something however creates the wavering outlines and if not the eyes then some faint memory, surely, behind the eyes, filaments of gas in violent motion or two extragalactic nebulae in collision, four or five hundred million years away. But the eyes close to avoid the issue of their death and amazing recovery. The closing resolves the optical image like a change of lenses, so that inside the mirror the tall thin man stares back, as before death, before recovery, as when life took its normal course through blood vessels, nerve fibres, muscle spindles, bones, flesh and such.
These ache, and comfort in the aching. Their returned presence mocks the wavering outlines that grow suddenly monstrous before vanishing as if they had not wavered there at all, round undulations doubling, trebling each other’s trebles on a map of ocean depths, filling the entire mirror, or, with some others, the whole room, bursting its walls, the house, the street, the square and the whole sky. The blood-vessels, nerve fibres, muscle spindles form some sort of presence, something to hold on to at least, such as a banister gripped by the hand towards the next landing and the door marked W. E. Mellek, Solicitor, which opens to the touch or to the words come in of the well-living swarthy, my dear friend, how good to see you.