Dont worry. She whispered, Things arent as bad as that.
Och I know I know.
Well then.
Yeh. Yeh.
She was staring right into his eyes.
A situation
Different incisions seemed to have been cut into the wall and from inside one of them an insect was peering at him. The insect reminded him of a flea, the curved part of its body, even down to its blood tan colour. The middle finger of his right hand began to drum on the edge of the table, he was frowning. What if for every incision one such insect was lodged? Mind you, they were so minute, these insects, that he was not afraid. He could ignore them easily. Or else he could get a spray gun and blast them all to smithereens. But what was the use of fantasising. He was not going to do anything. He couldnt do anything. He was stuck fast on this wooden chair, surrounded by everything hostile you could possibly conceive of in the universe. And as well as that it was like he could hear a scraping noise coming from somewhere too so no wonder he couldnt concentrate. Or was it just his ears? The finger drumming stopped but he continued frowning at the insect. Its toty brain would be working overtime. Who is this giant staring at me? Is he going to kill me? Somebody as big as him could squash me in a tick! Will he leave me alone? Forget all about me? Because if he does then I can continue crawling up the wall. Or down the wall; maybe it was going down the wall. Or else burrowing deeper into the hole, the incision. Maybe it and its relations, its ancestors — bearing in mind that each day is probably a lifetime and thus you have a state of affairs where four weeks ago is prehistoricity:
the world of the insect is of an eternity undreamt by man.
He shook his head to clear the brains into some sort of order, some sort of cohesion, so that he could think properly, he had to think properly. Life wasnt as good as all that just now. Not at present. But he couldnt afford to get more panic stricken than he currently was. On top of all the studying he had to meet the girlfriend in next to no time and he had had sex with her sister less than four hours ago. It was the sort of factual statement you had to present so coldly to yourself, so coldly. What was that bloody insect doing? Maybe burrowing deeper, trying to find a way of escaping out through the damn wall. That reminded him of himself. He spoke aloud: Make it big enough for the both of us, me as well as you. He could imagine hearing the insect’s voice in answer. It would of course be squeaky, in keeping with its size. Unless it was an ironic bass baritone. Why ironic? Because of its size obviously. And what was that scraping noise, was it the actual burrowing sound? Surely no. But where was it coming from? He stared hard at the wall. It was just a wall. As walls go it was simply one of them. It was neither up nor down. Walls are walls, the prison bars make them. That was a line from somewhere, a poem or a song. Prison bars make them. Prisons do not a prison make, walls and bars, cells. He had never been in a cell, a jail; it was an experience he hadnt had. And didnt want. Not at all, why should he? Why should he want to end up in a cell? He had never done anything remotely worthy of such a crime, charge, jail, that sort of castigation.
Nor do insects have heads wherein brains are tick-tocking thus they do not worry about minor tragedies, only the major ones such as food and sex, the impetus for survival.
He sighed so loudly he glanced immediately over his shoulder to see if he had been heard, sitting there alone, in his poky wee room, feeling oh so tired, drained and exhausted. It wasnt his fault he had slept with Jeanette. He was up in her flat to give her some advice on something and she just more or less offered herself. She did. She offered herself to him. Probably the pair of them had had a big fight or argument or something, her and Deborah. Mind you, as far as he had been given to understand they were always the best of pals. They seemed to get on fine the gether. He gazed at the wall. It was actually covered in these incisions. Tiny toty wee holes. Oh Lord. Lordie Lordie. Lordie Lordie Lordie.
The A4 folders. Ah dear. All the A4 folders, and the trade brochures.
A4 folders and trade brochures. Life was a series of A4 folders and trade brochures. Cardboard and glossy paper. Pens and pencils. Stamped addressed envelopes and gummed labels, invoices.
His eyes had just about closed there. God. But he was knackered. He was. He was drained and exhausted, feeling like a quick forty winks. He needed it. Plus it was a good way out of a problem, to sleep on it.
But this was a genuine tired feeling with a genuine real cause. There had been no time for rest and recuperation after the Jeanette performance because her own boyfriend was coming home and he had had to get out fast, fast. Which was not as bad and decadent as it sounds. She was wanting to dump the bloke, she really was — she just didnt fancy him any more, but found it difficult saying the magic words of release. He was hell of a clingy Benny — Benny being her boyfriend’s name. Poor old Benny. The two males had met on a couple of occasions, plus they had gone out on a foursome once with the sisters, to a pub up the town. It hadnt been a great success because the two females had had an awful lot to speak about — family stuff and that kind of thing — whereas the two men had had nothing at all, they had just sat there, not even any music to listen to, having to discuss football and general things about society. Except later on when the women went off to the Ladies, Benny had confided. Insecurity and an inferiority complex with women. These were the guy’s problems. Imagine confiding in somebody who was a stranger to you! My God. Even the insect was laughing at that one. He could see it poking its napper out the incision on the wall again. He put his thumb up and squashed it. It made him wince. It was awful. His stomach felt queasy. It was just an insect and he had squashed it with his thumb. Why worry? But why do it why did he do it, why did he do it? Why did he do it, in the first place, take away its life? The stain of it on his thumb, a brown brackeny coloured substance. Here he was having just had illicit sex with his girlfriend’s sister
fiancée’s sister. She was his fiancée’s sister. Deborah was his fiancée:
and now into the bargain he had squashed a living creature. And God would rightly be angry. Nobody likes their creations getting killed.
And what was that when you come to think about it but blasphemy, talking about God like that, in that tone of voice.
So here was now the third mark against him this day.
But he was a male and the sexual needs of the male are so horrendously hard to contain. Everybody knows that. And he had let himself fall into her web. Jeanette was a spider. She drew him in in that willowy winsome way and then let him have it, her bending down like that in front of him etcetera etcetera, an old trick which he was delighted to have played on him let us be honest, let us be good and damn honest about it he thought she was an extremely sexy lady and always had done since first they had been introduced. So what now what now. Killing a creature for no reason, just a silly absentmindedness. But wanton all the same. He had killed one of God’s creatures through an act of wanton absentmindedness. Yes He would be angry with him and would make him fail tomorrow’s test and he would then be forced into a life of continuous penury. He would have to go out working the road for a living instead of just training other folk to do it. That is what happened when you crossed the Lord.
That was him blaspheming again. Upon this day he had committed what amounts to adultery, and murder, and blasphemy. There was no fun in the thought. In fact it demanded an honest appraisal of himself, his entire life. If he couldnt manage an honest appraisal then the future was definitely bleak. He was doomed, he was doomed to become an ordinary salesman, a cynical salesman, somebody who held no truck for half measures and had absolutely no compunction whatsoever in destroying people who were customers, they would destroy all the resources of the world if they could get away with it, all on behalf of the selling racket. It was so bad. And yet it was the corollary of the downward spiral. It began with minor atrocities like the destruction of insects and the destruction of love, both earthly love and spiritual love. And the mark of the beast was on his thumb. And he needed rid of it. He got up and went to the toilet and washed his hands thoroughly. If he had had a bath he would have bathed. If he had had a shower he would have showered. He had neither of these facilities. Jeanette had both in her flat. It belonged to the two of them, her and her boyfriend, and they were able to bathe together and play sexy games. He would have wanted the same sort of fun and nonsense. But he and Deborah didnt do it, they didnt play sexy games. There was something that wasnt just right for it, something between them. Something that seemed to stop such an enjoyable interlude from happening. Plus his room was only big enough for what his grandpa used to call a jawbox, a sink in the wall, and this was where the diverse functional uses for water were put to the test, from shaving the chin to washing the socks through the doing of the dishes, given that the owners of the property were so totally greedy and so directly opposed to the whole concept of cooked food where tenants were concerned, so he didnt have that much crockery, and there was nary a pot and nary a pan, and normally a rinse of cold water was ample for everything. There was a bathroom. But it was outside on the next landing, shared by folk upstairs and down, including wheezing old McAllister who spat into the washhand basin there and never sluiced it out properly and you could always see the tell-tale signs. Plus there was always sticky things on the linoleum floor and even if you were having a bath you felt like wearing shoes. The idea of Deborah and him getting up to anything in there was beyond imagination. Deborah!