Richard said, "I'm touched . . . It's strange. Whatever happens, we balance each other out. We're like Henchard and Farfrae. You're part of me and I'm part of you."
"You know something? I understand exactly what you're saying. And I couldn't disagree more."
With a gesture at the chessmen Richard said, "It's a blip." And he meant the whole day. "I'll be back. I'll get you next time."
"I think not. I think there just won't be a next time. I think we've got to
the end of one another, This'll do me, It's a wrap."
He walked home. In Calchalk Street, as he approached, he looked toward the rooftop. Two of the half-dozen stars that still shine on Lon-don (sufficiently fat or proximate) were burning; but no lights were burning at 49E. He went up the stairs, past the bikes. In the kitchen he drank a glass of water, a glass of milk, and a glass of sweet vermouth. With his head sticking out of his study window he smoked a final cigarette. Then he sat there, listening: no noises you could go ahead and locate. But the place was subtly unsilent.
He went out into the passage . .. Nothing. Just the boys. He could hear them writhing and whispering away in there. And this was very bad: Marco was supposed to be ill. Richard entered, and told them what time it was. They countered with a demand for a story-the new kind of story he had, he thought, unwisely introduced them to. Twins stories: stories in which the twins personally appeared-and invariably distinguished themselves for their ingenuity and valor. He felt uneasy as he told these tales (Marius suddenly realized. It was Marco who), while the boys lay on their backs, clutching their boyhoods, with drugged eyes. No story, he said. But he told them one anyway. In which they bravely rescued their daddy-rescued him, then tended to his wounds.
He leaned back against the cold outer wall and the window frame. And he thought: the Man in the Moon looks younger every year. It used to be a joke face he wore: a clown face. No longer. He looks pretty mainstream now, like a contemporary: I know people as fat-cheeked, people as pale, people as bald. He looks like me. His face used to smile. Now it pleads. He's sorry-about how he looks. When I'm old, that face will pout. And the Man in the Moon will look like a baby-like the god of babies.
Why cars? Why stars? Why pounds and pence? Why fog, why clouds? Why cold and gold, why dust and rust? Why tramps and vamps and dukes and nukes, why fucks and fights? Why planes? Why trains? Why jobs? Why nickel and dime? Why time? Why mire? Why fire?
I will arise … I will arise and go now, to the callbox, with a suitcase. A phonecall will I make there. Who to? Balfour? R. C. Squires? Keith Horridge? Gwyn, his oldest-his only-friend: Gwyn had never been a candidate. Ever. Richard realized that it had always been Anstice at the end of the line (waiting, in her urban bird's nest with its dust and trinkets, and ever eggless), but Anstice was already dead.
He turned away from the window. The twins were asleep. More than asleep. They looked like figures on a battlefield, arrested, abandoned. They too looked already dead … Richard didn't want to be telling them these stories; these stories about themselves. They were bad for the boys. They reminded him of pornography.
But pornography was surveillance on the act of love.
If he had climbed into his weepship and reared up over Calchalk Street, over Westway and its speed checks and electric eyes, and come on down over Windsor Court, and moved past night porter and night camera and tracked the cable to the apartment-to the Club World-of Steve Cousins …
"I have no words for him," said Steve. "As for him, I have no words."
He sat naked in his black leather chair, finding out what he wanted to hurt. He was conducing surveillance on pornography, which was itself surveillance on the act of love. He was watching others watching others. And it was all up in the air: because if what you were seeing didn't remind you of something, then you really shouldn't be watching it. You really shouldn't be watching.
Pornography, which could wear down the brake linings, releasing you forward . . .
This was so important to him: that he chose to do what he did. Others thought they had chosen-chosen, for instance, a life of crime-just by the hangdog repetition of a hangdog cliche. "You're on your own in this world." "Nobody's going to look out for you in this life"-in this life of crime. But they didn't choose it. It chose them.
What you never wanted to do was fit the profile. You never wanted to be put together like that. No, he wasn't abused by his father. Yes, he had tortured animals as a child. No, he was not in the habit of recording his illicit actions on camera or camcorder. Lifelong hypochondriac: yes. Latent homosexuaclass="underline" no. Stay clear of the profile and work from left field. Left field: the obstetrics nurse who takes to smothering newborns; the millionaire who sends his daughter's ear to the house of the known kidnapper.
Although he believed it contained the information he sought, Steve hadn't found it in pornography. Pornography of the visible spectrum: the red, orange, yellow, the green, the blue, indigo, violet. Boy-and-girl or girl-and-girl and boy-and-boy: this hadn't told him what he wanted to hurt. But tonight he found it. He was ready.
And it came from nowhere-from left field. He wasn't one of those people who watched things and then went out and did them.
Steve sat there naked on the black armchair. Unfolding before his eyes was something completely average. American, hard-core but heavily and vandalously edited. Called?… Called Test Tube Babes. According to the story, the women in it were one minute old. Made by the men, scientists: to their own specifications. They mixed the DNA in a test tube. Then under the microwave or whatever. And then they were born. Withbig hair and big jewelry, tattooed and tit-jobbed, ankle-chained and nipple-ringed-and one minute old. The inter-sex sections were meant to be funny. Reminding whoever was watching that the people in pornography had no sense of humor. It was a necessary condition. Absolutely everyone in pornography was absolutely humorless. Steve never quite got this.
Test Tube Babes. He was about four fucks in when it happened. Scientists and scientist's creation: they're on the lab floor, just finishing up. And a kitten wanders in. They're on the floor, covered in sweat, and a kitten wanders in. Actor smiled, and actress smiled back: the kind of smiles that expressed full confidence of mutual forgiveness. And the kitten (ginger. Do they call it tortoiseshell?) just tiptoes in between them, curiously, with one back paw raised in exquisite tentativeness-having no idea, being an animal, of the prevailing reality. The ergonomic reality. And Steve knew what he wanted to hurt.
It made him do something he couldn't remember having done before-maybe he'd done it long ago, when he was one minute old. He tried to cry. Kittens taken from the newborn litter and kept all alone are immune to the pain of fire and will stand there with their whiskers crackling as the flames come ever nearer. He didn't have the lungs, he didn't have the ducts; the cobbled muscles of his naked belly-each of them hardened and bulged. But it didn't work out.
What he wanted to hurt had something to do with himself. Not himself now. But himself. Himself then.
He raised a hand to his eyes. "They're doing me all over the gaff," he said, just to delay it a moment or two. "They're doing me all over the gaff," he said, just to buy a little time.
It was spring: the season of comedy.
In comedy, in the end, all is forgiven. All obstacles are surmounted, all misunderstandings resolved. Everyone is gathered into the festive conclusion. Warped schemers, incorrigible pedants: they are banished. And everyone attends the nuptials of hope.