Читать книгу Clear: A Transparent Novel - Nicola Barker - Страница 11

Oh shit.

Oh SHIT!

It’s 2 a.m. I’m stewing in the bath having just briefly recounted – to a slightly-stoned Solomon – the perplexing tale of Aphra’s pudenda, when it comes back to me in a flash – I suddenly remember.

I remember where I saw her. I actually remember Aphra!

Now hold on a second…hold on…

So it’s a ludicrously huge bathroom (to set the scene), made up, in essence, of the entire attic area. There’s a sloping roof, a wooden floor, a free-standing bath and a free-standing shower. Solomon is sitting in his favourite, ancient, red leather armchair, tapping his boot to the erratic beats of Wayne Shorter’s post-bebop masterpiece, Juju, smoking weed, sipping Rooibos tea, encircled by Dobermans (I’m uncertain of the collective noun here – Dobermen? Dobermens? – but suffice to say, that there are three of these viciously angular, prick-eared bastards, which – in my humble opinion – is three too-damn-many. Especially when I’m in the buff and they haven’t actually eaten since 8 a.m. yesterday).

Solomon is currently (but of course) holding royally forth on his current subject of choice: David Blaine (seems like this canny illusionist is cheerfully perching on the tip of everybody’s tongue in this town right now).

‘You honestly think Blaine wants to be Christ?’ he asks, snorting derisively (in caustic response to something utterly uncontentious which I just idly tossed into the discussion-pot), ‘but you’re barking up the wrong tree entirely, Adie. Blaine doesn’t want to be Christ, he wants to be black.’

‘But what about…?’

‘He wants to be a brother.’ Solomon marches defiantly on, ‘That’s why he invented “street magic”, don’t you see? He wants to be “down”, yeah? He wants to be…’ (Solomon performs a satirical hand gesture) ‘where it’s at. Most fundamentally,’ he continues, ‘he wants to be the stranger in the room, the “unknown quantity”. He wants to be the mystery, the alien, the refugee…Because that’s what blackness denotes in this country, and in America, for that matter…’

Even I (full as my mind is of Aphra, and Shorter’s maddeningly persistent sax, which is rather like having an irate wasp lodged inside your alimentary canal) can’t let this pass.

‘Well I’ve rarely seen,’ I state provocatively, ‘so many people, from such diverse ethnic backgrounds, in such constant attendance at a single, live event, ever. (Even En Vogue at the Hammersmith Apollo, 1993.) ‘And I think – by and large – that they’ve mostly come to show their support, not to mock or to denigrate. If they sense a fraud or a wannabe, then they’re certainly not making any big fuss about it…’

Solomon waves me away. ‘We natives love a spectacle,’ he opines grandly. ‘We aren’t threatened by the theatre of life. Or by the pain of it, either. We embrace all that. Only Whitey shies away from the essentials. Whitey needs to live in his box, see? To make his point – to feel secure – he builds his own prison. And he fashions it with such apparent care, such deliberation – so fucking painstakingly – but then he forgets to include the windows, he forgets to include the doors. He builds these constructs out of fear, Adie, and then tries to make everybody else live inside of them. We Melanic¹ Peoples are different. We build our palaces out of language and music, sex and chaos. These palaces have no ceilings and they have no walls. The White Man may’ve caged our bodies, ruined our economies and appropriated our cultures, but our souls remain unencumbered and our spirits, vibrant. More than almost anything, the White Man loathes vibrancy…’

‘Guff,’ I say, and fart in the water. A neat row of bubbles rises to the surface.

‘Why so needlessly oppositional, Massa?’ Solomon enquires tenderly. ‘I mean why allow yourself to be restricted by that intellectually reductive configuration of either/or? It’s so pale, so obvious, so horribly predictable…’

‘Fuck off!’ I glug (over a frantic Elvin Jones drum solo), then sink down even lower in the water and drape my face with a flannel.

Five seconds ‘silence’.

Solomon inhales on his spliff, then exhales, with a little cough.

I pull the facecloth off.

‘I remembered,’ I said, ‘while you were talking just now, where it was that I saw Aphra before…’

‘Aphra,’ Solomon muses, ‘Aphrah. “Declare ye it not at Gath, Weep ye not at all; In the House of Aphrah, roll thyself in the dust.”’

I sit up (the water sloshes), ‘What?!’

Solomon remains impassive, ‘Micah, 1:10.’

‘The House of Aphrah?’

He nods, ‘In Hebrew, the House of Dust, no less.’ (Does this dude have a well-manicured afro-cockney finger in every pie?)

He sips his tea. ‘So where?’ he asks.

I lie back down, musing, spreading the flannel across my chest. ‘Remember Day Five or Six,’ I say, ‘when I met that angry girl with the miniskirt and the terrible hair?’

‘No,’ Solomon says.

‘The girl,’ I continue, ‘with the corkscrew perm, who slipped on a stray tomato and nearly twisted her ankle?’

‘Ah,’ Solomon exhales.

‘Monday night. About twelve o’clock. There’s this nasty half-riot under way and we’re right in the middle of it. The police have just turned up…’

‘I remember.’ Solomon sounds very bored.

‘And I grab this girl and take her up the back exit…’

Solomon snorts.

‘Of the bridge, you twat. The stairs out the back. And we got to that cosy little corner, halfway up…’

‘Spare me the gory details,’ Solomon groans.

‘But that’s the point,’ I expostulate crossly. ‘There were none. Things were just starting to get nice and steamy, up against that wall – she had her tongue down my throat, I had my hands up her skirt…when suddenly the girl freezes on me.’

Solomon doesn’t look nearly as astonished by this revelation as I think he perhaps should. ‘Halitosis?’ he ponders ruminatively.

I scowl.

‘Faulty technique?’

‘Thanks,’ I deadpan.

‘Someone’s coming?’ he finally offers (rather more helpfully), then ruins the effect by gently adding, ‘Prematurely?’

‘Yes,’ I nod (pointedly ignoring the ejaculatory slur). ‘Another woman. And instead of just walking by, like most people would, this other woman pauses and then whispers…’

I pause myself, as I recollect (then I digress), ‘I mean obviously I have my back to her, and the girl has hers against the wall, so she can see her better. But we’re in a clinch…’

Solomon slowly rotates his hand to move me on.

‘But when she hears a voice,’ I continue (ignoring him), ‘she pulls away slightly, opens her eyes, and she sees this other girl. This woman. And this woman in standing there, smiling, like something from Fatal Attraction…’

‘And she says?’ (Solomon obviously finds the film reference a step too far.)

‘And she taps me on the shoulder and she says, “You. In Bow. The VD Clinic. Six o’clock. Last Tuesday evening.”’

Solomon snorts so hard that he spills ash on his trousers.

‘Fuck,’ he curses, and quickly taps it off.

‘But that was her,’ I say, ‘that was Aphra. I turned round and I saw her, from the back, retreating. But it was definitely her. I remember her hair, and her shoes. These strange green shoes. The noise they made…’

Even Solomon is perplexed by this story. ‘But why’d she want to do that?’ he asks. ‘Out of sheer mischief, you think?’

I scratch at my neck for a moment, saying nothing.

‘I mean you said she had an axe to grind…,’ Solomon continues musing. ‘When she approached you today she called you a whore –’

‘No,’ I interrupt, ‘she called me a pimp. Then she claimed that I was using Blaine to pimp for me…,’ I pause. ‘It was all a little confused, actually.’

‘Argh, pure semantics,’ he waves me away.

‘Although I suppose,’ I start off nervously, ‘I mean, I suppose she might’ve said it because…’

I clear my throat, ‘Because it was true.’

It takes Solomon a moment to catch up, but when he does, he starts, ‘What?! You got yourself cock rot, Massa?’

‘Leave off! I had an appointment. Amanda – three exes ago – got chlamydia. She said I needed to get a checkup. But I’m clear, thank you very much.’

Solomon’s still perplexed. ‘But how on earth did she know?’

As Solomon speaks, one of his three Dobermans stands up, stretches, sniffs the air, trots over to the bath, dips its head down and laps at my water.

‘The million dollar question,’ I say, trying to push the dog away with my toe. The dog lifts its head and growls at my foot.

Okay.

The foot rapidly retreats.

Solomon clicks his fingers and the dog, Jax (who completes the foul triumvirate with Bud and Ivor), trots mechanically back to his side again.

Man. How’d he do that?

‘You think she’s following you?’ he asks, glancing towards the window (Solomon’s had three girl stalkers in his time, one of whom subsequently had a successful career in children’s TV presenting. See? Even his freak-followers are interesting).

‘What else to think?’ I say.

‘You believe she actually had a migraine?’ he asks.

I pause for a second, mouth slightly ajar –

Uh-oh –

Head-fuck time…

‘She didn’t!’ Solomon jumps in, roaring with glee, slapping his thigh. ‘She just Ian McEwaned you, man, and you’re still none the wiser!’²

(He seems indecently delighted by this thought.)

But, fuck…

My mind is racing.

And the porter? Even the porter? Was he…?

Nah!

‘No,’ I say, ‘I really think she was sick. I honestly do. She seemed sick. She was sick. She smelled sick.’

I remember the smell. Like rotten milk mixed with cheap lager.

‘And so you get her home, and she’s sick, like you say. And then you leave the room, and she takes off her skirt…’

Yeah. Solomon’s recall seems disturbingly on point this evening.

‘Then the sister comes home, or the friend…’ he chortles.

I sit up, panicked.

‘What? You think they set me up? You think they’re planning to mess with me in some legitimately fucked-up, McEwan-like way?’

‘Blackmail,’ Solomon sniggers, ‘or worse.’

‘I gave her my phone number…’

Solomon throws up his hands, ecstatically. ‘But of course you did, Massa. Of course you did.’

I stare at him, in silence, while the genius McCoy Tyner hammers away discordantly on his crazy, plinky-plonk piano.

‘Karma.’ Solomon grins, taking a last, long draw on his spliff and then leaning forward and proffering it to me. ‘Pure, undiluted, genius karma.’

Wow. Thank God that album’s over.

No matter what your views happen to be on the subject (love him or loathe him etc), there’s still no escaping this one essential thing (no, I’m not evading the issue, because this is the issue, see?): it’s like a bloody 24-hour party down here. And everyone’s invited – the famous, the infamous, the rich, the poor, the pretty, the ugly, the lovers, the haters. Everybody’s invited. Seriously. And everybody’s equal; they simply wouldn’t dream of turning you away. Because they want you, no matter what, to be a part of the spectacle.

It’s an event. It’s a happening. It’s fluid – like an organism. It has integrity, it flows, it’s vital and screwed up, and ridiculous and ongoing…

It’s a pure, fucking blast (I mean let’s just shelve the moral whys and the wherefores for one moment, shall we?), because man, what a backdrop! Tower Bridge! The Pool of London! I know I keep harping on about it, but it really is astonishing – like a picture postcard suddenly come to life. Almost as though (and, yes, hyperbole is my middle name, but a person needs to get excited about this shit sometimes, don’t they?) something which was previously virtually entombed in its own history (and significance and tradition; conserved, mothballed, mummified) has suddenly been reinvested with this incredible immediacy.

The spectacle of Blaine (hanging there, quietly, on his workaday green crane) has made this bridge come alive again (and the water, even, damn him – although the water, in my opinion, was doing just fine on its own). Even the sunset. The fucking sunset. Even that.

This preposterous magician (Jesus Christ! How’d he do this trick?) has reanimated the vista.

Everybody’s feeling it. The lovers are loving it. The angry people are getting angrier (I mean he’s a foreigner, a fraud, an affront, a squatter, eh? How dare he take on this noble landmark – out of his depth? Out of his depth?! – and then casually twist it around him like it’s his own private ampitheatre?).

Fact is, it almost seems like the quieter he gets, the more vibrant his surroundings grow. His weakness (his ‘hunger’) kind of vivifies the whole area.

Yup.

So where’s this strange, new N-R-G coming from, exactly? Us? Him? Is it (God forgive me), could it possibly be: pure, undiluted, honest-to-goodness charisma?

Shhiiit!

Hat’s off to the geezer, I say. Because I didn’t think it could be done. No, seriously…I really didn’t (I mean what is this now? Day 10?).

How’d he do it (any clues out there?)?

Number 1 (in my opinion): Passivity. The dude just sits (this part comes from him). Number 2:

Raw emotion (and this is our contribution). Love and hatred. Empathy and bile. Fury and benevolence (a great, uncontrollable fucking wave of reaction), and all – so far as I can tell – in fairly equal measure. The stuff of life, no less. The stuff of art and cinema and fiction. The stuff of all great narrative – comedy, horror, farce, tragedy…

It’s the whole package (Blaine is merely the prompt, or the twist which makes the plot start moving).

And we’re bringing it along. We’re getting all Dickensian again, all Rabelaisian, all ‘how’s yer father’. We’re reconnecting to a long social history of public spite (and – credit where credit’s due – public adoration).

‘Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be…’

British. So fuck you, right?!

Jeez.

Let’s get back to the vista, shall we?

Now here’s the thing…(if you haven’t come along yet, or if you’re unfamiliar with these surroundings – Unfamiliar?! Where’ve you been buried all these years? – or if you’re still not quite following). You know how it is, sometimes, when you see the most beautiful flower in the world – or girl, for that matter, or scene, or view, even – and you’re so drawn to it – or her – that you feel this incredible urge to pull closer: you want to touch, lick, smell…But – as you’ll invariably discover – the most beautiful is rarely the most aromatic, or the most smooth, or the most tasty, or the most interesting? Yeah? It’s just the most beautiful. And that’s simply that.

Uh…

Well not any more. No siree. Not here. This bridge is starting to twitch in its supports, whistle in its masonry and creak in its hinges. Like Frankenstein’s Monster, it’s starting to thud and gag and shudder and breathe again. It is! It is! I swear to God.

So let’s give that hype-crazy, quick-fingered New Yorker his due: Blaine has altered the dynamic of this spot (don’t know if he actually meant to; don’t know if it’ll last for ever – I seriously doubt it, somehow…), and that’s a kind of magic there’s no palpable explanation for. You can’t just hire the video and watch it all in slo-mo (look for the sleight of hand, the cut in the flow). Nope. You simply have to be there. It’s subtle. It’s perplexing. It’s pretty fucking intangible. It’s all (a-hem) in the ‘atmosphere’.

(Phew. Why’s my head suddenly filled with this over-powering vision of that smug SOB Solomon rubbing his hands together, rocking back on his heels and basically pissing his damn pants at my naive enthusiasm. Huh?)

Okay. Enough of the big spiel, the heavy sell…Let’s get down to brass tacks. Let’s hone in on the mechanics of the thing. Let’s try to get to grips with all those deeply perplexing anthropological and behavioural niceties, yeah?

Yeah?