Chick put his hand to his forehead. How long had Alyssum been living with him? … Colin’s doublezoons were supposed to have helped him to marry her – but she wasn’t all that worried about getting married. She was content to wait – happy simply to be with him – but you can’t accept things like that from a woman – things like staying with you simply because she loves you. He loved her too. But how could he let her waste her time like that – especially now that she had given up her interest in Heartre … How could anyone fail to be interested in a man like Heartre? … A man capable of writing – and with what clarity! – anything on any subject whatsoever … Surely it would take Heartre less than a year to complete his Encyclopedia of Nausea. The Marchioness de Mauvoir would collaborate with him on this – and there would be some fabulous manuscripts. But between now and then he would have to find and save enough doublezoons to keep an account going with the bookseller. Chick hadn’t paid his income tax. But what he would have given them was much more useful to him in the form of a copy of We Always Closed Our Zips. Alyssum would have preferred Chick to use his doublezoons to pay his taxes, and had even suggested selling some of her own things so that he could do this. He’d said yes, and it had come to exactly the right price for binding We Always Closed Our Zips. Alyssum managed very well without her pearls.
He wondered whether to unlock the door again. She might be waiting behind it, listening for him to turn the key. But he didn’t think so. Her footsteps on the stairs echoed away like a woodpecker falling asleep. She could easily go back home to her parents and pick up her studies where she had left off. After all, she wouldn’t be far behind the others on her course … It’s easy to catch up on missed lectures … But Alyssum hadn’t done any work at all lately. She’d been too interested in Chick – in cooking things for him and ironing his tie. The taxes could be forgotten. Nobody’s ever heard of people coming to chase you out of your home because you haven’t paid your taxes! No, things like that don’t happen. You can give them a doublezoon on account, and then they leave you alone for a few more years. Does a man like Heartre bother to pay his taxes? He probably does – yet, after all, should one, from the moral point of view, pay one’s taxes so that, in return, one can have the right to be locked up because other people pay theirs to feed the police and senior civil servants? It’s a vicious circle that’s got to be broken – nobody should pay any more for a long, long time, and then all the collectors would die of consumption and there’d be no more wars.
Chick lifted the lid of his double-turntabled record-player and put on two different Jean Pulse Heartre records. He wanted to listen to them both at the same time so that new ideas could spring from the meeting of two old ones. He placed himself equidistantly between the two loud-speakers so that his head would be just at the spot where the idea barrier would break. Then he could automatically preserve the results of the impact.
The needles spat on the ends of the tails of the hollow snails, lodged themselves into the depths of the grooves, and Heartre’s double words began to ring through Chick’s brain. Sitting in his chair he looked out of the window and noticed smoke rising here and there above the roofs in huge blue spirals. Their undersides were red, as if it were the smoke from paper burning. He watched the red slowly but surely take over from the blue. The stereophonic collision of words in his head coincided with great flashes of light, opening up a field of repose to his deep fatigue that was like lush and new-mown moss in May.
55
The police commissergeant pulled his whistle from his pocket and used it to strike an enormous Peruvian gong which was hanging behind him. Tipped boots could be heard galloping across the floors above, followed by continuous crashes, and six of his best men-at-arms tobogganed down the pole and burst into his office.
They got up, smacked their backsides to get rid of the dust, sprang to attention and saluted.
‘Douglas!’ called the commissergeant.
‘Present!’ replied the first man-at-arms.
‘Douglas!’ repeated the commissergeant.
‘Present!’ replied the second.
And so the roll-call went on. The police commissergeant could hardly be expected to remember the first name of every man, and Douglas was a traditional and conventional enough overture for most of them.
‘Special mission!’ he ordered.
As one man, the six men-at-arms slapped their hands on their puttock bockets to show that they were equipped with their twelve-squirter equalizers.
‘And I personally am in command!’ emphasized the commissergeant.
He thumped on the gong with violence. The door opened and a secretary appeared.
‘I’m off,’ announced the commissergeant. ‘Special mission. Shorthandify please!’
The secretary took up her shorthand pad and pencil and crossed her legs in official taking-down position number six.
‘Collection of overdue taxes from Chick Esquire, following seizure of coinage,’ dictated her chief. ‘Smuggling contraband tobacco with serious indictment. Total, or at least partial, confiscation of goods, aggravated by breaking up of happy home.’
‘Got it!’ said the secretary.
‘On our way!’ ordered the police commissergeant. ‘Quick march!’
He stood up and went to the head of the squad whose twelve feet took off in a clumsy imitation of the flight of the waffle-cuckoo. The men were dressed in skin-tight black leather with silver breast-plates and head-hugging helmets of blackened steel, which went right down over the napes of their necks and protected their foreheads and temples. They all wore heavily tipped boots. The commissergeant wore similar gear, but in red leather, and two golden stars twinkled on each of his shoulders. The equalizers stood out in the puttock bockets of his acolytes. He held a little golden truncheon in his hand and there was a heavy golden grenade swinging from his belt. They went down the main staircase, and as the commissergeant’s hand shot up to the rim of his helmet the sentry at the bottom leapt into the saddle of his high horse which was clearly standing on its dignity. A special car was waiting at the door. The commissergeant sat alone at the back, and the six men-at-arms spread themselves out evenly on the projecting footplates – the two fattest on one side, and the four skinny ones on the other. The driver was also wearing black leather, but had no helmet. He put his foot down. The car had no wheels, but a million tough vibrating feet of a type that ensured that there would be no risk of scattered obstacles and lost property bursting the tyres. The feet snorted and stamped on the road and the driver took a sharp turn at the first fork. The passengers felt as if they were on the surfy crest of a breaking wave.
56
As she watched Colin disappear into the distance, Alyssum’s whole heart went out to him to say Good-bye. He loved Chloe so much and he was going out to look for a job because of her so that he could buy more flowers and kill the horrible monster that was eating her away inside. Colin’s broad shoulders were sloping slightly. He seemed so tired. His fair hair was no longer smartly brushed and combed like it used to be.
Chick could be so charming talking about one of Heartre’s books or explaining something about Heartre. It would be impossible for him to live without Heartre. It would never occur to him to think of looking for anything else – Heartre says everything for him that he would ever want to say. Heartre must be stopped from publishing that encyclopedia. It will be the death of Chick. He’ll steal – even murder a bookseller. Alyssum slowly started walking. Heartre spends all day in a gin palace, drinking and writing with people like himself who also sit there writing and drinking. They drink Sea Tea and High Spirits so that they don’t have to think what they’re writing about. People are always going in and out, stirring up their basic ideas. Then they fish out one or two from the depths without discarding the remainder, retain a little of each, and dilute. People absorb this kind of thing much more easily, women in particular, as they can’t stand anything pure. The road to the gin palace was not very long. Alyssum saw one of the waiters i
n a white jacket and yellow trousers serving a stuffed pig’s trotter to Randy Man-O’Queue, the New Zaziland Screwball champ, whose English promotions by Rabbi Ragwrath always have such excellent posters by H. H. Welnit-Joy. Instead of drinking, which he detested, he doted on spiced foods to give his neighbours a thirst. She went in. Jean Pulse Heartre, in his usual seat, was writing. There were lots of people and a soft buzz of voices. Through an everyday miracle – the kind that only happens on Bank Holidays – Alyssum saw an empty seat by the side of Jean Pulse and she sat down. She put her heavy bag on her knees and unzipped it. Over Jean Pulse’s shoulder she could see the heading on the sheet – Encyclopedia, Volume Nineteen. Timidly she put a hand on Jean Pulse’s arm. He stopped writing.
‘Have you got that far already?’ said Alyssum.
‘Yes,’ replied Jean Pulse. ‘Do you want a word with me?’
‘I’ve come to ask you not to publish it,’ she said.
‘That would be very hard,’ said Jean Pulse. ‘Everybody’s waiting for it.’
He took off his glasses, breathed on the lenses, and put them back on again. Now his eyes could not be seen.
‘Of course they are,’ said Alyssum. ‘I just meant that I wanted you to hold it up for a while.’
‘Oh,’ said Jean Pulse, ‘if that’s all you want, we’ll see what we can do.’
‘You’ll have to hold it up for about ten years,’ said Alyssum.
‘Really?’ said Jean Pulse.
‘Huhum,’ said Alyssum. ‘Ten years at least, I’m afraid. You know it’s far better to give people a chance to save up to buy it.’
‘It’s going to be very boring to read,’ said Jean Pulse Heartre, ‘because it’s already terribly boring to write. I’ve got shocking cramp in my left wrist simply through holding the paper down.’
‘You poor thing,’ said Alyssum. ‘I feel sorry for you.’
‘Because I’ve got pins and needles?’
‘No,’ said Alyssum. ‘Because you won’t hold up publication.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Because Chick spends all his money on buying everything you do – and he hasn’t got any money left.’
‘He’d be far better off buying something else,’ said Jean Pulse. ‘I never dream of buying any of my own books.’
‘But he likes what you write.’
‘He has the right to,’ said Jean Pulse. ‘He’s made his choice.’
‘I think he’s too committed,’ said Alyssum. ‘I made a choice too, but I’m free now because he doesn’t want me to live with him any more. So I’m going to kill you because you won’t postpone publication.’
‘But you’ll take away my only means of existence,’ said Jean Pulse. ‘How do you think I’m going to get my royalties if I’m dead?’
‘That’s your funeral,’ said Alyssum. ‘I can’t be expected to take everything into consideration since the thing I want to do more than anything is to kill you.’
‘Don’t you realize that I can’t accept that kind of argument?’ asked Jean Pulse Heartre.
‘Oh, I do,’ said Alyssum. She opened her bag and whipped out Chick’s heart-snatcher that she’d taken from the drawer in his desk several days previously.
‘Would you mind undoing your collar?’ she asked.
‘Listen,’ said Jean Pulse, taking off his glasses, ‘this whole business is idiotic.’
He unbuttoned his collar. Alyssum gathered all her strength together and, with a firm gesture, plunged the heart-snatcher into Heartre’s bosom. He stared at her, died very quickly, and gave one last startled look when he saw that his heart was shaped like a tetrahedron. Alyssum turned very pale. Jean Pulse Heartre was dead now and the tea was getting cold. She took the manuscript of the Encyclopedia and tore it up. A waiter came and wiped up the blood and all the mess it was making mixed with the ink from Heartre’s pen on the little square table-top. She tipped the waiter, released both prongs of the heart-snatcher, and Heartre’s heart tumbled out on to the table. She closed up the gleaming instrument again and put it back in her bag. Then she went out into the street, holding the box of matches that she had taken from Heartre’s pocket.
57
She looked round. Thick black smoke was filling the shop window and people in the street were beginning to notice. She had had to use three matches before she could get the fire started. Heartre’s books were far too tough to let themselves be consumed easily. The bookseller was sprawled out under his counter. His heart, which was by his side, was beginning to burn with a black flame, and parabolic sprays of boiling blood were already spouting from it. The first two bookshops, three hundred yards behind her, were in flames, crackling, snorting, rumbling, and their owners were dead. Everyone who had sold books to Chick was going to die in the same way, and their bookshops would burn. Alyssum was running and weeping, remembering Jean Pulse Heartre’s eyes when he had seen his own heart. She hadn’t meant to kill him in the first place – only to save Chick from the dreadful disaster that was slowly mounting up all round him. They were all in league against Chick – and they all wanted to rob him of his money. They preyed on his Pulse-Heartrian passion, sold him useless old rags and slobbery pipes, and they deserved everything that was coming to them. On her left she saw a window full of paperbacks. She stopped, took a deep breath, and went in. The bookseller went up to her.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked.
‘Have you anything by Heartre?’ said Alyssum.
‘Of course,’ said the bookseller. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t show you any association items at the moment. They’re all reserved for a very special customer.’
‘You mean Chick?’ said Alyssum.
‘Yes,’ replied the bookseller, ‘I think that’s his name.’
‘He won’t be buying anything from you any more,’ said Alyssum.
She went closer to him and dropped her handkerchief. The bookseller, bones creaking, bent down to pick it up for her and with a rapid movement she stuck the heart-snatcher in his back. She was trembling and weeping as she did it. He fell, face downwards. She did not dare pick up her handkerchief as his fingers were clenched round it. The heart-snatcher sprang back with the bookseller’s heart, very small and very pink, between its prongs. She released them and the heart rolled to the side of its bookseller. She would have to hurry. She grabbed a pile of old papers, set light to them, and flung them under the counter. Then she threw more newspapers on top, piling into the flames a dozen James Bonds from the nearest shelf. The flames licked over the books, warmly, eagerly, lovingly, sadistically. The wood of the counter smoked and cracked. Clouds of smoke filled the shop. Alyssum knocked a last shelf of books into the fire and crept out on tip-toe. She turned round the notice on the door to read Closed so that nobody would go in, and started running again. Her eyes were prickling and her hair smelt of smoke. She ran on and the tears had only a short journey down her cheeks now as the wind dried them straight away. She was getting close to Chick’s street. There were only two or three more serious bookshops left, and the others held no danger for him. She looked round before going into the next one. Far behind her fat columns of smoke could be seen rising in the sky, with people below them hurrying to watch the complicated snakes and ladders of the Phyghre Brigade being played amongst the flames. Their big white engines shrieked past in the street as she closed the door. Her eyes followed them through the glass, and the bookseller went up to her asking if he could help her.
58
‘You,’ said the police commissergeant, ‘stay there, on the right of the door. And you, Douglas,’ he went on, turning to the second fat policeman-at-arms, ‘stay on the left. And don’t let anyone in.’
The two designated policemen-at-arms grabbed their equalizers, letting their right hands drop back along their right thighs, the nozzles pointing to their knees, in the regulation position. They adjusted the chinstraps of their helmets under their double chins, one of which overlapped at the front, and one at the back. The commissergeant went in, followed b
y the four skinny policemen-at-arms. Once again he posted one on each side of the door with orders to let nobody go out. He went up the stairs, followed by the two remaining skinny ones. They were very much alike, with sullen, scowling complexions, black eyes and thin lips.
59
Chick turned off the record-player while he changed the two records that he had just listened to simultaneously right through. As he was choosing some more from another series of lectures, he found a photo of Alyssum that he thought he had lost under one of the records. It was a three-quarter portrait in soft melting light. It seemed as if the photographer must have set up a lamp behind her to sprinkle sunshine into the silhouette of her hair. He changed the records and kept the photo in his hand. Glancing out of the window he noticed that new columns of smoke were rising, much closer now. He would listen to these two records and then go down for a chat with the bookseller next door. He sat down, held the photo with both hands before his eyes, looking at it more and more closely. It reminded him of Heartre. Little by little, Alyssum’s features gave way to Heartre’s, and he smiled at Chick. Of course he would dedicate anything he liked for him. Footsteps were coming up the stairs. He listened. There was a thudding, thumping and banging on the door. He put down the photo, stopped the record-player and went to see who it was. Standing there he saw the black leather uniform of one of the policemen-at-arms, then the second and, last but by no means least, the commissergeant in red. Fleeting reflections from the twilight of the landing were slithering over his black helmet.