The Gone-Away World

  And Old Man Lubitsch replied that these were, for the most part, excellent questions. He answered them at some length, with considerable patience and exactness, so that it emerged that Gonzo, much-loved younger son, might well eat cake; was not responsible; must indeed continue to go to school; would not get another brother or alas a puppy, but was on the plus side not in danger of being shot; need not give his life over to the business of horrible revenge; and could indeed have Marcus’s hat. The question “Why?” Old Man Lubitsch deferred to another day (along with the discussion of pain and mortality, to which he professed himself at this moment unequal, saying that he did not know for certain and would therefore be required by the dialogue to speculate on Marcus’s feelings at the instant of his death). And to these good answers he added that none of them would ever be able to replace Marcus, and should never seek to do so—but that Gonzo must, while knowing that, and like all of them, try to make new friends.

  Gonzo stares across the sandpit. It is a wasteland. He can see no one he wants to play with. If he cannot find a friend, he will start to cry again. His grief will catch up with him. It stalks him, jumps on him in idle moments. Gonzo already has puffy cheeks and raw, red eyes. Hurriedly, he takes his father’s advice.

  He makes a new friend.

  A boy (of course) his own age. Smaller. As alone as he is. Someone to share his burdens, racked—as children can be, for no discrete reason—with dreadful sadness. Cautious, as Marcus urged Gonzo to be from time to time, in curious contradiction of his own bold (careless?) fate. Someone to watch Gonzo’s back. We settle down to play, and it emerges that I am not quite as good at this as he is but good enough to keep him on his toes. In fact, this is almost definitive of me: in all the areas where Gonzo wishes to excel, I am just close enough behind to push him harder. In those he chooses to ignore, I am often quite talented. I am his foil. His sidekick. His Jiminy Cricket. Someone who will always take the blame, carry the can, own up, speak the truth, pay attention in class. A repository for dull virtues and a haven in times of trouble. Judicious, clever and sensible where he is headlong, intuitive and rash. Gonzo splits himself down the middle, and knows that he will never be alone again.

  This sandpit is not where we met. It is where I was born—or, rather, made. I am Gonzo’s invisible companion, his friend in adversity, coconspirator in mischief, refuge in dismay. Inseparable, complementary, we made our way and fought each other’s battles and offered a shoulder to cry on or a word of advice in difficult times. I am the man he chose, at every turn, not to be, though sometimes he pillaged me for aid and assistance, when sheer bravado and brilliant improvisation were not enough. And it occurs to me: how is this different from how it was a week ago? Everything I remember is true—except for the very edges of Gonzo’s imagined history of me, like the house on Aggerdean Bluff and the parents I never had—and everything is false. And Leah . . . Leah is true too, up to a point. But I won her for Gonzo, it seems—and if I am honest, he saw her first; proposed to her while I was unconscious. A truly headlong moment. And maybe she loved him before she loved me. It must have come as a terrible shock to him to turn and find me there beside him in Station 9, the secret keeper of his dreams made real, his minority opinions given life. You don’t expect to have to compete with yourself quite so directly. And yet that was the first time we had ever been in full agreement. Protect Jim. Do the job. Save the world.

  The moment when it happened, that ghastly plink and everything gone awry. Cold, terrible liquid rained down on us, demanding instruction, finding Gonzo’s fractured noosphere, his revisions and indecisions resolved by never making a serious choice—whichever option he did not like, he gave away. On one side the hero, the fearless man of action; on the other . . . me: second fiddle, weedy sidekick, junior scout—and every so often older, wiser head. We were deluged together in the raw, unbalanced Stuff of the universe. Inevitable consequence:

  My own little reification.

  I was made flesh, and in the process taken from him. I was never supposed to be real. How terrifying to confide your every doubt to an imaginary companion, to bequeath to him every alternative, and then one day to turn and see him standing before you. Gonzo must be feeling so hollow inside, with me spun out and separated from him. It must be quiet and empty in there.

  And that, of course, is how I survived being shot. Freshly minted, new, I wasn’t real enough to die.

  I HAVE FALLEN to my knees, rather self-consciously, because it seemed appropriate. Now I am wondering why. The sand is giving up its dew to my trousers, and some of it has filtered through the fabric and is making my skin itch. I wonder whether there are sand mites. The teenagers are watching with great interest. In the narrative logic of men collapsing to the ground in transports of horror, I should now throw back my head and scream at the top of my voice, a bellowing of pain and inconsolable rage. They peer at me with hopeful anticipation.

  I get up, and something falls or scuttles down my left leg. I shake it. I leave.

  There’s a general feeling among my audience that I haven’t delivered on my early promise. Silence and a minor palsy afflicting one lower limb do not constitute a full performance. They would have liked to see some groaning, possibly some violent fitting, and a finale involving invisible demons and shouted profanity culminating in a drug-induced coma. With a sharply critical air, they go back to assessing one another for possible sex.

  I walk to Packlehyde Street, and pass through the streetlamp light to the Lubitsch house. And then, before I can think better of it, I bang on the door.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The mathematics of love;

  bees of good and evil;

  Gonzo’s injuries.

  I HAVE NOT considered the time of day, or night. The house is not wakeful. I stand between the two brass lanterns outside the Lubitsch storm porch and I can hear the hall clock through the door, and I realise that it is after midnight. They will assume some emergency. I should come back tomorrow. On the other hand, I have already woken them. I can hear Ma Lubitsch’s careful, full-footed tread on the stairs, and behind her the tango patter of Gonzo’s father. Old Man Lubitsch wears slender, suede-bottomed slippers, neat around his small feet. His wife wears sandals, even in winter, because her feet get too hot in the furry boots her son brought from the city that first winter home from Jarndice. If the weather is cold enough that she has to cover up, she wears woollen socks, and on each foot the thong of the sandal pulls the fabric tight over her (enormous) big toe. Socks which are not well made will shortly tear at the seam or fray over the edge of her nails, and often she has to take a purchased sock and graft onto it a lower section of her own manufacture, so that from the ankle upward she wears a grey, ho-hum sort of sock, but from there on down she is a riot of colour, wool from a dozen tail ends and unravelling jumpers pressed into service.

  Either she has become a tad more frail this year or the season has been harsh, because this is what I see as the door opens a crack: a foot like a loaf of bread in a Father Christmas costume, and behind it another with purple toes and chartreuse heel. The brass lanterns come on, and a deep, suspicious voice says “Yes?” except it is a more like a “Eeyehh-iss?” and I realise that I am too ashamed to lift my eyes. Ashamed about what, I do not know; but the fact that I exist at all must surely be a horror to them, and yet here I am seeking something from them, be it sympathy or support or even information about Gonzo and his intentions, and these things I have no right to ask. But then again this is my refuge in time of trouble. Nowhere else but here did I ever get disinfectant on my grazes or buttered toast after falling in the creek. I cannot help it if I am a monster. This is my home.

  “Who is that?” Ma Lubitsch says insistently. “My husband is here,” she adds, in case I am contemplating an attack upon her virtue. “He has arranged to defend me!” And I am quite sure that he has, by simple force or some baroque design. Perhaps the brass lamps are wired to the electrical main, and he can cause lightning to arc between them.
Perhaps he has just obtained a shotgun. These are troubled times, and Cricklewood Cove has surely seen her share of marauders and the rest.

  Hangdog, I linger, head down. Obviously I must flee—this was a mistake. In fact, the matter of my continued presence bears examination. The way lies open behind me for an inglorious bolt into the dark, surely less ghastly than saying the words out loud to these people: I am the product of your son’s mourning, all grown up, and tried to make off with his wife, shot and yet still crawling home to haunt him and extract a reckoning, of whatever sort (and that, now that I think about it, is something I should consider in the light of recent revelations). Infinitely less unpleasant to blurt out some apology, wrong house, so sorry, bit drunk, and vanish for ever. Perhaps I could go and live with the Found Thousand, among my own kind. Perhaps they have room for a confused man with a fictional past.

  But something has happened to my feet. They are glued to the ground. Part of Old Man Lubitsch’s home defence system, perhaps, shortly to be followed, unless I explain myself sharpish, with a bolt of purging electrical fire and a sudden jolt of heat as I am turned to vapour. And yet I am still here. I can lift one foot. I can lift the other. I can in fact jump up and down. (Oh, marvellous. I am continuing my lunatic act, this time for the benefit of Gonzo’s parents. Ideal.) But backwards, it seems, I cannot go. Or no, not cannot, but will not. And that is an absolutely extraordinary idea. I will not go back into the dark. I will raise my head. I will be seen.

  And then I have been seen. I am looking into the face of Old Man Lubitsch as he elbows his way around his wife (a task requiring both arms), and it is hard to say which of us is more amazed.

  Gonzo’s father has not aged so much as he has acquired topography. His skin is folded, refolded, counterfolded, until it is almost smooth. Deep subduction lines have appeared around his mouth and eyes. His face is all over rock and water, with a fine spray of lichens on the lower slopes, and I observe him as he does me. His eyes widen, then contract, then narrow: recognition, confusion, suspicion. Then, as I flinch back, and half-turn to escape his dismissal, his gnarly arm shoots out and fingers tested by generations of bees clamp around my wrist. His hand stays me, then draws back; dabs at me once, twice, ever upward as if gathering pollen; finally folds around my shoulder to reposition me. He pulls me closer to the brass lamp on the left, then turns me away again for the other aspect. Unabashed, he reaches up and squashes my cheeks, then hauls down hard upon my shoulders so that I must bend my knees or lift him from the ground, and when I do bend, he touches my face as if sculpting it, to and fro. His skin is like brown paper. At last he steps back, mission accomplished, and still he has no idea what to think or what to do. He mutters to his wife: Ul-li-ye-na? And I realise it is her name; Yelena Lubitsch. She huffs at him, “Silly man,” and steps aside.

  “Come in,” Ma Lubitsch says. She does not ask why I am here or who I am. Whatever else, I am a young man in a bad place, and the current has thrown me up upon her strand. Yelena Lubitsch does not shirk the responsibilities of such occurrences—and nor yet does she base her decisions upon swift examinations on doorsteps, between swinging brass lamps, in the middle of the night. “Come in,” she says again, more forcefully because I am standing with my mouth open like a dog unsure whether he wants to be in the garden or by the fire, and without the sense to draw conclusions from the gathering clouds. And finally, when I still stand there, she makes a “tcha” sound which I recognise as meaning that all men are idiots, and all young men most especially so (and God has cursed her with a husband eternally young), and she plucks at my sleeve with a fraction of her strength, and brings me firmly across the threshold into her house. There’s a new smell, like honey and coal and furniture polish. Not unpleasant, but strong.

  “Boil the kettle,” she says, and it’s only when I look round and find that Old Man Lubitsch has already gone that I realise she is talking to me.

  THE OLD IRON KETTLE is where I remember, hanging like a benevolent bat above the stove. This kettle is a miracle provider, an endless source of cooking water, but also bathwater, medical water and when necessary veterinary water as well. At the same time it is a peril. Not a big peril, but a deceptive and painful peril nonetheless. There’s nowhere in Ma Lubitsch’s kitchen to cool it down. It sits on the stove when it’s being used, and it goes back on the hook when it’s dry, and as a consequence there is a kettle code relating to procedures for taking it down again without getting burned. This code is not written. It is a part of the landscape. I follow the code without thinking.

  First, check there are no toys, animals or small persons underfoot. Check your back, so that no one blunders into you. Second, remove from the hidden hook beside the stove the raggedy towel (doublestitched and padded with sand and clay) which hangs there. Wrap the towel around your hand. Third, reach up and test the weight of the kettle, in case some tomfool (Gonzo, probably) has hung it up with water in it. Repeat step one, then bring the kettle down and, without setting it on the stove because cold water poured onto the iron base will spit if it is hot, fill it from the tap. Note: do not overfill it so that the resulting cauldron is beyond your strength. Fourth, lift it back onto the stove. Finally, replace the raggedy towel on its hook so that the next user knows where to find it.

  Job done, I turn and find Ma Lubitsch watching, eyes shadowed by the high line of her cheeks. I notice that even her forehead is fat.

  Ma Lubitsch says “Hnuh” or “Nyuh” to indicate that I have not offended against the kettle code. Then she shoos me out of the sacred space into the hall and waves at the living room, where her husband has lit a fire in the grate and is waiting for me. I hesitate. She shoos me again and commences her three-point turn.

  WE HAVE SAT in silence. We have considered one another, and the strange portents that we are. We have done all the hesitating we can do. And so I have simply asked about Gonzo, and have they seen him lately, and Old Man Lubitsch sighs and nods and scents the storm in the wind. Or has been scenting it for days.

  “They came together,” Old Man Lubitsch says. “Gonzo and Leah. Yelena was delighted. They came out of the blue, and they stayed in the guest room. Why? I always have to ask why. Were they pregnant? They didn’t need money, surely. Looking for a house? But no, not that either. He had a new job, he said. A special job. He was going to make the world a better place. A safe place. He was very proud. But underneath he was something else. Something else.”

  Firelight draws zigzags across the ridges on Old Man Lubitsch’s face. He expands and contracts with the flames. The room smells of pine smoke.

  “Gonzo is not a diplomat. He cannot say one thing and think another thing. He cannot lie to his mother because he loves her, and he cannot lie to me because—I’m not saying he doesn’t love me, it’s just different between mothers and sons and fathers and sons—because I am an old fart with sharp eyes and he doesn’t have the practice. And he was lying with every part of him. Lying like shouting. Everything is okay, everything is wonderful. Look how happy I am, look how I am at ease. Bah.” Old Man Lubitsch picks up the poker and pokes. He starts quite gently, shunting one stray log farther from the hearthrug. The log is round and bent like a banana, so each time he rolls it over, it rolls back again. Old Man Lubitsch pushes harder. The poker slips, the log hesitates, then rolls back, and without warning he is stabbing at it, bashing it, and the fire crackles and sparks alarmingly. I wait quietly until he stops and puts the poker back on the stand. Old Man Lubitsch goes on.

  “He had a bandage on his arm. Around the edge it was grubby. An old bandage. Bruises and burns. Leah went to take it off. Tender, the way that she is. He was angry. He was so angry, and afraid, and ashamed.” Gonzo’s father broods. “Gonzo is a good man. We laid down the rules to him when he was a child: we told him what men do and what they do not and he understood. Marcus . . .” Old Man Lubitsch stutters on the unfamiliar name. “Marcus also. He taught his brother what it is to be the right kind of man. So there was no violence in his anger. It?
??s not that he was restraining himself, you understand? It is not in him to lash out, to hit someone dear to him.” And in a funny way this is true, although there are scars on my chest to make me feel different, however the Sandpit of Truth has changed my perspective on all that with the shooting and the kicking me from a truck at speed. “So Gonzo had this rage, this horror, and he did not know what to do with it. I saw it only in his mouth. He was so still, so calm, but his mouth gave him away. I thought he would vomit, or scream. He just sat there, absolutely stiff in his chair—that chair”—and here Old Man Lubitsch indicates a very ordinary lounger with velour cushions which shows no evidence of being a place of trauma—“and he asked her quietly please not to do that right now. She took her hands away so fast . . . I wished he had shouted. It would have been easier. The bandage was quite old. She had tried before. She does not know why he refuses. How was he hurt? Was he burned? Cut? What is this injury, and what does it mean to him? It hurts her, and she cannot ask. She can only offer herself, as she always does, and be refused, and absorb it and try again. I think, eventually, it will kill her.