I walk past each of the women. I am smelling them, testing their odour. I am not interested in their appearance. The first woman smells of heroin—was this what my father stank of?—and the abrasive caustic smell is unappealing. The second woman smells of decaying flesh. I know at once that she is dying. The third woman’s odour is soft and appealing; she is young. But when I look at her she is startled by my expression and quickly walks off to join the others. I approach the fourth. In a hard cockney accent, almost comical in its television authenticity, she asks me if I have missed the last train. I can smell semen in her mouth, onion, KFC. The first woman yells out to her, Watch him, love. She looks at me, confused. I stand still and wait. She walks off to join the other women. They splinter and begin their pacing, except for the first woman, who keeps looking at me. I turn and keep walking. I hear her furiously tell me to fuck off.
I am approaching the intersection of Old Brompton Road when I first smell her. She has her back straight against the side wall of the off-licence, and is in the shadows, so I can’t see her. But her odour is unique. I can smell woman on her: a cheap astringent perfume and something softer, sweeter, the fine dust of talcum powder. But she also smells like a child. I haven’t ever been so intoxicated by a fragrance. It reminds me of being in the showers after gym, at school; a fresh pungent scent. I can also smell her fear. It excites me.
She emerges from the shadows. She is very young, with mocha skin and long shining black hair. Her lips are coloured a ludicrous scarlet that distorts her fine small face. You want fuck? She stammers over the coarse words. I nod and she points through into the alley. Twenty pounds. She blurts out the amount, nervously. She is terrified of me. I can sense that, I can sense her distrust and her terror. There is panic in the small oval eyes shining in the darkness. We need a room, I answer. I see her start at my accent. Forty pounds. Again she blurts out the words. I nod. She steps out into the street and I begin to follow her. She keeps turning to look at me, confused. I am craving for her and I am thrilled by the strange stirring of my desire. The mingling of scents has disoriented me and I am hungry purely for the touch of her, to have her. There is nothing of sex in my lust and I have never experienced this freedom from the constraints of the body. She is neither male nor female to me; she is hardly human. It is as if I am looking at the haunches of a dog or a cat walking ahead of me. She stops in front of a shoddy rooming house. She is shivering when she indicates to me to follow her up the stairs.
The corridor reeks of sex and excrement. The young man who hands her a key did not glance up from the magazine he was flicking through. There is no lift and we walk up three flights of the stairs. The door of the room is stained and potholed. She turns the key and we enter.
It is tiny. A bare mattress on the floor—emanating rats and semen and cunt—and a small dresser with a bowl of condoms. An uncapped syringe is lying beside the mattress and the girl flicks it with her foot to a corner of the room. She turns to me.
I think she knew that death was in the room with her. Her shivering had increased but she was frozen to the spot, looking at me with her frightened eyes. She had her arms clasped across her chest. I walked over to her and lifted her arms away from her body. She let out a small whimper and an Arabic prayer. She closed her eyes and waited, shaking, prepared. I lifted her slip. Her slim, undernourished body was dark and boyish. I gently stroked the small cups of her breasts. I could hear her. I could hear her heart speaking. It was asking me to kill her. There was a scar running down her left side, an ugly reddish streak. I touched it and for a moment—the only moment—she was defiant, and she pulled away from me. I grabbed her and pushed her onto the mattress. There was a breathing in the room, an excited desperate breathing. She could hear it as well. She was looking beyond my shoulder, in terror, somewhere into the vastness of Hell. I was the Devil. I knew what Evil felt like, was, could be, had to be: the extinguishing of consciousness. I placed my hand on her throat and began to choke her. She started to struggle, attempted to scream, but she was weak and I was stronger than I had ever thought possible. With a jerk of my fingers I could extinguish her life. I was ready. Her hand reached for my throat. She plucked uselessly at my shirt collar, then got a grip and pulled. The crucifix that Giulia had given me tore and fell across the girl’s naked body. I looked at her, and now I could see her. She was a terrified small child and she was crying helplessly, desperately. She wanted to die but her body was willing her to live. I pulled away from her.
She did not move. Her eyes did not stray from my face. I was crying myself now, endless apologies. I thrust into my pockets and found money. I threw the notes at her. A fiver. A twenty. Another. Another. All of my money for England. She was still, then looking at the money at her feet, she sprang up from the bed, gathered the notes, grabbed her clothes and fled. I could hear the tumble of her steps as she rushed down the stairs. There was a shout, an obscenity. I picked up my crucifix and looked at it. The craving had not subsided. I was not clean. But I had consciousness. I had to feed. No Christ, no God, could change that. I made the promise then. And as I made it, out loud, in that piss-stinking fuck-room, I made it not to God but to a man. To Colin. I would choose righteously. Not her, not someone like her. I would have to choose. I could not pretend it was only instinct. I had to feed and I had to choose. I was Satan and I was God.
The man from the reception desk was standing in the doorway. He held a long dagger. When he spoke, his accent was from the Caribbean.
—You gonna fuck off?
I slowly nodded.
—If I ever fucking see you again, I’ll fucking slice you.
When I walked past him he spat at my feet.
There was no London as I retraced my steps. There were no revellers, no whores. There were no cars and no lights, no neon and no laughter. There was no asphalt, no sky, no brick, no night. There was nothing above and nothing beneath. There was no form in the void. There was only my breathing, the coursing of my blood. There was no one in the hotel foyer when I entered. There was no doorman, no porter, no receptionist, no concierge. There was no desk, no lift, no door. There was only a question, whispered to me, by the Thames, by the wind, by Europe itself. It was Andreas’ question, Maria’s question, Sula’s question, Zivan’s question. What do you believe?
I know how to answer it now. What I believe is that we will kill each other, that we will hurt each other. We will destroy our neighbours and we will exile them. We will sell our children as whores. We will murder and rape and punish one another. We will keep warring and we will keep hating and we will believe we are just and righteous and faithful. We will keep killing and selling one another and we will believe that we are just and fair and good. We will pursue pleasures and destroy one another in these pursuits. We will abandon our children. We will do all this in the name of God and in the name of our nature. We will create poverty and illness and we will create obscene wealth and the depravities that arise from it. We will think ourselves just and righteous, faithful and sane. We will hate and kill and piss and shit on one another. We will continue to do so. We will create Armageddon. In the name of God or in the name of justice or, simply, because we can. This is what I believe.
The American answers my knock. When he sees me, he laughs, a sly victorious cackle, and he opens the door and welcomes me. How had I not sensed it before? The putrid, spent stench of him. He is naked except for a white hotel towel tied around his belly.
—I thought you’d be back.
He sits in the armchair and the towel slips to the floor. His cock is wet and limp and red. He lights a cigarette and points to the bed.
—He’s yours, you can have him.
The room has been cleaned and the bed made up again with fresh sheets. But there is the stench of vomit and shit, the caustic foulness of amyl nitrate. The Russian is lying naked on his stomach in the centre of the bed. His wide, fleshy arse. There is a trickle of blood there, it has dampened the fine tufts of black hair along his crack, and my resolve weak
ens as I smell it. I want to enter him. I walk over to the bed, my cock hard. I look down at him. His eyes are open and for a moment I fear he is dead. He is a man, I can see he is a man. His breathing is hoarse, there are silent tears falling, a constant stream. The side of his face lies in vomit. The empty brown glass amyl nitrate vial is clutched in his fist. The television screen flickers with images from CNN. A grim male newsreader with glasses. Flashes of desert, a handcuffed youth, scrawling letters.
—Don’t worry, he’s not dead.
I turn to the American. He is smoking the cigarette, stroking the thick grey fluff on his chest. His smile is cruel.
—Fuck him. It is an order, harsh, intoxicating.
I shake my head.
—Go on, you fucking cunt, that’s why you’ve come back, isn’t it? Fuck him.
I am startled by the venom but I am not afraid. I have nothing to fear.
He goads me in harsh, cold whispers, arousing himself with each threat. His hand has begun to stroke at his cock.
—This is what you want to do, I know. I knew it all along.
He has grabbed a tube of lubricant from the floor and is squirting it onto his limp cock.
—Go ahead, rape him. Go on—have you got the fucking guts? Kill the cunt.
I can smell the Russian. Blood and shit and sex. My cock is pressing against my jeans. Rape him. Kill him.
The American has risen and stands beside me. He looks down at the Russian. The Russian’s eyes, unmoving, gaze somewhere beyond us. The American pulls the Russian’s legs apart. There is a fart, then the smell. The Russian moans.
—Isaac, the American says slowly, deliberately; he is huge, he seems to fill the whole of the room. I order you to kill him. Get your revenge, Isaac. He’s nothing, he’s an animal. The American spits on the Russian. I command you. Destroy him, kill him, annihilate him. I command you. Slaughter him.
The Russian is moaning. I can do it. I can do anything to him. Meat, blood and flesh. I know then what man is. Meat. Flesh. Blood. He moans, low, desperate, ill. I sniff the air.
It is the American behind me. I can smell all of him. Lubricant, sweat, semen, muscle, blood, amyl nitrate, shit, piss, spit, soap, leather, cotton, denim, metal, plastic, steel, wood, alcohol, marijuana, coke, Pepsi, fries, wine, beer, plastic, steel, iron, leather, silk, satin, uranium, plutonium, petrol, chips, chocolate, gelatin, dollars, euros, pounds, Omo, Oreos, Oil of Ulan, porn, television, cinema, gold, silver, cash, stocks, bonds, insurance, tanks, guns, rifles, Versace, Gucci, Prada. Piss, sweat, blood, shit. God. The American stinks of Him. Piss, sweat, blood, shit. It stinks of Him.
Armageddon. How long must we sing this song, Lord? Sweet Armageddon, beloved genocide, Come to me.
I don’t wish it to die straight away. I want to feel the liquid, thick and alive, course into me. I first bite into its upper lip. It does not scream, just a bare whimper as I tear the flesh off. Its eyes, horror swimming through them, catch mine but I have already ripped into its throat and it shakes, stammers and falls, slumping across the armchair. Its blood is on my face, on my lips, in my mouth, in my throat, pouring onto my body, the chair, the carpet, the walls. I feel its moment of death. Death makes a sound, a low rumble, a hoarse, desperate cleaving to life, then silence. Life is extinguished. The taste of the blood has changed, lost its potency, become stale. I wipe my face, lick at the blood. It has released its sphincter and bladder. Piss and shit run down its legs, drip onto the hotel carpet. There is laughter in the room, a boy’s loud joyous exhilarated laughter.
There is a box in the corner; light dances and flickers across a screen. For a moment I stare, transfixed. Light dances from it, sounds come from within it, patterns forming patterns, sound echoing sound. Elated, I walk over to the bed. I am not yet satisfied. There is more to be had. The other creature on the bed is asleep, snoring. I lift its head, and for a moment the eyes flick open, there is rage there, but my teeth sink into its face and the eyes disappear forever. I pull away skin and muscle and bone and the blood gushes onto my face and neck and as it pours over me I can taste Creation but almost immediately I feel virile life being extinguished and this blood too is spent. I throw the carcass off the bed and lie down on the drenched silk sheets. As I fall into calm sleep, I hear the jumble of confused electric noise coming off the box in the far corner of the room; I am aware of the insistent humming of the bedside lamp above me; I can hear the dripping of the blood as it slides down the walls and falls in drops onto the carpet; the last sound I hear before blessed sleep is the violent, delighted laughter of the boy as he comes to lie next to me, wrapping his legs and arms around me.
—EVERY CHRISTMAS THE Jews would steal a Christian toddler, put it in a barrel, still alive, run knives between the slats, and drain the child of its blood. Then they’d drink it. That’s the first thing I ever got told about the Jews.
—I can’t believe Rebecca told you that shit.
—I must have been about five when she told me. She made it sound like a fairytale …
—… pretty fucked-up fairytale …
—… I know, I know. Dad told her off when he heard her talking about that sort of stuff. He told us it was uneducated peasant bullshit. He sat me down and gave me a history lesson. He explained where the Jews came from, told us that the Bible was their history, told us about the Holocaust. He even explained what the Ashkenazi and the Sephardim were. Being Dad, of course, he put his own Marxist spin on it. He always said that the tragedy of the Holocaust was that the Nazis destroyed the Jewish proletariat. And he told us that the Bible was all crap and not to believe in any religion.
—He was never religious?
—Maybe when he was a kid. But, nah, he hated religion. His religion was communism. And heroin.
—My Mum hated religion too. Typical Aussie, she taught me jack-shit. I had to go to school before I heard about Jesus. I believed in the Easter Bunny but I hadn’t heard of Jesus.
—So how was she when you became a Christian?
—I was never a Christian.
—I thought you were …
—… I was fascinated by religion; I read the Bible because Steve made me. I’m glad he did. It made me fall in love with reading history. I know, that’s not very Aussie of me. But I hardly knew any Christians. Just Steve and some of the kids at school. I knew the Catholics, the Orthodox, the Muslims. But they didn’t give a fuck about religion except for some fasting at Ramadan or Easter. That was all religion was for them.
—I know exactly what you mean. It’s all ritual, no theology. When I got older I yelled at Mum, said: Your bloody Jesus was a Jew, how could you tell me the things you did? He was a Jew.
—He wasn’t.
—He was.
—Listen to me. He was born a Jew but he came to earth to announce a new Covenant, to replace the old Covenant between Moses and God.
—Now you do sound like a Christian.
—I just fucking hate that liberal bullshit that claims we’re all brothers, that it’s all the same religion …
—…’s the same bloody God …
—Listen, all I’m saying is that if you’re a Jew, you claim to be a descendant of the twelve tribes of Israel. Your law is the law of Moses. You are the Chosen People. That’s it. Your God doesn’t give a fuck about anyone else. It’s all there in the Torah. If you’re Christian you believe in the resurrection of Christ, the Trinity and the new Covenant. If you’re Muslim then Mohammed was God’s last Prophet and you submit to the word of God as written in the Qu’ran. They are not the same thing. I can’t stand New Age Christian preachers trying to humanise the Bible. I can’t stand secular American Jews brandishing their copies of the Constitution as equivalent to Holy Writ and thinking they can be both Jewish and non-believers. Fucking bullshit. At least the Muslims are bloody honest. You can’t be democratic and monotheistic. Choose. It’s one or the other.
—I disagree. That’s too hard, much too hard. You can be ecumenical. You can have a rabbi, a priest, a mullah ??
?
—… they go into a bar …
—… You can have them get together, acknowledge differences but also accept similarities. Find common ground. Otherwise you are talking perpetual war. I can’t agree with you.
—Listen, your mum didn’t make that up about the Jews, not the blood libel. It’s a fact. It’s in the Gospels, I can’t fucking remember exactly where, I think it’s in Matthew. The Jews answered Pontius Pilate: let His blood be on us and our children. If you’re a Christian, you have to accept that obscenity as fact. Your dad was wrong. Your mother wasn’t speaking as an illiterate peasant but as a believer. That’s the source of blood libel and I don’t give a fuck how many bourgeois theologians attempt to explain it away by theorising about the politics of the early Church and the Roman state. What are you? What do you believe? Do you believe that the Jews killed Christ? Or do you believe that the Jews are God’s Chosen People and his only people? Or do you submit to the word of God as revealed in the Qu’ran and unless you do you are doomed to Hell? This might offend your fucking democratic wishy-washy liberal pieties, but religion is war.
—Why are you so angry?
—Because people are cowards.
—Who came first? Abraham or Moses?
—Jesus Christ, I can’t believe this. And you’re the one who went to fucking university.
—They don’t teach religion at university.
—They should.
—Why?
—It’s history, it’s politics.
—You sound like a bloody fundamentalist. Bullshit. God is dead. That’s what you learn at university.
—Right, He’s dead, is He? Go ask Khadijah and Bilal next door. Go ask your mum. Go ask the fucking Israelis and the Palestinians or the Hindus and the Pakistanis if God is dead.
—You haven’t answered my question.