Nutshell(29)

But of course, to kill the brain is to kill the will to kill the brain. As soon as I start to fade, my fists go limp and life returns. Immediately, I hear signs of robust life – intimate sounds, as through the walls of a cheap hotel. Then louder, louder. It’s my mother. There she goes, launched on one of her perilous thrills.

But my own prison wall of death’s too high. I’ve fallen back, into the exercise yard of dumb existence.

Finally, Claude withdraws his revolting weight – I salute his crude brevity – and my space is restored, though I’ve pins and needles in my legs. Now I’m recovering, while Trudy lies back, limp with exhaustion and all the usual regrets.

*

It’s not the theme parks of Paradiso and Inferno that I dread most – the heavenly rides, the hellish crowds – and I could live with the insult of eternal oblivion. I don’t even mind not knowing which it will be. What I fear is missing out. Healthy desire or mere greed, I want my life first, my due, my infinitesimal slice of endless time and one reliable chance of a consciousness. I’m owed a handful of decades to try my luck on a freewheeling planet. That’s the ride for me – the Wall of Life. I want my go. I want to become. Put another way, there’s a book I want to read, not yet published, not yet written, though a start’s been made. I want to read to the end of My History of the Twenty-First Century. I want to be there, on the last page, in my early eighties, frail but sprightly, dancing a jig on the evening of December 31st, 2099.

It might end before that date and so it’s a thriller of sorts, violent, sensational, highly commercial. A compendium of dreams, with elements of horror. But it’s bound to be a love story too, and a heroic tale of brilliant invention. For a taste, look at the prequel, the hundred years before. A grim read, at least until halfway, but compelling. A few redeeming chapters on, say, Einstein and Stravinsky. In the new book, one of many unresolved plot lines is this: will its nine billion heroes scrape through without a nuclear exchange? Think of it as a contact sport. Line up the teams. India versus Pakistan, Iran versus Saudi Arabia, Israel versus Iran, USA versus China, Russia versus USA and Nato, North Korea versus the rest. To raise the chances of a score, add more teams: the non-state players will arrive.

How determined are our heroes to overheat their hearth? A cosy 1.6 degrees, the projection or hope of a sceptical few, will open up the tundra to mountains of wheat, Baltic beachside tavernas, lurid butterflies in the Northwest Territories. At the darker end of pessimism, a wind-torn four degrees allows for flood-and-drought calamity and all of turmoil’s dark political weather. More narrative tension in subplots of local interest: will the Middle East remain in frenzy, will it empty into Europe and alter it for good? Might Islam dip a feverish extremity in the cooling pond of reformation? Might Israel concede an inch or two of desert to those it displaced? Europa’s secular dreams of union may dissolve before the old hatreds, small-scale nationalism, financial disaster, discord. Or she might hold her course. I need to know. Will the USA decline quietly? Unlikely. Will China grow a conscience, will Russia? Will global finance and corporations? Then, bring on the seductive human constants: all of sex and art, wine and science, cathedrals, landscape, the higher pursuit of meaning. Finally, the private ocean of desires – mine, to be barefoot on a beach round an open fire, grilled fish, juice of lemons, music, the company of friends, someone, not Trudy, to love me. My birthright in a book.

So I’m ashamed of the attempt, relieved to have failed. Claude (now loudly humming in the echoing bathroom) must be reached by other means.

Barely fifteen minutes have passed since he undressed my mother. I sense we’re entering a new phase of the evening. Over the sound of running taps he calls out that he’s hungry. With the degrading episode behind her and her pulse settling, I believe my mother will be returning to her theme of innocence. To her, Claude’s talk of dinner will seem misplaced. Even callous. She sits up, pulls on her dress, finds her knickers in the bedclothes, steps into her sandals and goes to her dressing-table mirror. She begins to braid the hair that, untended, hangs in blonde curls her husband once celebrated in a poem. This gives her time to recover and to think. She’ll use the bathroom when Claude has left it. The idea of being near him repels her now.

Disgust restores to her a notion of purity and purpose. Hours ago she was in charge. She could be so again, as long as she resists another sickly, submissive swoon. She’s fine for now, she’s refreshed, sated, immune, but it waits for her, the little beastie could swell once more into a beast, distort her thoughts, drag her down – and she’ll be Claude’s. To take charge, however … I think of her musing as she tilts her lovely face before the mirror to twist another strand. To give orders as she did this morning in the kitchen, devise the next step, will be to own the offence. If only she could settle down to the blameless grief of the stricken widow.

For now, there are practical tasks. All tainted utensils, plastic cups, the blender itself to be disposed of far from home. The kitchen to be scoured of traces. Only the coffee cups to remain in place on the table, unwashed. These dull chores will keep the horror at a distance for an hour. Perhaps this is why she puts a reassuring hand on the knoll that contains me, near the small of my back. A gesture of loving hope for our future. How could she think of giving me away? She’ll need me. I’ll brighten the penumbra of innocence and pathos she’ll want around her. Mother and child – a great religion has spun its best stories around this potent symbol. Sitting on her knee, pointing skywards, I’ll render her immune to prosecution. On the other hand – how I hate that phrase – no preparations have been made for my arrival, no clothes, no furniture, no compulsive nest-making. I’ve never knowingly been in a shop with my mother. The loving future is a fantasy.