The Book of Strange New Things(150)

‘No shit?’ said Tartaglione. ‘Then let’s get drunk.’

The linguist led him through the dark into still more dark, then through a doorway into a house where he was made to kneel and told to get comfy. There were cushions on the floor, large plump cushions that might have been cannibalised from a couch or armchair. They felt mildewy to the touch, like the decaying peel of orange or lemon. When Peter sat on them, they sighed.

‘My humble abode,’ said Tartaglione. ‘Après the exodus, moi.’

Peter offered a grunt of gratitude, and tried to breathe through his mouth rather than his nose. Oasan interiors usually smelled of nothing much except food and the honeydew air currents that continually flowed through the windows and lapped around the walls, but this room managed to reek of human uncleanness and alcoholic ferment. In its centre stood a large object which he’d thought at first was a sleeping crib, but which he now identified as the source of the liquor stink. Maybe it was a sleeping crib, serving as an alcohol storage tub.

‘Is there any light?’ asked Peter.

‘You bring a torch, padre?’

‘No.’

‘Then there isn’t any light.’

Peter’s eyes simply couldn’t adjust to the darkness. He could see the whites – or rather yellows – of the other man’s eyes, a bristle of facial hair, an impression of emaciated flesh and flaccid genitals. He wondered if Tartaglione had developed, over the months and years he’d lived in these ruins, a kind of night vision, like a cat.

‘What’s wrong? You choking on something?’ asked Tartaglione.

Peter hugged himself to stop the noise coming from his own chest. ‘My . . . my cat died,’ he said.

‘You brought a cat here?’ the other man marvelled. ‘USIC’s allowing pets now?’

‘No, it was . . . it happened at home.’

Tartaglione patted Peter’s knee. ‘Now, now. Be a good little camper, don’t lose Brownie points. Don’t use the H-word. The H-word is verboten! è finito! Distrutto! Non esiste!’

The linguist was making theatrical motions with his palms, shoving the word home back into its gopher-hole each time it popped up. Peter suddenly hated him, this poor crazy bastard, yes, he hated him. He closed his eyes tight and opened them again, and was bitterly disappointed that Tartaglione was still there, that the darkness and the alcohol stink were still there, when what should be there when he opened his eyes was the place he should never have left, his own space, his own stuff, Bea. He moaned in grief. ‘I miss my wife.’

‘None of that! None of that!’ Tartaglione sprang up, waving his arms about. His bare feet thumped a mad rhythm on the floor, and he emitted a bizarre ‘sh!-sh!-sh!-sh!’ as he danced. The effort of it triggered an extended burst of coughing. Peter imagined loose fragments of lung swirling in the air like nuptial confetti.

‘Of course you miss your wife,’ muttered Tartaglione when he’d calmed down slightly. ‘You miss every damn thing. You could fill a book with all the things you miss. You miss dandelions, you miss bananas, you miss mountains and dragonflies and trains and roses and . . . and . . . f*cking junk mail for Christ’s sake, you miss the rust on the fire hydrants, the dogshit on the pavement, the sunsets, your dumbass uncle with the lousy taste in shirts and the yellow teeth. You want to throw your arms around the old sleazeball and say, “Uncle, what a great shirt, love your aftershave, show me your porcelain frog collection, and then let’s promenade down the old neighbourhood, just you and me, whaddaya say?” You miss snow. You miss the sea, non importa if it’s polluted, bring it on, oil spills, acid, condoms, broken bottles, who cares, it’s still the sea, it’s still the ocean. You dream . . . you dream of newly mown lawns, the way the grass smelled, you swear you’d give ten thousand bucks or one of your kidneys if you could have just one last whiff of that grass.’

To emphasise his point, Tartaglione sniffed deeply, a stage sniff, a sniff so aggressive it sounded as if it might damage his head.

‘Everyone at USIC is . . . concerned about you,’ said Peter carefully. ‘You could get transported home.’

Tartaglione snorted. ‘Lungi da me, satana! Quítate de delante de mí! Haven’t you read the USIC contract? Maybe you need help translating the lingo? Well, I’m your man. Dear highly skilled misfit: We hope you enjoy your stretch on Oasis. There’s chicken tonight! Or something very like it. So settle in, don’t count the days, take a long view. Every five years, or maybe sooner if you can prove you’re batshit insane, you can have a trip back to the festering scumhole you came from. But we’d rather you didn’t. What you wanna go back there for? What’s the point? Your uncle and his goddamned frog collection are gonna be history soon. Everything’s gonna be history soon. History will be history.’ He paced back and forth in front of Peter, his feet scuffling the dirty floor. ‘USIC concerned about me? Yeah, I’ll bet. That fatso chink dude, forget his name, I can just see him lying awake at nights thinking, I wonder if Tartaglione is OK. Is he happy? Is he getting enough vitamins? Do I hear a bell tolling, has a clod been washed away by the sea, is a piece of the continent gone, am I just a little f*cking diminished here? Yeah, I can feel the love. Who’s on love duty today?’

Peter dipped out of consciousness for a second or two. The flesh of his brow was contracting tight against his skull, pushing in on the bone. He remembered once having a fever, some sort of forty-eight-hour flu, and lying helpless in bed while Bea was at work. Waking in the middle of the day half-deranged and parched with thirst, he was puzzled to feel a hand on the back of his head, lifting it from the pillow, and a glass of iced water raised to his lips. Much later, when he was better, he found out that Bea had travelled all the way home to give him that drink, and then all the way back to the hospital, in what was supposed to be her lunch break.