The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(42)

I think just the wine.

Very good. Are we having fish?

I think the snapper.

Good choice. Maybe we should rethink the wine.

He opened the winebook again and leaned chin in hand. The point, Squire, is that where they used to be confined to State institutions or to the mudrooms and attics of remote country houses they are now abroad everywhere. The government pays them to travel. To procreate, for that matter. I’ve seen entire families here that can best be explained as hallucinations. Hordes of drooling dolts lurching through the streets. Their inane gibbering. And of course no folly so deranged or pernicious as to escape their advocacy.

He looked up. I know you dont share my animus, Squire, and I own it to be somewhat tempered when I reflect upon my own origins. We dont get far from our raising, as they say in the south. But have you in fact looked around you lately? I think you know how dumb a person is with an IQ of one hundred.

Western regarded him warily. I suppose, he said.

Well half the people are dumber than that. Where do you imagine all this is going?

I’ve no idea.

I think you’ve some idea. I know that you think we’re very different, me and thee. My father was a country storekeeper and yours a fabricator of expensive devices that make a loud noise and vaporize people. But our common history transcends much. I know you. I know certain days of your childhood. All but weeping with loneliness. Coming upon a certain book in the library and clutching it to you. Carrying it home. Some perfect place to read it. Under a tree perhaps. Beside a stream. Flawed youths of course. To prefer a world of paper. Rejects. But we know another truth, dont we Squire? And of course it’s true that any number of these books were penned in lieu of burning down the world—which was their author’s true desire. But the real question is are we few the last of a lineage? Will children yet to come harbor a longing for a thing they cannot even name? The legacy of the word is a fragile thing for all its power, but I know where you stand, Squire. I know that there are words spoken by men ages dead that will never leave your heart. Ah, the waiter.

Western watched him eat with a certain admiration. The enthusiasm and the competence with which he addressed matters. They shared a bottle of Riesling for which Sheddan demanded an icebucket. He waved the waiter away and poured Western’s glass. Important to establish the ground rules at the onset. Excuse me. Dont even think of pouring wine into our fucking glasses. I see your look. But the truth is I’ve few demands. Think about it. Stay slightly ahead of the curve. Try to keep the more common miseries at bay. Dont look luck in the eye. Cheers.

Cheers.

The German varieties tend to be a bit sweeter. Which I like. The French favor whites which can double as window cleaner.

It’s very nice.

The last time I lunched here was with Seals. A few weeks ago. I thought we were going to be eighty-sixed.

Thrown out.

Yes.

What happened?

The place was crowded and someone unleashed a truly villainous fart. Absolutely horrible. I looked around at the adjoining tables and people were just sitting there with their eyes glazed over. So Seals throws down his napkin and pushes back his chair and rises and demands to know who did it. Christ. We’re going to get to the bottom of this, he says. And then he began to point out possible culprits and to demand that they own up. It was you, wasnt it? Jesus. I tried to hiss him down. By now several large and unruly-looking chaps had gotten to their feet. The manager arrived just in the nick and we got Seals seated but he continued to mutter and they rose all over again. Do you know what I find particularly galling, he told them. It’s having to share the women with you lot. To listen to you fuckwits holding forth and to see some lissome young thing leaning forward breathlessly with that barely contained frisson with which we are all familiar the better to inhale without stint an absolute plaguebreath of bilge and bullshit as if it were the word of the prophets. It’s painful but still I suppose one has to extend a certain latitude to the little dears. They’ve so little time in which to parlay that pussy into something of substance. But it nettles. That you knucklewalkers should even be allowed to contemplate the sacred grotto as you drool and grunt and wank. Let alone actually reproduce. Well the hell with it. A pox upon you. You’re a pack of mudheaded bigots who loathe excellence on principle and though one might cordially wish you all in hell still you wont go. You and your nauseating get. Granted, if everyone I wished in hell were actually there they’d have to send to Newcastle for supplementary fuel. I’ve made ten thousand concessions to your ratfuck culture and you’ve yet to make the first to mine. It only remains for you to hold your cups to my gaping throat and toast one another’s health with my heart’s blood.

Ah well, Squire, I tell you everything and you tell me nothing. It’s all right. I know your history. A man broken on the wheel of devotion. You’re a missing Greek tragedy, Squire. Of course your story could still come to light. A foxed and speckled manuscript in a vault in an ancient library in some city in Eastern Europe. Moldering but pieceable. I say that I know your history but of course I exaggerate. Little I’d like better than to have a peek into those intrafamilial sordidities concerning which you remain so circumspect. Hard money says it would make the Greeks look like Ozzie and Harriet.

Rave on.

I always thought you’d go back to your science.

I guess my heart wasnt in it.

Where was your heart?