Catastrophe Practice (36 page)

Jason thought — That's witty.

Then — Perhaps it is what is witty that, like what is in that little bottle, either will blow up or will save the world.

The Professor gave up pulling at the doors. He took from the lining of his jacket what seemed to be a half bottle of whisky.

Jason murmured ‘What a big bottle!'

The Professor took a drink. He said ‘That's witty.'

Jason took the torch from between the Professor's legs. He moved with it around the hallway.

On a wall at one corner of the hall was a small box with a glass cover. Inside it was an instrument like a key. The end of the key was curved into something like the shape of a smile.

Jason said ‘It's if the lift is here, that you won't be able to get down the shaft.'

The Professor seemed to think about this. Then he said ‘A metaphysical problem.'

Jason gave a bang on the glass door of the box, which opened. He took the key out.

He said ‘From one of the explosions, which was near our home, the window of the baby's room blew in, and the glass went all over his cot. So if Lilia had not taken him away, I mean if she and I had not quarrelled and she had not gone to you, that is where the baby would have been, and he could have been injured or even killed.'

The Professor handed Jason the bottle. He said ‘Here.'

Jason drank. He said ‘Thanks.'

The Professor said as if quoting ‘— Radioactive waste: cancer-carrying bacteria —'

Jason said — What is in that little bottle?'

The Professor took the bottle of whisky back He said ‘And I thought that she walked out because of me!'

Jason went to the doors of the lift-shaft and held the key up to the small opening like a smile. The key went in. He turned it, and pushed. Then he tried to pull the doors sideways. The doors opened a crack.

The Professor said ‘Can you get your fingers in?'

Jason thought — This is absurd.

He said ‘There's another catch inside.'

The Professor said ‘I'll pull. You try to get at it.'

The Professor went in front of him, almost underneath him; Jason thought — Are we lovers; keeping an eye on each other for our mutual girlfriend? The Professor pulled at the doors: Jason reached up into the lift-shaft.

Looking round for somewhere to put the torch, he thought — I could put it in my mouth —

The Professor said ‘This is absurd.'

Jason found the catch on the inside of the lift-shaft. It was above the doorway, in the dirt and darkness.

The Professor pushed sideways; the doors opened further.

When Jason shone the torch into the shaft there appeared to be a drop of about six feet to the top of the lift, which was at the bottom.

Jason thought he might say — Do you really want to get down? Or are you doing this because you think you have to —

The Professor said ‘It is possible?'

‘Yes.'

‘There's a trapdoor —'

‘In the top of the lift.'

The Professor sat with his legs over the edge of the lift-shaft He took the bottle from his pocket again. He drank Then he handed it to Jason.

Jason drank.

He said ‘The problem now is not how to get in, but how to get out when at the bottom.'

‘Because people usually get out at the top?'

‘When they're stuck. Exactly.'

Jason handed the bottle back to the Professor.

They sat, side by side, with their feet hanging down the lift-shaft.

Jason said ‘Supposing you had the chance to do away with a third of the people in the world — would you take it?'

The Professor said ‘At random?'

‘Yes.'

‘If you were God?'

‘Yourself included.'

The Professor took another drink from the bottle.

He said ‘And your loved ones included?'

Jason, looking down the lift-shaft, thought — Ah, those arms out, flying, that know they will always be caught —

The Professor said ‘It wouldn't work, no.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because the occasion's got to be fitting.'

Jason said ‘I see.'

He thought — What do I see?

The Professor said ‘I mean, if the occasion is contrived, not at random, then what are you being fitted for?'

Jason said ‘And what are you being fitted by —'

The Professor said ‘— Even if you think you are a god.'

Jason thought — You mean, if you are a god, you are still just what happens?

They sat at the edge of the lift-shaft, drinking whisky.

There was a cluster of cables that went down the centre of the lift-shaft.

After a time Jason said ‘I could go down.'

The Professor said ‘Why should you?'

Jason thought — Perhaps I'm grateful.

He said — ‘I'm younger.'

The Professor said ‘I'm not so old!'

Jason said ‘All right, I'm grateful.'

‘What for?'

‘For your looking after Lilia.'

The Professor said ‘Dear God!'

Jason thought — But she should not have walked out!

The bundle of nerves, down the lift-shaft, trembled slightly.

The Professor said ‘There's an electrical system, with emergency batteries, which, when the power's cut, needs to be turned on.' Then — I'll explain when you've got down.'

Jason thought — So it is not your notes! Then — So it may be true about the little bottle?

The Professor said ‘There are also my notes.'

Jason took off his jacket. He leaned forwards to touch the cables, which were greasy.

He thought — Should I take the rest of my clothes off, like a cross-channel swimmer?

The Professor said ‘And I'll buy you a new pair of trousers.'

Putting a hand on to the cables, Jason thought — It is true that symbols exist in the outside world: there are forces like angels with flaming swords above rooftops —

Then the Professor said ‘In order to get money, you have to say you're enquiring into the nature of disease.'

Jason thought — Did he really say that? Then — You mean this is what he really is or is not doing?

The Professor said ‘Turn left. Go along the corridor —'

Holding on to the cables, Jason leaned out over the drop.

He thought — You mean, annihilation might in fact be about to be loosed on the world?

Then — Only a few feet to the bottom.

He stretched out a foot over the chasm.

— Oh where is that backdrop! those wings —

— That old man in the sky — A middle-aged man who can rise again and take his bow at the end of the third act —

— That bird for which they stay alive —?

He kicked off with his other foot; launched himself down the lift-shaft.

Eleanor entered a long low room lined with bookcases in which were gathered men mostly middle-aged, some dressed in outdoor clothes and some in overcoats over what looked like pyjamas and some in dressing-gowns. They seemed knobbly and slightly out of shape, like rejects of seed potatoes. They were peering out of windows; as if in a hall of comic mirrors. A few turned to look at Eleanor as she came in: then turned away, as if she might be normal. The talk and the excitement blew in gusts: there were cries and exclamations. Eleanor thought — Is it this fire, which is in the jungle, that is drawing human beings up out of the sea? There was a police officer holding his hat which was like his head underneath his arm. there was what seemed to be a dwarf propped up in gum boots.

Eleanor went to the window and looked out. There was her own head, then a lawn, then a chandelier behind her: then the fire above rooftops.

She thought — This comedy — we call it comedy — is the bustle of things coming up through the earth: the opening and shutting of mouths like penises: if it stopped, we would die.

Beyond the window — in her head — containing the chandelier, the fire, the lawn — she thought — I will sit in the dust and with my finger will draw patterns of this strange tribe.

There were these substances or planes, depending upon what degree of accuracy or activity you required: the framework of the building; the men talking in the room behind; the figures moving on the lawn carrying boxes. She wondered — What will they choose to rescue from the fire? not what will survive: that will work for itself. These members of the tribe — in the common-room behind her or in the burning night —
from these would be rescued — who? — she began to laugh — she had just seemed to pick up, with her smile in the window, an old man with a bald head and a body like a genie in the room behind her; and deposit him, closer to the fire, at her elbow —

He was saying — with his long bald head, his neck, his mouth opening and shutting like a penis —

She thought she might explain — I am slightly drunk: I have not been eating toadstools.

She tried to take a handkerchief from her skirt to put to her face to hide her laughter. She found she had got hold of — underwear, nightdress, holy shroud. She thought she might explain — I am not laughing at you: it is myself: why should I not move, sometimes, like a genie in and out of a bottle?

Or — I have sat so long at nights in countries where the only company is myself —

A pillar of smoke had risen above the rooftops.

She thought — The column, drawn by six white horses, rose to a height of several thousand feet —

The people in the room behind — the fellows and guests of her college — were talking, excitedly, about the fire beyond the lawn: as if it were about food; their mouths opening and shutting; the food being this excitement which gave them placement; identity —

The man like a genie was talking to her.

She could say —

— We've introduced a strain into a culture —

He was talking past her, as if through the window, into the night. She could not hear what he was saying.

— To test whether or not in laboratory conditions —

— You do it yourself it hurts you —

— You do it to yourself it kills them —

She thought — Supposing all the sound were shut off on a stage?

When she had been in her room in college earlier that evening and had switched on Anderson's film which he had set up, she had sat in the dark and watched the images flickering against the wall and there had been sirens and bells outside and she had thought — But if there is a connecting
principle — beyond placement, beyond identity — It would be something with which our instruments, which are to do with placement, could not deal —

Anderson had said — Words themselves are the enemy?

In the room behind her, the policeman who seemed to have his head tucked under his arm was standing directly underneath a chandelier. The chandelier had a sharp glass point hanging down.

She thought — If I concentrate, can I make that chandelier fall on to the space that would have been his head so that his whole contraption will light up and play a tune like a juke box?

Her husband Max, the Professor, had said — One of these days there may be the escape of some substance into the atmosphere —

She had said — Or the escape of some substance from the atmosphere into oneself —

He had said — That's witty.

On the lawn outside there was a body being carried past on a stretcher. The stretcher seemed to be a furled banner. Some boys and girls were following it, as if in mourning.

She had said to Max — What exactly are the experiments that you are doing?

He had said — Do you want me to use the jargon? or to say nothing about it instead.

She had thought — All words are a protection then?

In the room in the quiet night, with the pillars of the university coming down like those of the Philistines, she thought — But if there is some message — like lightning; like music; like the result of football pools in Andromeda — we could put ourselves in the way of it — that huge head — the glass in front of me containing the fire, the room behind, my own features —

The chandelier that had been hanging so pointedly above the policeman's neck had not fallen: she thought — This is a sign: perhaps I should go out.

She found she had moved away from the window towards the door. The man who was like a genie was watching her. She thought — If he comes after me I will pounce, turn him inside
out, him and his bottle, like an octopus.

She was out in the night.

She seemed to remember — Derivative strains from components of human intestinal flora —

Then she thought — I will make my mind a blank: throw seeds up into the air to see which way the wind is blowing.

She had wanted to ask — If they got out, they could destroy — who? — some, or everyone — ?

Or — There is no creation without destruction.

She thought — But can you think this, let alone say it!

Then — I am tired. I have not eaten much today. When I was in West Africa, in Borneo —

— Things happened just outside the limits of consciousness. People dressed up and came in from the jungle: they pretended; and it became real. There were figures that waved above rooftops like Petrouchka. You held on, and watched, till they went away.

There were bits of broken glass on the pavement.

She thought — I will follow it; like arrows; like bits and pieces of DNA —

— There is no such thing as human cancer virus: there is only the failure of mechanisms which prevent it —

She was moving towards a bridge. The current in the river seemed to be moving sluggishly both ways.

— Something like a map —

— In the mind —

— A needle turning.

There was a woman on the bridge. She was carrying a baby. Eleanor put a hand to her head.

— Hullo —

— Hullo —

— I wondered if you remembered me —

There had been a time when she and Max Ackerman had first been married and no young girls had yet come in —