Quipu (15 page)

Jesus Fucking Christ, I thought, this is Easter Sunday not Napalm Sunday. “What does he do in Vietnam,” I asked.

“He’s a Computer Programmer.”

“Oh, he doesn’t actually burn the people himself,” I mumbled into my paper cup of Coke, “he just arranges the schedules?”

Blank looks. “Well anyway, come on, I’ll introduce you.”

“No thanks,” I said, and walked in the other direction, pursued by looks of scorn and incomprehension. But Jeez, he’s a famous little-known genuine American quipu editor and international clever dick, they told one another.

I suppose I’d better do some work now, sweetheart. Even if I do plan to leave as much as possible to my hapless successor.

lots of love

Joseph

1975: truth is no stranger to fiction

Because so many of you have been asking me for an authoritative account of how our Government and our Loyal Opposition got themselves into the current lunatic deadlock, with the Senate under Opposition control denying Supply to the Government we elected just a year and a half ago, I am going to tell you, instead, the strange and until now hidden tale of my conversion to hikedom.

Yes, dear friends, there is no longer any sense in paying attention to politics, to the commonweal, to common sense for that matter. Our masters are all fucked in the brain. Whether Gough or Mal wins in the current battle, it is we who are certainly the losers.

I am aware that Joseph Williams, for example, will not be startled by this point of view. Against his nihilism, I have argued in support of Ballots, Involvement, Close Attention To The News and all that stuff which I gather my American readers imbibe in, er, “Civics Class.”

My faith in due process is now fairly shook. Even during the Vietnam war I never entirely lost hope in rationality. When Gough Whitlam became Prime Minister of Australia in 1972 and pulled the troops out of Nam, I felt my faith was justified. Now that we seem to be on the verge of a coup (and what else can you call it when a wealthy minority Opposition gets ready to throw out the elected Government?) I have changed my mind. The world is a nest of fantasy. There is no truth in it.

So I have decided to tell you something that
is
true, for which I can vouch from my own intimate experience. I will tell you how I encountered my first Quipu, and how this pivotal moment in my life explains the absence thereafter in my bed of all the numerous beautiful women who once thronged that place. Okay?

It was in the early 1960s. I do not care to be more precise, lest I incur the jeers of callow newcomers. I sat in my penthouse apartment above Collins Street. My green martini olive gazed like a bland eye. I swirled the glass lazily, set the insouciant fruit bobbing, and winked sardonically back at it.

I felt at peace with the world that year and that day, and with good reason. The conservative parties ruled the land. No one had heard of Women’s Liberation. (Seriously, Marjory, just joking. If you don’t believe me I’ll send you my I AM A HUMORLESS FEMINIST badge.) In the kitchen a luscious long-legged model named Asquith Lancaster was humming softly. With some satisfaction I congratulated myself yet again on my good taste and good fortune.

I stretched, and every muscle in my lean athletic body tensed and relaxed, even though aerobics had not yet been invented. My silk pyjamas rustled. Recessed lamps suffused peach light, and the conditioned air was intimate with Asquith’s perfume.

Only unwarranted modesty would permit me to deny that my apartment, twenty floors above the scuttling lights of the inner city, was a testimonial to my exquisite taste. Worth Avenue had supplied most of the interior. My decorator had flown to Australia specifically to do the place out. The bric-a-brac I’d picked up in my wanderings perfectly complemented the Lanfranchi decor.

From above the marble fireplace, a samurai sword cast a paradoxically gentle wash of light into my eyes. It always amused me to recall how it had come into my possession. The small, astoundingly nimble old Japanese martial arts expert had found me besottedly engaged with his unmarried daughter. With terrible rage, but awesome control, he suggested a method whereby our mutual honor might be satisfied. It was a frightening moment; as the saying is, my
cojones
were on the line. When his naughty daughter giggled merrily, however, I knew that the outcome was assured.

Three times I heard
hajime
, the call to begin, and three times it was not I who at last called for quarter. There is much to be said for a strict diet of animal proteins. On the following morning, in the bright Tokyo sun, the old gentleman presented me with the precious heirloom that mere hours before had threatened that portion of me by virtue of which, ironically, the sword was forfeit and satisfaction contrived.

When Asquith glided into the room with our coffee my gaze moved as if by metaphor from the ancient polished curve to her own graceful form. Her heart-stopping beauty momentarily stopped my heart, as, delicate and daring beneath the luminescence of her floating peignoir, her incomparable beauty subdued to a mere backdrop the apartment’s elegance.

Without a word I placed my half-finished martini on the cherrywood table as she put down the silver tray, fumes of coffee rising, and I took her into my arms, her face nuzzling my chest, my own lips moving across the ebony of her hair. The doorbell rang.

“What is it now?” Asquith asked nastily. “Your secretary?” She looked at her tiny Swiss watch. “Special delivery from Fortnum & Mason’s? Perhaps your interior decorator?”

Though I fumed, I allowed no trace of my annoyance to show. The bell rang again, and I drew a monogrammed chinese gown about my shoulders. “I’m truly sorry, my dear,” I told her with a boyish smile. “I left unequivocal instructions with the porter that we should remain undisturbed tonight.” I went across the thick pile of the carpet.

A demented, unshaven man stood with his finger on the bell, dressed in shoddy, grubby clothes. At his feet was a sturdy wooden case, plastered liberally with injunctions concerning its handling. I looked again from box to face. My first impression had been correct. It was the face of a complete fool.

“Joseph, what are you doing here?”

“Hello, Brian.” Joe Williams had never been to my apartment before. I watched a sequence of expressions as he gazed through the half-open door. All involved a measure of greed or lust. “I’ve been in Peru working on the Paqari-tampu dig. I’ve got a present for you.”

“Is he coming in?” Asquith asked. I was gratified in my proprietorial enthusiasm by the convulsive spasm of Joseph’s throat. As I shook his hand it was his head he shook numbly, staring at her. After the thin high air of the Cordillera Oriental, he had stumbled on heady perfumes too rich for his parched sensibilities. “No. Plane flights. Very kind. Tired. Finlay.”

“This is Joseph Williams,” I told Asquith, and gave him her name in return. “He’s been doing some archeo-linguistic work with my friend Ray Finlay. He appears to be letting us know that Ray sent this crate to me, and I would hazard from this inference that it contains something too delicate or precious to consign to commercial carriers. Would that be the gist of it, dear fellow? Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink?”

Asquith was at Joseph’s elbow, a narrow enough squeeze in the doorway, with a long scotch. He took it and a hearty snort without demur. We wrestled the crate inside while Asquith topped up his glass. I helped him lever the top off. Splintering, the metal-lined wooden top laid bare an enormous supply of packed cotton waste. Joseph drank down his second scotch.

“We thought at first it was a Psammead.” He sniggered and leered at Asquith.

“How lovely!” She beamed and clapped her hands. “A sand-fairy! And in the mountains of South America! I thought they were mythical beasts.”

“Science has learned much in recent years,” Joseph told her as she refilled his glass. I removed a large wrinkled leathery object from the box and held it out with some distaste.

“Ugh. An ancient Peruvian soccer ball?”

“Certainly not,” said the syntactical archaeologist. “It’s an egg. A fossil egg. Raymond thought it might grace your collection of
objets trouvés
.” He leaned over to point out a salient feature and fell on his face. The massive pile of the carpet spared him any lasting injury.

“Another?” murmured Asquith, presenting decanter and ice.

“Nope. Must be off. Your hospitality.” I noticed that he was peering fondly into Asquith’s
décolletage
, and steered him into the gloom of the corridor.

I set the egg in a silver bowl on the mantelpiece, contemplated it for a moment with intense fascination, and cleaned away the cotton waste and shreds of crate. Asquith made fresh coffee. We drank it fresh and sweet, from a single cup, gazing at each other. I took her to bed.

“Twice or thrice had I loved thee,” I cribbed from John Donne, “before I knew thy face or name.” Asquith breathed warmth into my poetic mouth. Her moist tongue touched the edges of my teeth. A cool flame licked at my dazed mind. I crushed her savagely against me and bit her earlobe, remembering as a sort of prospective metaphor the endless night on the combat mat in the Tokyo dojo. A vivid noise detonated in the living room.

There was a slow pungent exhalation of air six or seven thousand years old.

My heart leaped like a wounded thing. Asquith stiffened, which was a great deal more than could be said for me.

“My dear,” I said, “can you reach the lights.” In the darkness there was an irritated bumping as my beauty twisted the rheostat. Even as the lights came up there was a ghastly squawk and such a scratching of horny feet on painted ceramic tile as I had never heard even from game-cocks in a crisis of murderous rage.

Asquith did not stint herself. She screamed her head off.

I catapulted off the bed like a marionette jerked by some higher agency, following with my eyes the line of Asquith’s shaking finger. On the fireplace tiles in the living room, surrounded by torn leathery shards, blinking beady eyes in the light from the bedroom, a small crabby creature preened its wings and tore at the carpet with its feet.

“Oh my God,” Asquith said. “It smells awful.”

“It’s been in the shell rather a long time,” I pointed out.

“You know what it is, Brian.”

“It is difficult to believe.” I went closer, holding one of my new love’s hands behind me. The anatomy was indubitable. This was no Psammead. “It’s a genuine paleomorph,” I said. “Let us hope it is the domesticated and not the feral variety. Truly incredible.” I think I was lost from that moment, enchanted and committed.

You know how it is with cats. No one owns a cat. It is a condition of mutual respect. It is impossible to con a cat with insincerity. By the same token, cats are incredibly jealous. Watch the way a man’s cat acts when a beautiful woman enters the room. If you’re attune to it, the air is singed with unvoiced antagonism.

Just about the worst thing a woman can do, in such a situation, is to praise the cat, ruffle it dutifully, and then pretend it isn’t there. Almost inevitably she will be edged out of your life, and you’ll never know quite what it was about her that you disliked.

Asquith did not do that worst thing. She pulled her hand out of mine and stormed across the room. In her white face, her cheekbones held two burning points of anger.

“This is no better than a mad-house,” she told me. Carefully avoiding the engrossed creature peering up at her, she pulled her long dark cape over her shoulders. Her voice was high, not in the least pretty. “I don’t know why I came here in the first place.” She found her purse. At the door she turned. “You can sleep with your bloody horrible old mythical creature.”

A small, fierce gout of flame singed the edge of her cape as she swept from the room, and the Kwee-poo (for such it was, dear friends) yawned a jagged mouth of teeth and came meaningfully across the carpet toward me.

1977: kidnaped

Without a radiator (the Finlays do not run to luxury), wrapped up against the icy air in skivvy, pullover, cord trousers undone at the waist, and blanket, Joseph Williams lies in his guestroom bed, watching gray and white images on the 14-inch screen and waiting for the phone to ring and tell him his father has died at last.

Cliché encompasses everything vital in our lives, he thinks. Leave aside the drama, at once heightened and flattened, on the silly television set. All that he has read (and most of what he has read is trivial, fatuous, palliative), all of it has given precise accounts of just this burning emptiness in his viscera, this needle thrust, this ache behind the eyes and in the antrums. When his mother died, when Caro left him, he wept without hesitation, swallowed by the spontaneity of his grief. For his old, parched, eaten father he feels no empathy, no true link, not even any longer the irritation that used to enrage his mornings and evenings. His father is dying of lung cancer, stinking in his hospital bed, and Joseph can do nothing more cogent than stare at the Finlays’ spare monochrome TV set. As usual, he hasn’t even got anyone to talk to. Ray is away for the weekend at an AI conference, Terry the geologist is off in the center of the Dead Heart belting the deep crust with shock waves and listening for the cry of oil, Marjory is presumably delving into linguistics in her study.

Joseph’s hand slips down under the blanket, reaching for his lonely prick.

There is a tap at the door, which opens immediately.

1976: an invitation