The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales (15 page)

The Age of Decayed Futurity

Last night I finished work on my fourth novel. It is my greatest achievement, I think.

It was an incredibly untidy business. The results are scattered about all over this room in a hotel by the Baltic Sea, and I really must collate the myriad pages. I have been a victim of that unique mental fever from which only writers suffer. It is a malady brought on by a combination of a retreat into an inner world of the imagination and too much intense concentration. In this state the real world loses substantiality, and dreamlike visions from the depths of imagination take over completely.

I really had no idea just how quickly and intensively I would work. My first three novels had each taken at least two years to finish. Yet here I am surrounded by the first draft of my fourth after only two weeks. True, I have slept very little. But, above all, it was inspiration that took hold. Though perhaps
inspiration
is too weak a word for it. Let’s say, more precisely,
synchronicity
.

For it was here that I learnt of the Reassembly Cartel.

In six months I had written nothing and it is upon my literary products that my continued existence is dependent. The reputation I had established floundered, my agent Leszek Choszcz had almost given up hope that any more worthwhile work would appear from my pen. My past books were out of print and my royalties were drying up. What money I had put aside during the period of my critical and popular acclaim was almost exhausted.

I came to the Grand Hotel in Sopot after he (my agent that is) recommended the place to me. He said that the hotel would provide all the things I was used to in Warsaw, but with none of the distractions. He told me that Marlene Dietrich and Adolf Hitler had both stayed here.

Does one consider a pleasant view a distraction to writing? I suppose it depends on the author. The view from my room afforded a view of the sea, the beach, and the Sopot Pier, the longest in Europe, its gaunt skeletal structure reaching several hundred metres out to sea. However, with it being mid-Winter, at least the place would not be overrun with tourists swarming like ants.

What I hadn’t known was that Leszek was coming down to stay in the hotel for some of the time, doubtless to monitor my progress and keep me on the straight and narrow.

He fancies himself an expert on the minds of writers.

Do you know the difference between psychiatrists and psychologists? The former are medically trained and are proper doctors. More importantly they can therefore also issue prescriptions. All one needs to do is to read up on symptoms beforehand, and then it is quite easy to obtain the drugs one requires in order to work, albeit not necessarily what one needs for long term health. I once spoke with a delightful and terribly revealing young male student doctor who told me the consultative aid most at use within the state-funded Health Service is something called the wikipedia on a computer.

Doctors fear displaying ignorance when it comes to making a diagnosis.

But I have long distrusted all doctors. As most right-minded women do. Doctors are too male and intrusive. Even the female ones. Filled with a sense of self-importance. They can’t leave nature alone. They always want to meddle with it.

My name is Joanna Wolski. Perhaps, if you read books (so few nowadays seem to), you might have heard of me. I am a widow, and the author of three novels. Communist science fiction was huge in the 1960s, back in the days of the People’s Republic. Even if you
have
heard of me, you
will not
be aware my thighs are dotted with little round burns. Often, when I am smoking and absolutely alone, I turn up my skirt and press the burning tip of my cigarette onto the cold white flesh of my thighs. The pain temporarily distracts me from the anguish I still feel at the loss of my very dear, late husband.

Any honest liar can write acclaimed fiction.

Nowadays the reading public don’t care about anything other than a cheap thrill. That’s all they’ve ever wanted.

All that’s important is finding the right thrill at the right time for the right audience.

•

When I first learnt of the Reassembly Cartel, I thought that they were just another of those conspiracy theories, such as the faked moon landing, the C.I.A. being behind 9/11 and secret alien—or Nazi—UFOs. Many of my acquaintances had an interest in such monomanias. They have, no doubt, become the new articles of faith for those who reject the orthodox delusions like Christianity.

For my part, I smiled good-naturedly at their follies, feigned interest where required and popped another pill in order to deal with the problem of existing in an alien universe.

This is how it happened.

It was at a late night soiree given by Leszek Choszcz in the restaurant of the Sopot Grand Hotel that the conversation around the dinner table turned upon dead literary genres. Waving away the offer of a refill from a bottle of Chateau de Tours that was being passed anti-clockwise from person to person by the waiter, I made a comment about the reactionary appeal of ghost stories, and how the advent of electricity and socialism had largely killed off that genre.

When I made this remark one of our dinner guests, a former U.S. television soap-opera actor called Eugeniusz Kowalski overturned his wine glass, spilling the dark red liquid onto the white tablecloth.

He was also one of Leszek’s clients, but this was the first time I’d met him. Kowalski was not someone you would forget.

He had obviously been in an accident of some kind. His disfigurement was shocking, for his face was a mass of overlapping scar tissue covering a severely misshapen skull. He looked like a gargoyle.

“
If you were aware of the Reassembly Cartel,” he said, “you would not be so quick to dismiss the idea of revenants.”

“
Then what, exactly,” I replied, “is this ‘Reassembly Cartel’?”

“
It is a front group of billionaires with absolute power over human society. Their combined wealth is greater than any single nation state. But their names will be unfamiliar to you, because their identities are secret. They have no need of identification when they own whole continents. The greatest power in the world is now located in Los Angeles, U.S.A.”

“
But the cartel’s existence has been reported in the media?” I said.

“
They own the media. Nothing is said without their approval. They also control internet search engines.”

He had fallen into my trap.

“
Then how do
you
know about the existence of this cartel?” I said, having impaled his ugly little moth of a claim, or so I thought.

“
This face is my evidence,” he said, waving his hand in front of it. “I am an individual whom they seek to destroy. A gamekeeper turned poacher.”

He then told a convoluted and fantastic tale, one that I will attempt to repeat in this narrative with as much impartiality as I can. At the time I believed little of it, but my conviction that he was telling the truth came shortly afterwards.

•

We actors are close to God, I think.

People think of us as superficial, as just playing roles on the stage or screen. But it is a vocation much more significant than that. Actors have to make the attempt to try and
become
people who are not themselves, and to see life through their eyes.

I wanted to be a great actor. A Hollywood star.

In order to do so, talent is not enough, although
without
talent it is impossible. But there are those who will succeed, and those that will fail, and the only difference between them is not their talent (a question of degree) but whether they recognise that they do not work in a void.

Charm, contacts (
contacts! contacts! contacts!
), self-assertion and the seizing of opportunities are crucial. An actor cannot concern himself with anything other than furthering his own career. Why? Simple, and it is the golden rule of success; look out for number one as nobody else will do so. But above all, give praise, praise, praise, to those who you think may be useful.

Without publicity the actor becomes nothing.

The great actor remains in darkness, a mere nothing on the stage, unless he has the spotlight turned upon him.

Of that, I am convinced.

Ludwik Solski Theatre School, a long stint in flea-pit Krakow theatres, Program Three Polskie Radio, and then state television TVP 2.

I eventually appeared in a Polish film with English dialogue that did big box-office in the States, and from then on success seemed assured.

I knew, from the moment I arrived in L.A., and was picked up from the airport by limousine, that the hidden forces had brought me to them, right into the heartland of real power.

I soon secured a lead role in the network syndicated TV series
The Greatest Victory
, in which I portrayed a psychopathic British officer during the American War of Independence. My character, Cecil, the 11th Earl of Worcester, sexually abused children and put rebels into proto-concentration camps where the captives were dissected and then fed, still alive, to the pet pigs of the goose-stepping Redcoats.

I was invited to Hollywood parties in Beverly Hills, where the coke was pure and the women beautiful and filthy. I mingled with porn stars, rock stars, TV stars and film stars.

But I made a mistake. At the time I thought it little more than a faux pas, but it’s the reason my face looks like this.

It was the Polish accent that first caught my attention. Not unusual, of course, in L.A., but nevertheless, one’s antennae still go up.

I looked across the ranks of the glitterati, sipping at my dry martini, trying to dodge the cocktail stick skewering an olive, and spotted the source of the voice. It came from a tall, bearded man with a black cloth wrapped around his forehead like a bandana. He was surrounded by a group of bored looking celebs. He looked rather like an Orthodox Jew, except for one strange detail. His complexion had a green tinge about it, as if he were using some outlandish foundation make-up on his skin.

“
I do not mean,” the bearded man said, “class war, cultural equality or the redistribution of wealth. Socialism is dead. This is something else altogether. The New Revolution will be when the unknown masses rise up to destroy the power behind celebrity. This power creates the idiot sports players, cretinous pop stars and soap opera mannequins who hypnotise the masses. The forces behind the media are more powerful in this world than are politicians. The greatest act of terrorism right now would be for the public to destroy their television sets and mobile phones, burn down the cinemas and throw their computers out the window. I want to see all commentators, newsreaders and media moguls dangling from lamp-posts. They have turned the people of the Western world into gaping-mouthed zombies staring at a screen all their lives. Their goal is to extend their control over as much, too, of the East as they can.”

“
What about the internet?” someone interjected, “that’s not controlled, is it?”

He scarcely missed a beat.

“
Big Business can shut down anything they like and dictate to governments. On the internet people think they have freedom of expression. But how can mankind communicate when everyone talks at the same time, and instead of listening, insists upon the
right to talk over
everyone else?”

The man stumbled a little on his feet. He was obviously blotto. But he held the attention of those around him. It was indeed remarkable that this soak felt he had the right to lambast the very entertainment culture that was providing him with the bourbon he was consuming at a prodigious rate.

Someone nudged my shoulder and I turned to look straight into the eyes of a person who looked like Humphrey Bogart after half a dozen facelifts.

“
Crazy fucking Polack,” he drawled, “talking like that. Just because he used to be a big shot director.”

And then I realised who the ‘crazy fucking Polack’ was—Marek Zapolska. He’d given up on the studio system in the nineties, and gone independent after a series of blockbuster movies during the eighties. He’d been married to a string of Hollywood actresses, practically launching them to mega-stardom, all of a type: blonde, slim, stunning and at least six foot tall.

“
The cult of Celebrity is killing our ability to determine our own values. The famous have the aura of magic, of power about them. We hold them in awe because of their appearances on the electronic altar; we worship the manifestations of these gods at the exact same time each day or week as in a ritual. And to see them in the flesh! Why, it is as if they have descended from Olympus to walk amongst mere mortals and grace them with their presence! Snatch their autographs before it is too late! Take a photo to record a brief sojourn on earth before they return to their own electronic dimension!”

It was hard not to laugh at the hypocritical prick. As if anyone would be bothering to listen to him if he were not a product of the very system he now appeared to despise. Perhaps his supply of tall twenty-year blondes had finally dried up.

The plastic-faced Humphrey Bogart at my elbow had wandered off somewhere, perhaps for a smoke outside, and I edged my way closer to the circle of people surrounding Marek Zapolska. I had the feeling he was leading up to something, and I wanted to be there, just in case. The old instinct I had for seeing an opening to my advantage wasn’t wrong, either.