The Museum of Doubt
Read The Museum of Doubt Online
Authors: James Meek
Tags: #Fiction, #Short Stories, #Intrigue, #Suspense, #Thriller
I want to give you a demon. I want to give you a demonstration of something unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.
I beg your pardon? she said, Bettina Dron, bed and breakfast proprietor.
I want to give you a demonstration.
He was white tinged with yellow, like splatters of curdled milk, and hair black as a rook in a birdbath. It sizzled up thick and sleek from his scalp, went frying down his chops in whirling vortextual sideburns that ended suddenly, not cut, not shaved, it went from thick to nothing, from jungle to wax. There were moles on his cheeks with the hair pouring in a spout from them like from guttering after a downpour. It was dark and fine. Without touching him she knew his flesh was hot. A thick car crouched behind him on the drive.
Jack Your Firm’s Name Here, he said, sitting next to her on the sofa, their knees almost touching. He smiled. Bettina put one hand to her mouth and another to her heart, it’d doubled its speed. His teeth were so beautiful.
Call me Jack. That’s my Christian name.
Bettina. Her fingers turned her wedding ring.
Why not rent my name? said Jack. I travel the length of the
land. I’d be Jack Pinetops-Guesthouse. I was Jack Microsoft for a while but after six months they wanted to upgrade me to a new version and I couldn’t afford the facial surgery.
Bettina was tempted even though her B&B wasn’t called Pinetops. It was called Dron’s B&B. In the furthest synapses of her brain Pinetops had crackled unrecognised, unspoken, till now. There was a regiment of pine trees on Hill of Eye, and from the upstairs window you could see the tops of them. She asked Jack for a price.
A price? said Jack. He smiled, his eyes widened half an inch and his eyebrows seesawed queasily up and down. Surely you can’t mean money? Do they still use money in these parts?
I’ve got a Mastercard.
Mastercard! My dear Bettina, Jack Transaction Pending hasn’t been Jack Mastercard for many a midsummer moon. Do you have any water? I’m thirsty. Can it really be true that you haven’t heard of the Friedrich Nietszche Marketingschule? Every morning we chanted in unison: Does a mother expect to be paid for loving her child? Prices! Bettina, I’m touched.
Tears shone in Jack’s eyes. He took a glass thimble and a packet of peanuts out of his pocket. He scooped the tears into the thimble, ripped the packet open with his teeth, downed the liquid and emptied the nuts in after them. With his mouth full, shaking his head, he went on: To think I would have come here to sell you something. To think I would have come all this way in order to exchange some – some good, some item, some simple service for a unit of currency. Oh, Bettina! For you – do you know, I almost would. But there’s no need. I may appear to you to be a salesman. I have things to give, things to show and much to explain. I have nothing to sell. You may ask: But is there a product? A product, dear Bettina. There are many products. You might as well enter a forest glade on a sunny spring day and ask,
but is there a leaf? You might as well look down on the city and ask, but is there a window? Excuse me for one moment.
Jack got up and ran to the kitchen. He stood with his back to the sink and bent backwards till his spine was u-shaped. He slid his mouth underneath the tap and reached out to switch it on. The water gushed in a smooth stream down his throat, which had no Adam’s apple.
Would you like a glass? said Bettina, standing in the doorway, stroking her fingers.
Jack shook his head. Steam wisped from his mouth around the silver tube of water.
Would you not rather use the cold tap? said Bettina.
Jack switched the tap off and sprang up straight. He shook his head and gestured her back to the lounge. She sat down and he squatted on the rug between her and the fire, where pinelogs were burning. The hot water had put colour in his cheeks. His face had turned a chilly pink, like frozen cooked prawns.
Bettina, we’ve moved beyond money, he said. The forces that summon objects to you must be more powerful, more real than money. The force of time, the force of life, the force – dearest Bettina – of love. Tell me this. Have you worked your whole life to earn enough money to get the things you want for yourself and the people you love? Have you?
Yes I have, said Bettina.
Of course you have! cried Jack. Now, let’s sweat the fat off that proposition. First you want to take away the earning and the money. That’s just a mechanism. Do you have to see your heart beating to know that you’re alive? We need to see the big picture. So what do we do, we climb onto the roof and go up the ladder and get into the basket of the balloon and fly up ever so high, ever so high, till we look down on the world below, and everything looks so very different, so much simpler than it did
from down on the ground, doesn’t it. Doesn’t it, Bettina? What do we see from way up there when we look down? Mm? D’you know? Mm? Of course you do. We can see the truth! We can see the big, plain truth. And you know what that truth is, don’t you. Yes. The plain truth is that you’ve worked your whole life to get the things you want.
But just tell me one thing, Bettina. Just one little thing, mm? Not a big thing, a tiny little thing, but ever so important. Here’s the thing: what’s work? Mm? What’s work? Hard labour? Climbing the stairs, gardening, is that work? Is it? Breathing, is that work? It can be difficult sometimes, we all know that. Or cooking, frying eggs, making a sandwich, is that work? Can be, may be, might be. Maybe it’s leisure. Maybe you like it. Maybe you don’t. Or breaking rocks. Ever tried breaking rocks? No? More enjoyable than you could possibly imagine. Or strangling chickens. Could be work – could be leisure. For me, leisure, but who knows? Each to their own. Sex. For me, work, but again, some people like to relax like that. You see which way we’re moving here, little Bettina? Work is another one of these primitive ideas. People used to think everything was made up of earth, air, fire and water, and now we know everything is made up of little atoms too tiny to worry about. Everything is smooth. People used to think life was made up of work and leisure but now we know there’s only life. So what do we have now? You’ve lived your whole life to get the things you want. This is like x equals x equals y, right, so let’s strip it down to this: your whole life for the things you want. Are you following me?
I think so, said Bettina.
X equals y, so y equals x, so what do we end up with?
The things I want for my whole life, said Bettina.
Excellent! said Jack. And now, with your permission, sweet Bettster, the Demon-O-Stration.
The salesman reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small box. He opened it and took out a porcelain ornament, a grey and white gull with a yellow beak. He held it up and stared at it. A screen of tiredness dimmed his face, as if he had lent his own sleep and peace to generations against his will and had been reminded he would never get them back.
That comes later, he said sadly, and put the box away. His face filled with energy. He took out a black notebook computer two inches thick and a foot square. He flipped it open, flung out three spindly legs, unfolded the screen till it was a yard across and unhooked speakers which inflated with a spurt of gas to the size of cupboards. Digging in his trouser pocket, he produced a handful of black spheres like squash balls which he tossed in the air so that they hit the ceiling cornice, where they stuck and split open to shine bright spotlights onto Bettina. The theme from Chariots of Fire began to play. Jack took Polaroid pictures of Bettina and fed them into a slot in the computer while the music got louder and the spotlights spun. The lights roamed over her. The lights were bright and warm, almost material, almost moist, as if she was being licked by the tip of an enormous tongue. She closed her eyes.
Jack started to speak but she couldn’t make out what he was saying over the sound of the music, or so it seemed to begin with, until she realised that she’d heard what he was saying a few minutes earlier. After a while, she could remember his words a few hours earlier, and so it went on, his words soaking deeper into the sponge of her memory until she was sodden with reminiscences of his advice and wisdom from her earliest years; advice on fashion, on savings and investments, on home improvements, on what to do with her pocket money, on food and wines, on holidays. She opened her eyes and saw her face reflected in the computer screen as if in a mirror. Her face and the
reflected face moved towards each other, swivelled and merged, and Bettina’s mind expanded and stretched thin and taut like the skin of a balloon, so immense that it seemed perfectly flat. Pasted on the inner surface was her life, visible all at once, the baby Bettina waving her fat lacy forearms and fingers across the reaches of the inner space to the wedded Bettina, and the first period Bettina running to the bathroom with her heart beating so strong and hot and indestructible and opposite her on the far side of the sphere the old Bettina yet to come with cold dry soft skin and a stick, and all the Bettinas in between, sleeping, running, crying, laughing, eating, kissing, talking, moment by moment – eight billion Bettinas, one for every quarter-second. The Bettinas were naked and alone with each other. They filled the vault with a sound like starlings in the trees at evening.
The space dimmed and flickered and the starlingsong became an anxious murmur speckled with screams. Something dark and huge moved softly, powerfully across the Bettinas, like a velvet-sleeved roadroller crushing a sea of bubblewrap. In the wake of the strokes the crusher painted through the billions, the Bettinas became fewer and larger and more distinct. Gold, silver and diamonds flashed from their wrists, their necks, their arms and their fingers. They gained tights, panties, bras, blouses, skirts, jeans and sweaters. There were ankle boots, knee boots, fur-lined boots, trainers, stilettos, Chinese slippers, brogues, hiking boots, wellies. The Bettinas were fewer and fewer and wearing coats, fake fur, wool, a broad-shouldered belted raincoat. Rugs unfurled, a dozen televisions, two dozen radios, three cars, four suites, beds, curtains, Hoovers, washing machines, a stack of books and a mountain of glossy magazines. A rattle of pans piling up against the cookers and a river of wine, gin, Martini, cider, Perrier, milk and fruit juice burst from the ovens. There was an avalanche of potatoes, spaghetti, tomatoes, bread, cabbage and
a mudslide of chocolate and cheese. Then silence and stillness. Bettina was singular, and alone with her goods in a tightening, darkening inner cosmos. She sat down in an armchair, put her arms out around two of the five washing machines she would possess in her life and drew them close to her.
And just in case you’re still not sure you’ve made the right choice, said Jack, here’s a little something to put your mind at rest: a brand new Samsung microwave, absolutely free
*
.
Bettina looked up at the ceiling. The lights had gone and the sun of a December afternoon came through the windows. The carriage clock on the mantelpiece chimed 3.15. A dove strummed its crop in the eaves. Jack was tucking the computer away in his pocket. The new microwave waited on the coffee table. Jack stood at the door. He handed her a series of pastel-coloured folders.
All the information you need is in here, he said, opening one of the folders and flicking through the pages, each of which was signed by Bettina. You’ve got Life, our Retrospective-Perspective Material-Amatory All-Activity-Inclusive Time Endowment Plan, with the optional SuperLife Bonus, and the Post-Life Redemption Unit Lump Annuity.
Explain the last part again, said Bettina.
Bettina, said Jack, cocking his head slightly to one side, slanting his eyebrows and putting his hand on his stomach, then his shoulder, then the right side of his chest, then the left side: Hand on my heart. I’ll spend as long as it takes with you. Once more: with Life, you build up units backdated to the beginning of the scheme which after a certain time you begin exchanging for food, goods, property, pleasure, ornaments and accessories – don’t forget the accessories! – until you’re ready to acquire the Post-Life Annuity. The beauty of the Plan is that
however much or little you’ve got in the way of goods when the time comes for the Post-Life Redemption, it doesn’t matter – you just hand it all over, pick up your Annuity and go on your merry way.
Where? said Bettina.
Oh, Bettina, said Jack, smiling. He reached out to her, snapped a loose thread from her dress, knelt down, picked an earwig up off the floor, swiftly wove the thread into a harness for the insect and began swinging it from his forefinger. Bettina! Where? I’m sure you began planning that a long, long time ago. There can only be one place, can’t there.
The south of Spain, said Bettina.
Yes! said Jack, laughing loudly. That’s it. The south of Spain! The deep, deep south! He sighed, wiped tears from his eyes and hiccuped. Must be gone, Bettina. I’ve seen the Tullimandies and the Foredeans. No-one else in this neck of the pinetops, is there? He laughed again and went out the door, trapezing the earwig into his mouth.
Bettina heard the salesman’s engine belch and roar and the car take off. She walked to the kitchen.
He must have missed the Museum of Doubt, she said, hoisting the rubbish bag out of the pedal bin. She opened the back door.
The Museum of what? said Jack. His face had reddened, darker than the crimson of the sun going down behind Hill of Eye, and his hair had thickened – not the amount of hair, but the glossy black hairs themselves had fattened out.
Of Doubt, said Bettina. It’s up the road, beyond Mains of Steel. The lassie put the sign up a few years ago after she moved in. You see her coming down with her rucksack to catch the bus for her messages. She bids you the time of day and that’s it.
Jack hunched into his suit. His shoulderblades rose up and his neck telescoped in, his chin tucked into his collar. He looked
around, sniffing the air. Dark, he said. Mains of Steel. There’ll be snow. The deer’ll come down to feed. I can’t call by night. Do you have a room?
Of course.
Bless you, Bettling. I’ll get my things.