They Do the Same Things Different There (7 page)

The Curator’s final missive was simple, and straight to the point. He said that he thought the work of the gallery was important, but that the art on display wasn’t; there was only one significant year in world history, the year of his irrevocable triumph over creation—all the bits beforehand he now realized were just a dull protracted preamble before the main event.

He wanted to display 2038. And only 2038. 2038 was big enough, 2038 could fill the entire gallery on its own. All the other years could now be disposed of.

There were jobs going at the gallery, and everyone queued for them, man, woman, and child. And this time everyone was a winner, they
all
got jobs—really, there was so much work to do! The chatter and laughter of a billion souls in gainful employment filled the rooms, and it looked so strange to Andy and to Miriam, that at last the art they had preserved had an audience. They squeezed in—the gallery was packed to capacity—and yes, everyone would stare at the pictures on show, and perhaps in wonder, they’d never seen anything so splendid in all their lives—or maybe they had, maybe they’d lived the exact moments they were ogling, but if so they were long forgotten now, everything was forgotten. They’d stare at the pictures, every single one, and they’d allow a beat of appreciation, of awe—and then they’d tear them down from the walls.

And there were demons too, supervising the operation. So that’s what they looked like, and, do you know, they looked just like us! Except for the hair, of course, their long lustrous hair.

The people would rip down the years, and take them outside, and throw them on to the fire. They’d burn all they’d ever been, all they’d experienced. And over the cries of excitement of the mob, you’d have thought you could hear the years scream.

Once they’d destroyed all that had been on view in the public gallery, the people made their way down to the vaults. Miriam stood in her studio, guarding 1660 with a sharpened paintbrush. “You can’t have this one.” And a demon came forward from the crowd, just a little chap, really, and so unassuming, and he punched her once in the face, and her nose broke, and he punched her hard on the head, and she fell to the ground. She didn’t give them any trouble after that.

Andy found her there. She wasn’t unconscious as he first thought; she simply hadn’t found a reason to get up yet.

“This is all because of you,” she said. “You made me fall in love with you, and it drew attention. This is all because of us.”

And in spite of that, or because of it, he gave her a smile. And held out his hand for her. And she found her reason.

They went through the back corridors, past the hidden annexes and cubbyholes, all the way to his studio. 1574 was still draped over it higgledy-piggledy, January and December were trailing loose along the ground. Andy had never managed to learn even a fraction of the order Miriam had insisted upon, and for all that her life’s work was in ruins, she couldn’t help but tut. But seeing 1574 like that, less an old master, more a pet, it was suddenly homely and small, not a proper year, a year in progress—it was a hobby project that Andy liked to tinker on, it had none of the grandeur that the Curator was trying to stamp on and destroy. And for the first time, Miriam surprised herself, she felt a stab of affection for the old thing.

“We can save 1574,” he told her.

And she knew it was worthless. That had the Curator sent his thugs to take 1574 from the beginning, she’d have given it up without a second thought. An unnecessary year—but now she helped Andy without a word, he took one corner and she the other, and together they rolled it up. And because it
was
so unnecessary, it rolled up very small indeed, and Andy was able to put it in his pocket.

No one stopped them on the way to the elevator. There was nowhere to go but up. And there was nothing up there. Not anymore.

Andy pulled the grille doors closed. He pressed the highest button that there was, one so high that it didn’t even fit upon the panel with all the other buttons, it had to have a panel all of its own. It hadn’t been pressed for such a long time, there wasn’t much give in it, and when it finally yielded to Andy’s finger it did so with a clunk.

The elevator didn’t move for a few seconds. “Come on,” said Andy, and kicked it.

The lift doors opened out onto the Earth. And there was no air, there was no light, there was no dark. There was no
time
, time had been stripped out and taken down to the art galleries long ago, time had been frittered away then burned.

“We can’t stay here,” said Miriam. “I love you. I’d love you anywhere. But this isn’t anywhere, I can’t be with you here.”

But Andy took 1574 out from his pocket. And holding out one end of the scroll, he
flung
out the other as far as he could. And the year unrolled and flew off into the distance. And when it had unrolled all that it could, after it had sped over the crags that had once been continents and oceans, when the far end of it could be seen flying back at him from the opposite direction, Andy caught hold of it, and tugged it flat, and fixed the end of December to the beginning of January. And it lay across the Earth, all the lumps and bumps, and yet it was still a perfect fit.

“This won’t last. He’ll come and get us in the end,” said Miriam.

“He will. But not for another four hundred and fifty years.” And then Andy kissed her, straight on to the mouth. He hadn’t remembered that’s how you were supposed to do it, but suddenly it just seemed so logical. And they kissed like that for a while, one mouth welded to the other, as the Middle Ages settled and stilled around them.

They’d bask for a bit in August if they wanted the sun; then, to cool down, they’d pop over to February and dip their toes in the chill. And if they wanted to be alone, away from all the kings and sultans and soldiers and peasants and peoples set upon their paths of religious intolerance, then they’d hide in November—and November on the Juan Fernández Islands, just before Juan Fernández himself arrived on the scene. They spent a lot of time there. Alone was good.

They practised making love. If the mouth on mouth thing had been inspired, it was the tongue in mouth development that was the real breakthrough. They kissed a lot, and each time they did they both felt deep within the stirrings of dormant memories—that if they just kept at it, with diligence and labour, then they’d work out the next step of sex eventually.

“I love you,” Andy would tell her, and “I love you,” Miriam would reply. And they both wrote these facts down, privately, on pieces of paper, and kept them in their pockets always.

Miriam’s nose healed. It didn’t quite set straight, but Andy preferred it the new way; the very sight of its off-centre kink as it came up at him would set his heart racing faster. And the bruise where she’d been struck at last faded too. In its place there grew a single, shiny, blonde hair. Miriam felt it pop out of her skull one day and squealed with delight.

“It’s all coming back,” she said to Andy. “Everything’s going to be all right again.”

And Andy had seen enough of history to know that one lone random hair didn’t necessarily mean much. But he laughed indulgently as she combed it into position, and she laughed at his laughter, and then they both forgot what they’d been laughing at in the first place—but that was all right, that they were happy was all that mattered. And then they started the kissing again, and all they knew and heard and felt was each other, and they ignored the stick figure demon chattering and giggling above their heads.

Snoopy is dead. They found his body lying on top of his kennel, wearing those World War I fighter pilot goggles he liked, and there must have been a foot of snow on him. Charlie Brown told the reporters, “At first I just thought it was one of his gags. That up out of the mound of snow would float a thought bubble with a punch line in it.” He went on to admit that he hadn’t cleared the snow off the body for hours, just in case he did something to throw the comic timing. But Snoopy was dead, he was frozen stiff, it’s a cold winter and the beagle was really very old. The doctors say it might have been hypothermia, it might have been suffocation, he might even have drowned if enough snow had got into his mouth and melted. Charlie Brown is distraught. “I can’t help but think I might be partially responsible.” But no one blames Charlie Brown, we all know what Snoopy was like, you couldn’t tell Snoopy anything, Snoopy was his own worst enemy.

Everyone’s being nice to Charlie Brown. No one’s called him a blockhead for days. Lucy van Pelt has offered him free consultations at her psychiatry booth, and the kite-eating tree has passed on its condolences. And all the kids at school, the ones who never get a line to say or a joke of their own, all of them have been passing on their sympathies. You admit, you immediately saw it as an opportunity. That if you went up to Charlie Brown and said something suitably witty, maybe it’d end up printed in the comic strip. You came up with a funny joke, you practised the delivery. You’d find him at recess, maybe, or on that pitcher’s mound of his, and you’d say, “It’s a dog-gone shame, Charlie Brown!” That’s pretty funny. That’s
T-shirt
funny. That’s funny enough to be put on a lunch box. But when it comes to it, you just can’t do it. When you see Charlie’s perfectly rounded head, and the expression on it so vacant, so
lost
, it’s not just a sidekick who’s dead but a family pet—no, you
won’t
do it, you have some scruples.—Besides, you can see that all the kids have had the same idea, he’s being harangued on all sides by the bit part players of the
Peanuts
franchise, and their gags are better than yours.

Your name is Madalyn Morgan, although none of the readers would know that. Your name has never been printed. You’ve appeared in quite a few of the cartoons, whenever they need a crowd of kids to watch a baseball game or something. Once you got to be in a cartoon in which Charlie Brown and the gang were queuing up to see a movie, and you were standing just three kids in front! You didn’t get to say anything, but you were proud anyway, you cut out the strip from the newspaper, and framed it, and now it hangs on your bedroom wall. You think Madalyn Morgan is a good name. It’s better than Patricia Reichardt, she had to change her name to Peppermint Patty just to get the alliteration, and you have the alliteration already, they should have used you in the first place. And Peppermint Patty’s friend is called
Marcie
, that’s so close to
Maddie
, oh, it’s infuriating. Some of the supporting characters have a gimmick, and you’ve been working on some of your own. Schroeder has a toy piano; you’re learning how to play the harp. You think there’s room for a harp in the
Peanuts
strip. Linus carries a security blanket everywhere with him and believes in the Great Pumpkin. You’ve experimented with towels and Mormonism.

You’re sorry that Snoopy is dead, of course, but you can’t say that you’ll miss him. He was a self-obsessed narcissist, that’s the truth of it. And all those fantasies he had, that he was fighting the Red Baron on a Sopwith Camel, that he was the world’s greatest tennis coach or hockey player or novelist, that by putting on a pair of sunglasses he could be Joe Cool and hit on the girls—is it just you that thinks these delusions aren’t charming? But actually the symptoms of a sociopathic mental case? He was only kind to one of the characters, that little yellow bird called Woodstock, and you suspect that’s because Woodstock can’t speak English, and with no jokes of his own he’d never rival the dog in popularity. Snoopy is dead, and the world is in mourning, and you’re
sorry
, but you can’t pretend you care. But you admit that without his comic genius, there’s a cold wind now blowing through the funny pages.

There’s a funeral for Snoopy, but it’s only for close friends and stars of the strip. You’re not invited. It’s quite a big send-off; all over town everyone can hear it. There are fireworks. You like fireworks.

The
Peanuts
franchise has been marketed to the hilt, and it doesn’t take you long to track down a full-size Snoopy costume. When you try it on you’re pleased that it’s so woolly, that’ll keep you snug during the cold winter months ahead. Your hair is quite distinctive, and you’re worried that the head piece won’t cover it up properly, but it’s fine, it’s better than fine, it pads out all the crevices nicely and helps give Snoopy’s head that soft squidgy shape that’s so endearing.

You put the supper bowl between your teeth, the way you’ve seen the real Snoopy do countless times in countless strips. You go up to the front door of Charlie Brown’s house. You kick against it three times, loud, insistent.

You know this is a classic opening to many a
Peanuts
strip. Suppertime at the Charlie Brown house, and Snoopy banging on the door, demanding to be fed. And you can already imagine it on the page, this is panel one.

Charlie Brown opens the door. He stares at you. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know
what
to say. And this is the crucial moment, you know this—if he accepts you, then you’re okay, and the strip can continue, but there’ll be a million and one reasons why he wouldn’t
want
to accept you: for a start, you’re some strange kid he doesn’t know pretending to be his dead dog. His eyes water. Is he going to cry? You think he might cry. Or will he be angry? Charlie Brown doesn’t do anger well, his character is sold on that essential wishy-washiness of his, but if ever a boy is going to get angry, it’s now, surely—and you’re suddenly aware of just how
obvious
the costume looks, the zips and fasteners exposed for all the world to see, you’re some ill-fitting parody of a best friend he only buried last week.

And then his face softens. He has made the decision to play along, you can see it. Or has he been fooled? Is he really that much of a blockhead? “Snoopy, where have you been? We thought you were gone for good!” he says. The speech bubble appears to his side, you can read the words clearly, his response is now official. And that is panel two.

In panel three you’re both walking to the kennel. Charlie Brown is now carrying the supper bowl. You’re following behind, on hind legs, of course. You wonder whether you should be doing the happy dance, when Snoopy’s fed his supper he sometimes does the happy dance, but you think that maybe it’s a little ambitious. And it might break the comic focus—if there’s one thing you’ve learned on your long stint on
Peanuts
it’s that you mustn’t smother the gag with extraneous detail. Always focus on what the story is
about
. This isn’t a strip about Snoopy doing a happy dance. It’s a strip about Snoopy coming home and Charlie Brown accepting him. Keep it simple. Charlie Brown says, “I threw out all your dog food, all I’ve got left are these old vegetables. . . .”

And he’s gone. And you’re into panel four. The final panel on a weekday
Peanuts
strip is panel four, and it has a special job—it needs to sum up the world weariness and despair that is the hallmark of the cartoon at its best. To take all the hope that was present in the first three panels and show that it is wanting. To demonstrate that at best, life is an awkward compromise we all just have to buckle down and accept. You don’t know how to convey all that. All eyes are on you. You stare down at the awful food in your supper bowl. You roll your eyes. You send up a thought bubble. “Good grief,” you think.

And it’s a wrap.

The strip is printed in the newspapers the very next day. The world is glad to see that Snoopy is back again, even if he’s sporting a zip.

You soon find out, in the absence of a really good punch line, rolling your eyes and thinking “Good grief” tends to work pretty well.

Sometimes the supporting cast come to see you. Linus says, “You are exploiting the grief of someone who is suffering, don’t you feel ashamed?” And then quotes some Bible verses at you, and that’s so
very
Linus—and you want to say, if you’re so smug and sanctimonious, why do you carry a security blanket? No, you don’t feel ashamed, because
Snoopy
wouldn’t feel ashamed—that was the point of Snoopy, can’t they see that, he had no conscience at all. You just lie on the roof of the kennel and let their criticisms wash right over you. Lucy is more direct, as usual; she says she wants to slug you; she says she wants to pound you. The best way to deal with Lucy is to call her “sweetie” and kiss her on the nose, that never fails to infuriate her.

Incidentally, it’s hard to sleep on the roof of a kennel, especially one that tapers into such a very sharp point. It took you a week to learn how to do it without falling off. And even now, you haven’t found a way of lying there without the pain, it jabs right into your spine, it’s agony. Thank God your contorted face is masked beneath that Snoopy head. Thank God your Snoopy head is fixed in that expression of cute self-satisfaction.

Woodstock comes by only the once. He jabbers at you, and he’s angry, but you’ve no idea what he’s saying, his speech bubbles are full of nothing more than vertical lines. And you tire of him, and you punch him—you thwack him with your paw and it says, “Ka-pow!”—and Woodstock is lying still on the grass for ages, and you wonder whether you’ve killed him. (And wonder whether it would matter; if the
Peanuts
strip can survive the death of the original Snoopy, who cares about the fate of a little bird that wasn’t even given a name for the first twenty years of syndication?) But Woodstock
does
revive. And he flies away. And you never see him again.

The only one you need to keep happy is Charlie Brown. And Charlie Brown is
very
happy; he brings you fresh bowls of dog food every day, and you wolf them down, and dance the happy dance for real. He’s the butt of all your jokes, but he has faith in you, and you have faith in him—life will knock the stuffing out of Charlie Brown each and every day, but he rolls with the punches, he keeps coming back for more. It’s harder to be a Charlie Brown than a Snoopy. You have to admire him a bit for it.

You try out Snoopy’s tried and tested specialty acts. You fly your kennel into World War I, and fight the Germans. The first time you strap on your goggles you think maybe something magical will happen, that you’ll really take off into the air, that you’ll really have to dodge the bullets of enemy fire. And you feel a bit disappointed at first that it’s all pretend—of course it’s all pretend, and it always was. But there’s a certain thrill to it, that you have a nemesis, the Red Baron, even if it’s just a made-up nemesis. And every time he shoots you down you shake your fist up to heaven and curse him, and it’s fun, even though you know there’s no one up there listening and that no one really cares.

You try to introduce some of your own skills into the act. For a few strips Snoopy begins to play the harp, with hilarious consequences. For a week or two he becomes a Mormon. The last storyline is seen as a noble failure, and is never repeated.

Sometimes you forget you’re Madalyn Morgan at all. Sometimes you think you really were born at Daisy Hill Puppy Farm. And when your head itches, and once in a while you’re forced to pull off your mask, you see that that hair of yours has just kept on growing, there’s so much of it now, and you stare at it in the mirror with horror.

You don’t see why a dog would try so hard to be human. Being human doesn’t look that remarkable to you.

A kid pretending to be a dog, that’s eccentric. But a kid pretending to be a dog pretending to be a kid? To coin a phrase, that’s barking mad.